The Blinding Knife
Page 131

“So you don’t need me?” Gavin said. “I’m the Prism. You think getting money is going to be hard for me? You think I’ll lack for anything? You really want to start a fight with me?”
“Start it? If you hadn’t been so busy fucking that little girl, I think you’d have noticed we’ve already started.”
“What have you done?” Gavin asked.
“I made you, boy. In every way.” Andross Guile sank back into the cushions of his chair. “You want to cross me? Look to what you love.”
Chapter 88
“I heard that the wights are using hellhounds,” Ferkudi said. “In Atash.”
“And I heard the Eternal Flame in Aslal burned bright blue for two months straight!” Yugerten said. He was a gangly boy, and ranked low. No one paid much attention to him.
“Anyone can make a fire burn blue,” Ferkudi said. “I’m talking hellhounds!”
The scrubs were walking together as a class to go do another real-world training. They didn’t know any of the details yet, but after oversleeping, Kip had barely caught up with them before they got to the really bad neighborhoods.
“Burning dogs, made of luxin?” Teia asked dubiously.
Kip was trying to see who was watching them as they walked through increasingly narrow streets to Overhill.
“Hellhounds are a myth, Ferk,” Tanner said.
“The man who told me wouldn’t lie,” Ferkudi said.
“Think, you moron, you’re a drafter,” Tanner said. “How would you even do such a thing? You could make a statue of a dog out of red luxin, but it wouldn’t do anything, would it?”
“Well, I don’t know. I guess not,” Ferkudi said.
“They’re not made of luxin,” a voice interjected quietly. “But they are real.”
It was Trainer Fisk.
The boys fell silent, looked at each other.
“The wights infuse red luxin into the coat and skin of a dog. They do it for practice, before they try it on themselves. It’s a cruel, cruel thing, and worse is to set them on fire. But I’ve seen it happen. I saw Commander Ironfist put one down when we were cleaning up the wights from the False Prism’s War.”
Their respect for Commander Ironfist jumped up a few more rungs on the ladder to pure worship.
“But wouldn’t a dog who’d been set on fire be just as likely to kill the men who sent it as that man’s enemies?” Kip asked. “I’d think it would just go crazy.”
Trainer Fisk spat. “Dammit, Breaker. It would be you, wouldn’t it?”
“What?” Kip asked. He still wasn’t used to being called Breaker.
But the trainer said nothing as they entered a small square and passed dirty merchants who stared at them with open hostility. This was a Tyrean neighborhood, but the people here didn’t see a Tyrean when they looked at Kip, they saw only a Blackguard whelp.
When they’d passed out of the square and into the next street, Trainer Fisk said, “There’s kinds of drafting we don’t talk about much with younger drafters, because we lose enough of you as it is, and everyone thinks she’s special and tries the things that we tell you not to try. But you all are going to be warriors, and maybe sooner than we’d like, so you deserve to know what’s out there.”
If he hadn’t had everyone’s attention before, he did now. The class bunched around him, hanging on every word.
“Breaker’s right. You light a dog on fire, it’ll go crazy. But drafting is about Will. You know that we use Will for everything we draft, that Will can cover over mistakes we make in matching wavelengths. Lots of theories as to how it really works, but basically, you can infuse your own Will in your work.”
“Golems?” someone said.
Trainer Fisk grimaced. “Are almost impossible.” He looked like he was sorry he’d started down this road. He looked at the girl who’d said it. “You’re a blue monochrome, Tamerah. If you made a golem, it would just sit there in its harmonious blue-ness. A green golem would be totally uncontrollable, as has been demonstrated scores of times. They reject rules and control to the extent that they kill the foolish drafters who create them. So you have to be at least a bichrome to even attempt a golem, and they pretty much always go horribly wrong. Point is, for the question at hand, you can cast your will onto a living creature—in this case dogs. Usually those who’ve broken the halo—or plan to do so—will experiment on animals first to see how they might successfully change their own bodies. Hellhounds are one permutation of that.”
“Permutation?” someone asked.
“Version!” Ferkudi said. “And shut up.”
Trainer Fisk went on, reluctantly. “Infuse a dog with lots of red luxin, send enough Will into it to make it run at your enemies, and light it on fire. It’s a sick and horrible way to die. They howl in pain and rage, impelled to attack even when they’re so far consumed by the flames that you can’t believe they’re still moving. If you ever have to face one, take the legs off first, and then the head. That usually does it.”
“Usually?” Ferkudi said, astounded.
“Enough of that,” Trainer Fisk said. “Today, we’re inviting trouble. As before, know that some of you may not come back from today’s exercise. Of those who do, some of you may come back maimed. You may be knocked out of the Blackguard before you even get in, scrubs, and through no fault of your own.”
It was like being dunked in cold water. The levity and wonder of the moment before was dashed.
“We can expect that the gangs have heard about the exercise the other week, and we can expect that they’re looking forward to having another shot at you. Here’s the setup: the top two teams will be teams of six. Five of you are Blackguards, one of you is a Color. The bottom team will be nine. As always, it is hard to stay on top. Those of you who are Blackguards are not allowed to draft. Your Color is allowed to draft but not allowed to fight. The Color will be carrying a purse with forty danars in it. Enough to attract some serious problems for you, but not enough to start a riot. We hope. The older classes and several full Blackguards will be along the route. If you need help, you call out for it, and they’ll come. If you call for help, you fail and everyone in your team drops three places, but being a Blackguard means knowing when to beat a retreat. You start from here, the test is over when you cross the Lily’s Stem. Got it?”
The scrubs nodded.
“First up, Teia and Kip, Cruxer and Lucia, Aram and Erato. Kip, you’re the Color.”
“Why does Kip get to be the Color?” Aram asked. Little bastard.
Trainer Fisk’s jaw tightened for a fraction of a second, then he said, “Because Kip’s slow. Our current Prism notwithstanding, usually the man or woman you guard is older, slower, and a worse fighter than you are. Part of what we do is deal with that, and protect them despite their weaknesses. That good enough, Aram, or do I need to explain myself to you further?”
Aram scowled, looking away.
It wasn’t a bad team, Kip thought. Out of the twenty-one scrubs still left, Cruxer was first place, Teia was seventh place, Aram was eleventh but deserved to be in the top five, and Erato was ninth but deserved to be about fifteenth. Kip was fifteenth—and deserved to be about twenty-third—but that was neither here nor there. Cruxer’s partner, Lucia, was ranked twenty-first. She was smart, pretty, and well liked, with short wiry hair and a heart-stopping smile, but not much of a fighter. No killer instinct. No matter how much extra training Cruxer did with her, she was probably going to fail out in the final test next week.