Ironfist strode to the gate. The guards outside looked confused. “Captain?” Then they snapped sharp salutes, eyes wide. “Commander!”
A smaller door inset to the larger gate was open, and Ironfist walked through, nodding to acknowledge the men. The city inside was too overwhelming for Kip to comprehend even part of it. But the part that hit him first was the smell.
Ironfist must have noticed the look on his face. “You think this is bad? You should try a city without sewers.”
“No,” Kip said, looking at the hundreds of people in the streets, the three- and four-story buildings everywhere, the cobbled streets with tracks worn a hand’s breadth down into the stones. “It’s just that there’s so much.” And there was. Smells of cooking pork, spices Kip didn’t know, fresh fish, rotting fish, a thin odor of human waste and a stronger one of horse and cattle manure, and, overwhelming it all, the smell of unwashed men and women.
The people parted naturally around Ironfist, and Kip followed in his wake, trying not to run into anyone as he shot glances at all the people. There were men wearing ghotras like Ironfist, but also bedecked in robes with checkered patterns and loud colors. There were Atashian men with their impressive beards: beads, braids, natural sections, and more beads and braids. There were Ilytian women with multilayered dresses and shoes nearly like stilts, making them a full hand taller. And a riot of colors everywhere. Every color in the rainbow, combined in every possible way. Ironfist looked back at Kip, amused.
“Those soldiers at the gate,” Kip said, trying to take Ironfist’s attention off his being a bumpkin. “Those weren’t your men.”
“No,” Ironfist said.
“But they recognized you, and you didn’t recognize them, and they were really excited that they’d seen you.”
Ironfist looked at Kip again, scowling. “How old are you again?”
“I’m fift—”
“The commander,” Ironfist said. As if that answered everything. He smirked as Kip scurried up beside him. “You’re the genius. Let’s hear it,” he said.
Genius? I never acted like I thought I was that. But that was a distraction. This was a test. In fact, Ironfist had been testing Kip the whole time, Kip saw now. Putting him on the rudder had been a test, to see what he would do, how quickly he would figure it out, and if he would freeze up. Kip wasn’t even sure how well he’d done on that count.
Ironfist was a commander. A commander, the commander. The commander. Oh. Oh my.
“There’s only one company of Blackguards, isn’t there?” Kip asked.
Like most of Ironfist’s expressions, this one was quick and quickly muted: the full white of his eyes around dark irises visible for a bare moment, then a little smirk to cover. “Not bad, given the obvious hint, I suppose.”
“So you’re the sole commander of the most elite company in the Chromeria. That makes you like a general or something?”
“Or something.”
“Oh,” Kip said. “So that means I should probably be even more intimidated of you than I am right now, huh?”
Ironfist laughed. “No, I think you’ve got it just about perfect.” He grinned.
“What were you doing pulling guard duty on that rock?”
“It is a bit more than a rock.”
Put that way, it did make some sense. The Blackguard had to protect the Chromeria’s most important people, and a secret escape tunnel was the kind of thing you had to check yourself. “Still,” Kip said.
They came to a much wider road and Ironfist—Commander Ironfist—turned onto it, heading west, the opposite direction of almost all of the traffic. He sighed. “It’s not a duty anyone wants, so it’s sometimes used as punishment. Let’s just say I’ve given the White reason to be displeased recently.”
Kip said quietly, “Or that’s a cover so you can go out and check the maintenance of the tunnel.”
“Except that a tunnel is… a tunnel. Don’t make things more complicated than they are, little Guile.”
Huh? “Oh.” Ironfist could come from the Chromeria side and make sure the tunnel worked. He didn’t need to sail out to the island for that. Some genius I am. Embarrassed, Kip rushed to ask another question, and asked the question he knew he shouldn’t. “So what did you do to make him mad at you? You know, the White.”
“Him?” Ironfist asked.
“Her?”
Ironfist turned in at a little house with an oxidized copper dome, unlocked the door, and pointed for Kip to go in. “There’s hard tack and cheese and olives in the kitchen. Latrine off to the left. Bed straight down the hall.