The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,151

Samite rolled her shoulders, as if trying to find some way to extricate herself from the messy emotions and pick up her gruff-trainer persona once more. “Now, uh, there’s a stack of messengers and a line of papers outside your door—or maybe I got that backward. Regardless, uh, given the circumstances, I’ll give you the rest of the morning off. See you at the training yards tomorrow?”

Slowly, despite the still-churning mess of thoughts and emotions roiling head and heart and stomach, and despite the headache she had—she always got headaches when she cried—slowly, Karris nodded, and she felt a little bit of herself coming back. “Bright and early,” she promised.

Chapter 41

“I wanted to ask you something,” Kip said, coming into the little room that Cruxer had made his office and bedroom. It was nauseatingly tidy. Even the stacks of schedules on the desk looked just so.

“Anything,” Cruxer said. He’d just dribbled oil onto his blade, and now he picked up his whetstone, spinning a spear point into position.

“It’s a sore spot.”

Cruxer didn’t waver. He began the soothing wush-wush of the whetstone.

Kip went on. “Big Leo said something I didn’t understand. He said you were still grieving Lucia—”

“It hasn’t been that long,” Cruxer interrupted. It was uncharacteristic of him. He’d been in love with the young Blackguard scrub, and when she’d stepped into the line of fire, taking a bullet that had been meant for Kip, Cruxer’s world had ended.

“No. It hasn’t. And that wasn’t at all what tripped me up. It was that he thought the reason you were angry about me giving Ruadhán another chance had something to do with her. He wouldn’t say anything else when I asked him. So what’s that about?”

“I’m fine with you giving Ruadhán another chance,” Cruxer said. “Now.”

“That actually confuses me more,” Kip said.

Cruxer paused in his sharpening, then said, “You’re the . . . you’re the Breaker, not me. Different rules apply to you. I’m not a man who does new things. I’m a man who does the old things as well as they can be done. But here? I’m doing new things all the time. I’m making decisions over other people’s lives, like I’ve got any right to do that. I’m worried all the time, Breaker. I keep looking around waiting to be punished,” Cruxer said.

“Punished? For what?”

“Breaker, I’m eighteen years old. I’m styling myself a commander? I’m not even eligible to be a watch captain. I keep thinking Orholam’s gonna give me what I deserve any moment.”

“Is that who Orholam is to you?” Kip asked. “An Andross Guile waiting for you to transgress, so that He can expose you at the worst possible moment? Isn’t He instead like Ironfist, who will correct your form, not because He enjoys showing you how you’re messing up but because doing it wrong might get you hurt or killed someday?”

But Cruxer wasn’t even hearing him. “I’m not the man anyone thinks I am. I’m a fraud. I had a hundred chances to come clean, and I never did. And do you know what punishment I got for that?”

“What are you talking about?”

“None. She paid for it.”

“Lucia?” Kip said. “Her dying wasn’t your fault!”

“She wasn’t good enough to make it into the Blackguard—”

Kip accepted that. They’d all known it was true. “She absolutely had the spirit of the best of us, Crux. She saved my life. If this is on anyone, it’s on—”

“She had the spirit, yes, but not the skills. She shouldn’t have been there. Wouldn’t have . . .” His face contorted.

“Wouldn’t have?”

“I fell for her. Hard. Like, before we even talked. There was . . .” Cruxer’s face brightened at the memory. “There was something radiant about her. Like you just want to watch her across the room and watch how spirits lighten as people talk to her. I started training her extra right away, not just to be near her, either. I knew, brother, I knew so early that she’d never make it in. I don’t think she did. And I couldn’t bear to be away from her.”

He took a breath, steadying himself against his grief.

“She came from one of the slave-training houses, you know? If she failed out of Blackguard training, we both knew her owners would look for some other way to recoup their investment. Decent men who just want a domestic don’t bid as much at the auction as men who want a domestic for whom they have . . . other uses as well. Good women who