The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,237

become a saying for us.”

Big Leo said, “Our lives are . . . contiguous on the promachos’s mood, Ferk, so Win’s hoping that—that can’t be right. ‘Continuous’? No, not that, either.”

“I really didn’t think I was the subtle one,” Winsen said.

“ ‘Contingent’?” Ben-hadad suggested.

“Ah, that’s it,” Big Leo said.

“I still don’ t—” Ferkudi said.

Kip felt a sudden surge of love for these big apes. They were nervous. Chatty. Nettlesome. And yet they were here. With him.

They could’ve had a secure kingdom in Blood Forest, for a while at least. Fame, for a while at least. And yet they were here, for him.

With the honor guard there with them, a mature man would never crack a joke. Kip was a fugitive, and honor guards could turn to actual guards all too easily.

Exactly how far being a Guile would benefit Kip depended completely on Andross Guile’s whim.

“It means we hope the old man’s been eating his prunes,” Kip said as the lift doors opened.

“I still don’ t—”

“Orholam’s scabby left nut, Ferk!” Ben-hadad said, turning, not noticing the doors were now fully open and dozens of nobles and retainers and men-at-arms lining the hallway were looking at them. “He means that if that batshit-crazy old man is cranky because he’s constipated, we’re fucked!”

Ben looked at the faces of his friends, and then followed those to the aghast faces in the hall behind him. “Oops.”

Kip let him twist in the wind. Anything Kip did would merely make it seem like Ben-hadad was repeating an attitude Kip had modeled before. But give Ben-hadad this: his brain only stayed in panicked paralysis for a single heartbeat.

Ben-hadad limped out of the lift first, leaning heavily on his cane, exaggerating the limp. “War wound,” he said, too loudly, rubbing his ear as if he were part deaf. “The wights knocked me a bit senseless.”

Having seen that Andross Guile himself wasn’t in the hallway, Kip let himself take a breath.

After all, if his grandfather decided to kill him, it wouldn’t be over something like this. “Commander,” Kip said. “See that your man is appropriately disciplined later. For the moment, we’ve things to do.”

“Yes, my lord.”

They strode forward past the whispers, and surrendered their weapons to the Blackguards standing at the audience-hall door.

Out of the side of his mouth, Ben-hadad muttered, “I said, ‘Oops.’ ”

Kip recognized one—and only one—of the Blackguards at the door. Jin Holvar had recovered from her wounds, but looked older and grim as she extended her hands for their weapons.

“You know,” Cruxer said to Kip, unbuckling his sword belt and handing it over, “it stings not to be able to go armed in front of the White and the promachos, especially given that you’re family, and I’m a legacy, and all of us were so close to being Blackguards. I mean, I understand it. And it wouldn’t be so bad if the Lightguards didn’t get to go armed here while we don’t. But they do.”

Jin Holvar grimaced as if she agreed, but she maintained her Blackguard professionalism.

“No need to salt the wound,” Kip said. “The Blackguards here already have to share duties with the men who murdered Goss—and he was a Blackguard nunk at the time, wasn’t he?”

“Yeah, definitely, it’s true. He was,” Big Leo said, looking hard at Holvar but pretending to speak to Kip. “Even if a Blackguard wanted to forgive everything that happened to your old friends who had to flee afterward, that’s still a huge offense, completely unprovoked as it was.”

“Huge?” Ben-hadad said. “More than that. Unforgivable.”

“It’s all right,” Cruxer said, leveling a hellstone stare right at the Lightguards flanking the Blackguards at the door. “Jin was in the infirmary that day with us. She knows the truth of what happened. When men without honor attack you, there’s little you can do to stop the first treacherous blow. All you can do is make them pay later. The Blackguard being the august, honorable company that it is, I’m sure they’ve made those cowards pay since then. Sure of it.”

The faces of the Lightguards reddened and their knuckles went white, and the Blackguards nearby didn’t look much better.

“We are much diminished,” Jin Holvar said, stiff-spined. “A state not helped by our commander and then our best trainees abandoning us when we needed them most.”

“Maybe you should have gone with us,” Big Leo shot back.

“Maybe some would’ve if you’d given us the chance,” Jin said. Before they could answer—or apologize, Kip suddenly felt like an ass—she pushed open the door.

Another gauntlet of expectant faces