The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,326

This is sacrosanct. For the sake of the Seven Satrapies, I’m afraid I can’t allow you to—”

Kip had been with the Blackguard long enough to recognize the small move with his right hand backward, drawing the knife back to get space to apply more force to ram it home.

All the tension in Kip’s muscles exploded at once. Sweeping in from Zymun’s left side, he caught the young man’s right hand just as the knife swept forward. Kip pushed the knife wide as his own mass collided with Zymun, driving him away from Karris. Then Kip’s right elbow flashed up, cracking across Zymun’s head as Kip blocked his heel with his own foot.

Zymun went down, boneless.

The fight was finished before the gasps were.

Kip could tell suddenly that a lot of the people here hadn’t seen the telltale twitch that foretold murder. To the untrained eye, his action must have looked like an unprovoked attack.

“He was moving to kill her,” Commander Fisk announced sharply. “We train constantly to see tells of such a move, and Kip trained with us. He saw it, too. This was defense of life, not an attack. I know what I saw, and I swear this to be true.”

Twenty Blackguards gave silent affirmation. Kip hadn’t even thought of the Blackguard, but he realized why he was the first to react: they were trapped between their next Prism, a White who’d abdicated her protection by them, and a not-quite order from the promachos. Their loyalties and their oaths of obedience had tangled, slowing them.

“You dare? You dare lay your hands on me?” Zymun hissed at Kip from the floor, blinking his eyes.

“Grandfather,” Kip said loudly but without turning from the snake. “May I remind you of your earlier promise?”

Irritated, Andross announced, “Blackguards, Kip is under my full protection. Act accordingly.”

Zymun lunged at him, scrambling to draw a pistol, but the Blackguard—happily absolved of contradicting loyalties—restrained him quickly and with more force than strictly necessary.

“Take Zymun to his apartments. Our Prism-elect has much to pray about this night,” Andross said.

Zymun was dragged out, spitting and trying to bite the Blackguards, who had no trouble handling him.

“One minute to midnight,” Carver Black said.

Karris hadn’t moved from where she knelt on the pillow. “Commander Fisk?” she asked. “Will you do me the honor?”

“That is your will?” he asked.

“It is.”

Quietly Fisk added, “I wish we could lose a different Guile.”

“I know,” she said. “You’re a loyal friend, Commander. Thank you.”

Commander Fisk looked at Andross, but the old man made no gesture one way or the other. So then Fisk looked at Kip and extended his hand for his knife.

Kip hadn’t even realized he was still holding it. “Hell no,” Kip said. “This is insane. You know Ironfist! He would never do this! This isn’t his heart. We wait!”

“My lord has the luxury of disobeying orders,” Commander Fisk said. “I wish I had the same.” He took a knife from another Blackguard. “Karris, Archer, sister, High Lady Guile, forever our Iron White,” he said, “it has been my honor to serve with you, and to serve you. May Orholam reunite us in gentler lands.”

“And may He bless you with light and warmth, Commander. Now, stop delaying, old trainer of mine. It’s taking everything in me not to try my hand at fighting you one last time, to see if I could win now, as I couldn’t so very long ago.”

Taking a deep breath as he came to stand over her where she knelt, she pulled the neckline of her blouse open, looking up toward heaven and pulling the skin tight so that the gaps between the ribs were visible.

Then there was a cry outside the audience chamber in the hall. Kip couldn’t make out the words, but an instant later he saw Trainer Gill Greyling go sprinting past the open door—not into the audience chamber but past it toward the lifts—shouting, “Stop, stop, stop!” with the urgency of man who knew he was too late.

Chapter 94

Teia’d had terrible premonitions all the way here, but the last thing she was expecting when she finally made it invisibly to the Chromeria’s lifts was to be greeted by the lift gate opening to reveal a bloody, badly wounded Commander Ironfist.

“Get in, quickly. Timing is everything,” a dark, plain-dressed Parian man with him said to her. The lift was otherwise empty.

For a moment, Teia wondered if she was hallucinating the whole thing. First, she was invisible. Second, Ironfist was the utter opposite of invisible—and yet, no one else