He was missing something.

“Well, don’t thank me, get a move on,” Cruxer said happily.

But Kip didn’t move. He reached for the bag with the rope spear and tried to think. He bathed himself in yellow light from a special lantern. The problem was, he was almost done. He needed only to make the spear point now, and he wasn’t certain that luxin would make the best material for it. He’d thought about tying a tassel to the spearhead to distract the eye or perhaps filling it with off-spectrum brightwater so it would shimmer and gleam as it moved, but he hadn’t decided yet.

“Two things,” Cruxer said.

Kip looked at up at his friend. Cruxer drew a black spearhead from a bag.

Not just black, hellstone. He handed it to Kip. A setting of blackened steel graced the base of the blighted leaf-blade. Kip examined it and then the mantle of the rope spear. They snapped together perfectly.

“You want to explain this?” Kip asked.

“The hellstone came from the treasury here.”

That wasn’t what Kip was asking, and Cruxer had to know. “Ben-hadad do this?” he asked.

“We sort of all thought it was about time you were done with that damn thing,” Big Leo said, still without looking up from his book.

“What are you talking about?” Kip asked.

“Permission to speak bluntly, my lord?” Cruxer asked.

“Of course.”

“I mean, really bluntly.”

“Come on,” Kip said. As if he’d take offense.

“I figure a good friend gets one free chance to tell you you’re being an asshole in your life. And if he’s right, he gets one more.”

“That is an excellent introduction into whatever you’re about to tell me,” Kip said.

“Are you just tolerating that amazing fucking woman down the hall there, hoping you can trade her for Teia someday? Grow some balls, man. Make a choice. You know we all love Teia. You know we do. But you’re being an asshole to a woman who is better than I think you appreciate.”

“I appreciate her!” Kip protested.

“The question, Breaker,” Big Leo said, looking up from his book, his feet still propped up, “isn’t if you appreciate her. It’s whether you’re an asshole or a moron.”

“What are you talking about?” Kip said. “Wait, is this about the rope spear? Are you joking? You think I’ve been making this for Teia?”

Big Leo closed his book, sighed, and walked toward the door.

“I’m glad you all have been so thoroughly won over by my wife,” Kip said to Cruxer. “But you’re sadly mistaken about the whole rope spear thing.”

Cruxer looked at him flatly. “Yes, my lord.”

Kip looked at him, peeved. Of course, if they’d been mistaken, then mightn’t she…

And then he thought of all the times Tisis had seemed disappointed or hurt when he’d pulled out his little project to work on. Surely she couldn’t have made the same mistake.

Oh hells. She thought he hadn’t really chosen her.

Hadn’t chosen her? Come on! What bullshit… what totally, goddamned… accurate bullshit.

He was making the best of the hand life had given them.

But that was different, wasn’t it? It wasn’t making the choice his. It wasn’t owning it.

Kip looked at the rope spear he’d made. It was a perfect weapon, and completely hypothetical. He couldn’t use it.

He hadn’t chosen Tisis, had he? Despite everything. He’d called what they had ‘fun’ and told her he ‘cared for her,’ and he’d spent his spare time—for a year!—on a gift for another woman.

He stood up and tossed the damn thing to Cruxer.

“What do you want me to do with it?” Cruxer asked.

“I don’t care,” Kip said.

“You spent a year on that thing,” Big Leo said, standing up and closing his book. “It’s brilliant. I mean, the execution, not the idea of you doing it. Or working on it in front of your wife. Or taking time away from—”

“Thanks, Big Leo! Enough!” Kip said.

“You are going to at least name it, right?” Big Leo said. “Magical weapons have to have names. It’s a rule or something.”

“Sorry,” Kip said, ducking past the big man and out into the hall.

“Wait!” Big Leo said. “Is that you refusing to name it, or is that its name?”

Chapter 75

A paryl trip wire perched across the top step, waiting for Teia. It was an impressive distance from the mirror room, farther than she’d thought possible. Either Murder Sharp had just arrived, or he was a better paryl drafter than she had known.

She rubbed her face with her hands, as if she could scrub away fear as easily as she could rub fog off a window. It was about as effective. She checked quickly that no one could possibly see her in the stairwell, but of course the path to the mirror room was abandoned on the night of a new moon. Seeing it was safe, she made the sign of the seven, splaying her fingers to touch forehead, eyes, and mouth, then tapping them to heart and hands. The deeper she’d gotten into the secrets of the Order through the winter and into this spring, the more she needed to make an outward show of her own beliefs. The deeper she fell into the pits of heresy, the more orthodox she was becoming. But fear fogs the windows again at any hesitation, so there was time for only one sign and one breath prayer. Orholam, let your light guard me in this darkness.

It didn’t seem to do anything, but she kicked through the trip wire anyway. She walked down the hallway quietly, as if she didn’t know her entrance had been announced. There was another trip wire outside the door. She paused, then stepped over it, opening the door slowly.

The door squeaked. Of course it did.

She let out a cloud of paryl from her fingertips. It billowed freely through the room full of silent mirrors mounted on their great spinning frames. The paryl cloud spread from her outstretched hands like the slow blast of a blunderbuss: lighter paryl from her right hand floating up toward the ceiling while heavier, nearly solid paryl spilled across the floor and drizzled down the great circular holes in the floor. The slowly erupting cloud crashed against an invisible form in front of her, and curled around it like a thunderhead parting around a mountain.

The Shadow stood silent, his head bowed to hide his eyes.