“So Andross blackmailed you. For how long?”

“Just that one thing against Kip. Although he told me my failure at it meant I still owed him. But he didn’t threaten any further repercussions. He seemed to understand that Orholam himself must have wanted Breaker to get into the Blackguard. The promachos may be a horrible person, but he’s not irrational.”

“So is he still blackmailing you now? Is he blackmailing your lover?”

“No, and he can’t. I confessed everything to the White after…”

“After?”

“After Lytos died.”

Teia twitched. Lytos? Fisk’s relationship had been with a eunuch? How did that even work…?

Of course she knew of slaveholders forcing their eunuchs to serve them sexually, but otherwise a eunuch was assumed to be asexual. That was the point, wasn’t it? That a free eunuch might want a sexual relationship hadn’t even occurred to her—and it had to be a sexual relationship because Blackguards weren’t forbidden other relations, so they couldn’t be blackmailed with anything else. What sort of satisfaction would a eunuch get out of…

Then again, she didn’t have to understand the mechanics of the thing. She could see the emotion of it. “I’m… so sorry for your loss.”

The tightness around his eyes eased a little: he’d been worried she would mock him or think him a pervert for falling in love with a eunuch. “Anyway, none of that matters,” he said. “I stopped serving Andross after Lytos died and—”

“Lytos didn’t just die, though,” Teia objected. Winsen, peerless archer that he was, had feathered Lytos’s heart as Lytos had helped Buskin try to assassinate Kip. “Andross Guile tried to make you stop Breaker from joining the Blackguard. You failed. Did Andross send Lytos afterwards to kill Kip, to stop him once and for all?”

Fisk shook his head. “I don’t—I don’t think so. When I confronted the promachos, he said he not only hadn’t blackmailed Lytos, he’d never even talked to him. Andross Guile said that for him to ruin a eunuch’s relationship would be like an emperor stealing a gold ring from a beggar. Such a theft changed nothing for the emperor, but by whatever improbable means that beggar had gotten that gold ring, he’d never get another one in his life. Andross said it would show a meanness of spirit to ruin such happiness, no matter how puzzling he found it. The promachos is not a good man, Teia, but I believed him. I still do. He is ruthless, but he’s not cruel for its own sake. At the same time, I can certainly believe that someone else found out our secret and used it to blackmail Lytos into doing… what he almost did. Neither of us could have lived with having been expelled from the Blackguard.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Teia asked.

“Because you know what it is to love someone forbidden you.”

Teia went cold. Fisk? Fisk had been able to see how Teia felt—before she knew it herself? She moved to object, but he spoke over her.

“I’m telling you because you’re utterly loyal to Breaker, and you stayed behind anyway. I think you stayed behind on his orders. I think you stayed behind because you’re spying for him.”

“I’m not—”

“You stayed behind because you know Breaker is the Lightbringer.”

“Excuse me?” Teia said.

It took the wind out of Teia’s sails. Cruxer believed Breaker was the Lightbringer with the fervor of a prophet. She thought so, too, but she wasn’t worried about being part of history or something grand like that. She followed Kip because he was both great and good. That was enough for her.

And it had to be enough now, because more wasn’t an option now that Teats Tisis was scabbarding his sword. Plenty of men lusted after Tisis; she was tall, curvy, graceful, and rich, with exotic silky blond hair and exquisite taste. Teia wouldn’t have forgiven Kip for falling into bed with that creature, but she would have understood it.

But Kip had married her. A total fucking stranger. Ten minutes after he’d kissed Teia, too, stirring follies she’d never known.

Asshole.

Fisk said, “I want you to let him know that I’m on his side. If he needs the commander of the Blackguard, I’m here for him.”

Teia couldn’t even decode the words for a moment.

Kip’s friends had believed he was the Lightbringer. Sure, but they were dumb kids. Kids believed stupid stuff all the time, right?

This was different. Dour Trainer Fisk believing it?

“Why would you—” she started.

“We’ve all heard the stories. It’s just that some people don’t want to believe them. ‘He shall rise from green’ doesn’t have to mean coming from the Blood Forest or Ruthgar. It could mean he starts out drafting green. One of the first glimmers of Breaker’s magical genius showed when he went green golem in the Battle of Garriston—he’d never even heard of going green golem. He intuited it on the spot. His will was so strong, he drafted a green that stopped musket balls, Teia. ‘He shall kill gods and kings’? He’s already done both. ‘He’ll be an outsider’? How much more outsider can you be than a mixed-blood bastard from Tyrea? Each of those things offend the luxiats, and all of them together make their blood boil—as it makes them furious that a Lightbringer would be necessary to put their worship right—but hasn’t Orholam’s work always offended those in power? I won’t put myself on the wrong side of Orholam. ‘In the darkest hour, when the abominations come to the shores of Big Jasper, when Hope himself has died, then shall he bring the holy light and banish darkness.’ ‘Hope himself,’ Teia. That’s Gavin Guile. He’s dead. Our darkest hour is coming. We have to pick a side.”

Teia’d heard it translated as ‘hope itself,’ but that was maybe beside the point. For some reason, Teia hadn’t thought through what it would mean for the world if Kip really was the Lightbringer.

If he was the Lightbringer, he would shake the pillars of the earth. At the Lightbringer’s coming, the pious, the desperate, the poor, the naïve, the fools, the idealistic, the young—all those would flock not to the Lightbringer, but to their hope of what the Lightbringer would do for them. To those who had nothing, he could be everything.

What had happened to those first tribal warriors who spilled out of Paria with Lucidonius? They’d become Names. They’d ruled satrapies. Men and women who’d been thralls and stonecutters and foresters and mercenaries and brewers had become luminaries and generals and High Luxiats.