“I wouldn’t call it famous—blight and rot! There it is again. False humility.” He sighed. “In my limited circles, yes.” He flushed again. “And sorry for swearing.”

“How long did it take for them to try to sweep you up into their politics?”

“What? Who? Sorry, I don’t understand.”

“The luxiats. Whoever’s over you.” Kip could tell Quentin knew exactly what he was talking about, though.

“The magisterium is Orholam’s hand on earth. It’s not politicized like other institutions,” Quentin said. Nervous. Defensive.

For a moment, there was a choice. To Kip the Lip, or not. And then Kip said, “A liar. Huh. That’s too bad. You seemed like you could have been a friend. Good life to you, Brother Naheed.”

Chapter 34

Kip didn’t have time to go to the restricted library immediately, and Karris still hadn’t contacted him, so he headed to his next lecture. The magister was Tawenza Goldeneyes. She was ancient for a drafter, perhaps sixty, and with a ferocious reputation. They said she only took three discipulae a year—yellow superchromats, all. Kip, of course, would be joining the class after it had been meeting for months.

He headed for the yellow tower, crossing through the elevated walk with only a single gulp at the heights, and arrived minutes later at the door of a small lecture hall. He paused at the closed door. There was a sign on it. “No Men Allowed.” He stopped. Scowled.

Kip Guile, kills gods and kings, afraid to knock on a door.

Totally different things. This is like walking into a women’s privy.

He looked down at his burn-scarred left hand that was so quick to curl into a fist. C’mon, fist.

He knocked, a firm but gentle triple tap.

The door opened before he rapped for the third time.

“What are you doing?” an older woman with golden eyes and luminous skin asked him. It wasn’t much of a guess who she was.

“Greetings, Magister Goldeneyes, I saw the sign—”

“But didn’t read it? Can’t read? Begone.” She swung the door closed.

Kip stuck his foot in without thinking. The door hit his shoe and rebounded open. Magister Goldeneyes already had her back turned, and she stiffened at the sound.

The two young women beyond her in the room, seated, necks craned to see Kip, looked suddenly aghast.

“Your pardon,” Kip said. “I’m your new discipulus, Kip. I figured the sign was a mistake. Surely it means ‘superchromats only.’”

“And?” she asked, turning. She looked at him like he was an insect.

Kip paused, not sure what she was doing. He said, “I’m a superchromat.”

“A superchromat boy is like a dog that can bark ‘I love you.’ It’s a novelty, not a precedent.” She slammed the door.

Kip took it. Just when he’d been feeling like he was Little Lord Guile Gets His Way. In the scheme of things, he probably was way past deserving it. Besides, it let him go to a forbidden library before Andross Guile could figure out some way to screw him out of it.

He realized he was blocking the door and a homely Abornean discipula of about twenty with faint yellow halos was trying to get past. He moved. As she slipped inside, she smiled apologetically and said, “Some things the Lightbringer alone will set aright.”

She closed the door behind her.

In minutes, Kip was back in the Prism’s Tower, approaching one of the rooms that Quentin had told him about. There was a librarian sitting in a chair in front of the door, reading. He looked excited to actually see someone. “Oh, greetings!” he said. He pulled a key out of a pocket and extended his hand.

Kip handed the man his red parchment.

“Kip Guile?” the librarian asked. He could obviously read, so Kip wasn’t sure how to parse the deeper question in the voice.

“That’s right.”

“You were there.” The librarian licked his lips. “Is he alive? Truly? They say he is, but that’s what they would say, isn’t it? To make us keep hope until Sun Day, wouldn’t they? Is the Prism really alive?”

“I swear it,” Kip said. “I helped pull him out of the water. He was breathing. It’d take more than a few pirates to put an end to Gavin Guile.”

The librarian nodded, heartened, his whole mien getting lighter. “That’s right, that’s right. After all he’s done.” The librarian scowled down at the red parchment and said, “Thank you, and I wish I could let you in for giving me that news alone. But I’m sorry, sir. New rules. Your grandfather has decreed that only those with his personally written permission will be allowed access to this special section.”

“What?” Did he even have the authority to do that?

The librarian said, “Just came down this morning, not two hours ago.”

Two hours ago. Before Kip had even come up with his brilliant plan to get Ironfist’s signature. Kip didn’t know whether to feel better because this meant that his grandfather’s spies weren’t that good, or to feel worse because his grandfather had foiled Kip’s plan before Kip had even come up with it.

Little Lord Gets His Way, huh?

It took the wind from his sails. He only ended up going to one lecture. It was engineering, and the lecture covered angles of incidence: mirror armor quality and the refraction of luxin. The class easily had the best demonstrations, with armorers and war drafters standing up and talking about why this quality of mirror armor would perform against a missile of blue luxin at this angle, but not that one, and how keeping the armor clean was one of the biggest problems, dirt making them less reflective.

Some Mirrormen—usually either the elite infantry of any satrapy or simply the richest—took to wearing very thin cotton coverings over their armor so that they would constantly be buffing their armor to a high shine, either shedding it as they went into battle or keeping it on throughout. It was less impressive, one armorer said, but there was no reason not to let the luxin weapons attacking you do the work of cutting the covering. Most Mirrormen, though, wanted the mental advantage that their shining armor had on drafters. Or, more likely, Kip thought, they thought that if they had to do all the work to keep mirror armor shining bright, they were for damn sure going to show it off when they got the chance.

They only gave an overview and talked about one color today: blue. The series would be ongoing, and Kip hoped to make it to all of them.

Suddenly, though, the classes all seemed optional. He certainly wasn’t going to go to the basic class with Magister Kadah, but that was the only class he technically had permission to skip. But there was too much else to do with war looming to waste on histories and hagiographies not directly related to the war.

‘Uses of Luxin in Art’? Now? Who were they joking?

Other than the engineers, it didn’t seem anyone else had broken out of their denial that the war was real—and that they might lose.

After that lecture, Kip went to lunch. None of the Blackguard inductees were there. Most were on a staggered schedule to allow them to make it to lectures and still go to practice. Kip saw the reject table where he’d sat just a few months ago. The group was gutted now. Teia and Ben-hadad had left, subsumed into the greater culture of the Blackguard. Kip had barely belonged at all, and the girl with the birthmark, Tiziri, had been sent home because of Kip’s failure, stakes in a game of Nine Kings with Andross Guile. That left only Aras.