The boy was sitting alone. Kip hesitated, and then went toward him.

Aras looked up before Kip could sit. “What are you doing?” he demanded.

“I was … going to eat,” Kip said. “Can I join—”

“I don’t need your pity.”

“Only people who need pity say that,” Kip said, the words crossing his lips before he could call them back.

“Never speak to me again.”

Kip gave up. He went and sat alone and ate his food in silence.

Not knowing what else to do with himself, Kip went downstairs. He’d still have Blackguard training later today, but he couldn’t bear to sit and do nothing. Hurry up and start training me, Karris.

He found his father’s training room almost exactly as he had left it, except the obstacle course had been rearranged. But Kip was drawn to the pull-up bar.

Before the Battle of Ru, that damned bar had been his daily humiliation. He’d come here alone so the others wouldn’t see how pathetic he was.

He jumped up and did a pull-up easily. Well, that had been a bit of a cheat. He’d had some momentum from jumping. He did another. And four more. Six?

Six!

He dropped to the ground, and for the first time, the burning in his muscles felt like proof of progress, rather than punishment for failure. He wrapped his hands and moved over to the old punching bag, activating the lights with some superviolet. For a half an hour, perhaps an hour, he sank into the simplicity of hitting. Condemnations and memories of mockery rose to the surface like dross in the heat of the exercises, and he hammered them away one by one. Mother’s sneering quips, Ram’s teasing, General Danavis’s disappointment, Aras’s bitterness, punch by punch. He went from hitting the bag with sloppy fury to punching with passionless precision.

The body mechanics were beginning to sink in, too. He was hitting faster, more precisely, and harder, lines of force tracing up from his planted feet, through his hips, his tight abdomen, to uncurl like a whipcrack as he drove his fist into the bag. It felt … glorious.

There was a slight tear in the leather seam high on the bag, and Kip fantasized about punching the bag so hard he tore it open. It didn’t happen, of course, but the fantasy kept him working.

He was just finishing up, unwrapping his hands, when the door cracked open. It was Teia.

“Thought I might find you here,” she said shyly. “You big dope, you’re going to be useless at practice. We’ll probably both have to run.” She grimaced. “Sorry, that came out all wrong.”

Kip grinned. “It’s good to see you, Teia.”

“You, too.” She hesitated. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there. Up on deck, I mean. You’re my partner, and I wasn’t there when you needed me. I’ve been feeling pretty awful about it. And then you came back, and it—it wasn’t really the reunion I’d been hoping for.”

“About that…”

“Kip, I, I need to keep some secrets. Even from you. Can you trust me?”

When Kip thought of Teia, he thought of the petite girl whom he’d mistaken for a boy, months ago. A young slave, uncertain, in over her head. But also a girl who could accurately rank each of the Blackguard hopefuls and estimate that she was the fourth best of them, but somehow didn’t realize quite how excellent that made her against everyone else, or how smart she was to estimate so accurately.

This Teia wasn’t that Teia. Kip realized that while he was growing and changing through all the fights and all the old messages he’d told himself that he was realizing were lies, he had somehow thought that everyone else would stay the same. And it was a fool’s thought.

Teia was little, but that didn’t make her a child. She was being more mature than Kip had probably ever been in his life.

“I heard you saved the raid on Ruic Head,” Kip said.

Teia shrugged.

“Watch Captain Tempus said Commander Ironfist wanted to give you a medal.”

“What?”

“It got overruled by someone higher up, apparently.”

“In something regarding the Blackguards? Who could overrule—oh, don’t tell me.”

“That’s right,” Kip said. “So as long as you’re not working for that old cancer, sure, Teia, I trust you. You’re still on our side, right?”

She laughed, but there was something uncertain in it.

“Teia, you’re not … you’re not working for my grandfather, are you?”

“Kip—Breaker, I can’t tell you anything. But I will never betray you. You’re my best friend.”

“I am?”

She looked away awkwardly. Kip could have hit himself. Not the right response.

“I mean, I just thought that being my slave—”

“What?!” Her face flashed to angry.

“Wait wait wait!” He took a breath. “I wanted to be your friend, Teia. I was always afraid that when I—when I won your papers that it meant we couldn’t be friends. And I didn’t know how much of that stuck around. Even afterward, you know. I didn’t know if I’d always remind you of that. You’re my best friend, too.”

She looked mollified but still upset. “I’m more than my slavery, Kip.”

“And I’m more than a Guile, but it’s still there, like it or not.”

She pursed her lips, then nodded. She reached up and put a hand to a necklace she had, and Kip wanted to ask about it, but he could tell it was personal. A present from an old master, perhaps? Her face brightened, though her mouth twisted with chagrin. “I didn’t mean to put you on the spot. You know, calling you my best friend, like saying—like saying…” She grimaced.

“I didn’t take it wrong,” Kip said, rescuing her.

“You didn’t say it back because I—never mind. Can we go hit something?” She was blushing.

He had the sudden desire to grab her hand, but he didn’t. Why did he feel so awkward and young all of the sudden?

Teia said, “And you have to keep this from the squad.”

“No one will hear we’re friends from me,” Kip said gravely.

“Breaker!”

He grinned, sketched a quick sign of the three and the four, promising. She grinned back.

She moved to speak again, to explain more about not explaining about coming back to the Chromeria bloody, to defend herself somehow, but she let it go, and he credited it to her as maturity. The immature Teia would have checked and double-checked. Or should he think, ‘the slave Teia would have checked and double-checked’? Maybe this is who she always was, only held back by her slavery?

Well, I did one thing right, in my whole life.

“I missed you, Kip.” She grinned, and threw a towel to him.

He caught it, and his smile felt like it was going to break his cheeks.

“You ready to head up?” she asked.

He mopped his face. Good thing about going to Blackguard practice, he supposed—it was fine to go there sweaty.

The door cracked open behind them, and Grinwoody stepped in. Kip’s smile dropped.

“Good afternoon, young master … Guile,” the old slave said. As always, he was dressed carefully, looked wrinkled as an old apple, and had a demeanor as pleasant as a night of diarrhea.