“Yeah, that’s right. Scurry away, ya little vermin,” the store guard said.

They gritted their teeth and didn’t reply. Knowing that you could win a fight wasn’t a good enough reason to jeopardize a mission.

Tempting as it was.

The goon sneered. He obviously thought they were up to no good, but as long as they weren’t threatening his employer’s store, what did he care? He didn’t follow.

“Feels like there’s got to be some trick,” Kip said.

“There is,” Teia said, rejoining them silently. “But not on us.”

“What is it?” Cruxer asked quietly.

“There’s a woman watching the preacher from across the street. She’s carrying bandages. And the preacher himself, he’s the real thing. He’s a Blood Robe. He’s got sealed scroll cases that he’s handing off to certain people as they pass. He’s a handler of spies.”

“Oh, I can do this. This Lord Arias is a twig,” Big Leo said. He loosened up a shoulder that would have made a draft horse jealous.

“Hold,” Cruxer said. “We don’t know that he’s alone. But I do feel better knowing there’s some plan, even if I don’t know what it is. Give me a second.”

And the insane thing with Cruxer was that it was only a second. He scowled, looked at his team, and then started giving orders.

In moments, the team scattered, each to his or her appointed task. It left only Kip with nothing to do. “Cruxer,” Kip said. “Captain, I mean.” When they were on assignment, even the inductees were supposed to observe the official order scrupulously. “You’ve done me nothing but good turns. We both know I wouldn’t be in the Blackguard without you, but you can’t keep me out of the action. Doing that will only make those who are already better than me get even farther ahead. I need to be in the thick of things.”

Cruxer’s brown eyes, barely edged with green and yellow around the iris, fell on Kip like a sledge. “I’m captain,” Cruxer said.

That was all there was to it. “Yes, sir,” Kip said.

“There’s a good vantage. But we’re gonna have to climb,” Cruxer said. He took off.

A climb difficult enough that Cruxer found it worth mentioning? “Wonderful,” Kip said. He jogged after the older boy.

They cut wide a few blocks, slowed as they crossed the main streets, and came eventually to a building on the opposite side of the intersection from the spy. They went around the back of the building, which had scaffolding up, as the dingy dome was being worked on. The ladder had been pulled away from the scaffolding—doubtless to keep young scoundrels from climbing it.

Cruxer rested his back against the wall, took a wide stance, and cupped his hands, waiting for Kip to use it to jump.

“I could draft a ladder,” Kip said.

“You’ll jump,” Cruxer said.

“I’ll jump.”

“Hand to shoulder, then pull yourself up.”

Easy for you to say. Kip rolled his shoulders, shook his head, and took a deep breath.

“Not got all day here, Breaker.” Cruxer leaned his one shoulder forward, to give Kip more space to step.

Kip charged with the grace of a drunken turtle-bear, stepped into Cruxer’s cupped hand, onto his shoulder with the other foot even as Cruxer heaved his foot upward, and jumped. His hands slapped easily onto the edge of the wood platform, and he still had upward momentum. He pulled himself up and flopped onto the platform.

He spun around on his stomach and offered a hand down. Cruxer, standing in place, jumped straight up, grabbed Kip’s hand, kicked off the wall, and landed—standing up, stepping carefully over Kip.

And that’s why he’s the captain.

The scaffolding extended around the front of the building, and there were piles of brick stacked on it, waiting to be put in place and whitewashed. Cruxer and Kip moved forward, keeping low. The intersection was forty paces or more wide here, and against the dingy dome and the bricks, the two of them should be virtually invisible. Close enough to watch, far enough away not to be seen, and close enough to help if it all went to hell.

“Breaker,” Cruxer said. “It’s time we acknowledge something.”

That doesn’t sound so good. “Mm?” Kip asked.

“You’re never going to be a Blackguard.” Cruxer didn’t say it as a threat. He said it as simple fact.

Kip’s heart leapt into his throat. “I’m getting better. I’ll catch up, I swear.”

“It’s not that.”

Then Kip understood. “Look, I know the squad has this thing about me being the Lightbringer,” Kip said. “But—”

“Doesn’t matter.” Cruxer poked his head up over the edge. Big Leo was still making his way up Verrosh. Even hunched to seem smaller than he was, the young hulk was hard to miss. “They’ll never let you take final vows.”

“They?”

“Let’s say you make full ’guard. And you get put on rotation to guard the Red, whom everyone knows you’re feuding with. Hard to imagine, isn’t it? Or maybe you’ve patched up your feud with him, and you get put on rotation to cover the White—whom everyone knows he’s feuding with. Hard to imagine, isn’t it? I’m sure your grandfather has plans for you. Becoming a Blackguard would give you all sorts of protections from him. There’s no way he’d let that happen. That’s if the White doesn’t have her own plans for you.”

“Maybe her plans involve me getting those protections by staying in.” But Kip was only denying it because he wanted it to be wrong.

“Blackguards face the truth, Breaker. It’ll be a miracle if she lives long enough for you to make it to final vows.”

Kip’s stomach sank. Everyone knew the White had a year left, two at the most. Cruxer was right. There was no way Kip would be ready to be a full Blackguard in that time. Ironfist had bent the rules to get him this far.

“And if your father comes back in time to work his own particular magic, I’m sure he’s got his own plans for you.”

He thought of his grandfather’s view of oaths. If Andross Guile had meant what he’d told Kip, he definitely wouldn’t want Kip to make an oath that might put Kip against him—which was precisely what taking the Blackguard oath might do. He threw his hands up. “So why even have me in the squad?”

Cruxer body-slammed him with a disappointed look. “Don’t go back to being that whinging fat boy Kip. You’re Breaker now.”

Ouch.

“You’re in the squad because you deserve it,” Cruxer said. “The question for you, knowing that your time with us is limited, is what are you going to accomplish here? Heads up. We’re go.”

Big Leo walked as inconspicuously as possible through the thin crowd until he was about ten paces from the preacher, who was holding forth, though no one seemed to be paying him any attention. From their vantage, Kip couldn’t decipher a word either said, but Leo had planned to allege that the heretics had been responsible for killing his sister.

Leo shouted something, and then jumped on the preacher before the man could flee.

Since his cover was as a simple laborer, Leo was careful not to fight like a trained fighter. He simply grabbed the preacher’s hair in one hand and punched him rapidly in the face. If you’ve never been hit in the face, it’s deeply shocking even if there isn’t much power in it. Kip knew that Leo could have killed the man in a blow. Instead, he was pulling each punch, hitting the man in succession: cheek, eye, nose, mouth, cheek, eye. Blood poured freely, and the man was going to look and feel like he’d been beaten within a thumb of his life—without actually endangering him much. Big Leo hauled the man up, holding his entire weight by his hair as the man collapsed, and slugged him twice in the ribs, hard enough to break them.