“Gods and kings, plural?” Kip asked uncomfortably.

“I can’t remember. Of course, it depends which Seers you accept as canon. Those things are accepted by pretty much everyone. Some of the weirder Seers said, uh, can’t remember the exact phrasing, something about killing his brother—”

“Well that’s promising.” Zymun could use a good killing.

“—and dying twice.”

“I take that back,” Kip said.

“You did go overboard, and we thought you were dead, so that might count as one,” Cruxer said. “And everyone dies at the end of their life, so that could be it.”

“Or … the pirates who rescued me threw me back overboard, so maybe that’s twice,” Kip said. He didn’t buy it, though. “Great! Really helpful. Now I know I only need to die one, two, or zero more times. I may have to kill at least one more god and one more king. I do have to figure out how to heal blind people, and maybe pick up a bit about true worship.”

“Breaker, if it was easy, everyone would agree about it. A Seer sees a true vision, but they have to translate that into words, and that means into their own language, and into their own metaphors. And that’s if she’s a true Seer—there have been false ones. There are luxiats who make their life’s work of this sort of thing. Luxiats who are much better scholars than Klytos Blue, I might mention.”

“But if it’s all theological complexity and uncertainty, it’s useless! I mean, if I can’t figure out what it means, what’s the point?”

“Maybe it’s not for you.”

“I accept that, but if I were the Lightbringer wouldn’t I need…”

“No, even then.”

Kip looked at him, puzzled. “I’m … uh, not following.”

“The Lightbringer Prophecies may well not be for the Lightbringer’s benefit. They’re for everyone else. For the soldier who understands only a snippet, but it helps him hold the line. For the bereaved widow. For the young scholar, searching for meaning. What’s it matter, anyway? You’ve done pretty well so far not knowing the prophecies,” Cruxer said.

“Deliberate ignorance. I like this idea,” Kip said. He thought for a moment. “Everything we’ve said could be talking about my father. People thought he was dead when he fell into the water—” And somehow survived being stabbed with a knife that had morphed into a sword while it impaled him. Kip hadn’t told that part to anyone. They had already disbelieved him when he’d simply said his father wasn’t drowned. Who would believe the rest? Kip didn’t believe it; half the time he was convinced his eyes must have been playing tricks on him. “—and we’ve already talked about how a god being killed on Gavin’s command could well count even if he didn’t land the final blow.”

“His childhood doesn’t fit. Prophecy says the Lightbringer will come from the outside, outside the accepted or something. It fits a bas—a person initially thought to be a bastard coming from Tyrea. Doesn’t get much more outside the accepted than that. Gavin Guile is the son of Andross. He grew up here. He was groomed to take power. It doesn’t get much more inside than that.”

“Well, you didn’t tell me about that part!” Kip complained.

“I’m a Blackguard, not a luxiat. If you want to talk about prophecies, the people you should see are … well, actually they’re the last people you should see. In fact, I’m not so sure we should be including Quentin in any of this.”

“Quentin? Why not?”

“Somehow I thought it would be obvious to you. I forget you grew up in Tyrea.”

“Why wouldn’t I go to the luxiats?”

“Because if now is the time true worship needs to be restored, it means the luxiats are doing things so wrongly that Orholam himself is putting his hand in to make it right.”

“Well, shouldn’t they welcome Orholam moving? I mean, they’re luxiats.”

“Breaker … are you really that naïve?”

“They serve Orholam! That’s their job!” Kip said.

“Voice down.”

“Sorry, Captain.”

“We Blackguards exist to stop assassinations. It doesn’t mean we look forward to them.”

“Totally different,” Kip said.

“The more power you have, the more skeptical you’re going to be about someone coming along who wants to take all of it away. There have been false Lightbringers before. If you show up out of nowhere without undeniable proof that you are who we suspect, you might find yourself standing right at the fissure line of a schism. There have already been attempts to kill you, Breaker. Where do you think those have come from?”

One came from my grandfather, but he denied the others.

“Who else would even know you were alive?” Cruxer asked. “I don’t think the Color Prince would think you were worth killing when you first came here. If anything, you did him a favor by killing King Garadul and putting him in power.”

“Thanks for reminding me.”

“So if not him, Breaker, who?”

The Order of the Broken Eye? But they were just assassins for hire, right?

So unless there were yet more unknown enemies out there, it had probably been luxiats who’d tried to kill Kip. But luxiats? Really?

“Hells,” Kip said. More enemies.

Then he was struck by the fact that of anyone, it should be Cruxer who had such a cynical view of the Magisterium. “Captain? Doesn’t it shake your faith, I mean, if it really was the luxiats who killed Lucia?”

Cruxer looked away. “My faith isn’t in men.”

Which didn’t leave Kip with anything to say.

But that had never stopped him before. “So,” Kip said. “If I’m never going to be a Blackguard, what do you think I should be using this time for?”

“Learn to kill. Learn to lead. Learn who your friends are, and then draw them so close to you that every time someone shoots a musket ball at you, it hits one of your friends and not you.”

“That’s … that’s a horrible way to think about friends.”

“Breaker, if you become a Color or a Prism, and a thousand times more if you become the Lightbringer, you’ll no longer be merely our friend. You’ll be our lord first. It is right and proper that we should die for you. It is our purpose.”

Suddenly, Kip felt like he was locked in that closet again, covered by rats gnawing, gnawing, gnawing at him. But now the rats were cares, worries, burdens, people he could let down, people who would die if he failed, people who would die even if he succeeded. He felt sick and claustrophobic, hot and cold.

“Knowing I would die for you, how would you live if you were worthy of that sacrifice? Live that way,” Cruxer said.

“Simple, huh?” Kip asked sardonically.

“Simple. Not easy.”

They sat in silence for a few more minutes. Kip pretended to be thoughtful, but the idea was so big it couldn’t bear the weight of someone looking at you and wondering how much of it you’d processed. So mostly, he sat there and pretended to think, and felt wretched and dumb.

When they got up to go, he said, “Should we follow their route to the safe house and check up on them, or should we go direct?”