The conversation broke like ice over a puddle on a cold fall morning. They plunged into the mud beneath, the grime that was Kip.
He’d never spoken to them in anger. Not once in the year and a half—the lifetime—he’d known them. And it was going to shatter their friendship. All because Kip couldn’t control his mouth. Kip the Lip. God. Damn.
“Breaker,” Cruxer said quietly. “They don’t mean anything by it.”
“It wasn’t even Conn Arthur’s bear,” Ben-hadad complained. “I know he’s a moody—”
“Stop,” Kip said, looking away. He turned his back, but didn’t keep walking to the gate. Not yet. “You’re done.”
“Don’t you turn your back on us, you asshole,” Winsen said.
“Don’t,” Cruxer warned Winsen.
“No. Shit gets awful, we have a few laughs. You’ve joined us every other time. Now you pull high ground on us? Go fuck yourself. What’s your problem, boss?” Winsen demanded.
“Let’s forget it,” Kip said.
“Sure. We can joke about that guy’s head we found two hundred paces from his body back at that wagon ambush, but some fuckin’ bear is beyond the pale. Sure, boss, you get to decide what’s funny, too. Because you’re the Lightbringer.”
“I’ve never said that,” Kip said.
“Yes, he is,” Cruxer said at the same moment. But he went on, “And if you doubt it at this point, what the hell are you still doing here?”
“I like the food,” Winsen said. “And I get to kill people.”
Aside from Kip, the rest of them chuckled, but it was forced. They’d all known Winsen long enough to know that the first half was probably a joke—it should be; any spices the cooks laid their hands on had to be sold for actual necessities. But the second half probably wasn’t a joke, and they’d all known him long enough to be uneasy about that.
Long enough, not well enough, because it didn’t seem that any of them did know him well. If there were hidden depths to Winsen—and one expects depths—they remained hidden. He seemed unaffected both by the physical difficulties of a life at war and the moral ones.
“Bad people,” Ferkudi amended for him. He was probably the only one of them who wasn’t a little unnerved by Winsen from time to time.
“Huh?”
“You get to kill bad people.”
“That’s a bonus,” Winsen said. He grinned at their drawn faces. “I am joking, guys.”
But Kip didn’t believe him. Winsen was on their side, but he didn’t actually care. He liked the excitement. When religious or moral conundrums came up at the campfire, the look on his face was akin to the one Kip imagined his own must wear when Tisis talked about fabrics for her eventual ‘real’ wedding gown.
Kip didn’t think Eirene was going to spring for the big wedding. He also didn’t think they were going to live that long, so it was a moot point.
“Oh shit,” Ben-hadad said. “That wasn’t just his brother’s bear, was it?”
“It’s over now,” Kip muttered. “It doesn’t matter.”
“What are you talking about?” Cruxer asked. When Kip started walking without answering, he asked it again, this time of Ben-hadad. Of course it was Ben who’d figured it out.
“You all didn’t stop to think how weird it was that a non-will-cast bear attacked at just the perfect place and time? What? He was just trained that well?” Ben-hadad asked.
“Hadn’t really thought about it,” Ferkudi said.
“That wasn’t Lorcan,” Ben-hadad said. “That was Rónán in Lorcan.”
“Oh shit,” Cruxer said.
“Orholam’s beard, I’m so sorry,” Big Leo said. “I didn’t mean…”
“So wait,” Winsen said. “That was really his brother? In the bear? Didn’t his brother die before we even met him?”
“You’re talking soul-casting. That is… not just a little bit forbidden,” Cruxer said carefully. “I’ve come to appreciate that the Chromeria is sometimes overcareful with these magics. But even the Ghosts absolutely, categorically forbid soul-casting.”
“Yes,” Kip said. “And yet he saved us all today. Which makes him a heretic and a hero at the same time.”
“You knew,” Cruxer said.
“And you gave Conn Arthur an ultimatum,” Ben-hadad said. He gestured around at the destruction the bear had wreaked. “To do this.”
“Because Conn Arthur couldn’t bear to kill him?” Ferkudi asked. He saw the disbelieving, outraged looks of the others. “Oh no! That one wasn’t on purpose, I swear!”
Ignoring him, Cruxer said to Kip, “He lied to you, he said so. About this?”
“I suspected it from the beginning. What would you have had me do, Crux? Put Conn Arthur in front of a tribunal right after the will-casters joined us?”
“That’s the law among their people.”
Ben-hadad scoffed, and the others looked uneasy. It would have been impossible, of course. Even if they’d held the tribunal—not a sure thing, with how much the Ghosts revered Conn Arthur. Even if they’d found him guilty—and how would they, unless he confessed? Even if it had all gone as well as it could, Kip would have lost the Ghosts. They would have exploded or melted away into the forest.
And without them, these victories would have been impossible.
“Does the scripture say, ‘Do the law, and love meting out its punishment’?” Kip asked.
“No, it says, ‘Do justice and love mercy,’” Ferkudi said.
“Thanks, Ferk,” Big Leo said. “He knows.”
“Oh, it was one of those rhetorical…”
“Yeah. One of those.”
“The laws are there for a reason,” Cruxer said stubbornly, but weakening. “Every time we ignore the law, we end with tragedy.”
“Oh, look,” Kip said, “here we are.”
The Nightbringers who’d been in a mob in front of the city’s gate were now arranged in orderly lines and files. It was more formal, but they also all had their weapons close at hand.
But even as they snapped smartly back rank by rank to let Kip and the Mighty pass, someone high in the city wall unfurled several great, festive banners, and Kip knew everything was going to be fine.