Such martial societies were born from wars and all too often extinguished in them. The Blood War had birthed a dozen. The False Prism’s War had wiped out half that many. Some faded as the reasons they’d come together had disappeared—those formed in the Blood War had either morphed into mercenary companies like the Blue Bastards or the Cloven Shield, or the men and women had simply gone home or had become soldiers or outlaws or farmers as the demand for teachers disappeared. The martial arts of drafting died especially quickly because of drafters’ short lives.

It made Kip realize that anything awe-inspiring that they discovered had doubtless been discovered before. It had simply also then been lost.

Karris said, “Now, are you ready for the other half?”

“Other what?” he asked.

She lashed out with the tygre striper. Kip blocked, and blocked, and blocked again. Then she whipped part around an arm and popped it back—but it moved twice as fast as it should have and it cut across his belly long before his block arrived.

“The hell?” Kip asked.

“Strike it. Downstroke, in the middle.”

Kip did as he was told, slashing hard between Karris’s hands. The sharana ru bent a long way and popped his yellow luxin blade back upward.

“Again, the same.”

Kip cut again—and this time nearly had the yellow blade knocked from his grip as the sharana ru didn’t bend in the least. It was suddenly like a steel bar.

“This is what’s special about the sharana ru—sea demon bone or whatever it is. It is the only known mundane material that reacts to will. You want it to be hard, and it is.”

My problem is more often that I don’t want it to be hard, but it is.

Thank Orholam, this time Kip didn’t say it.

Karris paused and looked at Kip, who stared back at her, all innocence. “Mind out of the gutter, Kip.”

They shared a grin.

“With this sharana ru, you can simply grip it hard and will what you want it to—Orholam damn it, Kip! Now all I can think about is, uh … Ahem. All of them work best if you’re bloody, though.”

Well, that killed any innuendo. “Bloody?” Kip asked. He didn’t mean his voice to come out at quite that pitch.

“Will is in the blood. It’s why Orholam forbade the drinking of blood, as of old. Some part of the soul resides in the blood, some luxiats say. Or perhaps it’s merely coincidence. Regardless, it works with the sharana ru. There was a warrior caste on the Isle of Glass, before it sank into the seas and became White Mist Reef.”

“Legend, right?” Kip said.

She tossed him the sharana ru. “You hold the stuff of legend in your hands.”

Which just begged for a ribald joke. But it was Karris. She was like his mother.

If I didn’t already have a mother. Who was a complete and total calamity of humanity. Or had been. “Real?” Kip asked, shaking off the memories, the stench of that closet where he’d spent two nights and three days, nearly dying.

“Blood Forest has the Floating City. We couldn’t build one today, but the engineering was obviously known, once. Of course, the legends say the Isle of Glass was a hundred times the size of the Floating City. Perhaps it was twice as big, or smaller. Perhaps it sank because of its blasphemies against Orholam. Perhaps it was merely caught in a winter storm. Or both. These things, being, of course, not exclusive.”

“Did they have other weapons?”

“What would you think?” Karris asked.

“Bows.”

“A few. It was said that it took years of training to gain proficiency—the difficulty being in figuring out how much Will you were using, and keeping it consistent, despite being tired or scared or furious. None survive.”

“Catapults?” Kip asked.

“Broke the men who tried to use them.”

“What happens to a man whose will has been broken?” Kip asked. “I willjacked Grazner once in training, but he seemed fine.”

“Depends on how much of his will is in it. You foil what someone has a whim for, he might be left dazed for a moment. A man strains to put steel into enough sharana ru to fling a stone two thousand paces and fails? He’s left an idiot. Forever.”

“Dear Orholam.”

“Anyway, as I was saying, there was a warrior caste that used sharana ru weapons. They had a dozen war dances they used to get themselves into a fighting trance. Most involved lightly stabbing their own scalps and their palms. They went into battle bloody, and they didn’t leave until there was no more blood to shed. One of their great defeats was at the walls of Green Haven. There is a forest there where they say at dusk you can sometimes hear the sound of their war dance.”

“That sounds … spooky.”

“It’ll scare a stain right into your pants,” Karris said. She smirked. “You know, Kip, I wanted to say that you’ve become like…” Her eyes clouded.

Kip felt a sudden well of longing open beneath his feet, and he was falling into it. He finished the sentence in his mind, but he couldn’t speak lest the last bubbles of his breath escape, like so much hope.

“No,” she said, her tone changing abruptly, “you haven’t become like a real warrior, you are becoming a real warrior, and I’m proud to train you.” She patted his shoulder lamely.

It wasn’t what she was going to say, and he knew it. It wasn’t what she was going to say. Was it? She was going to say that other thing, that thing his stupid fool heart yearned for, pretending it would make everything better.

Kip nodded and took it as a compliment and crawled out of the well, half drowned and dripping false hope everywhere.

But he bobbed his head and smiled modestly. He was getting better at lying.

Chapter 59

Ah, the trouble one botched assassination can cause.

“The empire is broken, Gavin,” the Nuqaba said. Odd for her to start there. After her abrupt entrance and accusation, she and Eirene Malargos had withdrawn together. Apparently they’d come up with a plan, but only the Nuqaba was here now.

“How’s your husband?” Gavin asked. “Well, I hope?”

Her eyes flashed. Through circumstances Gavin had never heard a satisfactory explanation for, Haruru had married Izîl-Udad, the head of the family that had tried to have her mother assassinated. Izîl-Udad was now a cripple. It was widely rumored that the Nuqaba had pushed him down a flight of marble stairs during a drunken fight, leaving the man with shattered knees that even the most skilled chirurgeons couldn’t fix. The truth, Gavin’s spies had told him long ago, was that the man had beaten Haruru fiercely and often. One night, she had drugged him, drafted orange luxin on the stairs so that he would slip, and then crushed his knees with a hammer while he was helpless. He’d woken with no memory of the incident, or was so fearful that he claimed no memory of it, and because of the political pressures at the time, they’d stayed together. He was confined to a chair, and it was said she did not make his life easy.

Gavin had seen portraits of her as a younger woman many times, not least of which was the masterpiece in Ironfist’s room, and she had looked quite beautiful, though artists were apt to gloss over flaws for powerful patrons. Despite the years since she’d sat for that painting, she was still a striking figure. Perhaps more so now, in the fullness of her power. She wore an immaculately folded and doubtless colorful haik, if Gavin had been able to see the colors. Shiny metal—gold?—fibulae in sunbursts at each shoulder. Coral necklace and coral earrings, not through pierced earlobes, but hanging over the ears instead, in the traditional Parian style. Reedy muscles and heavy eyes, full lips and few curves, despite three children.