For once, the rules were helping Kip.
Not knowing what else to do, Aram slammed the baton into Kip’s back again. Harder.
Kip looked up at him and grinned. Don’t you know what I am?
I’m the fucking turtle-bear.
With a roar, Kip came to his feet as Aram was winding up for another swing. He caught Aram’s hand in his own and pushed against him. Aram kneed Kip hard in the gut, but that only meant the older boy was off balance as Kip locked a foot behind his.
Kip landed on top of the boy, but lost him almost immediately. Aram slid around and got under one of Kip’s arms and started battering his kidney with his fists. Kip tried to push off the ground, but somehow he couldn’t get any leverage anywhere. Green luxin imprisoned his hands.
“I’ve got you, Kip. You feel that freedom?” Aram whispered harshly in his ear. “I’m giving you just enough so they don’t call the fight. Just enough so I can punish you.”
Pain stabbed through him, making it hard to think, impossible to plan. Aram let him slip a little out of the grip and then corralled him again, grinning fiercely.
Hands manacled behind his back as he rolled onto his side, Kip used the pain like hammer blows hardening his will. He stared up at the crystals above them, bathing them in green light—and fired tiny pebbles as hard as he could at them.
A fist crashed across his jaw and he rolled heavily onto his back. Then something cracked and the green crystal overhead shattered, plunging them into darkness and showering them with crystal rain. Kip had not only shattered the green filter, but also the mirror behind it that turned the light toward the practice field. Cries of alarm went up from the crowd.
Kip was ready for the darkness—and Aram wasn’t. He lost his grip on the open green luxin he’d been using as Kip’s manacles. The manacles broke open and Kip slipped out of Aram’s grip and swung an elbow toward the boy’s head that struck a glancing blow.
Then Kip was on his feet. He relaxed his eyes into sub-red, and he could see. Aram was on his feet, staring this way and that.
Kip slugged him in the stomach and stepped back quickly. Aram turned, recovered, grunting. Kip slid to the left and punched the boy’s kidney.
Then, too soon, someone in the crowd cracked open a mag torch. No! Someone threw up a yellow flare. Kip tightened his eyes back to normal vision, and thought, Yellow, I can draft that if I’m—
But Aram’s first thought was martial rather than magical. He hit Kip in the nuts and tripped him.
Kip’s face bounced off the dirt, and then he was crushed by Aram’s weight as the boy jumped on top of him.
Aram pummeled both of Kip’s legs, hard punches right in the sweet spot in the middle of the thigh, rendering them useless.
Pain is nothing, pain is nothing, pain is nothing.
It didn’t matter what Kip told himself. This wasn’t pain; this was his body’s simple refusal to obey orders.
Think, Kip, think! One shot can end a fight.
One lucky shot. Orholam, please! Give me one lucky shot!
He flopped over onto his stomach. Even with the few grappling classes Kip had attended, he knew it was a stupid move. Your hands and legs—your weapons—go forward, not backward. Not well, anyway. He presented one elbow as what he hoped was a tempting target, and then convulsed his whole body, jerking his head backward as hard as he could, hoping to smash Aram’s face.
The back of his head glanced off the side of Aram’s cheek. Not enough.
The circle lit up again with natural white light as other mirrors were shifted onto the field, and the yellow light was extinguished. Kip’s one hope, dashed. He hadn’t even had time to draft the yellow. Green filters flipped back on.
Then Kip’s hands were trapped. Must have been trapped in luxin. A fist smashed his right ear. Another hit his left. Then his cheek. Then his mouth.
Right, left, right, left, right.
Kip was losing sense. But Aram had gone crazy. His leglock loosened as he concentrated solely on battering Kip to a pulp.
With a yell, Kip bucked and Aram lost his balance and fell forward. Kip wriggled to his knees, but Aram clamped down on him, smashing his fists harder and harder into Kip’s face.
Crying, stupid with rage and pain, blood blinding him, Kip roared and stood—lifting the older boy into the air, half on Kip’s back and half on his shoulders. He felt the boy stop punching him and his hands slip as he tried to collar Kip.
“You can do it, Breaker!” someone shouted.
The only thought in Kip’s mind was to crush Aram like a bug. Screaming over the sounds of Trainer Fisk’s incessant whistle, he lurched and threw himself toward the ground and—
Into a large red pillow. Inexorably, Kip’s limbs were pulled away, and Aram’s weight was borne away from him.
The clouds of dense red luxin faded, leaving Kip on the ground, still crying. Trainer Fisk examined him briskly to see how bad his injuries were, then stood.
“Aram wins. The top fourteen is decided. From here on up, we fight for placement. But Aram, you lost control. You damn near got yourself expelled. You’re done for the day.”
“No!” Kip shouted.
Trainer Fisk looked at him, then looked away, as if Kip was shaming himself.
Kip was weeping. Not from the pain, though everything was pain now. He’d been so close. He could have crushed Aram if they’d just let them finish the fight. He’d almost—
Almost. He was Kip Almost. Kip the Failure. Almost good enough. He was bleeding and weeping and snotting all over himself.
He looked up and expected to see Gavin leaving. Kip was an embarrassment. A weeping little girl where Gavin needed a son in his own image. Kip was nothing like his father. How could the acorn fall so far from the oak? Instead, Gavin held his gaze and beckoned Kip to come over.
Kip stood up and walked over toward the wooden bleachers where his father was sitting among all the trainees. He looked down, humiliated, humiliated by the tears dripping down his face, unable to stop, unable to hide.
Someone started clapping. Then others joined the one, and everyone was clapping. Kip looked to see if Aram was flexing or something. He wasn’t. Everyone who was clapping was looking at him. Him?
Kip rubbed his forehead, trying to hold himself together. Him? For him?
Ah fuck. He started crying harder. He’d wanted to be one of the Blackguards. They were the only people he respected. The only people in the world he wanted to be like. And he’d failed them, but they gave him this.
He took a towel, ostensibly to wipe up his blood. He covered his head. Someone put an arm around him, and Kip saw his father.
“Father,” Kip said. “I… if they hadn’t blown the whistle… I almost…”
“The boy panicked, Kip. That grip he was going for is a neck-breaker. And I think he got it. If they hadn’t blown the whistle, when you hit the ground, you’d have been dead.”
Aram had gotten the grip. Kip had felt Aram’s arms locking into place. If Aram had killed him, Aram would have been kicked out of the Blackguard. Not that it would have done Kip any good at that point.
“I failed,” Kip said, not quite daring to look out from under the towel over his head.
“Yes,” Gavin said. “He’s better than you. It happens. Smart work with the crystal there. It almost worked. Now come on, let’s go watch. It’s good to learn from those who are better than you are. Looks like your nose is broken. Best to set it quick.”