The Blood Mirror

Tisis left last, giving him a kiss on the cheek and saying, “I’m sorry. That was wicked of me. You’ll have to punish me later.”

“Right. As if I’d punish you for…” Kip trailed off. “That was me missing the point, wasn’t it?”

She winked at him and left, leaving Kip with the glowering giant.

As Kip studied him, though, he looked less angry and disapproving and more bereft. This was a man to whom joy was only a memory.

When he finally spoke, the conn said, “Congratulations on your nuptials.”

“Thank you.”

“We’re away from safe territory now. I think you pitching your tent away from the camp is a bad idea. You should be in the center of camp. You and your bride can carry on as you will. Our people aren’t shy about such things.”

“Right,” Kip said lamely. He’d thought the big man’s comments were going to be about something else entirely.

“Sibéal was deeply impressed by what she witnessed last night.”

“She was?” Kip said.

“But I see that you’re still pretty young, too.”

It stung, of course, being slapped down by a big, imposing older man. He was partly right, too. Sex jokes with his buddies? Or were they his buddies? Shouldn’t they be his men? Shouldn’t he, their leader, demand more respect?

The old Kip would have sucked that insult into his big old blubbery ego and gnawed on it, cracking apart bone and marrow of the insult and eventually returning with his own mind made up.

That Kip hadn’t been all wrong. Because the opposite approach would be to attack Conn Ruadhán Arthur in return. As any young blowhard would.

“You’re not wrong,” Kip said. “But tell me, where’s saying that aloud to me come from? You’re a quiet man, and not stupid. Was that a test, or was it a friendly warning that your people distrust me because of my youth already and I should be careful, or did it come from some bitterness at our camaraderie?”

The conn looked at Kip through tight blue eyes. He stroked his red, red beard. “It was a test. I didn’t have it all laid out sly-like. Just had a thought and wanted to see if you’d lose your temper if I said it to your face,” he said. “I don’t know what kind of man you are, Kip Guile. But you make me nervous. You led us to a great victory at Deora Neamh. Maybe a small victory in size, but strategically important and flawlessly planned, and you did it immediately after we joined you, which inspires us. How’d you do that?”

“I’ve read some books,” Kip said.

Truth was, he had read Corvan’s books—but not like fifty of them. Maybe four. What he’d done at Deora Neamh wasn’t exactly forging new military doctrine: a diversionary raid was pretty basic, and though he’d never read about anyone’s using superviolet flares for communication, he surely couldn’t be the first to come up with it.

But he’d also absorbed a lot of cards, a lot of memories. Surely among them must be some of the greatest tacticians of all time. Kip knew he should feel worried about dead men in his head.

Except they weren’t like invaders. The memories sat on one shelf in the library of his mind, and he knew which memories were his and which were not. He felt no more threatened by those memories than by a vivid book. Well, usually.

Suddenly passing out because he’d stepped through an unseen trip wire of Daimhin Web’s memories was unnerving. And could maybe be dangerous if it happened in the middle of battle or something. But mostly it just was. For once he didn’t overthink it.

If he could find a tactician in his head and plunder that man’s thinking in order to save his life and his friends, to Kip that didn’t feel any different from studying General Corvan Danavis’s tactics during the False Prism’s War: sure, it felt a little strange to scrutinize someone close to you by the same standards you applied to the greats of history, but you got over it.

“You read some books,” Conn Arthur said flatly.

“Father Violet himself said he learned all he knew of fighting from books, and that he fought his last battle by the same tactics he’d used to win his first. The art isn’t knowing what to do, it’s knowing exactly what your people can do, and getting them to do it at the right time. I haven’t been tested on those parts at all.”

“So despite our effortless victory, you’re worried you don’t know what you’re doing.”

“We got lucky. And I’m worried it won’t scale. That my skills won’t grow as quickly as our army does.”

The conn snorted. “That’s what you’re afraid of.”

“Why’s that funny?” Kip asked.

“Because it hasn’t even occurred to you to be afraid that no one will join you. I can’t tell if your total expectation of success is a function of your youth and inexperience, or insanity, or a deserved confidence. Oddest of all, I’m not sure it matters at this point.”

“But,” Kip said.

“But it will matter later,” Conn Arthur said. He seemed as if he wasn’t sure he wanted to say it. He wasn’t trying to make Kip angry now. He was deeply worried. “Someday we’ll face the White King himself or one of his generals, and I don’t want that day to be the day we find out it really was madness or youth all along.”

“That’s a lot of anxiety for you to tie up around some puerile jokes,” Kip said.

“It’s not just the contents of the jokes. It’s that you’re joking. You’re enjoying yourself out here,” Conn Arthur said.

“I was,” Kip said lightly.

But the conn’s point sank deep.

Perhaps the hairy bear of a man mistook how quickly Kip could shift from jokey to thoughtful, though. The conn said in a way that made it clear he was quoting someone, “‘A man who loves war will be feared by his foes; he should be feared by his friends.’”

Kip had been careless. Conn Arthur looked like a badass warrior. He would, if he lived long enough, probably become one. But he’d probably never fought until yesterday. The man was shaken. He didn’t understand what it does to you to see a pile of fresh heads stacked in a pyramid, what it meant to find half your friend’s leg lying on your pack or to laugh as a musket ball snapped past your ear because hearing that snap meant they’d missed. He hadn’t seen how precious any laughter at all is, because sometimes, at the campfire, a laugh was the only thing that kept you from thinking too hard about that thing you’d seen or that thing you’d done.