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the Blackguard? “You’re scaring me more by hedging than you would if you just told me,” Kip said.
    “First, you have to impress your grandfather without me there. He will summon you. He will not be pleasant. We’ll count it a victory if you avoid wetting yourself.” He grinned that Guile grin, then sobered. “Do your best. If you can impress him, you’ll have done more than I ever could. But whatever you do, don’t make an enemy of him.”
    “And that’s going to be impossible?”
    “No—well, maybe—but I was starting with the easy assignment. I want you to destroy Luxlord Klytos Blue.”
    Kip blinked. That wasn’t “Join the Blackguard” either. “That thing about being more scared by your hedging than the assignment? I take it back.”
    “By destroy, I mean do whatever you have to do to make him resign his seat on the Spectrum. I need that seat, Kip.”
    “For what?”
    “I can’t tell you. What you should ask is, what do I mean when I say, ‘Do whatever you have to’?”
    “Right, then,
that
,” Kip said. He was hoping this was all some kind of joke, but the feeling in his stomach told him that it wasn’t.
    “If you can’t get Klytos to resign of his own will, or through blackmail, kill him.”
    A chill radiated from Kip’s spine to his shoulders. He swallowed.
    “Your choice. I’m trusting you with that. This is war, Kip. You saw what happens when the wrong man is in power. The governor of Garriston could have prepared his city. He knew what was coming. Preparing the city would have made him deeply unpopular and it would have cost him a fortune. So instead, he chose to let them all die. One man caused all that carnage, simply by his inaction. If we hadn’t been there, it would have been much, much worse. This is like that. That’s all I can tell you.”
    It was impossible, but Kip felt a calm. The impossibility didn’t matter right now. He could grapple with that when his father was gone. “Does he deserve it?” he asked.
    Gavin took a deep breath. “I want to say yes to make it easier on you, but ‘deserving’ is a slippery concept. Does a coward who deserts his comrades deserve to be shot? No, but it has to be done because the stakes are so high. Klytos Blue is a coward who believes lies. If a man believes lies and repeats them, is he a liar? Maybe not, but he has to be stopped. I don’t believe Klytos is an evil man, Kip. I don’t believe he deserves to die out of hand or I’d kill him myself. But the stakes are high, and they’re rising. Do what you must. Get in the Blackguard first. I’ve secured a tryout for you. Get in, and the position will help you accomplish the rest.”
    Sure. Simple as that. Of course, for Gavin Guile, it probably
was
as simple as that. Things were so easy for a man of his powers, he probably thought they were easy for other people. “What are we trying to do?” Kip asked. “Ultimately, I mean.”
    “War is a spreading fire. And every old grudge is dry wood, begging for flame. When I fought my brother, men joined me who hated me, but they hated their neighbors more, and those neighbors then sided with him. We killed two hundred thousand people in less than four months, Kip. I had a chance to stop this new war at one city, a few thousand dead. I failed. There are satrapies that wouldn’t mind seeing Atash burn, that wouldn’t mind that fire spreading to Blood Forest, that don’t want their sons to die defending Ruthgar, that don’t want their daughters to have to be Freed after defending Paria, that don’t want to raise their taxes for Ilytian heathens, that don’t want to send their crops to those filthy Aborneans.”
    Kip understood. “Which leaves no one.”
    “We’re trying to stop the war before it engulfs everyone.”
    “How do you stop a war?” Kip asked.
    “You win. So you do your part, and I’ll do mine.”
    “How long do I have?” Kip asked. A small part of him rebelled. It wasn’t fair to ask a boy to do this. It