Free The Blinding Knife by Brent Weeks

hated her. He barely knew her, and he wanted to beat her ugly face in.
    She smiled. It was a deeply unpleasant smile. Small woman, so pleased to be the mistress of her domain, so proud to bully a class full of children. “Then I’ll make you a deal, Kip: you say whatever youwant, but if I find it impertinent, I’ll smack your knuckles again. You see, class, this will be a nice object lesson. An analogue for drafting—there’s always a price, and you have to decide if you are willing to pay it. So, Kip?”
    “You called my mother illiterate, and that’s about as true as me calling you a decent human being.” Kip’s heart was welling up, blocking his throat. “My mother sold her soul to haze. She lied and cheated and stole, I think she even whored herself a few times, but she wasn’t illiterate. So if you’re going to slander my mother to make me look pathetic, there’s plenty of true things you can say. But that is not one of them.” You
bitch
.
    The class goggled at Kip. He didn’t know if he’d just defanged a hundred rumors, or spawned them. Maybe both, but he’d kept a level tone, and he hadn’t called his magister a liar or worse. It was sort of a victory. Sort of.
    “Are you quite finished?” the magister asked.
    And now the price of the victory. “Yes,” Kip said.
    He put his hand on the desk for her to smack—his left hand, wrapped in bandages.
    Stupid, Kip. You’re just daring her. Asking for it.
    Crack! Kip jumped as the switch slammed into the table so hard it made the surface jump—just two thumbs away from his hand.
    “Class, sometimes with drafting as with life, you don’t have to pay the price for misbehaving,” Magister Kadah said. “Especially if you’re a Guile. Kip, I don’t like your attitude,” she said. “Go wait in the hall.”
    Kip stood and walked out into the hall, followed by twenty pairs of eyes. His fellow students were from all over the Seven Satrapies: dark-skinned Parians, the girls with hair free, the boys wearing ghotras; olive-skinned Atashians with sapphire-bright eyes; and lots of Ruthgari, small-nosed, thin-lipped, and lighter-skinned, one even a blonde. Kip was the only Tyrean, though he looked more mutt than anything: hair kinky like a Parian, but without the lean, fluid build; eyes blue like an Atashian, but skin darker than their olive complexions, nose not prominent. He even had a few freckles visible through his skin like he was part Blood Forester.
    “They’ll hate you for me,” his father had told him. Then that lopsided, winsome Guile grin had struck. “But don’t worry, eventually they’ll hate you for you, too.”
    It was his first day, so Kip was guessing he was being hated for Gavin Guile this time.
    Samite was gone when he got out into the hall. Kip supposed the Blackguards worked on shifts. She’d probably thought he could get through one lecture without getting in trouble.
    Oops.
    Go ahead, he thought as he sat on the floor in the Chromeria’s hall, feel sorry for yourself. You’ve been acknowledged as a bastard of the most powerful man in the world. He saved your life many times, and he gave you the choice. You could have entered the Chromeria anonymously. You chose this.
    Kip had thought he’d have at least one friend here, though. Liv had been here—until Garriston. She’d been nice to him, though she saw him as a little brother. But now she was gone, fighting for the Color Prince, choosing to believe comforting lies. Kip hated her for that, despised her for seeking the easy way out—but most of all he missed her.
    He sat close to the door, trying to overhear Magister Kadah’s lecture, trying to think about magic so he didn’t think about anything else. The magister was saying something about the properties of green luxin? He thought about trying to draft some right here in the hall. It would be a bad idea, though. Green made you wild, made you disregard authority. Now would be a bad time for that. He smiled, though,