The Black Prism

CHAPTER 90





Karris selected one of the Mirrormen’s horses that looked like it still had some wind and spirit left. Its barding was mirrored, and it shone in the morning sun. She might as well paint a target on her back. Well, she wasn’t exactly inconspicuous herself.

They didn’t have long. The four hundred paces between Lord Omnichrome’s color wights could only be crossed through a maze of alleys or rubble-strewn streets. It would slow them, but not much. Some things, though, had to be done. Karris moved to check King Garadul’s body, gritting her teeth against the gore.

He was definitely dead. She felt a peculiar emptiness. She’d wanted him dead. He deserved it. Now he was just gone. And, quite possibly, it hadn’t accomplished anything. She saw her bich’hwa on the ground next to him. Sonuvabitch. She picked it up, and scanned the ground, but there was no sight of her ataghan.

No more time. Corvan Danavis’s men were finishing collecting gunpowder and shot or replacement weapons from the dead and forming back up. Kip looked as bad as Karris would have expected. Corvan said, “It’s called being lightsick, Kip, and it might do anything to you. Make you feel weak as a puppy or strong as a sea demon. I’ve seen modest men tear off all their clothes because they couldn’t bear anything touching their skin. And shy women, well, never mind.”

“Hey, that was just the one time,” Karris protested, mounting up. When you could, it was good not to let a drafter sink too deep into themselves after drafting too much.

Corvan laughed. “I don’t know that I’d call you ‘shy,’ on any day, Karris White Oak.” He glanced down at her leg. “Certainly not today.”

Karris followed Corvan’s eyes. Oops. She’d managed to tear the slit in her dress practically to her hip, and sitting on a horse didn’t help. Well, what was she going to do? Go change?

“Time’s up!” Corvan shouted to his men. “We head for the docks! Catch up or die.” One of his officers came to him with a question, and he was swallowed up by his duties.

Which left Karris with Kip. She would prefer to be unencumbered during a battle, but she wasn’t going to abandon him, not again. There were things more important than her freedom. She sidled her horse over to the platform. “Come here, Kip,” she said with a little more edge than she meant.

Obviously dazed, Kip clambered up, and they were off.

At first, Karris thought they were going to get away cleanly. Then they came to the bridge. The far end was blocked with wagons and carts that must have just been set on fire moments before Corvan’s men arrived or they would have seen the smoke.

The men at the front of the column skidded to a stop, and the men who’d been running behind them collided with them, collapsing the column and causing chaos. Corvan, mounted near the front, was trying to extricate some drafters from the crush to get them to work on clearing the flaming barricades. It would only take a minute or two, in normal circumstances.

Near to the back of the column, Karris pulled up sharply and started shouting at the men near her to form a rear guard. “Load muskets, affix matches!” She wheeled around in time to see the first of the color wights pursuing them.

Karris had never seen anything like it. She’d known green wights could change their joints to give their legs immense springiness, but the greens weren’t the only color wights leaping from roof to roof behind them.

A yellow wight, limbs all aglow, ran straight toward the edge of a flat roof, gathering luxin in both hands. She leapt off the edge, and threw her hands down, releasing a jet of yellow at the ground, using the recoil to throw her up high enough to make it to the next roof. Like she was playing leapfrog in midair.

A flash of green, much closer.

Karris shot a ball of green up, intercepting the green wight as it descended. Her shot blasted the green wight off its trajectory, lifting it so that instead of landing among the terrified soldiers, it collided with the side of a building. The soldiers around it recovered before the wight did. Karris heard a rattle of musket fire.

Damn! Veterans would have dispatched it with their blades, saving precious shots for more active enemies.

Another green wight streaked through the air, and Karris missed it. It crashed through the back ranks, scattering men. Others, terrified, leveled their muskets and fired, most of them missing the wight and hitting their own friends.

By the time they put that one down, wights of every color were converging on them. Lord Omnichrome’s army was rounding a corner, not three hundred paces away, jogging, picking up speed for a charge. Half a dozen of Omnichrome’s red and sub-red drafters were mounted. They closed within two hundred paces and lobbed great flaming missiles toward Corvan’s massed, trapped men.

A blue wight, all glittering angles and blades, was the next across the rooftops to the left. A sub-red was leaping across roofs on the right, bald, her whole body literally aflame.

Out of nowhere, a big drafter dropped into the street straight in front of Karris, his back to Corvan’s men. He stood, arms spread out as if he were holding ropes and expecting a heavy load. His arms snapped out just as the blue wight and sub-red wight leapt to attack.

Both color wights jerked hard as the invisible superviolet luxin ropes around their necks went taut. The blue wight’s body went abruptly horizontal, all the luxin it had held going to jelly in an instant as it lost concentration. It crashed to the ground in front of the rear guard.

The sub-red wight, without the benefit of blue armor around her neck, barely changed directions. Her body landed on the next roof and fell, and her flaming head rolled right into the river.

The drafter who’d saved them shot a glance back, making sure the color wights were dead. It took Karris’s breath away. It was Usef Tep, the Purple Bear himself, the hero of the False Prism’s War. Even as Karris registered the fact, she saw the flaming missiles that were arcing toward the rear guard suddenly veer left and right in the air, exploding at a safe distance.

Another green wight she hadn’t even seen crashed into the ground, riddled with blue luxin knives. Karris saw Eleleph Corzin, skin luminous blue, step out of an alley.

“We’ve got your backs. Go!” a woman yelled.

Karris turned to see at least a dozen drafters stand on the last rooftop. It was like Karris had stepped into a heroes gallery. The woman who’d yelled was Samila Sayeh. Deedee Falling Leaf stood next to her, skin wrapped in vines of pure green luxin. Flamehands stood on the corner of the building, a steady stream of fireballs popping from each hand. Sisters Tala and Tayri to the right. Talon Gim bleeding heavily, left arm useless, but going to stand beside Usef Tep in the street. And others that Karris recognized from her youth, or who’d fought for Dazen and whom she’d heard described in vivid detail.

“Damn you! You and that boy are the only ones who can save Gavin. Take him and get the hell out of here!” Samila Sayeh yelled, her eyes flashing.

Corvan’s men surged as the barricades gave way. Karris felt Kip stirring behind her. Lord Omnichrome’s army was like an onrushing tide. Karris spurred her horse on, only shooting glances back at the magical conflagration behind her.

It was enough. All of Corvan’s men made it over the bridge. From there, it was a straight adrenaline-fueled shot to the docks.

Karris made it with the last group. Corvan, up at the front, was moving toward Gavin down on the docks. Gavin was working, drafting barges, it looked like. Someone alerted Gavin, and Karris saw a flash of his crooked smile toward Corvan.

And in that moment, Karris knew. It was like she’d been clubbed. Her throat tightened. The pieces spun together. A thousand pieces from the past sixteen years, and the last few in the past few days: That grin. Patting Corvan’s shoulder on the wall this morning. If Karris hadn’t spent more than a decade in the Blackguard, she wouldn’t have caught it. But Gavin and Corvan should hate each other. That could be explained away. They were professionals, sure. They had reasons to work together, right. But seamless command and instant obedience come only with time and trust. How could these men trust each other?

Who comes back from war a better man?

Gavin had said, “What’s in that note, it isn’t true. I swear it isn’t true.” Why would Gavin double down on a lie that he knew was going to be exposed minutes later?

Because it wasn’t a lie.

Oh shit.