“It’s heavy, bulky,” Cruxer said.
“Right. Their goal is to transport the grain, so they may hope to take the village’s barges to send the grain down the river and then back up the river to their own tributary. But I can’t imagine that the villagers would be that dumb—if you’re sitting on a fortune in grain, the last thing you do when you see an army coming is to leave your barges in places to make your stuff easier to steal. Naturally, if you do see barges, sink them. Thus…”
Kip looked around. Everyone was giving him their total attention, not even trying to interject. Even Cruxer looked impressed. As Tisis had said, they were turning to him. He was becoming a leader in their eyes, if not his own. What did that say?
He went on. “Thus, the Blood Robes either have their own wagons up here above the falls, or they have more barges even farther back. With the skimmers, the Mighty can get in place without being noticed.”
Conn Arthur said, “Why are we looking at the same thing and I see a problem, but you don’t? Like you said, their barges or wagons are up a completely different tributary above the falls. If we split our forces to attack in two places at once, how do we possibly coordinate an attack? We don’t have any idea how many soldiers, drafters, and wights they might have. We could get massacred.”
“The tributaries end up pinching close at Deora Neamh. When the battle starts at the warehouse, we’ll be able to hear the musket fire.”
“Over the noise of the waterfall?” Cruxer asked.
“Good thought,” Kip said.
“It’s not that big,” someone who’d visited the town said. “You’d hear a musket over it.” Others agreed.
“What if something goes wrong?” Conn Arthur asked.
“Oh, something will go wrong,” Kip said. “Even if it doesn’t, we use luxin flares to communicate.”
“That gives away our position if we use them,” Cruxer said. “And if these, uh, Ghosts use them, the enemy will see that they’re using flares and suspect a trap.”
“No. They won’t see them at all, because we’ll use superviolet flares,” Kip said. “Conn Arthur, tell me you’ve got at least one superviolet drafter.”
“Three or four.”
Kip went on. “And before you point out that this means we have to have two people watching the sky constantly in the superviolet spectrum, we specify times instead. We each get a sand clock or a water clock—whatever Ben-hadad can make—and we check the sky at set times. Even if this captain has superviolet drafters, they won’t know to be looking at all or when to look if they do, so they’ll miss whatever we signal. Remember, victory for us isn’t wiping them out. It isn’t even fighting them at all. It’s stopping them from getting food. Saving the village, saving the grain, and killing lots of Blood Robes—all nice, but very much secondary. If we sink the barges or burn the wagons and scatter their horses and they still get the grain and decide to carry it back to the main army, we’ll have plenty more chances to wipe them out in the forest.”
They all thought about it for a moment. It was the best Kip could do without scouts or any real idea of the enemy forces.
“Well, it sounds great,” Conn Arthur said. “Of course, plans usually do.”
Chapter 28
“How did the High Luxiats take it?” Andross asked, pitching his voice low and quiet. Teia was walking beside Karris White as they crossed the delicate green bridge between Little Jasper and Big Jasper toward the execution platform, so she couldn’t help but overhear.
“As well as we expected they would,” the White said.
“But they’ll not rebel?” he insisted.
“We’ll find out presently, won’t we?” Karris said.
Teia was glad she’d already applied the dark eye caps. Karris was working with Andross Guile?
Of course she has to work with him, T. She’s the White, and he’s the promachos. But this sounded like more, like they were on the same side. Andross Guile was an open sewer. He was the human embodiment of evil. Teia didn’t want Karris any closer to him than was absolutely necessary.
But the promachos was already taking his leave. “I despise not knowing beforehand exactly how others are going to react.”
“And imagine,” Karris said drily, “some of us always live that way.”
“The horror,” Andross said, but Teia thought he seemed secretly pleased that his daughter-in-law was making fun of him.
Ugh. Teia didn’t like it when the old man acted human.
As the Blackguards emerged from the tunnel that was the Lily’s Stem, Teia saw the crowd for the first time. The muffled roar of their murmuring washed over her as if she had suddenly slipped into a full bathtub of their speculation. Though she was second in the line of Blackguards, it felt as if every eye were upon her.
The entire Embassies District was packed from building to building with bodies. The large execution platform had been built against the wall, beneath the great mirrors that were known as Orholam’s Glare. Nearest to the platform in the plaza were Chromeria officials, nobles, soldiers, Lightguards, and Blackguards, but as Teia mounted the steps, she saw an ocean of humanity.
Teia had thought that there would be a big crowd. She hadn’t guessed the half of it. Nearly every man, woman, and child living on Big Jasper had turned out for this event. Slave, free, Parian, or Tyrean, it didn’t matter. A bobbing mass of humanity filled the plaza and the great avenue and every street that converged here throughout the Embassies District. Balconies of mansions and embassies and roofs of shops were filled to bursting with onlookers.
Everyone wanted to see what would happen. Everyone wanted to hear what the Chromeria had to say. With the death of the old White, the ascension and near murder of the new White, the unveiling of the secret escape lines from the Chromeria, and the explosion of the cannon tower, it seemed the Big and Little Jasper Islanders’ veil of safety had been torn away. Everyone had heard the reading of the lists of the dead. They’d heard about the battles. But all this, plus the arrest of traitors, here?
Suddenly the reality of war had come home.
The Chromeria hadn’t played off the explosion of the cannon tower as a mistake. It hadn’t lied, exactly. It had merely said, ‘It wasn’t an accident.’ Everyone assumed that the Color Prince had attacked.
Believing themselves to have been attacked, the people wanted assurances. Many wanted blood. That the people to be executed today had nothing to do with the attack seemed not to matter. This was the people’s chance to hear the new White and judge her, to be soothed or to be inflamed—or to be disheartened.
No wonder Karris was nervous.
The Blackguards spread out across the platform. Teia and Stump, being the shortest, would flank Karris so as not to make her appear smaller than necessary. The commander would stand among the Colors and High Luxiats behind Karris.
The crowd fell silent as Carver Black stepped forward to introduce Karris as the new White. Teia didn’t pay attention; it was all titles and trivia. She was doing what she was here for: scanning the crowd for dangers, alternately in paryl and in the visible spectrum. She had already looked through the clothes of everyone on the platform. With paryl she could see through cloth but not skin, and the very bodies of the men and women already in place could conceal weapons.