The Black Prism

Chapter 21

They practically flew down the river. Kip had never traveled so fast in his life. And the Prism didn’t speak a word, sunk into his own dark mood. For most of the afternoon, Gavin Guile worked what the scull had in the place of oars—for a while, it would be almost like a ladder, then it would be like the bellows of a forge, then it would be oars, then it would be a rolling track. Gavin worked at one until he was exhausted, muscles quivering, sweat matting his thin shirt. Then he would draft a little, the oars would change to some new shape that gave his most weary muscles a rest, and he would keep going.

When Kip finally found his voice, he said, “Sir, um, he took my case?” He wasn’t going to ask about Karris White Oak or what Gavin had said. Not now. Not ever.

Gavin looked at Kip, his mouth tight. Kip regretted speaking at once. “It was that or your life.”

Kip paused, then said, “Thank you, sir. For saving me.” That seemed like a better choice than saying, But that was mine! It was the last thing—the only thing—my mother ever gave me!

“You’re welcome,” Gavin said. He glanced back up the river, his thoughts obviously elsewhere.

“That man, he’s responsible for killing my mother, isn’t he?” Kip asked.

“Yes.”

“I thought you were going to kill him right there. But you stopped.”

Gavin glanced at him, weighing him. His voice was distant. “I wasn’t willing for the innocent to die so I could kill the guilty.”

“Those men weren’t innocent! They murdered everyone I know!” Tears leaked down Kip’s face. He felt ragged, wrung out, finished.

“I was talking about you.”

It caught Kip short, but his emotions were still a jumble. His presence had kept Gavin from killing King Garadul. He didn’t know words that could convey his feelings for that. He’d failed his mother again. He’d actually blocked her vengeance by his own incompetence.

I’ll make good, mother. On my soul. I’ll kill him. I swear it.

Half a dozen small villages passed, and dozens of boats. Fed by tributaries, the river widened. But Gavin stopped only once, to buy a roasted chicken and bread and wine. He threw the food to Kip. “Eat.” Then they were off again. Gavin didn’t eat. He didn’t speak or even slow when they passed the fishermen startled by their appearance.

It wasn’t until the sun set and Gavin shifted the oars again that Kip ventured to speak once more. “Can I help… sir?”

The Prism gave him an appraising glance, as if he hadn’t even thought of having him help. But when he spoke, he said, “I’d really appreciate that. Here, stand on this and just walk.” He’d been running. “You can use these hand oars to help if you want. Steer by dropping in the hand oar on the side you want to turn toward. Port for port, starboard for starboard, right?”

“Port is left?”

“Right.”

Kip blinked. Uh…“Port is right?”

“Only if you’re facing aft.”

The panic must have been clear on Kip’s face, because Gavin chuckled. “It doesn’t matter. You just go until you’re too tired, or if we hit rapids or bandits. I’m going to rest for a bit.” Gavin sat in Kip’s place and tore into the remains of the chicken and bread. He watched as Kip struggled with getting the scull up to a halfway decent pace. Kip turned a time or two—it actually was pretty simple—and looked at Gavin to see if he approved, but the Prism was already asleep.

The quarter moon was straight overhead as night fell and Kip began walking. Even driven only by Kip’s walking, the scull was fast. Gavin had narrowed the hull even further when Karris had left, so the boat seemed more to hover over the water than plow through it. For the first few minutes, Kip was gripped with anxiety. Every turn he was sure they would confront bandits and the Prism wouldn’t awaken. But soon he fell into the rhythms of the boat, the waves, and the night.

An owl was hooting in the distance, and little bats were swooping and diving, eating the insects that flew high above the water while trout leapt to eat those that flew too low. The scull startled a heron, which flew off into the night on great blue wings.

Gradually, the peace of the night seeped into Kip. The surface of the river became as smooth as a mirror, and the stars shone in it. He saw ducks huddled on the shore, their heads tucked into their wings. And then he looked once more at the man who was supposedly his father.

Gavin Guile was a muscular man, broad-shouldered but as slender as Kip was fat. Kip searched for any resemblance at all, some hint that this could be true. Gavin was lighter-skinned; he looked like a mix between a Ruthgari, who had green or brown eyes, dark hair, and olive skin, and a Blood Forester, with their cornflower blue eyes and flaming red hair and deathly pale skin. Gavin’s hair was the color of burnished copper, and his eyes, of course, were those of a Prism. When he was drafting they looked whatever color he was using at the moment, and could change in an instant. When he wasn’t drafting, Gavin’s eyes shimmered as if they were prisms themselves, every little twitch sending a cascade of new colors through his irises. They were the most disconcerting eyes Kip had ever seen. They were eyes to make satraps squirm and queens faint. The eyes of Orholam’s Chosen.

Kip’s eyes were plain blue, which did nothing for him except mark him as a crossbreed. Maybe some Blood Forester lineage. Like most peoples, Tyreans had dark eyes. Kip’s hair was dark as a Tyrean’s, but tightly curled like a Parian’s or an Ilytian’s, rather than straight or wavy. Enough to mark him a freak, but nowhere near enough to mark him this man’s son. Of course, his mother hadn’t had the look of a Tyrean either, which just complicated things. Darker than either, with kinky hair and hazel eyes. Kip tried to imagine what the child of his mother and this man might look like, but he couldn’t do it. Blend enough mutts, and who knows what you’ll get? Maybe if he weren’t so fat he might see it. Maybe it was simply a cruel trick. A lie.

The Prism. The Prism himself? How could such a man be Kip’s father? He’d said he hadn’t known Kip even existed. How could that happen?

The answer seemed pretty obvious. It had been during the war. Gavin’s army had met Dazen’s not far from Rekton. So as they’d come through town, Gavin had met Lina. He was the Prism, heading to what might be his death. She was a young, pretty girl whose town had been destroyed. She’d shared his bed. Then he’d gone on to kill his brother—perhaps the very next day—and in the aftermath of the war and the reconstruction and the work of putting down the rest of the rebellion and rebuilding alliances and administering the peace, he’d probably never thought of her again. Even if he had, Tyrea wasn’t exactly the friendliest or safest of places for the Prism back then. It had sided with Dazen, the evil brother, and been treated cruelly as a result.

Or maybe Gavin had raped Lina. But that didn’t make sense. Why would a rapist claim Kip? Especially because it obviously cost Gavin a lot to do so.

Kip could imagine his mother, pregnant, unmarried, left in the devastation that was Rekton. Of course she’d want to escape. Kip would have been her one hope. What would she have done? Travel, alone, to Garriston, where the victors were administering Tyrea? He could imagine that well enough. His mother, presenting herself to some governor, demanding to see Gavin Guile because she bore his bastard. She’d have been lucky if she got as far as a governor with that tale. So she’d been turned away, her dreams of anything good or easy in her life dashed.

Whenever she looked at Kip, she didn’t see her own bad choices, she saw Gavin’s “betrayal” and her disappointment. Kip was a dream dashed.

Within half an hour, Kip was tiring. His arms were burning. He thought of how Gavin had practically sprinted for hours. The thought of waking the Prism so soon shamed him. He’d always tired quickly, but if he pushed through his initial fatigue he had a lot of stamina.

He wasn’t going to wake the Prism. Not at all. Let the man rest. He’d earned that much from Kip. Kip would keep going until Gavin woke. Even if it killed him. He swore it.

The oath made Kip feel good. He was insignificant. A nothing. But he could give the Prism himself a good night’s sleep. He could do something. He could matter, in a small way, but a bigger way than he ever had in his whole life.

He kept going. The Prism had saved him today. The Prism himself! Gavin had faced down King Garadul. He’d killed a score or more of Garadul’s Mirrormen—and walked away. And Kip had probably endangered it all by trying to attack the king. How stupid could he get? With all the drafters there, Kip had thought he could get to the king? Stupid!

Despite the coolness of the night, it wasn’t long before Kip was covered in sweat. His fast walk had become a trudge, but that trudge still drove the scull as fast as a horse’s canter.

Kip was so focused on just keeping going that he was on top of the camp before he noticed it. There were maybe a dozen men carousing around a fire, drinking and laughing as one strummed a badly out-of-tune lute. Kip kept trudging, his brain slow to take in what this had to be. The men were all armed, including one who looked like he was supposed to be on watch—that one still held his crossbow cocked and ready against his shoulder.

Kip thought of whispering to wake Gavin, but they were so close that anything loud enough to wake the Prism might be loud enough to carry over the river to the crossbowman who stood just at the edge of the firelight, his body turned toward the river but his head turned to his comrades.

The scull made only a slight hiss as it cut across the water. Surely it would be inaudible beneath the merry crackling of the bandits’ fire. The bandits had partially dammed the river, with rocks pinching in from either side. They’d laid wood planks over the top to make a walkway with only a tiny gap in the middle. Any boat that tried to get through would be within range of at least their spears.

Kip could disengage himself from the oars and touch Gavin—but what could Gavin do? It was night. There wasn’t much light for a Prism to work with. Maybe if Kip had woken him earlier. Now it was too late. He’d probably killed them. He’d have to shoot for the gap and hope for the best.

He aimed the scull at the gap and gasped as at the last second the moonlight cut through the water and revealed the bandits’ last trap: a stout, sharpened pole was embedded in the riverbed and stuck up to within a few thumbs of the surface of the water. Anyone who tried to shoot the gap would find themselves hung up, with a gaping hole in their hull.

The scull’s luxin hull barely brushed the pole and slid past.

Kip shot a glance at the crossbowman as the scull slipped through the teeth of the bandits’ trap. The man was only a few years older than Kip. He was laughing, happy, hand extended to one of the other men, asking for a skin of wine.

Then Kip was through. The crossbowman turned, shaking his head, then froze as he saw Kip. In the dark, the translucent luxin must have been well-nigh invisible to the sentry’s fire-spoiled night vision. He was seeing a fat boy running past him—on the river’s surface. Impossible.

Kip smiled and waved.

The sentry lifted a hand and waved back. Froze. Looked back at his comrades at the fire. His mouth opened to shout an alarum, but nothing came out. He turned back to the river and looked for Kip.

Kip was still within easy crossbow shot. He knew that, but he didn’t speed up, even though—at this moment—he had energy to spare. Anything he did might spook the sentry.

The sentry stared hard into the darkness at the disappearing ghost—and said nothing. He rubbed his forehead in consternation, shook his head, and turned back to his friends. Then Kip ran, not for long, but after a minute of running the scull was hundreds of paces downriver. Kip returned to his walk. He smiled. Stupid as it had been, he’d made it through without even waking the Prism.

He didn’t know how long he walked. He tried to keep an eye on the shore, but weariness had sunk into his bones. He passed smaller camps—whether of bandits or just innocent travelers, he couldn’t tell. But each time he saw them, he slowed to a crawl until he could see that all the men in the camp were asleep. He even did his trick again of unfocusing his eyes, and he could see the sleeping lumps of several more men than his focused eyes could, but never another sentry.

The sky didn’t lighten for what seemed a thousand years. Kip’s legs were burning. His lungs ached. He could barely feel his arms, but he refused to stop. Even at his bare trudge, the scull still moved twice as fast as a punt.

Finally, the sun touched the mountains. As always, daylight came long before the sun could climb the Karsos Mountains’ backs to announce sunrise. And still the Prism didn’t wake. Kip wouldn’t stop walking. Not now. He’d gone all night. Surely the Prism would wake any moment and see what Kip had done. He would be impressed. He would look at Kip with new eyes. Kip would be more than a burden, a shame, a bastard to be quietly admitted and then avoided.

The Prism stirred, and Kip’s heart leapt. But then the man settled back in, his breathing steady once more. Kip despaired. He looked to the rising sun. Was he going to have to wait until the light shone directly on the Prism’s face? That would be another hour at least. Kip swallowed. His tongue felt thick and dry, raspy as a file. How long had it been since he’d had a drink? A river beneath his feet, and he was parched.

He needed a drink. He was past needing a drink. If he didn’t drink, he was going to pass out. The Prism’s wineskin wasn’t even a full pace away. Kip stopped walking. His legs quivered. His feet were numb, and now they hurt as the blood leached back into them. He extricated himself from the oar mechanism and stepped over to grab the wineskin.

Or tried to. His numb feet got tangled up and he pitched forward, barely able to twist one way so he didn’t crush the Prism. His turned shoulder slammed onto the scull’s gunwale, and suddenly everything that had been good about the scull turned bad. The shallow displacement that had allowed the boat to slip over the bandits’ trap meant no stability. The bowl-like flare of the slick hull that had allowed them to slide over rocks meant that the sudden shift in weight was cataclysmic.

One moment, Kip was staring at the river from thumbs away. The next, the entire scull flipped. Kip’s head went in first. And yet despite the water closing over his ears and the thrashing of his own stupid clumsy limbs and the crashing of the rest of the scull hitting the water, somehow he was certain he heard a man’s startled yell.

The river was warm. Kip was so mortified, he decided to just die and get it over with. He’d just dunked the Prism into the river. Orholam!

Oh, he’ll be real impressed now, Kip.

Then his lungs started burning, and the idea of quietly dying to remove one ignominious blot from creation lost all appeal. Kip thrashed, weakly. His legs decided now would be a good time to cramp, and both did. Then his left arm. He flapped in the water like a lame bird, got one gulp of air, and plunged back down. Part of him knew he could float. He’d floated leagues down the river just yesterday, but panic had him fully in its grip. He floundered, took a breath at the wrong time, and sucked in water.

His head hurt. Orholam, it was like someone was ripping out all of his hair.

He spit and spluttered. He was in air! Sweet, precious air! Someone had grabbed him by the hair and pulled him out of the water. He coughed twice more and finally opened his eyes.

The Prism was winking at him—no, not winking. The Prism was blinking away the water that Kip had just spat up into his face.

Let me die now.

The man hauled Kip into the scull—now wider, with a keel, and much more stable than before. Kip hung his head and rubbed his arm and legs until they could move again. The Prism was standing over him, waiting. Kip swallowed, wincing, and braced himself to meet the great man’s fury. He looked up sheepishly.

“Love a morning swim,” Gavin said. “Quite bracing.” And he winked.