The Black Prism

Chapter 32

Kip barely had time to get scrubbed down with towels, dressed in some soldier’s pants and a dry shirt and heavy boots—surprisingly enough, it all fit; apparently they were used to big soldiers out here—and plopped in front of a fire before Ironfist showed up. His tightly curled hair was damp, but otherwise there was nothing to give away that he had just been in the ocean too. He wore a regulation gray uniform like Kip’s, though with a gold seven-pointed star and two bars on his lapel, where Kip’s uniform was blank.

“Up,” Ironfist said.

Kip stood, rubbing his arms in what seemed a vain effort to get warm. “I thought you were a commander of the Blackguard. Why are you wearing a captain’s uniform?”

Ironfist’s eyebrow barely twitched. “So you know Chromerian ranks?”

“Master Danavis taught me all the military ranks of all Seven Satrapies. He thought—”

“That’s nice. You have all your belongings?” Ironfist said.

Kip scowled, at being interrupted and dismissed and at the thought of belongings. “I don’t have any stuff. I didn’t have that much to start with, and—”

“So the answer is yes,” Ironfist said.

So that was how it was going to be. “Yes,” Kip said. “Sir.” He was only a little sardonic with the sir, but Ironfist looked at him sharply, no humor at all in the one raised eyebrow. He really was very big. Not just tall, not just really tall. Rippling with muscle. Intimidating. Kip looked away. He cleared his throat awkwardly. “I’m sorry you had to dive in and get me. I’m sorry I made you lose your spectacles. I’ll pay you back, I promise.”

Suddenly, to his complete horror, Kip felt tears welling up from nowhere. Orholam, no! But the pull was as irresistible as the riptide. His stomach convulsed as he tried to choke back the sob, but it escaped anyway. He was so sick of being weak. He was the child who couldn’t even hold on to the rope someone put in his hands. He hadn’t been able to do anything. He hadn’t saved Isa when she needed him. He hadn’t saved his mother. He hadn’t saved Sanson. He was powerless, stupid. When it had come down to it, he’d panicked. His mother was right about him.

Half a dozen expressions rushed over Ironfist’s face in quick succession. He raised one hand awkwardly, lowered it, raised it again, and patted Kip’s shoulder. He cleared his throat. “I can requisition another pair.”

Kip started laughing and crying at the same time, not because Ironfist was funny, but because the big man thought Kip was crying about his spectacles.

“There you go,” Ironfist said. He thumped Kip’s shoulder with the side of his fist in what Kip thought was supposed to be a friendly manner—except it hurt. Kip rubbed his shoulder and laugh-cried harder.

“Let’s go,” Kip said, shrinking back lest Ironfist tap one of his namesakes on his shoulder again and leave a smoking ruin.

Ironfist’s eyebrows twitched up in a momentary expression of relief.

“Almost as bad as dealing with a woman, huh?” Kip said.

Ironfist stopped cold. “How’d…” he trailed off. “You are a Guile, aren’t you?”

“What do you mean?” Kip asked.

“Let’s go,” Ironfist said in a tone that brooked no argument. Kip didn’t hesitate. He didn’t know what precisely Ironfist would do to him if he didn’t obey, but knowing was a logical process. Fear was faster.

Outside, he saw that they’d rigged up another boat on the ramp. He rubbed his clammy arms and stared at the sea. The tide was halfway in and getting worse, and the waves crashed powerfully over the rocks of Cannon Island. This boat was a small sailing dinghy. It didn’t look even as stable as the dory. And it was smaller. Kip’s stomach turned.

“Commander?” one of the men said. “You sure? I wouldn’t want to go out on this even with experienced sailors. Especially if you’re going the long way.”

Kip didn’t see the look that passed between the men, but he heard the soldier say, “Yes, sir,” quickly afterward.

Cannon Island was in the middle of the current that flowed between Little Jasper and Big Jasper. Little Jasper Bay was calm, protected by a seawall, but Kip and Ironfist were headed the opposite direction, to circle three-quarters of Big Jasper in order to get to its bay.

“Aren’t we going to the Chromeria?” Kip asked. He could see the tops of colored towers, only partially visible above the rocky body of Cannon Island. “Why can’t we go to their bay? It’s closer.”

“Because we’re not going straight there,” Ironfist said. He gestured for Kip to get in and handed him an oar.

The men pushed them off and Ironfist began rowing hard. Kip did his best to keep up with the big man, but almost immediately they began turning toward Kip’s side. Ironfist said nothing; he just switched sides and rowed hard a few times on Kip’s side until they were straight, then returned to his own side. The commander aimed them so they quartered the waves. Kip’s heart was constantly in his throat. The three- and four-foot-tall waves yielded to five- and six-foot-tall waves.

And then Ironfist raised their little sail a third of the way. “Keep us straight,” he barked, working the lines. Kip felt like a headless chicken, flopping awkwardly from one side of the boat to the other, keeping them headed slowly forward, going up each wave with a lurch and swooping down the opposite side.

“Down! Get down!” Ironfist shouted. Kip dropped just as the wind shifted and the sail swung from one side of the boat to the other, the boom whipping over his head. It snapped so hard against the ropes that Kip thought it might tear off or break.

Orholam, that could have been my head.

The dinghy leaned over hard, even with the sail only a third of the way raised, and jumped forward. Kip had barely gotten back up to his knees, and the sudden forward motion made him tumble backward, splashing into the cold dirty water at the bottom of the dinghy.

“The rudder! Take the rudder!” Ironfist ordered.

Kip grabbed the rudder and held it straight for a long moment, though the dinghy was turned too far away from the wind—taking the waves almost side on. He blinked seawater out of his eyes. Throw the rudder this way, it turns at the fulcrum there, and the boat turns… Got it.

Part of the next wave sloshed over the gunwales as Kip threw the rudder hard toward the port side. A hard gust of wind made the dinghy bear down even farther in the water, then they popped up hard as they escaped the killing grip of the wave.

Kip whooped as they sped forward, riding the waves, plowing through them at times now, rather than simply being at their mercy. But Ironfist didn’t share his joy. He was glancing up at the sky. He raised the sails a little more, and the dinghy picked up even more speed, leaning so hard to the port side that Kip thought they were going to capsize.

When they reached the west side of Big Jasper, they were able to run before the wind. It was like flying.

Ironfist kept glancing south, but the dark clouds there seemed to dissipate rather than gather, and by the time they turned into Big Jasper’s wind shadow, Kip could tell from Ironfist’s demeanor that they were out of danger.

“There’s a small dock that we want, head straight,” Ironfist told him, raising their sail all the way.

So Kip aimed them past galleys and galleasses, corvettes armed with a single gun mounted on a swivel, and galleons with fifteen cannons on each side. They stayed fairly far out so they wouldn’t interfere with the constant stream of ships coming in and out of the bay, the dinghies taking crews ashore.

“Is it always like this?” Kip asked.

“Always,” Ironfist said. “Bay’s too small, so to accommodate the number of boats needed to keep trade flowing smoothly there’s an elaborate system to determine who gets in first. It works…” He glanced up at a captain swearing loudly at the harborman standing on his deck with an abacus. The harborman looked singularly unimpressed. “For the most part.”

Between having to veer sharply now and again to avoid other boats according to some ships’ etiquette that he didn’t understand, Kip didn’t get to catch more than a few glimpses of the city covering Big Jasper. And from what he saw, it did cover Big Jasper. There was a wall just above shore around the entire island—leagues of walls—but even that couldn’t hide the city as it rose on two hills. Aside from a few green patches—gardens? parks? mansions’ grounds?—there were buildings everywhere. Soaring bulbous domes in every color, everywhere. And people, more people than Kip had ever seen.

“Kip. Kip! Port! Gawk later.”

Kip tore his eyes off the island and turned to port, narrowly avoiding ramming a galleass. They sailed past under the evil eye of the galleass’s knotted-haired first mate. He looked like he was going to spit on them, but saw their uniforms and spat on his own deck instead.

They proceeded into open water until they started to round the eastern side of the island. “Turn in here,” Ironfist said. Kip turned toward a little dock with a few small fishing boats moored to it. They docked and headed up to the wall. Kip tried not to gawk, though the wall itself was easily the biggest man-made structure he’d ever seen.

Ironfist strode to the gate. The guards outside looked confused. “Captain?” Then they snapped sharp salutes, eyes wide. “Commander!”

A smaller door inset to the larger gate was open, and Ironfist walked through, nodding to acknowledge the men. The city inside was too overwhelming for Kip to comprehend even part of it. But the part that hit him first was the smell.

Ironfist must have noticed the look on his face. “You think this is bad? You should try a city without sewers.”

“No,” Kip said, looking at the hundreds of people in the streets, the three- and four-story buildings everywhere, the cobbled streets with tracks worn a hand’s breadth down into the stones. “It’s just that there’s so much.” And there was. Smells of cooking pork, spices Kip didn’t know, fresh fish, rotting fish, a thin odor of human waste and a stronger one of horse and cattle manure, and, overwhelming it all, the smell of unwashed men and women.

The people parted naturally around Ironfist, and Kip followed in his wake, trying not to run into anyone as he shot glances at all the people. There were men wearing ghotras like Ironfist, but also bedecked in robes with checkered patterns and loud colors. There were Atashian men with their impressive beards: beads, braids, natural sections, and more beads and braids. There were Ilytian women with multilayered dresses and shoes nearly like stilts, making them a full hand taller. And a riot of colors everywhere. Every color in the rainbow, combined in every possible way. Ironfist looked back at Kip, amused.

“Those soldiers at the gate,” Kip said, trying to take Ironfist’s attention off his being a bumpkin. “Those weren’t your men.”

“No,” Ironfist said.

“But they recognized you, and you didn’t recognize them, and they were really excited that they’d seen you.”

Ironfist looked at Kip again, scowling. “How old are you again?”

“I’m fift—”

“The commander,” Ironfist said. As if that answered everything. He smirked as Kip scurried up beside him. “You’re the genius. Let’s hear it,” he said.

Genius? I never acted like I thought I was that. But that was a distraction. This was a test. In fact, Ironfist had been testing Kip the whole time, Kip saw now. Putting him on the rudder had been a test, to see what he would do, how quickly he would figure it out, and if he would freeze up. Kip wasn’t even sure how well he’d done on that count.

Ironfist was a commander. A commander, the commander. The commander. Oh. Oh my.

“There’s only one company of Blackguards, isn’t there?” Kip asked.

Like most of Ironfist’s expressions, this one was quick and quickly muted: the full white of his eyes around dark irises visible for a bare moment, then a little smirk to cover. “Not bad, given the obvious hint, I suppose.”

“So you’re the sole commander of the most elite company in the Chromeria. That makes you like a general or something?”

“Or something.”

“Oh,” Kip said. “So that means I should probably be even more intimidated of you than I am right now, huh?”

Ironfist laughed. “No, I think you’ve got it just about perfect.” He grinned.

“What were you doing pulling guard duty on that rock?”

“It is a bit more than a rock.”

Put that way, it did make some sense. The Blackguard had to protect the Chromeria’s most important people, and a secret escape tunnel was the kind of thing you had to check yourself. “Still,” Kip said.

They came to a much wider road and Ironfist—Commander Ironfist—turned onto it, heading west, the opposite direction of almost all of the traffic. He sighed. “It’s not a duty anyone wants, so it’s sometimes used as punishment. Let’s just say I’ve given the White reason to be displeased recently.”

Kip said quietly, “Or that’s a cover so you can go out and check the maintenance of the tunnel.”

“Except that a tunnel is… a tunnel. Don’t make things more complicated than they are, little Guile.”

Huh? “Oh.” Ironfist could come from the Chromeria side and make sure the tunnel worked. He didn’t need to sail out to the island for that. Some genius I am. Embarrassed, Kip rushed to ask another question, and asked the question he knew he shouldn’t. “So what did you do to make him mad at you? You know, the White.”

“Him?” Ironfist asked.

“Her?”

Ironfist turned in at a little house with an oxidized copper dome, unlocked the door, and pointed for Kip to go in. “There’s hard tack and cheese and olives in the kitchen. Latrine off to the left. Bed straight down the hall. You’re not to leave until I come get you tomorrow at dawn.”

“But we came across those huge waves instead of waiting, I—I thought we were going straight to the Chromeria.”

“I’m going straight to the Chromeria.”

“While I just sit here all day?”

“When you see what you have to do tomorrow, you’ll be glad you had the rest.” Ironfist moved to leave.

“But, what—what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to go get back in the White’s good graces.”

Kip scowled as the door closed. There was a click. He was locked in. “That’s great,” he told the closed door. “I’ll just wait here. I’ve been meaning to catch up on my thumb-twiddling.” Grumbling, he made his way to the olives and cheese. Ten minutes later, he was asleep.