The Black Prism

Chapter 64

It’s simple, Kip. You’re not being asked to draft a pulley or a scull. One little green ball. It’s nothing.

He was sitting cross-legged, green spectacles on, white board in his lap, willing something to happen. He’d been doing this for two hours. And what exactly was he doing? Nothing. How were you supposed to even keep your mind on drafting when nothing happened for hours? His stomach was complaining again. It was constant now as the sun approached noon.

No food until I draft? It’s cruel. It’s torture. It’s impossible.

Kip looked up. Gavin had brought them only a few hundred paces outside the Lover’s Gate to the ruins of the old outer walls. When they’d arrived, there were already hundreds of men at work, and since then, many of those who’d been stuck in the line that they’d passed had joined them. They were excavating the roots of the wall down to bedrock, which was at least four paces down in the few places Kip could see. The excavation, though, went faster than he would have thought possible, between the sheer number of men working and the sandy soil, with only thin vegetation on top.

Gavin was poring over drawings with Master Danavis. General Danavis, Kip supposed, and the natural manner with which the general commanded men to do this or that—exactly how he’d told Kip to go do this or that—made Kip wonder why he’d never wondered about Master Danavis before. The man was obviously too big for a little town like Rekton, but Kip had never even thought about him. Children only think about themselves, Kip.

“It’s not good enough,” Gavin was saying. “No, the detail’s fine. The detail’s perfect. But the old wall didn’t stop us, so why rebuild something that’s faulty?”

Rebuild the wall? Hadn’t Gavin said that King Garadul’s army was arriving in four or five days?

“We’ll be lucky if we can get something that’s merely faulty,” General Danavis said. “We’ll be lucky if we can finish anything at all.”

“Bring me the drawings of Rathcaeson,” the Prism said.

“You’re seriously going to build a wall based on artists’ renditions of a mythical city?”

The muscle in Gavin’s jaw twitched with irritation.

“Understood, Lord Prism,” General Danavis said. He bobbed a bow.

“Bring your daughter,” Gavin said. “I could use a superviolet.”

A slight hesitation. “Of course.” The general left, mounting his horse and galloping toward the city, his Ruthgari personal guards trailing in his wake.

Then, though he’d been speaking nonstop with foremen, Ruthgari guards, and General Danavis all morning, Gavin was suddenly alone. He looked over at Kip. Oops, I think I’m supposed to be drafting.

Gavin cocked an eyebrow at him. “Not hungry yet, huh?”

Kip grimaced. “Thanks for reminding me.”

“Kip, more than any other color, green can be summarized in one word. All the others require at least a few, a bit of hedging, some qualifiers. Green is wild. Everything both good and bad associated with wild is what green is. That’s why I can tell you that you only need will, because will and wildness go so naturally together. If you were an incipient blue, I’d have to explain the sense of drafting, the harmony, the order, how it fits with the world. That’s not you. Any questions?”

Not about drafting. “What happened to that gunner?”

“What?” Gavin asked.

“The one on the Ilytian boat, who nearly killed us. Right before I shot him, his gun blew up.”

“It does happen,” Gavin said. “You overcharge your shot, the musket can’t handle the charge.”

“That gunner, who nearly hit us from five hundred paces? He misjudged a musket?”

Gavin smiled. He turned his palm over. There was nothing in it. Oh, Kip tightened his eyes. A superviolet ball rested in Gavin’s hand. “See it?” Gavin asked.

“I see it.”

Gavin extended his hand. A little pop, and his hand jumped back. The superviolet ball streaked out like it was a musket ball itself. “I blocked his musket barrel,” Gavin said, shrugging. “You can use any color to do it. Yellow only if you can make solid yellow, of course, but pretty much anything else.”

“Why not kill him?”

“I may have,” Gavin said. “A musket exploding in your hands is no joke.” He shrugged. “I recognized him. Freelancer during the war. Sometimes fought for me, sometimes for my brother, sometimes for any captain that would pay him enough. He’s a drunk and a scoundrel and the finest artist of the cannon in the Seven Satrapies. Whatever name he was born with, now he’s simply known as Gunner. It’s everything he is. His first underdeck command as cannoneer was on a ship called the Aved Barayah, the Fire Breather.”

“The Fire Breather? The Fire Breather?” Kip asked.

“Only ship in memory to ever kill a full-grown sea demon. Gunner was maybe sixteen years old.” Gavin shook his head, dispelling a memory. “I’ve killed a lot of people, Kip. Sometimes you hesitate, and as bad and as dangerous as that is, I like to think it’s proof that I’ve still got some humanity left. Besides, I knew making his gun blow up in his hands would really infuriate him. If I know Gunner, he made that musket himself, and he’s probably wondering who the hell overcharged his precious musket.” He glanced over to a richly dressed Ruthgari approaching, flanked by guards and slaves carrying a mobile pavilion to shade the light-skinned man. “I’ll leave you to your work,” Gavin said. “You might want to hurry, the servants should be bringing lunch anytime.”

Just when I’d sort of forgotten my stomach. Thanks.

Kip pushed the spectacles up his nose—they kept slipping down, and they weren’t even close to comfortable—and stared at the white board. Wild. Wild, unbridled, growing. The Ruthgari noble—Kip gathered it was the governor—was complaining shrilly to Gavin about something or other, and he stood as if he was going to take his time about it. Kip tried to block him out.

Green. Come on, let’s suck up some wildness.

Wild, now there’s a word for me. Kip the wild. I was pretty wild when Ram used to call me Tubby, huh? I was pretty wild when he made me back down over Isa. She’d be alive if I’d been a little wilder. To be wild is the opposite of being controlled, and I’ve been controlled for my whole life. Controlled by Ram, by Ram! A village tough. A boy! Barely a bully.

If Kip had told Ram to go to the evernight, if he had shredded Ram with his tongue, what could Ram have done except beat him? Ram’s muscles weren’t half a match for Kip’s brain.

Well, they’re not a match for anything now that they’re rotting.

The thought made Kip queasy. He didn’t want Ram dead. There’d been plenty of good things about the boy. A few, anyway. And if Kip didn’t feel terrible that Ram was dead, he did wish the boy were alive so he could face him now.

I’ve talked with Gavin Guile. I sank pirates with him! Well, mostly I tried not to drown while he sank pirates, but still.

Kip looked at his hands. Still no luxin. The governor was still complaining loudly. Orholam, how was Gavin standing it? The man had the most nasal voice Kip had ever heard. Kip wanted to bean the man in the head with a big old ball of green luxin. He glanced at his hands again. Nothing.

I’m going to fail Gavin. Again. Like I failed Isa. Like I failed Sanson. Like I failed my mother a thousand times.

Hunger gnawed Kip’s belly. That’s all I am, a fat failure. A new life’s been handed to me on a plate. Gavin Guile’s son, bastard son, sure, but he hasn’t once treated me like an embarrassment. And I can’t even summon the will to reach out and take this new life. In return for all the good he’s done me, I’m going to humiliate the man who saved my life, who gave me a second chance.

It was like bands of iron were being laid across his chest, and now they tightened, tightened. Kip could barely breathe. His eyes welled with tears. Baby. Failure. Disappointment. His mother’s face, twisted, dangerously high from smoking ratweed laced with ergot: You ruined my life! You’re the worst mistake I ever made. I gave everything and you took it all and gave me nothing! You make me sick, Kip.

Kip, you can throw off those chains. Stop believing those—

“Lies!” the governor shouted. Kip shivered, his skin tingling. The sun was nearly at its zenith. Orholam’s eye pressed down on the land like a physical weight, but to Kip it was a caress. Light, energy, warmth, love, light in dark corners. He looked at the white board, and in the green filtered through his spectacles, he saw one face of Orholam. Kip wouldn’t call it wildness. It was freedom. He wanted to shout, dance for joy, to hell with what anyone thought. There was freedom from all of that, and freedom from the prison of his own head, freedom from the nagging voices of doubt, from the running commentary about everything he saw and did. It was action, and it was as powerful as a redwood springing up in the cracks of a boulder. Life would win. The roots would reach and heave and strain.

Kip could feel those bands of iron around his chest burst asunder. He felt more alive than he had in his whole life. An animal strength and joy.

So this is what they mean by wild.

The yapping governor’s voice shrilled. Kip drew a ball of green luxin into his hand. Just like that? Just by deciding to do it? It seemed too easy. The ball was thick, dense, but flexible to his squeezing fingers. Kip made it bigger, hollow, about twice the size of his own head. Now the flexibility was exaggerated. Soft enough that it wasn’t going to kill anyone.

With the biggest grin on his face, Kip held it in his palms. How had Gavin shot out luxin? Kip had seen Ironfist do it too. He wrinkled his nose. Maybe I just will it.

A tiny part of his mind was protesting: You can’t assault the governor! He’s the governor, for Orholam’s sake. You think his bodyguards are going to appreciate that you don’t really mean to hurt him?

But in the grip of green, words like “governor” were bled of meaning. What was that? What was the difference? The trappings of human rituals and human titles seemed artificial, thin.

Kip willed the ball to shoot out of his hands. Still seated, grinning like a fool, he could feel energy coiling up behind the ball. How long did he let that build before he let it go? Oh well, that felt like long enough. A muffled crack and the ball jetted out of Kip’s hands, fast.

Still seated on the ground, he was blasted ass over elbows.

Rolling to his knees, laughing, Kip looked to see what had happened to the yapping man.

The governor was laid out, and apparently the green luxin ball had bounced around some, because the palanquin was collapsing, two of the slaves tumbling away from it. The palanquin dropped right on top of the governor, and Kip heard him shrieking—but his view was blocked as one of the bodyguards charged Kip, sword out.

Spectacles askew, Kip couldn’t draw any more green, but he still had a good amount in his body. He began drawing another, smaller ball. Too slow, too slow!

The air shimmered between him and the swordsman as he raised his hands. There was a crack from his hands and a tiny green ball shot out, snapping both hands back painfully from the kick.

A wall of blue luxin unfurled between Kip and the swordsman in the blink of an eye. The swordsman’s sword struck the blue wall in midlunge toward the kneeling boy. The blade screeched as it was forced downward, peeling off layers of blue. The swordsman himself smacked bodily into the blue a split second later, grunting. There was a sound like glass cracking, and a high-pitched whine.

The swordsman recovered, then stopped. The blue luxin right in front of his face was cracked from Kip’s shot, spiderwebs centered where his head would have been, a musket-ball-sized crater in the blue luxin.

“Enough,” Gavin said. He didn’t raise his voice, just injected it in a moment of silence. His blue wall had saved both of them.

Kip felt shaken, weak. Oh, shit. What did I just do?

The governor, still protesting, was pulled from the fallen palanquin by two of his bodyguards. He stood, nose bleeding, face flushed from embarrassment rapidly giving way to rage, and stormed over to Gavin.

“Your slave has assaulted me, I demand satisfaction!” The governor drew the decorative blade hanging at his hip and pointed it at Kip.

A muscle jumped in Gavin’s jaw. “That’s no slave. Kip is my natural son.”

“This, this is your bastard?”

Stony silence from Gavin. Finally, “Kip, apologize.”

Kip swallowed and stood, unable to conceal his trembling. “I’m terribly sorry, sir. I was practicing drafting for the first time. I really didn’t know what I was—”

“An apology? No, Lord Prism, first you assault me, and now this outrage? I demand satisfaction.”

“You’ll demand nothing,” Gavin said. He never broke eye contact. “You’re corrupt if not treasonous, Governor Crassos. You’ve been colluding with King Garadul, and if I can find just a little more evidence of it, I swear when you return to Ruthgar, your head will have a pike waiting for it. Unless Satrapah Ptolos decides to hand you over to the Parians instead. You’re incompetent, contemptible, a liar, a thief, and a coward. If you want satisfaction, you can duel with me. Sword to sword. On my word of honor I won’t draft, but we’ll do it right now.”

The governor blinked and the sword point trembled. He blinked again. Sheathed his blade. “I’ll leave brawling with swords to the benighted.” He snarled and turned on his heel, storming off.

Kip became aware that someone was right behind him. He turned and saw Ironfist looming over him. “How long have you been there?” he asked.

“Long enough to protect you from your foolishness, if not long enough to stop it. I wasn’t aware you had your family’s knack for getting into trouble in the blink of an eye.”

Oh, the blue wall had been Ironfist’s. Was that twice over now that Kip owed his life to the huge Blackguard?

“Commander,” Gavin said, “I need you to go speak with our spies. Crassos is rattled. He may run. Make sure the crews manning the cannons at the harbor’s entrance are men who will obey the order to fire, if it comes to that. And that he doesn’t plunder the treasury. I need to be able to pay our army.”

Ironfist frowned. “I’d prefer not to leave Kip. I’m a Blackguard, Lord Prism, not a messenger. My duty is here.”

Gavin said, “I can’t do it. Kip can’t do it. It needs doing. This is my fault for forbidding you to bring more Blackguards, but the point remains.”

Commander Ironfist hesitated only one second more. “Very well, Lord Prism.” He bowed and headed for the horses someone had brought for them.

When he had gone, there was a conspicuous silence. Dozens of workmen had seen what had happened, and humiliating the governor had clearly earned Gavin some goodwill, but no one appeared to want to come close either, lest Gavin was angry. Gavin rubbed his forehead. “You’re probably wondering why we’re going to fight a war for a*sholes like that governor,” he said.

Actually, the thought hadn’t occurred to Kip, but now that Gavin brought it up, it did seem odd.

“Because Rask Garadul had the stench of a fanatic, Kip. That’s all. Hundreds, or if we’re unlucky, thousands of people will die because I met Rask for a few minutes and I thought he was crazy.” Gavin expelled a breath. “He wants this city, and honestly, he’s got a right to it. If I could simply give this city back to Tyrea’s people, I would. They deserve it. They—you—have paid too high of a price for a war in which they took the only side they could. If there were anyone else who would take over after we left, I’d do it, and damn the Spectrum. But with Rask in power… It’s a little more complicated than that, of course, but that’s why I’m here, and my presence is what will make this a near thing. If we left, Rask would march in unopposed, close the harbor before the Parians could land, and that would be pretty much the end of it. The Parians would be furious, but the profits here aren’t so great that they want to march an army here. Eventually, Rask would offer an exclusive shipping contract on all the citrus from Garriston for a few years, and they’d take it. What do you think? Is it worth it?”

He’s asking me like my opinion is worth something. Kip hadn’t had that many adults care what he thought. “I think King Garadul should die and save us all this trouble.”

Gavin laughed ruefully. “If only. Maybe Karris will work a miracle and do just that.”

“You really miss her, don’t you?” Kip asked before he could stop himself.

Gavin looked at Kip sharply. Then he looked away. Relented. After a minute, he expelled a long breath, and it was like Kip was watching Gavin’s hope leak out of him. “That obvious, huh?” Gavin asked.

“You think they’ll kill her?” Kip asked.

A number of emotions flitted over Gavin’s face, settling in resignation, sorrow too deep for tears. “She’ll live until Rask sees if I’ll trade the city for her. Then he’ll kill her. Either way.”

No. No they won’t, Kip thought. I swear it.