The Black Prism

Chapter 65

The empty feeling in Kip’s stomach didn’t go away when they served lunch. Gavin and General Danavis—even though it was weird to think of him as General Danavis rather than Master Danavis, it was too weird for Kip to think of him as just Corvan—and even Liv were poring over the drawings and plans with architects and artists while they ate. Kip sat to one side, out of the way. He had no idea what they were doing, and space around the table was limited. He ate fresh oranges with gusto, and tore into the intriguing spiced fresh javelina. It tasted amazing, but even he couldn’t keep his mind on food for long.

“I’d ask if you’re serious,” General Danavis was saying, “but you have that look.”

“The problem isn’t the drafting,” Gavin said. “I can handle that much luxin easily—”

“Easily?” General Danavis interrupted, dubiously.

“Fine, not easily, but I can do it. The problem is the weight. I can’t lift this much, much less throw it into place.”

Liv cleared her throat gently, as if unsure she really wanted to intrude.

“Aliviana?” Gavin asked.

She colored. “Please, Liv.” She brushed her hair back nervously. “How about this?” She drafted something onto the table. It was, of course, superviolet, and thus invisible to most people.

General Danavis scowled. Apparently, most people included him.

“Sorry, father,” she said. “I can’t control yellow enough to make models with it.”

Kip tried to see what she’d drafted, but the table was obscured by bodies.

Gavin chuckled. “It looks ridiculous,” he said, and Liv blanched. “But it’ll work. Perfect. Fine. What do our architects think of the design?”

For a moment, Kip thought Gavin was being pretty rude. Obviously, General Danavis and everyone else around the table was curious about what Liv had designed. But this was Gavin as leader. All the rest of them didn’t need to know, and there was work to be done. He understood the solution to the problem, and that was all that was necessary. On to the next problem.

Which is what I should be doing. Kip had finished lunch. He could now draft a little bit, and on purpose. He knew what he had to do.

“My Lord Prism, none of us has ever built a wall of this magnitude, or, or—or a wall at all, to tell the truth,” a nervous architect said, “but these old drawings you’ve shown us of Rathcaeson are clearly flawed. Too much fantasy, not enough function.”

“This empty desert doesn’t have enough function,” Gavin said sharply. “Tell me what we need to do to fix it. I need to start building now, today.”

The architect blinked. Swallowed. “Uh, here.” He drew a line with his finger. “This interior passage isn’t wide enough. You’re going to have men rushing back and forth in armor, with guns, cannons being rolled into position, or replaced for repair. This passage must be wide enough for men to run past each other and past carts or cannons.”

“How wide?” Gavin demanded.

“I’d say, uh…” He held his fingers apart on the drawing.

“For Orholam’s sake, write on it,” Gavin said.

“Sir, those drawings are hundreds of years old, priceless relics of—” another man, perhaps an artist, protested.

“Priceless is being alive next week,” Gavin snapped. “Continue.”

Kip didn’t know why he’d been so slow, but it only dawned on him now that Gavin was seriously planning on building a wall, here. Before King Garadul’s army arrived. In four days.

Oh, maybe because it’s impossible?

Of course, crossing the Cerulean Sea in a morning was impossible too.

But seriously, did Gavin mean to draft the entire thing by himself? Kip didn’t know all that much about drafting and how much a drafter could safely use in a day, but the mere fact that the world wasn’t bursting with luxin buildings and bridges and walls told him that it had to be incredibly difficult. In fact, the only luxin buildings he’d seen had been at the Chromeria, and he had to guess that the seven towers had been the product of a huge collaborative effort.

The architect, a squinting little man, after puffing out his cheeks a number of times, deep in thought, began drawing quickly. “The cutouts on these murder holes don’t give sufficient range of fire. If you modify the top of the wall like this, scaling ladders won’t be able to hook onto the wall—at least not as easily. A railing on the back, like so, will save more of your own men from falling off the wall than theirs. These areas on top of the wall need to be bigger so you can store more powder for the cannons. There’s no place in these drawings for taking the wounded. I think you could incorporate that here. If you can set sleds like this right into the wall of the interior passage, it’ll be easier to move materiel around. There are also no lantern hooks in this plan. Your wall will be entirely dark if you don’t fix this. You’ll need cranes here, here, and here to lift supplies.”

“You’ve never built a wall before, huh?” Gavin asked.

“I have studied a few,” the architect said.

“How much am I paying you?”

“Uh, nothing yet, Lord Prism.”

“Well, double it!” Gavin ordered.

The architect looked befuddled, obviously doing the arithmetic and not liking the result, but not wanting to call the Prism himself out on it.

“He’s joking,” General Danavis told the man.

Gavin’s eyes sparkled.

“Oh.” The man looked relieved. Then Kip could see the question cross his face: joking about giving me nothing, or joking about giving me more for doing a good job?

Gavin said, “Keep working. This man here will take notes. I’m going to go lay the foundation.”

“He means that metaphorically, right?” the architect asked, squinting at the receding figure of the Prism.

“Our Prism’s a bear for metaphors,” General Danavis said.

“Huh?” the architect asked.

Kip stood, feeling heartsick. Now was going to be as good of a chance to escape as he was going to get.

“Kip!” Gavin’s voice rang out, drawing everyone’s eye to Kip. Kip felt a surge of panic and embarrassment at having been caught so easily. “Well done today. It’s not many boys who can draft consciously on their first day of trying.”

A flush of pleasure went through Kip, only doubled by the impressed look that flitted over Liv’s face.

“Liv!” Gavin called out, making her head whip around. “I want you to make models: lay out the curvature of the halls, widths for the top of the wall, whatever the architect tells you.”

“Yes, Lord Prism!” she said, her eyes turning back to the table and her work.

Now or never. If he waited, Ironfist would be back, shadowing him wherever he went. Kip looked at General Danavis, head down, making suggestions; Liv, listening intently; and finally at Gavin. These were the only people in the world who meant anything to him, and incredibly, they accepted him. Tolerated him, anyway. With them, for the first time in his life, he felt like he was part of something.

Kip turned his back and walked toward the city.