The Black Prism

Chapter 74

As night fell, the plain didn’t darken. At first, Liv had no idea why. She had been walking all day, stuck behind the wagon, wearing an old petasos with the brim low so her drafter’s eyes would be less conspicuous. She’d heard the rumble of guns earlier, but assumed it was posturing. There was no way the army was at Garriston yet. Along with what appeared to be half of the entire camp, she went forward to see what was so bright.

There were so many people covering the plain that Liv almost missed the signs of the battle that had concluded mere hours before, obvious as they were. Trenches where cannonballs had landed simply became ditches for the wagons to avoid. Slippery, muddy, bloody areas next to those cannon scars, with fragments of armor littered about, were just places to watch your footing in the near-darkness. The pungent aroma of gunpowder was already dissipating.

The last of the great lines of soldiers were marching through the gate even now, forcing all the camp followers to wait until after they’d gone inside and set up camp. Liv heard wild rumors of huge magical conflagrations, an epic battle, but she was skeptical. King Garadul’s army had taken the wall in an afternoon. It couldn’t have been much of a fight. Her father was a great general. He’d only lost one battle in his life, and that barely. He must have decided that they wouldn’t finish the wall in time and had withdrawn to the city walls. He’d probably just had some cannoneers stay to inflict some easy damage on King Garadul’s men and then withdraw.

The thought made Liv feel better. If her father had chosen to make his stand elsewhere, then he surely wouldn’t have been in danger today. The idea that he might have fought and died less than a league away and that she hadn’t had so much as a sick intuition was too terrible to entertain. She’d been so caught up in looking for Kip that she hadn’t even realized they were this close to the city.

But all thoughts and worries and distractions faded as she pushed through the crowds lined up looking at the wall. No one went within fifty paces of it. As Liv finally pushed to the front, she saw why. An enormous spider, larger than a man, had strung up a dozen corpses—no, not corpses, at least one of the web-wrapped bundles was struggling. As Liv watched, the man tore his head free, his hands bound tight up against his chest. Upside down, the man wriggled, trying to free his arm, setting himself swinging gently. The spider didn’t notice as it tended to another bundle ten paces away.

Liv saw a sword stuck in the ground not far from the man. He tore his right arm free and began clawing at the rest of the webs holding him, but couldn’t rip them open. Then he saw the sword. He swung, reaching for it. Didn’t quite reach it.

“Orholam save him!” someone breathed in the crowd.

“Look at the spider!”

The spider had frozen as if it heard something. Then it turned, just as the man swung farther. It turned, eyes glowing a sickly green.

The man’s hands closed on the sword hilt just as the spider pounced. He swung, missed, and the spider’s jaws closed on his neck. For one terrible instant the man’s entire body tensed, face contorting in pain. Then those awful jaws scissored together, and his head fell to the ground and rolled. His free arm—still holding the sword—spasmed for several long moments as blood gushed out of his neck onto the ground. Then he dropped the sword. It speared into the ground, right where he’d left it.

The spider latched onto his bleeding neck and began feeding.

Liv heard someone retch. Others muttered prayers and curses.

She was transfixed, as was everyone else. Eventually, the spider pushed the man’s arm back against his chest and wrapped him in webs once more. Then it picked up his head and put it back with his body.

While the spider was fixing the webs, wrapping the man’s head back in place, one of the other bundles began moving.

“I been watching for two hours,” a man next to Liv said. “They don’t none of them get away. This fella gets about thirty paces before she rips out his guts. Them two try to fight her together. It’s the same every time. I know it, but I can’t stop watching.”

The same every time? Liv looked back to the first man and position of the sword below him. It was the same as before—exactly the same. The blood that that pooled beneath his severed head had slowly receded to nothingness. This wasn’t a murder; it was a mummer’s show. Which actually didn’t make it any less impressive.

“What are you doing?” someone called out behind Liv.

She hadn’t even realized she was walking forward, but she didn’t stop. As she got closer, it became more and more apparent that she’d been right. She walked closer as—sure enough—the second man tore free and ran away. But then the spider stopped in its pursuit, froze, and turned. The crowd behind Liv gasped. The spider bounded back with great speed, going straight for Liv.

Liv froze, her heart leaping into her throat. The spider stopped, right in front of her, great pincer jaws snapping together, forelegs lifted to grab her. Too frightened to move, Liv watched those jaws clack-clack together, not ten paces away. Clack-clack…

Soundlessly?

Liv let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. She tightened her eyes and saw that the ground around her was laced with superviolet triggers. Brilliant. She stepped to her left, and the spider didn’t move until she stepped into the next zone, and then it was there, fast. And now that she was this close, she could see that the cavern behind the spider looked all wrong. It wasn’t nearly as deep as it appeared from fifty paces out. It was like a painting, with light and shadow used to make it appear that there was an entire cave where there was none. And the spider itself was crafted entirely of primary, stable luxin colors, layered so that it wouldn’t be obvious that it was a luxin creation.

As Liv moved past the triggers, the spider went bounding after the man who had “escaped,” but somehow hadn’t taken advantage of the last thirty seconds to actually run away. The spider ripped out his guts, just as the man had said.

Liv touched the luxin of the wall and immediately forgot about the genius of the spider mummery. The yellow luxin was flawless. It was perfection.

Forgetting where she was, she drafted directly from the yellow glow of the wall. Drafting from yellow luxin had once been pursued as the perfect source of light—at least for yellows—but it had never panned out. Something was always lost, it was always inefficient. But with an entire wall, leagues long, inefficiency didn’t matter. Liv drew a little torch of solid luxin into her hand to better see the wall when illuminated by a second source of light. Sometimes drafters hid things in their construction that—

“Hey! Mistress! What are you doing out here? All drafters are supposed to be inside the walls already.”

Startled, Liv saw a grizzled old soldier coming toward her, wearing the uniform of a Tyrean sergeant, a brace of nice wheellock pistols at his belt and an empty scabbard. His face was smudged with gunpowder or smoke and there were light bandages wrapped around his hands. He glanced at Liv’s forearms as he approached.

“I, uh—” She tried desperately to remember the lie she’d prepared in case someone asked her about her lack of the colored vambraces.

“You’re dazzled by Brightwater Wall. I know, all the drafters is. Where’re your arms?”

Arms? Liv guessed he meant the color vambraces all the other drafters wore. “I, ahem, was invited to the color lords’ party last night and I had a bit much to drink, I’m afraid. I fell asleep behind a bush and my unit either didn’t find me or thought it would be funny to leave me there mostly, ahem…”

“Naked?”

Liv blushed as much from the brazenness of her lie as anything. “I’m lucky I still have my specs,” she said, showing him her yellow spectacles tucked in a pocket.

“I’d probably drink a lot if I were asked to that party myself. Put on your specs and go to the gate. They’ll let you through. Then go to Quartermaster Zid. He’s a real bastard and he’ll give you all sorts of trouble, but… Ah, hell. Come with me, I’ll take you. That’s me, Master Sergeant Galan Delelo, sucker for a pouty lip and a clueless gaze.”

“Hey!” Liv said.

“Joking, joking,” Galan said. “You actually remind me of my daughter. And if she’s clueless, she got it all from her father. Come on.” He turned. “And you, all you damned fools, it ain’t real. It’s just a show. Stop piddling yourselves.” He slapped the wall to emphasize his point and half the crowd ducked at the sharp sound.

Mumbling to himself, he took her to the gate. Even the soldiers continued to march through. They’d left a narrow two lanes on one side for messengers and nobles and drafters to pass, and the guards there knew the master sergeant and let him right through.

Inside the wall, he weaved quickly between tents, walking fast, and cut to the front of a line of lower-ranking soldiers to speak with the quartermaster. “Need yellow rags for this girl here,” Galan announced to the quartermaster’s back as the big, hunchbacked man was collecting half a dozen swords to give to some young soldier.

Quartermaster Zid turned. “I don’t recognize her. She’s not with the units I supply. Forget it.”

“You’re going to give me hell? Tonight? You crazy old ninny, do I need to put my foot up your arse?”

“Ninny? You come harping on me like a harridan and you expect roses and wine? I ought to pound that ugly nose of yours flat,” the hunchbacked man said.

Galan laughed, rubbing a nose that had obviously been broken many times. “I seem to recall you trying that a time or two.”

The quartermaster grinned, and Liv’s terror faded as she realized the two were good friends.

“I know you’re happy to see I’m alive,” Galan said. “So just do me a favor and give the girl the rags.”

“Yellow?” Zid asked. He poured the swords onto the counter, ignoring the young soldier who tried and failed to grab all of them and almost skewered himself trying—unsuccessfully—to keep them on the counter.

“Yes,” Liv said.

He grabbed a list. “Name?”

“Liv.”

He scanned quickly. “No Livs, sorry. There’s not a yellow drafter named Liv in the entire army.”

Liv’s mouth went dry.

“You and you,” Zid said, pointing to some soldiers waiting, irritated, in line. “Arrest this woman. We’ll need to report an impostor—”

“Oh for Orholam’s sake, Zid, whaddaya think she is, a spy? She’s probably barely sixteen! What kind of a swiving fool would send a baby to spy on us?”

At the word “spy” Liv’s knees turned to water.

“Maybe a very cunning fool, who thought we would discount her for that very reason,” Zid said, suspicion leaking out of his very pores. “They say Gavin Guile did. They say some boy over in the chirurgeons’ tents is his own bastard. Who’d send a child? Those wily bastards, that’s who.” He nodded vaguely toward Garriston.

“I’m seventeen,” she said instead. What? Kip was in the chirurgeons’ tents? Was he sick? Wounded? She was too flustered and scared to rejoice that she’d just heard her first lead to Kip’s whereabouts.

“Come on, Zid, those lists are barely good enough to wipe your arse on once the fighting starts, you know that. It’s like you’ve never done this bef—”

“Gotcha,” Zid said. He threw back his head and laughed. He threw some yellow sleeves across the table. “That was for the ‘ninny’ crack. Now we’re even.”

“Even, oh, we’re not even close to even,” Galan said, but he was smiling. “Meh, duty calls, nice to meetcha, Liv, and if you ever can, knock this fella down a notch or three, wouldja?”

“Gladly,” Liv said, smiling over the sick feeling in her stomach, as if she were glad to be in on the joke.

In minutes, she was alone and, donning her sleeves for the first time, she was in. Now all she had to do was save Kip and Karris. And really, how hard could that be?

Not for the first time in the last few days, Liv wanted to swear and throw things and whine and complain, and—maybe just a little—she wanted to cry. Instead, she took a deep breath and headed deeper into camp.