The Black Prism

Chapter 87

Karris snatched a second sword from a man lying on the ground, bleeding from a stomach wound. She didn’t know what side he was fighting for; she didn’t care. The city smelled of gunpowder, sewage, and men’s sweat, the kind of stench that gets into leather armor and never comes out. As she ran, she drafted a thin sheen of green luxin down the swords, sealed it, then ran red luxin on top of that and sealed that too.

This entire area was a tangle of alleys. The buildings were thrown down haphazardly with seeming intent to vex one’s neighbors and make straight lines of sight impossible. The good news was that it made it impossible for King Garadul to rally his men in any numbers here.

The bad news was that—oh shit! Karris rounded a corner and almost ran into three Mirrormen, lost, peering down different alleys and looking like they were about to start arguing which way to go. Karris careened into them before any of them could react. She threw her weight into the smallest one and, catching him flat-footed, managed both to stop herself and to fling him off his feet. She spun, left sword swinging in a red arc.

The second Mirrorman was moving his sword into guard position, but too slowly, with no leverage. Her blade beat right through his and cut into his neck above his gorget. Not a deep cut, but deep enough, right there. Red luxin splattered on the outside of his armor, and as she yanked the blade back, red blood splattered the inside to match. He was still standing for the moment, but to Karris he was already dead.

Between colliding with the first Mirrorman and cutting the second, Karris had lost sight of the last one. She spun around, ducking, blocking with both swords, left down, right up in a reversed grip. The cut would have beaten right through her weak right-hand guard if she hadn’t ducked too. Instead, her own blade slapped into her shoulder. She couldn’t tell if it cut—what kind of moron went into battle without armor?

She came up cutting, but the Mirrorman blocked her strike. Then his eyes went wide. A low red flush of light washed them both. His sword had struck sparks off of hers, setting the red luxin aflame—and not only on her sword. Where the two blades had met, his sword had scraped off red luxin too, and the same sparks had set his alight. She’d intended the flames for later, but it worked as well for now.

Karris swung her right-hand, flaming sword in a quick arc and stabbed the Mirrorman in the face with her left.

If you’re going to wear heavy armor, never open the visor while you’re in battle.

She kicked him off her blade in a spray of broken teeth and exhaled blood, spun again, and saw the Mirrorman she’d collided with and sent sprawling crawling for his blade. She stomped on his hand as he lunged for it, and punched her blade through the mirror armor. It took a strong, direct strike to push through plate, but she’d practiced it a hundred times with the Blackguard, who trained assuming assassins would bear every advantage, including mirror armor.

Pulling the blade free again, she quickly wiped the last of the flaming red luxin off the sword with one of the men’s cloaks and reapplied the red luxin. She’d set herself alight if she wasn’t careful. She lifted a sturdy bow and a half-empty quiver from one of the dead.

Now where the hell was she? And where was Kip?

Karris had taken a shortcut, she thought. She knew there was a market on the south side of the city, and she’d thought she remembered roughly where it was. She’d pointed Kip after King Garadul hoping he would wreak some havoc by following, which would allow her to circle behind the king and kill him.

Maybe it had been a bad choice. Orholam, she’d abandoned Kip. A baby drafter.

Not that she could have done much to help him. At the Chromeria, they called what Kip had done going green golem. At one time, they had taught it as a war magic. No longer.

There were three problems with going green golem. First, you couldn’t seal the green luxin. If you did, you couldn’t move. Some drafters got around that by making big sealed plates and just holding the joints in open green. What Kip was doing was much harder. He was holding all the magic at once. It took enormous focus, and the armor was only as hard as his will. If someone broke his focus, he’d lose his armor instantly. Second, using that much green luxin burned out drafters fast. In the False Prism’s War, Karris had heard of green drafters breaking the halo after going green golem only three or four times. Third, you had to be strong as a bull. The suit—the armor, the golem, whatever it was—had weight. For the drafter, it was less because their will took part of the weight, but they still had to move an enormous hunk of luxin. That said, using open green in the legs did mean that a skilled user could make enormous bounds, and once they got moving, they were nearly impossible to stop.

It all meant that Kip was more likely to get himself killed than anything. And Karris had abandoned him. Damn it. What kind of woman abandons a child?

Karris double-checked the position of the sun from the shadows. The sun was still low in the sky and these alleys were swaddled in shadows and mist. As she looked up, she was struck by it. The rooftops rose from the mists like distant, square mountain peaks reigning over the clouds. Then she saw the retreat flares. It was the color Gavin or the Blackguards were supposed to use, and she was sure that was how he was using them now. But retreat to where?

The docks. They knew they were going to lose the city. They were just trying to make King Garadul pay as heavy a price as possible. Karris didn’t have much time to make sure that price was the ultimate price.

She ran into an empty house—she was pretty sure all the houses were empty here. Pushing past the leavings of chickens and several dogs, and one live skinny cow—lots of people brought their animals inside during the night, both for safety and to warm the house—she found the stairs, ran up to the family’s quarters, which had been hurriedly emptied, and found the ladder to the roof.

The square, squat houses of Garriston all had these flat roofs. The roof became a third room for most families. A perfect place to cool down on the hot, long summer evenings, the commoners’ only chance of catching a breeze off the Cerulean Sea. The buildings were packed tight, but by no means uniform. Not every building was three stories, and even of the many that were, the stories were different heights.

All the same, as Karris reached the roof, for one moment she was struck by the beauty of the scene. The whitewashed roofs, little squares and rectangles, gleaming in the sun, with mist curling up around every edge, churches and a few mansions rising like mountains out of the clouds, and the Travertine Palace dominating everything. Farther south, she could just see Brightwater Wall, like a golden belt around the city. Nearer, there was black smoking rising from the city wall, flashes of magic from the gates.

She shut it out. Found the market she’d been heading for. With the mist, she couldn’t see enough to tell if her guess had been correct.

You’ve already bet Kip’s life on this course, might as well see if it pays off.

Cursing herself for a fool, Karris drafted a green weapon harness, sheathed both blades on her back, messed with the harness for a second to get it to set right with the quiver and bow, cursed the torn, tight sleeves on her dress, cursed her muscular shoulders, and tore the sleeves off. She breathed. Then she sprinted to the edge of the roof and leapt.

The houses here were so close, it was an easy jump. Some homes even had planks between them so neighbors could visit each other. So long as she didn’t want to cross the street, it was easy going. She ran as fast as she could. One street to clear, then another block of houses, then the market. Her eyes bounced back and forth as she approached the larger gap of crossing the street.

There! One of the houses on the other side had a significantly lower roof. Karris veered left and leapt, passing over the heads of thirty or forty Mirrormen. She hit the lower roof, rolled, popped to her feet just in time to have to leap again—to a higher roof. She hit the next roof with one foot extended. She pushed up, trying to push herself just a little higher but not stop her forward momentum.

Her body popped up, but not forward enough. She landed with half of her torso on flat, whitewashed stucco, then slid down, scrambling, trying to find purchase.

She dropped to her fingertips, on dirty, cracked, crumbling stucco. She swung sideways, lost one handhold for a second as the stucco ripped away. She latched her hand back onto the roof, a clean grip this time, and swung back the other way. Her foot reached the edge, tearing the slit of her dress up even higher. She pulled herself up quickly, not trusting that the rest of the stucco wouldn’t crumble at any moment.

No time to be elated at being alive. Karris checked her swords and bow, glanced once down at the twenty-foot drop onto an uneven surface below—a broken leg there if she’d fallen, at least. Then she ran again.

She reached a roof overlooking the market and stopped. King Garadul was coming, with hundreds of Mirrormen and a few drafters—and Kip was hot on their heels. Literally.

This was going to get messy.

Karris smiled.