by Brent Weeks
She was supposed to still be on a ship. She was supposed to meet with a Chromeria spy before she got this far into Tyrea. He was supposed to guide her up the river to King Garadul's army and give her a cover that would get her into the army without getting killed. Instead, she was dripping wet, alone, and less than a full day's walk from that army, with no introduction, no map, no guidelines, no plan. Gavin and his bastard had disappeared down the river not five minutes ago.
I'm getting reckless. The red is destroying me.
Karris wrung out her heavy black wool cloak and started looking for a place to make camp. On the hillside there were huge numbers of eucalyptus trees filling the air with their fragrance, mixing with the taller pines, blocking out the harsh rays of Orholam's bright eye. It took her only a few minutes to find a decent spot mostly obscured by brush. She gathered wood and made a little pyramid. She didn't bother with kindling: there were advantages to being a red. But she did look around carefully for several minutes before she drew out her spectacles from their little pocket up one sleeve. She was alone. She drafted a thin thread of red luxin into the base of her pyramid.
Even drafting that much red blew on the coals of her fury. She tucked away the red and green lenses and thought of smashing Gavin's grinning face. I love you? How dare he?
She shook her head and shook her finger out, flinging away deliberately off-center red luxin, getting rid of the excess. As with all luxin drafted imperfectly, it decayed rapidly, releasing a paired scent: the smell of resin that all luxin shared and the odd, dried-tea-leaves-and-tobacco smell of red in particular.
She took out a flint and her knife instead of drafting sub-red directly for a spark. She was already cold, so she struck the spark like a mere mortal.
I love you. That bastard.
While her wet clothes dried, she changed into the spare clothing that had been in her waterproof bag. Tyrean fashion had become mercifully practical in the last fifteen years. Though in social or urban settings women wore calf- or ankle-length dresses belted and often accompanied with a wrap or a full jacket for the evening, on the trail and in the countryside women often wore men's linen trousers, albeit with longer shirts than men wore as a nod to modesty, worn untucked but belted, like a tunic. The way Commander Ironfist had explained it to her was that after the False Prism's War, there hadn't been enough men and boys to harvest the oranges or other fruits. The young women who'd joined the harvesters had shortened their skirts to make it easier to climb ladders repeatedly. Clearly someone had objected to that. Probably not the young men holding the ladders.
Thus the addition of trousers.
Karris liked the clothing. She was used to wearing men's clothes from training with the Blackguard, and if this loose linen didn't move with her as nicely or feel as soft as the stretchy, luxin-infused Blackguard garb, it was still cool. It also did a better job of camouflaging her body than the tight Blackguard garb. No man would dare so much as whistle at a woman Blackguard on the Jaspers, even if she was flaunting a hard-earned figure a little. A woman traveling alone in a far country shouldn't tempt fate more than necessary.
As her little fire burned merrily, Karris distracted herself by arming carefully. Her ataghan would sit concealed and fairly accessible within her pack once the black cloak was dried and rolled up. A bich'hwa-a scorpion-was strapped to one thigh inside her trousers. It was a weapon with iron rings to fit the fingers, four claws for swiping, and a dagger-the scorpion's tail-for stabbing. It wasn't quickly accessible, but she always thought it was good to have more weapons than were visible. Another long knife was tucked into her belt. Her bifocal spectacles went into the bag. Their weight simply made them too obvious if she concealed them in these long, flowing sleeves. That left her with her eye caps. The caps, with horizontally streaked lenses of red and green, each fit onto an eye socket, as tight and close to the eye as possible. A thin ridge of sticky red luxin made sure the lenses would stay on her face-and, if she weren't careful, would rip off half her eyebrow when she removed them. The sticky red luxin was shielded with a little strip of solid yellow luxin that was to be torn off before you stuck the caps onto your eyes.
For all that the eye caps had saved her life a time or three, Karris didn't like them. Naturally long eyelashes were a nice accessory at the Luxlords' Ball, but not so much when you had a lens a finger's breadth from your eye.
Karris hid her caps in plain sight, on a necklace made of chunky multicolored stones, none so clear or interesting as to make the necklace seem valuable. The caps clicked together around one link and blended with all the other stones. Another pair of caps was tucked under her belt buckle.
I'm stalling, she thought.
From where she was now, she had only two choices. She could head down the river and meet up with her contact in Garriston and then come back up the river, or she could try to infiltrate King Garadul's army on her own. Going down the river would waste time, and she'd still be much too early. There was also the threat of bandits. She assumed her contact would have some good way of circumventing them on the way back up, but that wouldn't help her as she headed downriver. Going on alone would mean trying to join a hostile army without a proper introduction. And now that Gavin had clashed with King Garadul, the king knew that the Chromeria had already gotten one drafter here, so surely he would be doubly suspicious of anyone else showing up.
In fact, Gavin's little stunt in Rekton had probably made her work impossible. There were certainly Tyreans as pale as she was, but her accent was wrong, and she was a drafter. To a suspicious camp, everything about her would scream spy. The White's orders had never factored in the circumstances in which she found herself now. It was like sitting at what you thought was a dignified Parian dinner with its rules, and finding yourself seated with raucous Ilytian pirates feeding you blowfish instead. There were rules for that too, and if you broke them, you'd consume a nice tender morsel that contained a poison that would leave you in agony for ten minutes, at which point it would leave you dead.
And Karris didn't know the rules here.
Of course, Gavin would just eat the whole damned fish-and somehow, miraculously, it wouldn't harm him. Everything was effortless for Gavin. He'd never had to work hard for anything. Born with a monumental talent to a scheming rich father, he simply took what he wanted. Even the rules of being a Prism didn't constrain him-he traveled to and fro about the Seven Satrapies without so much as a Blackguard escort when he didn't want one. And now he could cross the Cerulean Sea in a few hours. For Orholam's sake, now he could fly.
Get out of my head, liar. I'm done with you.
The lines didn't fit. The tiny spoons were gone, and the urums had a thousand tines instead of three. Fine. Karris wasn't going home. She wasn't going to wait for some man to come hold her hand and get her into Garadul's camp. She wasn't going to fail. There was more than one way to find out what King Garadul's plans were.
Of course, she didn't know what those were, but she was going to figure it out. As for now, she remembered something her brother Koios used to say before he'd been killed in the fire: "When you don't know what to do, do what's right and do what's in front of you. But not necessarily what's right in front of you."
The town of Rekton had been burned to the ground. There had been one survivor. There might be more, and if there were, they would be in desperate need of help and possibly protection. Those, Karris could provide.
And if it involved lighting some jackass up with a fireball the size of a small house, so much the better.
Chapter 21
They practically flew down the river. Kip had never traveled so fast in his life. And the Prism didn't speak a word, sunk into his own dark mood. For most of the afternoon, Gavin Guile worked what the scull had in the place of oars-for a while, it would be almost like a ladder, then it would be like the bellows of a forge, then it would be oars, then it would be a rolling track. Gavin worked at one until he was exhausted, muscles quivering, sweat matting his thin shirt. Then he wou
ld draft a little, the oars would change to some new shape that gave his most weary muscles a rest, and he would keep going.
When Kip finally found his voice, he said, "Sir, um, he took my case?" He wasn't going to ask about Karris White Oak or what Gavin had said. Not now. Not ever.
Gavin looked at Kip, his mouth tight. Kip regretted speaking at once. "It was that or your life."
Kip paused, then said, "Thank you, sir. For saving me." That seemed like a better choice than saying, But that was mine! It was the last thing-the only thing-my mother ever gave me!
"You're welcome," Gavin said. He glanced back up the river, his thoughts obviously elsewhere.
"That man, he's responsible for killing my mother, isn't he?" Kip asked.
"Yes."
"I thought you were going to kill him right there. But you stopped."
Gavin glanced at him, weighing him. His voice was distant. "I wasn't willing for the innocent to die so I could kill the guilty."
"Those men weren't innocent! They murdered everyone I know!" Tears leaked down Kip's face. He felt ragged, wrung out, finished.
"I was talking about you."
It caught Kip short, but his emotions were still a jumble. His presence had kept Gavin from killing King Garadul. He didn't know words that could convey his feelings for that. He'd failed his mother again. He'd actually blocked her vengeance by his own incompetence.
I'll make good, mother. On my soul. I'll kill him. I swear it.
Half a dozen small villages passed, and dozens of boats. Fed by tributaries, the river widened. But Gavin stopped only once, to buy a roasted chicken and bread and wine. He threw the food to Kip. "Eat." Then they were off again. Gavin didn't eat. He didn't speak or even slow when they passed the fishermen startled by their appearance.
It wasn't until the sun set and Gavin shifted the oars again that Kip ventured to speak once more. "Can I help… sir?"
The Prism gave him an appraising glance, as if he hadn't even thought of having him help. But when he spoke, he said, "I'd really appreciate that. Here, stand on this and just walk." He'd been running. "You can use these hand oars to help if you want. Steer by dropping in the hand oar on the side you want to turn toward. Port for port, starboard for starboard, right?"
"Port is left?"
"Right."
Kip blinked. Uh…"Port is right?"
"Only if you're facing aft."
The panic must have been clear on Kip's face, because Gavin chuckled. "It doesn't matter. You just go until you're too tired, or if we hit rapids or bandits. I'm going to rest for a bit." Gavin sat in Kip's place and tore into the remains of the chicken and bread. He watched as Kip struggled with getting the scull up to a halfway decent pace. Kip turned a time or two-it actually was pretty simple-and looked at Gavin to see if he approved, but the Prism was already asleep.
The quarter moon was straight overhead as night fell and Kip began walking. Even driven only by Kip's walking, the scull was fast. Gavin had narrowed the hull even further when Karris had left, so the boat seemed more to hover over the water than plow through it. For the first few minutes, Kip was gripped with anxiety. Every turn he was sure they would confront bandits and the Prism wouldn't awaken. But soon he fell into the rhythms of the boat, the waves, and the night.
An owl was hooting in the distance, and little bats were swooping and diving, eating the insects that flew high above the water while trout leapt to eat those that flew too low. The scull startled a heron, which flew off into the night on great blue wings.
Gradually, the peace of the night seeped into Kip. The surface of the river became as smooth as a mirror, and the stars shone in it. He saw ducks huddled on the shore, their heads tucked into their wings. And then he looked once more at the man who was supposedly his father.
Gavin Guile was a muscular man, broad-shouldered but as slender as Kip was fat. Kip searched for any resemblance at all, some hint that this could be true. Gavin was lighter-skinned; he looked like a mix between a Ruthgari, who had green or brown eyes, dark hair, and olive skin, and a Blood Forester, with their cornflower blue eyes and flaming red hair and deathly pale skin. Gavin's hair was the color of burnished copper, and his eyes, of course, were those of a Prism. When he was drafting they looked whatever color he was using at the moment, and could change in an instant. When he wasn't drafting, Gavin's eyes shimmered as if they were prisms themselves, every little twitch sending a cascade of new colors through his irises. They were the most disconcerting eyes Kip had ever seen. They were eyes to make satraps squirm and queens faint. The eyes of Orholam's Chosen.
Kip's eyes were plain blue, which did nothing for him except mark him as a crossbreed. Maybe some Blood Forester lineage. Like most peoples, Tyreans had dark eyes. Kip's hair was dark as a Tyrean's, but tightly curled like a Parian's or an Ilytian's, rather than straight or wavy. Enough to mark him a freak, but nowhere near enough to mark him this man's son. Of course, his mother hadn't had the look of a Tyrean either, which just complicated things. Darker than either, with kinky hair and hazel eyes. Kip tried to imagine what the child of his mother and this man might look like, but he couldn't do it. Blend enough mutts, and who knows what you'll get? Maybe if he weren't so fat he might see it. Maybe it was simply a cruel trick. A lie.
The Prism. The Prism himself? How could such a man be Kip's father? He'd said he hadn't known Kip even existed. How could that happen?
The answer seemed pretty obvious. It had been during the war. Gavin's army had met Dazen's not far from Rekton. So as they'd come through town, Gavin had met Lina. He was the Prism, heading to what might be his death. She was a young, pretty girl whose town had been destroyed. She'd shared his bed. Then he'd gone on to kill his brother-perhaps the very next day-and in the aftermath of the war and the reconstruction and the work of putting down the rest of the rebellion and rebuilding alliances and administering the peace, he'd probably never thought of her again. Even if he had, Tyrea wasn't exactly the friendliest or safest of places for the Prism back then. It had sided with Dazen, the evil brother, and been treated cruelly as a result.
Or maybe Gavin had raped Lina. But that didn't make sense. Why would a rapist claim Kip? Especially because it obviously cost Gavin a lot to do so.
Kip could imagine his mother, pregnant, unmarried, left in the devastation that was Rekton. Of course she'd want to escape. Kip would have been her one hope. What would she have done? Travel, alone, to Garriston, where the victors were administering Tyrea? He could imagine that well enough. His mother, presenting herself to some governor, demanding to see Gavin Guile because she bore his bastard. She'd have been lucky if she got as far as a governor with that tale. So she'd been turned away, her dreams of anything good or easy in her life dashed.
Whenever she looked at Kip, she didn't see her own bad choices, she saw Gavin's "betrayal" and her disappointment. Kip was a dream dashed.
Within half an hour, Kip was tiring. His arms were burning. He thought of how Gavin had practically sprinted for hours. The thought of waking the Prism so soon shamed him. He'd always tired quickly, but if he pushed through his initial fatigue he had a lot of stamina.
He wasn't going to wake the Prism. Not at all. Let the man rest. He'd earned that much from Kip. Kip would keep going until Gavin woke. Even if it killed him. He swore it.
The oath made Kip feel good. He was insignificant. A nothing. But he could give the Prism himself a good night's sleep. He could do something. He could matter, in a small way, but a bigger way than he ever had in his whole life.
He kept going. The Prism had saved him today. The Prism himself! Gavin had faced down King Garadul. He'd killed a score or more of Garadul's Mirrormen-and walked away. And Kip had probably endangered it all by trying to attack the king. How stupid could he get? With all the drafters there, Kip had thought he could get to the king? Stupid!
Despite the coolness of the night, it wasn't long before Kip was covered in sweat. His fast walk had become a trudge, but that trudge still drove th
e scull as fast as a horse's canter.
Kip was so focused on just keeping going that he was on top of the camp before he noticed it. There were maybe a dozen men carousing around a fire, drinking and laughing as one strummed a badly out-of-tune lute. Kip kept trudging, his brain slow to take in what this had to be. The men were all armed, including one who looked like he was supposed to be on watch-that one still held his crossbow cocked and ready against his shoulder.
Kip thought of whispering to wake Gavin, but they were so close that anything loud enough to wake the Prism might be loud enough to carry over the river to the crossbowman who stood just at the edge of the firelight, his body turned toward the river but his head turned to his comrades.
The scull made only a slight hiss as it cut across the water. Surely it would be inaudible beneath the merry crackling of the bandits' fire. The bandits had partially dammed the river, with rocks pinching in from either side. They'd laid wood planks over the top to make a walkway with only a tiny gap in the middle. Any boat that tried to get through would be within range of at least their spears.
Kip could disengage himself from the oars and touch Gavin-but what could Gavin do? It was night. There wasn't much light for a Prism to work with. Maybe if Kip had woken him earlier. Now it was too late. He'd probably killed them. He'd have to shoot for the gap and hope for the best.
He aimed the scull at the gap and gasped as at the last second the moonlight cut through the water and revealed the bandits' last trap: a stout, sharpened pole was embedded in the riverbed and stuck up to within a few thumbs of the surface of the water. Anyone who tried to shoot the gap would find themselves hung up, with a gaping hole in their hull.