The black prism l-1

by Brent Weeks

  Half a dozen expressions rushed over Ironfist's face in quick succession. He raised one hand awkwardly, lowered it, raised it again, and patted Kip's shoulder. He cleared his throat. "I can requisition another pair."

  Kip started laughing and crying at the same time, not because Ironfist was funny, but because the big man thought Kip was crying about his spectacles.

  "There you go," Ironfist said. He thumped Kip's shoulder with the side of his fist in what Kip thought was supposed to be a friendly manner-except it hurt. Kip rubbed his shoulder and laugh-cried harder.

  "Let's go," Kip said, shrinking back lest Ironfist tap one of his namesakes on his shoulder again and leave a smoking ruin.

  Ironfist's eyebrows twitched up in a momentary expression of relief.

  "Almost as bad as dealing with a woman, huh?" Kip said.

  Ironfist stopped cold. "How'd…" he trailed off. "You are a Guile, aren't you?"

  "What do you mean?" Kip asked.

  "Let's go," Ironfist said in a tone that brooked no argument. Kip didn't hesitate. He didn't know what precisely Ironfist would do to him if he didn't obey, but knowing was a logical process. Fear was faster.

  Outside, he saw that they'd rigged up another boat on the ramp. He rubbed his clammy arms and stared at the sea. The tide was halfway in and getting worse, and the waves crashed powerfully over the rocks of Cannon Island. This boat was a small sailing dinghy. It didn't look even as stable as the dory. And it was smaller. Kip's stomach turned.

  "Commander?" one of the men said. "You sure? I wouldn't want to go out on this even with experienced sailors. Especially if you're going the long way."

  Kip didn't see the look that passed between the men, but he heard the soldier say, "Yes, sir," quickly afterward.

  Cannon Island was in the middle of the current that flowed between Little Jasper and Big Jasper. Little Jasper Bay was calm, protected by a seawall, but Kip and Ironfist were headed the opposite direction, to circle three-quarters of Big Jasper in order to get to its bay.

  "Aren't we going to the Chromeria?" Kip asked. He could see the tops of colored towers, only partially visible above the rocky body of Cannon Island. "Why can't we go to their bay? It's closer."

  "Because we're not going straight there," Ironfist said. He gestured for Kip to get in and handed him an oar.

  The men pushed them off and Ironfist began rowing hard. Kip did his best to keep up with the big man, but almost immediately they began turning toward Kip's side. Ironfist said nothing; he just switched sides and rowed hard a few times on Kip's side until they were straight, then returned to his own side. The commander aimed them so they quartered the waves. Kip's heart was constantly in his throat. The three- and four-foot-tall waves yielded to five- and six-foot-tall waves.

  And then Ironfist raised their little sail a third of the way. "Keep us straight," he barked, working the lines. Kip felt like a headless chicken, flopping awkwardly from one side of the boat to the other, keeping them headed slowly forward, going up each wave with a lurch and swooping down the opposite side.

  "Down! Get down!" Ironfist shouted. Kip dropped just as the wind shifted and the sail swung from one side of the boat to the other, the boom whipping over his head. It snapped so hard against the ropes that Kip thought it might tear off or break.

  Orholam, that could have been my head.

  The dinghy leaned over hard, even with the sail only a third of the way raised, and jumped forward. Kip had barely gotten back up to his knees, and the sudden forward motion made him tumble backward, splashing into the cold dirty water at the bottom of the dinghy.

  "The rudder! Take the rudder!" Ironfist ordered.

  Kip grabbed the rudder and held it straight for a long moment, though the dinghy was turned too far away from the wind-taking the waves almost side on. He blinked seawater out of his eyes. Throw the rudder this way, it turns at the fulcrum there, and the boat turns… Got it.

  Part of the next wave sloshed over the gunwales as Kip threw the rudder hard toward the port side. A hard gust of wind made the dinghy bear down even farther in the water, then they popped up hard as they escaped the killing grip of the wave.

  Kip whooped as they sped forward, riding the waves, plowing through them at times now, rather than simply being at their mercy. But Ironfist didn't share his joy. He was glancing up at the sky. He raised the sails a little more, and the dinghy picked up even more speed, leaning so hard to the port side that Kip thought they were going to capsize.

  When they reached the west side of Big Jasper, they were able to run before the wind. It was like flying.

  Ironfist kept glancing south, but the dark clouds there seemed to dissipate rather than gather, and by the time they turned into Big Jasper's wind shadow, Kip could tell from Ironfist's demeanor that they were out of danger.

  "There's a small dock that we want, head straight," Ironfist told him, raising their sail all the way.

  So Kip aimed them past galleys and galleasses, corvettes armed with a single gun mounted on a swivel, and galleons with fifteen cannons on each side. They stayed fairly far out so they wouldn't interfere with the constant stream of ships coming in and out of the bay, the dinghies taking crews ashore.

  "Is it always like this?" Kip asked.

  "Always," Ironfist said. "Bay's too small, so to accommodate the number of boats needed to keep trade flowing smoothly there's an elaborate system to determine who gets in first. It works…" He glanced up at a captain swearing loudly at the harborman standing on his deck with an abacus. The harborman looked singularly unimpressed. "For the most part."

  Between having to veer sharply now and again to avoid other boats according to some ships' etiquette that he didn't understand, Kip didn't get to catch more than a few glimpses of the city covering Big Jasper. And from what he saw, it did cover Big Jasper. There was a wall just above shore around the entire island-leagues of walls-but even that couldn't hide the city as it rose on two hills. Aside from a few green patches-gardens? parks? mansions' grounds?-there were buildings everywhere. Soaring bulbous domes in every color, everywhere. And people, more people than Kip had ever seen.

  "Kip. Kip! Port! Gawk later."

  Kip tore his eyes off the island and turned to port, narrowly avoiding ramming a galleass. They sailed past under the evil eye of the galleass's knotted-haired first mate. He looked like he was going to spit on them, but saw their uniforms and spat on his own deck instead.

  They proceeded into open water until they started to round the eastern side of the island. "Turn in here," Ironfist said. Kip turned toward a little dock with a few small fishing boats moored to it. They docked and headed up to the wall. Kip tried not to gawk, though the wall itself was easily the biggest man-made structure he'd ever seen.

  Ironfist strode to the gate. The guards outside looked confused. "Captain?" Then they snapped sharp salutes, eyes wide. "Commander!"

  A smaller door inset to the larger gate was open, and Ironfist walked through, nodding to acknowledge the men. The city inside was too overwhelming for Kip to comprehend even part of it. But the part that hit him first was the smell.

  Ironfist must have noticed the look on his face. "You think this is bad? You should try a city without sewers."

  "No," Kip said, looking at the hundreds of people in the streets, the three- and four-story buildings everywhere, the cobbled streets with tracks worn a hand's breadth down into the stones. "It's just that there's so much." And there was. Smells of cooking pork, spices Kip didn't know, fresh fish, rotting fish, a thin odor of human waste and a stronger one of horse and cattle manure, and, overwhelming it all, the smell of unwashed men and women.

  The people parted naturally around Ironfist, and Kip followed in his wake, trying not to run into anyone as he shot glances at all the people. There were men wearing ghotras like Ironfist, but also bedecked in robes with checkered patterns and loud colors. There were Atashian men with their impressive beards: beads, braids, natural sections, and more beads and braids.
There were Ilytian women with multilayered dresses and shoes nearly like stilts, making them a full hand taller. And a riot of colors everywhere. Every color in the rainbow, combined in every possible way. Ironfist looked back at Kip, amused.

  "Those soldiers at the gate," Kip said, trying to take Ironfist's attention off his being a bumpkin. "Those weren't your men."

  "No," Ironfist said.

  "But they recognized you, and you didn't recognize them, and they were really excited that they'd seen you."

  Ironfist looked at Kip again, scowling. "How old are you again?"

  "I'm fift-"

  "The commander," Ironfist said. As if that answered everything. He smirked as Kip scurried up beside him. "You're the genius. Let's hear it," he said.

  Genius? I never acted like I thought I was that. But that was a distraction. This was a test. In fact, Ironfist had been testing Kip the whole time, Kip saw now. Putting him on the rudder had been a test, to see what he would do, how quickly he would figure it out, and if he would freeze up. Kip wasn't even sure how well he'd done on that count.

  Ironfist was a commander. A commander, the commander. The commander. Oh. Oh my.

  "There's only one company of Blackguards, isn't there?" Kip asked.

  Like most of Ironfist's expressions, this one was quick and quickly muted: the full white of his eyes around dark irises visible for a bare moment, then a little smirk to cover. "Not bad, given the obvious hint, I suppose."

  "So you're the sole commander of the most elite company in the Chromeria. That makes you like a general or something?"

  "Or something."

  "Oh," Kip said. "So that means I should probably be even more intimidated of you than I am right now, huh?"

  Ironfist laughed. "No, I think you've got it just about perfect." He grinned.

  "What were you doing pulling guard duty on that rock?"

  "It is a bit more than a rock."

  Put that way, it did make some sense. The Blackguard had to protect the Chromeria's most important people, and a secret escape tunnel was the kind of thing you had to check yourself. "Still," Kip said.

  They came to a much wider road and Ironfist-Commander Ironfist-turned onto it, heading west, the opposite direction of almost all of the traffic. He sighed. "It's not a duty anyone wants, so it's sometimes used as punishment. Let's just say I've given the White reason to be displeased recently."

  Kip said quietly, "Or that's a cover so you can go out and check the maintenance of the tunnel."

  "Except that a tunnel is… a tunnel. Don't make things more complicated than they are, little Guile."

  Huh? "Oh." Ironfist could come from the Chromeria side and make sure the tunnel worked. He didn't need to sail out to the island for that. Some genius I am. Embarrassed, Kip rushed to ask another question, and asked the question he knew he shouldn't. "So what did you do to make him mad at you? You know, the White."

  "Him?" Ironfist asked.

  "Her?"

  Ironfist turned in at a little house with an oxidized copper dome, unlocked the door, and pointed for Kip to go in. "There's hard tack and cheese and olives in the kitchen. Latrine off to the left. Bed straight down the hall. You're not to leave until I come get you tomorrow at dawn."

  "But we came across those huge waves instead of waiting, I-I thought we were going straight to the Chromeria."

  "I'm going straight to the Chromeria."

  "While I just sit here all day?"

  "When you see what you have to do tomorrow, you'll be glad you had the rest." Ironfist moved to leave.

  "But, what-what are you going to do?"

  "I'm going to go get back in the White's good graces."

  Kip scowled as the door closed. There was a click. He was locked in. "That's great," he told the closed door. "I'll just wait here. I've been meaning to catch up on my thumb-twiddling." Grumbling, he made his way to the olives and cheese. Ten minutes later, he was asleep.

  Chapter 33

  Karris woke beneath a lean-to constructed of tree branches and a man's cloak. It was either dusk or dawn. She guessed dawn from the dew on the ground. She examined herself with a soldier's efficiency, moving each limb and digit experimentally, trying to gauge her own potential for movement, violent or otherwise. All her fingers and toes worked properly, but her entire left side was bruised. She must have not only crashed through the doorframe with her upper body there, but also landed on her left side, because her shin ached, her knee ached, there were gravel scratches on her hip, her breast felt like someone had mistaken it for a sawdust-filled training bag and punched it for an hour, and her shoulder-Orholam, her shoulder. She could breathe without much pain, though, which she hoped meant there weren't any broken ribs, and she could still move her arm, although it almost made her black out to do so.

  Her right side hadn't escaped undamaged either. She had long gravel scrapes on her right arm and her stomach, probably some to match on her back, and her neck was sore from Orholam knew what. She'd stubbed all the toes of her right foot-didn't remember doing that either-and her left eye was swollen, not enough to block her vision, but enough to look real pretty. There was also a scratch on her forehead, several attractive lumps on her head, and-what the hell, a cut right on the tip of her nose?

  No, not a cut. A pimple. Unbe-A pimple? Now? Orholam hates me.

  Every one of her cuts and scratches had been smeared with some kind of ointment that smelled of berries and pine needles. Someone cleared his throat. "There's more ointment to your right. I tended the more… obvious cuts."

  Which Karris took to mean that Corvan hadn't stripped her naked.

  "Thanks," she grumbled. "What happened back there?"

  "Aside from the obvious?" Corvan asked, his voice flat.

  "In the church, downstairs. I've never seen red luxin that didn't burn cleanly. If you drafted it wrong, it should have evaporated, not formed a crust. And what was that thing you were in?" Karris sat up, wincing. Her ankle hurt too. Ow, when had she twisted her ankle? She ignored it, and tried to remember all she knew about Corvan Danavis. He'd been a rebel, of course, but before he'd sided with Dazen, he'd been a scion of one of the great Ruthgari families. For nearly a hundred years, Ruthgar and the Blood Forest had been bound together in peace, the closest of allies. Noble families from Ruthgar had intermarried with the leading families of Blood Foresters, holding lands on either side of the Great River. Other peoples had begun referring to the countries as one, merging the Verdant Plains and the Blood Forest to call the joint country Green Forest. Vician's Sin had put an end to that, and by a generation before the False Prism's War, the countries were instead known as the Blood Plains. If one good thing had come from the False Prism's War, it was that it had given Gavin the clout to finally end the interminable small-scale war constantly simmering between Ruthgar and the Blood Forest.

  Corvan was a product of that conflict. Born into a warrior family, with some ungodly number of brothers (eight? ten?), he was, Karris thought she remembered, the last one alive. Karris barely remembered him from before the False Prism's War. He was just another Ruthgari from old blood left suddenly penniless with little more than the fine weapons he carried and the fine clothes on his back. He'd been a monochrome, too, so his prospects of reclaiming wealth in some other land had been dismal. When the war had started, he'd joined Dazen immediately, like so many other dispossessed young lords with everything to gain.

  Karris had been fifteen years old, and she couldn't remember Corvan personally at all. Which, she supposed, wasn't too surprising, given all the attention she'd been getting from the Guile brothers. He'd been an adviser only for much of the war, but near the end of the war, Dazen had made him a general. Karris had heard Commander Ironfist credit that fact with Gavin winning the war-not calling Corvan Danavis incompetent, but the opposite. Commander Ironfist had said that if Corvan Danavis had been a general for the whole war, Gavin's armies wouldn't have even made it to the Battle of Sundered Rock. Ironfist had further said that if Gener
al Danavis hadn't surrendered unconditionally after Sundered Rock, there might still be guerrillas fighting in half of the Seven Satrapies. Corvan's grace in defeat had convinced his men to go home.

  Dipping her fingers into the bowl of ointment, Karris gave Corvan a look. He appeared confused. She began lifting her long shirt, ointment on her fingers, and he got it. He cleared his throat and turned away. Karris smeared ointment gingerly on the scrapes on her chest, giving herself time to think.

  With all that history, Karris expected Corvan Danavis would be some graybeard. This man was in his mid-forties, shaven except for a day or two's stubble. His skin was lighter than most Tyreans, but much darker than Blood Forester pale, though he did perhaps have some freckles on his cheeks. His eyes were blue-no shock there, with the ludicrous amount of red he'd been able to draft. The luxin halo was only halfway through his irises-even less than Karris's, despite his being probably twelve or fifteen years older than she was. There were perhaps red highlights in his dark hair, too, and his hair was wavy rather than kinky. And the general had been famous for his red mustache, which he'd kept trimmed except at the ends that dangled below his chin, where he'd tied red and gold beads. Maybe this was some other Corvan Danavis, or some man who'd taken his name, hoping to profit from the general's good reputation. "They were on us before we knew what was happening," Corvan said. "I'd counseled the village to send a boy or two for the levies but even I didn't expect this kind of retribution. King Garadul came here not to teach us a lesson, but to teach the rest of Tyrea one. I've only run into his like once before." General Delmarta, the Butcher of Ru, Karris guessed.

  "You saw the pyramid?" Karris asked, turning back to him.

  Corvan Danavis got very still. The side of his mouth ticked up in a snarl for the briefest instant. But when he turned his gaze to Karris, it was cool, in control. There wasn't even a hint of fresh red luxin in his eyes, which spoke of astonishing control for a drafter his age. "I gathered those I could and pulled back to the church." Was he hoping Garadul's men would respect holy ground? "It's the least flammable building in town" Corvan said, answering the unspoken question. "We fought, and we lost. The Delarias and the Sworrins couldn't get the door to the basement open, and I was too busy fighting. Maybe I shouldn't have fought at all. I think the chromaturgy just drew more soldiers. They overwhelmed us. I retreated downstairs."