“Kill them!” a familiar voice shouted. Orholam damn her, it was the Nuqaba herself.
Karris shot a thin, continuous ribbon of red luxin through the air. It ignited in a huge fan. She dragged it back and forth in front of the wall and the soldiers there. All the luxin burned away before it hit the men standing there, but a roiling wall of flame wasn’t something anyone wanted to approach. The heat itself would be a slap in their faces.
“She can’t throw it far enough to hit you!” the Nuqaba shouted as soon as Karris let the first wash of flames die.
Fool doesn’t know the difference between mercy and a lack of will.
But the truth was, Karris killing one soldier could be overlooked, called an accident. Killing a dozen was a diplomatic incident, war. War in the middle of war. Against Paria, their ally; Paria, which the Chromeria needed.
But they needed Gavin more.
Karris stopped, indecisive for the first time.
“The commander said to go!” Essel shouted. “We don’t even know if he’s leaving this way!”
“Get on the reeds, and turn us,” Karris ordered Essel and Ben-hadad, “but wait for my word. I’ll defend. We wait for Ironfist!”
Then a fireball arced through the air toward the skimmer and plopped into the water with a hiss and a kick of steam. Drafters. The Nuqaba’s Amagez drafters were on their way through the crowd.
One arm near useless, drafters and soldiers closing in, muskets being fired at them, and all Karris could think was that her real problem was that she was no longer a watch captain of the Blackguard and therefore was in no position to give orders at all, and that as soon as Essel realized it, the woman would take charge.
Karris threw another narrow stream of flame, hard. It was difficult to gauge the force needed as the distance changed, but luck smiled on her. Most of the red burned off in the air in a frightening display, but some little hit the massed musketeers across their muskets and chests.
The screams were immediate, but they were screams of surprise and fear, not of agony. With most of the flammability of the red exhausted, the men weren’t consumed. Hands were burnt, muskets thrown away, tunics hurriedly stripped off, men fell over each other as even those in the second and third rows threw themselves backward, away from the billows of flame.
“We have to go, now!” Essel said.
Karris hesitated again.
“He’s coming,” Gavin mumbled, from the deck where he was lying. He sounded delirious. “Don’t you see him? His angel’s fighting through the crowd.”
Essel said, “He’s not in his right mind. Karris, we have to—”
“We stay!” Karris snarled, but even as the words crossed her lips, she knew they had more to do with the red she was still drafting to keep the flame alive in her left hand, and the green she was drawing in that refused to be told what to do, and her own fear at what she’d seen in Gavin’s good eye.
His blue, unprismatic eye.
Before the smoke cleared in the gap where the musketeers had been, Karris saw a glow like a torch, lighting the dissipating smoke from within. An instant later, four of the Nuqaba’s Tafok Amagez appeared. Warrior-drafters. One had hands encased in red luxin, already aflame. He threw fireballs, right and left.
The right-hand shot was wide. A lefty then, or a feint. It gave Karris time to hurl a green projectile out to intercept the other fireball, batting it aside.
“Go, go, go!” Karris shouted. It was one thing to wait for Ironfist; it was another to commit suicide.
Three of the four Tafok Amagez attacked, throwing blue missiles that exploded in shrapnel, and green spears, and red fire. The fourth tried to fire a long musket, but it misfired and he was working to clear it. The Tafok Amagez were brute force drafters: if something didn’t yield when they hit it, they hit it harder.
Unable to use their physical strength against her except to throw their luxin really hard and fast, and unable to use their numbers to surround her, they kept doing more of the same. But Karris didn’t merely have to protect herself, she had to protect everyone on the skimmer and the skimmer itself. With a weak left arm.
She dodged through the lux forms—the modified martial arts moves that compensated for the balance shifts of throwing the weight of luxin—always giving herself an anchor to throw shields left and projectiles right and absorb and divert.
Not having used luxin for so long gave her an unusual edge. Like drinking several cups of kopi when you haven’t had any for a while, the luxin hit her hard. The wild energy of green roared past her injury, and the heat of red burned out the voice of her pain. But her long experience took that energy and passion, and made it a blade.
She was fast, faster than she’d ever been. She was instinctive, shooting missiles out of the air with missiles of her own, impossible shots, impossible speeds. Left left left—as they realized her weakness—and right and high, and diverting a huge curtain of flame that the red tried to drop on them from above.
It was only seconds, but the fury of the attacks made it seem an eternity. Essel and Ben-hadad were throwing luxin down the reeds, but the skimmer’s inertia was significant: its own weight, and the weight of four people on its decks, and neither Essel or Ben-hadad were particularly strong, physically or as drafters.
All it would take was one slip.
More Tafok Amagez joined the first ones, pausing only a moment to see what was happening. Half a dozen more.
Too many, and the skimmer was still too close.
And then the fourth stood, his musket cleared and reloaded. Karris saw him, and dread filled her. A premonition that cut off air like drinking tar.
She couldn’t counterattack: the missiles and fire were coming in too thick. He leveled the musket, took aim.
But Karris heard a familiar roar, a man bellowing.
A blue wedge, a V of shields as tall as a man, appeared behind the four Tafok Amagez. They didn’t even see it coming. And then a huge figure appeared, holding that V like a battering ram, running full speed. The wedge split as Ironfist rammed through the Tafok Amagez.
Sweeping his massive arms wide, bellowing that legendary shout that had melted the knees of enemies throughout the Seven Satrapies, holding the blue luxin shields to either side as he came through the middle of a dozen Tafok Amagez, Ironfist leapt off the wall, blasting the shields out into the Amagez and back, sending him flying with incredible speed.
He flipped in the air, and it looked for a moment like he was going to make it all the way to the water, but instead he dropped from that great height onto the end of the dock. Ironfist threw a gush of unfocused blue down as he landed, but the shock was still enough to stagger him and splinter wood.
His tunic had been torn half off, and blood was streaming from a cut on the side of his head, but he gathered himself and refilled with blue.
Karris had seen Ironfist run across the waves before. He drafted a narrow platform of blue, half floating on the water. He could make it fifty feet or more, and the skimmer wasn’t that far out yet. Her heart soared.
The Tafok Amagez were in chaos behind him. Several had been pushed off the wall. But as Ironfist drafted, his chest heaving from the exertion of Orholam-knew-what fighting he’d done to get through the crowd, Karris saw the Amagez with the long musket. He’d been at the far end, and he recovered first, lifting the musket with an ease and precision that told Karris this would be an easy shot for him.
He was too far away for Karris to hit with a drafted projectile. Karris was fast. Karris was accurate. But she wasn’t that fast or that accurate. She heard the shot, saw the sudden jerk and the smoke blossom from his musket—but he’d twitched off-aim at the last moment.
Karris realized that the musket she’d heard was behind her. Almost beneath her. The young marksman on the wall dropped his musket and tumbled down to the dock, dead.
And then the skimmer was picking up speed and Ironfist leapt aboard, and in less than a minute they were safely skimming down to the river, outrunning
any order that could arrive to tell anyone to stop them.
Karris looked at Gavin, lying bloody on the deck, still holding the smoking musket he’d fired to save Ironfist’s life.
Gavin was grinning fiercely. Blood from his ruined left eye had trickled into his mouth, and it painted his teeth red. “Not quite useless. Not yet,” he said.
Then he passed out.
Chapter 87
A knock, and a familiar woman’s voice: “Kip?”
Kip didn’t know how long he stood in the darkness of his room. Did time even have meaning anymore? He thought perhaps that the darkness would bring back the black luxin card. He hadn’t seen the entirety of it.
But it didn’t come back. And he knew no way to call it forth consciously. There were so many things that he needed to think about and decide right now, this instant, immediately, that he was paralyzed. He couldn’t think about anything. His life was about to turn irrevocably, and he wanted to look at some card?
Granted, if he was right, and viewing—or living or remembering or whatever the hell it was that he did with the cards—was nearly instantaneous, then theoretically, he could live as many of them as he wanted, and not lose any time. But somehow he was pretty certain it didn’t work that way. If he could even figure out how to call one up, he felt like it might roast that tiny, underused pea between his ears.
The thought only served to remind him of his headache.
A knock on the door. Again. Wait, this was the second knock, wasn’t it?
He hit the light control, and his knees almost buckled as the light seared his eyes, burned like rock salt stomped into his open wound of a brain. He leaned against the doorframe, gasping, and opened the door.
“Kip? Are you all right?”
Oh hells. It wasn’t Teia. Why had he thought it was Teia?
Because Teia’s the only girl who ever talks to you on purpose.
It was Tisis. “Are you hungover?” Tisis asked.
I’m a giant, wakened from my bed by assassins. With a roar, I grab the man leaning over my bed and ram him so hard into the marble wall that his skull shatters, blood spraying. Sharp steel parts the muscles of my leg, deep, hot. I jump out of bed, but my head is aflame with a hangover, black spots dancing in front of my eyes.
There are four of them left, grubby, not professionals. The nearest stabs—deflected, albeit with blood. Armlock, his arm dislocated, fist up to his face so hard bones crack—dammit, both his face fractures, and my knuckles. I know better!
I bellow, and see the fear go through the other—
“No,” Kip said. “Bit, uhm, lightsick.”
Her face softened. “Takes a while to get used to drafting, huh? So easy to do too much at first. I got lightsick a few times myself, early on.” And despite the worry that perched on her shoulders like a cougar bearing down on its prey, she grinned. “Well, maybe more than a few times. Green, you know.”
She’s beautiful.
And I can have sex with her. As much as I want. Well, as much as she’ll allow. Which may not actually be that much, now that I think of it, but surely it would be more than zero times. Have to consummate the marriage at least.
Andross Guile had been wrong. If there was anything wrong with Kip’s libido, it was that he had too much. He just didn’t think satisfying it was a possibility anytime soon. It was a ‘someday, who knows when, don’t think about it, you’ll just get more depressed than you already usually are.’
But as bad as he wanted it, he didn’t want it to be bad. Forcing it from Teia back when she was a slave would have been wrong.
Not that forcing it from her now would be good—ugh, his brain was only working for one purpose now and that seemed to be to hurt as much as possible.
What if he went to bed with Tisis and when he took off his clothes, he disgusted her? What if she saw his fattiness and despised him? How could someone so beautiful, someone who could do so much better, bear to be with him?
Ah, so you’re not chaste. You’re just afraid.
“Kip, I know I said you had a week to decide about… you know, my proposal. That didn’t really happen how I’d ever imagined it, by the way, and I certainly—anyway. I know I said you had a week, but I need your answer sooner.”
“Sooner?”
“As in, now.” She winced apologetically. “I have to leave the Jaspers. I’m going to walk to the docks as soon as I leave you.”
“You don’t have any stuff. Clothes. I don’t know. Jewels, cosmetics? Whatever it is you have.” Kip felt stupider the more he said.
“My slaves have already smuggled it out to the ship. I’m technically the Chromeria’s hostage, so I’m forbidden to leave without permission. I can’t carry anything on me lest your grandfather’s spies figure out that I’m leaving.”
“Oh.” Obviously, a little late for that. Andross knew everything. He always knew everything. Damn him. Damn him to a thousand pits of fire.
Fire. Fire engulfs the woman, her skin curling, blood hissing as it boils—
Breathe. Breathe. Back in the now, stay here, Kip.
And Kip still hadn’t decided what to do. He should have been weighing the pros and cons in the last few days, when he might have had a chance to think without the total distraction of a beautiful woman standing right in front of him.
Kip the Lip. Use it to your advantage.
“You know,” Kip said. “I actually haven’t decided. I should have been weighing the pros and cons in the last few days, when I might have had a chance to think without the total distraction of a beautiful woman standing right here in front of me. You’re beautiful. You know you have an effect on men. Are you seducing me?”
“Pardon me?” she said, incredulous. “I mean, thank you, but what are you talking about?”
“Are you trying to seduce me?”
She looked suddenly awkward. “I thought you weren’t interested in women.”
“What?!”
“I asked around while I was procrastinating and trying to figure out how to talk to you, and no one could even remember you expressing interest in a girl. They said you had a room slave that you never bedded, so I thought you either didn’t have any interest at all either way or you liked boys. That’s why I, um, tried to appeal to your better nature. Believe me, if I’d thought it would be as easy as flashing some cleavage at you, I’d have done it in a second.”
“What? What? What?” Then Kip couldn’t help it; he started laughing.
His grandfather had been right—infuriatingly right—about Tisis. And he’d been right for all the wrong reasons. He’d thought she would ask Kip to rescue her because she was subtle; she’d done it because she thought Kip was homosexual.
“I’m so sorry,” Tisis said. “You mean you’re not…”
“No,” Kip said, still grinning. “I mean, I’m not homosexual and not, er, well, I am asexual, I guess, but not by choice. I mean, I’m a virgin, but…” He slammed his eyes shut. Had he really just said that out loud? Orholam, let the floor open and swallow me. He opened one eye. Tisis’s mouth was hanging open, shocked.
Kip the Lip, use it, turn it out. “Which is to say, I find you very beautiful, Tisis, and not just in some abstract sense. And my earlier disinterested attraction to you—understandably dampened by the fact I thought you wanted to kill me—is strangely getting more intense and more personal all the time.”
He could tell the convoluted compliment warmed her. She blushed faintly, and looked at him with new eyes.
Before she could speak, Kip said, “But that attraction—whether it’s the simple infatuation of the boy you seem to think I am, or something more robust and worthy of consideration—is not the point. It’s moot.”
He could see her digesting that, and he could tell that she was impressed. But her regard was not, now, the kind you’d have when you think a child is being mature for his age. In her eyes little green shoots of respect broke the ground. “So,” she said, “if that’s not the point, what is?”
&nb
sp; “If I do this, I’m crossing my grandfather. He’s not just the Red anymore. He’s the promachos, and he was scary enough when he was only the Red. He does not forgive insults. I’ll need your protection and your sister Eirene’s protection, at least for a few years.” It was partly true, but it was mostly a lie, and Kip felt embarrassed at how easily it passed his lips. But she mistook his embarrassment, thinking it was for needing the protection of women. After the time Kip had spent with the White and with Karris, nothing could be further from his mind.
“Kip, your grandfather’s not going to come after you during the war. If he did, he’d risk losing not just my family, but all of Ruthgar. And after the war… who even can think that far ahead?”
It was true. As a political marriage, the union was actually far better for the Guiles than it was for the Malargos family. Though Tisis felt that her position was tenuous—and Andross had deliberately isolated her so she would feel it more keenly—he needed to know that Ruthgar was firmly on the Chromeria’s side. War was here, and the bottomless coffers of the Malargos family would be necessary to fund the fight.
Andross would strengthen his flank and get Kip away from the Chromeria, where he might cause problems. If Kip betrayed him, Andross would still achieve those things. If Kip obeyed him, on the other hand, Andross would put a spy directly into the heart of the Malargos family.
Who could plan for what would happen after the war? Andross Guile.
And what did Kip get for his participation? A wife set to inherit a fortune, a place next to power, and a reputation for defying his grandfather—which would be seen as being incredibly brave when he got away with it. After the war, they could ‘reconcile’ and all would be well. As far as political marriages went, Kip could do far worse.
In fact, he probably couldn’t do better.
With Zymun in play, Kip was expendable.
“What are you thinking there, little storm cloud?” Tisis asked, teasing.
That there’s no way out.
But maybe that’s the wrong way to think about this. I want to defy my grandfather because he’s an asshole, because he’s been cruel and insulted me, because he tried to have me killed.