The black prism l-1

by Brent Weeks

  A spy? Orholam strike me. "Any other news?" Gavin asked.

  "He took a horse and a stick of coins."

  "So he could get himself into even more trouble than simply heading into an enemy camp armed only with delusions," Gavin said.

  Ironfist didn't respond. He generally ignored statements of the obvious. "The Danavis girl is gone as well. The stableman says she asked him for a horse, but he turned her down. Sounds like she found the notes and went after him."

  Gavin stared out over the bay. The Guardian, the statue guarding the entrance of the bay, and through whose legs every sailor passed, held a spear in one hand and a torch in the other. The torch was kept by a yellow drafter whose entire job was to keep it filled with liquid yellow. Special grooves cut in the glass slowly exposed the yellow luxin to air and caused it to shimmer back into light. Mirrors collected and directed the light out into the night, spinning slowly on gears driven by a windmill when there was wind and draft animals when there wasn't. Tonight, the beam illuminated the misty night air, cutting great swathes in the darkness. It was what every drafter was supposed to do: bring Orholam's light to the darkest corners of the world.

  It was what Kip was trying to do.

  Ironfist said, "If he came into my camp and kept a low profile, I wouldn't suspect him as a spy."

  Because he'd make a marvelously bad spy, perhaps? "About our spies, what have you learned?"

  "Governor Crassos very innocently came to inspect the docks, carrying a very innocent-looking and strangely heavy bag. He looked awfully pleased to see me," Ironfist said.

  "You only get sarcastic when you're mad," Gavin said. "Go ahead. Let me have it."

  "I swore to protect Kip, Lord Prism, but first, the spies-"

  "You can call me Gavin when I've been stupid," Gavin said flatly.

  "The spies report-"

  "Out with it, for Orholam's sake."

  Ironfist clenched his jaw, then willed himself to relax. "I need to go after him, Gavin, which means I can't be here, helping with the defense and directing my people."

  "And you're Parian and huge and pretty much the opposite of inconspicuous, so if you go after him-as your honor demands-you'll most likely be killed, which will not only mean that you're killed, which you don't particularly desire, but it also means you will have failed to protect Kip, which would be the only point of going after him in the first place. And you can't delegate the mission to anyone else because you promised to protect him personally, and besides, any other Blackguard would stand out nearly as much as you do." It wasn't that Blackguards were darker-skinned than Tyreans and had kinky rather than wavy or straight hair. There had been enough mixing over the centuries that quite a few Tyreans had both traits. Even Kip could still make a good spy despite his blue eyes; Tyreans were used to minority ethnicities from all the people who'd stayed after the war. The problem was that ebony-skinned, extremely physically fit drafters who exuded danger from their very pores were going to stand out anywhere. Blackguards would stand out among an army of Parian drafters.

  "That's pretty much it," Ironfist admitted, the edge of his anger blunted by Gavin acknowledging exactly why he was angry.

  "What else did you learn from our spies?" Gavin asked, shunting aside Ironfist's concerns for the moment.

  Ironfist seemed just as happy to not be talking about his dilemma. "Some of them have come from King Garadul's camp, and I think our problems are bigger than we realized." He pushed his ghotra off his head, scrubbing his scalp with his fingertips. "It's religious," he said.

  "I didn't think you were much for religion," Gavin said, trying to inject a bit of levity.

  "Why would you think that? I speak with Orholam constantly."

  " 'Orholam, what did I do to deserve this?' " Gavin suggested, thinking he was kidding.

  "No. Seriously," Ironfist said.

  "Oh." Ironfist, devout?

  "But you know how that is. You speak with him all the time as well. You are his chosen."

  "It's different for me." Very very different, apparently. "But sorry to jest. Religion?"

  "This isn't just some political matter of calling himself a king. Rask Garadul wants to upend everything we've accomplished since Lucidonius came. Everything."

  An indefinable dread settled in Gavin's stomach. "The old gods."

  "The old gods," Ironfist said.

  "Get Kip back, Commander. Do whatever you have to. If anyone complains about your methods, they'll have to go through me. If you can, save the girl too. I owe her father a debt I can never explain."

  Gavin slept little and fitfully. He never slept much, but it was always worse as the Freeing approached. He hated this time of year. Hated the charade. His chest felt tight as he lay in his bed. Maybe he should have let his brother win. Maybe Gavin would have done a better job of all of this. At the very least, he wouldn't be here now.

  Nonsense.

  And yet he couldn't help but wonder if Gavin would have been a better Prism than he was. Gavin had always borne burdens of responsibility better than Dazen had. It didn't even seem like a weight to his older brother. Like the man had been without self-doubt. Dazen had always envied Gavin that.

  The morning came none too soon. Dazen sat up and put on his face, Gavin once more. He felt that stab of pain radiating through his chest, tightening his throat. He couldn't do this.

  Nonsense. He was just missing Kip, and Karris, and was worried for Corvan's daughter and dreading the exhausting drafting he was going to have to do all day long. There was nothing to do but get on with it.

  After taking his time with his ablutions-why had Gavin had to be such a dandy?-he ate and rode to the wall. He was greeted by a young orange drafter.

  The drafter was one of the tragically young who couldn't handle the power. An addict. He couldn't have been twenty years old, mountain Parian, but he didn't wear the ghotra, instead wearing his hair in dreadlocks, bound back with a leather thong. The rest of his clothing spoke of similar rejection of traditional attire-any tradition. Oranges tended to see exactly how others liked things to be. In most cases they used that to their advantage, becoming as slick as their luxin. But in some cases they defied every convention they saw, becoming artists and rebels. Given how the man's clothes somehow worked together to look good despite their disparate origins, and that all the colors and textures complemented each other, Gavin guessed this one was an artist. This young man's orange halo was thin with strain, though. He definitely couldn't have made it until the next Freeing.

  "Lord Prism," the young man said. "How can I help?"

  The sun had barely cleared the horizon, and all the drafters who were capable of drafting without hurting themselves or losing control had gathered at the wall. The local workmen seemed stunned to be surrounded by so many of them.

  "What's your name?" Gavin asked. He didn't think he'd even seen this young man before.

  "Aheyyad."

  "So you are an artist," Gavin said.

  Aheyyad smiled. "Not much choice, with the grandmother I had."

  Gavin tilted his head.

  "Sorry, I thought you knew. My grandmother is Tala. She knew I was going to be an orange and an artist by the time I was four years old. She forced my mother to rename me."

  "Tala can be very, ahem, persuasive," Gavin said.

  The boy grinned.

  A boy going to the Freeing at the same time as his grandmother. There was a tale of woe just under the surface there, a family's grief, the loss of two generations at once, but no need to prod that now. All things are brought to light in time. "I need an artist," Gavin said. "Can you work fast?"

  "I'd better," Aheyyad said.

  "Are you any good?" Gavin already knew that Aheyyad was or Corvan wouldn't have sent him. He wanted to know whether the young man would be bold or tentative when faced with something so vast.

  "I'm the best," Aheyyad said. "What's the project?"

  Gavin smiled. He loved artists. In small doses. "I'm building a wall. Work w
ith the architect to make sure you don't screw up anything functional, but your task is to make this wall scary. You can commandeer any of the old drafters to help you. I'll give you some drawings we have of Rathcaeson. If it can resemble those, do it. You'll tell the blues how to hold the forms. I'll fill them with yellow luxin. I'm doing functional things first. We can attach and integrate whatever you design in two or three days."

  "How big can I make… whatever I make?"

  "We've got a couple leagues of wall."

  "So you're saying… big."

  "Huge," Gavin said. Having the artist only design the forms would also keep the young man from having to draft anything at all, which with how close Aheyyad was to breaking the halo would possibly save his life.

  It took until noon before they were ready to start the drafting. Gavin had asked all the old warriors to look at the plans of the wall, and not a few of them had come up with suggestions. Those suggestions had covered everything from expanding the latrines-and making sure the raw sewage could be routed onto their enemies by emptying the pots suddenly through chutes out the front of the wall-to reworking the mounts for the cannons and adding furnaces to heat the shot at several of the stations. Heated shot was wonderful for setting fire to siege engines. Someone else suggested texturing the floors and providing gutters not only outside for rainwater, which had already been considered, but also within the wall itself for blood.

  Many good suggestions, and quite a few bad ones. The wall should be bigger, smaller, wider, taller. There should be space for more cannons, more archers, more beds in the hospital, the barracks should be within the wall, and so on.

  At noon, Gavin was rigged back into his harness and lifted off the ground. The others swarmed around him, drafting forms, steadying his harness. Then he set to work.

  Chapter 70

  It wasn't until two days later, as Kip and Liv came within sight of King Garadul's army, plopped over the plain and fouling the river like an enormous cow pie, that he realized how deeply, incredibly, brilliantly stupid his plan was.

  I'm going to march in there and rescue Karris?

  More like waddle in there.

  At the top of a small hill, they sat on the horse, which seemed grateful for the break, and scanned the mass of humanity before them. It was immense. Kip had never tried to estimate a crowd, and never seen one this large.

  "What do you think, sixty or seventy thousand?" he asked Liv.

  "More than a hundred, I'd guess."

  "How are we going to find Karris in that?" he asked. What did I expect? A sign, perhaps? "Captured drafter here"?

  Most of the camp was chaotic, people pitching lean-tos against wagons, those who had tents screaming at each other over who got which spot, children running around, clogging the spaces between tents and wagons and livestock. The sky was still light, though the sun had gone down, and campfires were being started all over the plain. Kip could hear people singing nearby. Men were swimming and bathing in the river, downstream of where some soldiers had hastily erected a corral. The animals dirtied the water, but no one seemed to care. Other men stood on the bank, urinating directly into the water. The color of the river upstream and downstream of the camp was distinctly different. People were carrying buckets of water everywhere, taken directly from the river.

  Maybe I'll only drink wine.

  More importantly, the smell of meat cooking permeated the air.

  Kip's stomach complained. They'd gone through his food faster than he'd thought-mostly, he had gone through it faster-and now he had nothing. Well, except for a stick of danars I stole with half a year's wages on it.

  Oh. That.

  "We split up," Liv said. "You head directly for the center of the camp. I imagine that's where the king will have his tents. She's important, so they might be keeping her close. I'll go look for where the drafters are camping. A captured drafter will probably be watched by other drafters. She's got to be in one place or the other. We'll meet back here in, say, three hours?"

  Kip nodded his acquiescence, impressed. He would have been lost on his own.

  And almost instantly, she slipped off the horse and was gone. No hesitation, no second-guessing. Kip watched her go. He was hungry.

  Leading the big, docile horse, tugging and pulling the beast as it tried to munch grass to the right and left, Kip approached at one of the larger fires. Not one but two javelinas were roasting on spits over the fire, and as Kip stared, swallowing, one of the fattest women he had ever seen sawed off a fully cooked leg with a few deft strokes at the joint. The smell was rich, succulent, savory, mouthwatering, lovely, astounding, mesmerizing, debilitating. Kip couldn't move-until he saw her raise the meat to her lips.

  "Pardon me!" he said, louder than he meant. Others around the fire looked up.

  "Didn't smell it," the fat lady said, then she sank her teeth into greasy ham. Kip died a little. Then more as the hard men and women around the fire laughed at him. The fat woman, leg in one hand, long knife in the other, grinned between bites. She had at least three chins, her facial features disappearing into the fat that encased her like an awkward child surrounded by a crowd of bullies. Her linen skirt could have served as a tent. Literally. She turned away from Kip, slipping the knife back into a sheath and putting her hand back to turning the spit. Her butt was more than a jiggly haunch; it was architecture.

  "Pardon me," Kip said, recovering. "I was wondering if I could buy some dinner. I've got money."

  Ears perked up all around the fire at that. Kip wondered suddenly if he'd picked a good fire to stop at. Were the men everywhere in the camp as scruffy as these ones?

  Kip looked around. Uh, yes, actually they were.

  Oh shit.

  He fumbled with the leather money belt holding the stick of tin danars. He'd grabbed the money belt because it already had money in it and would be easier to transport than loose coins. The stick was a great way to carry money. Cut square to fit the square hole in the middle of danars, and of uniform length so people could rapidly count their own money-scales were still used to count others' money, of course-it was convenient and kept your money from jangling at every step as they did in a purse. Plus the sticks could be bound in leather for attaching to a belt or hiding inside of clothes, as Kip's was. He'd seen the gleam of this stick and grabbed it.

  But as Kip pulled the open end of the money stick out to pull off one tin danar coin, he saw something was very wrong. He froze. The weight had been right, or at least close enough that he hadn't thought about it, but the coin he pulled out wasn't tin. A danar was about what a worker would make for a day's labor. An unskilled labor like his mother would only make half a danar a day. He'd assumed the stick he grabbed was full of the tin coins, each worth eight danars.

  Instead, he'd grabbed a stick of silver quintars. Slightly wider in circumference, but only half as thick, and the metal slightly lighter than tin, the silver coins were worth twenty danars each. A stick of silver quintars held fifty of the coins, twice as many as the twenty-five tin coins that would fit on the same stick. So instead of stealing two hundred danars from the Travertine Palace-an already princely sum-Kip had stolen a thousand. And he'd just pulled out one right in front of everyone, making it clear he had more.

  Conversation ceased. In the dancing light of the fire, more than a few eyes gleamed like wolves'.

  Kip tucked the rest of the money belt away, praying no one had seen how full it was. What did it matter? His life might be worth less than even the one silver quintar. "I'll take the other leg," he said.

  The fat woman let go of the spit and reached her hand out.

  "I'll need nineteen danars back," Kip said. A full day's wages should be more than three times what the javelina leg cost.

  She chortled. "We run a charity house here, we do. Look like luxiats, huh? Ten."

  "Ten danars, for a meal?" Kip asked, not believing she was serious.

  "You can go hungry if you wanna. You ain't gonna starve," the woman said.

&n
bsp; The injustice of this whale calling him fat and the impossibility of doing much about it paralyzed Kip. He gritted his teeth, glaring around the fire, and handed over the quintar.

  The leviathan took the quintar and held it between her teeth, bending it slightly. If it were a counterfeit, tin coated with silver, it would give the curious crackling sound unique to bending tin. Satisfied between the weight and the texture that it was real, she tucked the coin away. She took a swig from a glass jug, set it down, and then sawed a leg off the javelina. While she was working, Kip noticed that some of the men around the fire had disappeared.

  No doubt he was going to find them in the spreading darkness, waiting for him. Orholam, they had seen the rest of the stick.

  Nor were the remaining men and women looking at him in a terribly friendly manner. They sat on their bags, on stumps, or on the ground, mostly watching him quietly. A few drank from wineskins or aleskins, murmuring to each other. A glassy-eyed woman was lying with her head in a long-haired, balding, unshaven man's lap, stroking his thigh. Both were staring at him.

  The whale handed Kip the javelina leg.

  Kip looked at her, waiting.

  She stared blandly back at him from beneath her layers of blubber.

  A few weeks ago, Kip would have backed off. He was used to people treating him like dirt. Ignoring him or bullying him. But he couldn't imagine Gavin Guile being bullied, not even when the odds were stacked against him. Kip might be a bastard, but if had one drop of the Prism's blood, there was no way he could knuckle under. "I need my ten danars," Kip said.

  The drunk woman across the fire laughed suddenly, uncontrollably, until she started snorting and laughing harder. Not just drunk, then.

  "Do I look rich enough to have ten danars?" the whale asked.

  "You can cut that danar in half."

  She drew her knife and shrugged, stepping close to Kip. She reeked of grain alcohol. "Sorry, got no knife."

  Kip understood instantly. Several of the men were sitting up, not only paying more attention, but getting ready to hop to their feet. They weren't waiting only to laugh at him, knowing this whale would cheat him. They were waiting, knowing the whale would cheat him, to see if he was a victim. Would Kip meekly accept being cheated? If he was a victim, he was a mark. If he had one quintar, he might have more.