by Brent Weeks
Back in Gavin’s past life, one of the biggest burdens of leadership had been finding and removing such men from every command. Any short-term results they got from the fear their men held them in was ultimately spoiled by how they ruined morale and stopped men from taking initiative.
Gavin heard the crack of a whip, and heard Leonus cry out behind him. Strap shouted, “Don’t fuck with them, Leonus! You keep my boys from rowing, and I’ll wipe your ass with hull barnacles. You hear me?”
Even Orholam grinned at that, though when Leonus made it to their bench, each slave kept his face carefully composed. Strap was as wide as the sea, foul as a latrine, and had more tattoos than any four other sailors combined, and Leonus rightly feared her. The malformed man gave them each water quietly, hatefully.
At their increased pace, the slaves sweated freely, and the always hot, always humid cabin got hotter and wetter. One slave cried out with a muscle cramp in his leg and went down. His oarmates struggled to maintain the pace without him.
In an instant, Strap was on top of him, beating him mercilessly with the whip. After six or eight strokes, she unlocked the slave’s manacles and bodily hurled the man back down the aisle. Number Two was hustled into place.
The foreman looked pleased that they hadn’t slowed their pace. She walked up and down the aisle, checking the men for signs of exhaustion, then walked to the back. Gavin heard the slave’s cries and the snapping of leather, the thudding of fists and feet on flesh. It was insanity to beat a man for what he couldn’t control—and for a few long strokes of the oars, Gavin wondered why the otherwise sensible woman would do it.
Ah, preventative brutality. Beat the man who can’t help his cramp so that others don’t fake a cramp to get a rest.
Unjust, but probably effective. Gavin wasn’t sure if he admired or hated Strap more for it.
The door to the main deck two flights up cracked open, letting midday light down the sweat-slick stairs. The foreman went up the steps, and Leonus took her place at the bottom to repeat any orders she might shout.
“One hundred paces! Ain’t turning!” the foreman shouted.
“One hundred paces!” Leonus shouted. “Drummers, places!”
No one had explained what Gavin was supposed to do, or what happened in what order, but another drummer joined the first, pounding a big, hollow-sounding drum to add to the first. He beat at exactly the same tempo, though, standing in front of the slaves on the port side.
“Uh, fuck fuck fuck fuck, listen to our drummer, not theirs,” Fukkelot said. “Last—” He dissolved into curses and grunts for a while, getting more and more frustrated that he couldn’t speak clearly. Finally, he managed, “Last second, we stow the oars. After uh, uh, uh, a sprint, though.”
“Turning to port, seventy paces!” the foreman shouted.
A muffled report resounded from the long tom mounted on the prow of the Bitter Cob and shook the deck like a punch in the chest. Shouting abovedecks. Pounding feet. A musket fired above, followed by Gunner’s shout. He wouldn’t want anyone on deck shooting out at that range. He wouldn’t trust anyone but himself to hit a target that far away.
Gavin gritted his teeth, his legs quivering, arms burning, sweat dripping into his eyes. The slaves were barely touching their butts to the wood benches at this pace.
A high, loud crack sounded from some musket that Gavin couldn’t place, but that sounded very different than—oh, that could only be Gunner’s musket.
The Bitter Cob veered to starboard. Gavin figured they must be trying to cut directly behind the other ship, to keep them from getting a broadside. It would only work if their own ship were significantly faster.
“Starboard side, battle speed!” Strap shouted.
“Starboard side, battle speed!” Leonus shouted.
The drummer on the starboard side picked up his pace, beating triple beats in the space of two beats on the port side. It made the Bitter Cob cut to port, while losing almost no speed.
“Battle speed, all!” Strap shouted.
“Battle speed, all!” Leonus shouted.
They sprinted across the waves, throwing their whole weight into every stroke. There were no chants now. The men had no breath to spare. The heat was unbearable. Gavin heard the slapping of a whip, but his world was constricted to the pain in his shoulders and lungs and legs and back and calves and arms—
“On my mark, stow portside oars!” the foreman shouted. Before Leonus could even finish repeating the order, the foreman shouted, “Mark!”
The drummers pounded three great wallops, and stopped abruptly.
The slaves heaved their oars down, lifting the blades out of the water, and then pulled them into the hold, hand over hand, pulling them all the way inside so they wouldn’t be snapped off in a collision.
For one moment, as the drums fell silent, as the slaves gasped for breath, as the men above braced for impact, there was no sound but the peaceful hissing of the waves.
Then hell broke loose.
Chapter 12
Kip walked shoeless on the beach for an hour before his feet blistered. He walked on blistered feet for half an hour before the blisters cracked and bled. He walked on bleeding feet for less than a minute before the obvious occurred to him.
He sat heavily on the sand and sighed. How many months had he been drafting now? The Chromeria taught that you weren’t supposed to think of drafting first to solve your problems, but they had it exactly backwards.
Magic was useful for everything. It just killed you. You should always think of it first. Then you should decide if a little dram of death was worth it.
Functionally, perhaps, the same thing. Provided you thought of it before you were bleeding to death on a beach in some distant corner of the satrapies because you were so damn dumb.
Using the green of the jungle canopy as his source, he drafted a green, flexible sole to walk on, thought about it for a minute, and then drafted entire boots of green luxin. Because his feet were already bloody, he left an open connection between his feet and the bottom-most layer of the sole so that he would be able to adjust the grip of his shoes immediately. It flirted with the line of using magic in ways that became part of your own body—incarnitive. But there were no magisters here. Kip walked, adjusting his boots until he was happy with them and trying to lock that design in his mind in case he ever needed this again.
Every drafter did this, he realized. They came up with useful designs and memorized them to be used quickly again. It was just that simpletons designed shoes while savants designed skimmers. The number of designs you could make as your colors expanded had to be an exponential curve. Had Gavin Guile memorized a thousand thousand designs, or did he just understand magic so deeply that he didn’t have to memorize designs? He merely created what made sense. Like you don’t have to think how to walk up stairs that are slightly steeper than the stairs you’re used to. You just do.
It seemed the more Kip learned about magic, the more impressed he was with those who used it artfully.
Then again, he’d gone green golem once, purely on instinct.
You got potential, Kip.
And you know what potential means? he replied.
“Ain’t done nothing yet.”
It was actually kind of comforting to hear the sound of his own voice.
He kept walking. Whether under oar or sail, galleys could travel twelve to fifteen leagues a day. Most galleys only had a range of four days before they needed fresh provisions. As galleys became less prevalent—being replaced by ships with longer ranges—many of the coastal towns that lived on the galley traffic were struggling. They would die in another generation or two, but they weren’t gone yet. So at the maximum, there had to be a town within sixty leagues.
Assuming he hadn’t been dropped precisely in between two towns, Kip would obviously find one closer if he walked the right direction. But he’d been blindfolded. The nearest town could only be a league or two south, while he was heading north.
&nb
sp; Of course, there should be little towns in between, too, like that little fishing town so close to Ruic Head where the whales had gone crazy, and the people, too.
That was, if all the towns hadn’t been abandoned by people fearful of the advancing army of color wights, in which case, he could walk until he died and—
Not helping, Kip.
He was hungry. No, don’t think about that. Anything else.
At worst, if Kip could walk eight leagues a day, he should make it to a town in seven days. At worst. He could do that. All he needed was water. He could live on his fat for plenty long enough, theoretically, though he would walk slower as he became weaker. He found himself moving imaginary abacus beads as he did the figures. Funny, that helped.
That is, it helped him with the arithmetic. A smarter person would probably shut off his brain and walk. Kip had always been about as good at shutting off his brain as he was at shutting off his mouth.
Straight pipe between the two, mother used to say.
He was assuming he could walk eight leagues a day. Here, on the clear beaches, that seemed entirely plausible, but Kip knew there were other areas of the coastline that were rocky, where cliffs bordered the sea, or jungles abutted the waves almost directly. Points protruded full leagues out into the sea. If Kip followed the coastline exactly, he would have to travel much more than the sixty leagues a ship would travel between towns. If he didn’t follow the coastline exactly, he’d risk getting lost in an unfamiliar jungle or forest.
For a few minutes, he had to concentrate on breathing, his throat constricted, his chest tight, trying to throttle him.
But he didn’t stop walking. His mind clamped down on that refusal like a bulldog’s jaw locking. He was the turtle-bear, and the turtle-bear can’t be stopped. What was the worst that could happen? He could fail? He’d failed before, plenty. He could die? He’d almost died plenty of times now. Sometimes it was scary, sometimes it was terrifying, sometimes it was exhilarating, often it was uncontrollable no matter what you did, right or wrong. You don’t stop and make death a sure thing just because going on might result in death. Kip was a fat miserable disappointment, but he wasn’t a quitter.
He grinned suddenly. A fat miserable disappointment—who had, albeit with lots of qualifiers, killed a king, saved the Prism, and killed a god. Not bad for a fatty. Hell, he’d even outsmarted Andross Guile once.
Odd that he thought of outsmarting Andross Guile as more impressive than killing a god.
The god thing felt like luck, though, or like Orholam had surveyed the field for a suitable tool to keep his Prism alive, and finding none suitable, had picked up Kip because he was closest.
Kip paused.
I treat myself pretty shitty, he thought. I’d never let anyone treat a friend of mine this way.
An hour later, he found a stream. He drank, hoping the water was good. Truth was, he didn’t have much choice. He slowly drank more, waiting to make sure it didn’t make him throw up, and then sipping more. He stood, wishing he had a waterskin.
He caught sight of his green luxin boots. Golly, if only I had some way to make a waterskin!
With a sigh, he drafted a green bag. Magic first, magic always, Kip. He scooped up a great volume of water, then bent the green until it fit comfortably across his back. Drafted straps that fit his shoulders, drafted a belt.
Magic. So useful, it’s like … magic.
“Talking to this madman is making me crazy!” Kip said.
Funny. You’ll know you’re almost finished when you forget it’s supposed to be ironic.
He decided while he was walking, he could catch up on all the practica he’d missed. Unfortunately, at his level, the Blackguard training had consisted almost purely of hand-to-hand combat, the idea being that such was the foundation for all their future training. On the ships traveling to Ruic Head, they’d been taught proper grips and basic handling of swords and how to reload muskets. The other new Blackguard inductees already knew it all. Some of them had been training with weapons for years. Some were proficient with bows and other weapons that Kip had barely even picked up. He was way, way behind.
But I can go green golem.
Fat lot of good that does me now.
He felt like the coast was swooping out to a point, but looking at the sun alone wasn’t enough to confirm his suspicions. His classmate Ben-hadad had once said that he’d learned to draft a sextant so he would never be lost. Of course, you still needed a compass, too, and while you could draft a housing and a medium on which to float a bit of philosophers’ stone, there was no such thing as lodestone luxin. Some things still had to be done the hard way.
And easy or hard, Kip didn’t have any of the skills that would have saved him. This was what losing one game of Nine Kings had cost him—his grandfather had forbidden Kip to attend practica.
Kip was trying to intuit what others had studied for generations. Well? Am I a genius of magic, or not?
Wait! Why am I messing about thinking about sextants and compasses and waterskins? I should be making a skimmer. He’d seen it done. He’d even helped propel one.
But a failure with a complicated device like the skimmer would leave him in the middle of the sea, with no way to get out. Kip could float, but it wasn’t like he was going to drift to Big Jasper, and if he tried Gavin’s jetting trick to swim, he’d break the halo before he got halfway there.
I can draft all these colors. It’s as if I’ve got a toolbox full of every imaginable tool, and I’m too stupid to use them.
Too ignorant, perhaps, a kinder voice answered him.
It was true. You wouldn’t blame a savage for the fact that he can’t read.
But you wouldn’t trust him with reading you letters, either.
The light began to fade, and Kip turned his mind to different problems. He found a clean area of the beach, just at the edge, where the palm trees gave him shelter. He took off his water pack. Staring at the darkening sky, he gathered enough blue to draft a blue luxin box with a single hole in the top, and sealed it. Then, standing on the beach facing the sinking sun, he gathered as much red as he could, patiently, slowly. The passions of red flooded through him, but he ignored them and simply filled the blue box. He filled the box full with the version of red luxin called pyrejelly.
He hadn’t been thinking clearly, and by the time the box was full there wasn’t enough heat coming from the sun to give Kip sub-red. He’d need to light his fire manually. It took him half an hour in the fading light to find a rock that looked like flint.
He banged rocks together for another half hour. Nothing sparked. He wanted to scream. He hitched his pants up and sat, rubbing his face. He tightened his belt, and saw that he was past the last, tightest hole. Not six months ago, he’d been at the loosest hole on the belt, praying he didn’t get any fatter because he didn’t know where he’d get the money or the leather for a new belt. All the rest of his clothing had been replaced at the Chromeria, but it had seemed wasteful to get rid of his belt. Besides, his mother had given it to him, during one of her rare sober spells.
Kip pulled the belt off. One of the flints had a sharp point that he could use to scratch out a new hole.
He looked at the buckle. The metal buckle. If he could punch himself in the stupid, he would knock it to Sun Day. Kip scratched the buckle against the flint he’d found, and wonder of wonders, it sparked. He lit the pyrejelly with no problem. It burned nicely. Kip sat and pulled his water pack to himself as the stars came out. Maybe some water would take the edge off his hunger.
The green luxin pack was sealed. Kip hadn’t drafted any way to open it. If it had been light out, he could have drafted more green and simply opened the green luxin and re-drafted it shut. Instead, he had to treat it as a purely physical object.
He wanted to cry. Or scream. Or throw a fit. Instead, eventually, Kip dug a hole in a weak part of the water bag with the sharp flint. Holding the pack over his head, he was able to drink from the warm stream of water until he fi
lled himself.
Kip’s lamp guttered as the pyrejelly burned below the level of the hole. With no wick to pull the jelly up to the air, the fire starved and went out. Kip looked at it like it had personally betrayed him. He could smash the blue lamp holding the jelly, of course. He’d not made it very thick. But then the pyrejelly would burn off in perhaps a half an hour. If Kip had his spectacles, he could use that firelight to—he didn’t. Those were back on the ship. He’d not been wearing the lens holster the night Gavin had almost been killed.
He took that dagger for me. Kip had thought that Gavin liked him, approved of him like you approve of a well-trained pet. A sane man might risk danger to save his dog, but only an idiot would die for a dog, right? Gavin Guile was no idiot. He knew his worth in the scheme of things, and things couldn’t have been going better for him—he’d just married Karris, just turned a decisive defeat at the hands of the Color Prince into a narrow victory. Kip had seen it in his eyes, as Kip had revealed Andross was a red wight and attacked him. Gavin had known. Known about his father, for one. He’d shown no surprise. He’d been keeping that card in his hand, to play at the right time. And Kip had shouted it out to the world—Kip the Lip, saying exactly what he thought, speaking without thinking, endangering plans he couldn’t even fathom.
