The Blinding Knife (6 page)

He grunted.

She shouldn’t have said it. He’d doubtless drafted the scull from yellow to be kind to her. She’d complained about what he’d done last time, so this time he was doing it differently. And she’d thrown it in his face. Nice, Karris.

They pushed off and sculled together in silence, heading west. When they were half a league out, Gavin signaled that they should stop.

“I showed them all the skimmer yesterday, but there was a lot going on,” he said. A lot going on. She supposed that was one way to describe the panic fifty thousand helpless people felt when they realize they’re under attack by a sea demon and then watching their Prism lure it away from them single-handedly, using magic the likes of which no one had ever seen. “I didn’t want to give all the drafters a tutorial today in how to make one for themselves. Just because a secret’s going to get out eventually doesn’t mean you need to shout it
from the rooftops.” He stopped, seeming to realize that she might not be the person to say that to.

“So where are we going?” Karris asked. She didn’t want to talk about that now either.

“I told my people I’d go prepare a place for them.”

“You tell people things all the time.”

Gavin opened his mouth, hesitated. Licked his lips. Didn’t say whatever he was going to say. “I deserved that. Point is, I’ve got fifty thousand refugees. If we put them in one of the little Tyrean coastal towns, they’ll overwhelm the locals, and still be just a short march down the road for the Color Prince. They’ll be defenseless, and they’ll starve to death even if he doesn’t come after them. Point is, mostly for unfair reasons, no one will want to help a bunch of Tyreans.”

“So you’ve come up with an elaborate solution.”

“Not elaborate. Elegant. Fine, I suppose you could call it elaborate, too.” He began drafting the scoops and straws for the skimmer. “I’m going to put them on Seers Island.”

He was officially mad. Karris said, “That entire island is ringed with reefs. No one can get ships in there.”

“I can.”

“And how do the Seers feel about this?” she demanded.

“Surprised, I’d guess. I haven’t told them yet.”

“Oh, wonderful.”

“Who knows?” Gavin said. “They
are
Seers. Maybe they’ve foretold my coming.” His grin withered in the heat of her disapproval. He handed over one of the reeds and they began skimming.

Last time they’d skimmed together, they had held hands, Karris squeezing out the rhythm so that they would be in time with each other. This time he didn’t even extend his hand toward her. Good, it saved her the trouble of rejecting it.

Regardless, they found their rhythm and began cruising across the surface of the sea. Within half an hour, the mountains of Seers Island came into view. But they were farther away than they appeared, and it took hours before Gavin and Karris approached the island. Even then, Gavin didn’t head straight in. He turned south of the island, keeping between it and Tyrea, whose Karsos Mountains were just visible, purple in the distance.

Finally, Gavin turned them north, toward a huge bay. It was a shallow crescent, big enough for Gavin’s entire fleet to fit into, but too
wide in Karris’s half-educated opinion to offer protection from the winter storms that would rip between the island and the mainland in a few months.

There were no known settlements. This island was taboo, forbidden, holy. Lucidonius had given it to the Seers hundreds of years ago. And, of course, it was surrounded by reefs that would destroy any ship with a greater displacement than a canoe or a skimmer, and even those could only make it in at high tide.

As they came in closer, skimming a mere hand’s breadth over the coral, Karris saw an enormous pier jutting from the undeveloped shore. A pier that gleamed like gold—a pier of solid yellow luxin. She was about to comment to Gavin about it—Had he created this? Was this where he’d been going in the last few days?—when she saw something else.

There were a couple of hundred armed men and women standing on the beach in an unruly mob.

“Gavin, those people look angry.”

Amused, Gavin lifted his eyebrows momentarily. “Not as angry as they’re going to be.” And then, heedless, he beached the skimmer directly in front of the mob.

“Commander, could I talk with you for a moment?” Kip asked.

After Gavin and Karris left, Commander Ironfist and the Blackguards had taken over the fastest galleass in the fleet and, taking Kip, had headed for the Chromeria.

Everyone had been busy all the time for the first few days, with the Blackguards following the sailors’ lead and trying to learn their craft. Commander Ironfist didn’t want his Guards to sit idle, and given the chance to master some new skill, they dove right in. The sailors grumbled at first, but were eventually won over by how quickly the Blackguards learned.

For those who weren’t on duty, Ironfist supervised shifts of sparring
and calisthenics on the galleass’s small castle. Kip was allowed to watch, but mostly he tried to keep out of the way. It had taken him days to figure out when the commander would have a few empty minutes for Kip to bother him.

The commander looked at Kip. Nodded. Walked back into the cabin the captain was sharing with him for his work.

Kip had mustered his courage, but now he found it leaking away as they came into the small room and sat at a little table. “Sir, I… During the battle at Garriston, I—Well, some of it doesn’t seem real, like I’m remembering things that couldn’t really have happened, do you know what I—But that’s not what I…” Kip was being stupid, inarticulate. He flexed with his bandaged hand. It hurt. “I killed the king—satrap—whatever. When I did it, Master Danavis—I mean, General Danavis—shouted at me, saying I’d fouled everything. I didn’t mean to disobey, it just didn’t—I don’t know, maybe I did mean to disobey.” The words wouldn’t come out right. He felt like he was veering all over the place. He’d killed people, and part of him had liked it. Like he was smashing in the faces of those who wouldn’t take him seriously. Except that he had literally smashed faces in, and when he thought about it, he felt wretched. But that was too hard to say. “I still don’t know what I messed up, and what it cost. Can you tell me?”

Commander Ironfist drew a deep breath. Seemed to reconsider. “Hand,” he said.

Kip presented his right hand, not sure what the imposing commander wanted.

Commander Ironfist looked at him flatly.

“Oh!” Kip presented his left hand. The commander unwrapped the bandage. He said, “I was fourteen years old when I killed my first man. My mother was the
deya
of Aghbalu—a regional governor—and she was angling to depose Paria’s satrapah and become satrapah herself, though I didn’t know that then. I was walking past her chambers one day, and I heard her cry out. I had first drafted perhaps two weeks before. I went in, and I saw the assassin. Small man, features of the despised Gatu tribe, teeth stained from chewing
khat
, and poison on the wavy blade of his
kris
. I remember thinking that only if I drafted could I stop him in time. But the drafting didn’t just happen as it had two weeks before. He stabbed my mother, and while I stood there, not believing what I’d seen, he jumped out the window he’d
climbed in and tried to escape over the roofs. I chased him, and I beat him with my fists, and I threw him off the roof.”

Kip swallowed. Ironfist had chased an assassin, unarmed, across rooftops, and killed a man armed with a poisoned blade—when he was
fourteen
?

Ironfist paused, examining Kip’s burned hand. He gestured for the ointment the chirurgeons had given Kip and rubbed it on the raw skin. Kip hissed and clenched every muscle in his body to keep from crying out.

“You need to stretch your fingers,” Ironfist said. “All day, every day. If you don’t, your fingers will tighten up into claws in no time. The scars will freeze your palm and fingers, and you’ll have to split your skin open just to move. Take a little pain now or a lot later.”

This was a
little
pain?

Commander Ironfist went back to his story as he wrapped Kip’s hand in fresh bandages. “The point isn’t that I’m a hard man, Kip. The point is I made mistakes. My mother was trained in
dawat
, our tribe’s martial art. Not highly proficient, but trained well for a civilian. If I hadn’t come in the room and she hadn’t been worried for me, she could have fended him off until her guards came. And once I chased him down, I shouldn’t have killed him. We could have found out who sent him.”

“But you were just a boy,” Kip said. Having his hand wrapped back up and immobile was like crawling back into a warm bed on a cold morning.

“And so are you,” Commander Ironfist said. Kip started to protest, but Commander Ironfist wasn’t finished. “Even if you weren’t, I’ve seen grown men and women make worse mistakes in battle. If we naturally made good decisions in battle, there’d be no need to train for it.”

“Did I get people killed? I killed a king, and I still can’t figure out if it was a good thing or not.” The anguish leaked through and Kip’s eyes welled up. He looked away and gritted his teeth, blinking. Stupid. Get control of yourself.

“I don’t know,” Commander Ironfist said. “But the Color Prince exposed King Garadul on purpose. He wanted him killed. Maybe he’d planned it well in advance. Certainly us capturing Garadul rather than killing him would have tripped him up. General Danavis is very, very good at what he does. He understood in a moment. Most people
wouldn’t have. Especially not fifteen-year-old boys who’ve never been in a battle before.”

“But I ignored him. I wanted to kill the king so much I wouldn’t listen to anyone. Anything.” Kip had crushed the king’s head. He could remember the feeling of the man’s skull cracking, brains squishing, blood splurting.

“You were deep in the grip of your color, Kip. So you blundered. Maybe you precipitated a wider war. Maybe. Maybe the general was wrong. Maybe King Garadul would have been far worse than this prince. We don’t know. Can’t know. It happened. Do better next time. That’s what I do.”

That’s why you train.

“Did you ever find out who sent him?” Kip asked.

“The assassin? My sister thought she did. Let’s head to the galley. It’s time for supper, though not as much as either of us would like.”

“But did she get her vengeance on the killer?” Kip asked.

“You might say that.”

“What’d she do to him?”

“She married him.”

Tap. Superviolet and blue.
As his thumb touched, it was like someone had blown out a candle. The world went dark. Eyes useless. But then, a moment later, there was sun, waves washing over him, blinking, bobbing. Seeing his perspective shift while he felt his body utterly motionless made him queasy.

Tap.
Green solved that in a rush of embodiment, touch restored. He was swimming. A strong body, wiry, naked to the waist. The water is warm, strewn with flotsam.

Tap. Yellow.
Hearing restored, the shouts of men calling to each other, others screaming in pain or terror. But yellow is more than
that; it is the logic of man and place. But the yellow in this one isn’t quite right. Disbelieving. The Prism came out of nowhere. Dodged all his cannon shots. Even when Gunner finally started shooting both at once. That little boat the Prism made moved at speeds he wouldn’t have believed if he’d heard another telling the tale. Ceres is going to take this out on him. Damn Gavin Guile.

But this mind skips around. There’s something—

Tap. Orange.
The smell of the sea and smoke and discharged powder, and he can sense the other men floating in the water, and below them, around them—Oh, by the hells. Sharks. Lots of sharks.

His finger is already descending.
Tap. Red-and-sub-red-and-the-
taste-of-blood-in-his-mouth-and-it’s-too—

The trick with sharks is the nose. Not so different from a man. You bloody a bully’s nose, and he goes looking elsewhere right quick. Easy, right? Easy.

Gunner ain’t no easy meat. The sea’s my mirror. Fickle as me. Crazy as me. Deep currents, and monsters rise from her depths, too. What others call sea spray, I call her spitting in my face, friendly like. Unlike most of this lot, I can swim. I just don’t like it. Ceres and me do our admiring best at a bit of a distance.

She must be ragging something fierce.

The shark she’s sent after me is a tiger shark. Good hunters. Fast. Curious as a crotch-sniffing hound. Mad as a starving lotus eater. Usually twice as long as a man is tall. But the sea’s shown me respect, as she ought. My shark’s bigger. Three times as long as I am tall, looks like. Hard to tell through the water, of course. Don’t want to exaggerate. Hate exaggerators. Fucking hate ’em.

I’m Gunner, and I give it straight.

The scraps and shrapnel lines and barrels of the shipwreck litter the sapphire waters everywhere, but that tiger’s coming back. Depending how tenacious she is, it’ll take me a few minutes to swim to an appropriately sized—

“Oy, Ceres!” I shout as a thought occurs to me. “I know why you’re mad!” Not many people know it, but the Cerulean Sea is named for Ceres. Not for the color. Those tits and twits at the Chromeria think everything revolves around them and their colors.