The Black Prism

Chapter 85

“Traitors!” Kip heard a woman say. His head snapped toward Karris. She spat on the dead Mirrormen. Imperious, masterful.

What is she doing?

Karris grabbed a musket and powder horn and began reloading it, as if she were a simple soldier. When Kip saw the looks on the faces of the soldiers near them, he finally understood. They’d just seen her and Kip fight Mirrormen, but none of the surrounding men knew who was fighting on which side or if they should interfere. It looked like these soldiers had lost all of their officers—not surprising, since the defenders on the wall would try to kill officers first. That was probably the only reason Kip and Karris were still alive.

“Well, drafter?” she said, finishing her reloading. She was as fast at that as she was at everything. Her skin was the color of blood. Her eyes were no longer capped with the violet eye caps that kept her from drafting. Wait, had he done that? He was feeling shaky, drained. Her bluff had worked, though. The soldiers were turning back to the fighting, determined not to get in the way of this virago.

She was talking to him.

That’s right, genius, seeing how you’re the one who just drafted two huge spikes and impaled a couple of Mirrormen.

Which made Kip look toward the men he’d killed. Mistake. One had a frothy gore-hole in his chest the size of Kip’s fist. The other’s head was torn in pieces, chunks of white bone mixed amid red in a picture that refused to coalesce into a face.

“Kip, ordinarily this is a bad idea when you’re as new as you are, but I want you to draft more green. I need you with me,” Karris hissed.

He was staring at the smear of head on the ground. The soldiers pushing toward the gate were trampling right over the pieces of brain and bone, giving more room to the two drafters than they did to the men Kip had killed.

“Kip!” She slapped him, hard. “Cry later. Be a man now.” The red diamonds in her emerald eyes blazed. She cursed, cast about for a moment, looking for something, then a few threads of green wove their way from her eyes to her fingertips through the ocean of red that colored her pale skin, and she drafted something small in her hands.

Spectacles. Spectacles entirely of green luxin. She put them on his face, adjusted them, did something to seal them, and then stepped away. “Now draft!” she ordered.

Kip was a sponge. It was like going outside on a hot day, closing his eyes, and basking in the heat. Everywhere he looked there were light-colored surfaces, homes and shops whitewashed against the sun, and every one of them gave him magic. He soaked it in, feeling potent. Free. The throbbing in his burned hand faded to nothing.

He joined the stream of soldiers heading toward the gap in the wall. The musket fire from atop the wall had all but ceased. It was turning into a glorious morning, bright, crisp, slowly burning off the mist. It would be hot soon.

Where before, when he was unmoving, the stream of men had parted around him like a boulder as they saw that he was a drafter, as soon as he joined the stream he was jostled about just like everyone else. The lines compressed the closer they got to the wall, and men trying to stay with their units pushed hard. As it got tighter and tighter, more and more constrained, Kip started to rebel against it. He wasn’t sure how much of the agitation was his, and how much was the green luxin’s influence on him, but he could tell that there was more to his reaction than his own psyche.

With the confluence of horses and men in armor—though only a small fraction of King Garadul’s army was armored or uniformed, those soldiers were intent on going in first—Kip lost sight of King Garadul himself. Karris had slipped into the line in front of him, and she was using her slender form and muscles to slip in between rows and push forward. Kip soon lost sight of her too. It was all he could do to keep on his feet as the crowd packed tight together right at the wall.

“You!” someone shouted.

Kip looked. A horseman, ten paces away, was staring at him. Kip had no idea who the man was.

“You!” the officer repeated. “You’re not one of us!”

At first, Kip had no idea who the man was. He thought maybe it was one of the soldiers who’d escorted him with Zymun after Kip had blown up the fire. But even that was only a guess. Unfortunately, it didn’t matter. The man recognized him.

The officer tugged at his musket, trying to pull it from the saddle sleeve, but there were other horses pressing in on either side of him, and it was stuck.

“Spy! Traitor!” the officer shouted, pointing at Kip. “He doesn’t have the sleeves! He’s not one of us! Murderer! Spy! That green drafter is a spy!”

Kip had been pushed up the rubble pile to the gap in the wall itself. It put him at a high point. Everyone was able to see him.

The officer finally pulled his musket free and kicked his horse savagely to come after Kip. Turned backward looking at the man, not really believing he would fire into a crowd of his compatriots, Kip lifted his hands to draft something, anything. His foot slid on the rubble, and the surging crowd, some pulling away, some reaching toward him, threw him off balance. He went down in stages. The people were packed so tight that he didn’t fall all at once, but neither could he stop himself once he started.

The gap in the wall vomited them into Garriston. Kip fell and rolled.

Someone stepped on his burned left hand. He screamed. Feet were hitting his sides, someone tripped over him, someone stepped on his belly, someone kicked the side of his head. He tumbled, rolling down the slight hill of rubble, tried to gain his feet, and got smacked with the stock of a musket. He ended up on his back, head ringing, left hand on fire with pain, eyes having trouble focusing. Without meaning to, he’d gone turtle again, as he had when Mistress Helel had tried to kill him—and again, he was about as effective as a turtle on its back.

It was like the world knew Kip needed to take the coward’s way, and it conspired together to land him here.

The next thing he knew, there were people on every side of him, kicking, kicking. Some were trying to slam musket butts down on him, but there were so many people packed in so tightly around him that he only felt a few glancing blows on his legs. Back in the old days, he would have rolled over on his stomach and buried his head in his hands, rolled into a ball and waited until Ram had asserted his superiority again and tired of the game and left him. Doing that here would be death.

Do you expect me to take a whipping lying down?

Yes, Kip. It’s your way.

You expect me to die lying down?

Face it, Kip, you’re not much of a fighter, not when it matters. Why don’t you curl up in a ball and quit?

Part of him expected Karris to save him. She was a fighter. A warrior. A drafter. She was quick and decisive, nimble and deadly with magic or blade.

The crowd was like a beast, a seething, teeming, roaring mass that had lost all individuality. And Kip hated it. He ducked his head as someone tried to stomp on him. He saw leering faces. Brief images of snarling mouths. Visages twisted with hatred.

Part of him expected Ironfist to save him. The man had swept in out of nowhere twice before and done that. Ironfist was huge, strong, intimidating. He was as quiet and as unmoving as steel. A guardian.

Part of him expected Liv to save him. Why not? She’d come in at the last minute to save him from the assassin Mistress Helel.

Part of him expected Gavin to save him. What good was a Prism if he couldn’t save his own bastard? Gavin was here. Somewhere. He had to be close. He had to know the wall had been breached. He had to be hurrying here even now.

A kick caught Kip in the kidney, sending lances of pain through his whole body. As he lurched, a fist caught him in the face. His head bounced off the stones. Blood shot out of his nose, drenching his mouth and chin.

No one was coming. Like when his mother had locked him in a cupboard when he was eight years old because he’d complained or talked too much or—he didn’t even remember what he’d done wrong. He just remembered the look of disgust on her face. She despised him. She threw his soup at him and locked the door and went out to get high. And forgot about him. Because he was worthless.

After a day, the rats had come. He woke to one licking the dried soup off his neck. Its little claws dug into his chest, its weight terrifyingly heavy. He’d screamed, jumped to his feet, thrashed. Screamed and screamed, and no one heard. That rat ran away, but soon, in the darkness, more had come. They dropped into his hair, bit his bare toes, scrambled up his pant legs. They were everywhere. Dozens of them. Hundreds, for all he knew. He’d screamed until his throat was raw, thrashed and hit at them until his hands were bleeding, twisted his ankle on some old boxes crammed into the cupboard. And no one had come.

His mother had found him on the morning of the third day, curled in a ball, head tucked in his arms, whimpering, dehydrated, long bloody wounds all over his head, shoulders, back, and legs, not even trying to dislodge the rats covering him like a cloak. There were a dozen dead rats with him and more live ones. She’d given him water, eyes haze-glazed, begrudgingly cleaned his wounds with the last of her harsh lemon liquor, and then wandered out to find more haze. All without a word. She seemed to have forgotten it all when he next saw her. He still had scars on his shoulders, back, and butt where the rats had bit him.

No one’s coming, Kip. Another kick. You always were a disappointment. Another kick. A failure. Kick. You’re not good at anything. Kick.

“Enough! Enough!” someone shouted. The officer finally pushed through the crowd, carrying his musket. “Move back!” he shouted.

He hefted the musket, pointing it at Kip’s head.

What can I do? Draft little green balls? Fine.

Kip drafted a green ball and threw it up into the yawning barrel, willed it to stay.

The officer pulled the trigger. A moment, then the musket exploded in his hands. The breach of the musket blew out, throwing flaming black powder into the man’s face, setting his beard alight. He screamed, fell back.

“Kill him!” someone shouted.

Kip saw steel being drawn on all sides, flashes of the sun on blades. And he started laughing. Because he was good at something.

He was good at taking punishment. He was a turtle. Or maybe a bear. A turtle-bear. Orholam, he was an idiot. He laughed again, slapping his hands to his shoulders as he lay on the ground. Green luxin jetted out, covering him like he’d seen it cover the green wight back in Rekton.

As Kip watched, a sword descended and hacked into the green luxin over his arm. It cut in two finger’s breadths, but the luxin was thicker. It stopped, quivering like an ax in wood. Kip flipped over, pulling in more green from every light surface, not even knowing how he did it, pulling and pulling, drafting light from Orholam’s endless tap.

It filled him with that same wildness. Wildness chained, hemmed in, trapped. The luxin covering him grew thicker. Kip gathered his feet beneath himself and stood, roaring.

He was crazy. He was crazy, and he felt great. He smashed a green forearm into a wide-eyed man holding a sword. It flung the man back. Kip paused for a second, and spikes sprouted from his green armor everywhere. He threw his weight back and forth, crashing into the crowd like they were rats to smash against cupboard walls.

Blood was flying in red ropes. Kip wasn’t human anymore. He was an animal, unwilling to be caged. He was a mad dog. Some dim, thinking part of him thought that he shouldn’t have been able to move so well with such a heavy suit on him. He was strong, but not this strong.

He had no sense of the battle beyond the little circle around him. Even that was a blur—sharp motions to the left and right, gleams of light off blades and rising muskets to be crushed before they could fire. He slashed and hacked and pounded with unreasoning fury. He could hold only one thought: I will not be stopped.

In moments, or hours, Kip had no notion of time—he saw fear in every eye. A continual flood of men spilled in through the gap, thrust forth hard by the mass of bodies behind them, all pushing them forward and into Kip, but his very presence was slowing the flood, men pushing back as soon as they saw him, others leaping to the sides, hoping to avoid his fury.

Their weakness inflamed him further. Like rats willing to bite in the darkness but scattering in the light, they were cowards. He clubbed them, smashing heads, ripping open bellies. He charged the gap where they couldn’t flee, impaled them, flung gore left and right.

A thought won through his brain. Among all the shouting and screams and fear and mist and musket fire and clash of arms, someone was screaming a word: “Kip! Kip! King Garadul! That way!”

Kip couldn’t see who was shouting. He stretched, found himself taller, the luxin swirling under his feet, boosting him several hand’s breadths. Looking into the city, he saw Karris, skin red and green entwined, holding a sword, pointing it deeper into the city still.

King Garadul was rallying his Mirrormen around him there, pulling them together after they’d been separated coming through the gap. He was screaming orders. Seemed furious about something. Hadn’t seen Kip.

Before he even knew what he was doing, Kip was charging, all his will focused, intent, implacable. This one thing remained: King Garadul had to pay for what he’d done. He had to die.