The Blinding Knife (15 page)

“We’ll trade you,” Teia said.

“You will?!”

“No,” Teia said. The students laughed.

The lift stopped about halfway up the tower, and almost all the students spilled out to cross the walkways. Kip and Teia went with them. The six outer towers of the Chromeria were connected to the central tower by a series of spindly walkways hanging high up in the air. Kip had crossed one of these bridges before. He
knew
that they were safe.

After all, the Chromeria wouldn’t put drafters at risk, right?

Kip swallowed and followed. The blue tower was finished with blue luxin cut into facets so that the whole surface gleamed in the sun like a million sapphires. It would have been breathtaking, if Kip had any breath.

“Don’t like heights, huh?” Teia asked after they got across.

“Not my favorite,” Kip admitted.

“This might not be that much fun, then.”

Kip forced a weak smile.

“You have a bad experience or something?” Teia asked. “With heights?”

“Fat assassin lady tried to throw me off the yellow tower,” Kip said.

She looked at him, dubious. “Look, if you don’t like heights, that’s fine. You don’t have to make fun. I was just making conversation.”

Kip opened his mouth. No, he wasn’t going to win this one.

Had they ever figured out who wanted him dead?

If so, no one had ever told him. Which reminded him of his Blackguard escort—there still wasn’t one. It gave Kip the feeling—again—of being tangentially involved in Big Things. Someone tried to kill him; no one explained why. He got a Blackguard escort; the Blackguard escort got taken away, and no one figured to clue Kip in.

Go play in the corner and don’t bother the adults, Kip.

Teia led half a dozen students to the blue tower’s lift and they took that up to the top. There was a big, sturdy door and a nice hallway.

“Other half of the top floor is for satrapahs and nobles and religious
festivals,” Teia said. “On Sun Day, this whole floor rotates so that their half faces the sun, rather than ours.”

Beyond the sturdy door was a room full of gears and pulleys and ropes and sand clocks and bells, with enormous windows. It was so bright that Kip was momentarily blinded. Teia handed him a pair of large round spectacles with darkened lenses. Once he put them on, he was able to see again.

Weary students who’d pulled the dawn shift got up from their chairs and handed off thick coats to the next shift. Some of them muttered instructions about the states of certain gears or ropes. A few traded jokes. Kip was lost.

Eventually, they got sorted. Kip and Teia took their coats and both took a chair. There were six stations, two students per station, two chairs, four sand clocks, four bells, one giant mirror per station that was bigger across than Kip was tall, and three smaller mirrors.

“The whole Chromeria rotates over the course of the day so that it’s always facing the sun more or less directly,” Teia said. “So mostly we only have to move the mirrors up and down as the sun rises. First rule, never touch the mirrors with your hands. If there’s a problem, we summon the lens grinders. They’re the best in the world, and they get furious if they find handprints on their mirrors.”

But as impressive as the mirrors and pulleys were, they weren’t what seized Kip’s attention. There were half a dozen massive holes in the floor: one huge central hole, with six mirrors above it, and then numerous smaller ones.

“Lightwells,” Teia said. “So that drafters in the tower below us will always have enough light available, no matter if they’re on the dark side of the tower, or if it’s early or late in the day. Take a peek over the side.”

So every team used their big mirror to send light to another big mirror over the central hole, where other mirrors shot the light downward.

Kip poked his head over the side. The walls of the hole were perfectly sheer, covered in silver polished to a mirror sheen, and it plunged on forever. In the glare of the gathered sunlight, he couldn’t even see the bottom.

As he was watching, about four floors down, a section of the wall opened and a mirror three feet across popped out into the light stream. Kip saw that farther down, other mirrors were similarly gathering light, offset from each other by careful degrees so that mirrors above wouldn’t block light to the mirrors below.

Kip stepped back, swallowing. It was mind-blowing, genius—and there was no railing to keep the mirror-tenders from falling straight down.

A tiny bell rang, startling him. Teia turned over the sand timer connected to the bell and grabbed a rope over one of the smaller side mirrors. She pulled a ratcheting lever, which moved the mirror by some tiny degree.

The smaller mirrors fed light to smaller holes. “Special laboratories, or polychromes’ or Colors’ chambers,” Teia answered Kip’s unspoken question. “There’s only so many private lightwells in each tower, so you have to be pretty important to get your own. But our work is pretty mindless. Once you get used to it, anyway. We don’t calibrate anything. Mirror slaves do that, setting things every dawn, and then we just move the ropes so much every time a bell goes off. Teams of two so we stay awake, and in case we have to open the windows, and for the zenith switchover.”

“Sure. Zenith switchover,” Kip said, having no idea what she was talking about.

The work seemed complicated at first, but pretty soon Teia was letting Kip pull the levers and turn the sand timers.

“Anyone ever fall down the holes?” Kip asked.

“A boy fell down one of the smaller lightwells last year. It was four floors down to the Blue’s mirror. Broke his back. Lived for six months. A few years ago, it’s said some boys fought up here, and one pushed the other one into the great well. Died instantly. The killer swore it was on accident. They didn’t believe him.”

“What’d they do?” Kip asked.

“Orholam’s Glare.”

Kip’s face apparently said it for him: I have no idea what you’re talking about. Again.

“There’s a pillar at the base of the bridge on Big Jasper. You know the Thousand Stars?”

The mirror towers all over the city. “Sure.”

“Right, all those mirrors, plus all the mirrors on Chromeria towers, are all focused on that one point. They put the condemned at the focal point at noon. Drafter’s got a choice then. You can cook to death like an ant under a glass, or you can draft. If you draft, it’s like pushing too much water through a straw. You burst.”

“That sounds… unspeakably awful,” Kip said.

“It’s not supposed to be fun. Come on, it’s time for lecture. You think you can get through it today without causing an incident?”

Kip’s brow wrinkled, not ready to let it go. “But I thought that they slaved the Thousand Stars onto the Prism every Sun Day.”

“Yes?”

“Well, how does
he
not die?” Kip asked.

“He’s the Prism. He can do anything.”

I can’t do this.

Seven years, seven great purposes.

It was a fantasy, a fairy story, a fool’s errand. What Gavin wanted was impossible.

He lay next to Karris, close enough to share body heat. He’d slept fitfully, as always, had nightmares, as always. Last night, no doubt because of his waking fears about losing blue, he’d dreamed of his brother escaping the blue hell. He shook it off, ignored the stabbing pain and tightness in his chest. Dawn was close. Karris would wake any minute, and she would move away. They would get up; they would work. Sooner or later, the people of this island would either come to stop him or to talk. If they came to kill him, they would come at night. With dawn coming, he thought it unlikely they would attack now. Gavin would live another day.

The first of his purposes was easy enough, though he’d persistently failed: tell the whole truth to Karris. When the city had fallen to the Color Prince, he’d almost abandoned the second: saving the people of Garriston who had suffered so much because of him. Now that salvation was within sight. Other purposes, he had achieved: learning to travel faster than any man alive; undermining certain Colors on the Spectrum, the ruling council of the Chromeria. Others were still in process. All except telling Karris the truth ultimately built toward one goal, one grand design that he barely even dared to think about, lest
somehow thinking it would make it even more impossible than it already was. As if, in thinking it, he would spill the secret and it would escape beyond his grasp forever.

He owed his dead little brother Sevastian better. He owed his mother better. He owed Gavin better.

He wasn’t sure, even as he thought it, if by “Gavin” he meant himself, or his brother.

Karris snuggled close to him, but the very movement seemed to raise her consciousness above the waterline, and she started. He breathed evenly, feigning sleep. She pulled back, scooted away gently so as not to wake him. She might hate him—deservedly so—but she was still kind. It was one of the things he loved about her.

He’d held her while she mourned her brother last night. Held her until she slept, and then got up and kept watch. He’d envied her tears even as it warmed him and made him ache for her. He’d envied her for clean grief for a dead brother rather than his horror and guilt over a living one. No wonder he’d dreamed about Dazen when it had been his turn to sleep. Regardless, last night changed nothing between them. He expected a brusque thank-you today, if anything. Then things would be back to normal.

Except normal couldn’t hold. Karris wasn’t stupid: pretty soon she’d notice that he couldn’t draft blue. And her questions had already been unsettling.

The truth was, all his purposes were focused in one direction, except for the one about telling Karris the truth, which ran directly opposite. Karris was the greatest threat to his plans. And she was immune to flattery or pressure. She had nothing but her own sense of justice. If she thought ruining him was the right thing to do, she’d do it regardless of the cost.

The smart thing to do was to treat her like any other obstacle, and take her out.

It didn’t mean killing her. He could take her to one of the outer islands, where even merchants came only once a year, and simply leave her there. Then whatever happened with him, she couldn’t interfere. But stealing a year of the life of a woman who had, quite likely, only five years left to live was no small offense.

He sat up. This was going nowhere.

Karris was just coming back from making water in the woods.

“Any itch weed?” Gavin asked.

She blushed, remembering that misadventure. “I’m a touch more careful about that these days.”

“Once bit twice shy, eh?” Gavin asked, standing and stretching. He had to go make water himself.

“In some things.” She had an odd look in her eyes.

He stepped into the woods and started to urinate. It had been awkward, fifteen years ago, to have someone standing two paces away while he relieved himself. Having Blackguards protect him made him have to get over that fast. Especially when they traveled in wilderness, a Blackguard wasn’t going to let him out of her sight.

“Gavin? Thank you,” Karris said.

Gavin pissed. He knew better than to talk, better than to laugh in amusement at being right. He cleared his throat. “So, you figure this Third Eye is going to come today?” he asked.

“Safe bet,” Karris said, voice suddenly tense. He heard her pistol cocking.

“You may not know it now, but this class will be the most important topic some of you will ever study,” Magister Hena said. She was both impossibly tall and impossibly skinny, with bad posture, bad teeth, and thick colorless corrective lenses that made her eyes look different sizes. “For most of you boys, it will be the only time you get to taste the greatness of making real structures with luxin, so it will behoove you to pay attention, so you know what the women for whom you work are doing. If you’re good at it, you may be allowed to do the arithmetic, of course, so a large part of this class will have to do with the decidedly mundane task of teaching the abacus and the skills of drawing. Engineering is knowing. Building is an art. Everyone can do the former, the latter is reserved for the best women.”

One of the boys, scowling, raised his hand. She called on him.

“Magister Hena, why can’t we build?”

“Because only superchromats are allowed to build with luxin. You boys, your eyes are inferior. In some applications, you can cover your flawed drafting with enough will and by spraying enough luxin at the problem. But not in a structure people have to trust. Only women, and only superchromat women, are allowed to build. It’s not worth death to risk trusting a man.”

“But why, Magister Hena?
Why
can’t we draft as well?” the boy asked. He sounded whiny. Even to Kip, who thought it was unfair, too.

“I don’t care,” Magister Hena said. “Ask a luxiat or one of your theology teachers. For today, I’ll isolate the superchromats. Yes, I know you already tested this, but an engineer doesn’t trust, an engineer tests. If it’s not demonstrable, it’s not real. On your slate before you, there are seven sticks of luxin. Only at one place on those sticks is the luxin drafted absolutely perfectly. Make a mark beneath that spot with your chalk. I’ll come around and check your work, and the superchromats will move to the front of the room.”