The Blinding Knife (97 page)

To the south, she could hear the sounds of battle. Cannons and muskets were being fired from the wall, shaking the city. The soldiers at the top of the pyramid hadn’t seen the bane or Liv’s team yet, their vision narrowed to the battle playing out in front of the walls.

But despite feeling wild and strong, sprinting up the steps was exhausting. Liv slowed and the men on either side of her each grabbed one of her arms and helped her up the rest of the way. They didn’t harass her for it. They were fighters and their bodies were trained for this. She wasn’t. It made her feel weak and helpless—and some small part of her felt trapped and wanted to wrench free. But she suppressed the urge.

They slowed as they came close to the top of the pyramid. Almost invisible from below, there was a square patio at the pyramid’s penultimate level, where lords could gather and religious rituals be carried out. It was from here that the men and women of Ru’s royal family
had been slaughtered and thrown down the steps. Fuschias hung from baskets and pools of water and fountains kept the nobles cool, slaves brought fruit and wine from within the pyramid itself.

The drafters in Liv’s team had all pulled on their spectacles, and she did the same. She drafted a shell of superviolet and filled it with liquid yellow, as Gavin Guile himself had shown her. It felt like so long ago now.

“Who are you?” a voice asked from above. A soldier, challenging them.

A spear of blue shot through the man’s nose and into his face, and blood exploded from his eyes. Liv’s team charged.

There were more people on the top of the pyramid than Liv had guessed, but no drafters. She shot her flashbomb into the middle of the crowd and it burst, blinding the half of the men who were looking their way. Liv’s men were ferocious—easily some of the best drafters and fighters she’d ever seen. Phyros spun two axes that looked like halberds with their hafts shortened, and everywhere he went, men died, slaves died, women died. The blue drafters shot spikes through faces and necks, left and right. Phips Navid charged Lord Aravind, shouting vengeance, and was cut down by the noble’s bodyguards.

Liv stood back and shot flashbombs, feeling vaguely cowardly, but knowing that she was irreplaceable, and her flashbombs did their work. She only had to draw her pistol once, when a crazed slave had rushed her with a flowerpot. The woman had dropped at Liv’s feet, powder burns around the bloody hole in the center of her chest.

Then, abruptly, it was done. Men and women were moaning, but there was no fight. Liv’s team was down to five, somehow, and each of them was checking bodies, dispatching wounded enemies who were scrambling to hide or to find weapons.

“Got ten soldiers coming up the outer steps,” Phyros said. “I’ll hold the inside steps.”

Phips Navid was whimpering over by the throne. Liv walked over to him. His left eye was crushed, and there was a spear all the way through his stomach and coming out his back, and his knee was bent the wrong way.

“We get him?” Phips asked. “That swine Aravind? We get him?”

“Yes,” Liv said. “Looks like he took a spike in the groin. Phyros just opened his throat.”

Phips barked a laugh, but it ended in a whimper. “Good, good. Fourteen years I been hunting that bastard. Wish I could have done it myself. Wish… wish I hadn’t needed to. You believe in heaven?”

“I believe in hell,” Liv said.

He looked like he tried to laugh, but his face twisted in pain. “Do me the favor, will you? I’ll go find out for both of us.” He grinned again fiercely and held that grin stubbornly against his pain and fear. She told herself it was mercy, but she couldn’t move until she drafted superviolet once more. It had to be done.

She did it, blade slicing neatly through carotid and jugular. She stepped back on shaky legs. Turned away before she could watch what she’d done.

“Ladder’s back here,” Phyros called.

Liv hurried back to him and climbed up the ladder. There was a small ledge beneath the great polished mirror. But as soon as Liv approached it, she knew it was no ordinary mirror. Not only was this mirror massive—fifteen paces across at least—it was spotlessly clean. There was no dust, no scratches on its face. There were old, old runes carved into the iron frame, black with age.

From the top of the pyramid, Liv could see the battle unfolding at the walls. The Prince’s five hundred, decimated, had made it through the bloody smoky hell of that tunnel, and were pushing against soldiers in every street in that neighborhood. The black smoke of muskets rattling and the sound of men screaming rose even to here. But the Blood Robes were pushing in, gaining ground. In another half a block, they would push into a market, giving their superior skills a wider battle front. After that, Liv couldn’t imagine it would be long before they would reach the gate. But the fight wasn’t over yet, and it seemed that the Atashians on the top of the wall had a limitless supply of loaded muskets, pulling them out, shooting, being handed new ones, shooting, shooting, raining ceaseless death on the attackers.

Liv tore her eyes away. Her fight was here. She tightened her eyes to slits. The mirror seemed to hum in her vision. Strange. She looked down at the base and saw a black panel. She probed it with fingers of superviolet and felt the mirror shudder. It felt like there were little invisible levers inside it.

What am I doing? She looked at the soldiers coming up the
pyramid. This was her last test. This was what she was made for. If she did this, the Color Prince would give her more than she’d ever dreamed. She’d never again be inconsequential. She could never again be ignored, despised, powerless.

They were going to win the battle for the city, but out there, somehow, the battle for the sea would turn on what she did here. This was her chance to pay back the Chromeria for every sneer, for using her against her father, for making her break her oaths, for defiling everything.

The tendrils of her superviolet luxin sank into the black box, found levers within, pulled—and the mirror swung, almost taking her head off. She let go of the luxin, and the mirror stopped abruptly. She drafted again and pulled another and the mirror tilted. She pulled another, and the mirror shimmered and turned blue.

“Quickly, my lady, they’re almost upon us!” one of the men cried.

“Working!” she shouted.

With the superviolet controls, Liv pulled another lever, and a green filter bubbled to the mirror’s surface. From there, it was a simple matter of pushing and pulling the first two levers. She caught the sun’s rising light in the huge mirror and shot it out over the bay. She turned it left and right and up and down, wondering if she would have any idea when she finally got it right, or if she was
already
getting it right. She felt something when the beam was aimed far out to sea, over Ruic Head, but that must have been her trying too hard. That wasn’t even remotely the right direction. She turned it over the bay, up and down, searching.

Then something vibrated—she lost it. She reached again and turned the beam back, the tiniest bit. It caught, and hummed. In a moment, the mirror went from a mirror to something else entirely.

The mirror collected all the sun and was sending a vibrant emerald beam out to the bane. It was visible in the very air, burning bright green. That wasn’t right; it wasn’t even possible. Mirrors never shone so bright that you could see the beam during the day. Maybe in fog, or smoke, or at night, the light might be visible, but not an hour after dawn.

And yet it was.

But as it vibrated on that perfect frequency, humming like music, Liv’s perception was pulled through the great lens itself—and suddenly, she could see the tower shivering up out of the sea, growing,
right in front of her, as if it were only a hundred paces away, not thousands.

As she saw, she knew that Koios White Oak had been wrong. She’d passed the test of competency easily. This
was
a test of loyalty. For she saw Kip, and Karris, and Gavin Guile himself on the bane, and she knew that if she obeyed the Color Prince, she would doom them all.

If she was to have the power to change the world, if she was to save ten thousand naïve young women in the future from the sharks and sea demons, she must let her friends die. She had begged the Color Prince to save Kip and Karris before—had traded Blood Robes’ lives for theirs in Garriston. Not half a year ago, her friends had been worth her oath and the lives of a few strangers. Was saving them
now
worth the dream of a new, changed, pure world?

“Do you know what Atirat needs, Aliviana?” the Color Prince had asked her last night.

“Sacrifices?” she hazarded.

“Light. Every god is birthed in light.”

And, weeping, light she brought.

The first great wave came from behind the skimmer.

Gavin shouted something, but it was lost in the roar of water falling and crushing and sweeping over the back of the skimmer. His body language was unmistakable, though. He threw himself at the reeds and threw luxin down them as hard as he could. The Blackguards followed his example, and the skimmer jumped forward.

But they weren’t as fast as the great swell that swept Kip off his feet. He grabbed on to the rail with both hands, and as it flipped him around, he saw the spire rising out of the sea behind them. Already, it was hundreds of feet high. It was the origin of the great wave and the pounding water falling from the sky both.

Then Kip was crushed down against the deck. He heard the sound of luxin snapping and ripping loose and he saw Gavin flying off the front of the skimmer. He’d shot luxin so hard, he’d torn the reeds off. They were all suddenly airborne. Kip lost the railing—or maybe it disintegrated. He could see nothing except water. Whatever had hurled the sea upward had stopped, and now the seas dropped again with all the chaos of a waterfall. Kip fell and fell and fought for one deep breath. When he landed in the water, it was into a current that blasted him sideways. He hit something, scraped something else. It was no use trying to fight, he was being tumbled head over heels. He had no idea which way was up.

Feeling something beneath him, he grabbed it, missed, slipped. The current was forming swift rivers, and he knew that he needed to avoid the deeper current. He grabbed again, catching what felt like a tree branch, and walked himself hand over hand toward the weaker current. His lungs were burning, and the water was so fouled that he couldn’t see anything but green. He fought down his panic, fought down the wildness. Hand over hand, Kip. He grabbed root after root and kept going, going.

Moments later, he felt the temperature change on his back. Air. Wedging his feet in among the roots, he lifted his head and breathed.

The current almost pulled him into the depths and he staggered, but caught himself. He was standing on a new island, and everywhere, water was sluicing off in great rivers back into the sea. The land, if land it was, wasn’t uniform. In some places the water had no way to seek lower ground, and it stood in ponds and lakes.

Green. Every possible shade from the slate green of lichen to the red-tinged green of a ruby leaf. Radiant emerald greens that glowed from within and the dull, earthen greens of roots; spruce and sage and seaweed and olive and sea foam and mint green. The entire island was an amalgam of living vegetation and green luxin. Kip was standing on roots pulsing with life. He saw an entire galleon, mysteriously unbroken, wedged between the branches of what looked like a fallen tree, fifty feet in the air. But even as Kip stared in wonder, he saw branches climbing up the galleon’s hull like an ivy shoot. They wrapped over the galleon’s waist, thickened, and crushed the decks, spilling sailors everywhere.

The entire island was living vegetation, and it was waking.

Searching for the Blackguards, Kip saw the black-garbed figures rising, spread over five hundred paces. He only saw eight of them, but there were more in the water, swimming, fighting. Gavin stood a hundred paces away, waving, and pointing toward the spire. He looked urgent.

Kip ran toward him.

Coming to a channel of swiftly flowing water that was too wide to jump across, Kip threw green luxin down at his feet, making a plank to run on like he’d seen Commander Ironfist do before. It was easier than any drafting he’d ever done. The green light seemed to press itself physically into his eyes; he barely had to open the tap, and it flowed out just as easily. He felt the wild joy and freedom of green, a joy without terror, a joy without anchor—

Kip didn’t think it was his own joy he was feeling.

Gavin wasn’t waiting for Kip; he was sprinting for the spire. That he didn’t wait first hurt Kip’s feelings, then terrified him. Gavin would wait, if he could. If there wasn’t some absolutely desperate need, if seconds weren’t absolutely crucial, he would gather up his forces. Not only Kip, but everyone. Gavin would want to have his whole team together for both humane and tactical reasons. That he thought there was no time for either—

A sound like a thousand sighs swept across the bane—air being released, the hollow echo of bubbles opening. Kip ran straight over a rising cocoon yawning open, its membrane tearing as a jade green hand clawed the air. Commander Ironfist had been right. Green wights had flocked here by the hundreds or thousands to be perfected by the bane itself. And now they were rising. Kip hurdled over the color wight rising from its gooey cocoon and ran faster than he’d run in his entire life.