The Black Prism
Page 106

“Bring me the drawings of Rathcaeson,” the Prism said.
“You’re seriously going to build a wall based on artists’ renditions of a mythical city?”
The muscle in Gavin’s jaw twitched with irritation.
“Understood, Lord Prism,” General Danavis said. He bobbed a bow.
“Bring your daughter,” Gavin said. “I could use a superviolet.”
A slight hesitation. “Of course.” The general left, mounting his horse and galloping toward the city, his Ruthgari personal guards trailing in his wake.
Then, though he’d been speaking nonstop with foremen, Ruthgari guards, and General Danavis all morning, Gavin was suddenly alone. He looked over at Kip. Oops, I think I’m supposed to be drafting.
Gavin cocked an eyebrow at him. “Not hungry yet, huh?”
Kip grimaced. “Thanks for reminding me.”
“Kip, more than any other color, green can be summarized in one word. All the others require at least a few, a bit of hedging, some qualifiers. Green is wild. Everything both good and bad associated with wild is what green is. That’s why I can tell you that you only need will, because will and wildness go so naturally together. If you were an incipient blue, I’d have to explain the sense of drafting, the harmony, the order, how it fits with the world. That’s not you. Any questions?”
Not about drafting. “What happened to that gunner?”
“What?” Gavin asked.
“The one on the Ilytian boat, who nearly killed us. Right before I shot him, his gun blew up.”
“It does happen,” Gavin said. “You overcharge your shot, the musket can’t handle the charge.”
“That gunner, who nearly hit us from five hundred paces? He misjudged a musket?”
Gavin smiled. He turned his palm over. There was nothing in it. Oh, Kip tightened his eyes. A superviolet ball rested in Gavin’s hand. “See it?” Gavin asked.
“I see it.”
Gavin extended his hand. A little pop, and his hand jumped back. The superviolet ball streaked out like it was a musket ball itself. “I blocked his musket barrel,” Gavin said, shrugging. “You can use any color to do it. Yellow only if you can make solid yellow, of course, but pretty much anything else.”
“Why not kill him?”
“I may have,” Gavin said. “A musket exploding in your hands is no joke.” He shrugged. “I recognized him. Freelancer during the war. Sometimes fought for me, sometimes for my brother, sometimes for any captain that would pay him enough. He’s a drunk and a scoundrel and the finest artist of the cannon in the Seven Satrapies. Whatever name he was born with, now he’s simply known as Gunner. It’s everything he is. His first underdeck command as cannoneer was on a ship called the Aved Barayah, the Fire Breather.”
“The Fire Breather? The Fire Breather?” Kip asked.
“Only ship in memory to ever kill a full-grown sea demon. Gunner was maybe sixteen years old.” Gavin shook his head, dispelling a memory. “I’ve killed a lot of people, Kip. Sometimes you hesitate, and as bad and as dangerous as that is, I like to think it’s proof that I’ve still got some humanity left. Besides, I knew making his gun blow up in his hands would really infuriate him. If I know Gunner, he made that musket himself, and he’s probably wondering who the hell overcharged his precious musket.” He glanced over to a richly dressed Ruthgari approaching, flanked by guards and slaves carrying a mobile pavilion to shade the light-skinned man. “I’ll leave you to your work,” Gavin said. “You might want to hurry, the servants should be bringing lunch anytime.”
Just when I’d sort of forgotten my stomach. Thanks.
Kip pushed the spectacles up his nose—they kept slipping down, and they weren’t even close to comfortable—and stared at the white board. Wild. Wild, unbridled, growing. The Ruthgari noble—Kip gathered it was the governor—was complaining shrilly to Gavin about something or other, and he stood as if he was going to take his time about it. Kip tried to block him out.
Green. Come on, let’s suck up some wildness.
Wild, now there’s a word for me. Kip the wild. I was pretty wild when Ram used to call me Tubby, huh? I was pretty wild when he made me back down over Isa. She’d be alive if I’d been a little wilder. To be wild is the opposite of being controlled, and I’ve been controlled for my whole life. Controlled by Ram, by Ram! A village tough. A boy! Barely a bully.
If Kip had told Ram to go to the evernight, if he had shredded Ram with his tongue, what could Ram have done except beat him? Ram’s muscles weren’t half a match for Kip’s brain.
Well, they’re not a match for anything now that they’re rotting.
The thought made Kip queasy. He didn’t want Ram dead. There’d been plenty of good things about the boy. A few, anyway. And if Kip didn’t feel terrible that Ram was dead, he did wish the boy were alive so he could face him now.
I’ve talked with Gavin Guile. I sank pirates with him! Well, mostly I tried not to drown while he sank pirates, but still.
Kip looked at his hands. Still no luxin. The governor was still complaining loudly. Orholam, how was Gavin standing it? The man had the most nasal voice Kip had ever heard. Kip wanted to bean the man in the head with a big old ball of green luxin. He glanced at his hands again. Nothing.
I’m going to fail Gavin. Again. Like I failed Isa. Like I failed Sanson. Like I failed my mother a thousand times.
Hunger gnawed Kip’s belly. That’s all I am, a fat failure. A new life’s been handed to me on a plate. Gavin Guile’s son, bastard son, sure, but he hasn’t once treated me like an embarrassment. And I can’t even summon the will to reach out and take this new life. In return for all the good he’s done me, I’m going to humiliate the man who saved my life, who gave me a second chance.
It was like bands of iron were being laid across his chest, and now they tightened, tightened. Kip could barely breathe. His eyes welled with tears. Baby. Failure. Disappointment. His mother’s face, twisted, dangerously high from smoking ratweed laced with ergot: You ruined my life! You’re the worst mistake I ever made. I gave everything and you took it all and gave me nothing! You make me sick, Kip.
Kip, you can throw off those chains. Stop believing those—
“Lies!” the governor shouted. Kip shivered, his skin tingling. The sun was nearly at its zenith. Orholam’s eye pressed down on the land like a physical weight, but to Kip it was a caress. Light, energy, warmth, love, light in dark corners. He looked at the white board, and in the green filtered through his spectacles, he saw one face of Orholam. Kip wouldn’t call it wildness. It was freedom. He wanted to shout, dance for joy, to hell with what anyone thought. There was freedom from all of that, and freedom from the prison of his own head, freedom from the nagging voices of doubt, from the running commentary about everything he saw and did. It was action, and it was as powerful as a redwood springing up in the cracks of a boulder. Life would win. The roots would reach and heave and strain.
Kip could feel those bands of iron around his chest burst asunder. He felt more alive than he had in his whole life. An animal strength and joy.
So this is what they mean by wild.
The yapping governor’s voice shrilled. Kip drew a ball of green luxin into his hand. Just like that? Just by deciding to do it? It seemed too easy. The ball was thick, dense, but flexible to his squeezing fingers. Kip made it bigger, hollow, about twice the size of his own head. Now the flexibility was exaggerated. Soft enough that it wasn’t going to kill anyone.