The Black Prism
Page 154

He shot out of the water. By Orholam’s own hand, or by all the luck that had gone against him for his whole life now finally reversing course, he shot in the right direction. He flew onto the barge’s deck, blasting through half a dozen people gathered at the railing looking for him—and he kept his feet, though he was at a crazy angle and had to run as fast as he could just to not fall down.
He burst into the opening around Gavin just as Zymun closed on the Prism. Zymun sank the great white dagger into Gavin’s back an instant before Kip collided with him, the top of Kip’s head smashing Zymun’s nose. His momentum carried them both off the opposite side of the barge.
They landed with a great splash. Kip got a breath before they went under and immediately began tearing at Zymun, punching him, ripping at the dagger in his one hand and the sheath in the other. Zymun hadn’t taken a breath. He let both go and flailed, trying to get away from Kip with panicky motions. Kip tried to slash the other boy, still underwater, and missed.
With a gasp, Kip surfaced. Zymun surfaced five paces away, blood streaming from his broken nose, staining the water.
Kip heard screams beyond Zymun. The sharks had come and were turning the water between Zymun and the docks to white froth in the frenzy.
“Kip! Grab the rope! Grab the rope!” someone shouted. A coil hit the water close to him.
Zymun gave Kip one hateful glance and started swimming for shore. He was a good swimmer, too. Faster than Kip. It would be madness to go after him. And he was bleeding.
“Kip!”
Kip felt the first tremor of lightsickness hitting him. Oh shit.
But he’d lost his dagger before. It was everything. He wouldn’t lose it again. Bobbing in the waves, trying to ignore at least another score of triangular fins cutting the water headed for the dock, he sheathed the blade and tucked it inside his pants, and only then did he grab the rope.
Good thing there was a loop on the end. Kip managed to pull it over his head before he threw up the first time. There was nothing in his stomach, so he dry heaved as the barge towed him along for a way until the men on deck could haul him out of the water.
“Let go of the rest of the luxin, Kip,” someone was saying to him.
“I can’t, I can’t.” He knew it was going to be bad. He couldn’t take any more pain. He couldn’t even open his eyes.
“Come on, Kip, do it for me,” Gavin said gently.
Kip let go of the last of the luxin. The last thing he was aware of was pain shooting through his head, lances of light blotting out darkness, only to leave more behind.
Chapter 92
The prisoner was full in the fever’s grip. The gash he’d cut across his chest and the foul hair he’d packed into the cut had done their work. Death or freedom. It was time.
He tried to stand, but couldn’t. He was shaking too hard. Maybe he’d waited too long. He’d wanted—needed—to wait until the fever was at its hottest in order to have any chance at all. If he’d miscalculated, he would simply die, and end all of Dazen’s problems for him.
That would just be tragic.
He propped himself up, found his dirty little hair bowl close at hand, tried to inspect it for flaws for the thousandth time. He couldn’t tell. He felt like weeping, the fever throwing his very emotions into disarray.
“I’m sorry, Dazen. I failed you,” he said aloud. Meaningless words. From nowhere. The part of him that had marinated in blue for so many years found that curious. Not unexpected, but still strange. Why should he feel emotions simply because his blood was literally hotter than normal? Strange, but inconsequential.
He pulled the cut on his chest open, pulled out the chunky, dirty, blood-clotted wad of filth, and threw it aside. It didn’t all come out together. Some was stuck in the wound. With a grimy fingernail, he scratched out the remaining filth. It made him gag with pain.
Stupidity. He’d used his fingernail? When trying to clean a wound? He should have drafted tweezers. He wasn’t thinking straight. He blinked, his body tottering. No, there was no failure. Lesser men might fail. Not him. Not without trying his plan.
Gavin scooted over to the shallow bowl he’d scraped with his own hands over the course of sixteen years.
Well, some men might have nothing to show for sixteen years of labor.
He laughed aloud.
The dead man in the wall looked concerned. Keep it together, Dazen. Gavin. Whatever. Whoever you are, today you’re a prisoner, today you can be a free man. Or a dead man, which is a freedom of its own, isn’t it?
Dazen took his finely woven hair bowl and laid it inside the stone bowl he’d dug over the years. It fit perfectly, as well it might. He’d made it to fit, and checked it a thousand times as he crafted it. Sitting right in front of the bowl and its depression, Dazen untied his loincloth and shifted awkwardly until he could set it aside.
“If only Karris could see us now, huh?” the dead man said. “How could she choose him over this?”
Dazen barely glanced at the dead man, sitting in his shiny blue wall, mocking him, seated with legs spread grotesquely in front of a hair bowl and a shallow hole. “You can’t debase me,” Dazen told the dead man. “I do what I must. If that’s depravity, so be it.” He licked dry lips. He hadn’t been drinking water. He needed to be nearly dehydrated for this. His tongue felt thick.
The dead man said something in response, but Dazen ignored him. For a moment, he forgot what was next. He needed to make water. He wanted to lie down. Orholam, he was tired. If only he could rest, he’d have the strength…
Slapping! That was what was next. A little more pain, and then freedom, Dazen. A little more. You’re a Guile. You can’t be chained like this. You’re the Prism. You’ve been wronged. The world needs to know your vengeance.
Seated still—there was no reason to move from here, he wouldn’t be able to make it back if he moved—he studied every surface of his body that was visible.
Then he started slapping himself. Everywhere that he would be able to see. Hard.
“This strikes you as rational?” the dead man asked. “Maybe sixteen years in blue hasn’t been enough for you.”
Gavin—Dazen, damn it—ignored him. He slapped his forearms, his stomach, his chest everywhere except where the cut was—he didn’t want to pass out this close to victory—and his legs. Every surface of his body that he could see he slapped until it was insensitive, numb to the pain and, more important—red.
Gavin was only human. Though he was a superchromat, even he made tiny errors. That was Dazen’s bet. That was why Gavin hadn’t let anything with color down here. If he’d made the blue light perfectly, all in only one incredibly tight spectrum, there would have been only blue light to reflect from any item. Gavin wouldn’t have had to worry even if his prisoner had red or green or yellow spectacles. But the tiny flash of green Dazen saw every time he pissed into his bowl before it was leached of color told him that there was some spectrum bleed.
Now everything depended on how much and how fast he could draft.
Shivering, trembling hard from fever and from beating his skin nearly bloody, he pissed. Not straight into the depression. Not straight into the hair bowl. If he pissed too hard, he was worried he’d break right through the oil that he’d so painstakingly smeared around the inside of the hair bowl. So he pissed into his hand, and let the warm liquid flow gently into the hair bowl.