The Blinding Knife
Page 85

Kip obeyed. His brain didn’t seem to be working correctly, so he was glad to have the direction—even if the direction didn’t make sense in a house that was rapidly filling with smoke. The man had thrown his cloak off, so that was easy to grab, but the woman’s cloak was still around her body. Kip looked away as he rolled her off it, but still it stuck, and he saw that the cloak was bound to a choker collar of gold around the woman’s throat.
Focusing just on his fingers so he didn’t get overwhelmed by the gore and lose control, he unclasped the choker and finally pulled the cloak away.
He took a deep breath in the less smoky air down by the ground, and moved over to Janus Borig. He lifted her in his arms. Then he saw the cards again, and it hit him.
The precious cards lining the walls were aflame, each a little torch as the luxins within them flared.
“Don’t worry about them. Go,” Janus said.
“But they’re everything! They’re worth a—”
“Go, Kip.” Her voice was weak.
Kip stumbled down the steps, with the old woman in his arms, his head coming dangerously close to the open flames, the heat a wall.
The flames were crawling down the side of the stairs, and Kip saw garbage smoldering as they reached the ground level.
Orholam have mercy, this room wasn’t only full of garbage. It was full of black powder.
Kip pushed toward the door, having to step deliberately to get around the trash, his arms full of old lady, cloaks, and one big-ass knife.
“One moment,” Janus said in Kip’s ear right before he carried her out the door. Her voice was a whisper. “Turn a…” He turned her and she reached out toward her tobacco box.
“Are you kidding me?” Kip asked. “You want a smoke? Now?”
She rooted around in the box for one moment more, and from beneath the tobacco she pulled out a small lacquered olivewood and ivory box, only large enough to hold a single deck of cards.
“Ha! They didn’t get ’em.” She gave a wan smile. “What are you waiting for? This place is on fire.”
Kip carried her out into the night. It was storming, hard, lightning flashing, thunder shaking the buildings, rain smothering the streets. No one had noticed that the small building was on fire yet. Kip carried Janus down the street and had barely turned into an alley when he heard an explosion from her house. Then another, much bigger. He stumbled, fell, barely able to cushion the woman’s fall.
He propped her up in the wet, dirty alley, abruptly exhausted.
“I don’t suppose you grabbed my brushes,” she asked, eyebrows lifting. The rain had washed the blood from her face, but she was looking unhealthily pale, somehow luminous. “Because…” She smiled, her eyes unnaturally bright. “I know who the Lightbringer is now.”
And then she died.
Chapter 62
The Color Prince’s army had fought through the pass into Atash with few casualties. Liv hadn’t seen any of the fighting, and all the evidence of it was gone by the time she’d gone through.
After they made it through the pass, everyone had assumed they’d head straight for Idoss, the largest city in southern Atash. Instead, while smaller parties of foragers fanned out through the Atashian countryside to feed the army, the prince had taken the bulk of the army south, deeper into the mountains. He cut across the river and the main road, and then marched upstream, instead of downstream to Idoss.
Eventually, they came to the great silver mines at Laurion. Liv had never seen anything like it. The hills for at least a league in every direction were studded with holes. Three hundred and fifty mines, the prince said, worked by thirty thousand slaves. The mines were owned by the Atashian government, but nobles throughout the Seven Satrapies leased them and paid rents and a share of their profits to the state. Liv had heard of slaves being sent to the mines, but she’d never had any real concept of what it meant, other than that it was something bad that owners could threaten rebellious or lazy slaves with. Some Atashian students had mentioned their families renting out their slaves for the months after harvest to rich slaveholders who would transport them to the mines, work them, and send them back before planting. Apparently, a lot didn’t come back, and most families would only rent out their slaves that way if they desperately needed the money.
Around the hills beyond the mines was a ring of wooden towers. The area inside was too vast to enclose with a fence, but the land had been cleared of timber. Any escaping slave would have to cross a great deal of open ground. Each wooden tower had a small complement of guards, horses, and several slave-hunting mastiffs.
A small town called Thorikos sat below the mines on the river. Here, the ore was loaded onto barges, food was brought in from the surrounding countryside, trade was conducted between slaveholders, medical treatment and tools were sold, and disputes were adjudicated. Thorikos was mostly empty, though. Everyone who could flee had. Left behind were only an old assemblyman and those citizens too old or ill to make the trip. Liv wondered at the cowardice of their families. Who would leave his mother to an advancing army? War brings out the worst in many, and the best in few.
There was no battle. When the overlords of the mine saw the forces arrayed against them, they knew it would be suicide. The soldiers stationed at Laurion were guards who kept the slaves in and captured those who escaped, not disciplined fighting men. They had only half a dozen drafters, none of them women skilled in battle. All those had been withdrawn to Idoss.
The assemblyman met the Color Prince outside of town. He looked quite frightened by the sight of the prince. Liv had forgotten how overwhelming he was at first. But the old man surrendered gracefully and begged for mercy.
The Color Prince granted it. He swore no one would be killed or accosted, that nothing would be stolen except food and tools.
And he was true to his word, though it caused grumbling. It would have been harder, Liv realized, if the army had experienced any privation. Since their food stores were still well stocked and no one had yet died in claiming plunder, it was far easier to ask the army to go without.
The prince took great care in how he seized the mines themselves. He sent soldiers to circle through the hills to capture each wooden watchtower to keep the slaves from escaping in the chaos. If he really did mean to free the slaves as he’d claimed, he meant to do it at his own pace, in his own way.
And so it was. Koios White Oak loved a spectacle. As the evening sun set the sky alight with fire, he spoke to the thirty thousand gathered slaves. All would be released immediately as soon as they listened to his few, poor words. He would clothe and feed them all tonight. They were free to go wherever they pleased so long as they didn’t steal from his people or join the Chromeria against them. Or, he said, they could march with him, and take equal shares of the plunder with the rest of his soldiers, and exact vengeance, and perhaps make enough to start a life, to earn a plot of land if they wished to farm or a grant of money if they wished to live in the cities. They had ten days to decide, but they had to decide before he assaulted Idoss. If they chose to march with the army, they would be choosing to live by the army’s rules. But it was their own choice, freely given, and they would from this day never be slaves again.
With his own hands, he struck the chains off an old slave’s hands.
It was a huge gamble, and the next day it looked like it was one that had failed spectacularly. The slaves sent to the silver mines weren’t the best and most temperate men. They were the captured pirates, the violent, the disobedient, the lazy, the rebellious. They were the kind of men who hated having rules at all, and only perhaps a tenth showed up for the drills the next morning. The army spent that day training, and only began its march at noon the next day.