The Broken Eye
Page 210

Holding the card in his left hand, he drew the colors into his right and touched the five points. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.
“Got it,” he said.
He looked up, wondering if any of them would still be alive, if he had done it in time.
“Huh?” Ferkudi asked.
Kip was looking down at his left wrist. The tattoo was back, but it was already fading, as if its colors were connected to the colors he drafted. He looked up. “What do you mean, ‘Huh’?”
“Uh, you didn’t do anything,” Cruxer said.
“What did you see?” Teia asked.
“I … I … I can’t remember,” Kip said.
“What?!” Ben-hadad said. “You mean that was it working? And you don’t remember what it did?”
“Ben, I love you to death, but shut the hell up,” Cruxer said. “Breaker, what do we do?”
“I can’t remember anything—” Kip said.
“We came up here so you could remember nothing?!” Big Leo demanded. He was kind of an asshole when he was in pain.
“It’s outside of time, Big Leo,” Kip said. “It’s—I can’t remember anything right now. But I’ll remember it in the future, I think. Except, except one thing. We have to go upstairs.”
“There is no upstairs. Except the roof,” Cruxer said. “Oh. In for a den, in for a danar. Up to the roof!”
With Ferkudi and Cruxer helping Ben-hadad, they piled out of the room, past the Blackguards, who looked after them, wondering. They went out the door to the stairs up to the rooftop.
“Well, at least those Lightguards are gone,” Big Leo said. “Of course, there’s nothing else up here, either.”
“Big Leo, Winsen, Ferkudi, you guard the door,” Cruxer said. “Kip? Please, please, please tell me you’ve got something.”
“It’s…” Kip squeezed his eyes shut. There had been something. It was about this space. He could almost taste the memories. He knew, somehow, that he had seen all of the White’s life, every decision, every regret, every maneuver, and yet … he couldn’t grab on to it.
Oh, come on! What’s the point in having powers if they don’t come through when you need them?
“Teia,” Kip said. “There’s something here. I’m sure of it.”
“Something? Like, what? Like the entrance to her secret escape tunnel?” Teia asked. “Kip, I don’t think there’s room up here for a tunnel entrance.”
“Teia, I don’t know!”
“It was a tunnel,” Ferkudi said, suddenly excited. “That my parents talked about. I mean, it was a tunnel under the sea. Out to Cannon Island. Tunnel.” He pointed down, as if they weren’t grasping an obvious point. “But, but, I don’t think you’d start a tunnel from up here. Maybe in the basement?”
“Ferk, did you miss the whole convers— You know what? Never mind,” Kip said.
Teia was holding a hand up against the sun, trying to shield her eyes as she flared them open to paryl width, blinking from the intensity of the light.
There was a shout from inside. It was the Blackguards, but Kip knew they were simply doing their best to give Kip and the Mighty a warning.
“Does the door lock?” Cruxer asked.
Winsen shook his head. “Only from the inside. Anyone have arrows? Shit. Anyone know how to draft arrows?”
No one said anything.
Big Leo, arm still in a brace, leaned his weight against the door. “Please tell me they don’t have muskets,” he said. Still in pain from his broken arm, but resigned now.
Resigned to die well. This is what I’ve brought my friends to.
“Breaker,” Teia said. “Your spectacles. Try them. Try them all.”
Kip put on his sub-red spectacles. They were still a wonder, overlaying all the detail of sub-red without making him sacrifice the visible spectrum. Possibly the handiwork of Lucidonius himself. But not helpful. He flipped them back into their case and drew the superviolet, again, more helpful than narrowing his eyes to superviolet himself because he could see the spectra overlaid simultaneously. He looked around, not knowing what he was looking for.
The door rattled and jumped as someone tried to fling it open.
They hadn’t expected resistance. They tried again.
“Ignore that!” Teia said. “What about over here?”
At the door, Big Leo crouched down, still keeping his shoulder braced against the door, but as low as he could.
Two shots rang out, and wood splintered at head and shoulder level. If Leo hadn’t moved, he would have been dead.
Winsen pushed a tiny flashbomb through the hole the musket balls had torn.
“Kip!” Teia said. “I see something!”
Kip looked at the spot she was pointing out. There was something there, barely visible in superviolet. It was the shape of a key. Kip pressed it, hard, and it sank.
Text appeared, burning white in the floor at the very edge of the tower. It was in some language Kip didn’t know. “Uh … anyone read this? What is it?” Kip asked the squad.
Cruxer glanced over. “That’s archaic Parian. It says, um, it’s a formal case, um, something like ‘Would ye fly, o White?’” Another key appeared, larger.
“Yes!” Kip said. “That’s it!” There was another key next to the text. He pushed it down with his whole hand.
A panel slid back, and a long lever appeared. Kip looked at Teia, excited.
Wood exploded within a breath of Big Leo’s face. Shrapnel tore his cheek. “What are you waiting for?” he bellowed.
Kip heaved on the lever. He pulled it all the way back until it touched stone. They heard something grate and grind. They all looked around, expecting a hole to appear.
“Where’s the entrance? You think it’s some kind of chute?” Teia asked.
“Uh, there’s a whaddaythingit over here,” Ferkudi said, pointing.
On the inside of one of the crenellations, a bolt had appeared. Wrapped around the eye bolt was woven a steel cable that disappeared into the stones at their feet, which were glowing.
“Don’t stand on it!” Teia said.
“It … it ratchets, the lever,” Ben-hadad said.
“What?” Teia asked.
But Kip got it. He threw the lever forward and pulled it back again.
“Not much time left!” Big Leo shouted.
“Not acceptable!” Cruxer yelled. “Light ’em up!”
Who yells, ‘Not acceptable’?
With each throw of the lever, more steel cable popped out of the ground, slowly crossing the entire diameter of the tower. “What is it doing?” Kip asked. “Where’s the damn hole? There’s got to be some kind of chute, right?”
He heard the sounds of luxin being flung and shouts and musket fire and the wood door disintegrating, but he had time for none of it. His world had shrunk to this duty, this place. The steel cable finally popped fully free of the floor and wrapped over what looked like a pulley on a post at the edge of the tower.
Kip pulled it again and this time it stopped. He pushed the lever and pulled back with no resistance. It was finished, whatever it was. “That’s it!” he said. “What do we got?”