The Broken Eye
Page 57

Throwing off the covers, he reached from his bed to where his child-sized sword had fallen, trying to pick it up without stepping out of bed. It was too far away. He took his blanket and threw it over the sword, holding on to one edge. He pulled it toward himself, and it dragged the sword a little. In three more tries, he had it.
Swallowing, he drew the sword out of the scabbard. He heard glass break. It sounded like it came from outside, but he knew that was a trick of how the Guile home was laid out. The doors were huge, thick. Breaking glass could only mean that one of the other windows had been smashed down the hall. Sevastian’s room!
Dazen forgot his fear and jumped out of bed.
He threw his door open and ran. The hallway stretched longer and longer. He reached a full sprint, but the walls deformed. He was getting shorter and shorter, fading, fading.
When he reached Sevastian’s door, his hand passed through the latch. He couldn’t touch anything. Couldn’t change anything. His hand passed through the wood, too.
He threw himself at the door—through the door.
The blue wight snarled, standing over Sevastian’s bed, all blue skin and red blood. It jumped up to the window and disappeared into the night. Dazen only saw his little brother’s bloodied, broken body. He screamed. The smell of blood washed over him as he picked up Sevastian.
He was dead. The little boy had been pierced, a sword stroke or a spear thrust right in the middle of his chest. Little Dazen, wailing inconsolably, had no space for any other thought, but the dreamer saw more than he remembered. That sword or spear thrust had hit Sevastian high in the chest and come out the middle of his back. Sevastian had stood to confront the intruder, and been slain where he stood. A single, sure stroke. Good-hearted little Sevastian hadn’t even had time to dodge or fight, hadn’t believed someone would come to murder him in the night.
His own hands smearing blood on Sevastian’s perfect, angelic face, Dazen wailed. Lying there, eyes closed, Sevastian could have been sleeping. Dazen shook him.
“Wake up! Wake up!”
Gavin woke to Orholam shaking him.
It took Gavin long moments for rocking of the ship and the hardness of the wood under his back to sink in. One nightmare to another.
“These are the dreams you send me, Orholam?” he demanded. “Go to hell!”
Chapter 30
“Sailing galley. Ilytian canvas,” Leonus said.
Gavin thought it was horrible news, but the slaves murmured like it was a good thing. “What’s that mean?” he asked.
“Ilytian canvas, uh, uh, means Ilytian ship, uh, most like. Fuck. Fuck,” Fukkelot said.
“Don’t the Ilytians have the best cannons?” Gavin asked.
“Don’t matter,” Bugs said, across the aisle from Gavin. The man had some sort of condition, made his eyes bulge. It was hard to look at him, even in shades of gray. “Treat their slaves worse than they treat their dogs. Starve ’em, beat ’em so bad they can’t barely row. Ilytian galley can’t run as fast, can’t turn as fast as we can. Not by a long sight.”
It made sense, Gavin supposed. Ilytians captured more slaves than anyone, refused to be bound by the laws on the taking of slaves that the Chromeria imposed on the other six satrapies. If slaves were cheap, there was no need to take special care of them. The dead could be easily replaced. Ilytians were real bastards.
Gunner was Ilytian.
Gavin had found the man amusing, before he was under his power. Thought it was funny to play with Gunner’s mind by stoppering the man’s musket rather than killing him back when he sank his ship near Garriston. If he’d killed him, he wouldn’t be here now.
Funny how the mind can wander, even when rowing. Gavin’s frequently bloodied hands were wrapped now in cotton. He had a new empathy for Kip, who’d burned his left hand falling into a fire before the Battle of Garriston. His hands were agony every day. He’d thought he had a man’s hands before, rough and callused. He’d given himself too much credit.
“Win or die,” Leonus shouted.
The slaves didn’t shout the response. They hated Leonus.
“You worthless shit sacks! You shout back, or I’ll keelhaul every last one of you! Boy!” he shouted to the young man who had taken his old job as foreman’s second. “Whip that line. Now!”
The boy hesitated.
“Now!”
The boy lashed the whip across the bare backs of one of the lower rows. They cried out in pain. More than necessary, Gavin thought, but the boy hadn’t hit them as hard as Leonus liked.
“Win or die!” Leonus shouted.
“Row to hell!” the slaves replied.
“Never slack!”
“Row to hell!”
“Scratch the back of Shadow Jack!” Leonus shouted.
“Row to hell!”
“Row right back!” he shouted.
The drums began pounding out their tempo, and Leonus disappeared to the next slave deck.
“Don’t think I’m going to make it through this one,” Nine said.
“You never think you’re going to make it through, Itchy.”
“This time’s different. I can feel it.”
As before, with scores of men sweating in the tight confines of the rowing deck, it got hot fast. It was a bright, calm day outside, which meant this would be a clean, simple race to the death.
The drums pounded their steady tempo, and Gavin rowed. And rowed. And rowed. Twenty minutes. The boy went around and gave them water. At least he didn’t smash their lips with the long-handled cup. Not on purpose, anyway. Thirty minutes.
Finally, Leonus poked his ugly head belowdecks. “Drums, corso!”
The drums picked up, and Gavin settled into the new tempo happily. Happily. How strange was that? There was something oddly freeing about having no decisions to make. Go when they say go. Stop when they say stop. Eat when they say eat. Avoid the lash. Take your double serving of strongwine.
What am I going to do if I get free anyway, Karris? I can’t draft anymore. Will you still love me when you find out I’m not what I was?
He could imagine the looks in people’s eyes, the pity. He had been respected, loved, and feared in every corner of the Seven Satrapies, but the foundation of his power had always been his drafting. He’d been so much better than everyone else—so effortlessly good—that he’d become nothing else. He wasn’t a man; he was a drafter. You couldn’t think about Gavin without knowing he was the Prism, that he was drafting. That he was the best. The best now, probably the best in hundreds of years. Without that, he was … what?
An arrogant figurehead who ritually murdered scores of drafters every year. A hothead who threw young women off his balcony when they displeased him. And got away with it.
Other drafters made the transition from magical power to political power with no problem. The White had done it gracefully, his father less so. But Gavin? It wasn’t in him. And it was one thing to stop drafting because you believed you still had service to give; it was quite another to not be able to. A man might take an oath of celibacy and be respected; a man castrated was at best pitied.
And there was no hiding the loss. By this Sun Day, it would be over, for good or ill. He would either draft while performing the Sun Day rituals, or fail to do so, or if he didn’t make it back to the Chromeria by then, someone else would be named Prism. It was that simple. How far away was that now? Four months?