The Black Prism(191)

When she got out of the drafters’ area, she put on her yellow spectacles. No one bothered her. She arrived at the place she and Kip had agreed to meet just in time, but he wasn’t there. He never came.

The next day, she learned a heavy boy with Tyrean skin and blue eyes had been attacked and had killed five men—or ten or twenty, or five women too, depending on the rumor—and then thrown fire into the air. He’d been taken away by drafters and Mirrormen. Despite the impossibilities—Kip couldn’t draft sub-red—her intuition confirmed it. It had been Kip. She was sure. Someone had drafted fire, someone else had killed those people, and Kip had been taken.

She searched for him for two days. She found nothing.





Chapter 72





As the sun dragged its feet toward the horizon, Gavin gave the signal, and the teamsters’ whips cracked. The draft horses surged forward. Their leads drew taut, and the ropes connected to the great yellow luxin supports strained for a moment. Then the supports fell, the great straining mass of the horses snatching them away from the dropping wall.

The final layer of yellow luxin hit the ground with a boom, shaking the earth. Gavin quickly moved to inspect that everything had gone according to plan.

“One league out!” Corvan called. He was standing on top of the wall, looking out toward King Garadul’s vast army.

“Shit!”

“Here, Lord Prism!” one of the engineers called.

Gavin hurried over. The last of many big problems he’d run into in crafting a wall almost entirely of yellow luxin was that all the luxin had to be sealed. The seal was always the weakest point. If you could melt through that one area—no mean feat, but still—the whole structure would unravel. That his wall was made in sections just meant that each section had multiple seals. If any section failed, it would be catastrophic—an entire section of wall, fifty paces across, would splash into liquid light in moments.

It was probably the reason no one before Gavin had been idiot enough to make an entire wall of yellow luxin.

The solution had been simplicity itself: two layers of luxin, each protecting the other, the seals to the inside. That part was common enough among drafters, but the seal was always the last thing you touched. So you couldn’t really tuck it inside, not on something as big as a wall. You could protect one seal by covering it with more luxin and sealing that, but one seal would always be external. Most drafters would have covered the seal and covered that seal and covered that one and left it at that.

It wasn’t good enough for Gavin. He’d built the entire second layer of the wall up on supports. Then he’d built each side, sealing them on the inside. When the draft horses pulled out the supports and the second layer of wall fell into place, it left a structure where the seals—for the first time that Gavin had ever heard of—were truly protected, not just by yellow luxin, but by the vast weight of the wall itself. And as each section locked to the next, it became more and more difficult for anyone to ever lift the wall to access the seals.

Gavin was building something monumental, something pure, and it felt great. This edifice would stand long after he was dead. There weren’t many men who could claim the same. The locals were already calling it Brightwater Wall.

Hurrying over to the engineer who’d called out, Gavin found that one of the supports hadn’t been pulled all the way free. The wall had dropped on it, pounding the two-pace-wide support almost halfway into the earth, and keeping the wall from fitting the next section perfectly.

“Three minutes until our artillery will be in place!” Corvan called down.

Sonuvabitch! Gavin dropped on his knees next to the broad yellow support and brushed dirt away hurriedly. The support, unlike the wall sections, was sealed right at the surface for just this eventuality. Right… there! Gavin sent some sub-red into the seal and the entire support dissolved, the yellow luxin abruptly liquid. The wall settled with a deep rumble.

Gavin had made the tolerances too tight. He should have made those joints able to hook together even if they weren’t so well aligned. The tight joints gave the wall more strength and would keep soldiers inside dry even during rainstorms, but still.

Taking his attention off the wall for the first time in hours—it felt like days, though it was only early evening—he looked to the people assembled, looking for who he needed.

There were thousands assembled. Most of the people of Garriston wanted to see the wall being built. Vendors had set up their wagons and stalls. Minstrels wandered through, playing and prodding people for coins. Soldiers kept avenues clear and began ferrying gear and powder and ropes and shot for cannons and firewood for furnaces and additional armor and arrows and muskets. Others operated the cranes as soon as the second layer settled in place. Drafters were pouring through the inside of the wall, sealing any cracks, looking for flaws that they could fix, or larger ones that needed Gavin’s hand. The Blackguards—nearly a hundred of them—also stood nearby.