The Black Prism(240)

“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.