The Black Prism(46)

The panic must have been clear on Kip’s face, because Gavin chuckled. “It doesn’t matter. You just go until you’re too tired, or if we hit rapids or bandits. I’m going to rest for a bit.” Gavin sat in Kip’s place and tore into the remains of the chicken and bread. He watched as Kip struggled with getting the scull up to a halfway decent pace. Kip turned a time or two—it actually was pretty simple—and looked at Gavin to see if he approved, but the Prism was already asleep.

The quarter moon was straight overhead as night fell and Kip began walking. Even driven only by Kip’s walking, the scull was fast. Gavin had narrowed the hull even further when Karris had left, so the boat seemed more to hover over the water than plow through it. For the first few minutes, Kip was gripped with anxiety. Every turn he was sure they would confront bandits and the Prism wouldn’t awaken. But soon he fell into the rhythms of the boat, the waves, and the night.

An owl was hooting in the distance, and little bats were swooping and diving, eating the insects that flew high above the water while trout leapt to eat those that flew too low. The scull startled a heron, which flew off into the night on great blue wings.

Gradually, the peace of the night seeped into Kip. The surface of the river became as smooth as a mirror, and the stars shone in it. He saw ducks huddled on the shore, their heads tucked into their wings. And then he looked once more at the man who was supposedly his father.

Gavin Guile was a muscular man, broad-shouldered but as slender as Kip was fat. Kip searched for any resemblance at all, some hint that this could be true. Gavin was lighter-skinned; he looked like a mix between a Ruthgari, who had green or brown eyes, dark hair, and olive skin, and a Blood Forester, with their cornflower blue eyes and flaming red hair and deathly pale skin. Gavin’s hair was the color of burnished copper, and his eyes, of course, were those of a Prism. When he was drafting they looked whatever color he was using at the moment, and could change in an instant. When he wasn’t drafting, Gavin’s eyes shimmered as if they were prisms themselves, every little twitch sending a cascade of new colors through his irises. They were the most disconcerting eyes Kip had ever seen. They were eyes to make satraps squirm and queens faint. The eyes of Orholam’s Chosen.

Kip’s eyes were plain blue, which did nothing for him except mark him as a crossbreed. Maybe some Blood Forester lineage. Like most peoples, Tyreans had dark eyes. Kip’s hair was dark as a Tyrean’s, but tightly curled like a Parian’s or an Ilytian’s, rather than straight or wavy. Enough to mark him a freak, but nowhere near enough to mark him this man’s son. Of course, his mother hadn’t had the look of a Tyrean either, which just complicated things. Darker than either, with kinky hair and hazel eyes. Kip tried to imagine what the child of his mother and this man might look like, but he couldn’t do it. Blend enough mutts, and who knows what you’ll get? Maybe if he weren’t so fat he might see it. Maybe it was simply a cruel trick. A lie.

The Prism. The Prism himself? How could such a man be Kip’s father? He’d said he hadn’t known Kip even existed. How could that happen?

The answer seemed pretty obvious. It had been during the war. Gavin’s army had met Dazen’s not far from Rekton. So as they’d come through town, Gavin had met Lina. He was the Prism, heading to what might be his death. She was a young, pretty girl whose town had been destroyed. She’d shared his bed. Then he’d gone on to kill his brother—perhaps the very next day—and in the aftermath of the war and the reconstruction and the work of putting down the rest of the rebellion and rebuilding alliances and administering the peace, he’d probably never thought of her again. Even if he had, Tyrea wasn’t exactly the friendliest or safest of places for the Prism back then. It had sided with Dazen, the evil brother, and been treated cruelly as a result.

Or maybe Gavin had raped Lina. But that didn’t make sense. Why would a rapist claim Kip? Especially because it obviously cost Gavin a lot to do so.

Kip could imagine his mother, pregnant, unmarried, left in the devastation that was Rekton. Of course she’d want to escape. Kip would have been her one hope. What would she have done? Travel, alone, to Garriston, where the victors were administering Tyrea? He could imagine that well enough. His mother, presenting herself to some governor, demanding to see Gavin Guile because she bore his bastard. She’d have been lucky if she got as far as a governor with that tale. So she’d been turned away, her dreams of anything good or easy in her life dashed.

Whenever she looked at Kip, she didn’t see her own bad choices, she saw Gavin’s “betrayal” and her disappointment. Kip was a dream dashed.