“Hello, brother,” Gavin said.
Chapter 35
“Now this,” Ironfist said, “is how you should be introduced to the Chromeria. High tide and dawn.” He’d arrived before dawn, waking Kip to the bewildered feeling of not knowing if it was morning or night. Kip had only slowly been able to get his bearings as the commander hustled him through the less-crowded streets, finally cresting this hill. “They call it the Glass Lily,” Ironfist said. “A rather softer name than it deserves, but then steel isn’t transparent, is it?”
As they crested the hill, on first glance, the Chromeria did look something like a flower. Six towers in a hexagon surrounded one central tower. Because Little Jasper rose in altitude from south to north, the towers farther away from Kip rose higher, though all were the same height from base to tip. And each tower was completely transparent on its south side. Completing the odd flower imagery was the bridge, if it could be called a bridge.
The bridge crossing the ocean between Big Jasper and Little Jasper was green, like a flower’s stem, heading right to the flaring towers and the bulbous walls that actually hung past vertical. But not only was the bridge green, it wasn’t supported by anything. It lay at the surface of the water. It wasn’t floating, because it didn’t move with the waves, and the sea was choppy on one side of it and much calmer on the other.
“Why green?” Kip asked, trying to kick his brain into working. Wasn’t green flexible?
“It’s blue reinforced with yellow. It only looks green,” Ironfist said, resuming his walk toward the bridge. Kip hurried to keep up, having difficulty gawking and walking at the same time, all tiredness fled.
“Yellow?” Kip asked. “How does that work? The Pr—erm, my uncle hasn’t told me anything about yellow.”
Ironfist looked at Kip, his gaze heavy as a sledge. He didn’t answer, not even when Kip shut up and walked quietly alongside him, looking expectantly up at the big man but not bothering him.
Finally, Ironfist glanced at Kip. “Do I look like a magister to you?”
“Just figured that you’re not much good as a fighter without your blue spectacles,” Kip said. Stop, you moron! Don’t—“So we might as well put you to some use.”
The Blackguard commander’s head snapped toward Kip. Kip swallowed. You deserve the crushed skull you’re about to get, Kip. You’re begging for it.
Then a small, unwilling smile crept over the commander’s face. He guffawed. “When Orholam hands out the brains, the folks at the front of that line have to go to the back of the common sense line, huh?”
“What?” Kip asked. “Oh.”
He waited patiently, thinking that his joke would buy him an answer about yellow luxin, but Ironfist ignored him. The perverse little grin on his face told Kip that he knew Kip was waiting for an answer and was only holding his tongue because he didn’t want to start another topic. But Ironfist wasn’t going to give him the pleasure of winning an answer. Pudgy force, meet immovable mass.
Within minutes, though, they had made their way onto the Lily’s Stem—or rather, into it—and Kip forgot whatever it was that he had asked. The bridge was fully enclosed, albeit with blue luxin so thin it was almost as colorless as glass. But beneath their feet, the bridge actually glowed. Kip shot a look at Ironfist.
“No matter how often you look at me, I’m still not going to be a magister,” the big man said.
“How about a guide?”
“Nope.”
“A polite host?”
“Uh-uh.”
A jackass? Kip’s mouth actually opened to say it when he noticed again how thickly muscular Ironfist’s arms were. He closed his open mouth and scowled.
“You were going to say something?” Ironfist asked.
“Your name,” Kip said. “Is that common, among Parians?”
“Ironfist? Far as I know, I’m the only one.”
“That isn’t what I—” Oh, he was teasing.
Ironfist smirked. “You mean to take a name that describes us? Very common. Some use our old tongue, but the coastal folk—my people—use words that outsiders can understand. But the Ilytians do it too. To a lesser extent, the whole Chromeria does it. Gavin Guile is almost never called Emperor Guile or Prism Guile. He’s just the Prism. Orea Pullawr is just the White. A lot of people think that meaningless names are the true puzzle.”
“Meaningless names. You mean like Kip?”
Ironfist cocked an eyebrow. Shrugged.
Thanks a lot.
The crowds heading to Little Jasper for the day didn’t even seem to notice the wonder beneath their feet. The bridge was perhaps twenty paces wide and three hundred long from shore to shore. The surface was lightly textured, but that barely interfered with its transparency, aside from some dirt. Kip could see the water right under his feet, not even a foot away, swelling up with every wave and gapping in between them. They were on the side of the bridge with heavy seas, too—apparently here traffic traveled on the right, unlike at home, so waves crashed into the luxin right next to Kip. After having been pulled in and pounded by those same waves, it made him more than a little nervous. No one else seemed to even notice it.