Green was all wildness, freedom. That logical part of Dazen that had basked in blue’s orderliness knew that sucking up pure wildness while locked up in this luxin cage would lead to madness. Within days he’d claw out his own throat. Pure wildness, here, would be death. He would finally accomplish his brother’s objective for him.
He needed to be patient. He needed to think, and thinking was hard right now. He examined his body slowly, carefully. His hands and knees were lacerated from his crawl through the hellstone tunnel. The bumps and bruises from his fall through the trapdoor and into this cell he could ignore. They were painful, but inconsequential. Most worrisome was the inflamed, infected slash across his chest. It nauseated him just looking at it, oozing pus and promises of death.
Worst was the fever, corrupting his very blood, making him stupid, irrational, sapping his will.
But Dazen had escaped the blue prison, and that prison had changed him. His brother had crafted these prisons quickly, and probably put most of his efforts into that first, blue one. Every prison had a flaw.
The blue prison had made him the perfect man to find it. Death or freedom.
In his reflective green wall, the dead man said, “You taking bets?”
Chapter 3
Gavin sucked in light to start making his rowing apparatus. Unthinking, he tried to draft blue. While brittle, blue’s stiff, slick, smooth structure made it ideal for parts that didn’t undergo sideways stresses. For a futile moment, Gavin tried to force it, again. He was a Prism made flesh; alone out of all drafters, he could split light within himself. The blue was there—he knew it was there, and maybe knowing it was there, even though he couldn’t see, might be enough.
For Orholam’s sake, if you could find your chamber pot in the middle of the night and, despite that you couldn’t see it, the damned thing was still there, why couldn’t this be the same?
Nothing. No rush of harmonious logic, no cool rationality, no stained blue skin, no drafting whatsoever. For the first time since he was a boy, he felt helpless. Like a natural man. Like a peasant.
Gavin screamed at his helplessness. It was too late for the oars anyway. That son of a bitch was swimming too fast.
He drafted the scoops and the reeds. Blue worked better to make the jets for a skimmer, but naturally flexible green could serve if he made it thick enough. The rough green luxin was heavier and created more drag against the water, so he was slower, but he didn’t have the time or attention to make it from yellow. Precious seconds passed while he prepared his skimmer.
Then the scoops were in hand and he began throwing luxin down into the jets, blasting air and water out the back of his little craft and propelling himself forward. He leaned far forward, shoulders knotting with the effort; then, as he picked up speed, the effort eased. Soon his craft was hissing across the waves.
The fleet arose in the distance, the sails of the tallest ships first. But at Gavin’s speed, it wasn’t long before he could see all of them. There were hundreds of ships now: from sailing dinghies to galleasses to the square-rigged three-masted ship of the line with forty-eight guns that Gavin had taken from the Ruthgari governor to be his flagship. They’d left Garriston with over a hundred ships, but hundreds more that had gotten out earlier had joined them within days for protection from the pirates who lay thick in these waters. Last, he saw the great luxin barges, barely seaworthy. He himself had created those four great open boats to hold as many refugees as possible. If he hadn’t, thousands of people would have died.
And now they would die regardless, if Gavin didn’t turn the sea demon.
As he sped closer, he caught sight of the sea demon again, a hump cresting six feet out of the water. Its skin was still placidly luminous, and by some good fortune it wasn’t actually cutting straight toward the fleet. Its path would take it perhaps a thousand paces in front of the lead ship.
Of course, the ships themselves were plowing slow furrows forward, closing that gap, but the sea demon was moving so quickly, Gavin dared to hope that it wouldn’t matter. He had no idea how keen the sea demon’s senses were, but if it kept going in the same direction, they might well make it.
Gavin couldn’t take his hands away from the skimmer’s jets without losing precious speed, and he didn’t know how he would deliver a signal that said, “Don’t Do Anything Stupid!” to the whole fleet at once even if he did. He followed directly behind the sea demon, closer now.
He’d been wrong; the sea demon was going to cut perhaps five hundred paces from the lead ship. A bad estimate, or was the creature turning toward the fleet?
Gavin could see lookouts in the crow’s nests waving their hands violently to those on the decks below them. Doubtless shouting, though Gavin was too far away to hear them. He sped closer, saw men running on the decks.