The Blinding Knife(259)

It must have been difficult to get the catapults up to the top of the cliffs, or to find materials to build them up there, but there was no way to stop them once they made it there. And if the Blood Robes brought one up, surely they would now bring more. There was no defense against that.

The trebuchet loosed another shot. It looked to Kip like it was nearly random. It was such a long distance that it might take them days to breach the walls—but days of raining death into a city were days of terror for those inside.

The walls of the city still looked whole, though the entire waterfront was burning, and hulks of burned-out ships rested in the shallows everywhere. Apparently the Color Prince’s rented pirates had done good work.

But Gavin obviously didn’t care about the city right now. They pulled in a broad arc, seeing that the army had entirely encircled the city and seized all the towns around it.

“Greens, anyone got a feel yet?” Gavin asked. The sun had fully cleared the horizon now. Musket shots were crackling from the shore, aiming at them, but they were three hundred paces out.

“If anything, it feels weaker here than out—” one of the men started.

“Shit!” Gavin said before he could even finish. “Of course! ‘Most of the times,’ she tells me! Most of the times.” He turned the skimmer sharply back out to sea. Karris made hand signals to the other skimmer.

“What is it? What is it?” Kip asked, and he could tell he was speaking for some of the others, too.

“The bane’s huge. If it’s nearby, but it isn’t here, where is it?” Karris said.

Kip still didn’t understand. Up ahead, he saw the guns of the fort on Ruic Head open up, pillars of black smoke blowing out with every shot. It had to be home to the biggest guns Kip had ever seen. Below, the Chromeria’s fleet had taken a tentative course. They weren’t hugging the north coast closest to the fort, but neither had they gone straight for the middle.

Now, as the guns opened up, cratering the waters around their fleet, the Chromeria’s ships were reacting quickly, tacking to the middle. But instead of the Color Prince shoring up the middle to keep the Chromeria’s ships in range of his guns, they were melting away instead. One Chromeria ship was afire and had lost its mainmast, but the rest were fleeing.

Sure of salvation, the Chromeria’s ships were heading straight for the gap, amazed at their own escape.

The fort’s big guns set half a dozen of the smaller ships aflame, though. Men were screaming, and Kip saw shapes moving through the water faster than they should have been able to, jumping out and hurling luxin. Birds—ironbeaks, no doubt—crowded the air.

But when Kip took his eyes away from the individual stories unfolding before his eyes—the men dying, the fires started, the amazing shots hit, the luxin bent into shapes he’d never seen—he saw that the Color Prince wasn’t even trying to hold the center. No ships were rushing to shore up the defenses there.

And Kip was feeling wild. What the hell?

It was getting harder to think strategically. Kip wanted to kill, he wanted to run, he wanted to move—and though he was flying at greater speeds than most men know in their whole lives, it wasn’t enough. He wanted to move like this as his own master, under only his own control.

What had Karris said? “If it isn’t here”?

It is here.

“The bane float,” Gavin said. “Most of the times!”

As soon as Kip realized was that meant, he saw that everyone else had already figured it out. Gavin had turned the skimmer toward the middle of the strait. There, lost among the fires coming from each shore, were a dozen rowboats—boats filled with the Color Prince’s drafters and wights.

“Split!” Gavin said. “Kill them before they can finish!”

Finish what?

The skimmer split into its component parts—six sea chariots and the central skimmer, leaving Kip with Gavin and Karris, who were each manning one of the reeds. Kip took off his sub-red spectacles with one hand and tucked them into their case, but the skipping of the skimmer was so jarring that instead of drawing another pair to ready himself for the fight, he had to use both hands to grip the railing.

The snap of muskets firing sounded in Kip’s ears and a torrent of every color of luxin flew between the sea chariots and rowboats. Half the drafters in the boats seemed to be there solely to defend the others, and Kip saw massive shields of green luxin springing up around every one of them, far more powerful than the drafters should have been able to make. Fire and luxin and even musket balls were absorbed easily. The other men on the boats were heaving at great green chains that disappeared into the depths below them, and even as Kip watched, something seemed to give. First one crewman fell down and the tight chains suddenly went slack, and then another and another.