The Blinding Knife(36)

The seawall would actually be three seawalls, with two wide gaps: one for ships coming into the bay, and one for ships leaving. The channels through the coral that led to the openings zigzagged, the turns marked by buoys. If they came under threat of attack, the locals could remove the buoys. It was going to be rough work, Gavin thought. He’d learned some things from building Brightwater Wall, but there he’d also had thousands of workers and dozens of drafters to help him.

Lovely that I made such a defensible refuge for the Color Prince.

Well, second time’s the charm. He would leave this for the people of Tyrea—now his people—and he would do a few other things to give them a head start on establishing a city. Then he would leave.

They had a small campfire, and Karris cooked some fish she’d snared while Gavin slept. She woke him and they ate together.

“Sorry,” he said, “I should have helped with dinner.”

She looked at him like he was being stupid. “You’re making the Ninth Wonder of the World this week; I can make dinner.”

“It’s not really fair, is it?” Gavin said. “I couldn’t do this without you, but it’ll be the Thing Gavin Built, just like Brightwater Wall was.”

She shook her head. “You’re a mystery to me, Lord Prism.”

He didn’t remember falling asleep, but when he woke in the middle of the night, there was a blanket over him. He saw Karris in the low light of the fire, watching the darkness. He felt an immense gratitude toward her. She’d worked hard all day long, too, and now she was staying up all night.

Her back was to him and to the fire, maintaining her night vision, of course. Gavin and most sub-reds could control their eyes well enough to attain full night vision quickly, but Karris didn’t like to lose even a few seconds of night vision.

Gavin sat up and was right on the edge of calling out to tell her he would take the next watch when he saw her shoulders shake.

Not a shiver. She was crying. Gavin hadn’t seen Karris cry in years.

He knew she wouldn’t be pleased to find out he’d noticed, but he stood and put his hands on her shoulders. She tensed.

“I’ll take this watch,” he said gently.

“Don’t, Gavin,” she said. Her voice was raw, right at the edge.

Don’t what? Don’t touch her? Don’t say anything? Don’t leave?

“Today was Tavos’s birthday,” she said, struggling to get the words out clearly. “I almost didn’t even remember.” Tavos, her brother. He’d died in the fire. He’d been a terrible person, violent, unstable, one of the boys whose jeering had made Dazen believe that if he didn’t fight back that night, he would be killed. But Karris hadn’t seen that, had maybe never seen that side of her brother. Even if she had, he’d still been her brother. “I just miss them all so much. Koios…” She sounded like she wanted to say more, but couldn’t.

Koios had been her favorite brother. He was the only one Gavin regretted killing. The only halfway decent person among them.

And then she did weep. She turned to him, and he held her. He said nothing, still not certain he wasn’t dreaming the whole thing, knowing only that if he said anything, he would say the wrong thing.

Bewildered as he might be, sometimes a man’s highest calling is simply to stand, and hug.





Chapter 19




In his dream, Kip was a green wight, chasing down screaming children and murdering them with blade and fire. He woke alternately furious, weepy, and bloodthirsty, the rage from those phantasms sometimes still clinging to him.

When he got up to go urinate in the middle of the night, a Blackguard accompanied him. It was a man Kip had never met, and he said nothing. Merely walked with Kip, and held him back for a moment while he checked that there were no assassins in the toilet. Ridiculous.

It was a relief to get out of bed in the morning, though Kip didn’t feel rested in the slightest. Several older, second-year students came and herded the new students toward the dining hall.

Kip was ravenous, but he got no more food than anyone else in the serving line. He reached the end of the line in dread. Tables were laid out in long rows, and students clumped together with friends.

Which I don’t have.

In fact, Kip had quite the opposite. He caught sight of Elio, whose arm was wrapped in thick bandages and hung in a sling. The boy was talking with his friends when he saw Kip. He shut up instantly and blanched.

I should go over there. I should go and sit with them, disarm them with small talk, pretend nothing happened, but assert my right to sit with the toughest boys in the class.

But he didn’t have it in him.

It was only then that he realized there was no Blackguard following him this morning. He looked around at the lines of students, tables, food, servants, and slaves. No Blackguards anywhere. For some reason, it took what little, tottering confidence he had and knocked it over with a breath. They’d seen what he’d done. They’d decided he wasn’t worth protecting.