Teia intercepted Kip before he got to the lists. “We’ve got mirror duty, blue tower.”
“What?” Kip asked.
“You weren’t here for bearings week when they show us how things work. You don’t know anything,” Teia said. “So I switched chores with someone. I’ll be on your crew all week.”
“Really?” Kip said. It was a ray of normal piercing his black clouds of utter cluelessness.
He was about to thank her when she said, “No. Don’t.”
“I was going to—”
“I’m not doing it for you. Partners often have to share each other’s punishments. The punishments usually mean you miss class. So if you botch things, it hurts my chances to make it into the Blackguard.”
Great, something else to feel guilty about.
Teia walked him to one of the lifts, where they joined about fifty other students waiting. Teia’s hair wasn’t tied back today and now Kip felt foolish for mistaking her for a boy in the first place. Moron.
He wondered what Liv was doing now. He wondered if she was even still alive. Stupid worry. She was probably murdering people by now. Kip had stood there, on the eve of the Battle of Garriston. He’d heard all of the Color Prince’s lies and known them for what they were: smears and half-truths. High-minded talk used to cloak cowardice.
Magic was hard. It made you a master of the world for a decade or two, and then it mastered you. Drafters went crazy. When vastly powerful people go crazy, they endanger everyone. Killing them wasn’t nice, but it was necessary.
The Color Prince said, “We won’t murder our parents who have served for years!” He meant, “I don’t want to die when it’s my turn. I want all the privileges we’re afforded because of our gifts, but I don’t want to pay the price.” Kip could see that, and Kip was a moron. Why hadn’t Liv?
After a few minutes, Kip and Teia were able to get on the lift with twenty other students.
“We’re lucky,” Teia said. “The mirrors are boring, but when you have to spend all morning on the counterweights and then you go to Blackguard tryouts and you can barely lift your arms? That’s awful.”
“Thanks, tell me about it,” another student said. Kip thought he recognized the boy from the Blackguard class. His name was Ferkudi, maybe? “I’ve got the counterweights all week!”
“We’ll trade you,” Teia said.
“You will?!”
“No,” Teia said. The students laughed.
The lift stopped about halfway up the tower, and almost all the students spilled out to cross the walkways. Kip and Teia went with them. The six outer towers of the Chromeria were connected to the central tower by a series of spindly walkways hanging high up in the air. Kip had crossed one of these bridges before. He knew that they were safe.
After all, the Chromeria wouldn’t put drafters at risk, right?
Kip swallowed and followed. The blue tower was finished with blue luxin cut into facets so that the whole surface gleamed in the sun like a million sapphires. It would have been breathtaking, if Kip had any breath.
“Don’t like heights, huh?” Teia asked after they got across.
“Not my favorite,” Kip admitted.
“This might not be that much fun, then.”
Kip forced a weak smile.
“You have a bad experience or something?” Teia asked. “With heights?”
“Fat assassin lady tried to throw me off the yellow tower,” Kip said.
She looked at him, dubious. “Look, if you don’t like heights, that’s fine. You don’t have to make fun. I was just making conversation.”
Kip opened his mouth. No, he wasn’t going to win this one.
Had they ever figured out who wanted him dead?
If so, no one had ever told him. Which reminded him of his Blackguard escort—there still wasn’t one. It gave Kip the feeling—again—of being tangentially involved in Big Things. Someone tried to kill him; no one explained why. He got a Blackguard escort; the Blackguard escort got taken away, and no one figured to clue Kip in.
Go play in the corner and don’t bother the adults, Kip.
Teia led half a dozen students to the blue tower’s lift and they took that up to the top. There was a big, sturdy door and a nice hallway.
“Other half of the top floor is for satrapahs and nobles and religious festivals,” Teia said. “On Sun Day, this whole floor rotates so that their half faces the sun, rather than ours.”
Beyond the sturdy door was a room full of gears and pulleys and ropes and sand clocks and bells, with enormous windows. It was so bright that Kip was momentarily blinded. Teia handed him a pair of large round spectacles with darkened lenses. Once he put them on, he was able to see again.