The Blinding Knife(40)

Weary students who’d pulled the dawn shift got up from their chairs and handed off thick coats to the next shift. Some of them muttered instructions about the states of certain gears or ropes. A few traded jokes. Kip was lost.

Eventually, they got sorted. Kip and Teia took their coats and both took a chair. There were six stations, two students per station, two chairs, four sand clocks, four bells, one giant mirror per station that was bigger across than Kip was tall, and three smaller mirrors.

“The whole Chromeria rotates over the course of the day so that it’s always facing the sun more or less directly,” Teia said. “So mostly we only have to move the mirrors up and down as the sun rises. First rule, never touch the mirrors with your hands. If there’s a problem, we summon the lens grinders. They’re the best in the world, and they get furious if they find handprints on their mirrors.”

But as impressive as the mirrors and pulleys were, they weren’t what seized Kip’s attention. There were half a dozen massive holes in the floor: one huge central hole, with six mirrors above it, and then numerous smaller ones.

“Lightwells,” Teia said. “So that drafters in the tower below us will always have enough light available, no matter if they’re on the dark side of the tower, or if it’s early or late in the day. Take a peek over the side.”

So every team used their big mirror to send light to another big mirror over the central hole, where other mirrors shot the light downward.

Kip poked his head over the side. The walls of the hole were perfectly sheer, covered in silver polished to a mirror sheen, and it plunged on forever. In the glare of the gathered sunlight, he couldn’t even see the bottom.

As he was watching, about four floors down, a section of the wall opened and a mirror three feet across popped out into the light stream. Kip saw that farther down, other mirrors were similarly gathering light, offset from each other by careful degrees so that mirrors above wouldn’t block light to the mirrors below.

Kip stepped back, swallowing. It was mind-blowing, genius—and there was no railing to keep the mirror-tenders from falling straight down.

A tiny bell rang, startling him. Teia turned over the sand timer connected to the bell and grabbed a rope over one of the smaller side mirrors. She pulled a ratcheting lever, which moved the mirror by some tiny degree.

The smaller mirrors fed light to smaller holes. “Special laboratories, or polychromes’ or Colors’ chambers,” Teia answered Kip’s unspoken question. “There’s only so many private lightwells in each tower, so you have to be pretty important to get your own. But our work is pretty mindless. Once you get used to it, anyway. We don’t calibrate anything. Mirror slaves do that, setting things every dawn, and then we just move the ropes so much every time a bell goes off. Teams of two so we stay awake, and in case we have to open the windows, and for the zenith switchover.”

“Sure. Zenith switchover,” Kip said, having no idea what she was talking about.

The work seemed complicated at first, but pretty soon Teia was letting Kip pull the levers and turn the sand timers.

“Anyone ever fall down the holes?” Kip asked.

“A boy fell down one of the smaller lightwells last year. It was four floors down to the Blue’s mirror. Broke his back. Lived for six months. A few years ago, it’s said some boys fought up here, and one pushed the other one into the great well. Died instantly. The killer swore it was on accident. They didn’t believe him.”

“What’d they do?” Kip asked.

“Orholam’s Glare.”

Kip’s face apparently said it for him: I have no idea what you’re talking about. Again.

“There’s a pillar at the base of the bridge on Big Jasper. You know the Thousand Stars?”

The mirror towers all over the city. “Sure.”

“Right, all those mirrors, plus all the mirrors on Chromeria towers, are all focused on that one point. They put the condemned at the focal point at noon. Drafter’s got a choice then. You can cook to death like an ant under a glass, or you can draft. If you draft, it’s like pushing too much water through a straw. You burst.”

“That sounds… unspeakably awful,” Kip said.

“It’s not supposed to be fun. Come on, it’s time for lecture. You think you can get through it today without causing an incident?”

Kip’s brow wrinkled, not ready to let it go. “But I thought that they slaved the Thousand Stars onto the Prism every Sun Day.”

“Yes?”

“Well, how does he not die?” Kip asked.

“He’s the Prism. He can do anything.”