The Broken Eye(285)

They could kill twelve, no problem. But how many more were around the hippodrome, within a minute’s run? Karris and Ironfist could get in, but what if Gavin wasn’t there yet? Or what if he’d already been taken above?

“The timing’s impossible,” Karris said.

Ironfist veered the skimmer into an open space between two riverboats. They spilled out onto the dock, ignoring the stares of the merchants and sailors. “Ben-hadad, Essel, guard the boat. Ben-hadad, that spot there.” He pointed out in the canal. “Make sure it stays clear. If it isn’t deep, make it so.”

“How am I supposed—”

“Your problem. Essel, ten minutes, fifteen at the outside. Hezik, with us.”

“Ben-hadad, do whatever you’re going to do.”

He approached her warily. “This is not going to be comfortable,” he said. “Hold your left eye open. You can’t blink.”

She did and he lifted a tiny lens on delicate luxin fingers, swabbing the lens itself one last time to make sure it was free of dust—and then placed it directly on her eye. It was about as enjoyable as she’d guessed getting poked in the eye would be. She blinked.

“No—you weren’t supposed to blink—” Ben-hadad said. “Is it still in? Next one.”

They repeated the process. It took two tries, and left her streaming tears.

But she looked up at him and Ben-hadad said, “I’m a genius.”

Commander Ironfist grabbed her face in his meaty hands and turned her toward him. It was so disconcerting when he touched her face.

He looked troubled, but said nothing, merely nodding.

Ben-hadad had not only made almost impossibly thin blue lenses that sat directly on her eyes, he had patterned them exactly to the luxin patterns already on her retinas. To anything other than long study, Karris would appear to simply have blue eyes.

“How long?” she asked.

“A few hours. Try not to blink too hard.”

It would have been great, she’d joked, if she drafted blue. Ben-hadad took the criticism to heart, and had incorporated a bit of red luxin—which someone else had needed to draft for him, on a speeding, windy skimmer—into the lens itself, but only directly over the pupil. With the black pupil behind that dot of red, it was unnoticeable. One lens red, one lens green.

Karris wished she could try it out, but drafting at all risked destroying the disguise. Cursed pale skin. She would undo the good months of abstaining from drafting had done.

“Ready,” she said. She didn’t look a drafter at all.

Ironfist and Karris and Hezik ran up the steps from the docks, Karris especially drawing stares with her dress that was all cleavage and a flood of white lace and blue satin and a pink ribbon on her right hip the size of a great ship. She hiked up skirts and petticoats and thanked Orholam that she hadn’t put on the elevated shoes, too.

As usual, Ironfist moved with purpose. He cut between stalls, heading straight for the hippodrome’s wall. Karris’s wide skirts knocked over a rack of petosae, and she cursed the dress again, never mind that her life was going to depend on it in moments.

“Sorry, sorry,” she said, shooting the biggest, stupidest smile she could at the old man who ran out to catch his hats.

He looked at her face, her dress—and then her cleavage—and seemed to forget his anger, at least long enough for her to escape.

Ironfist brought them to the wall. It wasn’t the lowest wall, but it was clear. All the entrances were packed with people and Guile soldiers. Twenty feet above them here was a sentry box and a narrow walkway that disappeared into the hippodrome: a lookout to spot supplies arriving.

Ironfist must have already given an order to Hezik while Karris was flirting with the merchant, because Hezik’s brown skin was already tinged blue. He moved instantly to the wall, put his back to it, and squatted slightly, putting his thigh at a good angle to step up on.

Without hesitation, Commander Ironfist approached at a slow jog. The rhythm was important, and as always with Ironfist, the rhythm was perfect. He stepped on Hezik’s thigh, then up off his shoulder, then into the hand Hezik had raised above his head. A small luxin platform sprang up out of Hezik’s palm, shooting Ironfist into the air, his own jump magnified.

The jump was so perfect that Ironfist merely put his hands on the railing as his body went over it and into the walkway, as effortless as a farmboy vaulting a stone fence.

And then it was Karris’s turn. In this damned dress.

She gathered up skirts in both hands, and took a deep breath against the rib-breaking bodice, nodded the tempo to Hezik and jogged. Step, step, step.

Karris wasn’t as tall or as strong as Ironfist, but she was a great deal lighter. Hezik overcompensated and launched her luxin platform too hard. She flew up and off to the side, but Ironfist was there, dodging to the side fast enough to arrive in place and put out his hand and arm as stable targets. She snagged his hand, and he swooped her up and into the walkway.