The Broken Eye(288)

She stepped back and pulled a pistol from her belt and pointed it at him, and then another.

“You’re not going to shoot me,” he said.

“Am I not? Look in my eyes and tell me I lack the will to do it,” Liv said.

“It isn’t will you lack,” Phyros said.

“So it was you.”

He looked confused. Then, briefly, frightened. If she knew her pistols had been unloaded, did that mean she’d loaded them again?

She had thought to talk to him, to appeal to the loyalty she thought she’d built in him, to offer him a choice, to appeal to logic. But he wasn’t a superviolet or a blue drafter; Phyros was a warrior. He attacked instantly, and was on top of her before she could think.

His gigantic hand was around her throat, squeezing, throwing her into panic. With his other hand he flung the pistols away from her hands, grabbed the others from her belt, and tossed them away, too. The sword and knife at her belt followed, as the blackness closed in.

Phyros carried Liv by her neck and her belt up the weatherbeaten stairs out to the very point of the promontory. She curled into a fetal position and kicked, kicked blindly. Then they reached the top.

His hand was still wrapped around her throat, though loosely now, and he was pawing through her pockets. He found the necklace and pulled it out. He pushed her back until she was on the very edge of the cliff. The wind whipped them. She could barely breathe. There was no strength in her.

“What’ll it be, lady, the black or the abyss?” He loosened his grip just enough for her to speak.

“The blade.”

“What?” he asked. Perhaps the wind had swallowed her words.

She rammed the hidden blade her father had given her deep into his chest, twisted hard, and pulled it back.

He pulled away instinctively, which was the only thing that saved her from falling off the cliff as he dropped her. She flung herself toward the ground and rolled past him.

He roared wordlessly and drew his huge sword. He darted forward and stood over her. There was no escape. He lifted the sword, but then lowered it, the expression on his face softening. “You killed me. I guess I—” He fell over sideways, lifeless.

Liv stood and walked past his corpse. Walked out onto the cliff. She glanced at the drop. It should have terrified her, but she was numb. She looked up to the superviolet seed crystal, twinkling in the air. It floated at the nexus of a thousand streams of superviolet light, some of it spontaneously shimmering into luxin in the presence of the crystal, lifting it. The crystal tumbled end over end, and each time it did, it sent a little flash of purple light in the visible spectrum.

It called directly to Liv’s heart. Here is calm, here is reason, here is power, here is fearlessness. The seed crystal called to Liv, and Liv raised her hand and called to it.

And it came to her.





Chapter 86




Karris ran down the broad steps of the hippodrome’s tiered seating, not even trying to be ladylike.

With the broadness of the steps, she couldn’t take her eyes off her footing to see if Gavin still lived. But the audience still seemed transfixed, so she guessed he must. Maybe it was only torture.

As she descended the crowds got thicker, until she had to push through a mass of people standing at the chest-high fence that ringed the track. The track itself was fifteen feet below them. With her dress, Karris had to push through the crowd instead of dodging through it. But she wouldn’t be denied.

A man took umbrage at her shoving. He said, “Who the hell do you think you—”

Sometimes being short was a blessing. She swung a hand up between his legs, grabbed a fistful of cloth and his stones, and twisted, hard. He dropped, and she snatched his ghotra off his head as he fell.

From the spina, she heard a man’s screams. She recognized the voice. No, no, no.

She unwrapped the ghotra as she moved. Reaching the front, she vaulted over the worn stone handrail. She threw the ghotra into a knot around the rail and jumped, sliding down it until she ran out of cloth.

She dropped daintily onto the sand of the hippodrome floor and ran out onto the dirt racetrack before anyone could stop her.

There was a murmur from the half of the hippodrome that saw her immediately. What was a noblewoman doing running out onto the track?

But the people on top of the spina—drafters and what looked like a chirurgeon—didn’t see her immediately. They were looking at Gavin, bound to a table. He was screaming, throwing himself against his bonds, obviously in agony, but he couldn’t move. The chirurgeon was lifting a red-hot poker in gloved hands. Karris had never seen him in such pain. Gavin, admitting weakness, admitting pain? Gavin?!

They were blinding him. Dear Orholam, they’d already burned out one eye.