The Broken Eye(330)

He sat, straddling the inverted T, not far from the edge, but not so close she could just push him and make him go.

“There’s no way it’s going to hold both of us,” Teia said.

“Lap, now!”

Teia grabbed the center bar and swung one leg around it, straddling the T and Kip from the opposite side.

Her eyes went wide as she settled into place, but not from sitting on his lap. “Kip! Go! Kip, go, go, go! Aram!”

But instead of helping him push off, she was leaning to Kip’s left, the same leg he was trying to rock forward. He realized she was trying to draw the pistol he’d tucked behind the lens holster, but it was trapped underneath them.

A musket fired behind Kip, and Kip felt something shift. He hadn’t been hit. He looked at Teia; she hadn’t been hit either, but she was looking up. He followed her gaze. The bullet had hit the mechanism where the inverted T connected to the wheel. As Kip and Teia watched, the wheel rolled down the cable without them.

They were now tangled together, sitting on a bar completely unconnected to the cable.

“Would you believe I was aiming for your head?” Aram said. “Lucky miss, for you, huh? Thing is, I’m a lot better with a spear.”

One thousand one. One thousand two. Kip had never successfully drafted solid yellow luxin in less than a six count. Every time he went faster, his yellow broke.

Teia finally reached Kip’s pistol. She tugged on it, but it was held in place. She pulled harder. Gave up. She started to stand—

One thousand three. One thousand—

Kip hugged Teia to himself, and hopped off the edge of the tower.

Teia hugged him hard with her arms and legs as they fell, eyes squeezed tight shut. They fell and fell—and then swooshed out over the Chromeria’s wall, and out over the sea, together.

She looked up, stunned. Kip had drafted a simple loop of solid yellow luxin over the cable, and doubled the bar they were sitting on. He swapped spectacles and drafted a steady stream of orange for lubrication where yellow luxin scraped over steel cable. They were emitting a constant stream of yellow sparks, but it would hold. It would hold long enough.

Teia looked at Kip, wide-eyed. Then she squeezed him hard again, but this time with glee. In the perfect light of early morning, they flew over the sea and shoreline. They flew over Sapphire Bay. They flew over the morning parades and luxin fireworks. Teia waved to the bewildered crowds, and many waved back, laughing.

Whites fly, too, indeed.

The cable passed over the east side of Big Jasper, high over houses and warehouses and ships and the wall.

Teia looked at Kip, and he looked at her. She was glowing with joy and morning light, her skin radiant, her eyes holding a million colors Kip had never seen. And they were flying, and they were holding each other, and they were safe, and they were alive, and they were breathing pure glory, and Orholam’s Eye gazed on them with the approval that only young lovers know, and in that moment Kip knew the difference between love and infatuation, and love and hunger, and love and the longing not to go unloved. And he wanted to know nothing more than this, and he wanted this moment to freeze forever and thought to cease.

He kissed her. And she kissed him. And it was infatuation, and it was hunger, and it was longing to be loved, and it was an all-consuming fire so hot it devoured worry and loneliness and fear and time and being and thought itself. They kissed, embracing, flying, and for a hundred heartbeats, there was no war, no death, no pain, nothing hard, nothing terrible, nothing but warmth and acceptance.

And as they slowed, nearing the end of their flight, when Kip pulled away from her at last, and gazed again into her eyes, he knew he was lost in her. And he knew at last the difference between love and necessity.





Chapter 95




“This convocation is now in session,” High Luxiat Amazzal said. “None may enter. None may leave.” Karris wondered if, out of all the High Luxiats, they’d chosen Amazzal solely for his voice. He had a great booming, deep, powerful voice. Maybe the voice and the beard. He had a braided beard in the Atashian style. It was enormous and perfectly white, woven with white silk thread and pearl beads.

With a gravitas that imbued even simple actions with meaning, he held up the end of a thick iron chain. Half a dozen young luxiats were holding coils and coils of the stuff. It was a single, long chain. Unhurriedly, he walked to the main doors and wrapped the chain around the handles, rattling and clanking. There was some sound there that set off Karris’s Blackguard senses. But maybe it was just thinking of Gavin being in such chains. Gavin, here. Home again. Gavin, her love, perhaps broken.

A young assistant brought High Luxiat Amazzal an enormous lock, and he snapped it on. He repeated this at each of the doors, unwinding the chain from each relieved young luxiat’s arms, walking to each, taking his time, and winding the chain securely. By the time he reached the last door, the last assistant was trembling with fatigue. He was sweating, clearly terrified he would shame himself by dropping the chain.