“I’d like that, Master Danavis. General Danavis?”

Master Danavis smiled. “Yes. Hadn’t noticed how much I’d missed that. Despite everything. Say, Liv, do you know anything about Karris White Oak?”

Liv shrugged. “Only Blood Forester Blackguard, astounding fighter, bichrome who was nearly a poly, maybe the fastest drafter on the Jaspers. Why?”

The new general said, “She was captured by King Garadul. The Prism won’t admit it, but I know it’s going to drive him to distraction. He cares a great deal about her. I doubt it will be possible to rescue her, not with the limited assets I have, but I’m going to learn all I can to see if there’s any hope at all.”

And just like that, a stupid, mad, impossible idea took root.

Chapter 62

“Wake up, Kip,” a voice said.

Kip was usually a heavy sleeper, but he sat upright instantly at that voice. “My Lord Prism?” he asked, blinking. It felt like it had barely been ten minutes since he went to bed.

Gavin said, “Get dressed. We’re going for a walk.” He turned toward Commander Ironfist, who was standing by the door. “You’re invited.”

A grin flashed over Ironfist’s face, visible only because his teeth were so starkly white against his ebony skin. He would have accompanied them regardless.

Kip pulled on his clothes. Within minutes, they were walking the streets of Garriston. Kip was playing his part of the gawker once more, still a little overwhelmed by being in a city of this size, despite that it wasn’t nearly as impressive as the Jaspers. The construction, of course, wasn’t all towering minarets. Like back home, the buildings were square, with flat roofs where people could relax in the evenings or sleep during the unbearably hot nights. Even with the sea breezes, it got stiflingly hot here. But the buildings here weren’t solely the stone construction that was used in Rekton. Interspersed with the stone, often on the same building, were mud bricks and date palm wood, all stuck together with gypsum mortar. Even the whitewash, helpful in cooling homes and preserving the mortar and mud bricks from the sun, was applied haphazardly. The buildings were, however, three and four stories tall. Only a few buildings in Rekton rose to three stories. People in the streets looked dirty, and there was garbage everywhere.

Gavin, Kip noticed, was wearing a worn, faded cloak with a single button holding it closed in front. Disguising his status? Indeed, Commander Ironfist was getting more stares than either Kip or Gavin.

“Hey, Ironfist, you think you could be a little less conspicu—” Gavin started, then traced his eyes from Ironfist’s feet up, until he had to tilt his head back to take in the huge, hugely muscled man. “Never mind.”

Kip smiled. “Where are we going?” he asked.

“You’ll see,” Gavin said. “How are your studies?”

“I don’t know that anything I’ve done yet counts as studying,” Kip said. He scrunched his face. “Liv was barely beginning to explain how drafters’ dependence on will makes for a lot of dangerous men when her father came in.”

“What’d she say?”

“Well, nothing. I didn’t really understand it, and she didn’t get the chance to explain.”

Gavin turned into an alley to help them bypass the crowded streets surrounding the water market. “Very few men are superchromats, Kip. Even I’m not a superchromat, though Dazen was, so apparently it runs in the family. If you want to draft something that will endure, you have to draft the exact middle of the spectrum you’re working with. You want to make a blue sword that will last years after you draft it? It has to be perfect, and of course, you have to keep it out of light, but that’s a different topic. Because men, aside from the few exceptions, can’t do that—can’t draft in the exact middle of a color, not can’t keep it out of the light, obviously. Ahem, that is, if men want to make anything permanent, they have to add will. Makes it sound like it’s meat you add to a stew, doesn’t it? Hmm. I don’t teach much, obviously. Let me try this.” Gavin appeared perfectly heedless of the dark corners they were passing and the acquisitive eyes that followed them. But then, once any acquisitive eyes alit on Ironfist, they found other things to study in a hurry.

“Every time you draft, you use your will. You have to decide that something totally outlandish, weird, unnatural-seeming is going to happen, and you’re going to make it happen. In other words, you decide to do magic. Now, the more outlandish it is, the harder it is to believe you can really do it. Or to put it another way, the more will it takes. You with me?”

“Makes sense so far,” Kip said.

“Good. Now, blue sword.” Gavin lifted a hand from beneath his cloak. His hand was solid blue, and as Kip watched, blue luxin blossomed from it. Gelled, solidified, hardened into the form of a blue sword. Gavin handed it to Kip.

Kip took it, feeling self-conscious as they passed through an intersection with another alley and he was bearing the blade like he was following it to his destiny. “Uh,” he said, but then he felt the hilt go slippery. A moment later, the blade drooped, broke off the hilt of its own weight, and splatted on the dirty cobblestones of the alley. There was a light shimmer of blue, and then nothing but blue dust. The same happened moments later to the hilt in Kip’s hand, leaving only that gritty blue dust.

“What’s the dust?” Kip asked.

“A later lesson,” Gavin said. “I’m having trouble teaching the basics as it is. The point for you is to imagine I’d drafted you a plow instead of a sword. Great, it works while the drafter is at your farm, but ten minutes after he leaves, all you’ve got is dust, literally. Not helpful. This is why superchromats are heavily recruited by all satrapies.”

“So they can make plows?”

“Not all magic is for fun and dismemberment, Kip. In fact, most drafters spend their whole lives doing practical things like making plows. For every artist, there’s ten men who repair roofs with green luxin. Anyway, men—and the women who aren’t lucky enough to be superchromats—can cover their failings with will.”

“You mean just by trying harder.”

“Pretty much.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad. So they try harder. Liv was making men among drafters sound like slaves compared to the freeborn.”

“More like dogs, I’d say,” Gavin said.

“Huh?”

“Well, they are second-class because using will constantly wears you. It’s exhausting. And will isn’t just effort, it’s belief and effort together. So if you need belief to do magic, what happens to the man who loses all his belief in himself?”

“He can’t do magic?” Kip guessed.

“Exactly. That’s half of what all the hierarchy among drafters is about. Satraps and satrapahs treat drafters like they’re Orholam’s gift to the world not just because they are Orholam’s gift, but because if the drafter doesn’t believe he’s special and you call on him to do magic, he won’t be able to do it. Drafter who can’t draft? Useless.”

“I never thought of that.” So the rigid hierarchy wasn’t simply because they could? Kip guessed that this wasn’t the way Liv’s tutors had explained things to her.