Kip turned his back and walked toward the city.

Chapter 66

It was only as Kip approached the Lover’s Gate that he understood why Gavin was attempting to build a new wall. The old wall was encrusted with homes, shops, and inns like a ship with barnacles, except here the walls were covered both inside and out. In places, people’s roofs were almost level with the top of the wall. If Gavin wanted to make that wall defensible, he’d have to level hundreds of homes. The demolition itself would have taken four days.

Clearly, the effect on the people’s opinion of demolishing the homes of perhaps a fifth of the city’s population would be ruinous. Gavin had only a few days in which to make the people who remained in the city want to fight for him rather than for his enemy. He’d been caught between impossible choices: leave the people’s homes propped against the inner walls and have a militarily indefensible wall, or tear the houses down and risk turning an already divided populace against him. So Gavin had decided to build his own wall.

Unbelievable. How must it have been during the Prisms’ War, when people had to choose which brother to fight beside? It would have been like fighting beside giants, knowing that their slightest move might crush you, but knowing that standing in the no-man’s-land between them would be even worse.

Kip found his way back to his rooms and packed what he guessed he’d need. Cloak and food, and more food, and short sword, and a stick of tin danars in a money belt. It was more than he thought he’d need—he hoped they’d forgive him for that, but he might need money for bribes. Then he decided he’d need to leave a note so they didn’t waste precious time searching for him.

There was a quill and parchment on the desk in his room, so he scratched out the letters laboriously. “I’m Tyrean and young. More help as a spy than here. No one will suspect me. Will try to find Karris.” He signed the note, folded it after the ink dried, and stuck it under the covers in Liv’s bed.

Then he scratched out another one. “Went to buy some food and watch minstrel shows. Shaken after drafting. Will be back by midnight.”

That one he left on the desk. They would find it first and give him a head start. They wouldn’t find out he was truly gone until after nightfall. At that point, they’d know he would be too far gone for them to catch him.

With what he felt must have been suspiciously overloaded saddlebags, Kip made his way past the gate guards and to the stable.

“I need a horse,” Kip told the stableman imperiously.

The man returned his gaze, not moving from his position leaning against one wall. “Right place,” he said.

Kip had a sinking feeling. The man wasn’t buying that he was anyone who could give orders. If Kip couldn’t get a horse, he couldn’t do anything. It would be the shortest attempt at running away in history. He hadn’t even gotten out of the house. “Uh, I need something not too ostentatious, and not too… spirited.”

“Not much of a rider, huh?” The man’s tone said, Must not be much of a man.

Confess your ineptitude and fall on his mercy, Kip. “What’s your name, shit shoveler?” he demanded instead. Oops.

The groom blinked and stood up straight unconsciously. “Gallos… sir,” he added uncertainly.

“I don’t ride these stinking meat barrels much, but I need one that’s reliable, that can handle my fat ass, and that won’t panic when I use magic, you understand? And I don’t have time for your superciliosity.” Was that even a word? Kip bulled forward. The groom probably didn’t know either. “There’s a war on. Get me my damned horse and save the shit-packing for your stable boys.”

The groom moved with alacrity, saddling an old draft horse. “Best I got for what you’ve asked, sir,” the man said.

A draft horse? I’m not that fat.

“Sorry, sir, only one I got.”

“It’ll do,” Kip said. “Thank you.” No need to press his luck. The stirrup did look impossibly high, however. Instead of humiliating himself by trying to mount and most likely failing, he took the reins and led the beast out into the city, taking care to tip the groom.

Orholam, I really was an asshole. Kip didn’t know what made it more disconcerting: that being an asshole had promptly gotten him his way, or that he had enjoyed exerting mastery over another man. Back home, he would have been whipped, and he would have deserved it.

In the streets, he kept his eyes peeled until he found a man roughly his own size, wearing a coat despite the heat. It looked old, worn, and cost maybe as much as one of Kip’s coat’s pockets. Kip traded with the man. Then he bought wine and water in one of the streets leading to the water market and was convincing a shopkeeper that he really did want to trade his fine cloak for a plain woolen one when he heard loud voices. He turned.

Some old man was standing in the back of a wagon, exhorting the crowd heading into the water market, most of whom were ignoring him. “—to have our own nation again. With our own king! You all want to writhe under the bootheel of the Parians again? Do you remember what they did last time? Have you no memory?!”

“They killed hundreds for listening to nonsense like yours!” someone shouted.

“And I say we don’t have to let them ever do it again,” the old man snapped back. That got some murmurs of agreement.

“Everyone who wanted to listen to your shilling for King Garadul has already left!” a shopkeeper yelled.

“The king isn’t willing that any should perish. Come, join him, and fight!”

“We don’t want to fight. We don’t want to kill. We don’t want to be killed. We want to live.”

“Cowards!” the old man said. Then he shuffled off to look for a more sympathetic audience.

Kip was about to head out of town when something caught his eye. There was a new ship in the bay, a galleon flying a white flag with seven towers. The Chromeria’s flag. Almost at the moment that he identified the flag, he saw a line of men and women walking through the streets led by at least a dozen Blackguards. He froze. Guilty conscience. They didn’t know him, and he didn’t see the only two Blackguards he’d seen before, Stump and whatever the other one’s name had been.

The people behind the Blackguards were perhaps more interesting, though, and Kip studied them as they passed half a block away and turned down a street to head toward the Travertine Palace. There were perhaps two hundred of them, and Kip was sure that every last one was a drafter. A few had eyes light enough that he could see their irises were solid blue or green or red, but some of the lighter-skinned among them actually had a visible tint to their skin. Some concealed that with long sleeves. Other didn’t seem to care. “… be true, but it looks better than the last time we were here, Samila,” a blue-tinged man said. Despite his light-enough-to-show-color skin, the man had his hair in dreadlocks almost to his waist. The woman was stunning, perhaps forty years old, with solid blue irises, high cheekbones, and the olive skin of the western Atashian upper classes. Both wore rich clothing.

Samila Sayeh and Izem Blue? No, surely not. Those names were just from stories. Surely there were plenty of drafters their age who happened to be blues and reds who had special relationships with each other.

Next came more Blackguards, helping infirm drafters or wheeling them in chairs. Kip decided not to wait to see if Stump were with them.