Gavin shrugged. Just another problem among hundreds, but he knew Corvan was laying all the potential problems on the table so Gavin could make his own choices about what was and was not important.

“What do you want to do, Lord Prism?”

He meant about the battle or the evacuation, of course.

“I want to kill Rask Garadul.”

Corvan said nothing, didn’t move to order an assassination or something similarly stupid.

Damn him, but Gavin’s father had predicted even this. If you lose the city, kill Rask Garadul, Andross Guile had said. Gavin had been sure he could save the city—and hadn’t arranged assassins to kill Rask. He should have done both. Too late now, unless Rask charged him tomorrow as foolishly as he had done yesterday.

Gavin moved to speak, but the words wouldn’t come. He cleared his throat, trying to remove the taste of failure. “I’ll help as much as I can while performing my religious duties, but…” He cleared his throat again. Seven years, seven great purposes. Here I was trying to do something good for once. “I’ve failed, Corvan. Order the evacuation.”

Chapter 76

Judging from the cold air licking his skin, it was well after midnight when Kip was escorted through some kind of gate. He had to judge from the temperature because he was wearing a blindfold, along with a black sack over his head, a noose around his neck, hands bound behind his back.

One of the guards who was accompanying him was cursing, quietly but constantly, awed by something apparently called Brightwater Wall. They passed through slowly, stopping and starting, some military sounding voice barking, “Don’t stand there and pick your butts. Move deeper into camp. You’re blocking everyone else.” Kip heard the crack of a whip like a pistol shot, and the line started moving again.

The last couple of days had been like this. Kip had woken in darkness—darkness that turned out to be a blindfold, his hands bound at his sides. When he struggled to get it off, men had come. They removed the blindfold, one stared at his eyes, pulling them wide open with rough fingers, then they blindfolded him again. His left hand was agony. That first day—if it was just a day—they had dosed his wine with something foul that dulled his pain and his senses.

They’d taken him to see Lord Omnichrome, withholding Kip’s dosed wine so he would be lucid, but they never removed the blindfold. They’d sat in a tent with many voices for hours, with Kip in agony, and then they’d left. Apparently the lord was too busy to see him.

After a while, Kip heard his guards arguing. A clever man would have figured out some way to exploit their divisions. Kip just stood quietly, wondering when his next dose would be. His hand was throbbing.

They handed him off to someone else—literally handing over the noose around his neck.

“Aren’t you going to give him the poppy wine?” one of his guards asked.

“Why waste good poppy on bad blubber?” the other guard asked. “I like poppy wine my own self.”

“Oh, that stuff tastes foul,” the first said. Kip could agree with that.

“I don’t drink it for the taste,” the guard said, laughing. Kip could agree with that too. “Let’s go. I saw some women a ways back. With your charm and my poppy wine…” He laughed again.

Kip was pulled into a wagon. He stumbled up the steps and nearly strangled on the noose, but soon found his seat. The door was closed behind him.

Someone loosened his noose, pulled it off, took off his hood, pulled off his blindfold. “Kip?” she asked.

Kip blinked. Though the light in the violet room was dim, after two days in total darkness it made his eyes water nonetheless. But through the blear of his tears, he made out Karris White Oak.

“Karris?” he asked. Stupid question. Of course it’s her, you’re looking at her, you idiot.

“Kip, what are you doing here?”

“I’m here to rescue you,” he said. Then he laughed.

“Kip, how much poppy wine did they give you?”

It had been hours since they’d given him wine, but he just laughed harder.

Karris guided Kip to her pallet in the wagon. He fell asleep instantly. She stared at him. A hard, mean part of her wanted to hate him.

My son would be Kip’s age. Hell, Kip could be my son. He does have blue eyes, and my grandmother was Parian.

What, you think brown skin and kinky hair skips a generation? Like twins?

Karris rubbed her face. It was an idle fantasy and she knew it. The son she’d abandoned was Kip’s half brother, but any similarities they shared would be because they shared Gavin as a father. And what a father he’d been, to both boys.

She had to get out of here. She was thinking too much.

Karris watched Kip sleep, seeing the Guile blood in the shape of his brow and his nose, and she couldn’t even name the feelings in her heart.

Eventually, she covered him with her blanket.

Chapter 77

Gavin survived the noon rituals. The luxiat, a perfectly well-intentioned young green, was shaking like a leaf through the whole thing. Garriston wasn’t exactly a prime posting, so no doubt the young man hadn’t expected to ever catch a glimpse of the Prism, much less meet him, much less be responsible for performing the Sun Day ritual with him. They muddled through, Gavin prompting the young man with his lines two or three times. It took an hour and a half—and that was with Gavin cutting short the list beseeching Orholam’s blessing on every noble in the Seven Satrapies and every official in the Chromeria.

“If even Orholam can’t remember their names, maybe they aren’t all that important, eh?” he told the luxiat, leaving the young man gawping.

It was early afternoon before he could escape. Escape being relative, of course. He had a dozen Blackguards, a secretary, four messengers, and a dozen city guards accompanying him. He went to the docks.

He found Corvan there, ably directing the mess. The crowd wasn’t as bad as he had assumed it would be. Perhaps people were holding out hope that Gavin would save them. Perhaps after seeing him build an impossible wall, they thought his powers were unlimited. Perhaps some were simply religiously observant—only absolutely necessary work was supposed to be done on this holiest of days.

Good thing staying alive doesn’t count as absolutely necessary.

Many nobles were bartering with ship captains. Boxes of goods were piled on the docks—and plenty of goods that weren’t in boxes. Rolled-up tapestries that must have hung in families’ great halls, furniture with gold leaf paint, artwork, a maze of trunks packed with Orholam knew what.

“Lord Prism,” General Danavis said, coming up to Gavin quickly. “Perfect timing.”

Which means you’re about to hand over some truly unpleasant duty.

“I gave the order yesterday that no ships were to leave the harbor, in case an evacuation became necessary. I let it be known that disobedience meant seizure of the ship for the captain, and death for whoever hired him.”

It was a harsh sentence, but war called for harsh sentences. Whoever took a ship out of the city early was condemning dozens to death if Garriston were overrun and a massacre began. The problem with harsh sentences was that someone always tried to call your bluff—once. “Who was it?” Gavin asked. He thought he knew already.

“Governor Crassos. His men fired on the Blackguards who went to stop them.”