You’ve made me an animal, brother.

But if animal he was, Dazen was a fox. The dehydration had made his urine as shockingly yellow as his body could produce, and the woven, oiled hair bowl held. Dazen’s heart leapt—he wanted to weep—as he saw yellow for the first time in sixteen years. Yellow! There was spectrum bleed! By Orholam, it was beautiful.

He drafted off of it. Just a tiny amount, it was like trying to suck water through a bag, even as the bowl slowly drained. He drafted a yellow ball, not even as big as his thumb, into the palm of his left hand.

It immediately started shimmering into light—but yellow light. For the first time, Dazen saw his cell in something other than blue light. He saw his body in something other than blue light. And yellow, being in the middle of the spectrum rather than at the opposite end, made red a hell of a lot easier to see. And it had spectrum bleed both up and down.

And Dazen’s whole body was red from him slapping it.

Dazen drafted red hard, as hard as he could, even as the little yellow marble sputtered out and disappeared. It was enough. It had to be enough. The skin down to his right arm looked dull in the blue light that once again dominated the cell, but he knew it was red.

And now the whole reason he’d given himself a fever.

Dazen drafted heat from his own body. It was incredibly inefficient. It had never worked before. He was shaking, the fever was so bad he couldn’t think. Surely… surely…

He drew on his body’s heat, tried to imagine it rising in waves as from a desert. A tiny flame, a spark was all he needed. He had as much as he could get. Like an old man, Dazen propped himself up. Magic had weight, and with as much as he was planning to throw, he needed to not fall over as soon as he started. He got up to his knees and grinned at the dead man.

The dead man grinned back, like he’d been expecting this. Like he’d been waiting for it for years.

Dazen brought his hands together. He threw a tiny starter stream of red out of his right hand, directly at the dead man’s face. His left hand let all the heat he’d gathered go at once—

And made a tiny spark.

The spark caught. The red blazed, and suddenly the blue cell was flooded with red light and heat. Dazen drafted more and more and released it in a hammer blow, straight at the dead man, straight at the weak spot in the cell wall.

The concussion bowled him over despite his attempt to brace himself. He’d thrown his fireball with so much will there’d been no way he could take the force in his weakened body.

He didn’t think he lost consciousness, but when he opened his eyes, the world was still blue. Failure. Dear Orholam, no.

Dazen rolled over, expecting to see the dead man leering at him. But the dead man was gone. A hole stood in his place. Jagged, broken in the wall, the edges smoldering, glowing with sludgy low-burning red luxin. A hole, and a tunnel beyond.

He couldn’t stop himself. Dazen started weeping. Freedom. He couldn’t stand, he was too weak, but he knew he had to get out. He had to go as far as he could from here before Gavin discovered he was gone. So he started crawling.

As he crossed out of the blue luxin cell, he held his breath, sure there would be some trap, or some alarm. Nothing. He breathed deep, fresh, clean air filling his lungs with strength, and began crawling to freedom.

Chapter 93

Kip woke in a little blue room. Every surface was blue luxin, even the pallet where he was sleeping, though it had been softened with a heap of blankets. From the faint rocking motion, he realized he was on one of the blue barges.

And his back hurt like hell. In fact, most of his body hurt. His left hand was bandaged heavily and he could feel that a thick poultice had been spread all over it. His shoulders and both arms were bruised everywhere, he felt like someone had beaten both of his legs with a board, his head was throbbing, and he was sore pretty much any other place on his body he could think of. He wiggled a pinky toe. Yep, that was sore too.

And he was hungry. Unbelievable.

You’re on a refugee ship, Kip. There ain’t gonna be any food.

He tried to go back to sleep. That was the best thing for it. He’d feel better when he woke up. And they might catch some fish or something by then. He rolled over, and his lower back still hurt. What the—He shifted, and realized he was lying on something.

Reaching down to his waistband, his fingers brushed something. His eyes shot open. The knife. His inheritance. If it didn’t hurt so bad, he would have laughed about it. Clearly, he’d been carried in here wrapped in blankets, and left. No one had even noticed. In an armada of ships with thousands of refugees and soldiers and maybe a hundred boats, with pirates and everything else to worry about, apparently Kip hadn’t been the first thing on Gavin’s mind. Well, what did I expect? They couldn’t strip me and get me dry clothes—there are no dry clothes.

Kip rolled off the knife and sat up. He groaned. He really was sore. And hungry. But that didn’t matter now.

A figure passed the door, and Kip hid the knife by his leg hurriedly.

Gavin poked his head in. “You’re awake!” he said. “How do you feel?”

“Like an elephant sat on me,” Kip said.

Gavin grinned and came and sat on the edge of Kip’s pallet. “I heard you were trying to be Ironfist for a while out there. He’s pretty steamed. He’s supposed to be the one who saves my life, you know.”

“He’s mad?” Kip asked, worried.

Gavin sobered. “No, Kip. No one’s mad at you. He won’t admit it, but he’s proud of you.”

“He is?”

“And I am, too.”

“I thought I was too late.” Gavin was proud of him? His mind couldn’t really register the thought. His mother had always been ashamed of him, and the Prism himself was proud? Kip blinked quickly, looked away. “You’re really fine?” Kip asked.

Gavin smiled. “Never felt better,” he said. “Oh, did you… did you know that boy? The assassin?”

Kip felt a lump in his throat. “He was one of the drafters who wiped out Rekton. Zymun was his name. He tried to kill me there. Did he get eaten?” Kip remembered the boy bleeding profusely, swimming toward all those sharks.

“I don’t know,” Gavin said. “My rule is, if you don’t see an enemy dead with your own eyes, assume they’re still alive.” He grinned, almost grimly, at a private thought. “But,” he said, shaking himself out of it, “I guess that explains this.” He pulled out the rosewood box that had held Kip’s dagger.

Gavin handed it to Kip. “It’s empty,” he said. “But I thought it looked like that box your mother tried to give you. Either your Zymun stole it from King Garadul, or this is a common style. Looks like it held a knife, but I guess that went into the waves. I’m sorry.”

Kip wanted to rush to confess, but the knife was his. Gavin might take it away from him. Kip hadn’t even gotten to see it yet, not really.

“Anyway,” Gavin said, “you rest up. I’ve got work to do. I’ll have someone send in some food to you, and we’ll talk later. All right?” He got up, stopped at the door. “Thank you, Kip. You saved my life, son. Well done. I’m proud of you.”

Son. Son! There was pride in Gavin’s voice as he said it. Kip had made the Prism proud. It was like light bursting over hills to illuminate places in his soul that had never seen it.