For all that the eye caps had saved her life a time or three, Karris didn’t like them. Naturally long eyelashes were a nice accessory at the Luxlords’ Ball, but not so much when you had a lens a finger’s breadth from your eye.

Karris hid her caps in plain sight, on a necklace made of chunky multicolored stones, none so clear or interesting as to make the necklace seem valuable. The caps clicked together around one link and blended with all the other stones. Another pair of caps was tucked under her belt buckle.

I’m stalling, she thought.

From where she was now, she had only two choices. She could head down the river and meet up with her contact in Garriston and then come back up the river, or she could try to infiltrate King Garadul’s army on her own. Going down the river would waste time, and she’d still be much too early. There was also the threat of bandits. She assumed her contact would have some good way of circumventing them on the way back up, but that wouldn’t help her as she headed downriver. Going on alone would mean trying to join a hostile army without a proper introduction. And now that Gavin had clashed with King Garadul, the king knew that the Chromeria had already gotten one drafter here, so surely he would be doubly suspicious of anyone else showing up.

In fact, Gavin’s little stunt in Rekton had probably made her work impossible. There were certainly Tyreans as pale as she was, but her accent was wrong, and she was a drafter. To a suspicious camp, everything about her would scream spy. The White’s orders had never factored in the circumstances in which she found herself now. It was like sitting at what you thought was a dignified Parian dinner with its rules, and finding yourself seated with raucous Ilytian pirates feeding you blowfish instead. There were rules for that too, and if you broke them, you’d consume a nice tender morsel that contained a poison that would leave you in agony for ten minutes, at which point it would leave you dead.

And Karris didn’t know the rules here.

Of course, Gavin would just eat the whole damned fish—and somehow, miraculously, it wouldn’t harm him. Everything was effortless for Gavin. He’d never had to work hard for anything. Born with a monumental talent to a scheming rich father, he simply took what he wanted. Even the rules of being a Prism didn’t constrain him—he traveled to and fro about the Seven Satrapies without so much as a Blackguard escort when he didn’t want one. And now he could cross the Cerulean Sea in a few hours. For Orholam’s sake, now he could fly.

Get out of my head, liar. I’m done with you.

The lines didn’t fit. The tiny spoons were gone, and the urums had a thousand tines instead of three. Fine. Karris wasn’t going home. She wasn’t going to wait for some man to come hold her hand and get her into Garadul’s camp. She wasn’t going to fail. There was more than one way to find out what King Garadul’s plans were.

Of course, she didn’t know what those were, but she was going to figure it out. As for now, she remembered something her brother Koios used to say before he’d been killed in the fire: “When you don’t know what to do, do what’s right and do what’s in front of you. But not necessarily what’s right in front of you.”

The town of Rekton had been burned to the ground. There had been one survivor. There might be more, and if there were, they would be in desperate need of help and possibly protection. Those, Karris could provide.

And if it involved lighting some jackass up with a fireball the size of a small house, so much the better.

Chapter 21

They practically flew down the river. Kip had never traveled so fast in his life. And the Prism didn’t speak a word, sunk into his own dark mood. For most of the afternoon, Gavin Guile worked what the scull had in the place of oars—for a while, it would be almost like a ladder, then it would be like the bellows of a forge, then it would be oars, then it would be a rolling track. Gavin worked at one until he was exhausted, muscles quivering, sweat matting his thin shirt. Then he would draft a little, the oars would change to some new shape that gave his most weary muscles a rest, and he would keep going.

When Kip finally found his voice, he said, “Sir, um, he took my case?” He wasn’t going to ask about Karris White Oak or what Gavin had said. Not now. Not ever.

Gavin looked at Kip, his mouth tight. Kip regretted speaking at once. “It was that or your life.”

Kip paused, then said, “Thank you, sir. For saving me.” That seemed like a better choice than saying, But that was mine! It was the last thing—the only thing—my mother ever gave me!

“You’re welcome,” Gavin said. He glanced back up the river, his thoughts obviously elsewhere.

“That man, he’s responsible for killing my mother, isn’t he?” Kip asked.

“Yes.”

“I thought you were going to kill him right there. But you stopped.”

Gavin glanced at him, weighing him. His voice was distant. “I wasn’t willing for the innocent to die so I could kill the guilty.”

“Those men weren’t innocent! They murdered everyone I know!” Tears leaked down Kip’s face. He felt ragged, wrung out, finished.

“I was talking about you.”

It caught Kip short, but his emotions were still a jumble. His presence had kept Gavin from killing King Garadul. He didn’t know words that could convey his feelings for that. He’d failed his mother again. He’d actually blocked her vengeance by his own incompetence.

I’ll make good, mother. On my soul. I’ll kill him. I swear it.

Half a dozen small villages passed, and dozens of boats. Fed by tributaries, the river widened. But Gavin stopped only once, to buy a roasted chicken and bread and wine. He threw the food to Kip. “Eat.” Then they were off again. Gavin didn’t eat. He didn’t speak or even slow when they passed the fishermen startled by their appearance.

It wasn’t until the sun set and Gavin shifted the oars again that Kip ventured to speak once more. “Can I help… sir?”

The Prism gave him an appraising glance, as if he hadn’t even thought of having him help. But when he spoke, he said, “I’d really appreciate that. Here, stand on this and just walk.” He’d been running. “You can use these hand oars to help if you want. Steer by dropping in the hand oar on the side you want to turn toward. Port for port, starboard for starboard, right?”

“Port is left?”

“Right.”

Kip blinked. Uh…“Port is right?”

“Only if you’re facing aft.”

The panic must have been clear on Kip’s face, because Gavin chuckled. “It doesn’t matter. You just go until you’re too tired, or if we hit rapids or bandits. I’m going to rest for a bit.” Gavin sat in Kip’s place and tore into the remains of the chicken and bread. He watched as Kip struggled with getting the scull up to a halfway decent pace. Kip turned a time or two—it actually was pretty simple—and looked at Gavin to see if he approved, but the Prism was already asleep.

The quarter moon was straight overhead as night fell and Kip began walking. Even driven only by Kip’s walking, the scull was fast. Gavin had narrowed the hull even further when Karris had left, so the boat seemed more to hover over the water than plow through it. For the first few minutes, Kip was gripped with anxiety. Every turn he was sure they would confront bandits and the Prism wouldn’t awaken. But soon he fell into the rhythms of the boat, the waves, and the night.