“But we can lift heavy things.”

Kip grumbled. “And pee standing up, right?”

“Very useful around poison ivy. I was on a mission with Karris this one time…” Gavin whistled.

“She didn’t,” Kip said, horrified.

“You thought she was mad at me back on the river? Somehow, it was my fault that time, too.” Gavin grinned. “Anyway, to wend my way back to my point, most of us can see the normal range of colors. Hmm, tautology there.”

“What?” Kip asked.

“That’s a digression too far. Just because you can see a color doesn’t mean you can draft it. But if you can’t see a color, you’ll draft it poorly. So men aren’t as accurate when drafting certain colors as superchromat women, which is half of them. Will can cover a lot of mistakes, but it’s better if there aren’t mistakes to begin with. This becomes vital if you’re trying to build a luxin building that won’t fall down.”

“They make luxin buildings?”

Gavin ignored him. “The special cases that I started all this to tell you about are sub-red and superviolet. If you can see heat, Kip, there’s a good chance you can draft it.”

“You mean I can start a fire like whoosh?!” Kip made a grand sweeping gesture.

“Only if you say ‘whoosh!’ when you do it.” Gavin laughed.

Kip blushed again, but Gavin’s laughter wasn’t mocking. It didn’t make him feel stupid, just silly. There was plenty scary about the man, like Master Danavis was scary sometimes. But neither seemed mean. Neither seemed bad.

“And that would be very strange,” Gavin said, “because you’ve drafted green.” He looked like he was trying to figure out how to teach something. “Have you ever seen a rainbow?”

“A rain-what?” Kip asked, doe-eyed.

“It was a rhetorical question, smarty. The order of colors is superviolet, blue, green, yellow, orange, red, sub-red. Usually, a bichrome simply spans a broader arc. So they draft superviolet and blue, or blue and green, or green and yellow. A polychrome—much rarer—might draft green, yellow, and orange. A drafter who drafts colors that don’t border each other is rare. Karris is one. She drafts green, but not yellow, not orange, and then she drafts most of red and into sub-red.”

“So she’s a polychrome.”

“Close. Karris can’t quite draft sustainable sub-red—what they call a fire crystal. Fire crystals don’t last long regardless because they react to air, but—never mind that. Point is, she’s just short of being a polychrome, and that matters.”

“I bet that made her happy,” Kip said.

“On the bright side, they wouldn’t have let her become a Blackguard if she was a polychrome—polychromes are too valuable—and the pressure on her to bear children would have increased. Regardless, it’s rare, and it’s called being a discontiguous bichrome. Discontiguous because the arcs aren’t touching. Bichrome because there are two. See? Everything in drafting is logical. Except what isn’t. Like so: seeing sub-red is seeing heat, so seeing superviolet should be seeing cold, right?”

“Right.”

“But it isn’t.”

“Oh,” Kip said. “Well, that makes sense, I guess.” Except that it doesn’t.

“I have the strongest urge to ruffle your hair,” Gavin said.

Kip grunted. “So how is this going to work?”

“There’s a small island we use as an artillery station. There’s a tunnel between there and the Chromeria, which is a secret so important that if you tell anyone, the Chromeria will hunt you down and execute you.” He said it cheerfully, but Kip had no doubt that he was serious.

“Then why did you just tell me?” Kip asked. “I could let it slip.”

“Because I’ve already shared a secret that I think is more important—the existence of this skimmer. But if you betray that secret to our enemies, the Chromeria might do nothing. But if you do betray us deliberately, you’d also tell them about the escape tunnel. So now if you betray me, you’ll betray the whole Chromeria too. And they’ll come after you and they’ll kill you.”

Kip felt a chill. This man was warm, personable. Kip had no doubt that Gavin liked him, but in Gavin’s circles, you could like someone and still have to kill him. The casual way that Gavin prepared for Kip’s possible betrayal told Kip he’d been betrayed before and been caught unaware by it. And Gavin wasn’t the kind of man who had to learn a hard lesson twice.

“I’m going to dock on the island and put you on a boat to the main island. I’ll send a Blackguard with you to take you to the Thresher. In a few days, you’ll leave with me wherever I decide we have to go and I’ll start teaching you to draft.”

Kip hardly heard the last part, though. “The Thresher?”

Chapter 27

Karris only fell a few feet through the floor before she hit something soft. Her left foot sank to the knee while the rest of her body continued falling into the basement. The sticky whatever-it-was held her leg as she fell, so she swung upside down and the rest of her slapped into the side of something like a great red egg—a thin crust over gooey innards. She smacked into it, broke the side, and splatted into red luxin. Then her fall pulled her free and she fell onto a stone floor.

As she’d been trained, she flung her right hand down hard, the shock of slapping the floor hurt her hand—it always hurt—but that slap took the pressure off more vulnerable areas of her body and allowed her to guide the last part of her fall. She rolled instead of landing on her head.

In a moment, she popped up to her feet, and pulled the thin-hilted ataghan from her pack. There was no light in the chamber except what spilled down through the hole she’d made in the ceiling. Chunks of wood were still falling into the hole. The great red egg shone in the sudden light. Settling smoke, stirred by Karris’s fall, climbed the shaft of light surrounding the egg. The entire room, perhaps twenty paces by thirty, stank of smoke and burnt red luxin, which was odd, because red luxin usually burned perfectly cleanly. For that matter, every surface illuminated in the weak light appeared to be blackened luxin as well.

But the great egg took all of Karris’s attention. At least seven feet tall, it was seared perfectly black except where Karris had broken it. Red luxin now oozed out of that wound like tar. A half dozen tubes snaked away from the egg in every direction, disappearing into the ceiling, each also blackened. The seared corpses of a dozen of King Garadul’s soldiers lay about the room.

“What in the hell?” Karris murmured. She lifted her sword to crack the egg open.

The egg exploded before she could touch it. A great section of the front flew into her, the blackened shell shattering over her barely raised left arm, her chest, stomach, and legs. Caught in midstep, she was thrown off balance. She stumbled and felt more than saw a form shooting backward out of the egg even as the shell splattered over her.

Instead of trying to catch herself, Karris flung herself into the fall. She rolled forward, tucking her ataghan in so she didn’t skewer herself, and attacked. There was no hesitation. Ironfist had pounded that lesson into Karris for years: when attacked, you counterattack instantly. The speed of that strike was often the only advantage you had. Especially if you were small. Especially if you were a woman. Especially if you weren’t wearing your spectacles and the other drafter was.