“I learned to fly. Took me most of the last year.”

She looked at him like she couldn’t tell for once whether he was joking. “That could prove handy,” she said carefully.

Gavin laughed.

“You’re serious,” she said.

“I’ll have to take you for a ride—a flight?—sometime,” Gavin said. “You’ll love it.”

“And you think the idea of that is a good enough distraction to sidetrack me from getting the rest of your goals out of you?”

“Absolutely,” Gavin said, in mock seriousness. “I learned from the best.”

“Very well,” she said. “Now get out of here.” He was halfway out the door when she called. “Gavin!” She called him Gavin now, always, even when her eyes called him Dazen. “Be careful. You know how your father is when someone won’t do what he wills.”

Chapter 50

Kip woke with a dead arm from a dream about his mother holding his head in her lap. It wasn’t a dream; it was half memory. He’d been young. His mother was running her fingers through his hair, her eyes red, swollen. Red eyes usually meant she’d been smoking haze, but this morning she didn’t smell of smoke or alcohol. I’m sorry, she said, I’m so sorry. I’ve quit. It’s going to be different from now on. I promise.

He cracked open one sleep-snot-encrusted eye and moaned. That’s nice, mother, can you just get off my arm? He rolled over. He’d slept on the ground? On a carpet? Oh! As the blood slowly flooded back into his arm, it started hurting. He rubbed it until feeling returned. Where was he? Oh, Liv’s room. It was barely dawn.

Sitting up, Kip saw a woman coming in the room. Maybe the opening door had woken him. Liv must have slept elsewhere. The covers of the bed weren’t even disturbed.

“Good morning, Kip,” the woman said. She was a dark woman, with heavy eyebrows, frizzy hair, and a flamboyant gold scarf around her neck. She was thick, hugely tall, with great heavy shoulders and a bold-patterned green dress draped over her like a sheet over a galleass. “It’s dawn, and time for your first lesson. I’m Mistress Helel.”

“You’re my magister?” Kip said, still rubbing his hurting arm.

“Oh yes.” She smiled, but the smile didn’t touch her eyes. “And you’ll remember today’s lesson for the rest of your life. Get up, Kip.”

Kip stood. She walked past him and opened a door to a small balcony outside Liv’s room.

“Come quickly,” she said. “You need to see this before the sun is fully over the horizon.”

Hair squashed, mouth full of cotton, breath foul, arm throbbing, Kip licked his dry lips and stepped past Mistress Helel. Her eyes were dark and intense—so dark that he couldn’t even tell what color of a drafter she was.

Weird. Here I’m supposed to see minute differentiations in colors undetectable to most people, and I couldn’t even see the color in her irises. He stepped onto the pure yellow luxin balcony. Aside from streaks of water or dirt, the entire thing was eerily clear.

Despite his experience yesterday learning that the yellow was one of the strongest materials known, Kip tested his weight on the balcony gingerly. It was, of course, solid. Due to the way the towers all leaned out, as if blossoming, if Kip fell from here, he’d smash on the rocks several hundred feet below, just shy of the water. It was even worse for the floors above them, which leaned even farther out. He gulped and tried to pay attention to the rising sun.

“We don’t have all day, Kip,” Mistress Helel said. There was something in her voice, a tension.

Kip turned as she stepped out onto the balcony with him. At first he thought she was tripping, because she lunged forward so suddenly. He moved toward her to catch her. If there was one thing good about being fat, it was that he could stop big weights.

But Mistress Helel extended both of her hands like battering rams. Kip’s move forward brought him between her arms. Her thumbs scratched across his chest and off both sides. She cursed as they crushed together in an awkward hug.

“I’ve got you,” Kip said. “Don’t worry, you’re not going to—”

The big woman stood to her full height, regaining her balance. She was much taller than Kip, and the move pressed big flat breasts onto either side of his face. Somehow his chin got caught in her dress’s gaping neckline as she stood and for a brief—but not nearly brief enough—moment, Kip’s face was fully engulfed in flabby cleavage.

“Gah!” Kip blurted.

Mistress Helel was already bending over, mercifully freeing her neckline of Kip’s chin, but then bending farther, her body pressing against his. After an experience that he was doubtless going to relive in dreams—and not the good kind—he sidled out of the way.

The woman’s big meaty hands slapped on Kip’s right and left legs. His move to the side made her left hand slip off his right leg, though. Then she lifted.

“What are you—” Kip stopped as soon as he saw her eyes.

Dead concentration, complete lack of emotion. She pushed forward hard into Kip, lifting. He put it all together far too slowly.

The intensity, the story, the lack of color in her eyes, the stumble that hadn’t been a stumble. It had been a lunge. The lack of embarrassment at Kip being pressed against her breasts—because you don’t let the touch of a little flesh deter you. Not when you’ve come to kill.

Kip’s hands slapped against the edge of the balcony behind him. With only one leg in her hands, Mistress Helel lifted sharply. She was so strong that Kip’s weight was no problem for her.

If he’d been a brave man, Kip would have fought her. If he’d been flexible, he would let her pick up the one leg while he stood on the other and beat her to a bloody pulp. Instead, Kip took the fatty’s way. He went limp, floppy, making all his weight dead weight, seeking the ground the way he’d done when Ram would try to show off by picking him up and throwing him on the ground. If Kip collapsed, Ram could never lift him, where if he held himself rigid, Ram could hold his weight easily.

Mistress Helel brought one hand off Kip’s left leg, seeking a grip anywhere on his round body. Kip wriggled like a fish, pushing off the balcony, trying to push himself back into the tower. She pinned him against the corner of the balcony with her own substantial weight and drew back her left hand to punch him.

But the floor called him, and without her strong arm to hold him, Kip answered. Her fist descended and landed a glancing blow, but Kip fell. She lost her hold and he went turtle, barely keeping a grip on his pant leg. Cursing, she tried to lift him by that alone.

His pants ripped, and then slipped off his waist. They tangled around his knees, but however his baggy pants hampered his movements, they did nothing to help the assassin lift him either. She cursed him and punched his leg, taking a wide stance to pound him. He yelped. Then she slugged him in the stomach, taking his breath away. She snarled. “Take your death like a man.”

Kip bit her ankle.

The assassin cried out and fell on top of him. She recovered enough to land knee-first on his chest. Then she angled her fall so she crushed and trapped him. Apparently Kip wasn’t the only one who knew how to use his weight to good advantage. She landed with her head toward his feet.