Andross cursed and shot a flaming missile at the rope holding up the portcullis.

It fell, but the floor didn’t open beneath Gavin. Andross must not have reset the trap correctly.

Gavin pulled himself up to his knees, but his father saw him move and kicked. Gavin tried to block the kick, but he was too weak. Andross’s foot smashed into his stomach, and another fist caught Gavin across the jaw.

He fell to the ground, and Andross stepped on his neck.

“Some trap,” the old man said. Still holding Gavin down, Andross reached in front of him, where Gavin had spat out the hellstone fragment and the broken tooth he’d kept secreted in his mouth.

Gavin tried to scramble away, but Andross pinned him harder, exerting so much pressure Gavin thought his vertebrae would crack. Gavin caught the barest glimpse of Andross’s pinprick-tight pupils.

He was drafting. He threw out a hand, and sent something beyond normal vision into Gavin’s old trap. Gavin said, “But you can’t draft superviolet.”

“Can’t I? It seems you know as little about me as I once knew about you.” With a light kick to Gavin’s temple to stun him once more, Andross said, “I think it’s time you learn something else you didn’t know. Take a look at what’s waiting for you below.”

His brother’s rotting corpse was below. Orholam, no. Gavin had thought his father would surely give his brother the burial he himself hadn’t.

“No, please…”

The floor gave way, and Gavin tumbled into the yellow hell.

Chapter 39

The subtlety of the problem was its beauty. Kip sat in the soft light of the incipient dawn teasing slender threads of yellow light for his project. It would be some time before the Ghosts had enough light to reach them, and watching the river change as night pulled back its covers and shivered into dawn was precious to him as last night had been precious.

He looked at the yellow cords in his hands. Something about having the peaceful light before him and having something to occupy his hands left no space for other thoughts, and sometimes thinking was the enemy.

After Tisis had pleased him last night, he’d begun to learn the mysteries of her body in turn. Joyful discoveries for an attentive novitiate. But after several rounds of delight, Tisis had sworn her body was relaxed enough to attempt intromission again.

Her Jade Gate was still firmly closed. Something in her wouldn’t allow him inside, and a tiny part of him couldn’t help but wonder if her body was betraying her words as lies that she really did want this marriage.

Maybe that was unfair of him.

It had certainly been unwise to say it out loud.

A magical, nearly perfect night had ended in tears and a turned back.

Eventually he’d pulled her to him, and she let him hold her against his big form, but neither had said another word.

The problem in his hands this morning was ever so much simpler. When he’d been lost and delirious the last time he’d been in Blood Forest, he’d drafted a small length of chain from solid yellow. He’d begun by drafting each tiny link one at a time. It would have taken him several years to make a mail coat that way.

If he lived long enough to finish it, it would make something lighter and much, much stronger than iron or steel. He still wasn’t sure if it would stop a musket ball, though.

That uncertainty, and that he would have to spend weeks to draft a large-enough section of mail even to run an inconclusive test against a musket ball, had made him lose interest.

Tisis had been up for a while. He could hear her moving around the tent, getting dressed and ready for the day. She paused now, just inside. Gathering her courage? Kip wondered if they were going to start the day with a fight.

He glanced back down at his project as she stepped out. She stretched with a pleased sound and made a quick sign of the seven to the sun as it first peeked over the horizon, illuminating the river and her blonde hair in its ponytail. She met Kip’s eye and smiled.

She came over and sat next to him, her hip touching his.

So… not a fight. Thank Orholam.

“What’re you working on?” Tisis asked, a smile in her voice.

“Just something to keep my hands busy.”

“Something to keep your hands busy?”

“Little project. Was thinking of making a mail coat with it at first. But it’d take me six months at least. I’m not sure it makes sense to plan that long term.”

She put her hand on his thigh and blew out a breath. “Kip, I wanted to say sorry for last night. I was a brat.”

I wish more people would be a brat that way! was probably not the right thing to say. But she wasn’t talking about the first part of the night and he knew it. “I’m sorry, too,” Kip said.

“No, you’ve got nothing to be sorry for. Thanks for pulling me back to you. I needed that,” she said.

The rest of the camp was stirring now, and not a few people were already hard at work at morning chores, but, taking their cue from Winsen, who stood guarding Kip and Tisis from a good distance, the others didn’t approach.

“I know we didn’t exactly choose this,” Kip said. “I mean, we did, but it was a pretty constrained choice. But we’re in this together. I had a great time last night—the best time. You were, just, wow.”

“But,” she said glumly.

“Yeah. I want us to stop trying the other thing.”

“The normal thing, you mean?” she asked bitterly.

He wondered how much they were being careful not to say it straight out because they were outside where someone might just overhear, and how much they were just embarrassed. Who fails at having sex?

“Everything is great for us except that. Why can’t we just have fun and put that aside?” Kip said. “It’s just not—”

“You know damn well why,” she said quietly. “The contract isn’t valid. I mean, at this point I’ve already lied to my sister, which has only worked because I haven’t had to see her face-to-face. She’ll know, Kip.”

“We’re not going to see her,” he said. “Not until all this is over.”

“Kip, political marriages get split up all the time. And that’s when they’re valid in the first place. I’m not really safely in your family until I have a baby and your grandfather decides it looks like a Guile. You think that old man wouldn’t be happy to cast me off like a cheap whore again?”