No one had explained what Gavin was supposed to do, or what happened in what order, but another drummer joined the first, pounding a big, hollow-sounding drum to add to the first. He beat at exactly the same tempo, though, standing in front of the slaves on the port side.

“Uh, fuck fuck fuck fuck, listen to our drummer, not theirs,” Fukkelot said. “Last—” He dissolved into curses and grunts for a while, getting more and more frustrated that he couldn’t speak clearly. Finally, he managed, “Last second, we stow the oars. After uh, uh, uh, a sprint, though.”

“Turning to port, seventy paces!” the foreman shouted.

A muffled report resounded from the long tom mounted on the prow of the Bitter Cob and shook the deck like a punch in the chest. Shouting abovedecks. Pounding feet. A musket fired above, followed by Gunner’s shout. He wouldn’t want anyone on deck shooting out at that range. He wouldn’t trust anyone but himself to hit a target that far away.

Gavin gritted his teeth, his legs quivering, arms burning, sweat dripping into his eyes. The slaves were barely touching their butts to the wood benches at this pace.

A high, loud crack sounded from some musket that Gavin couldn’t place, but that sounded very different than—oh, that could only be Gunner’s musket.

The Bitter Cob veered to starboard. Gavin figured they must be trying to cut directly behind the other ship, to keep them from getting a broadside. It would only work if their own ship were significantly faster.

“Starboard side, battle speed!” Strap shouted.

“Starboard side, battle speed!” Leonus shouted.

The drummer on the starboard side picked up his pace, beating triple beats in the space of two beats on the port side. It made the Bitter Cob cut to port, while losing almost no speed.

“Battle speed, all!” Strap shouted.

“Battle speed, all!” Leonus shouted.

They sprinted across the waves, throwing their whole weight into every stroke. There were no chants now. The men had no breath to spare. The heat was unbearable. Gavin heard the slapping of a whip, but his world was constricted to the pain in his shoulders and lungs and legs and back and calves and arms—

“On my mark, stow portside oars!” the foreman shouted. Before Leonus could even finish repeating the order, the foreman shouted, “Mark!”

The drummers pounded three great wallops, and stopped abruptly.

The slaves heaved their oars down, lifting the blades out of the water, and then pulled them into the hold, hand over hand, pulling them all the way inside so they wouldn’t be snapped off in a collision.

For one moment, as the drums fell silent, as the slaves gasped for breath, as the men above braced for impact, there was no sound but the peaceful hissing of the waves.

Then hell broke loose.

Chapter 12

Kip walked shoeless on the beach for an hour before his feet blistered. He walked on blistered feet for half an hour before the blisters cracked and bled. He walked on bleeding feet for less than a minute before the obvious occurred to him.

He sat heavily on the sand and sighed. How many months had he been drafting now? The Chromeria taught that you weren’t supposed to think of drafting first to solve your problems, but they had it exactly backwards.

Magic was useful for everything. It just killed you. You should always think of it first. Then you should decide if a little dram of death was worth it.

Functionally, perhaps, the same thing. Provided you thought of it before you were bleeding to death on a beach in some distant corner of the satrapies because you were so damn dumb.

Using the green of the jungle canopy as his source, he drafted a green, flexible sole to walk on, thought about it for a minute, and then drafted entire boots of green luxin. Because his feet were already bloody, he left an open connection between his feet and the bottom-most layer of the sole so that he would be able to adjust the grip of his shoes immediately. It flirted with the line of using magic in ways that became part of your own body—incarnitive. But there were no magisters here. Kip walked, adjusting his boots until he was happy with them and trying to lock that design in his mind in case he ever needed this again.

Every drafter did this, he realized. They came up with useful designs and memorized them to be used quickly again. It was just that simpletons designed shoes while savants designed skimmers. The number of designs you could make as your colors expanded had to be an exponential curve. Had Gavin Guile memorized a thousand thousand designs, or did he just understand magic so deeply that he didn’t have to memorize designs? He merely created what made sense. Like you don’t have to think how to walk up stairs that are slightly steeper than the stairs you’re used to. You just do.

It seemed the more Kip learned about magic, the more impressed he was with those who used it artfully.

Then again, he’d gone green golem once, purely on instinct.

You got potential, Kip.

And you know what potential means? he replied.

“Ain’t done nothing yet.”

It was actually kind of comforting to hear the sound of his own voice.

He kept walking. Whether under oar or sail, galleys could travel twelve to fifteen leagues a day. Most galleys only had a range of four days before they needed fresh provisions. As galleys became less prevalent—being replaced by ships with longer ranges—many of the coastal towns that lived on the galley traffic were struggling. They would die in another generation or two, but they weren’t gone yet. So at the maximum, there had to be a town within sixty leagues.

Assuming he hadn’t been dropped precisely in between two towns, Kip would obviously find one closer if he walked the right direction. But he’d been blindfolded. The nearest town could only be a league or two south, while he was heading north.

Of course, there should be little towns in between, too, like that little fishing town so close to Ruic Head where the whales had gone crazy, and the people, too.

That was, if all the towns hadn’t been abandoned by people fearful of the advancing army of color wights, in which case, he could walk until he died and—

Not helping, Kip.

He was hungry. No, don’t think about that. Anything else.

At worst, if Kip could walk eight leagues a day, he should make it to a town in seven days. At worst. He could do that. All he needed was water. He could live on his fat for plenty long enough, theoretically, though he would walk slower as he became weaker. He found himself moving imaginary abacus beads as he did the figures. Funny, that helped.

That is, it helped him with the arithmetic. A smarter person would probably shut off his brain and walk. Kip had always been about as good at shutting off his brain as he was at shutting off his mouth.

Straight pipe between the two, mother used to say.

He was assuming he could walk eight leagues a day. Here, on the clear beaches, that seemed entirely plausible, but Kip knew there were other areas of the coastline that were rocky, where cliffs bordered the sea, or jungles abutted the waves almost directly. Points protruded full leagues out into the sea. If Kip followed the coastline exactly, he would have to travel much more than the sixty leagues a ship would travel between towns. If he didn’t follow the coastline exactly, he’d risk getting lost in an unfamiliar jungle or forest.

For a few minutes, he had to concentrate on breathing, his throat constricted, his chest tight, trying to throttle him.