The Broken Eye (5 page)

“Black,” Gill said.

“Definitely black,” Gavin said.

“Bilhah,” the White said, addressing her room slave by name for the first time that Gavin remembered. “What day is today?”

“’Tis the Feast of Light and Darkness, Mistress. The day when light and dark war over who will own the sky.”

The White still didn’t turn. Quietly, she said, “And on this equinox, when we know the light must die, when there is no victory possible, we’re saved—not by a white whale, but by a black one.”

The others nodded sagely, and Gavin felt like a significant moment was passing him by. He looked from one to another. “Well?” he asked. “What does it mean?”

Gill slapped the back of his head. “Well, that’s the question, ain’t it?”

Chapter 2

Gavin Guile’s palms bled a warm, thick gray around the slick oar in his hands. He’d thought he had respectable calluses for a man who worked mainly with words, but nothing prepared you for ten hours a day on the oar.

“Strap!” Number Seven said, raising his voice for the foreman. “More bandages for
His Holiness
.”

That elicited a few pale grins, but the galley slaves didn’t slow. The big calfskin drums were thumping out a cetaceous pulse. It was a pace the experienced men could maintain all day, though with difficulty. Each bench held three men, and two could keep this pace for long enough to allow their oarmate to drink or eat or use the bucket.

Strap came over with a roll of cloth. She motioned for Gavin to present his hands. Strap was the burliest woman he had ever seen, and he’d known every female Blackguard for twenty years. He pulled his bloody claws off the oars. He couldn’t open or close his fingers, and it wasn’t even noon yet. They would row until dark; five more hours, this time of year. She unrolled the cloth. It seemed crusty.

Gavin supposed there were worse things to worry about than infection. But as she wrapped his hands with efficient motions, albeit without gentleness, he smelled something vibrant, resin overlaid with something like cloves, and heard the tiny shivering splintering of breaking superviolet luxin.

For a moment, the old Gavin was back, his mind reaching for how he could take advantage of their foolishness. It was difficult to draft directly from luxin breaking down, but difficult was nothing for Gavin Guile. He was the Prism; there was nothing he couldn’t—

There was nothing he
could
do. Not now. Now, he was blind to colors. He couldn’t draft anything. In the threadbare light of the slowly swinging lanterns, the world swam in shades of gray.

Strap finished tying the knots at the back of his hands and growled. Gavin took that as his sign and lifted weary arms back to the oar.

“F-f-fights infection,” said one of his oarmates, Number Eight, but some of the men called him Fukkelot. Gavin had no idea why. There was a loose community here with their own slang and inside jokes, and he wasn’t part of it. “Down here in the belly, infection’ll kill you quick as a kick.”

Superviolet luxin fighting infection? The Chromeria didn’t teach that, but that didn’t make it wrong. Or maybe it was simply a new discovery since the war and no one had told him. But his thoughts were drawn instead to his brother, Dazen, who had slashed his own chest open. How had Dazen not succumbed to infection down in the hell Gavin had made him?

Had the madness that had convinced Gavin he had to kill his imprisoned brother not been madness at all, but only a fever?

Too late now. He remembered again the blood and brains blowing out of Dazen’s skull, painting the wall of his cell after Gavin had shot him.

Gavin put his bandaged hands back on the well-worn oar, the grip lacquered with sweat and blood and the oil of many hands.

“Back straight, Six,” Number Eight said. “The lumbago’ll kill ya if you do it all with your back.” Now, that many words with no cursing was just a miracle.

Eight had somehow adopted Gavin. Gavin knew it wasn’t pure charity that led the wiry Angari to help him. Gavin was the third man on their oar. The less work Gavin did, the more Seven and Eight would have to do to keep time, and Captain Gunner wasn’t taking it easy on the speed. He wasn’t keen on staying close to the site of the fall of Ru.

In another week, the Chromeria would have pirate hunters out: privateers given writs to hunt the slave takers who’d swept in upon the wrecks of the invasion fleet, saving men in order to press-gang them. They’d look to ransom those who had relatives with means, but many would doubtless head straight back to the great slave yards of Ilyta, where they could offload their human cargo with impunity. Others would seek out nearer slave markets, where unscrupulous officials would forge the documents saying these slaves were taken legally in far distant ports. Many a slave would lose his tongue so he couldn’t tell the tale.

This is what I led my people to, Karris. Slavery and death.

Gavin had killed a god, and still lost the battle. When the bane had risen from the depths, it had smashed the Chromeria’s fleet, their hopes thrown overboard like so much jetsam.

If I had been declared promachos, it wouldn’t have happened.

The truth was, Gavin shouldn’t have only killed his brother; he should have killed his father, too. Even up to the end, if he’d helped Kip stab Andross Guile instead of trying to separate them, Andross would be dead, and Gavin would be in his wife’s arms right now.

“You ever think that you weren’t hard enough?” Gavin asked Seven.

The man rowed three big sweeps before he finally answered. “You know what they call me?”

“Guess I heard someone call you Orholam? Because you’re seat number seven?” As six was the number of man, so was seven Orholam’s number.

“That ain’t why.”

Friendly sort. “Why then?”

“You don’t get answers to your questions because you don’t wait for ’em,” Orholam said.

“I’ve done my share of waiting, old man,” Gavin said.

Two more long sweeps, and Orholam said, “No. To all three. That’s three times no. Some men pay attention when things come in threes.”

Not me. Go to hell, Orholam. And the one you’re named after, too.

Gavin grimaced against the familiar agony of rowing and settled back into the tempo, sweep and stretch and brace against the footboard and pull. The
Bitter Cob
had a hundred and fifty rowers, eighty men in this deck and seventy above. Openings between decks allowed the sounds of drums and shouted orders to pass between the upper and lower galley decks.

But not only sound passed between the upper and lower decks. Gavin had thought his sense of smell was deadened after a few days, but there always seemed some new scent to assail him. The Angari fancied themselves a clean people, and maybe they were—Gavin hadn’t seen any signs of dysentery or sweating sickness among the galley slaves, and each night, buckets made the rounds of the slaves, the first full of soapy water for them to slop on themselves and the second full of clean seawater to rinse. Whatever slopped free, of course, dribbled down on the slaves in the lower hold and, dirtied further, into the bilge. The decks were always slippery, the hold hot and damp, the sweat constant, the portholes providing inadequate ventilation unless the wind was high, the dribbles of liquid from the deck above that dripped onto Gavin’s head and back suspiciously malodorous.

Footsteps pattered down the stairs, the light step of a veteran sailor. Fingers snapped near Gavin, but he didn’t even look over. He was a slave now; he needed to act the part or be beaten for his insolence. But he didn’t need to cower. On the other hand, he
did
still need to row, and that took all his strength.

Strap took Gavin’s hands off the oar, unlocked the manacles, whistled to Number Two. Numbers One and Two were at the top of the fluid slave hierarchy, allowed to sit up front and rest, trusted to run errands without chains on, and only required to row when another slave got sick or fainted from exhaustion.

After Strap manacled his hands behind his back, Gavin looked at Captain Gunner, who was standing at the top of the stairs out of the hold. Gunner was Ilytian, with midnight black skin, a wild curly beard, a fine brocaded doublet worn open over his naked torso, loose sailor’s pants. He had the handsome intensity of madmen and prophets. He talked to himself. He talked to the sea. He admitted no equal on heaven or earth—and in the firing of guns of any size, he was justified in that. Not long ago, Gunner had been jumping off a ship Gavin had lit on fire and poked full of holes. Gavin had spared Gunner’s life on a whim.

The good you do is what kills you.

“Come on up, little Guile,” Captain Gunner said. “I’m running out of reasons to keep you alive.”

Chapter 3

Kip’s palms bled vibrant crimson around the slick oar in his hands. His palms had blistered. The blisters had filled with colorless plasma. The tender skin beneath had torn. Blood had swirled into the plasma like red luxin. Chafed ceaselessly against the oar, the blisters broke, bled. He shifted his grip. New blisters formed, colorless. Filled with crimson. Burst.

He didn’t see the color, though. Couldn’t see anything. He could only imagine the colors waiting for him as soon as he shed the blindfold Zymun had put on him to keep him from drafting. Zymun, the polychrome who’d followed the Color Prince. Zymun, who’d tried to kill Kip in Rekton, and tried to assassinate Gavin at Garriston. Zymun, who held a pistol pointed at Kip’s head even now. Zymun, his half brother.

Zymun, whom he would kill.

“What are you smiling about?” Zymun asked.

The rowboat bobbed and lurched on the waves as it had for the last two days. Without the use of his eyes, Kip couldn’t thread his way through the chaos of the waves, rowing at the right time, pausing when appropriate. From time to time, he’d pull on one oar and feel it slip free of the water. He’d flounder until Zymun barked a direction. Two days they’d been doing this. Two agonizing days.

The blindfold was overkill the first day: Kip’s eyes had swollen shut. During the battle he’d accidentally hit himself, and then Zymun had punched him in the face. He had a dozen small cuts on the left side of his face and down his left arm from when the merlon of the green bane had been hit by a cannonball and exploded into shrapnel. Andross Guile had stabbed him in the shoulder and gashed him along his ribs.

If it hadn’t been for his Blackguard training for the last months and the fact he had a gun leveled at his head, Kip wouldn’t have been able to move. As it was, the unfamiliar exercise reduced his muscles to quivering clumsiness. His back was agony. The fronts of his legs, kept constantly flexed as he tried to keep his balance in the bobbing boat, were murder. His arms and shoulders were somehow worse. And his hands! Dear Orholam, it was like he’d dipped them in misery. His burned left hand that had been slowly healing was now a claw. It hurt to tighten, it hurt to loosen, it hurt to leave it alone.

Kip was fat and frightened and finished.

“More to port,” Zymun said, bored. He didn’t think enough of Kip to pursue why Kip had smiled. He was too canny to come close at a slight provocation, and the waves were too heavy today for him to risk putting himself off balance for a momentary pleasure.

He’d never offered to take a turn at the oars.

The only thing that kept Kip going was fear. It was exhausting to be afraid for two days straight, and it was starting to make Kip a bit furious.

But what can I do? I’m blind and reduced to such weakness I couldn’t win a fight with a kitten, muscles sure to clamp or collapse at any move I make. Zymun has set the field. He has the cards: six colors and a gun.

But as soon as Kip saw it as a game of Nine Kings, his terror eased. He imagined analyzing the game with the patience of a blue. Could Zymun be nearly as frightening an opponent as Andross Guile? No. But if you have a terrible hand you can still lose to a bad opponent.

Zymun could kill Kip at any moment, easily and without fear of justice or repercussions, because no one would ever know.

Yes, yes, we’ve established that, but so what?

Kip’s best card was Zymun’s laziness. Zymun knew they needed to row or they could fall prey to pirates and be enslaved. Zymun didn’t want to row himself, so Kip was safe until he irritated Zymun enough to overcome his laziness, or until Zymun didn’t need him any longer.

Zymun had great cards, but a great card that you never play is a worthless card.

Zymun had a ludicrously inflated opinion of himself—he’d already spoken at length about all the things he would do once he reached the Chromeria. Kip didn’t appear in those stories, which told Kip all he needed to know about his own future. But Zymun’s inflated opinion of himself meant he had a proportionally deflated opinion of others. Kip acted beaten, and Zymun believed it. Of course he was superior. Of course Kip would be devastated by that fact and realize that he was helpless.

“I really expected the sharks to get you at Garriston,” Kip said, threading a grudging admiration through his tone.

Zymun wasn’t an idiot, despite his arrogance. Once the sun went down, he lost his luxin advantage. Then he only had three cards: the pistol, Kip’s injuries, and that his own muscles weren’t devastated from a dozen hours of grueling labor. Anytime Kip had turned over last night in his sleep as he lay in the front of their little boat, under the bench, Zymun had woken instantly, the flintlock already cocked and pointed at him.

Kip’s odds of getting accidentally shot if Zymun twitched in his sleep were depressingly high.

“Wasn’t a pleasant swim,” Zymun said. After a silence, he said, “I expected that waterfall to get you back at Rekton.”

Peeved, Kip the Lip almost brought up their next meeting—in the rebel camp, when Zymun hadn’t recognized him. But taunting a man with a dozen sure ways to kill you wasn’t the height of good sense.

“Guess we’ve something else in common then,” Kip said. “Hard to kill.” He shouldn’t have bothered trying to draw them together with some illusory common bonds. Zymun was pure reptile. Kip thought the boy must try to hide it most of the time. With Kip, he didn’t. Another sign of how Kip’s time was limited.