The Broken Eye (98 page)

As they approached the vast iron gate blocking river access, Commander Ironfist looked at Karris. “New plan?” he asked.

They both looked at the defenses. The gate itself could be blasted open or opened by a guard at the counterweights. The soldiers guarding the gate and the hippodrome, ironically, were wearing Guile livery. The Guiles must be sponsoring these races, so they were in charge of the expense and manpower of securing the hippodrome during the race and clearing and cleaning it afterward.

It would have been a great stroke of luck if they’d had hours to call the Guile steward, convince him or her who Karris was, and enlist them to help. There was no time for that.

We could just kill them. Tragic, but their lives against Gavin’s? Karris was willing to make that trade.

But there were at least a dozen of them, most of them at the gate to the basement itself, where someone was shouting up the results to the races to them as they happened.

They could kill twelve, no problem. But how many more were around the hippodrome, within a minute’s run? Karris and Ironfist could get in, but what if Gavin wasn’t there yet? Or what if he’d already been taken above?

“The timing’s impossible,” Karris said.

Ironfist veered the skimmer into an open space between two riverboats. They spilled out onto the dock, ignoring the stares of the merchants and sailors. “Ben-hadad, Essel, guard the boat. Ben-hadad, that spot there.” He pointed out in the canal. “Make sure it stays clear. If it isn’t deep, make it so.”

“How am I supposed—”

“Your problem. Essel, ten minutes, fifteen at the outside. Hezik, with us.”

“Ben-hadad, do whatever you’re going to do.”

He approached her warily. “This is not going to be comfortable,” he said. “Hold your left eye open. You can’t blink.”

She did and he lifted a tiny lens on delicate luxin fingers, swabbing the lens itself one last time to make sure it was free of dust—and then placed it directly on her eye. It was about as enjoyable as she’d guessed getting poked in the eye would be. She blinked.

“No—you weren’t supposed to blink—” Ben-hadad said. “Is it still in? Next one.”

They repeated the process. It took two tries, and left her streaming tears.

But she looked up at him and Ben-hadad said, “I’m a genius.”

Commander Ironfist grabbed her face in his meaty hands and turned her toward him. It was so disconcerting when he touched her face.

He looked troubled, but said nothing, merely nodding.

Ben-hadad had not only made almost impossibly thin blue lenses that sat directly on her eyes, he had patterned them exactly to the luxin patterns already on her retinas. To anything other than long study, Karris would appear to simply have blue eyes.

“How long?” she asked.

“A few hours. Try not to blink too hard.”

It would have been great, she’d joked, if she drafted blue. Ben-hadad took the criticism to heart, and had incorporated a bit of red luxin—which someone else had needed to draft for him, on a speeding, windy skimmer—into the lens itself, but only directly over the pupil. With the black pupil behind that dot of red, it was unnoticeable. One lens red, one lens green.

Karris wished she could try it out, but drafting at all risked destroying the disguise. Cursed pale skin. She would undo the good months of abstaining from drafting had done.

“Ready,” she said. She didn’t look a drafter at all.

Ironfist and Karris and Hezik ran up the steps from the docks, Karris especially drawing stares with her dress that was all cleavage and a flood of white lace and blue satin and a pink ribbon on her right hip the size of a great ship. She hiked up skirts and petticoats and thanked Orholam that she hadn’t put on the elevated shoes, too.

As usual, Ironfist moved with purpose. He cut between stalls, heading straight for the hippodrome’s wall. Karris’s wide skirts knocked over a rack of petosae, and she cursed the dress again, never mind that her life was going to depend on it in moments.

“Sorry, sorry,” she said, shooting the biggest, stupidest smile she could at the old man who ran out to catch his hats.

He looked at her face, her dress—and then her cleavage—and seemed to forget his anger, at least long enough for her to escape.

Ironfist brought them to the wall. It wasn’t the lowest wall, but it was clear. All the entrances were packed with people and Guile soldiers. Twenty feet above them here was a sentry box and a narrow walkway that disappeared into the hippodrome: a lookout to spot supplies arriving.

Ironfist must have already given an order to Hezik while Karris was flirting with the merchant, because Hezik’s brown skin was already tinged blue. He moved instantly to the wall, put his back to it, and squatted slightly, putting his thigh at a good angle to step up on.

Without hesitation, Commander Ironfist approached at a slow jog. The rhythm was important, and as always with Ironfist, the rhythm was perfect. He stepped on Hezik’s thigh, then up off his shoulder, then into the hand Hezik had raised above his head. A small luxin platform sprang up out of Hezik’s palm, shooting Ironfist into the air, his own jump magnified.

The jump was so perfect that Ironfist merely put his hands on the railing as his body went over it and into the walkway, as effortless as a farmboy vaulting a stone fence.

And then it was Karris’s turn. In this damned dress.

She gathered up skirts in both hands, and took a deep breath against the rib-breaking bodice, nodded the tempo to Hezik and jogged. Step, step, step.

Karris wasn’t as tall or as strong as Ironfist, but she was a great deal lighter. Hezik overcompensated and launched her luxin platform too hard. She flew up and off to the side, but Ironfist was there, dodging to the side fast enough to arrive in place and put out his hand and arm as stable targets. She snagged his hand, and he swooped her up and into the walkway.

It worked perfectly except that the boned skirts smacked Ironfist in the face as she spun, poking him in the eye. He didn’t let it interfere with setting Karris down in the walkway, but he was left blinking.

Karris looked down in disgust. “This thing is hideous,” she said.

“The very pinnacle of fashion is to wear the hideous with great confidence.” Ironfist rubbed his eye, but he did it as he jogged over to the door. It was chained shut, and the door itself was stout old wood. The hinges were on the other side. Ironfist was in the lead, and he went right to the barred window. Who the hell put a door that sturdy up here? Who bothered to chain it shut?

Shaking the door to test its hinges, Ironfist immediately got the attention of someone on the other side.

“Would you open the door?” he asked smoothly. “My lady friend and I seem to have gotten locked out.” He smiled as if they’d been up to mischief.

“Go to hell,” Karris heard from the other side.

Brave words, when Ironfist was on the opposite side of a chained door.

Ironfist turned. “I saw a man on the spina. Being bound for punishment. It’s not Gavin.” He hesitated, though.

“Let me look,” Karris said. She went to the window, but wasn’t tall enough to see over the standing crowds.

Without needing to be asked, Ironfist stooped and wrapped an arm around her and lifted her up.

“That’s him,” she said instantly. Even emaciated and with his hair dyed, she couldn’t mistake him. “Sir,” she said louder. “Please…?”

The man turned, frustrated. “Do I look like I have a key? I’m trying to watch the show.”

Karris nearly shot a spike of luxin through his head.

There had been some hope while they’d thought the chains might just be looped around the other side. But locked, too?

She looked at Ironfist. They could break through the door, but it would take time and noise. That would draw soldiers. And if Gavin was already on the spina …

Ironfist looked up. There were no more walkways or sentry boxes above them, but there were open spaces between the broad arches—twenty-five feet up. Not only was it higher than their first jump, but it would mean running forward, jumping forward, and grabbing
sideways
. If they did anything wrong, Karris would be launched away from the hippodrome and would land in the market below. Far below.

It was too dangerous.

“Ladder?” Ironfist asked. It was possible, but it would take time to make one that would bear even Karris’s weight over this kind of height.

“Shh. The crowd just went silent,” Karris said.

Ironfist took his place instantly, squatting slightly, right hand over his shoulder, a flat blue platform already drafted in it. “If you need to, you come out the way you went in,” Ironfist said. “They won’t expect it. Five count. Gavin first. Plank out.”

“You think you can?” Karris asked. She’d taken her position already. Plank, from up there? She paled. As if
that
was the insane part of this plan.

But before Ironfist could answer, the crowd in the hippodrome erupted in groans. Something terrible had happened. It was the same sound they made when a chariot wrecked, or a man was dragged to death by his horses. That was how it always went: a shared groan, then a cheer.

They
cheered
.

Karris drafted green for the first time in half a year, carefully packing it in areas covered by the dress, and the wildness filled her. Her eyes lit. This, this was life. She wasn’t too late. She couldn’t be too late. Not when she was this close. “One, two, three, four,” she said, giving the tempo for the jump.

Ironfist’s face was stone, the tight muscles in his jaw giving the only indication that he’d entered battle readiness, the whites of his eyes flooded with blue.

Karris jogged the few steps. With battle juice flowing and green luxin, she rushed the tempo she’d set. But Ironfist had practiced with her, fought with her. He knew; he adjusted.

But the faster tempo and the harder jump meant her skirts—which she had to release as soon as she made the first jumping step—flattened more than they had on her earlier jump with Hezik. The first step was fine, the step to Ironfist’s shoulder was fine, but the skirt caught for a fraction of a heartbeat between her foot and Ironfist’s hand.

Ironfist threw her hard into the air, springing the platform high and hard to give her the maximum height. But that little hitch put her off balance. Her leg strained to take all the pressure and she flew up—but not high enough, and out into the empty air.

Something big and blunt smacked into her butt, adding to her fading momentum, shooting her higher into the air. It was Ironfist. He’d noticed her jump was wrong and immediately tried to help her get higher. But the blue luxin scoop snapped immediately as he tried to use it to angle her in.

Worse, the boost twisted her body so that she was facing the street. All the green luxin she’d readied to extend in hooks was useless. Then some primal part of her remembered something and acted before it could rise to the level of thought. She snapped her hands out and
streamed
unfocused green luxin into the empty air.

Like a tiny rudder steering a mighty ship, it didn’t take much. She threw luxin, and the luxin threw her back—toward the vast open arch. She started spinning, but too late. Her left leg hit stone, and she tumbled.

In.

She’d made it. Her butt had cleared the ledge, just barely.

Karris hopped to her feet amid the standing crowd. No one had even noticed her entrance except one little girl on her father’s shoulders. The girl was patting his head, trying to get his attention. Karris straightened her skirts, brushed off the dirt, and pushed hair out of her eyes.

Now, the hard part.

Chapter 85

Aliviana Danavis spotted the superviolet seed crystal after midnight. She and Phyros were camped just off the bare rock that made up the north peninsula of the Everdark Gates. The sailors they’d hired had refused to make the climb, their fear so great that Liv had left her last remaining drafters with them, to make sure the sailors didn’t abandon them here. For three days, Liv and Phyros climbed alone, guided only by Liv’s intuition. She hoped it was a sense of superviolet, but she wasn’t sure.

Until now.

They had found a campsite just below the final pitch, where windblown grasses gave way to the bare rock of the cliffs of the Gate itself. The site had obviously been used by every party ever to make the climb to stare out over the Gates and the sea. Liv had sat with her back to the fire, thinking about tomorrow and stealthily checking her guns. She checked them all without ever moving her hands, letting her luxin wrap invisibly around her back or down to her belt. She was no smith, but when she pressed her superviolet luxin down the first pistol’s barrel, she noticed that the wadding was in place, but there was no ball. She’d loaded the pistol herself, so it was possible she’d done it improperly and the ball had fallen out.

But on all four? The only question that remained was when it had been done, and by whom. One of the drafters or sailors, back when they were on the galley? Or by dear Phyros?

She took a deep breath, and that was when she saw the seed crystal. In the air above and perfectly between the Everdark Gates, a winking, spinning crystal like a star hung low. Something about the moonlight made it glow cool in the visible spectrum.

Liv rose and started walking, barely aware of herself. In the superviolet spectrum, the crystal looked entirely different. It was hard to get any idea of the size of the thing. Light in the visible spectrum seemed unaffected by the crystal, and indeed, overwhelmed it. In the superviolet spectrum, though, the delicate light of a thousand stars bent toward that one point. When the moon emerged from a cloud, its powerful light beat down, scattering the superviolet streams like iron filings in a wind. But the moon’s face was hidden once again, those delicate streams were sucked toward the seed crystal as to a lodestone.

“Aliviana!” Phyros said. “Where are you going?”

During the day, it would be invisible even in the superviolet. The sledge of sunlight was too strong. This tiny point of light would be a mote in a storm.

“Eikona!” Phyros said.