The Blinding Knife: Lightbringer: Book 2 Read online

  Kip’s spectacles were bent but still in his hand. No time. He’d get them on his face about the time the sword ended his life.

  Both he and the assassin lunged at the same time: Vox lunging for Kip, Kip lunging for the cards on the wall. Kip raked his hand down the wall, tearing off four, five, six cards.

  A gush of flames shot straight out of the wall. If Kip had been standing in front of the cards, he would have been consumed. Instead, the flames made a wall between him and the assassin, who skidded to a stop. Kip pulled on his spectacles, bending them roughly into place and sucking in green. Vox saw what he was doing, and as the curtain of flame dwindled to nothing, they both threw up an open hand to fling luxin at each other.

  The assassin was faster. His hand snapped out—and nothing happened. His palm was empty of color. He had one second to look down at his own hand, surprised. Then Kip’s green missile speared through his stomach.

  The man fell to the floor and wailed. “Atirat! Atirat, come back. What have you done to me?!” he shouted at Kip. He wasn’t looking at his stomach. He wasn’t looking at his death wound. He was looking at his hands.

  Kip coughed. The wall holding the remainder of the cards had caught fire. Some of the cards sparked and spat, like tree sap in the blaze. Others sat placid in the flames. The fire was spreading, fast.

  A breathy, labored voice said, “Kip.”

  It came from the corner. Janus Borig. She was alive.

  “Get the knife, you fool,” she said.

  “What?” Kip asked, like a simpleton. Oh, his knife. The one he’d thrown away during the fight. That knife.

  Kip had to step over Niah’s body, her exploded head still leaking blood in an expanding circle. He looked away quickly so he didn’t vomit.

  The other assassin was babbling something about being unclean, unworthy, ruined. He was weeping, gasping, but he didn’t seem like he had the strength to make any trouble. Kip found the dagger and stood up into the smoke just as he heard a scream.

  He flinched, ducked low, and was in time to see Vox—who had taken off his cloak and his shirt for some reason—slash open the side of his own neck. Blood fountained out, and the assassin stared at Kip, his brown eyes full of hatred, for a single moment, then he slumped over, unconscious.

  What the hell?

  Kip ran back to Janus. “Cloaks, Kip.”

  “We can get you a cloak once we get out of here,” Kip said.

  “Stupid, wonderful boy. Their cloaks.” Her voice was weak.

  Kip obeyed. His brain didn’t seem to be working correctly, so he was glad to have the direction—even if the direction didn’t make sense in a house that was rapidly filling with smoke. The man had thrown his cloak off, so that was easy to grab, but the woman’s cloak was still around her body. Kip looked away as he rolled her off it, but still it stuck, and he saw that the cloak was bound to a choker collar of gold around the woman’s throat.

  Focusing just on his fingers so he didn’t get overwhelmed by the gore and lose control, he unclasped the choker and finally pulled the cloak away.

  He took a deep breath in the less smoky air down by the ground, and moved over to Janus Borig. He lifted her in his arms. Then he saw the cards again, and it hit him.

  The precious cards lining the walls were aflame, each a little torch as the luxins within them flared.

  “Don’t worry about them. Go,” Janus said.

  “But they’re everything! They’re worth a—”

  “Go, Kip.” Her voice was weak.

  Kip stumbled down the steps, with the old woman in his arms, his head coming dangerously close to the open flames, the heat a wall.

  The flames were crawling down the side of the stairs, and Kip saw garbage smoldering as they reached the ground level.

  Orholam have mercy, this room wasn’t only full of garbage. It was full of black powder.

  Kip pushed toward the door, having to step deliberately to get around the trash, his arms full of old lady, cloaks, and one big-ass knife.

  “One moment,” Janus said in Kip’s ear right before he carried her out the door. Her voice was a whisper. “Turn a…” He turned her and she reached out toward her tobacco box.

  “Are you kidding me?” Kip asked. “You want a smoke? Now?”

  She rooted around in the box for one moment more, and from beneath the tobacco she pulled out a small lacquered olivewood and ivory box, only large enough to hold a single deck of cards.

  “Ha! They didn’t get ’em.” She gave a wan smile. “What are you waiting for? This place is on fire.”

  Kip carried her out into the night. It was storming, hard, lightning flashing, thunder shaking the buildings, rain smothering the streets. No one had noticed that the small building was on fire yet. Kip carried Janus down the street and had barely turned into an alley when he heard an explosion from her house. Then another, much bigger. He stumbled, fell, barely able to cushion the woman’s fall.

  He propped her up in the wet, dirty alley, abruptly exhausted.

  “I don’t suppose you grabbed my brushes,” she asked, eyebrows lifting. The rain had washed the blood from her face, but she was looking unhealthily pale, somehow luminous. “Because…” She smiled, her eyes unnaturally bright. “I know who the Lightbringer is now.”

  And then she died.

  Chapter 62

  The Color Prince’s army had fought through the pass into Atash with few casualties. Liv hadn’t seen any of the fighting, and all the evidence of it was gone by the time she’d gone through.

  After they made it through the pass, everyone had assumed they’d head straight for Idoss, the largest city in southern Atash. Instead, while smaller parties of foragers fanned out through the Atashian countryside to feed the army, the prince had taken the bulk of the army south, deeper into the mountains. He cut across the river and the main road, and then marched upstream, instead of downstream to Idoss.

  Eventually, they came to the great silver mines at Laurion. Liv had never seen anything like it. The hills for at least a league in every direction were studded with holes. Three hundred and fifty mines, the prince said, worked by thirty thousand slaves. The mines were owned by the Atashian government, but nobles throughout the Seven Satrapies leased them and paid rents and a share of their profits to the state. Liv had heard of slaves being sent to the mines, but she’d never had any real concept of what it meant, other than that it was something bad that owners could threaten rebellious or lazy slaves with. Some Atashian students had mentioned their families renting out their slaves for the months after harvest to rich slaveholders who would transport them to the mines, work them, and send them back before planting. Apparently, a lot didn’t come back, and most families would only rent out their slaves that way if they desperately needed the money.

  Around the hills beyond the mines was a ring of wooden towers. The area inside was too vast to enclose with a fence, but the land had been cleared of timber. Any escaping slave would have to cross a great deal of open ground. Each wooden tower had a small complement of guards, horses, and several slave-hunting mastiffs.

  A small town called Thorikos sat below the mines on the river. Here, the ore was loaded onto barges, food was brought in from the surrounding countryside, trade was conducted between slaveholders, medical treatment and tools were sold, and disputes were adjudicated. Thorikos was mostly empty, though. Everyone who could flee had. Left behind were only an old assemblyman and those citizens too old or ill to make the trip. Liv wondered at the cowardice of their families. Who would leave his mother to an advancing army? War brings out the worst in many, and the best in few.

  There was no battle. When the overlords of the mine saw the forces arrayed against them, they knew it would be suicide. The soldiers stationed at Laurion were guards who kept the slaves in and captured those who escaped, not disciplined fighting men. They had only half a dozen drafters, none of them women skilled in battle. All those had been withdrawn to Idoss.

  The assemblyman met
the Color Prince outside of town. He looked quite frightened by the sight of the prince. Liv had forgotten how overwhelming he was at first. But the old man surrendered gracefully and begged for mercy.

  The Color Prince granted it. He swore no one would be killed or accosted, that nothing would be stolen except food and tools.

  And he was true to his word, though it caused grumbling. It would have been harder, Liv realized, if the army had experienced any privation. Since their food stores were still well stocked and no one had yet died in claiming plunder, it was far easier to ask the army to go without.

  The prince took great care in how he seized the mines themselves. He sent soldiers to circle through the hills to capture each wooden watchtower to keep the slaves from escaping in the chaos. If he really did mean to free the slaves as he’d claimed, he meant to do it at his own pace, in his own way.

  And so it was. Koios White Oak loved a spectacle. As the evening sun set the sky alight with fire, he spoke to the thirty thousand gathered slaves. All would be released immediately as soon as they listened to his few, poor words. He would clothe and feed them all tonight. They were free to go wherever they pleased so long as they didn’t steal from his people or join the Chromeria against them. Or, he said, they could march with him, and take equal shares of the plunder with the rest of his soldiers, and exact vengeance, and perhaps make enough to start a life, to earn a plot of land if they wished to farm or a grant of money if they wished to live in the cities. They had ten days to decide, but they had to decide before he assaulted Idoss. If they chose to march with the army, they would be choosing to live by the army’s rules. But it was their own choice, freely given, and they would from this day never be slaves again.

  With his own hands, he struck the chains off an old slave’s hands.

  It was a huge gamble, and the next day it looked like it was one that had failed spectacularly. The slaves sent to the silver mines weren’t the best and most temperate men. They were the captured pirates, the violent, the disobedient, the lazy, the rebellious. They were the kind of men who hated having rules at all, and only perhaps a tenth showed up for the drills the next morning. The army spent that day training, and only began its march at noon the next day.

  By the third day, Liv realized what the prince had been betting on. The freed men, though now clothed and unbound, had no food. The Color Prince’s foragers had denuded the land of crops and livestock. No one would beat the freed men, but no one would feed them either. Of course, most of them were very familiar with privation; starving the slaves was seen as the best way to cure lustfulness and laziness. They could deal with the pain of an empty belly. For a while.

  There was no traffic on the roads except other slaves, so there was no one to rob even if they wanted to. One small band had attacked the camp, making off with food, but not horses. They’d been hunted down, tied up, sprayed with red luxin, and set afire alive. As three days turned to four, large groups began traveling parallel to the slow-moving army.

  On the fifth day, at dinner, thousands came into camp. They were given crusts, nothing more. Free men work for their meat, they were told. The next morning, thousands more were at the drills.

  By the tenth day, twenty-two thousand men had been added to the army.

  Of course, adding such huge numbers of untrained, undisciplined men to an already undertrained and undisciplined army caused huge problems. Liv would listen to the advisers bickering late into the night about it, even raising their voices to the prince. Should the slaves be put into their own units, or incorporated into existing ones? (The latter.) What was to be done about slaves who accosted women or men in the camp? (Immolation.) The slaves were all men, and only the camp overseers and their favorites—who’d all fled—had been allowed to visit the prostitutes in Thorikos. Could anything be done for them?

  The prince had addressed that by bringing together representatives of the slaves, his generals, and the prostitutes—who hadn’t been organized in any sort of a guild, but did so rapidly when they were told that they could thus make a fortune. Liv’s ears burned as she listened, but the prince never asked her to leave. He got the Mother of the Companions, as the prostitutes wished to be called, to tell him how many clients their women could serve in a day. He had two-thirds that many chits made up, made of bronze, each stamped with a lewd act. Then he made up a much smaller number of silver chits that could be used for the best Companions—he left it up to the Mother to decide how she wished to choose those women. He distributed a third of the chits to the generals, a third to the head of the foragers, and a third to his bursar.

  Chits were to be given to men who gave extraordinary service—either bringing in many more crops or volunteering for particularly hazardous assignments for the generals. At least half of the chits had to be distributed to slaves, and if there was any corruption in hoarding chits or dispensing them only to favorites, the corrupt man or woman would be drawn, hanged, and immolated. Then, every day, the Companions would turn in the chits for reimbursement. The last third could be purchased by anyone in the army for set prices, helping offset the subsidy for the others.

  The prince said, “For the next two weeks, I want you to do your best to find ways to give out as many of these as possible, and not to the same men over and over. Give everyone a chance to earn one. After that, we’ll scale back. We don’t want riots or rapists this week, but we don’t want financial ruin next week either.”

  The next day, it seemed the camp shrank by a third as the newly freed men went out on volunteer missions in every direction.

  As they approached Idoss, the towns got bigger and the loot got better. None resisted until they were almost on the outskirts of Idoss itself. This city, Ergion, had a stone wall, archers, a few drafters. Liv couldn’t figure what the people of the city were thinking—Idoss, which might be defended, was only a day’s trip away for a family, two days for an army. An easy trip, when fleeing for your life. But somehow the city elders had convinced themselves they could scatter a slave army like chaff.

  The headsman spat from the ramparts and instructed his archers to fire on the Color Prince when he came forward to parley. The Color Prince’s drafters deflected the arrows easily.

  With drafters providing cover from the archers, their sappers—former miners, half of them—placed gunpowder charges under the wall within an hour. They blew open a hole and had the city in flames in another.

  This time, the Color Prince gave orders for no quarter to be given. This would be an example, he said. He only wanted five hundred women and children left alive.

  The army went mad, and Liv stayed in the camp. Even dressed as a rich drafter and well-known as she was, it wasn’t safe in Ergion for a woman alone. She didn’t want to see what the freed men were doing to their former masters anyway.

  That night, a hugely muscled man whose status as a former slave could only be noted by his sheared ear was allowed into the prince’s tent. He bowed and presented a sack. The city headsman’s head was inside.

  The Color Prince gave him a handful of silver chits, looked him in the eye, and nodded. As the brute left, leaving the disfigured head oozing blood on the prince’s carpet, Koios White Oak simply said, “Amazing what a man will risk for a few minutes with the mouth of a talented woman.”

  Chapter 63

  ~Samila Sayeh~

  Tap, superviolet and blue. Tap, green. Tap, orange. Tap, yellow. Tap, red and sub-red.

  I’ve been having these waking dreams. Before the Guiles’ War had come to Ru, my favorite little cousin Meena was given an Ilytian dragon. Everywhere she’d gone, the toy had bobbed along in the air above her, tied to her wrist with a string, never deflating in the two months she had it. Meena had skipped everywhere, singing. Seven years old, and already she’d been training for two years. Her voice had a purity that transfixed soldiers and courtiers alike, but as often as not she’d make up her own nonsense songs, skipping through town.

  Meena is dead. She would have been twenty-thr
ee years old now. She wanted to go to the Chromeria with me. I told her no. Of course, her mother never would have let her go even if I’d asked. Most likely. I hadn’t tried. Meena died in General Gad Delmarta’s purge, her body tossed down the steps of the Great Pyramid along with those of the rest of our family. Fifty-seven dead at the pyramid alone. Many more within the city, though those deaths were more pedestrian, somehow mattered less—at least to my people.

  I wonder if Meena would have become a drafter, a warrior like me. I had no interest in fighting until that butcher killed all my people. I became quite a warrior, though. But evidently not enough of one.

  And now my time is done.

  With the precision only the best blues can manage, I study the red tent that is my cell.

  The battle for Garriston was to have been my last fight. Usef and I had been overwhelmed by the wights and separated from the other veteran drafters who’d volunteered to fight to the death instead of joining the Freeing.

  Usef and I had fought on opposite sides of the Prisms’ War, the False Prism’s War, the War of Guiles. One of my best friends from the Chromeria killed Usef’s first wife. And Usef had killed her in turn. Usef and I had ample reason to hate each other. Instead, we’d fallen in love. Two broken warriors tired of war.

  We’d chosen to make our last stand together. All the veteran drafters had been broken into pairs, each armed with a pistol and a dagger. All of us were close to breaking the halo, so whoever broke first would have their partner put them out of their madness. And if she was left alive alone, each was responsible for ending her own life.

  I wondered if Usef could kill me, when it came to it. Usef was a blue, but he was also a red. It was how he’d gotten his nickname, the Purple Bear. He hated that name with a passion, thought it made him sound ridiculous. But as I pointed out, it was really the only nickname possible. Usef was six and a half feet tall, barrel-chested, burly, and hairy, with a full, wild beard and long, wild dark hair and heavy brows. He was a bear, and a red and blue disjunctive bichrome. His growling in response to people calling him the Purple Bear had only made the name stick.