Again, Kip seemed to be the only person who wasn't hanging on every word, so as the sun rose, first touching Brightwater Wall behind them because it was higher than the plain below, he saw movement on the wall.
He couldn't see it well around the frame of the spectacles, but the forms of five men-a cannon crew-became three, then in a violent motion two, then just one. The cannon on the wall had been pointed at a high trajectory toward Garriston, but the man was angling it down and down.
A quick spark.
Boom!
The cannon spat fire. Kip didn't see the shell hit, but he felt it. The earth seemed to jump.
For a moment, no one did anything, thinking it must have been a mistake. Screams of fright and pain. Then Karris collided with him, knocking him off his feet.
Kip smacked his head as he fell, so at first he wasn't sure if the second explosion was just his imagination.
"Canister shot!" Karris said. "Shit! We have to move! Ironfist's aiming for that wagon."
Wagon? Ironfist? Why was Ironfist shooting at them?
Kip was blinking. Something was strange about his vision-oh! Smacking his head against the ground had knocked one of the black lenses out of the frame of his spectacles.
"Grab that lens and cut my hands free!" Karris barked.
They were both lying on the ground, hands bound. The crackle of musket fire filled the air.
One of the Mirrorman guards grabbed Kip, trying to haul him to his feet.
Despite lying flat on her back, Karris kicked the back of the man's knee with her left foot. He folded, and by the time he landed on his back her right foot had swept up and then down in an ax kick across his throat. There was a crunch and blood sprayed through the mail flap over the man's mouth.
Kip could hardly believe what he'd just seen, but Karris was already moving on. She scrambled over the dying man, lying right on top of him. With her hands still behind her back, she drew the man's belt knife a hand's breadth and cut her wrists free.
"Stop!" a Mirrorman yelled, his musket pointed at Karris's head.
There was still screaming everywhere. Chaos. Shouting and gunfire and the screams of the dying.
Kip lashed out, kicking for the Mirrorman's knee as Karris had done seconds before.
The Mirrorman saw it coming and swung the butt of his musket for Kip's leg-
– and was flung away like Orholam's own hand had slapped him.
A concussion, a roar, a pressure so vast Kip's vision went black for an instant. Everyone standing was torn off their feet. Things-Kip couldn't even tell what they were-blasted overhead.
He must have lost a few seconds. He rolled over, tried to stand, fell. His wrists were bloody, but no longer bound. The acrid aroma of gunpowder filled the air. Bits of wood rained down on the ground.
When Kip tried to stand again, someone helped him. Not even a hundred paces away where the powder wagon had been, he saw a crater in the ground a good ten paces across and at least two paces deep. Everyone in a huge circle around it was dead.
Karris turned him around, her mouth moving, skin smudged with powder. He couldn't hear her.
He saw her mouth a curse as she realized the same thing. He was pretty sure she was mouthing "Ironfist" and a series of curses. She put a musket in his hands and said, slowly enough that Kip could read her lips, "Can you walk?"
Kip nodded, not sure how much he was hearing her and how much he was reading her lips. She pulled at him and they started jogging. He was still disoriented, but he saw that he wasn't the only one. Dozens of men and women with powder-darkened skin and clothes were staggering around, some of them bleeding from their ears. A man was carrying his left hand in his right hand, looking for the rest of his arm as blood pumped out of his mangled shoulder.
Teams of soldiers were forming up now and running toward the wall. Others stood back and were firing their muskets at the gun emplacement, but Kip didn't see anyone on top of the wall returning fire.
Someone was shouting at Kip. Good, so he could hear. He turned.
He didn't recognize the soldier standing in front of him. "Form up, soldier!" the man shouted. "Move it!"
They thought he was a soldier because he had a musket. But then, with his powder-blackened clothes, it was no wonder.
"Come on, soldier, we've got a city to take!"
There were at least twenty soldiers with the man, and only the officer had a real uniform. Kip shot a glance at Karris. She was wobbling back and forth, holding her hands over her eyes like she was blind, just another wounded person. Kip realized that if they saw the violet caps over her eyes, they'd capture her immediately. Or kill her outright. With that dress, it was best not to let their attention alight on her any longer than necessary.
If Kip refused, the man could summarily execute him. And he looked grim, ready to do it. "Yes, sir!" Kip said. He joined the lines, glanced at Karris, looked once more for Liv and didn't see her, and then ran with the soldiers toward the city and the sound of guns and the flash of magic.
Chapter 81
Gavin squared his shoulders and confronted his accusers. A hallway in the Travertine Palace. It wasn't exactly where he would have picked to die, but he supposed it was better than some dungeon somewhere. Better than I gave you, Gavin. At least he could face this with dignity.
"What do you want?" he demanded.
"We know what you're doing," Usef Tep said. "Sir." The "sir" was belated. It always was with the Purple Bear.
Samila Sayeh came forward, put a hand on Usef's meaty arm. "We've come together to stop you, Gavin Guile."
"And how do you propose to do that?" Gavin asked.
"By volunteering."
Huh? Gavin tottered on the edge of drafting everything he could. Stopped. Tried to keep his idiot perplexity off his face.
"It's noble, Lord Prism, but it's not wise."
What? Well sometimes when you don't know what the hell someone's talking about, the best thing to do is play along.
"I don't know what the hell you're talking about," Gavin said. Oops.
"The Freeing is the holiest moment in a drafter's life," Samila said. "You're trying to protect that for us. And we thank you for that. But we're warriors. All of us fought in the war. We're willing to fight again."
"I die this day," Usef said. "It's my duty to make an end, and I accept that. But I've got no patience for all this Orholam this and Orholam that. I'd rather go down fighting."
"Lord Prism," Samila Sayeh said, "we have to hold the city long enough for everyone to escape. Holding the walls is a death sentence. Why not give it to us? We're dead anyway."
Their talking had given Gavin a few moments to think, to recover his balance. "If I send you out there, you'll all break the halo. That's why you're here. Next year I'll have to face you fighting for him. They don't put down color wights. It's not just your souls we're talking about here. It's your sanity. And you're right, you're all warriors. That makes you ten times as dangerous when you break."
"We'll fight in teams. Each with a pistol and a knife. When we break, we'll do as the Blackguards do."
When a comrade broke the halo on the battlefield, the Blackguards considered them dead-and indeed, it did usually render a person unconscious temporarily. The Blackguards would check the eyes of a fallen comrade, and if the halo was broken, they'd slit their throat.
"Except when a team's down to one, we end ourselves too," Samila said. It was, for some, a thorny theological point, though not without precedent. Was suicide a sin when you knew you were going mad and would likely hurt or kill innocents? "You are the Prism, you could make a special dispensation."
"Future generations would believe that implied special dispensation is needed," Talon Gim said, scowling. He had always had very definite theological views.
Maros Orlos stepped forward. "Lord Prism, we've already sent to be Freed all the drafters we knew were too far gone to be any use on the battlefield. What is the greater good here? That we do things as they've always been done, or that we save an entire city?"