There were no nunks here now. Kip figured they’d probably just get in the way. He started looking around for the slaves’ overseer, but couldn’t see one immediately. That was odd. Usually the overseers made a real effort to distinguish themselves above their fellows.
“I see how, I just don’t understand why, Overseer Amadis,” a boy said.
Kip homed in on the conversation and wove through the workers to the east side of the tower. The boy who’d spoken was watching as an older man swung a mirror from one position to another. But the mirror he was swinging was blackened, melted.
“Because we’ve got no backup mirrors. We use what we’ve got,” the old man said.
“Why not take it out altogether?”
Overseer Amadis looked up at Kip. “My lord, will you give me one moment to deal with this?”
“Of course.”
He turned back to the boy. “Because it’s the counterweight to Valor’s mirror. We’ve got two hundred twenty-seven position changes tomorrow, and without this mirror in place, that bolt in the frame may snap.”
“But why do I have to clean it? It’s melted!” the boy asked, but then his head dropped. “My pardons, Overseer.”
A female slave nearby who was scrubbing the floor on hands and knees shook her head. “Little Alvaro doesn’t want to work. Thinks he’s too good for it. Surprise, surprise.”
“Because if you keep it clean,” the overseer said, “maybe it’ll make it through the day without shattering. It’s brittle as is. And because everyone else needs to clean theirs. Letting your mirror get dirty is the worst thing we keepers can possibly do, isn’t it, Ysabel?” the overseer said, turning to the sneering woman scrubbing the floor.
She turned back to her labors, muttering.
Kip looked from her to the blackened mirror. Clearly there was some story there, but it didn’t have anything to do with him.
“Alvaro,” Amadis said, “son, you’re only just coming out from under the cloud of suspicion she put on you. You serve well tomorrow, and you get moved to a rotation on the real mirrors. If you loaf because it doesn’t seem to matter to you . . . You’re a smart kid. You want them to look at you like you looked at Ysabel a year ago?”
The boy shook his head with a fair facsimile of humility, accepting his correction.
“Sorry about that,” Amadis said. “These two should not be kept together, but we make do, like everyone. How may I help you, my lord?”
“I’m afraid I’m going to throw a wrench into your plans,” Kip told Overseer Amadis. “But it’s for something more important than Sun Day, I promise.”
Unsurprisingly, the overseer was less than delighted at what Kip wanted. There were things a slave—even an exalted one—couldn’t promise. Every warden would have to be summoned to sign over control of the mirror towers in their neighborhoods. Orders would have to be cleared with the appropriate authorities. The luxiats in charge of the Sun Day parades would have to confer.
Kip understood immediately, likely more than Amadis did.
This man didn’t have the power to say yes. He wasn’t an arrogant ass jealous of his small bubble of authority, but he served those who were. No one wanted to be held responsible for saying yes, so everything would go as slowly as possible. The luxiats in charge of the parades would confer, then decide they couldn’t approve such a thing themselves, and summon a High Luxiat. He’d be briefed at length, then deliberate. Then he’d decide he couldn’t decide himself, and so on until Sun Day of next year had passed.
“At long last,” Kip said to Big Leo, “it turns out my time getting stonewalled in Dúnbheo was valuable for something after all.”
Big Leo grunted and stretched against the massive chain he wore draped around his neck. It actually made a few slaves stop what they were doing. He didn’t ask Kip to explain, though. Sometimes, he was at least as difficult in his own laconic way as Winsen.
Kip said, “Overseer Amadis, you have access to messengers, right? Good. Send urgent messages directly to the High Luxiats and High Lord Black and the luxiats in charge of the parades and the wardens that Lord Kip Guile requires—well, all the things I’ve asked for, you parse them out appropriately to the appropriate ones. Tell them I require those things immediately. Stop all your work with the mirrors, right now, until you’ve done that. In your messages, note that I’ve written down their names specifically, and that those who fail in providing what the Jaspers need for our common defense immediately will face the full wrath of the Guiles. Treason will be suspected of those who work against our common defense, punishment will be meted out swiftly if not overly carefully, and more loyal replacements found.”
“Well, that oughta do it,” Big Leo rumbled.
“I can promise you our full cooperation, my lord,” Overseer Amadis said. “Starting immediately. These mirrors will be slaved to the gem before you can reach the roof.” He swallowed.
“That feel good?” Big Leo asked as they headed to the exit.
“Nah,” Kip said.
Big Leo said nothing.
“Maybe a little.”
“—know why you think you’re special, Elos?” a boy was saying at the same moment. “Because you’re an arrogant little shit.”
Kip stopped at the door. Had he heard ‘Elos’? Like that green wight Gaspar Elos way back in Rekton? He could have sworn . . .
He looked back, but all the slaves were hard at work, double-time.
Nah, must have imagined it.
He headed back to work.
Chapter 88
It was no pleasure to cut through the layers of defense Kip had set up at his headquarters. If Teia could do it, so could other Shadows. The best of them anyway.
Fine, there was some pleasure in it: for the first time, she was able to experience the blend of using her magical and her physical dexterity without having to dread why she was doing it. Before now, an infiltration meant she was going to commit murder.
Today, she was simply going to . . . what exactly?
She wanted to talk to Kip before they died. Maybe she knew something that could help him. Maybe she could do something to help him. Hell, she was an assassin, wasn’t she? She could probably make all sorts of his problems go away.
And for Kip she’d do it. No questions asked.
After all, what was one more soul in her ledger?
There was one paryl drafter in Kip’s entourage. Slow girl, paryl leaking out of her like a sieve, inefficient, unfocused. Teia could have gotten past her without even being invisible.
Still, she had to be careful. Anyone who glimpsed a heel or the eyes of an otherwise-invisible intruder was going to shoot first and ask questions later, literally.
Teia was good now, but enervating a finger before it twitched on a trigger? She wasn’t that good. And paryl certainly wasn’t going to stop a musket ball.
It took only half an hour of being on the street until she slipped into Kip’s suite, not completely certain that she’d managed to silence the hinges from outside the door, though she had wrapped them in layer after layer of paryl.
This was not Kip’s suite, she realized as she got inside.
It was Kip and Tisis’s suite. And Kip was gone. Tisis sat at a large table, quill in hand, scribbling. She looked tense.