In a low voice, nearly catatonic, he said, “We were all gathered already, dividing last-minute responsibilities for the day and the battle, trying to decide what to do to calm the pilgrims. Where to have them take shelter—”
“We agreed not twelve hours ago to cancel this parade—and now I hear Zymun pulled drafters off the wall and soldiers from their posts in order to have it anyway. And with the Spectrum’s blessing! What the hell were you thinking?”
Klytos wouldn’t meet her eyes, still watching the dawn and the approaching armada and the eerily silent cannons below. Woodenly, he said, “He came to us directly from the Freeing. He hadn’t washed. He—he was covered in their blood. There was a manic gleam in his eyes. He called it his due. He’s not wrong.”
“You know he was never to be declared Prism. Andross is going to be furious—”
“It was his second Sun Day as Prism-elect! And—and if Kip is right and the tower array can be used as a weapon, only a Prism can keep using it for any length of time! How long can anyone else live drafting that much power?” Klytos asked. The little weasel.
Karris grabbed his shoulder and hauled him around, forcing him to face her. “But the Spectrum doesn’t make a Prism just by saying a few words!”
A little smile suddenly played over Klytos Blue’s lips, though the mad, hopeless gleam never left his eyes. “Oh, I know that,” he said. “Andross managed to root out most of the Spectrum who know how Prisms are made, but some of us figured it out. We can’t make a Prism anymore, which means we’re all going to die in this battle. But you Guiles always survive the calamities they bring on the rest of us. Not this time.”
“Why declare him Prism?” Karris demanded.
His smile dripped poison. “Without being made a Prism by the Blinding Knife, anyone who gets up on that array is gonna die. Kip already promised to, so there’s one dead Guile. But why take only one when we can get two?”
Karris slapped him.
He crumpled against the wall and cowered.
She rubbed her temples, thinking what to do next.
Wild-eyed, Klytos was looking around at the Blackguards. “You all saw that! I’m the Blue. She’s assaulted me! Take her into custody immediately!”
From where he stood at Karris’s left hand, Gill Greyling drawled, “Apologies, High Lord, I must’ve been distracted. I saw nothing.” He looked around at the seven other Blackguards in the room. “Anyone?”
Around the room, lips pursed in chagrin. Heads shook.
“I heard something,” one of the new kids volunteered. “Sounded like a shit plopping on the floor.”
Twenty-year-olds, Karris thought.
Klytos snarled from where he was on the floor, but he was too much of a coward to physically attack a Blackguard. “You should be thanking me! You know what Zymun is!”
Karris shook her head. She knew what she had to do now. She was gonna have to go find Zymun and try to make him do what had to be done. There was no way it was going to end well. She had no authority over him now, and nothing to bribe him with. “Klytos, you fool, you’ve given Zymun almost unlimited power. What’s he ever done to make you believe he’ll use it for good?”
Chapter 112
The sounds of cannons roaring to life from various towers around the great walls announced the progress of the Cwn y Wawr to Kip’s ears. Those gun crews began their bombardment immediately, their elevation giving them significantly greater range than the armada.
The first shots splashed harmlessly wide or short, but soon the gun crews fell back into their training. They’d zeroed their shots on buoys at set distances, and now, even though the Blood Robes had sunk those, the gun crews’ captains had them memorized.
Odd, Kip thought, how when you were far enough away, the sights of distant timbers exploding and fires billowing from a ship were satisfying. But when up close, one felt only awe at the destructive power of humanity, and horror at the bloody carnage and shrieks of the limbless dying that attended every successful shell, the innocent crews being dragged to their watery rest.
The men pulling those oars were surely prisoners of war. Allies. Friends. Men whose names had once been posted on Big Jasper’s lists as lost.
Yet Kip couldn’t hate the gun crews when they shouted with joy after a successful shot. War is the wily orator who gets us cheering horrors.
It looked like the Chromeria’s forces were being roused from their torpor, but before Kip could descend to the lines to make sure of it, Einin said, “My lord, that’s far enough. Commander Leonidas ordered me to keep you back from the lines.”
Kip glared at her. “Big Leo?” he asked instead of complaining. He should have known the new commander wouldn’t let him put himself in danger.
“Yessir. Uh, he hasn’t made it clear to us nunks what we’re allowed to call him.”
Regardless of what Andross had commanded, Kip should probably go up to the mirrors now, but what if the army messed up again? What if they needed him?
The razor wings reached the towers. Netting hung above every gun crew, and archers and musketeers armed with blunderbusses were posted with them.
Some of the will-cast birds were shot out of the sky. Others made it to the nets, tangling in them before exploding or bursting into flame.
A musketeer drawing a bead skyward on an incoming razor wing stepped backward into a cannon’s line of fire just as the gun crew, looking out to their own distant target, touched the linstock to the breech. Kip cried out, but they were too far away, there was too much noise.
The woman simply disappeared in the black-powder cloud that bellowed from the cannon’s muzzle. Kip caught a glimpse of her legs flying, launched off the wall.
The razor wing splashed fiery death amid the gun crew a moment later.
“I would love it if we went back to the Prism’s Tower now, my lord,” Einin said nervously.
He shot out chi at all the bane again. He couldn’t see all of them from here. That was a problem, though he thought he’d have felt if any of the others were rising from the depths. Where was Liv?
Out beyond the bay, some of the larger ships of the armada had turned broadside and stopped, apparently within their range now. He extended a hand and someone gave him a long-lens.
The ships were dropping anchors. Huh. Ah, to give themselves more stable firing platforms. The gun crews on the open decks, many of them bare-chested, were all very dark-skinned.
Ilytians. Dammit. Best gunners in the world, with the best guns. That meant the pirate kings were indeed working for the Wight King. Karris said she’d tried to bribe them away, but apparently after Gavin and Kip had sunk Pash Vecchio’s great ship, the Gargantua, he’d been beyond the reach of promises—and she hadn’t been willing to send him boatloads of coin merely in the hope that a pirate would act in good faith.
Kip watched the Ilytians fire their first rounds, the flash of light and the puff of rolling black smoke visible long before the sound could be heard.
He wanted to give an order to someone to focus on those ships, but it was unnecessary.
As those ships set up their bombardment, the rest of the fleet charged the East Bay.
Kip wondered where Corvan was.
Maybe he was content to lead from some safer, clearer vantage. Maybe there was an emergency somewhere else Kip didn’t even know about.