Gavin put a local guild head in charge, went to draft on the barges, and when he came back found the man letting his own guild members bring extra baggage. Gavin drafted a scaffold off the side of the pier in five seconds, and had the man strangling on it in ten. He put someone else in charge before the first man was dead.

"Make decisions fast and as justly as you can," Gavin told the deeply frowning, pockmarked cooper he was putting in charge. "And my whole authority is behind you, even if you make mistakes. Take one bribe, and I'll take my time making your death as much worse than this as I can imagine." Then he left. He didn't have time for this.

He was at the base of the wall when he heard the explosion. It was exactly what he'd been afraid of. It had been why he'd drafted Brightwater Wall in the first place. With all the homes and shops built directly against the city wall, it was hard to defend from enemies outside, but impossible to defend from enemies within. Anyone who owned a shop could be given barrels of black powder, tunnel under the wall a little bit, and set a charge. They could work in full privacy, uninterrupted-could, and had.

Blackguards in tow, Gavin dug his heels into his horse's flanks. But he didn't head for the gap. A hole in the wall was a prize, of course, but it would immediately attract defenders, and it might not be big enough for the army to come through. It might become a choke point, a killing zone. Better to use the distraction of a breach in the walls to open a gate elsewhere.

Gavin dispatched messengers to the Hag's Gate and the Lover's Gate and headed toward the Mother's Gate. At the top of the wall, he ran into General Corvan Danavis with his entourage. Doubtless, Corvan was going to direct the defense at the breach in the wall personally.

Corvan paused only to say, "They're holding back their drafters and color wights. I don't know why. But if we lose a gate in the next twenty minutes, we won't make it until noon." That was Corvan, condensing the information to the absolutely vital.

"If it falls," Gavin said, "be at the ships an hour before noon."

Corvan nodded his head. No fighting to the death. Gavin clapped Corvan's shoulder. Then the general was gone.

At the top of the gate, Gavin looked over the teeming mass on the other side. Hardly anyone was firing at the invaders from the wall anymore, but the army pushed forward like a blind beast, black fingertips reaching up to grab the wall.

Many of the homes outside the wall had been demolished in just a few hours, but of those that remained, the army had found which places were easiest to scale. At half a dozen places, a slow trickle of men were clambering up onto the wall itself and engaging the few defenders.

Farther out, King Garadul's men were setting up their mortars. Too late, really. There was no point in them bombarding the city at all, and doing so now would probably kill as many of their own as it would kill defenders. Nonetheless, they were already loading the mortars. Gavin had found that lots of men liked to be safe from the fighting, but they wanted to be able to say they'd taken part. Those idiots would fire some rounds and later brag how they'd turned the battle.

Good to see that King Garadul's got discipline problems too.

And where was the king?

From the gate's highest point, looking back into the city, Gavin spied him despite the mists. King Garadul had pressed into the city himself. Idiot! Sure, Gavin had done the same more than once, but he was armed like few others. Gavin's presence on a battlefield wasn't simple morale-boosting. King Garadul was leading the attack, surrounded by perhaps a hundred Mirrormen. As Gavin caught sight of him, he saw the king yelling at some messenger, gesticulating angrily.

He wants his drafters.

And why isn't he getting them?

Gavin moved to the front of the Mother's spear, stared out to the hill, some five hundred paces away. On the crown of the hill there were banners and a crowd. He drafted lenses, adjusted the distance necessary between the two to get the focus right, and studied the image above the low-hanging mists. A multicolored man was lifting a musket, pointing it right at him. Insanity. No musket could fire so- The musket fired-a huge charge from the cloud of black smoke. Gavin couldn't hear it over the rest of the sounds of battle, of course. One of the mortars fired. Gavin continued to study the man. He drafted the two lenses together to keep the focus steady. A polychrome wight. Probably a full polychrome, or at least pretending to be one, from all the colors he'd drafted into his own body. Curious. The man was studying him too.

Around Lord Omnichrome, there were not just the usual complement of generals and lackeys, but dozens of drafters. They were clearly not going anywhere.

Someone handed the musket back to Lord Omnichrome. Lord Omnichrome took the musket, aimed quickly, and fired. A second later, something hit the Mother's spear two paces above Gavin's head and exploded, taking a chunk out of the rock. Luxin projectiles? From five hundred paces? Gavin was still thinking about it as the Blackguards pulled him away and to the back of the spear.

Lord Omnichrome wanted King Garadul dead. So simple, so bold. He probably had even egged on King Garadul at Brightwater Wall, daring him to be a promachos, getting the young king to lead from the front, hoping he'd get killed.

If your enemy wants it, deny it.

Gavin drafted a small yellow tablet, making it read, "Capture Garadul, not kill. At all costs." He covered it in blue and liquid yellow luxin and shot it into the path where he believed Corvan was going.

But Gavin's intuition told him the main strike was going to happen elsewhere, while the defenders focused their efforts here. "To the Hag's Gate," he told his Blackguards. "We run!"

Chapter 87

Karris snatched a second sword from a man lying on the ground, bleeding from a stomach wound. She didn't know what side he was fighting for; she didn't care. The city smelled of gunpowder, sewage, and men's sweat, the kind of stench that gets into leather armor and never comes out. As she ran, she drafted a thin sheen of green luxin down the swords, sealed it, then ran red luxin on top of that and sealed that too.

This entire area was a tangle of alleys. The buildings were thrown down haphazardly with seeming intent to vex one's neighbors and make straight lines of sight impossible. The good news was that it made it impossible for King Garadul to rally his men in any numbers here.

The bad news was that-oh shit! Karris rounded a corner and almost ran into three Mirrormen, lost, peering down different alleys and looking like they were about to start arguing which way to go. Karris careened into them before any of them could react. She threw her weight into the smallest one and, catching him flat-footed, managed both to stop herself and to fling him off his feet. She spun, left sword swinging in a red arc.

The second Mirrorman was moving his sword into guard position, but too slowly, with no leverage. Her blade beat right through his and cut into his neck above his gorget. Not a deep cut, but deep enough, right there. Red luxin splattered on the outside of his armor, and as she yanked the blade back, red blood splattered the inside to match. He was still standing for the moment, but to Karris he was already dead.

Between colliding with the first Mirrorman and cutting the second, Karris had lost sight of the last one. She spun around, ducking, blocking with both swords, left down, right up in a reversed grip. The cut would have beaten right through her weak right-hand guard if she hadn't ducked too. Instead, her own blade slapped into her shoulder. She couldn't tell if it cut-what kind of moron went into battle without armor?

She came up cutting, but the Mirrorman blocked her strike. Then his eyes went wide. A low red flush of light washed them both. His sword had struck sparks off of hers, setting the red luxin aflame-and not only on her sword. Where the two blades had met, his sword had scraped off red luxin too, and the same sparks had set his alight. She'd intended the flames for later, but it worked as well for now.

Karris swung her right-hand, flaming sword in a quick arc and stabbed the Mirrorman in the face with her left.

If you're going to wear heavy armor, never open the visor while you're in battle.

She kicked him off her blade in a spray of broken teeth and exhaled blood, spun again, and saw the Mirrorman she'd collided with and sent sprawling crawling for his blade. She stomped on his hand as he lunged for it, and punched her blade through the mirror armor. It took a strong, direct strike to push through plate, but she'd practiced it a hundred times with the Blackguard, who trained assuming assassins would bear every advantage, including mirror armor.

Pulling the blade free again, she quickly wiped the last of the flaming red luxin off the sword with one of the men's cloaks and reapplied the red luxin. She'd set herself alight if she wasn't careful. She lifted a sturdy bow and a half-empty quiver from one of the dead.

Now where the hell was she? And where was Kip?

Karris had taken a shortcut, she thought. She knew there was a market on the south side of the city, and she'd thought she remembered roughly where it was. She'd pointed Kip after King Garadul hoping he would wreak some havoc by following, which would allow her to circle behind the king and kill him.

Maybe it had been a bad choice. Orholam, she'd abandoned Kip. A baby drafter.

Not that she could have done much to help him. At the Chromeria, they called what Kip had done going green golem. At one time, they had taught it as a war magic. No longer.

There were three problems with going green golem. First, you couldn't seal the green luxin. If you did, you couldn't move. Some drafters got around that by making big sealed plates and just holding the joints in open green. What Kip was doing was much harder. He was holding all the magic at once. It took enormous focus, and the armor was only as hard as his will. If someone broke his focus, he'd lose his armor instantly. Second, using that much green luxin burned out drafters fast. In the False Prism's War, Karris had heard of green drafters breaking the halo after going green golem only three or four times. Third, you had to be strong as a bull. The suit-the armor, the golem, whatever it was-had weight. For the drafter, it was less because their will took part of the weight, but they still had to move an enormous hunk of luxin. That said, using open green in the legs did mean that a skilled user could make enormous bounds, and once they got moving, they were nearly impossible to stop.

It all meant that Kip was more likely to get himself killed than anything. And Karris had abandoned him. Damn it. What kind of woman abandons a child?

Karris double-checked the position of the sun from the shadows. The sun was still low in the sky and these alleys were swaddled in shadows and mist. As she looked up, she was struck by it. The rooftops rose from the mists like distant, square mountain peaks reigning over the clouds. Then she saw the retreat flares. It was the color Gavin or the Blackguards were supposed to use, and she was sure that was how he was using them now. But retreat to where?

The docks. They knew they were going to lose the city. They were just trying to make King Garadul pay as heavy a price as possible. Karris didn't have much time to make sure that price was the ultimate price.

She ran into an empty house-she was pretty sure all the houses were empty here. Pushing past the leavings of chickens and several dogs, and one live skinny cow-lots of people brought their animals inside during the night, both for safety and to warm the house-she found the stairs, ran up to the family's quarters, which had been hurriedly emptied, and found the ladder to the roof.

The square, squat houses of Garriston all had these flat roofs. The roof became a third room for most families. A perfect place to cool down on the hot, long summer evenings, the commoners' only chance of catching a breeze off the Cerulean Sea. The buildings were packed tight, but by no means uniform. Not every building was three stories, and even of the many that were, the stories were different heights.

All the same, as Karris reached the roof, for one moment she was struck by the beauty of the scene. The whitewashed roofs, little squares and rectangles, gleaming in the sun, with mist curling up around every edge, churches and a few mansions rising like mountains out of the clouds, and the Travertine Palace dominating everything. Farther south, she could just see Brightwater Wall, like a golden belt around the city. Nearer, there was black smoking rising from the city wall, flashes of magic from the gates.

She shut it out. Found the market she'd been heading for. With the mist, she couldn't see enough to tell if her guess had been correct.

You've already bet Kip's life on this course, might as well see if it pays off.

Cursing herself for a fool, Karris drafted a green weapon harness, sheathed both blades on her back, messed with the harness for a second to get it to set right with the quiver and bow, cursed the torn, tight sleeves on her dress, cursed her muscular shoulders, and tore the sleeves off. She breathed. Then she sprinted to the edge of the roof and leapt.

The houses here were so close, it was an easy jump. Some homes even had planks between them so neighbors could visit each other. So long as she didn't want to cross the street, it was easy going. She ran as fast as she could. One street to clear, then another block of houses, then the market. Her eyes bounced back and forth as she approached the larger gap of crossing the street.

There! One of the houses on the other side had a significantly lower roof. Karris veered left and leapt, passing over the heads of thirty or forty Mirrormen. She hit the lower roof, rolled, popped to her feet just in time to have to leap again-to a higher roof. She hit the next roof with one foot extended. She pushed up, trying to push herself just a little higher but not stop her forward momentum.

Her body popped up, but not forward enough. She landed with half of her torso on flat, whitewashed stucco, then slid down, scrambling, trying to find purchase.

She dropped to her fingertips, on dirty, cracked, crumbling stucco. She swung sideways, lost one handhold for a second as the stucco ripped away. She latched her hand back onto the roof, a clean grip this time, and swung back the other way. Her foot reached the edge, tearing the slit of her dress up even higher. She pulled herself up quickly, not trusting that the rest of the stucco wouldn't crumble at any moment.

No time to be elated at being alive. Karris checked her swords and bow, glanced once down at the twenty-foot drop onto an uneven surface below-a broken leg there if she'd fallen, at least. Then she ran again.

She reached a roof overlooking the market and stopped. King Garadul was coming, with hundreds of Mirrormen and a few drafters-and Kip was hot on their heels. Literally.

This was going to get messy.

Karris smiled.

Chapter 88

Kip was on fire. Someone had doused him in red luxin and lit him up.

It didn't stop him. He simply thickened the green that encased him so the red wouldn't burn through. The pyre jelly stuck to the green. He couldn't rub it away from his face, it was glued in place, implacable. But he could move the green luxin itself, so he made it swirl outward, until his eyes were clear and he could see again. Using the same technique, he swirled all of the pyre jelly to his arms and shoulders, then along his sides, so he was outlined in flame. It all took only a few moments. He thought it, and the luxin did it. Or more precisely, he willed it, and it happened.

The wildness within him was so strong that he wanted to break free of the city and run away. But he wouldn't allow it. He harnessed the wildness. The wildness would serve him. It would help him destroy the man who held the lash and the leash, the man who wanted to control him: King Garadul.

He wasn't sure that he was going the right way, but he followed the flow of King Garadul's soldiers. Kip himself was like a beacon, burning as he was in the misty morning. But the light made his vision lousy. It was like holding a torch: if you held it over your head, you might see into the darkness, but if you held it between yourself and the darkness, you weren't going to see anything at all. Kip was was the torch. He couldn't see much, and he didn't care. He could see the men streaming away from him, some of them seeing him and just running like hell, but others seemed to be running toward something. A meeting place, a rallying point. Where King Garadul would be. the torch. He couldn't see much, and he didn't care. He could see the men streaming away from him, some of them seeing him and just running like hell, but others seemed to be running toward something. A meeting place, a rallying point. Where King Garadul would be.

Kip barreled around a corner into the backs of half a dozen soldiers. They hadn't seen him and he couldn't stop. He ran right over them in a mess of screams and burning flesh and curses and blood and a struggle just to keep from falling as he stepped on body parts. He swung his arms in big sweeping motions, fire and blood and blades unleashed into a crowd.

And it was a crowd. Kip had made it. There were hundreds of soldiers here. He could see dim flashes of the winking armor of the Mirrormen on the other side of the square. Then he was subsumed, folded into the loving arms of battle. There was no morning mist. No counting of his foes. No deciphering the shouts of his enemies into plain language, orders that might help him know what was coming. There was only the roar coming from Kip's own throat, the hammering of his own heart, the pulsing life that was his magic. There was only the burning in his muscles, the resistance his arm felt as a bladed arm cut into a man's torso, and the freedom as he pulled it all the way through.

The world closed in on Kip. He could barely see, barely turn his neck within the green armor. It drove him crazy. He needed freedom. He couldn't be trapped. He was an animal. He crashed through ranks of soldiers as they formed against him. His sweeping arms snapped spears like nothing. He bludgeoned heads with his closed fists. Tore men off his back and snapped their spines in his hands.

Then, abruptly, the ranks parted in front of him. All except one man, who didn't move aside in time, and Kip saw two rows of ten musketeers each. The first row was kneeling, the second row standing, all muskets pointed at him. Someone shouted, his voice a command. And Kip saw the one soldier between him and the musketeers. The man heard too, and understood. Kip saw the panic on his face.

The musketeers loosed a volley. Fire and smoke leaped like a pouncing, snarling lion from their muskets. Kip saw the soldier cut down, even as he steeled himself against the blast.

The musket balls hit him like a fist, many striking at the same time, and a few instants behind the first, carrying him like a punch's follow-through. He was swept off his feet.

A cheer went up. Kip's head swam and he felt the green luxin going soft all around him.

No! I can take punishment. That's my gift. That's my talent.

A musketeer ran over to Kip, pointed a blunderbuss at his head. Something streaked by the man's head-an arrow?-but missed. Kip grabbed the yawning mouth of the blunderbuss and pulled it to himself, stuck it right to his forehead, and pressed green luxin down the barrel. The man pulled the trigger and the breech exploded.

Kip jumped to his feet with inhuman strength. He stomped on the screaming musketeer and looked at himself. He could see the lead musket balls, flattened, inside his green armor. Like they'd shot a tree. The bullets had penetrated, but been stopped. Kip laughed, damn near insane. He was bulletproof.

Ignoring the musketeers, several of whom were running away while the rest were reloading furiously, fumbling with their ramrods and powder horns, trying to ready another shot, Kip looked for King Garadul. These men were no threat. They couldn't bind him. But he couldn't see. So he pulled green luxin around him and made himself taller. Simple.

And there he was. Surrounded by his Mirrormen, King Garadul was mounted, shouting at a drafter beside him, pointing at Kip. The drafter's skin was bright blue, but even as she gathered her magic, something streaked out of the sky. The woman's hands opened limply and blue poured out of her, puddled on the ground. She toppled out of her saddle.

King Garadul stopped in midsentence, looked around. The drafter on his other side, a red, fell out of her saddle. This time Kip-and all the Mirrormen-followed the arrow's path back to its source. Up on a rooftop. Karris, skinny, muscular, bloody, wearing a torn dress and already drawing another arrow. One of the Mirrormen tackled King Garadul out of his saddle. Karris's third arrow cracked a Mirrorman's greave and pinned his leg into his horse. The stallion went crazy, bolting, knocking down half a dozen men and trampling them before it tripped and rolled over on the Mirrorman.

Kip ignored the havoc. He had his target now. He could feel his strength ebbing. He had to do this now. There would be no second chance. He bulled forward, men and women dodging out of his way, slowly reaching full speed.

I'm crazy.

Kip laughed. If this was insanity, so be it. He collided with the first ranks of Mirrormen before they had all recovered from looking for Karris. Some were turned, some were mounted, others had dismounted, some were still drawing or reloading muskets to fire at the rooftop assassin. Kip bowled over a horse, smashed men, deflected weak strikes.

Swinging one big luxin fist, he crushed a Mirrorman's helmet, but the blow also sheared off half of Kip's green hand. Elsewhere, he saw that the spikes and blades he'd drafted onto his body had been cut or broken off where it collided with mirror armor. He smashed left and right, but even as he crushed men, his armor was disintegrating. He was hacking parts of himself off with every blow he inflicted.

The Mirrormen, recovering, formed up behind the front row. Kip burst through the row and found himself staring at dozens of pistols, all roaring. It knocked him back once more, even though he braced himself. He felt hot lines against his skin-the luxin was thinner now. Some of the shots must have gotten through.

I will not fail. Not now. Not so close. Damn it, where's the king?

Kip lashed out at the nearest Mirrorman, shooting a ball of green luxin at the man. It hit the Mirrorman's chest and split in half, gobs of green luxin flying off in either direction, leaving no more damage than if Kip had thumped the man's chest lightly with his fist, scored only because a musket ball had been carried unintentionally inside the green luxin Kip had thrown.

The rest of the Mirrormen dropped their muskets and drew sharp, mirror-bright swords as one. Kip was looking at his chest, studded with those flattened musket balls suspended in green luxin, some of them surrounded by blood where they had cut him. He was drawing in more luxin to replenish his armor and he saw the little balls swirling around like little boats under a waterfall.

Luxin doesn't hurt? How about lead?

Kip drew one of the lead balls up from his chest into his hand. He extended his hand and shot out a tiny ball of green luxin carrying the musket ball with all his will.

A little hole lined in green goo appeared in one of the Mirrormen's chest plates. His mirror armor cracked in splintery, spidery lines around the hole, and then crimson blood joined the emerald luxin and he toppled backward.

It was like Orholam had breathed new life into Kip. He was exhausted, broken, elated, and free. He was laughing again. Totally insane. Totally unstoppable. Lead bullets swirled through his armor and into his palms and he fired them like he was a musket himself. The weight of green armor, which had been so crippling before, now allowed him to shoot the little bullets so hard that if he had been doing it without the armor it would have bowled him over.

He extended right hand, left hand, right hand, left. Shooting everywhere. At each place, men died. Kip wasn't accurate in the least, but this close, he didn't need accuracy. He pointed at a chest and might hit a neck or a belly or someone else in the second rank. Either way, it killed, and ranks disappeared before him. He emptied all the musket balls from his chest and found more in his back and arms, and new ones added every moment. He cut a gory path through the Mirrormen. He couldn't see King Garadul, but he figured that wherever the resistance was greatest was probably the right way. Nothing good is easy.

Through the ranks and chaos, Kip saw a flash of something. Royal garments. Garadul.

He burst through just as King Garadul was pulled up onto a platform at the back of the market square. His men were trying to hustle him down some narrow alley there. Kip bounded forward, and found that his green luxin legs bounced him much farther than he'd intended. He landed between King Garadul and the alley, crushing two of the king's men, including his last drafter. The ground was littered with dead drafters, but Kip didn't care how they'd died. He had eyes only for the king. He extended a hand behind him and shot out a dozen musket balls toward the remaining Mirrormen.

King Garadul tripped over a body on the platform. In an instant, Kip was on top of him. He kicked at Kip. Kip brought a big fist down and broke the king's leg like kindling. The man screamed. Kip grabbed his head, latching big luxin fists together on either side and lifting. The rattle of musket fire stopped. Kip was too close to the king; no one would dare.

"You killed my mother!" Kip shouted in the king's face.

The king's eyes focused on Kip's face within the green armor. "You?" he said. "Lina's brat? She's not worthy of vengeance and you know it."