huh?'
Ironfist laughed. 'No, I think you've got it just about perfect.' He grinned.
'What were you doing pulling guard duty on that rock?'
'It is a bit more than a rock.'
Put that way, it did make some sense. The Blackguard had to protect the Chromeria's most important people, and a secret escape tunnel was the kind of thing you had to check yourself. 'Still,' Kip said.
They came to a much wider road and Ironfist-Commander Ironfist-turned onto it, heading west, the opposite direction of almost all of the traffic. He sighed. 'It's not a duty anyone wants, so it's sometimes used as punishment. Let's just say I've given the White reason to be displeased recently.'
Kip said quietly, 'Or that's a cover so you can go out and check the maintenance of the tunnel.'
'Except that a tunnel is… a tunnel. Don't make things more complicated than they are, little Guile.'
Huh? 'Oh.' Ironfist could come from the Chromeria side and make sure the tunnel worked. He didn't need to sail out to the island for that. Some genius I am. Embarrassed, Kip rushed to ask another question, and asked the question he knew he shouldn't. 'So what did you do to make him mad at you? You know, the White.'
'Him?' Ironfist asked.
'Her?'
Ironfist turned in at a little house with an oxidized copper dome, unlocked the door, and pointed for Kip to go in. 'There's hard tack and cheese and olives in the kitchen. Latrine off to the left. Bed straight down the hall. You're not to leave until I come get you tomorrow at dawn.'
'But we came across those huge waves instead of waiting, I-I thought we were going straight to the Chromeria.'
'I'm going straight to the Chromeria.'
'While I just sit here all day?'
'When you see what you have to do tomorrow, you'll be glad you had the rest.' Ironfist moved to leave.
'But, what-what are you going to do?'
'I'm going to go get back in the White's good graces.'
Kip scowled as the door closed. There was a click. He was locked in. 'That's great,' he told the closed door. 'I'll just wait here. I've been meaning to catch up on my thumb-twiddling.' Grumbling, he made his way to the olives and cheese. Ten minutes later, he was asleep.
Chapter 33
Karris woke beneath a lean-to constructed of tree branches and a man's cloak. It was either dusk or dawn. She guessed dawn from the dew on the ground. She examined herself with a soldier's efficiency, moving each limb and digit experimentally, trying to gauge her own potential for movement, violent or otherwise. All her fingers and toes worked properly, but her entire left side was bruised. She must have not only crashed through the doorframe with her upper body there, but also landed on her left side, because her shin ached, her knee ached, there were gravel scratches on her hip, her breast felt like someone had mistaken it for a sawdust-filled training bag and punched it for an hour, and her shoulder-Orholam, her shoulder. She could breathe without much pain, though, which she hoped meant there weren't any broken ribs, and she could still move her arm, although it almost made her black out to do so.
Her right side hadn't escaped undamaged either. She had long gravel scrapes on her right arm and her stomach, probably some to match on her back, and her neck was sore from Orholam knew what. She'd stubbed all the toes of her right foot-didn't remember doing that either-and her left eye was swollen, not enough to block her vision, but enough to look real pretty. There was also a scratch on her forehead, several attractive lumps on her head, and-what the hell, a cut right on the tip of her nose?
No, not a cut. A pimple. Unbe-A pimple? Now? Orholam hates me.
Every one of her cuts and scratches had been smeared with some kind of ointment that smelled of berries and pine needles. Someone cleared his throat. 'There's more ointment to your right. I tended the more… obvious cuts.'
Which Karris took to mean that Corvan hadn't stripped her naked.
'Thanks,' she grumbled. 'What happened back there?'
'Aside from the obvious?' Corvan asked, his voice flat.
'In the church, downstairs. I've never seen red luxin that didn't burn cleanly. If you drafted it wrong, it should have evaporated, not formed a crust. And what was that thing you were in?' Karris sat up, wincing. Her ankle hurt too. Ow, when had she twisted her ankle? She ignored it, and tried to remember all she knew about Corvan Danavis. He'd been a rebel, of course, but before he'd sided with Dazen, he'd been a scion of one of the great Ruthgari families. For nearly a hundred years, Ruthgar and the Blood Forest had been bound together in peace, the closest of allies. Noble families from Ruthgar had intermarried with the leading families of Blood Foresters, holding lands on either side of the Great River. Other peoples had begun referring to the countries as one, merging the Verdant Plains and the Blood Forest to call the joint country Green Forest. Vician's Sin had put an end to that, and by a generation before the False Prism's War, the countries were instead known as the Blood Plains. If one good thing had come from the False Prism's War, it was that it had given Gavin the clout to finally end the interminable small-scale war constantly simmering between Ruthgar and the Blood Forest.
Corvan was a product of that conflict. Born into a warrior family, with some ungodly number of brothers (eight? ten?), he was, Karris thought she remembered, the last one alive. Karris barely remembered him from before the False Prism's War. He was just another Ruthgari from old blood left suddenly penniless with little more than the fine weapons he carried and the fine clothes on his back. He'd been a monochrome, too, so his prospects of reclaiming wealth in some other land had been dismal. When the war had started, he'd joined Dazen immediately, like so many other dispossessed young lords with everything to gain.
Karris had been fifteen years old, and she couldn't remember Corvan personally at all. Which, she supposed, wasn't too surprising, given all the attention she'd been getting from the Guile brothers. He'd been an adviser only for much of the war, but near the end of the war, Dazen had made him a general. Karris had heard Commander Ironfist credit that fact with Gavin winning the war-not calling Corvan Danavis incompetent, but the opposite. Commander Ironfist had said that if Corvan Danavis had been a general for the whole war, Gavin's armies wouldn't have even made it to the Battle of Sundered Rock. Ironfist had further said that if General Danavis hadn't surrendered unconditionally after Sundered Rock, there might still be guerrillas fighting in half of the Seven Satrapies. Corvan's grace in defeat had convinced his men to go home.
Dipping her fingers into the bowl of ointment, Karris gave Corvan a look. He appeared confused. She began lifting her long shirt, ointment on her fingers, and he got it. He cleared his throat and turned away. Karris smeared ointment gingerly on the scrapes on her chest, giving herself time to think.
With all that history, Karris expected Corvan Danavis would be some graybeard. This man was in his mid- forties, shaven except for a day or two's stubble. His skin was lighter than most Tyreans, but much darker than Blood Forester pale, though he did perhaps have some freckles on his cheeks. His eyes were blue-no shock there, with the ludicrous amount of red he'd been able to draft. The luxin halo was only halfway through his irises-even less than Karris's, despite his being probably twelve or fifteen years older than she was. There were perhaps red highlights in his dark hair, too, and his hair was wavy rather than kinky. And the general had been famous for his red mustache, which he'd kept trimmed except at the ends that dangled below his chin, where he'd tied red and gold beads. Maybe this was some other Corvan Danavis, or some man who'd taken his name, hoping to profit from the general's good reputation. 'They were on us before we knew what was happening,' Corvan said. 'I'd counseled the village to send a boy or two for the levies but even I didn't expect this kind of retribution. King Garadul came here not to teach us a lesson, but to teach the rest of Tyrea one. I've only run into his like once before.' General Delmarta, the Butcher of Ru, Karris guessed.
'You saw the pyramid?' Karris asked, turning back to him.
Corvan Danavis got very still. The side of his mouth ticked up in a snarl for the briefest instant. But when he turned his gaze to Karris, it was cool, in control. There wasn't even a hint of fresh red luxin in his eyes, which spoke of astonishing control for a drafter his age. 'I gathered those I could and pulled back to the church.' Was he hoping
