The Black Prism

It took until noon before they were ready to start the drafting. Gavin had asked all the old warriors to look at the plans of the wall, and not a few of them had come up with suggestions. Those suggestions had covered everything from expanding the latrines—and making sure the raw sewage could be routed onto their enemies by emptying the pots suddenly through chutes out the front of the wall—to reworking the mounts for the cannons and adding furnaces to heat the shot at several of the stations. Heated shot was wonderful for setting fire to siege engines. Someone else suggested texturing the floors and providing gutters not only outside for rainwater, which had already been considered, but also within the wall itself for blood.

Many good suggestions, and quite a few bad ones. The wall should be bigger, smaller, wider, taller. There should be space for more cannons, more archers, more beds in the hospital, the barracks should be within the wall, and so on.

At noon, Gavin was rigged back into his harness and lifted off the ground. The others swarmed around him, drafting forms, steadying his harness. Then he set to work.

Chapter 70

It wasn’t until two days later, as Kip and Liv came within sight of King Garadul’s army, plopped over the plain and fouling the river like an enormous cow pie, that he realized how deeply, incredibly, brilliantly stupid his plan was.

I’m going to march in there and rescue Karris?

More like waddle in there.

At the top of a small hill, they sat on the horse, which seemed grateful for the break, and scanned the mass of humanity before them. It was immense. Kip had never tried to estimate a crowd, and never seen one this large.

“What do you think, sixty or seventy thousand?” he asked Liv.

“More than a hundred, I’d guess.”

“How are we going to find Karris in that?” he asked. What did I expect? A sign, perhaps? “Captured drafter here”?

Most of the camp was chaotic, people pitching lean-tos against wagons, those who had tents screaming at each other over who got which spot, children running around, clogging the spaces between tents and wagons and livestock. The sky was still light, though the sun had gone down, and campfires were being started all over the plain. Kip could hear people singing nearby. Men were swimming and bathing in the river, downstream of where some soldiers had hastily erected a corral. The animals dirtied the water, but no one seemed to care. Other men stood on the bank, urinating directly into the water. The color of the river upstream and downstream of the camp was distinctly different. People were carrying buckets of water everywhere, taken directly from the river.

Maybe I’ll only drink wine.

More importantly, the smell of meat cooking permeated the air.

Kip’s stomach complained. They’d gone through his food faster than he’d thought—mostly, he had gone through it faster—and now he had nothing. Well, except for a stick of danars I stole with half a year’s wages on it.

Oh. That.

“We split up,” Liv said. “You head directly for the center of the camp. I imagine that’s where the king will have his tents. She’s important, so they might be keeping her close. I’ll go look for where the drafters are camping. A captured drafter will probably be watched by other drafters. She’s got to be in one place or the other. We’ll meet back here in, say, three hours?”

Kip nodded his acquiescence, impressed. He would have been lost on his own.

And almost instantly, she slipped off the horse and was gone. No hesitation, no second-guessing. Kip watched her go. He was hungry.

Leading the big, docile horse, tugging and pulling the beast as it tried to munch grass to the right and left, Kip approached at one of the larger fires. Not one but two javelinas were roasting on spits over the fire, and as Kip stared, swallowing, one of the fattest women he had ever seen sawed off a fully cooked leg with a few deft strokes at the joint. The smell was rich, succulent, savory, mouthwatering, lovely, astounding, mesmerizing, debilitating. Kip couldn’t move—until he saw her raise the meat to her lips.

“Pardon me!” he said, louder than he meant. Others around the fire looked up.

“Didn’t smell it,” the fat lady said, then she sank her teeth into greasy ham. Kip died a little. Then more as the hard men and women around the fire laughed at him. The fat woman, leg in one hand, long knife in the other, grinned between bites. She had at least three chins, her facial features disappearing into the fat that encased her like an awkward child surrounded by a crowd of bullies. Her linen skirt could have served as a tent. Literally. She turned away from Kip, slipping the knife back into a sheath and putting her hand back to turning the spit. Her butt was more than a jiggly haunch; it was architecture.

“Pardon me,” Kip said, recovering. “I was wondering if I could buy some dinner. I’ve got money.”

Ears perked up all around the fire at that. Kip wondered suddenly if he’d picked a good fire to stop at. Were the men everywhere in the camp as scruffy as these ones?

Kip looked around. Uh, yes, actually they were.

Oh shit.

He fumbled with the leather money belt holding the stick of tin danars. He’d grabbed the money belt because it already had money in it and would be easier to transport than loose coins. The stick was a great way to carry money. Cut square to fit the square hole in the middle of danars, and of uniform length so people could rapidly count their own money—scales were still used to count others’ money, of course—it was convenient and kept your money from jangling at every step as they did in a purse. Plus the sticks could be bound in leather for attaching to a belt or hiding inside of clothes, as Kip’s was. He’d seen the gleam of this stick and grabbed it.

But as Kip pulled the open end of the money stick out to pull off one tin danar coin, he saw something was very wrong. He froze. The weight had been right, or at least close enough that he hadn’t thought about it, but the coin he pulled out wasn’t tin. A danar was about what a worker would make for a day’s labor. An unskilled labor like his mother would only make half a danar a day. He’d assumed the stick he grabbed was full of the tin coins, each worth eight danars.

Instead, he’d grabbed a stick of silver quintars. Slightly wider in circumference, but only half as thick, and the metal slightly lighter than tin, the silver coins were worth twenty danars each. A stick of silver quintars held fifty of the coins, twice as many as the twenty-five tin coins that would fit on the same stick. So instead of stealing two hundred danars from the Travertine Palace—an already princely sum—Kip had stolen a thousand. And he’d just pulled out one right in front of everyone, making it clear he had more.

Conversation ceased. In the dancing light of the fire, more than a few eyes gleamed like wolves’.

Kip tucked the rest of the money belt away, praying no one had seen how full it was. What did it matter? His life might be worth less than even the one silver quintar. “I’ll take the other leg,” he said.

The fat woman let go of the spit and reached her hand out.

“I’ll need nineteen danars back,” Kip said. A full day’s wages should be more than three times what the javelina leg cost.

She chortled. “We run a charity house here, we do. Look like luxiats, huh? Ten.”

“Ten danars, for a meal?” Kip asked, not believing she was serious.