The Blood Mirror

“She told us to come this far to meet you, but that if we wanted any hope of defeating the White King, we would have to do battle with one of his captains at Deora Neamh… in two days.”

“And…,” Kip said.

“It’s a waterfall,” Tisis said, coming out of nowhere. “It’s a hundred leagues from here.”

“Ah,” Kip said. Given a marching speed through the forest of maybe ten leagues a day, or poling or rowing upriver at maybe fifteen leagues a day, that would seem impossible indeed. “How many drafters do you have?”

Conn Ruadhán Arthur cocked his head to the side, puzzled.

“Your pardon, Lord Guile,” Sibéal Siofra said. “We thought you knew. We’re all drafters.”

Kip looked around. Without exception, these people were pale skinned. Only a few had any luxin staining visible on their arms at all, even the older ones. That was odd. A few were so freckled it might cover up orange or red staining, but most were not.

There were many blue-eyed people among them and a number of pygmies, and the light eyes should have made drafters doubly obvious. But he’d not noticed iris shading in any of them.

“Oooh,” Tisis said as if something was dawning on her. She looked toward Kip as if she wanted to say more, but instead she said, “You’re not just from the town of Shady Grove.”

“No,” Conn Arthur said. “We’re Ghosts. Look on us and tremble,” he said sarcastically. “Is that going to be a problem?”

“Can many of you draft solid luxins?” Tisis asked.

“Yes,” Sibéal said, seeming relieved. “We just… don’t get much practice.”

Drafters who intentionally didn’t draft? What was the point? “One moment,” Kip said, and he pulled Tisis aside. Quietly he asked, “Ghosts?”

“It’s a school for drafters that’s not under the authority of the Chromeria. A long time ago, when the Chromeria was consolidating control of all drafters, they declared everyone at such schools to be heretics. Those who stayed were often declared dead by their families, either to disown them or to escape Chromeria punishment for that family member’s apostasy. Thus, Shady Grove–trained drafters became referred to as Shades, or Ghosts. Since they also tend to keep a low profile lest the Chromeria renew its hunt for them, the name stuck.”

“The Chromeria hunted them?” Kip asked.

“The Magisterium, actually. Luxors.”

Kip turned back to Sibéal and Conn Arthur. “You like blunt speaking, right?”

“It’s usually faster,” Conn Arthur said. “Isn’t it?”

All right, Kip Blunderbuss. Come out and play. “They branded you heretics. Are you?”

The conn took a displeased moment to digest that, but then said, “We love Orholam and follow him.”

“Not to elide a painful history and many hard feelings,” Sibéal Siofra interjected. “We do have some doctrinal differences, and don’t submit to the Magisterial assertion of primacy.”

Orholam’s crooked little toe, that permanent smile of hers was hard to get past. Kip thought her true expression was an uncertain, placating smile. He sighed.

“Good old Chromeria. Never failing to make its friends fearful and its enemies bold,” Kip said. “Well, then. This is war, not an admissions test on doctrine for the Magisterium. Let’s get to work.”

He broke them up into teams to start building skimmers for everyone. He organized the correct numbers of drafters of each color needed and put Ben-hadad in charge of overseeing the creation of the skimmers themselves, letting the young genius figure out the most efficient number and composition of skimmers given the number of people they had to move and the skill or lack thereof of the drafters available.

Kip went to work learning the disposition of his new forces. Most of the Ghosts here were those who had no homes anymore. Either they’d made Shady Grove their home, or their families’ homes were in areas that the White King had already captured.

With Cruxer and Conn Arthur, Kip went over a map that Tisis was able to draw of Deora Neamh and its environs. She’d never visited, but she’d studied Blood Forest geography extensively, and she could draw. They showed the map to all the Ghosts who’d ever visited the town, and amended it as necessary.

Kip stared at the map. The problem with it was that the land was hilly—it was home to a tall waterfall—but the map itself did a poor job of showing the elevation changes. “What do they want from this town?” Kip asked.

“Slaves. Loot. The regular, I suppose,” Conn Arthur said.

“No,” Cruxer said. “There’s a water mill here, below the base of the falls. Where do farmers keep their grain before and after it’s been milled?”

They found someone who’d visited the town. He sketched a warehouse a ways down the rocky river, at the first place where the river was navigable for larger boats and barges. There was a good road between the mill and the docks. He hadn’t even thought to add it in when shown the map before, because it was outside the scope of the paper.

Kip didn’t know how long he stared at the map. They had no idea how many men and wights would be attacking the city. If it really was a foraging party, it would contain a small force of fighters meant to cow the populace, but be made up mainly of laborers and camp followers pressed into service to haul the grain back to the main camp.

“Breaker,” Cruxer said. It was almost noon, and Kip was still turning things over in his mind, visualizing the terrain. “Ben-hadad says they’re finished. He’s launching the skimmers now.”

Kip didn’t move. “The thing about prototypes?”

“Milord?”

“They fail.”

“Well, these aren’t the first skimmers that Ben’s built.”

“They’re the first ones he’s watched inept drafters build for him, with so many going at once that he can’t watch every step.”

Just then a spate of curses rang out from the water’s edge. They turned and saw an entire section of hull had disintegrated and a skimmer was sinking rapidly.

Kip grinned at Cruxer.

“Well, you don’t have to be smug about it,” he said. “If we don’t get there in time, we might lose our new allies, you know.”