gold scarf around her neck. She was thick, hugely tall, with great heavy shoulders and a bold-patterned green dress draped over her like a sheet over a galleass. “It’s dawn, and time for your first lesson. I’m Mistress Helel.”
“You’re my magister?” Kip said, still rubbing his hurting arm.
“Oh yes.” She smiled, but the smile didn’t touch her eyes. “And you’ll remember today’s lesson for the rest of your life. Get up, Kip.”
Kip stood. She walked past him and opened a door to a small balcony outside Liv’s room.
“Come quickly,” she said. “You need to see this before the sun is fully over the horizon.”
Hair squashed, mouth full of cotton, breath foul, arm throbbing, Kip licked his dry lips and stepped past Mistress Helel. Her eyes were dark and intense—so dark that he couldn’t even tell what color of a drafter she was.
Weird. Here I’m supposed to see minute differentiations in colors undetectable to most people, and I couldn’t even see the color in her irises. He stepped onto the pure yellow luxin balcony. Aside from streaks of water or dirt, the entire thing was eerily clear.
Despite his experience yesterday learning that the yellow was one of the strongest materials known, Kip tested his weight on the balcony gingerly. It was, of course, solid. Due to the way the towers all leaned out, as if blossoming, if Kip fell from here, he’d smash on the rocks several hundred feet below, just shy of the water. It was even worse for the floors above them, which leaned even farther out. He gulped and tried to pay attention to the rising sun.
“We don’t have all day, Kip,” Mistress Helel said. There was something in her voice, a tension.
Kip turned as she stepped out onto the balcony with him. At first he thought she was tripping, because she lunged forward so suddenly. He moved toward her to catch her. If there was one thing good about being fat, it was that he could stop big weights.
But Mistress Helel extended both of her hands like battering rams. Kip’s move forward brought him between her arms. Her thumbs scratched across his chest and off both sides. She cursed as they crushed together in an awkward hug.
The big woman stood to her full height, regaining her balance. She was much taller than Kip, and the move pressed big flat breasts onto either side of his face. Somehow his chin got caught in her dress’s gaping neckline as she stood and for a brief—but not nearly brief enough—moment, Kip’s face was fully engulfed in flabby cleavage.
“Gah!” Kip blurted.
Mistress Helel was already bending over, mercifully freeing her neckline of Kip’s chin, but then bending farther, her body pressing against his. After an experience that he was doubtless going to relive in dreams—and not the good kind—he sidled out of the way.
The woman’s big meaty hands slapped on Kip’s right and left legs. His move to the side made her left hand slip off his right leg, though. Then she lifted.
“What are you—” Kip stopped as soon as he saw her eyes.
Dead concentration, complete lack of emotion. She pushed forward hard into Kip, lifting. He put it all together far too slowly.
The intensity, the story, the lack of color in her eyes, the stumble that hadn’t been a stumble. It had been a lunge. The lack of embarrassment at Kip being pressed against her breasts—because you don’t let the touch of a little flesh deter you. Not when you’ve come to kill.
Kip’s hands slapped against the edge of the balcony behind him. With only one leg in her hands, Mistress Helel lifted sharply. She was so strong that Kip’s weight was no problem for her.
If he’d been a brave man, Kip would have fought her. If he’d been flexible, he would let her pick up the one leg while he stood on the other and beat her to a bloody pulp. Instead, Kip took the fatty’s way. He went limp, floppy, making all his weight dead weight, seeking the ground the way he’d done when Ram would try to show off by picking him up and throwing him on the ground. If Kip collapsed, Ram could never lift him, where if he held himself rigid, Ram could hold his weight easily.
Mistress Helel brought one hand off Kip’s left leg, seeking a grip anywhere on his round body. Kip wriggled like a fish, pushing off the balcony, trying to push himself