Of course, crossing the Cerulean Sea in a morning was impossible too.
But seriously, did Gavin mean to draft the entire thing by himself? Kip didn’t know all that much about drafting and how much a drafter could safely use in a day, but the mere fact that the world wasn’t bursting with luxin buildings and bridges and walls told him that it had to be incredibly difficult. In fact, the only luxin buildings he’d seen had been at the Chromeria, and he had to guess that the seven towers had been the product of a huge collaborative effort.
The architect, a squinting little man, after puffing out his cheeks a number of times, deep in thought, began drawing quickly. “The cutouts on these murder holes don’t give sufficient range of fire. If you modify the top of the wall like this, scaling ladders won’t be able to hook onto the wall—at least not as easily. A railing on the back, like so, will save more of your own men from falling off the wall than theirs. These areas on top of the wall need to be bigger so you can store more powder for the cannons. There’s no place in these drawings for taking the wounded. I think you could incorporate that here. If you can set sleds like this right into the wall of the interior passage, it’ll be easier to move materiel around. There are also no lantern hooks in this plan. Your wall will be entirely dark if you don’t fix this. You’ll need cranes here, here, and here to lift supplies.”
“You’ve never built a wall before, huh?” Gavin asked.
“I have studied a few,” the architect said.
“How much am I paying you?”
“Uh, nothing yet, Lord Prism.”
“Well, double it!” Gavin ordered.
The architect looked befuddled, obviously doing the arithmetic and not liking the result, but not wanting to call the Prism himself out on it.
“He’s joking,” General Danavis told the man.
Gavin’s eyes sparkled.
“Oh.” The man looked relieved. Then Kip could see the question cross his face: joking about giving me nothing, or joking about giving me more for doing a good job?
Gavin said, “Keep working. This man here will take notes. I’m going to go lay the foundation.”
“He means that metaphorically, right?” the architect asked, squinting at the receding figure of the Prism.
“Our Prism’s a bear for metaphors,” General Danavis said.
“Huh?” the architect asked.
Kip stood, feeling heartsick. Now was going to be as good of a chance to escape as he was going to get.
“Kip!” Gavin’s voice rang out, drawing everyone’s eye to Kip. Kip felt a surge of panic and embarrassment at having been caught so easily. “Well done today. It’s not many boys who can draft consciously on their first day of trying.”
A flush of pleasure went through Kip, only doubled by the impressed look that flitted over Liv’s face.
“Liv!” Gavin called out, making her head whip around. “I want you to make models: lay out the curvature of the halls, widths for the top of the wall, whatever the architect tells you.”
“Yes, Lord Prism!” she said, her eyes turning back to the table and her work.
Now or never. If he waited, Ironfist would be back, shadowing him wherever he went. Kip looked at General Danavis, head down, making suggestions; Liv, listening intently; and finally at Gavin. These were the only people in the world who meant anything to him, and incredibly, they accepted him. Tolerated him, anyway. With them, for the first time in his life, he felt like he was part of something.
Kip turned his back and walked toward the city.
Chapter 66
It was only as Kip approached the Lover’s Gate that he understood why Gavin was attempting to build a new wall. The old wall was encrusted with homes, shops, and inns like a ship with barnacles, except here the walls were covered both inside and out. In places, people’s roofs were almost level with the top of the wall. If Gavin wanted to make that wall defensible, he’d have to level hundreds of homes. The demolition itself would have taken four days.
Clearly, the effect on the people’s opinion of demolishing the homes of perhaps a fifth of the city’s population would be ruinous. Gavin had only a few days in which to make the people who remained in the city want to fight for him rather than for his enemy. He’d been caught between impossible choices: leave the people’s homes propped against the inner walls and have a militarily indefensible wall, or