their interactions that made them unattractive. Gavin looked at men and women whom he had arranged to live and work far from the Jaspers just so they wouldn’t endanger him and thought, I ruined you and you never even knew it. And I missed you.
“We just discovered it a few minutes ago. This note was sitting out. The other was tucked under the bedsheets.”
Smart. Kip accomplished exactly what he was trying to do: he bought himself time. Kept us from looking for him all day. Gavin extended his hand, knowing Ironfist would have the notes. Ironfist handed them over.
The important one read, “I’m Tyrean and young. More help as a spy than here. No one will suspect me. Will try to find Karris.”
A spy? Orholam strike me. “Any other news?” Gavin asked.
“He took a horse and a stick of coins.”
“So he could get himself into even more trouble than simply heading into an enemy camp armed only with delusions,” Gavin said.
Ironfist didn’t respond. He generally ignored statements of the obvious. “The Danavis girl is gone as well. The stableman says she asked him for a horse, but he turned her down. Sounds like she found the notes and went after him.”
Gavin stared out over the bay. The Guardian, the statue guarding the entrance of the bay, and through whose legs every sailor passed, held a spear in one hand and a torch in the other. The torch was kept by a yellow drafter whose entire job was to keep it filled with liquid yellow. Special grooves cut in the glass slowly exposed the yellow luxin to air and caused it to shimmer back into light. Mirrors collected and directed the light out into the night, spinning slowly on gears driven by a windmill when there was wind and draft animals when there wasn’t. Tonight, the beam illuminated the misty night air, cutting great swathes in the darkness. It was what every drafter was supposed to do: bring Orholam’s light to the darkest corners of the world.
It was what Kip was trying to do.
Ironfist said, “If he came into my camp and kept a low profile, I wouldn’t suspect him as a spy.”
Because he’d make a marvelously bad spy, perhaps? “About our spies, what have you learned?”
“Governor Crassos very innocently came to inspect the docks, carrying a very innocent-looking and strangely heavy bag. He looked awfully pleased to see me,” Ironfist said.
“You only get sarcastic when you’re mad,” Gavin said. “Go ahead. Let me have it.”
“I swore to protect Kip, Lord Prism, but first, the spies—”
“You can call me Gavin when I’ve been stupid,” Gavin said flatly.
“The spies report—”
“Out with it, for Orholam’s sake.”
Ironfist clenched his jaw, then willed himself to relax. “I need to go after him, Gavin, which means I can’t be here, helping with the defense and directing my people.”
“And you’re Parian and huge and pretty much the opposite of inconspicuous, so if you go after him—as your honor demands—you’ll most likely be killed, which will not only mean that you’re killed, which you don’t particularly desire, but it also means you will have failed to protect Kip, which would be the only point of going after him in the first place. And you can’t delegate the mission to anyone else because you promised to protect him personally, and besides, any other Blackguard would stand out nearly as much as you do.” It wasn’t that Blackguards were darker-skinned than Tyreans and had kinky rather than wavy or straight hair. There had been enough mixing over the centuries that quite a few Tyreans had both traits. Even Kip could still make a good spy despite his blue eyes; Tyreans were used to minority ethnicities from all the people who’d stayed after the war. The problem was that ebony-skinned, extremely physically fit drafters who exuded danger from their very pores were going to stand out anywhere. Blackguards would stand out among an army of Parian drafters.
“That’s pretty much it,” Ironfist admitted, the edge of his anger blunted by Gavin acknowledging exactly why he was angry.
“What else did you learn from our spies?” Gavin asked, shunting aside Ironfist’s concerns for the moment.
Ironfist seemed just as happy to not be talking about his dilemma. “Some of them have come from King Garadul’s camp, and I think our problems are bigger than we realized.” He pushed his ghotra off his head, scrubbing his scalp with his fingertips. “It’s religious,” he said.
“I didn’t think you were much for religion,” Gavin said, trying to inject