vertical meant you’d like to switch from white to red. Sign and countersign. The luxiat’s call and the congregation’s response. She loved dance and could perform most of the dances of the Seven Satrapies. She loved music and could play the gemshorn or accompany herself on the psantria while she sang. But nothing she’d learned was helping her now. There was no structure, no hierarchy, no order to direct her.
She was supposed to still be on a ship. She was supposed to meet with a Chromeria spy before she got this far into Tyrea. He was supposed to guide her up the river to King Garadul’s army and give her a cover that would get her into the army without getting killed. Instead, she was dripping wet, alone, and less than a full day’s walk from that army, with no introduction, no map, no guidelines, no plan. Gavin and his bastard had disappeared down the river not five minutes ago.
I’m getting reckless. The red is destroying me.
Karris wrung out her heavy black wool cloak and started looking for a place to make camp. On the hillside there were huge numbers of eucalyptus trees filling the air with their fragrance, mixing with the taller pines, blocking out the harsh rays of Orholam’s bright eye. It took her only a few minutes to find a decent spot mostly obscured by brush. She gathered wood and made a little pyramid. She didn’t bother with kindling: there were advantages to being a red. But she did look around carefully for several minutes before she drew out her spectacles from their little pocket up one sleeve. She was alone. She drafted a thin thread of red luxin into the base of her pyramid.
Even drafting that much red blew on the coals of her fury. She tucked away the red and green lenses and thought of smashing Gavin’s grinning face. I love you? How dare he?
She shook her head and shook her finger out, flinging away deliberately off-center red luxin, getting rid of the excess. As with all luxin drafted imperfectly, it decayed rapidly, releasing a paired scent: the smell of resin that all luxin shared and the odd, dried-tea-leaves-and-tobacco smell of red in particular.
She took out a flint and her knife instead of drafting sub-red directly for a spark. She was already cold, so she struck the spark like a mere mortal.
I love you. That bastard.
While her wet clothes dried, she changed into the spare clothing that had been in her waterproof bag. Tyrean fashion had become mercifully practical in the last fifteen years. Though in social or urban settings women wore calf- or ankle-length dresses belted and often accompanied with a wrap or a full jacket for the evening, on the trail and in the countryside women often wore men’s linen trousers, albeit with longer shirts than men wore as a nod to modesty, worn untucked but belted, like a tunic. The way Commander Ironfist had explained it to her was that after the False Prism’s War, there hadn’t been enough men and boys to harvest the oranges or other fruits. The young women who’d joined the harvesters had shortened their skirts to make it easier to climb ladders repeatedly. Clearly someone had objected to that. Probably not the young men holding the ladders.
Thus the addition of trousers.
Karris liked the clothing. She was used to wearing men’s clothes from training with the Blackguard, and if this loose linen didn’t move with her as nicely or feel as soft as the stretchy, luxin-infused Blackguard garb, it was still cool. It also did a better job of camouflaging her body than the tight Blackguard garb. No man would dare so much as whistle at a woman Blackguard on the Jaspers, even if she was flaunting a hard-earned figure a little. A woman traveling alone in a far country shouldn’t tempt fate more than necessary.
As her little fire burned merrily, Karris distracted herself by arming carefully. Her ataghan would sit concealed and fairly accessible within her pack once the black cloak was dried and rolled up. A bich’hwa—a scorpion—was strapped to one thigh inside her trousers. It was a weapon with iron rings to fit the fingers, four claws for swiping, and a dagger—the scorpion’s tail—for stabbing. It wasn’t quickly accessible, but she always thought it was good to have more weapons than were visible. Another long knife was tucked into her belt. Her bifocal spectacles went into the bag. Their weight simply made them too obvious