jerks. Three balls, each the size of a fist, whipped out right to left. Karris dodged the first and second, but the third caught her as she had to stutter-step again to miss another sticky patch on the floor. It thumped hard into the ribs on her left side, then splattered. She rolled with it, spun into range, and slashed with the ataghan.
The red drafter met her descending sword with layer after layer of red luxin. Held luxin, even red luxin, could gain a certain degree of rigidity from the drafter’s will, and more from being woven, but red luxin could never stop steel. It was like pitting water against a sword.
But this wasn’t just a bit of held red luxin. It wasn’t like slapping a sword into still water. It was like standing below a dam when they opened the floodgates. It was only water, but the speed and volume of it would blow a man off his feet. Likewise, the red luxin hitting Karris slowed her, slowed her more, and finally brought her to a complete halt.
The red drafter’s face paled as the luxin drained out of him. Next, his neck and chest went back to their natural hue as the torrent continued. Then his muscular shoulders, the luxin being bleached out of his body from eyes to extremities. They both realized he was running out of luxin at the same time.
Karris broke off her attack at the same time he did. She feinted to his right, expecting to meet more red luxin, and set up a killing blow. Instead, her sword clanged against something hard, but she didn’t see any sword. He couldn’t have drawn one without her seeing it, not even in this darkness.
Not hesitating, she lifted the ataghan and brought it down toward his head. It clanged and stopped as he lifted his hands in a V.
He shoved her hard backward and followed, keeping close. The shaft of light piercing the gloom of the room illuminated his hands and what he was holding as he shouted, “Enough! Damn you, stop for one second.”
The drafter held a pistol in each hand, crossed, their barrels holding Karris’s ataghan prisoner between them. His right pistol stared at her right eye, his left at her left eye. Karris had her other knives and the bich’hwa, of course, but there was no way she could draw any of them before he could pull a trigger.
The pistols staring at her were of Ilytian design. The Ilytian renunciation of magic usually meant their mundane tools were the best. With pistols, however, it was still dicey. This drafter had wheellock pistols. They negated the need to keep a fuse burning, but the flints failed to ignite the black powder at least one time in four.
Unfortunately, both pistols were double-barreled, and all four hammers were raised. Karris tried to do the figures—was it one time in sixteen or one time in two hundred fifty-six that all four shots would fail? Her heart despaired. She wasn’t going to gamble on those odds, not even one in sixteen.
So… talking.
“What do you draft?” the man demanded, his voice strained.
“I don’t know what you’re talking—”
“What. Do. You. Draft?!” he screamed. He flung her ataghan aside and put one pistol directly against her forehead. It was too dark for him to see her irises, but he was going to figure out soon, anyway, so Karris said, “Green. Green and red.”
“Then draft a ladder and get out. Now!”
Another time, Karris might have been irked that she obeyed so promptly, but her spectacles were on her face in an instant and she turned toward the light. Everything in this chamber was covered with either open red luxin or blackened, seared, closed red luxin. Finally, she found an ironwood beam up in the temple that reflected a pure enough white light to allow her to draft a good solid green.
Even as her body filled with green, she saw why the drafter was so urgent. This chamber was filled with red luxin. She shouldn’t have put it together so slowly. There were two entrances to the room, and the dead soldiers were seared but not roasted to death—and the red luxin had remained, coating everything rather than burning as it should have.
And it still remained. This room was full of red luxin, old and new. They were inside a powder keg.
A burning pew fell over, spilling smoldering and flaming brands toward the hole. One tottered on the edge, promising death.