figured that you’re not much good as a fighter without your blue spectacles,” Kip said. Stop, you moron! Don’t—“So we might as well put you to some use.”
The Blackguard commander’s head snapped toward Kip. Kip swallowed. You deserve the crushed skull you’re about to get, Kip. You’re begging for it.
Then a small, unwilling smile crept over the commander’s face. He guffawed. “When Orholam hands out the brains, the folks at the front of that line have to go to the back of the common sense line, huh?”
“What?” Kip asked. “Oh.”
He waited patiently, thinking that his joke would buy him an answer about yellow luxin, but Ironfist ignored him. The perverse little grin on his face told Kip that he knew Kip was waiting for an answer and was only holding his tongue because he didn’t want to start another topic. But Ironfist wasn’t going to give him the pleasure of winning an answer. Pudgy force, meet immovable mass.
Within minutes, though, they had made their way onto the Lily’s Stem—or rather, into it—and Kip forgot whatever it was that he had asked. The bridge was fully enclosed, albeit with blue luxin so thin it was almost as colorless as glass. But beneath their feet, the bridge actually glowed. Kip shot a look at Ironfist.
“No matter how often you look at me, I’m still not going to be a magister,” the big man said.
“How about a guide?”
“Nope.”
“A polite host?”
“Uh-uh.”
A jackass? Kip’s mouth actually opened to say it when he noticed again how thickly muscular Ironfist’s arms were. He closed his open mouth and scowled.
“You were going to say something?” Ironfist asked.
“Your name,” Kip said. “Is that common, among Parians?”
“Ironfist? Far as I know, I’m the only one.”
“That isn’t what I—” Oh, he was teasing.
Ironfist smirked. “You mean to take a name that describes us? Very common. Some use our old tongue, but the coastal folk—my people—use words that outsiders can understand. But the Ilytians do it too. To a lesser extent, the whole Chromeria does it. Gavin Guile is almost never called Emperor Guile or Prism Guile. He’s just the Prism. Orea Pullawr is just the White. A lot of people think that meaningless names are the true puzzle.”
“Meaningless names. You mean like Kip?”
Ironfist cocked an eyebrow. Shrugged.
Thanks a lot.
The crowds heading to Little Jasper for the day didn’t even seem to notice the wonder beneath their feet. The bridge was perhaps twenty paces wide and three hundred long from shore to shore. The surface was lightly textured, but that barely interfered with its transparency, aside from some dirt. Kip could see the water right under his feet, not even a foot away, swelling up with every wave and gapping in between them. They were on the side of the bridge with heavy seas, too—apparently here traffic traveled on the right, unlike at home, so waves crashed into the luxin right next to Kip. After having been pulled in and pounded by those same waves, it made him more than a little nervous. No one else seemed to even notice it.
Then, at about the time Kip and Ironfist reached the middle of the bridge, Kip saw a monster wave coming in. Just in time to meet the bridge, trough met trough, peak met peak, and the wave loomed high—its height easily half again as tall as the bridge. Kip braced himself and took a deep breath.
He didn’t notice he’d clamped his eyes shut until he heard Ironfist’s quiet chuckle. He opened his eyes as the last of the water sluiced off the outside of the tube, harmlessly. The bridge hadn’t groaned, hadn’t shuddered, hadn’t even acknowledged the power of the wave that had just fully passed over it.
A few passersby grinned knowingly. Apparently this was the kind of joke that didn’t get old.
“Is this why—” Kip stumbled as he reminded himself to use the correct term. “Is this why my uncle wanted me to come this way?”
“Part of the reason, I’m sure. Anytime we have to deal with a recalcitrant king or satrap or queen or satrapah or pirate lord, we make sure they come across at high tide. It’s a good little reminder of whom they’re dealing with.”
Little reminder?
The next wave crashed over the bridge as well, and soon even the wave troughs were higher than the bottom of the bridge. By the time Kip and Ironfist stepped off the bridge, it was half submerged in the sea. Unbelievable. Kip hadn’t grown up on the sea, but even he knew that