opened to the Prism’s and White’s level of the tower. The Mighty and the best of their compatriots presented a hedgehog of muskets, drawn arrows, spears, and crossbow bolts—to an empty foyer.
No one stood at the checkpoint here, or farther down the hallway. It made things infinitely easier for Kip and his people—this hall could be held at the checkpoints by a dozen men with muskets for hours.
Good luck? Kip was so unfamiliar with the creature he didn’t dare trust it.
“Superviolets, sub-reds, out!” Big Leo said, suddenly every bit the commander.
Kip, with nothing to do until others finished their work, thought idly, ‘Commander Big Leo’?
Huh. That did sound a bit awkward. ‘Commander Leonidas’?
Hmm. Maybe so.
If we live.
The superviolets and sub-reds streamed out of the lift, checking for traps. Kip thought again of Teia. Orholam, but it would have been nice to have Teia here. She was so fast, so sharp.
And so absent. Curled up in her darkened room, shivering against the lacrimae sanguinis in her very eyes, hoping it might wear off before it killed her.
They all wanted to be with her, to give her all the comfort and companionship she deserved. Kip had a million things to say, a thousand apologies—but war silenced all.
They motioned an all clear, and Big Leo motioned everyone forward. Kip wasn’t allowed to lead, not into what could be an ambush.
They made it all the way to the doors to the roof. What was wrong with the Lightguards? Not even a lookout out here? It was odd to be reminded that the enemy could be poorly led, too. Even at the top, it wasn’t always geniuses and masterminds. Sometimes it was just thugs willing to work with the worst kinds of masters. Sometimes it was the amoral, selected primarily for their skills at bootlicking.
Still, no soldiers here didn’t mean Kip wasn’t going to barge into the middle of a hundred on the other side of these doors.
So the Mighty stacked up at the doors to the roof, forty men. Ferkudi—with no sign of the silly, dopey, spacey Ferkudi he so often lapsed into—was giving rapid hand signals to the warriors in the stack.
For the space of a few heartbeats, Kip saw the young man blurred with the boy he had been. Big, soft, dopey Ferkudi, the butt of all the jokes, the oblivious knucklehead who could oddly do long calculations in his head had turned into this lethal warrior, this leader of men.
And yet he was Ferkudi still. He wasn’t one or the other; he was one or the other as the situation demanded.
Kip loved them both.
And he was terrified that he was going to get his friend killed.
But not terrified to inaction.
Kip checked his pistols’ load and action and flint and frizzen. No luxin, not now.
Big Leo looked to him. Kip nodded.
The commander gave the tempo with one hand. Took a breath.
Three. Two. Boom!
They charged up the stairs onto the roof, fanning out.
In mere seconds, the forty were on the roof, guns pointed every direction.
There were a mere dozen people on the roof: six Lightguards, who raised their muskets to the sky instantly; two trembling courtiers; two messengers; and two scantily clad young slave women.
No Zymun.
“Where is he?” Kip bellowed into the face of one of the courtiers.
“Sir, I—”
“Where?!”
“He had to . . . he had to answer the call of nature, sir.”
“He broke the halo,” one of the women said with a hollow tone. She had the look of one who’d been traumatized by Zymun and was courageously fighting to reclaim herself. “His eyes bled. Sub-red. They took him downstairs.”
The courtier looked at her with rage. Advancing on her and lifting a hand, he said, “We were ordered not to—”
Big Leo pummeled the man across the jaw.
The courtier skidded across the ground, unconscious, maybe dead.
Kip turned to Ben-hadad. “Take twenty men. Arrest him or kill him.”
“And if they look to fight back? It’ll threaten civil war,” Ben said.
“That war would end as soon as he’s dead,” Kip said.
“Got it,” Ben said. And left.
Kip realized that his friend was not even going to try to arrest Zymun.
But it just wasn’t a priority now.
“Quickly, my lord,” someone said.
Kip turned to the enormous crystal that hung suspended between great iron arms, half of its circumference enshrouded in mirrors. Kip grabbed the straps and golden hand grips and beautifully carven sigils of Prisms past and levered himself into place. Others strapped him in.
Just in time.
For roaring over the horizon, already nearing the Jaspers, the first of