“Lord Prism, how do you know this?” Tempus asked.
“Because I killed the blue bane by myself a couple months ago.”
Tempus rubbed his temples. Other Blackguards shuffled their feet. Kip heard a few mutter “Promachos” as if it were a quiet curse. At first Kip thought it was because they didn’t believe Gavin, then he realized it was because they did.
My father’s a giant, a god among men.
“Promachos,” Tempus asked. He hesitated. “If we’re too late, and the avatar wakes…”
Gavin pursed his lips. “Whoever it is, they won’t know much more about it than we do. It will certainly be a drafter of incredible power, seemingly able to draft infinite amounts from the smallest amount of light. It may be able to control the green drafters in its vicinity. Your bodies, at least. It can control the green luxin that’s become part of your body over your years of drafting. Maybe your minds, eventually. But if we get to it today, it shouldn’t have time to learn the full extent of its power. Best if we kill it before it wakes and keep this all theoretical, eh?” Gavin quirked a smile. “Light’s rising,” he said. “Let’s take it to them. We cut through the lines first and find the temple. Greens won’t be at strength until full light.”
They took to three skimmers. Gavin took the center of one with Karris and Kip with him, Watch Captain Tempus took the center of a skimmer dominated by green drafters, and Watch Captain Blademan took the last. Ironfist hadn’t let any of the greens be drivers, even in Tempus’s group. They’d be archers on each of the sea chariots when they split.
With the light barely gray in the east, the skimmers set out in a wide formation. The light was so weak that not all of the drafters could help propel the skimmer, even with their eyes dilated, so their progress wasn’t as fast as usual. Gavin’s skimmer, even with fifteen people on it, was easily the fastest, and he didn’t wait for the others.
They cut across the sedate waves, barely making any noise. Up ahead, Kip saw their ships looming larger. It wasn’t yet dawn, but to Kip the disposition of the ships seemed odd. They knew that the Color Prince’s army had seized the battery across from Ruic Head, of course. Between those cannons and the cannons in the fort on Ruic Head, the Atashians’ field of fire covered almost the entire entrance to Ruic Bay. Of course, the Color Prince held the fort on Ruic Head now—and he didn’t know that Gavin knew that. But if he had seized the fort, it would seem better strategy to beef up the middle of the neck here, to force the Chromeria’s ships to head along either coast, where it would be easier to shoot them.
They hadn’t done that. Instead, the center of the prince’s line was weak. There were a number of ships, but they were caravels and coccas and naos, small vessels. Quicker, more agile, sure, but not with many guns. Was the prince simply trying to bait the trap and not reveal that he did hold the fort on the north side?
That had to be it. Once they saw the Chromeria’s forces commit to going along the northern shore, the prince’s line would be reinforced and crush them against the fort’s guns.
Whatever corrupting power the green had, it didn’t seem to be exerting it yet. Kip supposed it must have something to do with there being no ambient light. After dawn, it would surely become more and more intense.
They passed the first ships and heard alarum bells ringing only after they passed. A luxin flare shot out over the sea, illuminating them. There was a rattle of muskets and a couple swivel guns, but at the speed they were traveling, none came close. Kip saw one of the superviolets on the skimmer tracking the flare. It took her several seconds with the bouncing of the skimmer over the waves, but finally the beam of superviolet she was shooting out caught the flare and encapsulated it, extinguished it, plunging them back into darkness. The other two skimmers came through in darkness, unseen.
As the light rose in the east, they traveled faster, and they passed more ships, too quickly for them to get off credible shots. As the sun peered over the horizon, Kip caught his first glimpse of Ru’s Great Pyramid, rising red and green in the morning.
But there was no sign of any rising green spire. The skimmers spread out as they went deep into the bay. The distant sounds of the battle starting rolled over the leagues behind them. And still no temple, no spire, and Kip was only beginning to feel the restless energies of green pulling at him.
They came fully in sight of the city. Kip could see the towns outside the walls still smoking, having been burned down the day before. The base of the great stepped pyramid was only blocks from the waterfront. Though constructed of the local reddish stone, the pyramid was whitewashed aside from the great red stripes painted in zigzags up each of its four sides, and covered with greenery. At the top rested a giant curved mirror. Clearly, the makers of the Chromeria’s Thousand Stars had stolen the idea from the Great Pyramid. Behind the city, the Red Cliffs loomed a thousand feet over the city. Smoke rose from whatever towns had once rested up there, and Kip saw a single trebuchet bombarding the city from on high.
It must have been difficult to get the catapults up to the top of the cliffs, or to find materials to build them up there, but there was no way to stop them once they made it there. And if the Blood Robes brought one up, surely they would now bring more. There was no defense against that.
The trebuchet loosed another shot. It looked to Kip like it was nearly random. It was such a long distance that it might take them days to breach the walls—but days of raining death into a city were days of terror for those inside.
The walls of the city still looked whole, though the entire waterfront was burning, and hulks of burned-out ships rested in the shallows everywhere. Apparently the Color Prince’s rented pirates had done good work.
But Gavin obviously didn’t care about the city right now. They pulled in a broad arc, seeing that the army had entirely encircled the city and seized all the towns around it.
“Greens, anyone got a feel yet?” Gavin asked. The sun had fully cleared the horizon now. Musket shots were crackling from the shore, aiming at them, but they were three hundred paces out.
“If anything, it feels weaker here than out—” one of the men started.
“Shit!” Gavin said before he could even finish. “Of course! ‘Most of the times,’ she tells me! Most of the times.” He turned the skimmer sharply back out to sea. Karris made hand signals to the other skimmer.
“What is it? What is it?” Kip asked, and he could tell he was speaking for some of the others, too.
“The bane’s huge. If it’s nearby, but it isn’t here, where is it?” Karris said.
Kip still didn’t understand. Up ahead, he saw the guns of the fort on Ruic Head open up, pillars of black smoke blowing out with every shot. It had to be home to the biggest guns Kip had ever seen. Below, the Chromeria’s fleet had taken a tentative course. They weren’t hugging the north coast closest to the fort, but neither had they gone straight for the middle.
Now, as the guns opened up, cratering the waters around their fleet, the Chromeria’s ships were reacting quickly, tacking to the middle. But instead of the Color Prince shoring up the middle to keep the Chromeria’s ships in range of his guns, they were melting away instead. One Chromeria ship was afire and had lost its mainmast, but the rest were fleeing.