And Gavin was gone almost every day, scouring the seas for the blue bane with Karris. He’d sat with his abacus and his map, checked and double-checked his calculations and his assumptions—and then checked and double-checked the seas. The bane wasn’t there. Wherever the two hours east and two and a half hours south started from, it wasn’t from his beach on Seers Island. Nor, running it backward, was it simply two hours west and two and a half hours north of White Mist Reef, though that had taken him some time to figure out, too, because the reef wasn’t simply one point on the map, it was an entire zone in the sea, five times larger than Seers Island. So did he measure that distance from the presumed center of the reef, or from some particular point therein, or from every possible point in a circle?
And it wasn’t like his skimmer’s speed was a simple constant either. Some days he was tired and he’d cover leagues less, though he thought he’d been traveling at the same rate.
“It’s about Kip,” Karris said.
That seemed safe enough. “Yes?” he ventured.
“What are you doing to that boy?”
“Pardon?” He hadn’t even seen Kip in weeks.
“He’s a boy, Gavin.”
“I was under the impression he was a ptarmigan.”
“Don’t give me that,” Karris said, flushing. She shifted on her stool and winced. Training with amateurs meant collecting bruises from where people weren’t in control enough of their own bodies to pull blows short consistently.
“I have no idea what we’re even talking about,” Gavin said.
“You’ve given him some impossible task, haven’t you?” Karris asked.
Gavin scowled. “How’d you know—”
“I know you!”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Gavin said lightly, grinning, trying to defuse.
But Karris obviously wasn’t in the mood to make peace. “He’s a boy, not a weapon. You’ve loosed him like an arrow at some target. I don’t know who. I don’t even care. You’re using him to advance some agenda.”
Gavin absorbed that, pursed his lips, set his spoon down into his stew. “That’s right. We all serve.”
“It’s not right. He’s a good kid, and he deserves better. You’ve acknowledged him as your son—now be a father.”
“What? What did you just say?” Gavin demanded.
“He’s a child! You’re treating him like he’s another soldier. He needs your time, Gavin. He needs you to put him first.”
“I don’t put him first,” Gavin said frankly.
“Exactly!”
“Exactly. And what exactly would you have me abandon so I can go have playtime with Junior? Clothing and housing fifty thousand refugees? Not important. Destroying a bane? Not important. Saving all seven satrapies? Not—”
“That’s not what I meant and you know it! You’ve said Kip is your son. Are you going to treat him like he’s your son or not?”
“Kip is not important!” Gavin shouted.
Karris sat back, defeated. “Then you are a smaller man than I thought you were.”
“What would you have of me?” Gavin shouted.
“Decency,” she said quietly.
He pounded the table with a fist so hard it bounced and spilled soup and wine everywhere. He roared, “Decency?! I do everything for others! Everything!”
“A lie,” Karris said quietly. “But so very close to true. How is it that those closest to you get the worst of you, Gavin Guile?”
“Out! Get out!” he roared.
She got up and walked out. At the flap of the tent, she turned pitiless eyes on him and said, “You’re a great man, but only when seen from afar.” Then she was gone.
What the hell was that about?
He’d thought things were warming up with Karris as they worked together. They’d always worked well together, always enjoyed each other’s company, even when they didn’t speak. And now this. This ambush. Where had this come from?
Women. Gavin mouthed a few more curses. He could go after her. He should go after her.
And what? Tell her what? Tell her the whole truth?
The thought chilled his anger. He swore again and pulled out his charts. He had work to do, damn her.
He’d ended up abandoning his shortcut, which had probably put him two weeks behind what a methodical approach would have yielded, and narrowed the search through guesswork and good intelligence. He’d visited cities around the Cerulean Sea, asking if people had seen blue wights, and if so, what direction they were traveling. He’d even come across wights twice, one in a sailing dinghy, the other rowing a blue luxin dory of its own design. Both had been as unhelpful as possible, of course, trying to kill Gavin and Karris, but Gavin had found where each had come from, one from a little town outside Idoss in Atash and the other from Garriston. Taking the blues’ penchant to move in efficient straight lines, he’d calculated where their paths should intersect—and found nothing there.
Clearly, one or both of them had either been a bad sailor or had been blown off course by the autumnal storms that were all too frequent now.
Blown off course by a storm from out of nowhere, pity the bastards. Ambushed. No wonder they say the sea is a woman.
Gavin had ended up dividing the Cerulean Sea into zones and grids, and he would skim as far as he could, checking every half hour on his sextant and compass that he was staying on line. Of course, at the speeds he was traveling, he could have gone off course for a half hour by a few degrees—easily done during the hard weather—then corrected himself, and the next day traversed that day’s path perfectly and still have cut a wide enough berth that he would miss a small island.
The only other option was to stop every ten minutes and take the painstaking readings. He was adept in the tools’ use, but stopping that often meant leagues and leagues that he didn’t even get to. He also had to be aware that the bane was moving. If it moved too fast, it could go straight across his grid and he’d never be the wiser—even if all of his other calculations and guesses were accurate. It was infuriating.
Karris had suggested he build another condor and fly. It would have been a great suggestion, if he could still draft blue. It had taken him months to design the condor with the original materials, and it had still been a long way from perfect. Yellow luxin could be substituted for blue, but it was heavier, and infinitely more difficult to draft a stable version. He thought that within a couple of weeks he could figure out a design that would suffice. But made from solid yellow, it would be a permanent design. He couldn’t make a new one every day, and he couldn’t easily unravel it if he lost it to some enemy. So that meant finding a secure place to store it while he perfected it. And then, if something went wrong when he was in midair, he wouldn’t be able to simply patch it quickly with blue. If something went wrong, he would crash, and all his work would be for naught. If he knew that he was going to be searching the sea for six months, it would be worth it. But he didn’t know that.
Beyond infuriating.
And his Tyreans needed him. Their few drafters would burn themselves out helping with clearing forests and building shelters if Gavin didn’t lend them aid. Corvan had convinced the Seers Islanders, who were almost all drafters, to help in exchange for future work, but there was still always more work to be done. Instead of trying to do it all himself, Gavin put his copious drafting abilities to work in a way that first amused himself, and then astounded everyone else: he built bricks.