Just when I'd sort of forgotten my stomach. Thanks.

Kip pushed the spectacles up his nose-they kept slipping down, and they weren't even close to comfortable-and stared at the white board. Wild. Wild, unbridled, growing. The Ruthgari noble-Kip gathered it was the governor-was complaining shrilly to Gavin about something or other, and he stood as if he was going to take his time about it. Kip tried to block him out.

Green. Come on, let's suck up some wildness.

Wild, now there's a word for me. Kip the wild. I was pretty wild when Ram used to call me Tubby, huh? I was pretty wild when he made me back down over Isa. She'd be alive if I'd been a little wilder. To be wild is the opposite of being controlled, and I've been controlled for my whole life. Controlled by Ram, by Ram! A village tough. A boy! Barely a bully.

If Kip had told Ram to go to the evernight, if he had shredded Ram with his tongue, what could Ram have done except beat him? Ram's muscles weren't half a match for Kip's brain.

Well, they're not a match for anything now that they're rotting.

The thought made Kip queasy. He didn't want Ram dead. There'd been plenty of good things about the boy. A few, anyway. And if Kip didn't feel terrible that Ram was dead, he did wish the boy were alive so he could face him now.

I've talked with Gavin Guile. I sank pirates with him! Well, mostly I tried not to drown while he sank pirates, but still.

Kip looked at his hands. Still no luxin. The governor was still complaining loudly. Orholam, how was Gavin standing it? The man had the most nasal voice Kip had ever heard. Kip wanted to bean the man in the head with a big old ball of green luxin. He glanced at his hands again. Nothing.

I'm going to fail Gavin. Again. Like I failed Isa. Like I failed Sanson. Like I failed my mother a thousand times.

Hunger gnawed Kip's belly. That's all I am, a fat failure. A new life's been handed to me on a plate. Gavin Guile's son, bastard son, sure, but he hasn't once treated me like an embarrassment. And I can't even summon the will to reach out and take this new life. In return for all the good he's done me, I'm going to humiliate the man who saved my life, who gave me a second chance.

It was like bands of iron were being laid across his chest, and now they tightened, tightened. Kip could barely breathe. His eyes welled with tears. Baby. Failure. Disappointment. His mother's face, twisted, dangerously high from smoking ratweed laced with ergot: You ruined my life! You're the worst mistake I ever made. I gave everything and you took it all and gave me nothing! You make me sick, Kip.

Kip, you can throw off those chains. Stop believing those-

"Lies!" the governor shouted. Kip shivered, his skin tingling. The sun was nearly at its zenith. Orholam's eye pressed down on the land like a physical weight, but to Kip it was a caress. Light, energy, warmth, love, light in dark corners. He looked at the white board, and in the green filtered through his spectacles, he saw one face of Orholam. Kip wouldn't call it wildness. It was freedom. He wanted to shout, dance for joy, to hell with what anyone thought. There was freedom from all of that, and freedom from the prison of his own head, freedom from the nagging voices of doubt, from the running commentary about everything he saw and did. It was action, and it was as powerful as a redwood springing up in the cracks of a boulder. Life would win. The roots would reach and heave and strain.

Kip could feel those bands of iron around his chest burst asunder. He felt more alive than he had in his whole life. An animal strength and joy.

So this is what they mean by wild.

The yapping governor's voice shrilled. Kip drew a ball of green luxin into his hand. Just like that? Just by deciding to do it? It seemed too easy. The ball was thick, dense, but flexible to his squeezing fingers. Kip made it bigger, hollow, about twice the size of his own head. Now the flexibility was exaggerated. Soft enough that it wasn't going to kill anyone.

With the biggest grin on his face, Kip held it in his palms. How had Gavin shot out luxin? Kip had seen Ironfist do it too. He wrinkled his nose. Maybe I just will it.

A tiny part of his mind was protesting: You can't assault the governor! He's the governor, for Orholam's sake. You think his bodyguards are going to appreciate that you don't really mean to hurt him?

But in the grip of green, words like "governor" were bled of meaning. What was that? What was the difference? The trappings of human rituals and human titles seemed artificial, thin.

Kip willed the ball to shoot out of his hands. Still seated, grinning like a fool, he could feel energy coiling up behind the ball. How long did he let that build before he let it go? Oh well, that felt like long enough. A muffled crack and the ball jetted out of Kip's hands, fast.

Still seated on the ground, he was blasted ass over elbows.

Rolling to his knees, laughing, Kip looked to see what had happened to the yapping man.

The governor was laid out, and apparently the green luxin ball had bounced around some, because the palanquin was collapsing, two of the slaves tumbling away from it. The palanquin dropped right on top of the governor, and Kip heard him shrieking-but his view was blocked as one of the bodyguards charged Kip, sword out.

Spectacles askew, Kip couldn't draw any more green, but he still had a good amount in his body. He began drawing another, smaller ball. Too slow, too slow!

The air shimmered between him and the swordsman as he raised his hands. There was a crack from his hands and a tiny green ball shot out, snapping both hands back painfully from the kick.

A wall of blue luxin unfurled between Kip and the swordsman in the blink of an eye. The swordsman's sword struck the blue wall in midlunge toward the kneeling boy. The blade screeched as it was forced downward, peeling off layers of blue. The swordsman himself smacked bodily into the blue a split second later, grunting. There was a sound like glass cracking, and a high-pitched whine.

The swordsman recovered, then stopped. The blue luxin right in front of his face was cracked from Kip's shot, spiderwebs centered where his head would have been, a musket-ball-sized crater in the blue luxin.

"Enough," Gavin said. He didn't raise his voice, just injected it in a moment of silence. His blue wall had saved both of them.

Kip felt shaken, weak. Oh, shit. What did I just do?

The governor, still protesting, was pulled from the fallen palanquin by two of his bodyguards. He stood, nose bleeding, face flushed from embarrassment rapidly giving way to rage, and stormed over to Gavin.

"Your slave has assaulted me, I demand satisfaction!" The governor drew the decorative blade hanging at his hip and pointed it at Kip.

A muscle jumped in Gavin's jaw. "That's no slave. Kip is my natural son."

"This, this is your bastard?"

Stony silence from Gavin. Finally, "Kip, apologize."

Kip swallowed and stood, unable to conceal his trembling. "I'm terribly sorry, sir. I was practicing drafting for the first time. I really didn't know what I was-"

"An apology? No, Lord Prism, first you assault me, and now this outrage? I demand satisfaction."

"You'll demand nothing," Gavin said. He never broke eye contact. "You're corrupt if not treasonous, Governor Crassos. You've been colluding with King Garadul, and if I can find just a little more evidence of it, I swear when you return to Ruthgar, your head will have a pike waiting for it. Unless Satrapah Ptolos decides to hand you over to the Parians instead. You're incompetent, contemptible, a liar, a thief, and a coward. If you want satisfaction, you can duel with me. Sword to sword. On my word of honor I won't draft, but we'll do it right now."

The governor blinked and the sword point trembled. He blinked again. Sheathed his blade. "I'll leave brawling with swords to the benighted." He snarled and turned on his heel, storming off.