"I didn't think you were much for religion," Gavin said, trying to inject a bit of levity.

"Why would you think that? I speak with Orholam constantly."

" 'Orholam, what did I do to deserve this?' " Gavin suggested, thinking he was kidding.

"No. Seriously," Ironfist said.

"Oh." Ironfist, devout?

"But you know how that is. You speak with him all the time as well. You are his chosen."

"It's different for me." Very very different, apparently. "But sorry to jest. Religion?"

"This isn't just some political matter of calling himself a king. Rask Garadul wants to upend everything we've accomplished since Lucidonius came. Everything."

An indefinable dread settled in Gavin's stomach. "The old gods."

"The old gods," Ironfist said.

"Get Kip back, Commander. Do whatever you have to. If anyone complains about your methods, they'll have to go through me. If you can, save the girl too. I owe her father a debt I can never explain."

Gavin slept little and fitfully. He never slept much, but it was always worse as the Freeing approached. He hated this time of year. Hated the charade. His chest felt tight as he lay in his bed. Maybe he should have let his brother win. Maybe Gavin would have done a better job of all of this. At the very least, he wouldn't be here now.

Nonsense.

And yet he couldn't help but wonder if Gavin would have been a better Prism than he was. Gavin had always borne burdens of responsibility better than Dazen had. It didn't even seem like a weight to his older brother. Like the man had been without self-doubt. Dazen had always envied Gavin that.

The morning came none too soon. Dazen sat up and put on his face, Gavin once more. He felt that stab of pain radiating through his chest, tightening his throat. He couldn't do this.

Nonsense. He was just missing Kip, and Karris, and was worried for Corvan's daughter and dreading the exhausting drafting he was going to have to do all day long. There was nothing to do but get on with it.

After taking his time with his ablutions-why had Gavin had to be such a dandy?-he ate and rode to the wall. He was greeted by a young orange drafter.

The drafter was one of the tragically young who couldn't handle the power. An addict. He couldn't have been twenty years old, mountain Parian, but he didn't wear the ghotra, instead wearing his hair in dreadlocks, bound back with a leather thong. The rest of his clothing spoke of similar rejection of traditional attire-any tradition. Oranges tended to see exactly how others liked things to be. In most cases they used that to their advantage, becoming as slick as their luxin. But in some cases they defied every convention they saw, becoming artists and rebels. Given how the man's clothes somehow worked together to look good despite their disparate origins, and that all the colors and textures complemented each other, Gavin guessed this one was an artist. This young man's orange halo was thin with strain, though. He definitely couldn't have made it until the next Freeing.

"Lord Prism," the young man said. "How can I help?"

The sun had barely cleared the horizon, and all the drafters who were capable of drafting without hurting themselves or losing control had gathered at the wall. The local workmen seemed stunned to be surrounded by so many of them.

"What's your name?" Gavin asked. He didn't think he'd even seen this young man before.

"Aheyyad."

"So you are an artist," Gavin said.

Aheyyad smiled. "Not much choice, with the grandmother I had."

Gavin tilted his head.

"Sorry, I thought you knew. My grandmother is Tala. She knew I was going to be an orange and an artist by the time I was four years old. She forced my mother to rename me."

"Tala can be very, ahem, persuasive," Gavin said.

The boy grinned.

A boy going to the Freeing at the same time as his grandmother. There was a tale of woe just under the surface there, a family's grief, the loss of two generations at once, but no need to prod that now. All things are brought to light in time. "I need an artist," Gavin said. "Can you work fast?"

"I'd better," Aheyyad said.

"Are you any good?" Gavin already knew that Aheyyad was or Corvan wouldn't have sent him. He wanted to know whether the young man would be bold or tentative when faced with something so vast.

"I'm the best," Aheyyad said. "What's the project?"

Gavin smiled. He loved artists. In small doses. "I'm building a wall. Work with the architect to make sure you don't screw up anything functional, but your task is to make this wall scary. You can commandeer any of the old drafters to help you. I'll give you some drawings we have of Rathcaeson. If it can resemble those, do it. You'll tell the blues how to hold the forms. I'll fill them with yellow luxin. I'm doing functional things first. We can attach and integrate whatever you design in two or three days."

"How big can I make… whatever I make?"

"We've got a couple leagues of wall."

"So you're saying… big."

"Huge," Gavin said. Having the artist only design the forms would also keep the young man from having to draft anything at all, which with how close Aheyyad was to breaking the halo would possibly save his life.

It took until noon before they were ready to start the drafting. Gavin had asked all the old warriors to look at the plans of the wall, and not a few of them had come up with suggestions. Those suggestions had covered everything from expanding the latrines-and making sure the raw sewage could be routed onto their enemies by emptying the pots suddenly through chutes out the front of the wall-to reworking the mounts for the cannons and adding furnaces to heat the shot at several of the stations. Heated shot was wonderful for setting fire to siege engines. Someone else suggested texturing the floors and providing gutters not only outside for rainwater, which had already been considered, but also within the wall itself for blood.

Many good suggestions, and quite a few bad ones. The wall should be bigger, smaller, wider, taller. There should be space for more cannons, more archers, more beds in the hospital, the barracks should be within the wall, and so on.

At noon, Gavin was rigged back into his harness and lifted off the ground. The others swarmed around him, drafting forms, steadying his harness. Then he set to work.

Chapter 70

It wasn't until two days later, as Kip and Liv came within sight of King Garadul's army, plopped over the plain and fouling the river like an enormous cow pie, that he realized how deeply, incredibly, brilliantly stupid his plan was.

I'm going to march in there and rescue Karris?

More like waddle in there.

At the top of a small hill, they sat on the horse, which seemed grateful for the break, and scanned the mass of humanity before them. It was immense. Kip had never tried to estimate a crowd, and never seen one this large.

"What do you think, sixty or seventy thousand?" he asked Liv.

"More than a hundred, I'd guess."

"How are we going to find Karris in that?" he asked. What did I expect? A sign, perhaps? "Captured drafter here"?

Most of the camp was chaotic, people pitching lean-tos against wagons, those who had tents screaming at each other over who got which spot, children running around, clogging the spaces between tents and wagons and livestock. The sky was still light, though the sun had gone down, and campfires were being started all over the plain. Kip could hear people singing nearby. Men were swimming and bathing in the river, downstream of where some soldiers had hastily erected a corral. The animals dirtied the water, but no one seemed to care. Other men stood on the bank, urinating directly into the water. The color of the river upstream and downstream of the camp was distinctly different. People were carrying buckets of water everywhere, taken directly from the river.