Chapter 34

It had been a long morning already. Gavin had woken painfully early to reach the coast by the dawn, and then had skimmed as soon as he'd been able to draft the sun's first rays. Then he'd sculled to Cannon Island and made an unpleasant, claustrophobic trip through the escape tunnel, leaving him dirty, sweaty, sore, and deprived of sleep. But there was no other option than to push; not after what the color wight had told him.

The tunnel met the Chromeria at a disused storage room in the basement, three levels underground. There was a plain closet set in the back of one of the rooms, and a hidden door in the back of that closet. Gavin grabbed a lantern from a hook, twisted the flint, and was gratified to see it light instantly. He released the luxin he'd been holding into two puddles on the floor that quickly dissolved-no need to terrify anyone he ran into-and slipped into the closet.

The hidden door closed smoothly behind him. He opened the closet door. A hand's breadth, then it stopped, blocked. With the light of the lantern only cutting through the little crack, he couldn't see what the problem was. He reached through the crack into the darkness. Polished wood greeted his fingertips, smooth and straight, then more, right on top of it. Chairs.

Well, that was the problem of a super-secret door hidden in a disused storage room, wasn't it? Sometimes people saw a disused storage room and thought it should be used to store things.

Sighing, Gavin set down the lamp and braced his shoulder against the door. He pushed, hard, harder. The door slid another hand's breadth or two as the stacked chairs shifted, then stuck fast. He glanced at the lantern, drafted a green wand, and stuck a blob of red luxin to the end. He lit the red with sub-red and poked his narrow torch through the gap, holding it high. He poked his head through the gap after it.

The entire room was packed with furniture, as if half a dozen lecture halls and dining areas had been cleared out and everything put in here. Dear Orholam. Gavin swore quietly. The only clearance was down at floor level. The only way out was to crawl between the legs of the chairs and tables.

There was nothing for it. Unless Gavin wanted to start a fire, draft huge amounts, and obliterate everything in the room so he could simply walk out-not terribly discreet-he was going to be mopping the floor with his body. Great. He let the luxin torch disintegrate and started crawling.

Ten minutes later, he stood. He didn't try to brush the dust from his clothing. There wasn't much point. He was muddy with dust, that's how much dust there was, along with damp floors and sweat and dust he knocked off of the chairs and tables above him. He listened at the door for a full minute, heard nothing.

Stepping into the hall lightly, he closed the door behind himself. He extinguished his lantern with a puff; the halls were brightly lit. Even three floors below the sea, the cherry glims (the red-drafting second- to fourth-year students) were expected to keep the lamps fueled with red luxin. The storeroom, wisely, was set almost at the end of one of the long hallways. Gavin ducked down to the lift at the end, mere paces away.

The lifts had to serve the entire Chromeria, which meant they had to be serviceable by slaves or the dims, the newest students. So it was entirely mechanical. As anyone stepped into the lift, a scale would indicate how many counterweights were needed. If a drafter chose to use less counterweight, she would have to pull herself up the rope, albeit only lifting a fraction of her own weight. If she used more counterweight than her own weight, it could be difficult to stop at the correct floor. A central lift handled all the heavier loads and moved entire classes, while these side lifts took smaller loads. Additionally, each lift bay had numerous slots and ropes so that ambassadors wouldn't have to wait while dozens of dims made their way to class.

Gavin grabbed the second to the last rope. Secrecy meant he couldn't take the last one, though if someone saw and recognized him, they would wonder why he wasn't taking the lift reserved for a man of his rank, so it was probably a wash as to which way was more discreet. He drafted a brake, threw the lever to double his own weight, and kicked the release.

He flew upward at great speed. Though he started deep beneath the earth, the lifts were brightly lit. At the top of each chute were holes to the outside, and mounted there were highly polished mirrors from Atash that sent natural light down the chutes for as long as the sun was visible to that chute each day. Adjusting the mirrors every few minutes was another fun job for the dims, and every evening they would have to crank all the counterweights back into place. Gavin could remember doing that himself. As memories went, it wasn't a terribly pleasant one.

The lift didn't go all the way to his chamber near the top of the Chromeria, of course. That would be far too convenient-or, as the Blackguards preferred to say, insecure. No reason to give assassins a direct path to the Prism or anyone else important. Instead, after whizzing upward at high speed halfway up the Chromeria, zipping past students and magisters and servants and slaves so fast that they had no chance to see who was in such a hurry, Gavin threw the brake.

He stopped at the top of the chute and stepped out in front of the guard station that protected this floor. There were four men here, guards, not Blackguards, all looking up from their dice guiltily. Apparently they hadn't noticed the whizzing rope until too late. Their mouths hung open at the sight of him, Gavin Guile himself, sweaty, dirty, and here.

"Tell you what," Gavin said, tucking the brake into his belt. "You keep this quiet and I will too." He stared significantly at their dice and the coins on their table. Guarding the lift at this high a floor had to be boring, but Luxlord Black wouldn't be pleased to learn that his soldiers were gambling on duty.

Four heads bobbed as one. Gavin stepped into the next lift, which was right next to the one he'd exited, and got in his accustomed position. This time, he chose a more human speed.

There were two Blackguards guarding the lift at his level, and these men weren't dicing. They were barely even blinking. Both had their spears in hand, knees lightly bent, spectacles on.

When the Blackguards were on duty, they were on duty.

The men snapped salutes and slapped their spears crisply to their shoulders, swiveling smoothly back into their spots. Gavin walked past and slipped into his room. A bit of superviolet dropped all the shades, giving him light. He pulled a summons chain by his desk and walked over to his bathtub. Today was going to involve a lot of diplomacy, but most importantly, it was going to involve his brother, and there was no way he could appear before Dazen disheveled. It might be interpreted as weakness. He opened the tap, tested the water, and heated it with sub-red.

He was starting to take off his clothes when the door opened and his room slave Marissia walked in. She'd been captured during the war between Ruthgar and the Blood Foresters. Like most of her people, she was red-haired and freckled, eyes like jade. Karris had Blood Forester blood. Gavin had never thought it a coincidence that his room slave was a young, pretty girl from the Blood Forest. The White had hoped, doubtless, to dull some of his appetites that had caused so much trouble before the war. The girl had even been a virgin when she came to serve him ten years ago, which meant that the Ruthgari who'd captured her had had more of a taste for gold than flesh.

Marissia helped him strip off his filthy clothes and piled them to take them for laundering. Then Gavin stepped in the bath. "I have messages for you," she said. "Are you ready to take them?"