Okay, not too bad. One.

He hit the ground with a surprisingly hard thump. His natural reaction was to try to roll with the impact-which didn't work well, given that there wasn't any slack in the rope. He flopped over onto his back and rolled on top of the mag torch. It burned through his shirt instantly.

Gavin jumped to his feet with a yelp. Mercifully, the shirt didn't catch fire. He examined the angry red burn on his ribs. Very painful, but not very serious. He unhooked himself from the lift.

The chamber at the bottom of the lift was only four paces square. Gavin saw none of it. In the blue light of the mag torch, he walked to one blue wall. At his touch, it became translucent, but there was nothing behind it. Not yet. Slowly, ever so slowly, the chamber opposite lifted from its resting place and spun into position.

This was Gavin's greatest work. He'd constructed it in one furious month, sinking everything he knew into it. But whenever he called the blue chamber forth, his heart seized. And it did so today. The slow speed of the blue chamber's lift and rotation was necessary so that the man inside wouldn't even know he was moving.

On the other hand, it gave Gavin five minutes with nothing to do but wait. It would be empty today. Dear Orholam. Gavin's chest tightened. It was hard to breathe. The chamber was too small. There was no air. Breathe, Gavin, breathe. Paint that nonchalance on thick.

Finally, the translucence revealed the smooth globe of the dungeon's interior. Opposite Gavin stood a man who looked much like himself, though thinner, less muscular, dirtier, and with longer hair.

"Hello, brother," Gavin said.

Chapter 35

"Now this," Ironfist said, "is how you should be introduced to the Chromeria. High tide and dawn." He'd arrived before dawn, waking Kip to the bewildered feeling of not knowing if it was morning or night. Kip had only slowly been able to get his bearings as the commander hustled him through the less-crowded streets, finally cresting this hill. "They call it the Glass Lily," Ironfist said. "A rather softer name than it deserves, but then steel isn't transparent, is it?"

As they crested the hill, on first glance, the Chromeria did look something like a flower. Six towers in a hexagon surrounded one central tower. Because Little Jasper rose in altitude from south to north, the towers farther away from Kip rose higher, though all were the same height from base to tip. And each tower was completely transparent on its south side. Completing the odd flower imagery was the bridge, if it could be called a bridge.

The bridge crossing the ocean between Big Jasper and Little Jasper was green, like a flower's stem, heading right to the flaring towers and the bulbous walls that actually hung past vertical. But not only was the bridge green, it wasn't supported by anything. It lay at the surface of the water. It wasn't floating, because it didn't move with the waves, and the sea was choppy on one side of it and much calmer on the other.

"Why green?" Kip asked, trying to kick his brain into working. Wasn't green flexible?

"It's blue reinforced with yellow. It only looks green," Ironfist said, resuming his walk toward the bridge. Kip hurried to keep up, having difficulty gawking and walking at the same time, all tiredness fled.

"Yellow?" Kip asked. "How does that work? The Pr-erm, my uncle hasn't told me anything about yellow."

Ironfist looked at Kip, his gaze heavy as a sledge. He didn't answer, not even when Kip shut up and walked quietly alongside him, looking expectantly up at the big man but not bothering him.

Finally, Ironfist glanced at Kip. "Do I look like a magister to you?"

"Just figured that you're not much good as a fighter without your blue spectacles," Kip said. Stop, you moron! Don't-"So we might as well put you to some use."

The Blackguard commander's head snapped toward Kip. Kip swallowed. You deserve the crushed skull you're about to get, Kip. You're begging for it.

Then a small, unwilling smile crept over the commander's face. He guffawed. "When Orholam hands out the brains, the folks at the front of that line have to go to the back of the common sense line, huh?"

"What?" Kip asked. "Oh."

He waited patiently, thinking that his joke would buy him an answer about yellow luxin, but Ironfist ignored him. The perverse little grin on his face told Kip that he knew Kip was waiting for an answer and was only holding his tongue because he didn't want to start another topic. But Ironfist wasn't going to give him the pleasure of winning an answer. Pudgy force, meet immovable mass.

Within minutes, though, they had made their way onto the Lily's Stem-or rather, into it-and Kip forgot whatever it was that he had asked. The bridge was fully enclosed, albeit with blue luxin so thin it was almost as colorless as glass. But beneath their feet, the bridge actually glowed. Kip shot a look at Ironfist.

"No matter how often you look at me, I'm still not going to be a magister," the big man said.

"How about a guide?"

"Nope."

"A polite host?"

"Uh-uh."

A jackass? Kip's mouth actually opened to say it when he noticed again how thickly muscular Ironfist's arms were. He closed his open mouth and scowled.

"You were going to say something?" Ironfist asked.

"Your name," Kip said. "Is that common, among Parians?"

"Ironfist? Far as I know, I'm the only one."

"That isn't what I-" Oh, he was teasing.

Ironfist smirked. "You mean to take a name that describes us? Very common. Some use our old tongue, but the coastal folk-my people-use words that outsiders can understand. But the Ilytians do it too. To a lesser extent, the whole Chromeria does it. Gavin Guile is almost never called Emperor Guile or Prism Guile. He's just the Prism. Orea Pullawr is just the White. A lot of people think that meaningless names are the true puzzle."

"Meaningless names. You mean like Kip?"

Ironfist cocked an eyebrow. Shrugged.

Thanks a lot.

The crowds heading to Little Jasper for the day didn't even seem to notice the wonder beneath their feet. The bridge was perhaps twenty paces wide and three hundred long from shore to shore. The surface was lightly textured, but that barely interfered with its transparency, aside from some dirt. Kip could see the water right under his feet, not even a foot away, swelling up with every wave and gapping in between them. They were on the side of the bridge with heavy seas, too-apparently here traffic traveled on the right, unlike at home, so waves crashed into the luxin right next to Kip. After having been pulled in and pounded by those same waves, it made him more than a little nervous. No one else seemed to even notice it.

Then, at about the time Kip and Ironfist reached the middle of the bridge, Kip saw a monster wave coming in. Just in time to meet the bridge, trough met trough, peak met peak, and the wave loomed high-its height easily half again as tall as the bridge. Kip braced himself and took a deep breath.

He didn't notice he'd clamped his eyes shut until he heard Ironfist's quiet chuckle. He opened his eyes as the last of the water sluiced off the outside of the tube, harmlessly. The bridge hadn't groaned, hadn't shuddered, hadn't even acknowledged the power of the wave that had just fully passed over it.

A few passersby grinned knowingly. Apparently this was the kind of joke that didn't get old.

"Is this why-" Kip stumbled as he reminded himself to use the correct term. "Is this why my uncle wanted me to come this way?"

"Part of the reason, I'm sure. Anytime we have to deal with a recalcitrant king or satrap or queen or satrapah or pirate lord, we make sure they come across at high tide. It's a good little reminder of whom they're dealing with."