Page 69 (1/2)

Yellow luxin bricks With what they’d learned building Brightwater Wall, his architects and laborers built for solid bricks Gavin would walk around the for them with yellow luxin, drafted perfectly, sealed perfectly, practically indestructible, and then he’d head out for the day The laborers took the bricks and built everything out of theuard him on the island and while they traveled, Karris had eventually begun helping out on her own She trained the best of the locals in fighting, soh javelinas and the rarer giant javelinas had long been native to Tyrea, there hadn’t been any close to Garriston for decades, and facing the dangerous, unpredictable ani to actual warfare

Whenever Gavin and Karris returned to the island, he was always surprised With plentiful free building supplies and fifty thousand willing workers and friendly locals and good governance, their little port went from a camp to a settlereeht that uarantor of peace than mutual defensibility But every other possible structure was springing up Gavin felt proud to be part of building sos with Corvan, talking governance, aood to talk, to jest, to drink too much wine every once in a while

And he’d kept Karris at arth, desperate for her co those closest to him worst, indeed

He set the charts down He hadn’t even been looking at them for the last few minutes

This wasn’t about Kip, he realized At least not purely about Kip For Karris, this was about the path not taken Kip was of an age where he could have been their son, had Gavin not broken his and Karris’s betrothal Karris wasn’t saying, How can you keep your distance froly whelped on so, Is this the kind of father you would have been to our son?

Orholaht

Kip was a good boy, but Gavin barely knew him And he certainly didn’t knohat to do with him He should have kept him here, should have trained him himself It hadn’t even really occurred to hie, a burden to be passed off to Commander Ironfist as quickly as possible

Everyone had demands of the Prisood boy, but he wasn’t Gavin’s son Gavin could tell the whole world that he was; he could take the disgrace of having fathered a bastard; he could even face his own father over it But there was a difference between a grand gesture and daily decency

Add Kip to the list of proble, festering--o tackle, but he felt trapped until he found the blue bane

The nexthad happened, and he let it lie, too There was nothing he could do about Kip or anything else until he found the bane

So he stopped whenever he saw ships out in the open sea, transformed the skimmer into a dory and rowed to them, asked his questions and deflected theirs, and kept searching The probleer, the Chromeria would declare him dead, despite the letters he sent with ship captains and the return letters fronored But he couldn’t leave his search He hated blues too much This, too, was part of his five purposes--to destroy all wights He owed Sevastian that Nothing would keep him from it Not even the Chromeria itself

He took Karris with him almost every day, partly because she wouldn’t let him leave her, and partly because he hoped she would feel the blue The Third Eye had let slip that everyone in the proximity of a bane would be affected, but drafters most powerfully Gavin’s plan was to use Karris to find it, and then go back the next day without her to destroy it She would be furious with him, of course, but he didn’t care

And the days passed, and passed, and passed Two ive the said