Marissia’s eyes danced, as if daring Karris: Am I your host who is sharing her own liquor with you, or a slave? Who am I to you? she asked.
To hell with it. In this, Marissia was Karris’s superior. She’d been running a spy network for how long? Besides, it had always been wine or brandy shared in Blood Forest, never whisky. Maybe it was time for new traditions.
Karris took the glass and took a gulp. It set her on fire, and pain had never felt so good. She counted it a victory that she didn’t cough. As the fire spread through her gut, she held up the glass, as if admiring the color. It was a thing aficionados seemed to do. “Barrenmoor?”
Whiskies were a niche taste, made even more so by the vast distances the barrels had to travel from the distilleries at the edge of Blood Forest in the highlands above Green Haven and their subsequent cost. Karris hadn’t been able to afford the stuff on her Blackguard wages. She’d guessed Barrenmoor only because it was one of the two best.
“Crag Tooth,” Marissia said, examining it in turn and taking another sip.
“Mmm,” Karris said. The other one. Dammit.
“Easy miss. This is the sixteen. After it’s matured sixteen years, it mellows to be easier drinking like Barrenmoor. I prefer it because it still retains its fiery character and complexity while time takes off the rough edges and impetuosity.”
Karris looked at Marissia sharply. Sixteen years? Rough edges and impetuosity? The woman’s eyes danced again.
Damn her, Karris was not going to like this woman.
“And how does it do as it ages further?”
“Crag Tooth hasn’t been a player for that long, but I’m confident that in the fullness of time it will bring Colors and satrapahs to their knees.”
They drank together, trading sips, each thinking private thoughts. They watched the storm smash all its rage on the Chromeria, lightning striking the tops of the towers themselves, power channeled down into the earth itself, diffused, harmless. Rain sheeting the windows so thickly it was impossible to see to any distance. Wind hammering the tower so hard it swayed, but was unbroken. And whether it was the warmth of the whisky or the fire or, oddly, the company, Karris found herself enjoying the storm.
The storm was subsiding by the time they finished their second whisky, a little light fighting through the clouds just at the horizon.
Karris set the glass down on the table, stood, and walked to the door without a word. She opened it and, looking back, saw woman, and storm, and light. The eye can see all at once, but only focus on one at a time. The clouds were still dark, angry.
She said, “You know, sharing a glass with you is—” one thing, but there’s no way I’m sharing my husband with a…
But the words didn’t make it to completed thought, much less out of her mouth. There was a sudden stiffness in Marissia’s spine, a grief in her eyes at all that was denied her. As Karris had been a warrior in the Chromeria’s open battles, so had Marissia been one in its secret battles, and perhaps neither was content anymore to fight alone.
Karris started over. “Sharing a glass with you is the best thing I’ve done in months.”
Chapter 53
~Samila Sayeh~
Today is the day we make a god. The crowds are gathering, paying obeisance to me and to the other Elect around me, and above us, to the Color Prince himself. All the people are gathering today. A special day, a special victory, but also to commemorate our people’s great victory at Ox Ford, and mourn our losses. The Color Prince wishes to tie all these together in the small folks’ minds.
I find it terribly uninteresting, so instead I regard the mathematical precision with which I have remade my left hand with blue luxin. No, remade is too grandiose. Augmented. My hand has become superior in most ways to a human hand, but I am a mere mechanist. Perhaps I would have become a creator had not the Guiles’ War made a warrior of me.
It is, however, a masterpiece. Blue luxin is crystalline, solid, hard, nearly unbreakable on one plane but easy to snap or shatter if pushed from the side. Supplementing the human animal with all its shifting and bending and twisting forms is well nigh impossible to do without impinging on its functionality. Sheathe your arm in a blue luxin carapace? Easy. And then you sweat, and the sweat and oil gets trapped. The skin softens and, chafed incessantly, peels. Exposed to that sweat and oil and dead skin, after a time, infection sets in. Then the body attacks itself. Unable to swell, the blood gets cut off, the infection spreads, fever comes, and throughout, incredible pain.
It is my hypothesis that much of the madness of color wights has had nothing to do with luxin. It has been the result of unending pain, the sadly self-inflicted torture of incorporating luxin into one’s self imperfectly. Perhaps such madmen are so dangerous they must be put down for the safety of others, but to call madness evil is a grave error. The pre-Lucidonian philosopher said, ‘Every act intends some good.’
The damage done by wights has been done through ignorance. One doesn’t punish ignorance with death. One fights it with knowledge. Not darkness, but light.
My companion and I have long talks about this. She isn’t real, of course. She is merely a dialectical prop. She—I picture her as a grown-up version of my niece Meena, who was murdered at the Great Pyramid—questions my research, and we debate. It is the only way for me to have an equal here.
It makes me miss the Chromeria. So many fine minds there. Of course, they forbid all this research, but if they could overcome their fears as I have overcome mine… But of course, I know the Color Prince has people recruiting within the Chromeria. The people here are eager, but they aren’t disciplined thinkers. They think being Free means being free of the consequences of their actions, free of nature’s laws. It is an attitude the prince has not seen fit to curb. Not yet, not when he still needs soldiers and drafters to die for him. Later, he promises me, we will work to channel such fervor.
‘Light cannot be chained, but it can be directed,’ he tells me. He seems to like the phrase, and I can tell he will use it again. Later. After victory, after the first phrase has bought him willing martyrs and power, he will add that second clause to nullify the first. And those fool martyrs will have died only to put a new king with a different title on a new seat in the same place. Thus ever does a tyrant’s noose tighten, I suppose. Expanding, building that future speech in his head, he says, ‘All the world is open to the light, but our eyes can only look one way at a time.’
I see these rhythms, with Meena’s help. How nine kings became seven satraps, and how failed attempts at making a high king yielded to a successful attempt to make a Prism, and how the Prism’s power and the satraps’ was eroded by jealous Colors. As a wolf hungers for meat so a man lusts for power. It is unwise to get between either one and his prize. This is not a condemnation but a fact. And only a fool allows herself to become the prize.
This is the reason why someone else is becoming Mot today, not I, though I stand in the first rank for that honor. Dubious honor, I think. We each ‘get’ to wear a necklace of what the Color Prince claims is black luxin. Most likely it’s simply a clever illusion, but I find it unsettling.
Meena and I have discussed this position for me, at some length. She thinks that—Oh, more cheering. Everyone else on the podium is applauding. I join them.
She thinks that having an overseer would grate on me. I say, what’s the difference between having one overseer to direct me to do the Color Prince’s will, or having two overseers to direct me to do the Color Prince’s will? Plus, those who fail the prince directly feel his wrath directly. Dervani Malargos and Jerrosh Green fought tooth and nail to be the Atirat, and when the prince made his choice, he gave one godhood, and the other a musket ball in his brain pan. And soon thereafter Dervani had joined Jerrosh in death, albeit at Gavin Guile’s hand. Godhood is a dangerous business.
Still, Meena thinks I will chafe under the rule of a lesser mind. Ramia Corfu is certainly that, though the man is beautiful. One oughtn’t discount the power of beauty.
It is a change I notice in myself. It has been months since I last took Usef Tep. We’d made love nine times in that last week before the Freeing, knowing it would be our last. We’d even slipped out of the line at the Freeing, fooling none, and not trying to fool them, either. Human delicacies break down in death’s acid gaze. While I had not Usef’s daily hunger, by now I would usually feel the lack keenly. Now my libido lies dormant. I look at Ramia’s well-proportioned face, and I understand that other women see only boyish charm and willfulness, smoldering good looks. It’s not that I don’t see it, or understand from memory what it will do to others; it’s that its effect on me is limited.
It matters not. My sole strategy with Ramia Corfu will be to make myself appear to be what I actually am: indispensable and utterly without ambition. Meena pretends to be content with this, though I think she has more ambitions for me than I do.
The Color Prince is going on, and seems to be doing a good job of it. He usually does. Then he gestures to Ramia to stand.
Ramia stands, with an arrogant grin that I suddenly realize I’m going to really, really hate within the span of—oh, I already hate it. He nods to the rest of us, as if we’re lucky to be seen with him. My face remains impassive, but some of the others bristle. It’s one thing to revel in such a triumph; it’s another to act as if you got there because you were smarter than the rest of us.
Why him? I know the Color Prince likes him, but I had assumed it was something to do with the Color Prince feeling a need to have attractive people around when his own looks had been forever destroyed. The Color Prince is now a marvel to behold, a wonder, but not remotely beautiful in human terms, and those who’ve tried to go to his bed have all been rebuffed. The word is that the fire unmanned him, which means the damage must have been severe. It has never been taught officially in the Chromeria, but the uses of luxin in sex have been explored by drafters from time immemorial.
“Ramia Corfu, Lord of the Air, come forward,” the Color Prince says. As the young man joins him, the Color Prince goes on. “It is my place as a leader of free men and women to recognize and reward excellence. In your ascension, you will bow the knee to no man and no woman, but to your prince alone. We establish order not so that we may have lords, we establish lords that we may have order. Ramia Corfu, do you pledge your magic, your sword, your will, and your obedience to me?”
“I so swear,” Ramia Corfu says. He gets down on one knee and touches the Color Prince’s foot.
“Then today I declare the restoration of the Old Order,” the Color Prince says. “It is not my wish to rule. It is only my wish to see a people who rule themselves. Free women. Free men. So what authority you have trusted to me, I turn back to you. The white light of the sun is all colors working in concert. Our ancestors, the nine kings of old, forgot this. They pitted themselves against each other, and in their weakness, a heresy came among them. A Prism shattered them. We shall not fail as they failed. I have been your Color Prince, a man only, wounded, made whole with many colors. But today I tell you I have a vision for all of us to be united in freedom under the light. The Prisms have split light, have split satrap from satrap, have split us into those who steal and those who are stolen from. We will unite all of us instead, and we will find strength together. Nine gods, nine kingdoms, and all peoples, united under one White King.” He holds up a multicolored arm, blue plates and green seams and luxin running beneath it all, constantly. “But a poor White King am I. One day, when we have taken back our kingdoms, I shall remake myself. On the day when you unite the satrapies, I, too, shall be made whole. My friends, will you serve—”
“Yes!” many shout.
“We will serve!”
But he quiets them, playing to the critical. “Will you serve not me, but this noble ideal?”
“We will!”
“Will you give your all to see the nine kingdoms come again?”
“We will!”
He goes on, but I stop listening. The rest of it is mere whipping the crowd up. Interesting turn there, making his own healing synonymous with ‘healing’ the Seven Satrapies under his banner. Healing with war. With tens of thousands listening, I can’t be the only one to find that darkly amusing. Better is when he tells them he’s looking for those who will serve mightily, that’s there’s ‘room at the top.’ The veiled appeal is ‘serve me, and I’ll make you powerful,’ but the very fact that there’s a top must means there’s a bottom. Could a statement be more transparently at odds with his talk of all being equal?
Regardless, if nothing else, the Color Prince has given himself a new title: he is now the White King. I seem to remember him swearing at some point that there would be no kings among us. Does no one remember?
But through it all, he’s left Ramia Corfu on his knees, and the young man is clearly uncomfortable and peeved about it.
When the cries of “The White King! The White King!” fade, the newly dubbed king steps back to Ramia Corfu. He produces a small ivory box and opens it. He pulls out a many-pointed crystal, holding it between thumb and forefinger. It spins, seemingly of its own volition, scintillating in a thousand shades of heaven.
The White King hands the crystal to Ramia. The young man stands. He doesn’t move at all for a long moment, but when he does, he looks around at the others on the platform. He looks at the soldiers nearby. He looks at the king.
Ramia Corfu’s eyes are sapphires lit from within, and crystals race across his skin, breaking as he moves, and reforming, renewing from within instantly.
“A king?” Ramia says. “What is a king before a god? You have given me the power over the luxin in your very body!” His entire body is sheathed suddenly in crystalline armor so thick a cannon shot would bounce off. He raises a razor-edged arm as the king’s men cry out in alarm.
“And you have given me an excellent demonstration,” the White King says.
The blue crystal carapace shatters at Ramia Corfu’s neck, and he crumples to the ground as if his strings have been cut. His head rolls free and as all his blue luxin armor blows apart into grit, the scent of chalk and blood fills the air.
Most of the crowd can’t see what decapitated him, but I can. It was the necklace the Color Prince gave us and commanded us to wear at all times. The so-called black luxin pendant has pierced Ramia’s neck front to back, tearing through the spine and emerging behind him, and the chain tightened until it cut all the way through his neck, popping his head off.
Or maybe it isn’t ‘so-called’ black luxin. Maybe it really is black luxin. Maybe I’ve been studying the wrong color all this time.
“Some of us, sadly, are not worthy of trust,” the White King says loudly. “And such traitors will be winnowed out mercilessly. However! There are in our ranks many more faithful who are true to our cause, and who will never betray us. Who will serve us all, high or low, to the best of her capabilities—which are great indeed.”
Oh no. How can I be so late to see it?
“Samila Sayeh, heroine of the old wars, but a true convert to our ways. Samila Sayeh, will you serve as Mot, our blue goddess?”
I stand unsteadily, feeling the weight of the black luxin crystal about my throat, heavy and corrosive. I bow my head, incapable of speech. Beside the new king, I can imagine Meena. She looks fierce; she looks triumphant.
She looks like she was planning this all along.
Chapter 54
“You haven’t been entirely honest with me,” Karris said once the secretaries and slaves had cleared out of the White’s rooms to give them privacy.
“I am entirely honest with Orholam alone, and him only when he forces it from me, I’m afraid,” the White said.
“None of that,” Karris said. “Don’t turn this religious. I’m not taking over your spy network because you’re roombound and you can’t go see them all yourself.”
“Oh?”
“At least that’s not the only reason,” Karris said.
The White’s wrinkles deepened as she smiled. She had line
s aplenty, of course, and the smile lines were not so deep as the worry lines. “Push me to the window, dear.”
Scowling, Karris did so. One couldn’t push the woman’s chair across her apartments without being painfully aware of how thin and saggy her skin was, how delicate the bones. It was as if Death were gently announcing his impending arrival by these hints at how close to a skeleton this woman was, how near the end of her term of service on this earth.
“Hold. Are you deliberately reminding me how frail you are so I don’t yell at you?”
The White laughed. “Not everything is a trick, girl.”
Karris frowned deeper. “Oh. Well, sorry then.”
“But that was.”
The White’s grin was infectious, and Karris couldn’t help but grin along with her. She took back all her thoughts about Death’s arrival. This woman was going to live forever. Somehow Orea Pullawr was a little girl caught filching sweetmeats, smiling like, ‘Mommy, you can’t be mad at me, I’m too cute!’ and simultaneously the wisest old crone in all the world.
Karris couldn’t lose her. She sat down on the floor with her back to the blue luxin wall, looking up at the woman who had become hero and mother to her. “Please don’t leave me,” she said. She couldn’t help it.
“Not until it’s my time, girl,” the White said.
Karris scowled again. “Well, that’s meaningless.”
The White waved a dismissive hand. “Bah. People say meaningless things all the time when they’re about to die. How about this one: ‘As long as I’m in your heart, I’ll never truly die.’ Ha! Please don’t keep me trapped in your heart after I die, girl. I get claustrophobic.”
“How about, ‘You’ll be watching over me’?” Karris asked, only half joking.
“Sure—so please spend less time in latrines, because I don’t want to see it!”
Karris laughed. And then she couldn’t bring up what she’d come to ask about. Her courage wasn’t doing so great today.