Today, she didn’t lecture. Some days she did. Learning to keep some attention on other things kept you from getting war-blind, too focused on what was immediately in front of you. Last time she’d taught him about the other magic-using fighting companies in the world: the Nuqaba’s guard in Paria, the Tafok Amagez; the old Blue-Eyed Demons that Gavin had destroyed after the war; a few of the martial elites from the highland Parian tribal societies; the secretive Shadow Watch of Ruthgar, whom she knew did exist because Gavin had checked them out personally to see if they were a threat to the Seven Satrapies. Few individuals within any of those groups, though, also used magic with anything near the facility of the Blackguards. The Cwn y Wawr were archers and tree climbers and green drafters and masters of camouflage in the deep parts of Blood Forest, and some of the Shadow Watch were highly talented drafters as well—but no one group had the range of drafting abilities available to them that the Blackguard did. No other group had the critical mass of drafters to maintain a drafting tradition in each color, so instead each generation had to invent again techniques their forebears would have been able to teach them easily.
Such martial societies were born from wars and all too often extinguished in them. The Blood War had birthed a dozen. The False Prism’s War had wiped out half that many. Some faded as the reasons they’d come together had disappeared—those formed in the Blood War had either morphed into mercenary companies like the Blue Bastards or the Cloven Shield, or the men and women had simply gone home or had become soldiers or outlaws or farmers as the demand for teachers disappeared. The martial arts of drafting died especially quickly because of drafters’ short lives.
It made Kip realize that anything awe-inspiring that they discovered had doubtless been discovered before. It had simply also then been lost.
Karris said, “Now, are you ready for the other half?”
“Other what?” he asked.
She lashed out with the tygre striper. Kip blocked, and blocked, and blocked again. Then she whipped part around an arm and popped it back—but it moved twice as fast as it should have and it cut across his belly long before his block arrived.
“The hell?” Kip asked.
“Strike it. Downstroke, in the middle.”
Kip did as he was told, slashing hard between Karris’s hands. The sharana ru bent a long way and popped his yellow luxin blade back upward.
“Again, the same.”
Kip cut again—and this time nearly had the yellow blade knocked from his grip as the sharana ru didn’t bend in the least. It was suddenly like a steel bar.
“This is what’s special about the sharana ru—sea demon bone or whatever it is. It is the only known mundane material that reacts to will. You want it to be hard, and it is.”
My problem is more often that I don’t want it to be hard, but it is.
Thank Orholam, this time Kip didn’t say it.
Karris paused and looked at Kip, who stared back at her, all innocence. “Mind out of the gutter, Kip.”
They shared a grin.
“With this sharana ru, you can simply grip it hard and will what you want it to—Orholam damn it, Kip! Now all I can think about is, uh… Ahem. All of them work best if you’re bloody, though.”
Well, that killed any innuendo. “Bloody?” Kip asked. He didn’t mean his voice to come out at quite that pitch.
“Will is in the blood. It’s why Orholam forbade the drinking of blood, as of old. Some part of the soul resides in the blood, some luxiats say. Or perhaps it’s merely coincidence. Regardless, it works with the sharana ru. There was a warrior caste on the Isle of Glass, before it sank into the seas and became White Mist Reef.”
“Legend, right?” Kip said.
She tossed him the sharana ru. “You hold the stuff of legend in your hands.”
Which just begged for a ribald joke. But it was Karris. She was like his mother.
If I didn’t already have a mother. Who was a complete and total calamity of humanity. Or had been. “Real?” Kip asked, shaking off the memories, the stench of that closet where he’d spent two nights and three days, nearly dying.
“Blood Forest has the Floating City. We couldn’t build one today, but the engineering was obviously known, once. Of course, the legends say the Isle of Glass was a hundred times the size of the Floating City. Perhaps it was twice as big, or smaller. Perhaps it sank because of its blasphemies against Orholam. Perhaps it was merely caught in a winter storm. Or both. These things, being, of course, not exclusive.”
“Did they have other weapons?”
“What would you think?” Karris asked.
“Bows.”
“A few. It was said that it took years of training to gain proficiency—the difficulty being in figuring out how much Will you were using, and keeping it consistent, despite being tired or scared or furious. None survive.”
“Catapults?” Kip asked.
“Broke the men who tried to use them.”
“What happens to a man whose will has been broken?” Kip asked. “I willjacked Grazner once in training, but he seemed fine.”
“Depends on how much of his will is in it. You foil what someone has a whim for, he might be left dazed for a moment. A man strains to put steel into enough sharana ru to fling a stone two thousand paces and fails? He’s left an idiot. Forever.”
“Dear Orholam.”
“Anyway, as I was saying, there was a warrior caste that used sharana ru weapons. They had a dozen war dances they used to get themselves into a fighting trance. Most involved lightly stabbing their own scalps and their palms. They went into battle bloody, and they didn’t leave until there was no more blood to shed. One of their great defeats was at the walls of Green Haven. There is a forest there where they say at dusk you can sometimes hear the sound of their war dance.”
“That sounds… spooky.”
“It’ll scare a stain right into your pants,” Karris said. She smirked. “You know, Kip, I wanted to say that you’ve become like…” Her eyes clouded.
Kip felt a sudden well of longing open beneath his feet, and he was falling into it. He finished the sentence in his mind, but he couldn’t speak lest the last bubbles of his breath escape, like so much hope.
“No,” she said, her tone changing abruptly, “you haven’t become like a real warrior, you are becoming a real warrior, and I’m proud to train you.” She patted his shoulder lamely.
It wasn’t what she was going to say, and he knew it. It wasn’t what she was going to say. Was it? She was going to say that other thing, that thing his stupid fool heart yearned for, pretending it would make everything better.
Kip nodded and took it as a compliment and crawled out of the well, half drowned and dripping false hope everywhere.
But he bobbed his head and smiled modestly. He was getting better at lying.
Chapter 59
Ah, the trouble one botched assassination can cause.
“The empire is broken, Gavin,” the Nuqaba said. Odd for her to start there. After her abrupt entrance and accusation, she and Eirene Malargos had withdrawn together. Apparently they’d come up with a plan, but only the Nuqaba was here now.
“How’s your husband?” Gavin asked. “Well, I hope?”
Her eyes flashed. Through circumstances Gavin had never heard a satisfactory explanation for, Haruru had married Izîl-Udad, the head of the family that had tried to have her mother assassinated. Izîl-Udad was now a cripple. It was widely rumored that the Nuqaba had pushed him down a flight of marble stairs during a drunken fight, leaving the man with shattered knees that even the most skilled chirurgeons couldn’t fix. The truth, Gavin’s spies had told him long ago, was that the man had beaten Haruru fiercely and often. One night, she had drugged him, drafted orange luxin on the stairs so that he would slip, and then crushed his knees with a hammer while he was helpless. He’d woken with no memory of the incident, or was so fearful that he claimed no memory of it, and because of the political pressures at the time, they’d staye
d together. He was confined to a chair, and it was said she did not make his life easy.
Gavin had seen portraits of her as a younger woman many times, not least of which was the masterpiece in Ironfist’s room, and she had looked quite beautiful, though artists were apt to gloss over flaws for powerful patrons. Despite the years since she’d sat for that painting, she was still a striking figure. Perhaps more so now, in the fullness of her power. She wore an immaculately folded and doubtless colorful haik, if Gavin had been able to see the colors. Shiny metal—gold?—fibulae in sunbursts at each shoulder. Coral necklace and coral earrings, not through pierced earlobes, but hanging over the ears instead, in the traditional Parian style. Reedy muscles and heavy eyes, full lips and few curves, despite three children.
“Such a pleasant surprise to see you here,” Gavin said. As if that covered the half of it.
She laughed aloud. “Do you know, the seed crystal tells me that you actually are happy to see me. You’re a complicated man, aren’t you, Gavin Guile?”
He blinked. “What’s this about a seed crystal?” You never knew. Sometimes you just ask, and people will tell you what you want to know.
She studied the crystal. “A genuine question. Really? Really?”
She laughed again.
Gavin quirked an eyebrow. For the last two hours, his mind had been spinning like a mill with the gears uncoupled, whizzing furiously, accomplishing nothing.
“Do you remember the mosaic on the left-hand wall, as you enter my library?” she asked.
By ‘my library’ she meant the Library of Azûlay. The building itself was more than eight hundred years old, and probably built on top of a library that had been there at least two hundred more. The mosaic was of King Zedekiah, skin depicted in onyx, the scroll-spear of wisdom in his right hand and whatever had been in his left hand long ago chiseled out by thieves. The kings and queens and satraps who followed had never found two scholars who agreed on what had been lost—a scepter? scales of justice? a sword?—or they would have restored it long ago. King Zedekiah, Gavin remembered, wore a crown with seven stars. One for each color, naturally. The red and blue and green, most likely ruby and sapphire and emerald, had been picked out at whatever time the left-hand mosaic tiles had been stolen, but those had been easier to replace.
Though it was a famous place, and he knew much about it, Gavin had never been there. He had never visited her. And he had never taken her to his bed, made Orholam only knew what promises, and then left her without a word—unlike his older brother, the real Gavin.
Thanks for that, brother.
“The crown?” Gavin said, dubious. “Surely metaphorical.”
“King Zedekiah was one of the nine kings.”
“I’ve heard that speculation before,” Gavin said. “You think—”
“Not speculation. You think I support scholars for the warm feelings I get for my charity?”
“Never that,” Gavin said. He smirked to try to take the edge off. It didn’t work.
Her expression darkened. “They confirmed it for me. Along with some other fascinating tidbits.”
“Pray tell,” Gavin said.
She looked down at what she’d said was the orange seed crystal. “Mostly sarcastic, but interested, too. You hoping I’ll slip up? You want to battle with me, Gavin?”
“Seems like that trinket is doing more than telling you yes or no on whether I’m telling the truth,” Gavin said.
“King Zedekiah was holding a sword in his hand. All diamonds, except for a helix of obsidian up the spine, wrapping around seven jewels. Ah, I don’t need the seed crystal to tell me you’re familiar with the blade.” She walked up close to the bars. She had a terrible walk. Heavy and direct, like a man trudging under the weight of a pack, no sway to her slender hips at all.
But then she was at the bars, and the scent of her perfume wafted over him. Lemon and jasmine and balsam and amber. It reminded him of Karris’s scent, a brief flash of the paradise that was having her hair drape over his face, skin to skin.
But he was brought back instantly as she spoke. “Haven’t you ever wondered why so much of your approved history starts only four hundred years ago?”
“That was when Lucidonius came. No empire likes to laud that which came before it.” Gavin shrugged. “Simple exercise in maintaining power. Bury the past until you’re sure it’s dead.”
“Another truth wrapped around a lie. You’re hoping I’ll be frustrated and explain why you’re wrong.”
Sometimes Gavin wondered how well he would have ruled if he hadn’t had the handicap of maintaining his façade. He’d had to keep the Nuqaba at arm’s length throughout his time as Prism because he didn’t know the full details of her tryst with his brother, and she was said to be one of the strongest intuitive thinkers in the Seven Satrapies. He’d feared that she would take one look at him and declare him a fraud.
Luckily, her religious duties had kept her tied to her own country, and its great distance from the Chromeria had been enough excuse for Gavin to avoid going there. But now here he was, her prisoner, and she had a means of knowing whenever he told a lie.
“So then, why do you think the empire is doomed?” Gavin asked.
“Because Eirene and I are deciding whether we’ll join the Color Prince or stay with your father and the Seven—pardon—Five Satrapies.”
It took Gavin’s breath away. Treason. Treason, discussed as if they were discussing who could give a better price for alligator leather.
“You see, Gavin, the Spectrum has become so insular that they’ve forgotten they exist for us, not the other way around. When’s the last time any member of the Spectrum even traveled to their home satrapy? Six years ago. And that was prompted by one of Delara Orange’s cousins dying young, with two wills and four bastards.”
Gavin said nothing, but it was more than his breath that was gone. It was his spirit, limp as a wind-starved sail. Why would she tell him her planned treason, and tell him so bluntly?
Because there was, quite simply, nothing he could do to affect what she did. Ultimately, she was saying, all of Gavin’s power rested on his magical power. This was her vengeance.
No, it was only the beginning of her vengeance. She would dismantle all he’d accomplished in his time as Prism.
“You see,” she said, “the Spectrum was so busy hobbling you that they ignored every other threat. Think what you could have accomplished if the empire had been an empire in truth. Ilyta could be a center of smithing that would enrich everyone. Instead it’s ten thousand pirates, two hundred smiths, and a few hundred thousand people in poverty. Did I say Five Satrapies? Four. And think about Tyrea. Well, surely you know what a wasteland Tyrea is. Totally unnecessary. If a man as strong as you couldn’t unite this empire, then this empire is too weak to stand.”
“So you’ve made your decision?” he asked.
She smiled almost shyly. “I’ve made mine. The Color Prince thinks he can control us. You see this?” She held up the jewel. It was a six-pointed star, with black tips on each point, both the color—orange, he assumed—and the black somehow throbbing with life. She had it contained in a tiny glass box, and the box on a chain.
“The seed crystal?” Gavin asked.
“Didn’t you find them when you destroyed the other bane?”
Gavin shook his head. “Is this a cruel joke?” The term ‘seed crystal’ didn’t bode well.
She shook her head. “All that work. All those lives. Wasted. The bane will reform if you don’t seize the seed crystal. Within months. They look for a host; a drafter to whom they give enormous power. And for some reason, this man, this Color Prince thinks he can then control all of them. But so long as I hold this, rather than it holding me, I don’t need to find out. He thinks an orange drafter must, by her very nature, desire to become a goddess. But I’m smart enough to choose freedom. Freedom from the Chromeria. Freedom from him, as well. But I won’t leave without Ruthgar. To get the terms we want—that we need—it wi
ll take both of us.”
“So my hopes reside with Eirene Malargos? Comforting.”
“I could force her hand, you know. Your father has offered to buy you.”
“He has?” Father knew. He knew Gavin was here. That solved some problems. And made more, naturally.
“Ah, so you think he knows you’re here? No. He’s merely offered a general bounty—er, reward. You hurt me, Gavin. And for that I’m going to hurt you.”
Going there would be disaster if that trinket really did what she said it did. “Tell me about the orange seed crystal,” he said.
But she wasn’t about to let him control the conversation. “You turned my brothers against me. You made them abandon me.”
“You’re angry about that? Not the other?” Gavin asked.
“You thought I’d been pining after you for sixteen years? You took my virginity, not my wits.”
Gavin was left speechless. He’d known she was furious with his brother Gavin. He’d figured Gavin had deserved it, but it wasn’t the kind of thing you could ask in a letter. ‘Are you still angry that I left you behind?’ That ‘I’ could be a bitter thing to write, at times.
“You stole Hanishu and Harrdun.” She wouldn’t call them Ironfist and Tremblefist. “To be Blackguards! Slaves. Disgusting. And they left me to do it. They thought you were more important than I. And you let them go. What are they to you but more bodies to be spent in your protection? Nothing. If you had a thumb’s worth of generosity in you, you would have sent them back. You left me at my home, seventeen years old, in charge of a tribe shocked and devastated by our enemies. I had to marry the man who’d had my mother assassinated. I spent ten years digging myself out of the hole you put me in.”
“Join the fucking queue,” Gavin said. “War is hard. People die. You got dealt such a raw hand that you rose to become the Nuqaba. Your brothers would be ashamed of what you’ve become.”
Her eyes went cold. “Well, at last some fire. I wondered if that man was dead. You’ve become a schemer, Gavin Guile, but at least you have some passion left.”