The Blinding Knife (34 page)

Back in the Chromeria, the magisters had warned their disciples constantly not to rely too much on their luxin to shape their thoughts or their feelings. Here, it was encouraged, and Liv wasn’t sure yet which approach was better. If you were burning away your life by drafting as the Chromeria taught, it made sense to train young drafters not to draft when they didn’t have to. But it had never been clear to Liv that the prohibitions were solely utilitarian. They’d been moral warnings, as if luxin were wine and those who relied on it were morally weak.

If so, she was weak. But the superviolet gave her clarity, and distance from her feelings of inadequacy, of loneliness. She used it and then yellow to pull problems apart, examine them from new angles, and peer right through them, all the time.

He poured himself some brandy, held up a finger, watched it as it turned a dull hot red, and touched it to his zigarro. “That’s all you have for me?”

“You were Koios White Oak,” Liv said. Karris White Oak’s supposedly dead brother.

“Past tense?” he said grimly into his brandy.

She had no answer.

“How’d you find out?” he asked.

“I asked,” she admitted. Not exactly genius deduction.

“And what does this revelation tell you?” he asked.

“Not as much as I’d hoped.”

He swallowed the rest of his brandy in a gulp. “Come with me.”

They walked through the camp in the low light of the shrouded moon and a thousand campfires. As soon as he stepped out of the tent, two drafters and two soldiers clad in white fell in beside them.

“The Whiteguard?” Liv suggested. It smacked of desperation to be taken seriously, a mockery of the Prism.

“Are there no mirrors in nature?” he asked, seeming to read her thoughts. “There have been four attempts on my life. One by one of my former generals. Three by parties unknown. Light cannot be chained, but the Chromeria hopes it can be extinguished.”

They passed the camp in its thousands. It was more organized than when it had marched on Garriston. Practice, Liv supposed. Few people even noticed their leader moving down the path, and those who did didn’t seem to know how to salute him. Some bowed. Some prostrated themselves. Some gave a more military salute.

“The blues want me to standardize the response to me,” the prince said around his zigarro. “But I only want to impose what order is needful. More order is needful while directing an army than I would like, but once we tear down what the Chromeria has built, the needs will change. All will be free in the light.”

They stopped in front of a gallows on the western edge of the camp. Four men were hanged there. In the low light of torches, Liv couldn’t see their faces, but she did see the unnaturally elongated necks. The prince held up a hand and a beam of yellow light shone on the dead men. There was dried blood down each man’s chin. Their features were swollen. The birds had been feeding on them.

Liv didn’t know much about how bodies rotted, but she knew enough to be able to tell that these men had been dead for more than a day. So they couldn’t be criminals; the army had just arrived here.

“They’re our zealots. Martyrs now. These were men I sent to spread the news to Atash, to prepare the way for us. They went unarmed. They were only to speak, to convince. Their tongues were torn out and they were tortured before they were hanged. The Atashians didn’t even wait for them to cross the border. Invading our land to kill the unarmed? This is a declaration of war and commencement of hostilities. Atash has sown the wind. They will reap the whirlwind.”

“You tell a lot of lies, don’t you?” Liv asked. Then she swallowed. The superviolet made her understand structures, but not necessarily obey them.

The prince’s guards stiffened. Liv saw glares of hatred from them.
But the prince looked over at her curiously. “I forget who you are,” he said. Then his voice cooled. “But perhaps you do, too.”

She swallowed again.

“I don’t deny that I already intended to liberate Atash, but they have drawn first blood. Against innocents. And let me tell you this, Aliviana Danavis. It’s time for you to step beyond the illusions of your childhood. A lie told in the service of truth is virtue. Do you know why Ilytian pirates have plagued the Cerulean Sea for centuries?”

“Because they have safe havens and the Ilytian coast is treacherous for those who don’t know—”

“No. Because men are bad at judging their own long-term interests. Satraps hate the pirates. Traders hate the pirates. Families whose fathers are pressed into their service hate them. Parents whose sons are enslaved to pull an oar hate them. But though the pirates have been bruised a few times—and I’ll be the first to acknowledge this is one good thing that the so-called Prism has done—they always come back. And why? Because satraps find it easier to pay them off than to crush them forever. There are currently four pirate lords in Ilyta, and each of them has signed contracts with the Abornean satrapah swearing not to attack ships flying the Abornean flag. Do you know what happens to the money that satrapah sends to those pirates?”

Liv grimaced. “It enriches the pirates.”

“It finances more piracy, and the dreams of every pirate to become a pirate lord himself. Satraps have looked at the problem and despaired. From time to time, they’ll go after one pirate lord who broke a treaty, and sometimes they’re even successful in hanging a boatful of men. But it never sticks. No one is willing to put her money or men on the line to help others, so then when it’s her ships getting stolen and scuttled, no one is willing to help her in return. Now, don’t you think the Seven Satrapies would be better off if they worked together for once and simply took care of the problem? Not just better off now, but better off for a hundred years?”

“If you could really stop it. You really think you can accomplish what satraps and Prisms have failed to do?”

“Absolutely. It’s purely a matter of will, and that I have in infinite supply.”

His audacity was breathtaking.

“That’s small, Liv,” he said. “Slavery. Nature made not slaves, nor should man. You’re Tyrean, and your land hasn’t been tainted as
much as others, but slavery’s a curse. I’ll end it. The Chromeria is the same. It comes and sweeps up the flower of a nation—its drafters—and takes them away. Indoctrinates them. Returns them only to those places it favors, and fools the young drafters into thinking they’re doing it for their own good. Like slavery, a curse that corrupts those on both sides. Everyone has said these institutions are too big to change. I say they’re too big not to change. I lie in pursuit of that. Say it will be easier than it will be. I admit it. I lie carefully, and only to motivate people toward their own good and the good of the Seven Satrapies.”

Liv believed him, but the superviolet part of her compelled her: “Who decides which ends are worth lying for?”

He shook his head sadly. “You think I do this lightly? Look at what the Chromeria has wrought. Your father is a drafter. He’s my enemy right now, but I can recognize him as a great man. A great soul. Would not almost anything be better than murdering him? Are your hands any cleaner because you ask someone else to do the murdering for you?”

She felt sick thinking about it. Her father was old for a drafter. He’d drafted little for most of her youth, but now, fighting, he would be drafting almost every day. He had a couple years at most. “Can’t… maybe they can be convinced that the Freeing is unnecessary? That wights aren’t evil? That—”

“Convinced? Liv. The Freeing isn’t incidental to the Chromeria’s order. It’s the central pillar. Without the Freeing, there’s no necessity for the Chromeria. If drafting isn’t oh so very dangerous, you needn’t send your daughter to a far country to learn it. Without that, there’s no indoctrination, and no capture of the most valuable commodity in the whole world—drafters. Without control over and a monopoly on the drafters, the whole house comes down. That’s why this.” He pointed to the dead men.

A wind gusted and blew foul putrefaction into Liv’s nose. She coughed and turned away.

“You might wonder why I haven’t cut them down, given them a decent burial. I will. After all of our people march past this, and see what kind of animals we’re fighting. Because I refuse to cover up the Chromeria’s sins, and I refuse to take part in them.” He stared at the bodies for another moment, sadness in his eyes, or at least Liv thought she read sadness there. He looked at her. “You have questions.”

“Not about this. Not… now,” Liv said, looking at the bodies, feigning hardness.

“I favor you because of your mind, Aliviana. You needn’t restrict yourself to the lecture at hand.”

She wondered at that. How much was true, how much was flattery? But it warmed her nonetheless. “The gods,” she said, “are they real?”

A twist of a smile. “What does Zymun say?”

“He says they are.”

“But?”

“But he’s Zymun, and you’re you.”

The Color Prince laughed aloud. “Perfectly put. You ought to be an orange.”

She thought he was teasing her for her ineloquence, but then realized he meant it. What she’d said was the safest thing she could have said: it could mean anything or nothing.

“Yes, they are real. Though I don’t believe their exact nature is like either the Chromeria or the new priests think. I like you, Aliviana. You ask the right questions. You think big. But you don’t think big for yourself. You’re too modest. I need my drafters trained, of course. That is a purpose, and a worthy one—but it’s not a great purpose.”

“Does it have to do with Zymun?” she asked.

“Zymun? Oh, you fear that I’m trying to pair you off with him?”

“He’s certainly doing his best, my lord.”

“Yes, I’m not surprised. Zymun never underestimates himself. No, I put you with Zymun because you’re of an age and I thought you’d appreciate that. And it keeps both of you busy. If you prefer another tutor…?”

“No, my lord. I’ve rather grown… used to him, I should say.” So long as she didn’t insult Zymun’s own intelligence, which he couldn’t bear, he was an unending fount of praise for her abilities, for how quickly she mastered abstruse concepts and remembered obscure history. He made her feel good about herself. Special. And his ceaseless attempts at seduction made her feel grown-up, womanly, desirable. “Only… he doesn’t speak about his past much.”

“The only important thing for you to know about Zymun’s past is that he tried to assassinate the Prism,” the Color Prince said.

“He really did? He said something, but I thought he was—”

“I gambled. Sent Zymun on a mission that had a low chance for success. He thinks he failed, which is good. It helps me keep him in line. Truth is, he only half failed. History may give him credit for midwifing…” His voice trailed off. He looked up at the sky.

“A new era?” Liv suggested. “Midwifing a new era?” She followed his gaze as the moon emerged, illuminating the nighttime clouds. They were spread across the sky in perfect lines, horizon to horizon, perfectly spaced, perfectly parallel. The vision—for such a thing couldn’t be real, could it?—lasted for perhaps twenty seconds, then the clouds broke under the onslaught of the winds, smeared, scattered.

The Color Prince broke the silence. “New gods, Aliviana. New gods.”

“Secrets?” Kip asked. “What secrets?”

“I don’t know. Yet,” Janus Borig said. “That’s why I brought you here today. I wanted to know if you were one of them.” She sucked at her teeth. “You’re not.”

“So is that good news or bad news?” Kip asked.

“It is very, very bad news.”

“I still don’t understand,” Kip said.

“Understatement.”

“Huh?”

“Come here.”

Kip came to her side. She showed him her sketches. The first was of a cloaked, hooded figure, lit from behind, long hair falling in front of his eyes in a dark curtain, eyes dimly gleaming from behind the mass, a beard with gleaming beads woven in, a dagger drawn. An assassin? Another showed a bald, ebony-skinned man, bleeding from a cut under one eye, wearing an eye patch, spinning short swords in both hands. Another showed—

“Wait, that’s Commander Ironfist,” Kip said.

“Ah, so it is. Thank you,” she said. “What happened to his hair?”

“He’s in mourning for his lost Blackguards.”

“Ah yes, of course.”

“Why are you asking me? Why does he only have one eye?”

“Does he not only have one now? Hmm. It’s not always literal.”
Her head tilted to the side. She scrawled an old Parian word on the paper below Ironfist.

“Guardian?” Kip asked.

“Sentry. Watchman. Guardian. Vigil Keeper. Strong Tower. Quiet.”

“Quiet?” Kip asked. “How’s that fit?”

“Not him. You. Be quiet.”

“Oh, oh, sorry.”

She drew a scrawl around his neck. A necklace. But her hand paused when it got to what was hanging from the chain. She sucked at her pipe, bringing the dormant coals back to life. Then she sighed. “Lost it.”

“I’m still back at what you’re doing with Commander Ironfist,” Kip said. There was some corner of dread turning over in his soul. She turned her eyes on him, and his heart flipped over and convulsed, tried to crawl off the squeaky clean floor to the stairs, its palpitations making it hop like a deranged bunny, the worst escape attempt in history.