The Blinding Knife (55 page)

“In return, you and the city’s mothers will be allowed to retain your lives, your estates, and your positions, unless you betray me. The city will be unmolested; the countryside will go unplundered; no men or women will be pressed into service. I expect you to communicate this offer to the city’s mothers. I’ve put it in writing already.

“All of it is true, except one part. I don’t trust the city mothers. I know what kind of women they are. I have reports on all of them. They aren’t young, and smart, and flexible like you are. When I leave this city, you will rule alone. I am not a hard master with my friends. I hope you can be such.”

The corregidor was pale. “And if we refuse?”

They had arrived at the place where Liv now realized the Color Prince had been heading all along. He gestured to a large group of wretched people behind them, guarded by soldiers. It was the five hundred women and children captured from the small town of Ergion. “These unfortunates were taken from the last city that opposed us. They will be herded in front of our army for the first attack. When your ballistae and cannons and catapults start, you will massacre them—or do you think perhaps the city mothers will instruct you not to fire? And there will be attacks within your city. You know I have people inside. You don’t know how many. I know about your secret exits along the river and below the Great Abbey.”

The corregidor’s eyes widened for a fraction of a second. Either surprise that the prince knew about this or surprise that there was another exit he hadn’t known about.

“You remember the stories about the massacres at Ru, which led to Idoss surrendering during the last war? I will simply do the same, in reverse. Idoss will be a beacon to the world, and you get to choose which kind—a beacon of my munificence, showing how kind I can be to those I conquer, or a beacon of my malfeasance, showing how ferocious I am with those who oppose me. The children in your city will be killed—too many mouths to feed, too likely to get sick or bear
grudges when they’re grown. The women will be killed or put to service if they’re pretty or useful enough. The only men and women who will survive unmolested will be your slaves. And they will be free to keep any of their masters’ goods they wish. My people in the city are already letting them know this now. How much do you trust your slaves, Corregidor Kata? If by some chance you do hold out for a week, two weeks, a month, do you think the slaves might join us? Or have you treated them so well that their loyalty is unshakable?

“You, I will do my best to capture alive. I will send your genitals to your father. I will cut off your arms and legs and dress you in purple and put a crown on your head. I may blind you. I haven’t decided yet what makes a better example. Tongue, no tongue? It will probably depend on your attitude. Regardless, I’ll take my time. You will live a long time, and in great pain, I promise you.”

The corregidor looked positively sick. “You’re insane,” he said. “You talk one second like you’re some luxiat and you have all these principles, and the next you’re talking about murdering a hundred thousand people.”

The same thought had struck Liv before, but now she had another one. There were only a few people in the entire world who were absolutely overawing in their abilities—and she’d met the best of them: Gavin Guile and now Koios White Oak. Those two, and perhaps a few others like the White were far above Liv. But no one else was. She could have done better here than this boy was doing—and he was two or three years her elder and had all the benefits of being raised as a satrap’s son. The reason the Color Prince was treating her as a capable adult wasn’t because he was flattering her—though he was, and they both knew it—it was because she deserved to be treated as such. It wasn’t that she was so incredibly gifted; it was that the people she had always assumed were incredibly gifted were in fact no more gifted than she was. She was their peer. And she was young yet. In time, she would be superior to most. Why hadn’t the Chromeria ever treated her this way?

Why hadn’t her own father?

The Color Prince said, “We all make choices, and then we bear the consequences for those. Unfortunately, right now, you get to make the choices for those people and for me. They’re
your
victims, not mine. When I’m in charge, they’ll be free to choose for themselves. There’s
no way to overturn the Chromeria without people like you forcing massacres. If there were, I’d take it in a heartbeat. This is the only way I can bring the change needed, so this is how I will do it.”

“You’ll do it because you can,” the corregidor sneered over his fear.

“Because I can. Because I will it.”

“So might makes right?”

The Color Prince was steel. Unamused, unapologetic, unyielding. “Might doesn’t make right. Might makes reality.” He stared at the corregidor for long enough to drop the weight of certainty on the boy, then turned and looked at the women and children. His gaze was sad but resolute. He would march these people to their deaths to shield his own people’s lives, and he would blame the corregidor for it.

If it was a bluff, it was as brassy a bluff as Liv had ever seen. But she didn’t think it was a bluff. Neither, she could tell, did the corregidor. His face slowly worked through horror, revulsion, astonishment, and finally resignation. He wasn’t facing a man, he was facing a force of nature. There was no reasoning with a cyclone, no pleading with a hurricano. You batten down the hatches and ride it out, praying you survive.

“We don’t have close to a million danars,” the corregidor said, and Liv knew he had surrendered.

“Not in your treasury, you don’t. You’ll let every rich and noble family in the city know that if they don’t pay their share, they’ll be first to die. Substitutions can be made on the food. I’m not unreasonable. You may not have that much barley. You can make it up in other grains. And the fruit will be difficult if you don’t hurry. We won’t take spoiled produce. One noble family will be killed for each wagon you’re short.”

The corregidor blanched. “I’ll have to take this to the city mothers, of course. It’ll probably take two days.”

“In one day, our catapults will be constructed. We’ll start hurling one woman of Ergion over your walls every quarter hour. We won’t stop until the luxiats arrive. I know your guns will be able to reach our catapults, so please know that the women and children of Ergion will be camped around the catapults as well. Your gunners are half-trained at best. There’s no way they’ll be able to hit our catapults on the first shot—or even the tenth.”

The corregidor swallowed. “I understand.”

“My people will post lists of the women’s names in the order they
will be flung, so that people inside Idoss can know when to listen for their friends’ deaths—or perhaps their enemies’, I suppose. We’re starting with known acquaintances of the city mothers. My engineers tell me that the forces generated in the catapult’s sling will have an even chance of killing a woman before she’s even released. I’ve told them to work on it. I want you to hear their screams as they fly.”

Kata Ham-haldita cursed quietly and left. He glanced at Liv, glanced away, ashamed.

“So that’s it?” Liv asked once he was gone. She wouldn’t have dared ask, before. She would have been too awed, too frightened. But now she wasn’t going to waste the opportunity to learn from the best.

The prince was still looking at the women and the children. The children were playing together, shrieking and squabbling, unaware of their probable impending deaths. “Most likely,” the Color Prince said. “It all depends on how smart young Kata is. One of the city mothers is a shrewd old harpy named Neta Delucia. The guards were her men. If Kata isn’t careful, he has just signed his own death warrant by meeting with me privately. She’ll know immediately that I offered to buy him off. And I put Mother Delucia’s enemies at the top of the list of women to be killed. With her friends right behind them. The mother and the corregidor will fight. If Mother Delucia wins, we’ll fling half a dozen women into town, and suddenly Idoss will see reason. If Kata wins, it make take more or less time, depending on how decisively he moves.”

“And either way, you win?” Liv asked.

“We choose freely, Aliviana. That doesn’t mean we can’t set up the choices so that both benefit us.” He smiled, and that smile reminded Liv of Gavin Guile’s crazy reckless indomitable smile, but without the warmth.

“That’s not really freedom then, is it? Not for them,” Liv said.

“Are you ready for another truth, then, Aliviana? You learn so fast. Very well. Freedom isn’t the highest good. Power is. For without power, your freedom can be taken.” He smiled again. It was a hard smile, but this was a hard world.

Ironfist was on his way to the White’s quarters on top of the tower when he saw Blackguards standing outside the Prism’s apartments. Since he’d just left Gavin, they could only be hers.

The commander knocked on the door.

“Come in,” the White said.

The White was in her wheeled chair. Before her, Gavin Guile’s room slave Marissia was on her knees, laying her head in the White’s lap. Tears streaked the room slave’s face, and the White was soothing her.

“Gavin Guile’s back. He’s one floor down,” Ironfist said. The sometimes fractious relationship between the White and the Prism didn’t need the additional strain of Gavin finding the White in his room. Gavin liked his private space.

Marissia hopped to her feet, dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief. “Oh! I cry once a year and he invariably—Mother, thank you. I will do as you’ve said.”

“Orholam bless you, child. We’ll leave now so we don’t make your life any more complicated than necessary,” Orea Pullawr said. “Commander?”

He wheeled her out into the hallway. It was much faster for him to do so, but it was also evidence of her growing frailty. Not two months ago, she would have angrily refused to let anyone push her around like she was an invalid.

Nor did she take over when they went down the hall. She seemed tired.

One Blackguard preceded them, and the other took their backs. Even here, they guarded.

“One thing I never considered about getting old,” the White said, as Ironfist rolled her in front of her desk and then released her, to sit opposite her. “It makes spying so much harder.”

“I thought that you had people for such things,” Ironfist said.

“You can never leave such things entirely in other hands. It puts you at the mercy of your own spymaster. Or spymistress, as the case may be.”

Spymistress? What? Did she mean—“Marissia?” Ironfist asked, incredulous. “She’s your—”

The White said nothing for a long moment, and Ironfist’s mind whirled at the implications. Marissia did have unfettered access to this floor at all times, but she could also move freely among the other slaves in the tower. Her position as a slave to the most important man in the world made her exist in a social gray zone: if needed, she could mix socially with the lowest scullery boy, or she could chide the richest merchant on Big Jasper. A smart woman would exploit the advantages of such a situation, and Ironfist knew that Marissia was definitely a smart woman.

“No, she’s not,” the White said finally. “But just now, you were thinking as I must think all the time. As Gavin must think.”

“That’s harder than juggling the odds of a rival pulling a good card,” Ironfist said.

“One gets better with practice. But I prattle.” She tented her hands in her lap, sat quietly. She glanced at his bare head, then back to his eyes. Waited.

Ironfist rubbed his bare head, the stubbly hairs growing in like stubborn weeds of faith he could cut but not uproot. If he couldn’t trust the White, who could he? Even if she was faithless. Of course, he was faithless now, too. Did that make him less trustworthy?

He laughed quietly to himself. Truth was, he didn’t know.

“I may be on the verge of losing my position. What was your big gamble?”

“Cards on the table, huh?” the White said.

“I at least appear to have very little to lose.”

“Those who fold have no right to see the cards of those who stay in the game,” the White said.

“Metaphors break down.”

The White was quiet for a long moment, staring into the depths of him. He was impassive under her gaze. “You’ve stopped wearing your ghotra. It’s hard to fail to notice such a thing. How should I react to that, Commander? Personally, or politically?”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Politically, you may have just made it impossible for me to save you. You’ve gone apostate. Most people don’t wear the evidence of their faith on their heads—or take it off when they have doubts. You do. If the Black lists your apostasy as a reason to remove you from office, you’ll admit it’s true. So, politically, you’ve put the knife to your own throat.”

He hadn’t even thought of that. His religion—or lack thereof—wasn’t some public show. How could not the outer man reflect the inner?

“Of course, you could defang that by simply putting your damn hat back on. Explain to anyone who asks that you removed it in mourning for your lost, which is true. Partly. But you won’t do that.”

“To be a man is to bring together that which you should be and that which you are. Deception is darkness.”

“And did not Orholam himself set the world to spinning, so that there may be both times of light and times of darkness? The greater light and its nightly mirror do not shine on all the world constantly.”