The Broken Eye (114 page)

For one who had always had an affinity for the blue virtues of order and harmony and setting a plate exactly according to some point-book written by some long-dead prince of the punctilious pompacio, power was a revelation. Power, not for others, but for her.

And the heart of intoxication is toxic.

Andross Guile looked back at her calmly. He didn’t seem angry. It was a feeling, an intuition, rather than any hint of expression. He had an air of expectation. And an expectation, for Andross Guile, was an expectation of victory. He was patient because he was going to win.

Karris smiled at him, smiled like she knew the game, like she loved that he thought he was going to win, smiled like she was better than he was. He blinked, then, the barest flicker of doubt. She ducked her head demurely and smiled on sweet secrets.

He had a plan. Damn. Andross Guile wasn’t a man to leave anything to chance. He wasn’t going to take a chance, not even a six-to-one chance. Even if he owned all of the other six, he would have a favorite.

But how would he cheat? The ceremony must surely be designed to making cheating impossible.

But Andross Guile knew exactly what those safeguards were. Or who.

Karris looked at the High Luxiat Amazzal. Was he part of it?

“Orholam, all-mighty Lord of Lords,” he said. “Look upon us. Highest Lord and Highest God, thee we beseech. Look upon our efforts and bless them with thy light, thy life, thy favor. This day, Orholam, Lord and High King, Emperor of Emperors, Balancer of Scales, Mighty and Just, Honorable and Pure, Awesome in Power, Wholesome in Mercy, we seek your will and not our own. We seek this day your White, your light, your antidote to night. We, your satrapies, ask your hand to rest lightly on us, lightly on obedient hearts that need only prompting, not compulsion, only guidance, for it is thy purpose which we seek to serve, and not our own. We praise thee, Lord of Luxlords, Light of Nations, Voice in the Stillness, Guide to the Blind, and Path of Mercy to the Benighted. See and move, O God.” Each time he said ‘God’ he gave it the traditional moment of hesitation, of respect. It was a measure of his piety or simply his experience that he made the traditional seem vibrant, like he himself thought even this measure of respect was perhaps too little.

“Candidates,” he said, “come forward. From this time forward, drafting is forbidden. Drafting is an imposition of our will upon the world. Any who draft or who accept another’s drafting on their behalf will be disqualified and executed as a heretic. Understood? If so, repeat, ‘Under the Un-deceivable Eye of Orholam, I understand and I agree.’”

They did so, in unison. Then they followed him to a circle on the floor. Young luxiats carried folding screens out for each of them and set them up quickly. Karris’s luxiat was a pimply, blushing young man of no more than eighteen.

The High Luxiat spoke now only for their ears. “The ceremony must be unimpeachable. Thus, because in years long past others have attempted to destroy the sanctity of it, we have put safeguards in place. No lenses. No mirrors. No jewelry. No strips of cloth in your color. Nothing. Even your hair will be covered. In order to assure all that you are obeying these injunctions, you will strip, be searched, and be given identical garments, randomly assigned, all under the eyes of the Blackguards, luxiats, and each other. No exceptions. Even a White submits. If you object to these rules, you may remove yourself from consideration now. If you don’t object now, and are found violating the rules, you’ll be executed by Orholam’s Glare. You understand?”

They did.

“If you think you see some malfeasance on the part of any other, bring it to the attention of the luxiats. A new Blackguard and luxiat will be assigned to her or him, and she shall be searched again. Appropriate punishments will follow, by which I mean death for the heretic and the Blackguard who allowed the heresy both.”

He left, and Karris stripped down. Her blushing luxiat was far more embarrassed than she was. Then he saw the bruising. Flopping into the river flat on her side had made the left side of her body look like she’d been dead and lividity had set in. His mouth moved, but he was obviously forbidden to speak. Karris ignored it. Years with the Blackguard had stripped necessary nudity of its shame. Besides, feelings about her body would distract her from the game Andross was playing, and you couldn’t play Andross and have any hope of victory if you didn’t give it your full attention.

The High Luxiat was facing seven Blackguards. Each drew a number from a bowl and moved to one of the disrobing lords or ladies. Trainer Fisk—Watch Captain Fisk now—moved to Karris. He gave her a shrug that barely moved his muscle-bound shoulders. “It was supposed to be women to search the women, and men for the men, but with our numbers so low, they said—Orholam’s beard, what happened to your—”

“Just do it,” Karris said.

He did. Not that there was much searching to do. Her hair took the most time, despite that it would be covered. Then he examined both of her hands, her eyes, her armpits, her back, her butt crack, the soles of her feet. Contraband was obviously the first target, but luxin-packing was the second. Fisk was professional and moved quickly, his face a mask.

Seven more Blackguards watched the searchers, and the luxiats, making sure nothing was passed between any of them. The randomness—assuming it was random—of the choice of guards seemed like it would defeat any plan Andross might try to orchestrate. Karris watched the others.

She saw nothing other than their obvious discomfort. She wondered, would someone being passed a—a what, precisely? A colored lens. A drafter could never go wrong with a lens. It would be small, inconspicuous, and allow lethal action.

But she saw nothing untoward.

Luxiats brought out stacks of robes, and at least two Blackguards searched each robe, bending seams to look for hidden pockets, and shifting the piles randomly. The High Luxiat himself distributed them then, also seemingly at random. The robes weren’t even different sizes, meaning Karris was swimming in hers while Jason Jorvis could barely close the robe.

The High Luxiat came to each of them while they dressed, holding a plain wooden bowl. “This is the order you’ll draw,” he said.

“We draw for the order we draw?” Karris asked, deadpan.

He sighed. “Would it shock you that there have been problems about precedence in the past? One goes first, seven goes last.”

Karris shrugged and drew. Six.

She was secretly glad to be going so late. By then, the choices would be constricted.

“There will be seven stones presented. Listen for Orholam’s voice. He will guide you. You each may bring no more than one stone back. Just to warn you, each has multiple layers of paint on it, and there is no way to tell how deep is the true one. You bring it back and plunge it into the bowl full of solvent. Whoever has the White’s stone will be revealed.”

“What do you mean we bring it
back
?” Karris asked. “Where are we going?”

“That’s it?” Jason Jorvis asked. “No other rules?”

“You really don’t remember?” Ismene Crassos asked.

“My family weren’t on the Jaspers last time.”

“And you didn’t hear the stories?”

“I’m just trying to get the rules clear,” he said.

All Karris could remember from the time Orea Pullawr was selected as White was a boy named Amestan Niel who’d stayed at a neighboring estate for the summer. She’d barely said two words to him in the whole time. Her best friend, whom Karris had told all about her crush on him, all summer long, had kissed him the night before he left. It had been a devastating betrayal at the time. Last Karris had heard, Amestan Niel was now the third largest exporter of wool in Paria.

Somewhere in the tower, something rumbled. Something big.

They all looked at each other.

“Was that part of … this?” Karris asked. But from the startled look on the High Luxiat’s face, she knew it wasn’t.

“We’ll proceed,” he said.

The luxiats carried away the screens, and the candidates were brought to stand in a circle.

“Brace yourselves,” the High Luxiat told the audience. “There is often a great deal of wind.”

Wind?

At some signal Karris didn’t see, all the windows in the room slid down into slots, even as the windows in Gavin’s room one floor above did. There was a cold wind, but there wasn’t much of it after the initial gust. The morning was still and warm.

Then the floor shifted. Karris instantly dropped her center and stood wide in a fighting stance. It was the floor beneath her and the other candidates. Ismene looked at her and grinned as if to say, Isn’t this exciting?

The five-pace-wide circle on which they stood rose out of the floor. Patterns on the audience chamber floor sank, revealing tracks—and the entire disk the candidates were standing on started sliding toward the open window.

“Am I the only one to whom this seems like a really bad idea?” Karris asked.

“Jump off, then,” Jason Jorvis said.

She was standing right at the edge of the disk, and she had been considering doing just that, until he spoke.

The disk slid out the window and into the air, supported on a vast arm protruding from the Prism’s Tower two stories below. They slid out ten, then twenty paces from the side of the tower, and the great windows of the audience chamber rattled shut.

Oh. Karris understood. Everyone was to see what happened, but no one was to be able to draft to affect the outcome. The nobles were craning their necks to see more clearly, but Karris’s eyes were suddenly drawn up.

Atop the Prism’s Tower, one of the massive crenellations had split off and fallen several stories. That had been the rumbling sound she’d heard. The huge chunk of stone was dangling, suspended by a woven steel cable. Karris had been atop that tower a hundred times. There were no steel cables and massive bolts in the crenellations. And the precision of the break made it look purposeful. She was trying to see more of it—where did that cable go?—when her platform shuddered again. Seven additional smaller circular platforms unfolded from beneath the larger platform. The seven circles sank geared teeth into the edge of the larger platform and began wheeling slowly around them.

Now, on each of the smaller circles sat a narrow pedestal, and on the pedestal, in teak and velvet, a white ball. They were identical. After they circled all of them once, they stopped.

Naftalie Delara had drawn number one. She said, “No point in delaying, I suppose.” She looked heavenward. “Orholam guide me. Orholam bless my choice.” She went to one of the pedestals and took the white ball there.

Out on balconies of each of the seven towers, a Blackguard and a luxiat stood as a team, watching each other, watching the other teams, and watching that no one would come out onto their balconies to interfere with the ceremony.

But whatever cheat Andross had arranged was doubtless already done. He’d arranged who would pick, and somehow told them beforehand which stone was the one. The mechanics of the cheating would never be visible, and in picking sixth, her choice would likely be moot anyway—a choice between two stones of which surely neither was the correct one. Pointless and barren, like so many years of her life.

Eva Golden Briar took longer, but settled on one in short order.

The White had sacrificed Orholam only knew what to get Karris here, and they’d lost. Karris didn’t even know which smiling face hid a liar. Maybe all six did. Andross Guile always had backup plans behind his plans, didn’t he?

Karris heard musket fire again and could tell that it came from the top of the Prism’s Tower. There were some few people gawking at the candidates through their windows, but no one was out on the balconies, and none was armed that Karris could see. What the hell was going on? The Blackguards on the other towers looked alarmed, too, but were glued to their stations.

Akensis Azmith had selected his stone while Karris looked. Croesos Ptolos took longer, hesitating a long time before one, praying, and then taking another. Then Ismene Crassos went. She looked at each of the three remaining for a long time. Went back to one three times, and finally picked it up.

That left Karris, and two stones.

Listen to the will of Orholam, huh?

She walked up to the first stone. White, round, small enough to fit comfortably in her palm—for whatever reason, it didn’t feel right.

Now that was odd. She approached the second, studying it closely, and felt a strong urge to take it in her hand immediately.

She crossed her arms. She’d claimed to the White that she wanted Orholam to speak to her in a way that was obvious, but here it was, and it was obvious, and she didn’t like it. If Orholam’s voice was a slap in the face, then of what value were Karris’s ears? It somehow seemed to devalue her intellect, the intellect Orholam himself had given her. She should be a participant in Orholam using her.

Shouldn’t she? Or was she being arrogant?

The fiery green/red drafter she had been not so very long ago would have made a decision and to hell with it. Orholam could do his part or not. If this was his big plan, he’d have to do it. It was all probably pointless anyway, the correct stone already taken.

But Karris wasn’t that girl anymore. She had been foolish. She had done things for which she hated herself still. She’d tried to burn herself to ash, and been too excellent to die. She’d tried to blot out the weakness with borrowed purpose as a Blackguard. And now the ache and the disappointment were as much a part of her as her passion and her wildness. She was not a creature of isolated extremes, that disjunctive bichrome, not anymore; she was a whole cloth in the making, integrated.

Ignoring the waiting nobles at the window and the waiting candidates around the disk, Karris turned toward the morning sun. The perfect fiery orb was losing its red tone as it rose, becoming gold.

Karris spread bare arms, saluting the sun, soaking up its full-spectrum light, accepting it and reveling in it.

We are the stories we tell about ourselves. But when those stories are lies, we are the most surprised of all.

When you ask for bread, Karris, would I give you a stone?