The Broken Eye (97 page)

Same platform he’d stood on when he ended the Blood War.

He stumbled on his hobbles as he climbed the stairs, and laughter rang out.

His people. How he hated them.

Then he saw the coal bucket, smoking. Two iron pokers rested in it, each with a tip as narrow as a pupil. He looked around the hippodrome. Fifty thousand people, and not one friend. In the satrap’s box, he saw the Nuqaba looking at him, smiling. She was mouthing something to him. She was too far away for him to read her lips, but he could guess: ‘Useless.’ She was enjoying Gavin Guile impotent at least as much as she would enjoy seeing him blinded. Then she and everything else became a blur. He saw people moving, mouths moving, but he stopped hearing.

He remembered, strangely, as if cobwebs were being cleared from a hall of memory he’d not trod in decades, Lady Janus Borig visiting when he was a child, treating his mother like no one treated his mother, and telling him, ‘Black luxin is the scourge of history. It is madness in luxin form. It is the soul poison. Once touched, it lives within a drafter forever, slowly eroding her from the inside. In every world, there is that which is
haram
, that which is forbidden, and in every world, that is the thing most desired, for there is that in us which loves destruction. Here is a test for your wisdom, young Guile. It is the only test that matters. In this world, Orholam has given us such power as even the angels have not. It is the power of evil unfettered. It is the destruction of history itself. It is madness and death and being-not. It is void and darkness. It is the lack of light, the lack of God himself—the lack that men rightly call hell. It is black luxin, and that color—though color it is not—that color, Dazen Guile, is your color.’

And he’d believed her. He’d known then he was the cursed brother, the evil brother. And what she’d said had been true.

And at the end of all things, when every color is gone, darkness remains.

Gavin could see only in shades of gray.

And black.

How did I forget that? How did I, who remember all things, forget that day? Is that a real memory? Was it merely lost among all the myriad others?

But there was no time for that now. Not on this, his last walk.

Drafting black luxin wasn’t something you could test. It was a cocked and loaded pistol. You pulled the trigger, or you didn’t. And if you were able to draft it, and you did …

Hell, hell on earth. The smoking ruins of Sundered Rock. The charnel house, the gore, the rage and madness and slaughter and vileness of poison poured onto the world as from a spigot as big as the sky itself.

Gavin looked around the hippodrome, and in shades of gray and black, he saw not a single friend. They jeered and they hated and they knew him not. They, whom he had saved from a war that would never end, they hated him and wished pain and death upon him. For nothing more than their amusement.

They were, in this moment of bloodlust and casual cruelty, an open window into hell.

Gavin could bring hell to them, and in so doing, save himself.

It was the only way to save himself.

He looked at the mutely roaring masses: the sounds might have been the susurrus of the waves on the shore for all he heard them, and he realized that if they had been threatening him with death, he wouldn’t do it. He would die for these ingrates. Not happily, but willingly.

But to be blinded, to be made useless, to be disgraced, to be mocked, to be impotent, to be pitied? To be shorn of sight and light and power was to be made not–Gavin Guile. It was all he had built for his whole life. It was all his worth.

Or he could draft the black once more, triumph once more, rise once more, a shadow figure caked in the ashes of his enemies’ burnt flesh and dreams.

To be Guile is to have will titanic. It is to move the world according to my pleasure. To be an Unmoved Mover, to be like unto God.

To be Guile is to kill without hesitation those who stand in your way. Even if it be a stadium full. Even if it be your brother.

To be Guile is to be great but not good.

But I’m not only Guile, not anymore. I’m a husband and a father now. I’m more than a conqueror. What if what I’m losing isn’t worth what I’ll lose to keep it?

Karris, will you understand? Kip, will you someday see that this isn’t my moment of weakness?

They seized him, and of all the acts of will in a life famed for them, it was by far the greatest that he resisted them not.

They bound him to a table. It had a lip to hold in several thumbs’ depth of sand. To soak up blood, he supposed. First, they put thick leather straps on his feet and wrists. Then luxin locked even his head in place.

He was on his back, on sand, staring at the sky. Like he was afloat on the ocean, lying in the skimmer, dangling his arms out to each side, looking at the placid heavens. Either this was Orholam’s peace, or Gavin had finally lost his mind.

A man came to stand over Gavin and pushed his eyelid down, making him blink. Then luxin flowed around his eye and opened the eyelid. The luxin gelled, solidified, and held his left eye wide open. Bound to the table as he was, it left him looking directly at the noonday sun.

You can’t stare at the sun. You might go blind.

Gavin burst out laughing.

He was staring eye to eye with Orholam’s Eye, the sun. And he couldn’t look away.

What had that scurvied pirate said? You keep up your lies, and you’ll be stricken blind? What lie was I supposed to not tell? There were so many. Was it only telling the truth to Antonius Malargos? I am a fabric of shadows, Orholam. There is naught else to me.

The drafter spoke to him, but Gavin was beyond words now.

Staring a challenge at the sun, but still I could draft the black. I could take my noonday shadow, withered though it is, and cast it over all the world.

A woman in a chirurgeon’s coat stepped close, looming over Gavin. She was plain, and pale, and paler than her usual pallor, Gavin guessed. Blanched white as only the pallid people at this arc of the satrapies could blanch. She wore two heavy leather gloves. He couldn’t hear her, but he could read her lips. Though she didn’t know he was the Prism, she was begging for his forgiveness. He’d seen those words pass lips in their thousands and thousands, every Sun Day.

Still I could draft the black. Orholam, you do not show half the mercy I do.

Karris, I will miss seeing your smile.

The chirurgeon lifted the first white-hot metal poker from the barrel and scuffed the coal particles from the metal with quick strokes. She braced her hip against the table and brought the smoking hot point over his head, holding it in both hands, burning like a second sun. She moved carefully, carefully.

Last second. Last chance. This is it.

The glowing metal descended, the bright white point of that terrestrial sun blotting out the celestial one.

He’d been like this. Last time. At the point of death. And had refused to die. Hands outstretched, like now, only facedown that time. Arms outstretched, and he’d reached out and embraced all hell.

And it was there, beneath his fingers like a smothering blanket of black spiders, ready to be thrown over the face of the world, over the face of the sun.

The black luxin trailed under his fingertips like all the waters of the world. To claim it, he had only to make a fist.

Still I can— His fingers went rigid, but didn’t clench.

Tssss.
The sound of his sizzling eyeball was the first thing he heard as all sound came back.

He’d known it would hurt.

He’d had no idea.

He screamed his soul.

Chapter 84

“Karris, you have to wake up. Right now.”

Karris blinked to find Marissia shaking her. “Marissia, what are you doing? It’s not even light out.”

“It’s Gavin. One of my spies has just reported.”

That woke her instantly.

“Gavin’s imprisoned in Rath, and he may be executed.”

“When? How do we know? How good is the source? Where?” Karris moved toward the bureau where she kept her blacks.

Marissia stepped in her way, put a hand on her arm. “Today,” she said.

“Today?! And we’re learning this now?!”

“I have an idea,” Marissia said. “Mind you, not a good one.”

And now here Karris was, agreeing with the last part more and more with every windswept league. Gavin’s invention of the skimmers should change everything. They might even save his life.

She’d grabbed all the Blackguards she knew could keep their silence and whom she knew had a fair bit of drafting left until they broke their halos, but she hadn’t told everyone. There hadn’t been time. She’d hadn’t looked for Ironfist, certain that he would have seen this foolishness for what it was and tried to stop it.

But there he’d been, at the Luxlords’ dock at the back of the Chromeria, waiting.

She took a deep breath and lifted her chin, gathering her thoughts. He was as imposing as his arguments would be good. And that was if he even bothered to argue with her, rather than simply throw her over his shoulder and carry her away.

He scowled at her and she moved to speak. He spoke first. “You can go get yourself killed, but you’re not going to do it alone.”

“You have to let me— What?”

Ironfist let her struggle under a glare that weighed more than she did. Then a little smile stole onto his face.

She jumped onto him and hugged him, hard.

“Gah!” He caught her, startled, then pushed her away. “Karris, there’s no, there’s no hugging in the Blackguard!”

She smiled up at him. “You’re cute when you’re flustered.”

Karris couldn’t count the emotions that passed over his face, but twice his mouth opened to say things, and nothing came out. He stepped back away from her, then looked irritated that he’d retreated. He settled on a glower. “I brought baggage,” he said, gesturing over his shoulder.

“I’m baggage?” the Blackguard inductee named Ben-hadad asked.

But Ironfist ignored him, noticing all the Blackguards looking at him, grinning their fool faces off. “What is this?!” Ironfist barked at them. “Lives in the balance. The whole point of the Blackguard, and you’re lolling about? Skimmer! Now!”

They scattered like deer at a musket shot, and only then did a small, satisfied smile steal over his face. He looked at Karris and sniffed. “The room slave told me your plan. Terrible plan. This one here will make it work, though.” He made a grudging motion to Ben-hadad.

“I … what?” Ben-hadad asked. His hinged spectacles, with their multiple lenses sticking up, looked like alarmingly distended eyebrows.

“The baggage.”

Ben-hadad looked nonplussed. Then, “Oh! Oh, the dress! What’s the dress for?” He pulled out of a bag the frilliest riot of a dress that Karris had ever seen.

“Lady White Oak needs a maid,” Ironfist said. “The dress is for you.”

Ben-hadad’s mouth dropped open. He looked down at the dress in his hands. Dislodged by his movement, the lenses on one side of his spectacles drooped.

“He’s joking,” Karris told Ben-hadad.

“He’s, he is?” Ben-hadad asked. Relief washed over his face.

Ironfist looked as close to smug as he got. “You do gears and whatnot. Machines?”

“Yes, sir,” Ben-hadad said, confused. “But I’ve never—”

“You’ll make one for Lady White Oak.” Ironfist seemed to stress ‘lady.’ “While we ride.”

So they’d started, in those hours before dawn, burning a fortune’s worth of magnesium torches to do what drafting they could early. It was enough to get halfway through building the skimmer.

Usually the Blackguards made sea chariots. With the difficulty of the drafting and the expense in life lost to draft so much so quickly, their craft needed to last more than a few voyages to be worth making. Thus they made heavier, durable, and slower craft.

Not this time.

But even with seven of them together, they couldn’t draft the craft as quickly as Gavin could have done it alone. The man could intuit the shape and density of luxins required, and, of course, didn’t need to communicate which luxin needed to go where to anyone else. He just did it.

Karris spent all morning as they crossed the waves trying to come up with a better plan. She had no doubt Commander Ironfist was doing the same. From his silence, she guessed he had failed, too.

Five exhausted Blackguards traipse into the middle of fifty thousand angry civilians whipped into a frenzy by the brutal chariot races and whatever lies the Nuqaba had dreamed up and do … what, precisely?

There just weren’t good options. Not with time running out. What could Karris do? Threaten the Nuqaba? With what? Bribe her? With what? Say that an army would avenge Gavin? Perhaps even true, but it would come too late for him.

She looked at Ironfist. “Could you…?” The woman was his sister. He kept a picture of her in his room. She knew he thought about her often.

“You don’t know the Nuqaba,” he said. He never called her his sister; he never used her name. “If she even
sees
me, this only gets worse.”

Dawn was nearly six hours past now, the sun perilously near noon.

Around the skimmer, the five drafters who’d come with her—two of the others had exhausted themselves building the craft and stayed behind, not worth the weight they would add to the skimmer—were all bent against the wind, cutting up the Great River past galleys and galleasses. Everyone other than Karris and Ben-hadad wore eye caps rather than spectacles, enduring the glue and the discomfort in a trade for keeping them on and being able to see even at these great speeds.

Everywhere, they attracted stares. None of the people on shore had ever seen a ship move at such speed, and though they might have heard rumors of skimmers and sea chariots, seeing one was different.

They angled the skimmer up river channels. Karris and Commander Ironfist both had been here before. The hippodrome was carved into Rathcore Hill—the smaller twin to Jaks Hill in an otherwise flat plain. But while the hippodrome complex was elevated above the floodplain, a deep canal had been dug to allow ferries to transport horses and goods directly to the hippodrome’s basement.