The Blinding Knife (54 page)

“Not hordes. Splitting light well enough to be invisible is probably close to impossible. And there are only—if the legends are right,
which is a
big
if—twelve of these cloaks, created for the original Order of the Broken Eye, if not before. Some have surely been lost or destroyed, and we now have two of them. So at most there are five more teams of assassins out there. Maybe only two or three. Maybe none.”

“At least we have these cloaks now.”

“Which is better than our enemies having them, but they’re probably useless to us. Having denied their existence, I don’t think the Chromeria has any method of testing drafters to find lightsplitters. Even if someone knew of such a thing, could they be convinced to share it when the very idea verges on heresy? The Atashian luxors suppressed something uncomfortably similar a hundred ten, maybe a hundred twenty years ago now.”

“And that’s one card,” Kip said.

“And you have a deck full. Breaker indeed.” Commander Ironfist started laughing quietly.

“What’s so funny?” Kip asked.

“I was just thinking that with how important these cards are and who can view them most clearly, you’ve probably just condemned a few of my least favorite people to spending the rest of their natural lives in a library somewhere, touching cards and taking notes.”

“You realize,” Kip said grumpily, “that that may well be
my
future you’re laughing about?”

“Doubtful,” a voice said behind Kip. “I imagine that you’ll be killed within the next year or live forever.”

Kip turned around, and there, in front of the most silent door in history stood Gavin Guile, his Gavin Guile smirk on his lips.

“But I wouldn’t bet against the boy who convinced Janus Borig to give him her life’s work.”

Kip couldn’t speak. Gavin’s presence filled the room.

“How is the old goat?” Gavin asked.

“Dead,” Kip said, his voice flat and lifeless. He hadn’t realized how much he’d cared for the woman until now.

A respectful pause. “I should have gathered as much from the cloaks. No evidence who sent them, I suppose?”

Kip had nothing to say. Obviously,
his
first instinct had been wrong.

“Don’t look at me, Lord Prism,” Commander Ironfist said. “I wasn’t there. I didn’t kill them. Kip did.”

Gavin shot a look at Kip. “
You
killed them? That’s a story I’ll want to hear. But later. Well done, son.”

Son. Son! With one word, Gavin was overturning months of Lord Andross Guile’s torment. Kip wanted to fall all to pieces. He wanted to shove all the cards and the knife into his father’s hands and blubber.

Gavin raised a finger. “First things first. Commander, your Blackguards sent Grinwoody packing. I intercepted him. He was on his way back to my father. He seemed to think that when he returns, you’ll be deprived of your position.”

“I think that faithless worm is being optimistic,” Ironfist said.

“I sent Karris to stall him, but if there’s anything you need to do, I suggest you do it now. I’ll intervene for you so far as I can, but you’re not under my purview. You’re certain he’s wrong, and you’ve done nothing, and you’re sure Carver Black will save you?”

Commander Ironfist’s face clouded. “I suppose there are a couple things that could… cause problems.”

“What?” Kip asked. “What have you done?”

“It’s not what I’ve done,” Ironfist said. “I’ve been looking into some old m—Lord Prism, Breaker, excuse me. I have urgent matters to attend to.”

He stepped out the door, then turned. “Breaker,” he said. “You can trust Cruxer. And… just so you know, you’d have made an excellent Blackguard.”

He was leaving. Kip had the sudden fear that he’d never see the big man again.

Kip ran over and hugged him.

Ironfist grunted, surprised. Then he hugged Kip in return. After a moment, he pushed Kip back.

Gavin had an odd look in his eye at seeing Kip embrace the commander. A distance between them. But in a blink, it was gone. He tossed the man a coin purse. “Commander, just in case. And honestly, I don’t know for certain that they’re coming after you.”

“I do,” Ironfist said. “Orholam give you light, Lord Prism. Be well, Breaker.” Then he was gone.

Idoss was a city of ancient ziggurats. Some luxiats said they were man’s attempt to scale to the heavens. They called them blasphemy. But those luxiats’ attempts to have the ziggurats torn down had never been successful. There were thirteen of the great terraced pyramids in the city arrayed geometrically, six and six around one. The central one was easily taller than the Prism’s Tower that Liv had thought was the tallest structure in the world.

Having surrendered to Dazen’s general Gad Delmarta rather than fight during the Prisms’ War, Idoss had escaped the torch and the sword and the flux. Most of the men pressed into service in Dazen’s army—at least those who survived the Battle of Sundered Rock—had made their way home within a couple months and the city had recovered more quickly from the war than any other city on the southern rim of the sea.

The city’s
corregidor
was the Atashian satrap’s son, Kata Ham-haldita. The term was Tyrean, one of the few remnants left of the time when Tyrea had included what was now eastern Atash. When the corregidor came out to parley, the Color Prince had the central avenue up which the young man traveled lined with all the color wights in the army, and instructed them to all be outside and in full view, but to ignore the corregidor and go about their chores so that he might believe there were far more of them in the army than there were.

It doubtless made for a terrifying walk, and the boy arrived rattled. And boy he was, for though he nominally ruled one of the richest cities in the Seven Satrapies, he was only twenty years old, and clearly young for his age.

Liv met Corregidor Ham-haldita and his two bodyguards outside the Color Prince’s tent. Her presence seemed to brace the young man. He smiled at her as if he was used to wooing women with that smile alone. He was a pretty boy, though skinny and narrow-shouldered. Liv preferred a man who looked like a man; she gave a pleasantly neutral nod. In truth, her heart was pounding—not from the boy, but with being trusted to be here. She’d worn the nicest of her dresses, and she could tell that the young man appreciated it.

“Corregidor, we’re delighted that you’ve come to join us. The prince is resting within. Will you join us?” she asked.

He looked at his bodyguards, but Liv stepped inside the tent, not waiting for a response. After a short hesitation, the corregidor and his men followed her.

The tent was dark, darker than usual, darker than necessary. There was one chair inside, a throne, and nothing else, not even rugs. In the chair, slouching, sat the Color Prince. He didn’t move when Liv came in. Then, when Corregidor Ham-haldita came in, the Color Prince lifted his head, and his eyes began to glow dull red, the color of new-forged iron. He stood, and the layers of luxin scraping across each other gave a sound like steel rasping over steel.

A shimmer of pale yellow light passed down his form, illuminating every crack and joint and seam, he flexed as if shaking himself from sleep, and every blue plate of armor on his body glowed, dimmed, then every red seam, then every green joint, all the way up to the barely visible pale violet that pulsed around his head in a crown.

The slack-jawed expression on the corregidor’s face almost made Liv laugh aloud, but she tucked her chin and bit her tongue. His men were right on the verge of pulling their weapons, but they looked terrified, too.

“Corregidor,” the prince said. “Welcome. Walk with me?”

The corregidor had to clear his throat before he could speak. “Of course.”

Liv joined the leaders and their guards, walking as she’d been instructed on the corregidor’s right while the prince walked on his left. Trapped between hope and fear, the prince had said.

Hope of what? Liv hadn’t quite dared to ask.

She didn’t think she was pretty enough to catch a future satrap’s eye, though if the Color Prince was successful, this boy would never be a satrap. But
he
didn’t know that yet. What then? A mistress? A night’s entertainment? Liv was abruptly aware again that she was a woman alone. If the Color Prince wanted her to accept one of the whores’ chits from Corregidor Ham-haldita, there was no way she could refuse. Not exactly the great purpose that the prince kept alluding to, but she wasn’t the person who got to choose, was she?

A quiet fury rolled through her.

When they strode into the full sunlight, the corregidor missed a step again. Seeing the Color Prince’s luxin form fully lit with natural
light was at least as impressive as seeing him glow in a darkened tent. Again, not a mistake.

The Color Prince led the way through the camp, as if walking aimlessly, though Liv was sure he wasn’t. He didn’t leave much to chance.

“You’ve come with something to say,” the Color Prince said. “A deal, perhaps.”

“The city mothers have asked that I tell you we wish only peace, but if we must fight, you will pay dearly to take this city, and perhaps not before our reinforcements arrive.”

“Which I’m sure you expect any day.”

“Yes, we do.” The boy colored, as if fearing he was being made fun of. “And we can hold you until they arrive and smash you against our walls.”

They passed by Zymun, who was training with the other drafters. He stood shirtless, lashing an old tree with great whips of fire, awing his fellows. He stopped when they walked by, bowing respectfully to the Color Prince, his eyes full of jealousy at the sight of the other young man. Zymun’s wounds had faded, and if his shirtless body didn’t fill Liv with the speechless desire that Gavin Guile’s once had, he was still quite handsome. Powerful, intelligent, charismatic—and always, always interested in her. Always flattering. Always flirting.

She’d flirted with boys at the Chromeria, of course—mostly before that disastrous Luxlords’ Ball. But those had mostly been the flirtations of impossibility: playing at being adults. Playing at being outrageous. Zymun’s flirtation was the flirtation of possibility. She had only to say the word, just once, one night when he came by her tent and asked politely if he could come in. That she
could
say yes, that none would stop her, that none would even question her was more of an erotic charge than that she could say yes to Zymun in particular, dashing as he was.

Her students would envy her the assignation, of course, for she had students now. Not discipulae, not among the Free.

“So Delara Orange has been successful in persuading the rest of the Spectrum to go to war? Or am I to be on watch for the elite Ruic troops?”

“Both,” the boy said. Even Liv could tell he was lying.

“You are a young man,” the prince said. “And I think you’re a hair’s breadth from being stripped of your position by those frightened old harridans.”

They walked through a narrow alley between two tents, stepping over the guy wires. As they emerged, the corregidor’s guards found themselves looking into the barrels of twenty loaded muskets and at half a dozen drafters with arms loaded with luxin.

“Disarm them, and keep them thirty paces away, but don’t harm them,” the Color Prince said. “Unless they do something stupid, in which case, shoot for the groin.”

With the men thus detained, the Color Prince kept walking, as if nothing had happened. “Both of those men report to the mothers, and I think we can agree we don’t need their interference, can’t we, Corregidor?”

“How do you know that? Or are you just guessing?” the corregidor asked, trying to keep his voice level.

“Can’t we?”

The corregidor choked down his fear. “Very well. I’m—I’m sure we can settle this together.”

“Mmm. I believe in choices, Kata. We are free men, making free choices, and bearing the consequences. So here are yours: First, you can surrender. I will give you less than generous terms. You will free your slaves, the city will pay a million danars, and you will give us twenty thousand ephahs of barley, sixty wagons laden with fruit, ten thousand barrels of wine, and twenty thousand barrels of olives. You will give us five thousand swords or spears and a thousand working muskets, with five hundred barrels of gunpowder and a hundred barrels of shot or eight hundred bars of lead. You will send with us fifty smiths and fifty wheelwrights and half a dozen chemists, and you will pay them double wages while they’re gone. You will empty your city of brothels—the prostitutes can make their own choice on if they travel with us, but you will not allow any of them within your city for one year so as to encourage them to choose wisely. You will send all of your drafters to speak with me. Same with the slaves. They will be allowed to choose whether to join us or to go elsewhere, but they won’t be allowed to return to your city until the war is completed, on pain of death. You will arrange a parade through the city, welcoming us with trumpets and hailing us for giving you freedom. And before we come into the city, you will send all your luxiats out to this camp.”

The details were washing over the young man, and he grabbed on to the last like a raft in a maelstrom. “What is to happen to them?”

“We’ll kill them all,” the Color Prince said bluntly. Then he continued as if the man hadn’t interrupted. “Then, in every church, you will allow to be established new forms of worship: one for each of the old gods. You will not be required to maintain or attend services at any of these, however, and our new priests will abide by your laws so long as you don’t interfere with their worship.