The Blinding Knife (59 page)

“Yes, my lord. I have much to tell you.” She glanced over at Kip. Ah, in private.

Gavin handed Kip the cloaks and the card box. He walked to a closet, rummaged for something.

Kip cleared his throat awkwardly and walked over to one side of the room where there was a table and chairs. Marissia had already risen by the time Kip sat, and was speaking quickly to Gavin, with her hand to the side of her mouth, in case Kip was a lip-reader, he guessed.

These people know what they’re doing, and they’re playing for keeps. Kip felt the familiar sinking feeling. He was so far out of his depth all he could do was flail.

“No!” she said, her voice rising just enough for Kip to hear it. “No alarms. I’m certain—” She lowered her voice again.

Gavin asked several quick, sharp questions, heard the low answers, then nodded a few times. There was a knock on the door. Gavin appeared to curse. “Yes?” he said.

The door cracked open. Kip couldn’t see who it was, and Gavin made a very subtle gesture to him to stay where he was. Always keeping secrets, his father. Not letting anyone know anything that might endanger them all. Samite, blocked from sight as she was by the open door, remained silent, unseen.

“Gavin,” an older woman’s voice said. “I was hoping you might accompany me downstairs. It is
your
business that will be before the Spectrum, after all, but I’d enjoy a word first.”

The White. Gavin was talking to
the White
. Kip swallowed again.

“Of course,” Gavin said.

He turned around and addressed Marissia, but Kip could tell that he was really talking to him. “I’ll be back in an hour. Stay out of trouble.”

Marissia curtsied deeply. She knew when to play along. Gavin nonchalantly tossed something onto his bed, flicked his eyes to Kip to let him know it was for him, and then left.

After the door closed, Marissia turned to Kip. “It appears you’re to stay here, young master. Do you have any needs?”

“Perhaps a bite to—”

“Excellent. Then if you’ll excuse me, I have urgent errands for the Prism. Please do stay out of his things. He’s not very understanding about those who violate this, the only sanctuary he knows.”

“I under—”

But she was already gone, the door snapping smartly shut behind her.

“—stand,” Kip said. He glanced, chagrined, at Samite beside the door. Her lips were pursed, trying to keep from grinning, no doubt, but otherwise her face was expressionless.

He sat down at the table. Stay out of trouble, huh? He looked over at the bed and then at the deck box, and, for one proud moment, thought of not opening it.

Hell with that.

The cards practically leapt into his hands.

The door opened, and Kip slammed the cards back into their box and hid it under the cloaks.

Oh, it was just Teia.

“Hey, Master,” she said, eyes twinkling. “The Prism’s slave told me you might still be here. We’re supposed to go to practice.”

“We need to talk about that master thing,” Kip said.

“No, we need to talk about our strategies for the Blackguard testing. After practice.”

“We don’t need to talk about strategies yet, do we?” Kip asked.

“
We
don’t.”

“They sent you in here to distract me,” Kip said, understanding.

“Commander said you’d just been through something traumatic. Your partner’s supposed to look out for you. Now come on.”

It was almost like having a real friend. But of course Teia had to look out for Kip. She was his slave. Kip gave a wan smile. “Almost a real friend” wasn’t half bad, considering.

He picked up the card box again as he stood. Samite cleared her throat.

Kip looked at her. She returned his look blandly. He put the box down, feeling like a chastened child. He gestured toward the bed: Can I get that at least, Mom?

Be my guest, her expression said, tolerantly amused.

Kip picked up a little stick of ivory from the bed. He had no idea what it was.

“Oh, that’s a testing stick,” Teia said, coming over to stand beside him. “From the Threshing. It shows what colors you’ll likely be able to draft. Why’d he give you a testing…”

The stick lay across Kip’s open palm. It had all seven colors.

Gavin greeted the White with a smile as their Blackguards fell into place behind them. Elessia, a petite woman, light-skinned for the Blackguard, was pushing the White’s wheeled chair. This was a change. The White was weakening, then.

For some reason, though he had feared her for nearly two decades, the thought brought him nothing but dread. She was dying, and so was Gavin. And if she continued drafting so much, so, too, was Karris. Maybe this generation’s time had passed.

Meanwhile, the heretics under the Color Prince grew strong. Kip wouldn’t be ready in time. Not with Gavin dying at this rate. He’d lost two colors in what, four months?

“So you faked Kip’s test so your enemies wouldn’t know he was a full-spectrum polychrome?” the White said.

Yes, let’s do jump right in. Anything to not give her a commitment to balance while she watched. “Pretty much, though someone sent an assassin after him immediately, so it obviously didn’t work.”

“It appears someone is trying to start up the Order again. There have been a few unexplained murders in the time you’ve been gone. But we can talk about that later.”

They entered the lift together. Gavin took his time setting the weights. First, he wanted to get the weight exactly right so the stop wouldn’t be jarring for the old woman. Second, he wanted her to hear what he had to say.

“If you told me your plans beforehand every once in a while, I could help you, you know, Gavin.”

But that would require me to trust you.

“But that would require you to trust me,” she said.

Scary. Too much time with the old goat. He wondered if he was becoming more like her, or she him. Now
there
was a scary thought.

“What’s the endgame, Gavin?”

Endgame? He thought of his seven purposes. Seven purposes in seven years. He was two years in now. And he didn’t have five years left anymore. He’d learned to travel faster than anyone ever had. Hell, he’d learned to fly. He’d failed at freeing Garriston—though if he followed Corvan’s argument, he’d actually succeeded by saving the
people. He still hadn’t told Karris the truth, but he’d do that once he left here. And the other four? Well, he’d be working toward all of them in this meeting. And he certainly couldn’t tell her about any of—

“So there is an endgame,” she said. She lifted her eyebrows, coolly amused.

Shit. He’d forgotten who he was talking to here. Forgotten to guard his every expression. Forgotten to lie first and think later. Protect. Guard. Hide. The fugitive’s motto. Honesty is death. Loneliness is weakness.

“War,” Gavin said darkly. “The end is always war.”

“I don’t even know that they’ll declare war, but if you think they’re going to declare you promachos again, you’re insane,” she said as he applied the brake. He stopped them perfectly even with the level so that her wheeled chair could exit smoothly.

He strode ahead, not waiting for her.

“They’re too afraid of you, Gavin.”

Too afraid? They’re not afraid enough.

Gavin stepped into the meeting room and took a seat on the far side. The table around which they met was a circle, but Gavin wanted to be able to see who came in the door. A few of the Colors were already seated. Sadah Superviolet, representing Paria, sat next to Klytos Blue. Sadah was from minor nobility in a clan that wielded little clout in Paria. Mountain Parian. She’d attained far more in her life than anyone would have expected through cold intelligence and fierce ambition. Indeterminate age, limbs lean, hands as gnarled as a yucca palm branches, skin as psoriatic as a yucca palm’s trunk. She wore her kinky hair gathered in small knots and wore a tight-fitting cap of woven gold that sat tight against her scalp, with little gaps for each knot of hair. An odd style that, so far as Gavin knew, had originated with the woman herself. Like the superviolet she was, Sadah brought a dispassionate perspective to all her votes, and was often the swing voter because she was immune to any pressure but that of logic. Hated lies.

Klytos Blue was Ruthgari through and through, but represented Ilyta. He was a coward. Intelligent, but lacking substance, no gravitas. He did what Andross told him on most matters. Gavin sat next to Klytos, greeting him as if he didn’t despise him. He was happy to sit next to the man—not for his company, but because it’s hardest to
surreptitiously study the expressions on the faces of those who sit right next to you. Klytos didn’t matter; Gavin didn’t have to be able to study his face.

Jia Tolver, the Yellow, nodded to Gavin, smiled. At the center of the color spectrum, yellows could be truly fearsome: great souls who brought under their power the appeals of emotion and reason in perfect balance. Jia was no great soul, though she liked to think she was. In truth, she really just ended up being perfectly susceptible to appeals of reason and emotion both. She was Gavin’s, almost always. She’d been infatuated with him for years. His smile was enough to get her vote, though it had been a delicate act to keep her from trying to get into his bed. She tried her wiles on him every so often, and he deflected her propositions rather than rejected them. Vain creature. Good enough looking, but too much makeup, though she had cut back on the perfume after Andross made numerous explicit references to rooms smelling like cheap whores whenever she entered. She was proud of her unibrow, kept it perfectly coifed.

As he sat, Gavin smiled at the hairy caterpillar perched on her brow. Jia beamed.

The others came in together, chatting. They were friendly, but tense. Delara Orange, the red/orange bichrome whose bosom was so large it ought to have had its own vote, looked drawn, grim, older than Gavin had ever seen her. She represented Atash: her country had been invaded by the Color Prince, and doubtless she would advocate war. Doubtless, she had been advocating war since she’d first heard of the invasion.

The Sub-red was Arys of the Greenveils. She was perhaps eight months pregnant now, serially pregnant always. In her, the passions of sub-red were wedded to a cultural imperative for drafters to breed so as to replace the dead for the once-interminable wars between Blood Forest and Ruthgar. She was, Gavin thought, perhaps thirty-five, and she had twelve children. Not a one, if rumor was correct, by the same father. She had a curtain of straight red-red hair, freckles, and blue eyes sparkling with the crystalline detritus that marked a longtime sub-red. She had perhaps two years left. Her thirteen—or by then probably fourteen—children would grow up honored in Blood Forest. They would also grow up without a mother.

“Where’s Lunna Green?” Gavin asked Klytos.

Klytos blanched. “I’m so sorry, Lord Prism…”

Lunna, despite being Ruthgari, was Gavin’s. He’d carefully built up enough credits with her that if he called them all in, she would do almost anything for him.

“What?” Gavin asked. Oh no.

“She had a stroke. She died.”

“She wasn’t even forty-five,” Gavin said.

“I’m so sorry, Lord Prism. She was right at the verge of breaking the halo for some time, and…” Klytos lowered his voice. “There were rumors she wasn’t going to take the Freeing. You understand?”

That she was trying to become a green wight, and she’d failed. No, she wouldn’t. Would she?

But that was the thing about facing death and insanity, wasn’t it? You never knew what a person would do. Gavin had seen all sorts over the years.

This was a disaster. A declaration of war required a simple majority. Eight votes were possible—one for each Color, and one for the Prism. In case of ties, the White got a vote. Gavin’s count had included Delara Orange, who was Atashian and would definitely vote for war, and Arys Greenveil, whose Blood Forest was directly on the warpath and who wasn’t averse to war regardless. His own vote, with Lunna’s, would bring it to four. That would kick it up to the White, who he thought would vote for it. She wasn’t a fool.

But without Lunna, Gavin would have to sway Jia Tolver or Sadah Superviolet. Jia voted with him often, but the Aborneans had no stake in a war, and wouldn’t mind seeing Atash burn for a while as they pretended that their reluctance to help put out the flames was born of pure, high-minded pacifism. Sadah Superviolet was even harder to judge. Paria was also far away from the fighting, and wouldn’t want to send its young men or its wealth—but Sadah would do what was right. He hoped.

Gavin would have to move fast if he was going to have a chance.

Perhaps the new Green would be amenable. If she or he wasn’t, Gavin could structure the vote. His father would have already sent in his vote on war as a no, but if Gavin was tricky and quick, he could make there be votes on issues that the Red hadn’t sent his vote down for. By not calling a straight up-or-down vote on declaring war, Gavin might be able to outmaneuver the old spider. Difficult, but possible. He would turn the old man’s proud disregard for the Spectrum on its head.

For all the satisfaction you get out of despising us, father, there are costs.