The Black Prism
Page 43
“Blue eyes, though. That’s interesting. Not many people in your town with blue eyes, are there?”
“My father has blue eyes. There’s a few among people who settled there after the war, but no, we’re like the rest of Tyrea.”
“Is he a drafter?”
“Of course he is. My father’s one of the most famous red—”
“Not your father, idiot girl. Kip.”
“Kip? No! Well, not the last time I saw him. He was twelve or thirteen then.”
Aglaia sat back. “I should let you grope in the dark after your attitude today, but then you’d be even more likely to muss everything than you already are. I have an assignment for you, Liv Danavis. It turns out that my punishment of having to deal with you was Orholam’s gift in disguise. We intercepted a letter this woman Lina wrote to the Prism.”
“She what?”
“She claimed Kip was his bastard.”
Liv laughed, it was so ridiculous. Aglaia’s face said she wasn’t kidding.
“What?!” Liv asked.
“She said she was dying, and she wanted Gavin to meet his son Kip. We don’t know if it’s their first communication or not. But she didn’t ask for anything, or threaten him. Kip’s the right age, and Gavin had blue eyes before becoming the Prism. The rest is inconclusive, but the note was written as if it were true. As if Gavin knows her.” Aglaia smiled. “Liv, I’m going to give you an opportunity at a better life, and I hope I don’t need to tell you that I can already make you have a much worse life, if I so choose. You tested as a superviolet and a marginal yellow. For obvious reasons, your sponsor chose not to train you as a bichrome.”
Yes, Liv knew it well. A bichrome was expected to be kept in a certain style, or it reflected badly on the sponsor and the sponsoring country. And yellow was so hard to draft well that few who were trained in yellow passed the final examination. So supporting a yellow bichrome was a huge investment, with little possibility of a return. Liv’s sponsor had pretended she wasn’t a bichrome to save his money. It wasn’t fair, but there was no one to speak up for Tyreans.
“Here’s your assignment, girl. I’ve maneuvered things so that your class will be up next for the Prism’s personal instruction. Get close to him—”
“You want me to spy on the Prism?” Liv asked. The very notion was nearly… blasphemous.
“Of course we do. He may solicit you for information about his son and this woman Lina. Use that opportunity. Become indispensable to him. Become his lover. Whatever you need to—”
“What? He’s twice my age!”
“And that would be horrible—if you were forty years old. You’re not. It’s not like we’re talking about someone old and decrepit. Tell me the truth, you’ve already dreamed about him tearing off your clothes, haven’t you?”
“No, absolutely not!” Really she’d just admired him. Every girl did that. But for Liv, it had been completely abstract. Platonic.
“Oh, a saint you are. Or a liar. I guarantee every other red-blooded woman in the Chromeria has dreamed about it. No matter. You’ll think about it now.”
“You want me to seduce him?!”
“It is the easiest way to be in a man’s room while he’s sleeping. Then if he wakes while you’re rifling through his letters, you can pretend to be jealous and say you’re looking for letters from some other lover. Truth is, we don’t care how you get close to him, but let’s be honest: what do you have to offer the Prism? Witty conversation? Insight? Not so much. On the other hand, you’re pretty for a Tyrean. You’re young, not very bright, uncultured, not powerful, not a scholar or a poet or a singer. If you can get close to him some other way, great. I’m just betting the odds.”
It was the most eviscerating way to be told you were pretty that Liv had ever heard. “Forget it. I’m not going to be your whore.”
“Your piety’s touching, but it’s not whoring if you want to do it, is it? You’ve seen him. He’s gorgeous. So you get a few extra benefits. You can enjoy him, you can bask in every woman’s jealousy, you get everything that we offer—”
“I don’t want anything more from you.”
“You should have thought of that before you signed your contract. But that’s in the past. Liv, if you can get even one private meeting with Gavin Guile, we will set you up as a bichrome. Get close to him, and we’ll make your rewards even richer than that. But spit in my face, and everything in your life can turn to hellstone. I have full power over your contract, and I will use it.”
The offer of setting up Liv as a bichrome seemed awfully generous just for getting one meeting with the Prism, but she saw the logic behind it. A Prism could do what he wanted, but sleeping with a Tyrean monochrome would seem questionable, tasteless. Slumming. A bichrome, on the other hand, at least had some standing. The truth was, the offer was still probably generous, and might make Gavin more suspicious of them, but the prize—having a spy next to the Prism himself—was worth so much that the Ruthgari were willing to risk it. They needed Liv to say yes.
“Besides,” Aglaia said. “If you’re smarter than I think you are, you can find out for yourself who gave the orders to burn Garriston. You could find out who’s responsible for your mother’s death.”
Chapter 31
Gavin had hunted down hundreds of color wights, and this one didn’t feel right.
The madness struck every color wight differently, but blue wights always reveled in order. They loved the hardness of blue luxin. Most eventually tried to remake themselves with it. Every one of them believed they could avoid madness if only they were careful enough, smart enough, and thought through every step. But what was a blue wight doing crossing the reddest desert in the Seven Satrapies?
Rondar Wit had been posted in one of the smaller coastal cities of Ruthgar. Married, four children, and a good relationship with his lord patron, who’d waited two weeks to report Rondar’s disappearance—no one liked to believe that their friend might go mad.
Gavin trudged through the desert. He’d stopped briefly at one of his contacts on the coast, got dressed entirely in red, and armed, and still thought he should reach the wight before dark. Still, he was exhausted. Skimming was fast, but his arms and shoulders and stomach and legs ached. His will felt sapped. He didn’t get lightsick when he drafted too much—but he did get tired and shaky.
Coming near the top of a dune, he stopped so as not to skyline himself and drafted a pair of long lenses. Tracking blues was usually easy because no matter how smart they were, most couldn’t bear to be illogical. If you figured out where they were going, you could guess they would take the most efficient route there. Gavin had no idea where this one was going, but he was following the coast. Unless his objective was nearby, Gavin was going to assume that the giist would continue heading down the coastline, staying far enough from the coast to avoid farms and towns. Of course, this wight had made a mistake, coming in too close from the desert for the sake of speed and access to water, and had been seen by a boy herding the rangy desert cattle the nomads kept. The boy had told his father, and his father had told everyone, including Gavin’s contact.
“My father has blue eyes. There’s a few among people who settled there after the war, but no, we’re like the rest of Tyrea.”
“Is he a drafter?”
“Of course he is. My father’s one of the most famous red—”
“Not your father, idiot girl. Kip.”
“Kip? No! Well, not the last time I saw him. He was twelve or thirteen then.”
Aglaia sat back. “I should let you grope in the dark after your attitude today, but then you’d be even more likely to muss everything than you already are. I have an assignment for you, Liv Danavis. It turns out that my punishment of having to deal with you was Orholam’s gift in disguise. We intercepted a letter this woman Lina wrote to the Prism.”
“She what?”
“She claimed Kip was his bastard.”
Liv laughed, it was so ridiculous. Aglaia’s face said she wasn’t kidding.
“What?!” Liv asked.
“She said she was dying, and she wanted Gavin to meet his son Kip. We don’t know if it’s their first communication or not. But she didn’t ask for anything, or threaten him. Kip’s the right age, and Gavin had blue eyes before becoming the Prism. The rest is inconclusive, but the note was written as if it were true. As if Gavin knows her.” Aglaia smiled. “Liv, I’m going to give you an opportunity at a better life, and I hope I don’t need to tell you that I can already make you have a much worse life, if I so choose. You tested as a superviolet and a marginal yellow. For obvious reasons, your sponsor chose not to train you as a bichrome.”
Yes, Liv knew it well. A bichrome was expected to be kept in a certain style, or it reflected badly on the sponsor and the sponsoring country. And yellow was so hard to draft well that few who were trained in yellow passed the final examination. So supporting a yellow bichrome was a huge investment, with little possibility of a return. Liv’s sponsor had pretended she wasn’t a bichrome to save his money. It wasn’t fair, but there was no one to speak up for Tyreans.
“Here’s your assignment, girl. I’ve maneuvered things so that your class will be up next for the Prism’s personal instruction. Get close to him—”
“You want me to spy on the Prism?” Liv asked. The very notion was nearly… blasphemous.
“Of course we do. He may solicit you for information about his son and this woman Lina. Use that opportunity. Become indispensable to him. Become his lover. Whatever you need to—”
“What? He’s twice my age!”
“And that would be horrible—if you were forty years old. You’re not. It’s not like we’re talking about someone old and decrepit. Tell me the truth, you’ve already dreamed about him tearing off your clothes, haven’t you?”
“No, absolutely not!” Really she’d just admired him. Every girl did that. But for Liv, it had been completely abstract. Platonic.
“Oh, a saint you are. Or a liar. I guarantee every other red-blooded woman in the Chromeria has dreamed about it. No matter. You’ll think about it now.”
“You want me to seduce him?!”
“It is the easiest way to be in a man’s room while he’s sleeping. Then if he wakes while you’re rifling through his letters, you can pretend to be jealous and say you’re looking for letters from some other lover. Truth is, we don’t care how you get close to him, but let’s be honest: what do you have to offer the Prism? Witty conversation? Insight? Not so much. On the other hand, you’re pretty for a Tyrean. You’re young, not very bright, uncultured, not powerful, not a scholar or a poet or a singer. If you can get close to him some other way, great. I’m just betting the odds.”
It was the most eviscerating way to be told you were pretty that Liv had ever heard. “Forget it. I’m not going to be your whore.”
“Your piety’s touching, but it’s not whoring if you want to do it, is it? You’ve seen him. He’s gorgeous. So you get a few extra benefits. You can enjoy him, you can bask in every woman’s jealousy, you get everything that we offer—”
“I don’t want anything more from you.”
“You should have thought of that before you signed your contract. But that’s in the past. Liv, if you can get even one private meeting with Gavin Guile, we will set you up as a bichrome. Get close to him, and we’ll make your rewards even richer than that. But spit in my face, and everything in your life can turn to hellstone. I have full power over your contract, and I will use it.”
The offer of setting up Liv as a bichrome seemed awfully generous just for getting one meeting with the Prism, but she saw the logic behind it. A Prism could do what he wanted, but sleeping with a Tyrean monochrome would seem questionable, tasteless. Slumming. A bichrome, on the other hand, at least had some standing. The truth was, the offer was still probably generous, and might make Gavin more suspicious of them, but the prize—having a spy next to the Prism himself—was worth so much that the Ruthgari were willing to risk it. They needed Liv to say yes.
“Besides,” Aglaia said. “If you’re smarter than I think you are, you can find out for yourself who gave the orders to burn Garriston. You could find out who’s responsible for your mother’s death.”
Chapter 31
Gavin had hunted down hundreds of color wights, and this one didn’t feel right.
The madness struck every color wight differently, but blue wights always reveled in order. They loved the hardness of blue luxin. Most eventually tried to remake themselves with it. Every one of them believed they could avoid madness if only they were careful enough, smart enough, and thought through every step. But what was a blue wight doing crossing the reddest desert in the Seven Satrapies?
Rondar Wit had been posted in one of the smaller coastal cities of Ruthgar. Married, four children, and a good relationship with his lord patron, who’d waited two weeks to report Rondar’s disappearance—no one liked to believe that their friend might go mad.
Gavin trudged through the desert. He’d stopped briefly at one of his contacts on the coast, got dressed entirely in red, and armed, and still thought he should reach the wight before dark. Still, he was exhausted. Skimming was fast, but his arms and shoulders and stomach and legs ached. His will felt sapped. He didn’t get lightsick when he drafted too much—but he did get tired and shaky.
Coming near the top of a dune, he stopped so as not to skyline himself and drafted a pair of long lenses. Tracking blues was usually easy because no matter how smart they were, most couldn’t bear to be illogical. If you figured out where they were going, you could guess they would take the most efficient route there. Gavin had no idea where this one was going, but he was following the coast. Unless his objective was nearby, Gavin was going to assume that the giist would continue heading down the coastline, staying far enough from the coast to avoid farms and towns. Of course, this wight had made a mistake, coming in too close from the desert for the sake of speed and access to water, and had been seen by a boy herding the rangy desert cattle the nomads kept. The boy had told his father, and his father had told everyone, including Gavin’s contact.
