by Brent Weeks
He found the floor and walked brazenly into the room. It was a barracks like any of the Blackguards’ or discipulae’s, so it was no problem finding the right one, or finding Quentin’s bed among the rows. He nudged the sleeping luxiat.
“Oh, it can’t be time for morning prayers already—” Quentin cut off at the sight of Kip looming over him, and the whites of his eyes became fully visible around his irises.
Some people lash out when they’re terrified. Quentin was a freezer.
For a long moment, he didn’t blink, didn’t breathe. It lasted longer than Kip would have expected. Surely Quentin recognized him?
“I’ve got a question for you,” Kip said, quietly so as not to disturb the other sleepers.
Something about that unlocked the luxiat, and he took a big breath. He got out of his bed, his body scrawny, no muscles at all. Kip was so used to being surrounded by the training-honed physiques of the Blackguards that he was kind of shocked by what was surely a more normal body than theirs.
Again he thought, My father did this on purpose. He surrounded me with the best, so I would always use them as my comparisons, so I would always stretch myself. It was a little cynical, very smart, mean in the short term, and probably best in the long term. Damn. Gavin Guile was rightly a legend.
Quentin followed him out into the hall. “This, is, uh, good,” Quentin said. “I just figured out the shelving scheme.”
“Huh?”
“For the library.”
“Oh, that. Great. Look, I need you to tell me how a Prism is chosen. Walk with me.”
Quentin fell in beside him, and they talked with lowered voices. “Chosen? They aren’t chosen. They’re discovered. I mean, they’re chosen, of course—by Orholam.”
“Right,” Kip said. “Sure. So how are they ‘discovered’?”
“All luxiats report to their superiors, passing along possibilities gleaned from their areas, those pass it on up the hierarchy of the Magisterium, and the High Luxiats meet with the Spectrum to confer and test whoever has been sent.”
“Let me guess that whoever’s been sent is always from one of the leading families.”
Quentin blinked, then his eyes flicked up as he tried to remember. “With one arguable exception, and one definite one—yes, at least for the past two hundred and twenty-two or -three years.”
“And that doesn’t seem curious to you?”
“It’s not curious at all. It’s not like you’re the first to notice that, Kip. Breaker? Why do some people call you— Never mind. It’s more evidence that Orholam has blessed the political order of the Seven Satrapies. And the exceptions prove that Orholam sees all men, and when the nobles displease Orholam, he is more than willing to go outside our human politics.”
“Convenient how that works for you, either way.”
Quentin held a reproachful silence. Finally, he said, “Did you wake me only to mock me?”
Kip wasn’t angry at Quentin, who seemed like he was outgrowing his naiveté, though with great pain. Kip was angry at his grandfather. It seemed that if there was one place free of politics, it should be Orholam’s house. But that wasn’t Quentin’s fault.
“No. I wanted to ask you how a Prism’s … uh, installed? Elevated? Whatever. Is there a ceremony?”
“It’s ‘consecrated,’ actually.”
“How’s it happen?”
Quentin looked a little peeved that this was what Kip had woken him for. “It’s all very secret. There’s a feast. There’s mourning for the Prism who has died, and every light in the city and the Chromeria is extinguished for the night except for the great braziers that they light in the star towers. People mingle and drink and mourn their own dead and sing songs and only these little beacons of light remain.”
“What about the ceremony itself?”
“It is known only to the Spectrum and the High Luxiats. I think the Spectrum may only be told what to do on the night of. I mean, the High Luxiats can be very close-mouthed about the things they think are important, and it doesn’t get much more important than that.”
“Who’s currently on the Spectrum who was there seventeen years ago?”
“You mean when Gavin was made Prism?”
“Right.”
“Your grandfather, of course. The White and the superviolet … and I think that’s it, actually. It’s been a hard seventeen years.”
“Would there be something about it in the restricted library?” Kip asked.
“What’s this about, Kip?”
“It’s about a knife.”
“A what?”
“A knife. Maybe a holy knife.” Kip paused. “Your face just did a thing.”
“A thing?”
Kip was suddenly suspicious. “Do you know something about this, Quentin?”
They’d reached the restricted library. “Let’s wait until we’re inside,” Quentin said.
Kip manipulated the panels to bring the diffuse yellow luxin glow to the darkened room. Quentin didn’t look any better in full light.
“Kip, I—I swore to tell you anything you asked about.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And I wasn’t … precisely forbidden to share this, but I did know that it wasn’t meant to be shared. If you ask it of me, my oath to you supersedes an implicit understanding, but it makes me very uncomfortable.”
“Out with it,” Kip said.
“So you’re compelling me?”
“Damn right.” It wasn’t even a question.
“One of the High Luxiats let slip to me that they lost something very important some sixteen or seventeen years ago. He said that Andross Guile had taken it, and then claimed it was lost.”
Kip rocked back on two feet of his chair and blew out a heavy breath. “I was right,” he said. “I just woke up and I knew. Huh.”
It was the Blinding Knife—or, as Andross had called it, the Blinder’s Knife. If Kip hadn’t been working and studying and fighting every hour of the day before collapsing into bed and nightmares half the time before repeating all of the rest again, harder, he would have thought of it sooner.
Kip had stabbed Janus Borig’s assassin Vox with that blade, and the man had failed to draft green at the very moment he’d gone toe to toe with Kip. It had saved Kip’s life. Vox had shouted, ‘Atirat! Atirat, come back!’ Atirat, the green goddess.
Kip had stabbed one of the green demigods at the top of the bane, and it had robbed the woman of her color.
Kip had thought that Zymun had stabbed Gavin when they were escaping the Battle of Garriston. And he had.
Thinking again of the fight on the ship, when Kip screened out Grinwoody’s contorted, furious face, and the flailing blows, and Andross Guile’s intense concentration, and Gavin’s self-sacrifice, and his own guilt about his ineptness and that he had gotten his father nearly killed—when Kip screened it all out and thought only about the right things, everything became clear. And the right things were Gavin’s eyes, and the knife. Gavin had looked at Kip and his eyes hadn’t sparkled with refractory elegance of a Prism’s eyes, and then Kip had seen the dagger grow.
On the deck of Gunner’s ship, Kip had seen that dagger pulled from Gavin’s chest. No longer a dagger with a single gleaming blue jewel, it was now a gleaming white-and-black sword with seven burning gems in the blade.
Kip strained to remember how his father’s eyes looked then, but Gavin had been five paces away, in the darkness, shouting with pain, eyes narrowed or averted.
Not Gavin’s eyes, then. Andross Guile’s. Kip had been face-to-face with the man, and he had seen the broken halos in his eyes. And since then, Kip had seen his eyes again. Kip had sunk the dagger into Andross’s shoulder that night, if only for a moment.
The Blinding Knife was what made Prisms. And the knife had taken that away from Gavin.
“What is it? What does it mean?” Quentin asked.
“Well I’m not going to tell you. I know you can’t keep a secret.”
Quentin looked ill.
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“Quent. I’m joking.”
“So what is it?”
Kip shook his head. “I wasn’t joking about not telling you—I’m not telling you. I like you, Quentin, but I barely know you, and I don’t know how much of what we say the luxiats make you share with them. I wouldn’t even hold it against you. It’s very hard to say no to some of these people. I was joking that you can’t keep a secret.”
“Not really joking about that, though,” Quentin said.
“I wasn’t questioning your character.”
“Yes you were.”
“Yes, I was.” Kip shrugged. “Tell me I’m being irrational.”
Quentin opened his mouth, then closed it. “Might be rational, but it doesn’t feel very good.”
That was why Andross Guile had been so focused on the blade. Kip had thought him a monster for caring more about the blade than about his son Gavin. But to Andross it wasn’t a blade, it was the future of all the satrapies. The Blinding Knife was the key to making a new Prism.
And Kip’s mother—his drug-addled, hate-filled wretched harpy of a mother—had stolen it seventeen years ago. And disappeared.
It had meant that Gavin couldn’t be replaced. Most Prisms lasted seven years or fourteen, but despite his clashes with the Spectrum and with his father, Gavin hadn’t been replaced. Because they couldn’t replace him. They had lost the one implement by which the gift of Prismhood was conferred—and, probably, taken. They killed the old Prism with the blade, it took his or her power, and they somehow transferred it to the new one.
It didn’t explain everything—how were there two Prisms during the war?—or how had Dazen faked being a Prism? But that the blade was a well of power—Kip was certain of that. He’d seen the evidence.
Orholam have mercy. What happened if the previous Prism didn’t want to give up his power and die? They were usually young. Who wanted to die?
That’s what the Blackguard is for. To protect the Prism for the satrapies, and if necessary, to protect the satrapies from the Prism.
What kind of spectacle would that make, if some Prism angered the Spectrum enough to get ousted, and they voted to kill her? It would surely be the commander, perhaps one or two others, who would bring the ousted Prism forth and slay her to take her gift. For the good of the satrapies.
No wonder they shrouded it in secrecy. It might even be necessary. All drafters reached their end and had to be put down, so surely Prisms must incur some cost for their ceaseless drafting. Perhaps they went mad.
But Prisms were there to Free others. When Blackguards subdued and killed a screaming, fearful Prism—that would not be a moment to increase the faith of the faithful.
No wonder it was a night of mourning and darkness.
“You don’t look very well,” Quentin said.
“I don’t feel very well.” It also meant that Gavin Guile was no longer a Prism. Even if the Blackguard found him now, he would be useless to them.
Better, then, to find the knife, before the Color Prince does.
And all this, Andross Guile had understood in an instant. He’d acted immediately. Kip didn’t know whether that made him admire the man or hate him.
But Gavin wasn’t dead. Unlike every Prism before him, he’d survived. Because he was unique. Perhaps unique in all history.
“Quentin, you said you’d figured out the shelving scheme in here?”
“Just yesterday, actually. Shouldn’t be a problem now to find out whatever you need about anyone’s family—or even the Black Cards.”
“I’m going to have to trust you, Quentin. Can I do that?”
“That’s an illogical question, isn’t it? For if I were not trustworthy, would I not tell you that I am?”
“Whereas if you were trustworthy, you’d point out the illogic of the question,” Kip said.
Quentin raised a finger to protest, but then lowered it. He looked first puzzled, then vaguely gratified, as if Kip had shown him a particularly useful trick. “Ah. Aha. I see. Thank you. How may I serve?”
“Forget the genealogies, forget looking up the Black Cards. I want to know everything you can find about the Lightbringer.”
Chapter 56
“I looked up to your mother,” Eirene said. “She took me under her wing when my own mother died. She knew I had no women to look up to. As an adult, I can see why else she was doing it, of course. Making peace between Malargos and Guile needn’t take a marriage, if your friendships are strong enough. But then something happened. Do you know what?”
Gavin sat in his cell, looking at his captor through heavy-lidded eyes. This was their third visit over the past months. He’d lost two fingers from those meetings. One more and he wasn’t going to have much grip in his left hand. “Pray tell,” he said. His voice was gravelly. Hadn’t been used much in weeks. She was letting him rot down here.
“It wasn’t a rhetorical question. Do you know what happened? One day, Felia Guile is visiting all the time, and inviting me to visit her, and then … Nothing. She refused to ever even talk to me again. What happened?”
That strange intensity was suddenly back. The worst of it was that Gavin was slowly starting to believe that Eirene Malargos wasn’t insane. She was a normal woman driven to extremes by her circumstances. Circumstances that the Guiles had much to do with.
“I don’t know,” Gavin said, rubbing his eyes, nearly scratching himself with his bandaged hand. “But I’m sure it was all my fault somehow. How’s it going keeping your nephew silent?”
“This was fifteen years ago. Think about it. Why would Felia Guile shut me out, suddenly, then?”
Gavin fixed stupidity on his face and thought about it. It didn’t take him long. First he thought it was the war or his fraud, but that was sixteen years ago now. Fifteen years ago was when Felia had learned that Dervani Malargos had survived the war, after being lost in the wilderness for years, and was making his way home, carrying Gavin’s secret. She’d confessed at her Freeing that she’d tried to buy him off, first, and then sent pirates to intercept his ship, murdering him, or so she thought.
Felia Guile, willing to kill to protect her last living son, but not willing to face the daughter whose father she’d had murdered and smile. That sounded like mother. Hard when she had to be, but soft underneath. Not like Andross Guile, who never would have thought to befriend a Malargos in the first place. But if he had, he would have played it to the hilt.
This world has only two kinds of people: villains and smiling villains.
Gavin said, “Of course I know why. Because I kept my silence about what happened at Sundered Rock from even her. For two years, I told no one, and then she heard a rumor that your father was alive. She asked me about it, because I’d made a passing reference at some point to him being dead. She asked me if I could be mistaken.” He closed his eyes and blew out air, as if it were a painful memory.
“And what did you tell her?” Eirene asked.
You dumb cunt, I’m going to enjoy killing you. You have no idea about me, do you? I’m going to tear your fingers off with chains and make you eat them. “I told her the man was an impostor. He wasn’t the first or the last with a lot of scars and wild tales to come back to a wealthy estate to claim the empty seat at the table.”
“He wasn’t an impostor,” Eirene said.
“Yes. He was.”
“No he wasn’t.”
“And you know this how?” Gavin asked. He had the target now. The man had sent messages to Eirene. Odds were they’d never met, though. He would have sent something to prove he was who he said, but perhaps it was something that could have been a forgery, or a fact that a close associate might have known.
“I’ll ask the questions.”
No need to hold back, then. His story needn’t be perfect, it merely had to cast doubt on the other.
I am the Father of Lies. See my magnificence. “I know because I was there, Lady Eirene. At the end. Dervani was close to Dazen.” True. “He was a good warrior.” True
. “Not the most talented of drafters, but clever with his uses of green luxin.” True, if flattering. Some sugar of what the listener wants to hear helps a bitter lie go down. “He stood when many fell, in my brother’s and my last clash.” First part was true. Second part was not. “He was there, at Sundered Rock. At the end. He lived through the conflagration.” True, he had lived, and he had been at the battle. But he’d only lived because he’d not been near the center at the end. No one had lived through that magical miasma except Dazen and Gavin. “Dervani charged me at the end, trying to save Dazen. He … died heroically.” Pure fabrication.
“You lie!” she said.
Gavin looked away. Looked back at her. Pursed his lips. “He tried. He … charged me, knocked me over. He pointed a pistol at my face, and it misfired. When I rose, I disarmed him, and … he broke. I grabbed a javelin and threw it through his back as he ran away. I didn’t see his body afterward, but I’ve seen a lot of battle. He didn’t live through that. I guarantee it. I then picked up that pistol. Little thing. Decorated with silver sparrows, if I remember right. Must have been a backup pistol. Be the only reason it was still loaded that late in the battle. No bigger than my hand. Odd thing in the middle of a battlefield. There were no damned weapons handy except that javelin and that pistol. I couldn’t bear to draft the least luxin at that moment, and my brother was barely conscious. I took that little pistol, and I put it between my brother’s eyes. It didn’t misfire for me.”
The dead look on my face doesn’t have to be painted on. It’s close enough to truth to bring those memories close to the surface again. The detail about Dervani’s pistol was particularly good. How would Gavin know of a small secondary pistol carried by one of Dazen’s retainers?
“No,” Eirene whispered. “No.”
“My mother didn’t understand. She never saw battle. She thought running away made your father a coward. Truth is, every man only gets so much heroism to spend in a day, and your father had far more than most. He charged two warring gods, and would have made all the difference if he hadn’t been betrayed by a broken flint. When he charged me, he didn’t know I couldn’t draft any more, and after what he’d seen me do it was brave indeed … But more than that, my mother couldn’t allow herself to hate me for killing my brother. I was all she had left. So she blamed your father. She thought that if he hadn’t brought that pistol into my hand her other son would still be alive … I think she knew, rationally, that it wasn’t fair to blame him, and by extension your family. But she did. She knew she could keep herself from acting on the hatred she felt for you—for me, really—but she couldn’t keep a pleasant mask on her face while she did it. She might even have been right. I wonder sometimes, if I would have taken my brother prisoner if there had only been that javelin there, or would I have rammed that through his throat? The pistol made it easier, but … it’s an idle fancy. I was in a killing mood. My mother blamed your father, and probably believed that you would blame her in turn, if you knew the truth of what I had done.”