The black prism l-1

by Brent Weeks

  He didn't look at the wound, didn't watch the blood bloom on Aheyyad's shirt. He held the boy's eyes as the life went out of them. And when it did, Gavin said, "Please forgive me. Please forgive me."

  Gavin had sheathed the dagger, and he was scrubbing his hands on the blood rag he carried-though they were clean. He stopped. "They murder you!" Lord Omnichrome shouted. "They stick a knife in you and watch you die. As you beg, they watch-and they say their god smiles on this! Tell me, is this any way to treat our elders? Under the Chromeria, we barely have elders. They've killed them all. Oh, except for the White. Except for Andross Guile and his wife. The rules don't apply to them, but you and me, and our mothers and our fathers-we should be killed. They say this is Orholam's will. They say it is the Pact. Like something we swore to as ignorant children makes their murder of our parents good and right. What insanity is this? A woman serves the Seven Satrapies for all her life, and then as a reward, she's murdered? Is this freedom? This is what they call 'Freeing' her?"

  Liv caught sight of Kip, but she wasn't pushing toward him anymore.

  "You know it's wrong. I know it's wrong. They know it's wrong. That's why they speak about it in hushed tones and euphemisms. It's not just. It's not a Freeing, it's a murder, let's be clear about that. And then they don't even have the decency to give your body back to your family. They use it in some dark ritual instead. Is that what our fathers served so long to get? Is that just? The Chromeria soils everything it touches. And do you think that all who are 'Freed' have volunteered?"

  Lord Omnichrome laughed derisively. As the Blackguards took Aheyyad's body out of the room, careful not to spill any blood, there was a single knock on the door. One strike, followed by nothing. It took Gavin a moment to remember: Bas the Simple had never really understood knocking.

  "Come in, Bas," Gavin said. Children and idiots. This is who I kill? I bathe in the blood of innocents.

  The man came in. He was actually quite handsome dressed in his finery. Unlike other simpletons Gavin had known, there was no sign of Bas's difference in his facial features.

  "I am sorry for coming out of turn, Lord Prism. I have a question, and I did not wish to interrupt my Freeing to ask it."

  That he was interrupting someone else's Freeing to ask the question didn't occur to him, of course.

  "Please, ask," Gavin said.

  "I heard Evi Grass talking about Brightwater Wall. Evi is a green/yellow bichrome. She's from the Blood Forest, but I don't think she's scary at all. My mother used to tell me that anyone with red hair is just as like to set you on fire as look at you, but Evi isn't like that."

  Gavin knew Evi well. Not classically bright, she was incredibly intuitive but rarely trusted herself. At least she hadn't years ago.

  "Evi once saved me from a charging-"

  "What did she say, Bas?" Gavin asked.

  "She didn't say anything, she just saved me. I guess she might have yelled. I couldn't tell you for sure-"

  "What did Evi say about Brightwater Wall?"

  "I don't like it when you interrupt, Lord Prism. It makes me nervous."

  Gavin stifled his impatience. Pushing harder would make Bas completely incapable of speech.

  Bas saw that Gavin wasn't going to push and then thought for a moment. Gavin could see him find the mental path once more. "Evi said the brightwater was drafted perfectly. She said she didn't remember you being a superchromat. I can't see the color differentiations myself, of course, but I don't think she'd lie, and Gavin Guile wasn't a superchromat. His brother Dazen was. And you're taller than Gavin. He wore boots to make himself look taller, but Dazen was taller by his thirteenth birthday. I remember that day. It was sunny. My grandmother said that Orholam had always smiled on the Guiles. I was wearing my blue coat…"

  Gavin wasn't listening. He felt like the floor had dropped out from under his feet. He'd known this moment was coming. He'd expected it for sixteen years. He'd gone into his first meetings as Gavin expecting anyone, everyone, to point and scream, "Impostor! Counterfeit!" Others had figured it out, but never in a way he couldn't contain. He couldn't discredit Bas. The man was immune to political currents, and everyone knew it. And if asked, Bas would point out a hundred differences between Gavin and Dazen. By the time he was done speaking, the Gavin mask would be destroyed.

  And yet he'd come alone. On this night, of all nights.

  "So my question was… my question was, why are you lying, Dazen? Why are you pretending to be Gavin? Dazen is bad. He kills people. He killed the White Oaks. All of them. They say he went from room to room in their mansion, even killing the servants, and then he burned it all down to hide his crimes. The children were trapped in the basement. They found their little bodies in a pile. They were hugging each other. I went there. I saw them." Bas stopped speaking, evidently consumed by that old image. With his perfect memory, it must have been vivid indeed. "I told those little charred bodies that I would kill Dazen Guile," Bas said.

  Gavin felt an old dread, like the sting of an old master's lash. Bas was a green/blue/superviolet polychrome. Every drafter was changed over time by his colors. Only the wildness of green would make the formerly order-obsessed Bas skip his place in line. But the orderliness of blue was making him crazy to know why, to see how things fit together. "Bas, I'm going to tell you something I've only told one other person in the world. I'm going to answer your question. You deserve it." He lowered his voice. "When I was sixteen years old, I had a… a vision. A waking dream. I was in front of a presence. I fell on my face. I knew he was holy, and I was afraid-"

  "Orholam himself?" Bas asked. He looked doubtful. "My mother told me that people who say they speak for Orholam are usually lying. And Dazen is a liar!" His voice pitched up at the end.

  The last thing Gavin needed was Bas shouting something about Dazen. "Do you want to hear my answer or not?" he asked sharply.

  Bas hesitated. "Yes, but don't you-"

  Gavin stabbed him in the heart.

  Bas's eyes went wide. He grabbed Gavin's arms. Gavin withdrew the dagger.

  Coldly, so coldly, Gavin said, "You gave the full measure, Bas. Your service will not be forgotten. Your failures are forgotten, erased. I give you absolution. I give you freedom."

  By the time he said "absolution," Bas was dead.

  Gavin lowered the man to the floor carefully. He went and knocked at the side door. The Blackguards came in and took the body, and just like that, Gavin got away with murder.

  Chapter 79

  The man was a liar. Kip didn't know exactly what was lie and what was truth, but Lord Omnichrome was King Garadul's right hand. They'd massacred his village. For nothing. If murder was nothing to them, what was a lie?

  But there was truth here, like all the best lies. That really was what the Pact meant. No wonder they talked about it in sidelong conversations, hushed tones. You got old, you broke your halo, you became like a mad dog. They had to put you down. Kip remembered when Corvan's dog had been bitten by a raccoon and later started foaming at the mouth. Corvan, the alcaldesa, and some of the other men loaded muskets and went after it. Corvan himself blew its brains out. He hid his face afterward, and everyone pretended not to see his tears. It had been a year before he talked about that dog, but when he did, it was never of its madness, never of killing his dog. This was the same. No one talked about the Freeing because no one wanted to dishonor the dead: "Kip was a great man, right until he went crazy and started trying to kill his friends. Right until we had to put him down."

  So it was a hard truth. That didn't make it a lie. Indeed, it probably made it more likely that it was true.

  But no one in this crowd wanted to accept that. They wanted someone to blame for the death of their parents. They didn't want to die themselves. They could dress that up in some holy-sounding bullshit, but Kip had seen behind the veil. These people were murderers. Gavin was a good man. A great man, a giant among dwarfs. So he had to do hard things. Great men made the hard choices, so everyone could survive. So
he held people to the Pact, so what? Everyone swore to it. Everyone knew what they were swearing. There was no mystery, no con. They made a deal, and they liked the deal until they had to pay the price.

  These people were cowards, oathbreakers, scum.

  I have got to get out of here.

  He turned and saw the last woman he expected to see here. "Ilytian water clocks claim this is the shortest night of the year," Felia Guile said from the doorway. "But it's always been the longest for you."

  Gavin looked up at her, gray-faced. "I didn't expect you until dawn."

  She smiled. "There was some disturbance with the order. Bas the Simple cut in earlier than he was supposed to. Some withdrew until later." She shrugged.

  Withdrew? So maybe they know. It's all falling apart.

  Maybe it's best this way. I kill my own mother now, and she doesn't have to see it all come crashing down.

  "Son," she said. "Dazen." The word was almost a sigh, a release of pent-up pressure. Truth, spoken aloud after years of lies.

  "Mother." It was good to see her happy, but terrible to see her here. "I can't-I didn't even take you on that flight I promised you."

  "You really can fly?"

  He nodded, his throat tight.

  "My son can fly." Her smile lit her face. "Dazen, I am so proud of you."

  Gavin tried to speak, but failed.

  Her eyes were gentle. "I'll help you," she said. She knelt at the rail, opting for more formality. With his mother, Gavin should have known. "Lord Prism, I have sins to confess. Will you shrive me?"

  Gavin blinked back sudden tears, mastered himself. "Gladly… daughter."

  Her attitude of simple piety helped him play his part. He was not her son, not here and now. He was her spiritual father, a link to Orholam on the holiest day of her life.

  "Lord Prism, I married unwisely and lived fearfully. I let myself be owned by my fear that my husband would put me aside, and didn't speak when I knew I should. I let my sons be pitted against each other, and one is dead because of it. Their father didn't foresee it because he was a fool, but I knew."

  "Mother," Gavin interjected.

  "Daughter," she corrected firmly.

  Gavin paused. Acquiesced. "Daughter, go on."

  "I have spoken cruel words. I have lied a thousand times. I have treated my slaves without regard to their welfare…" She spoke for five minutes, not sparing herself, blunt and forthright, not condensing her answers for her sake, but for Gavin's-he had others to shrive this night. It was surreal.

  Gavin had heard stunning admissions and seen darker sides of people with saintly reputations for the last sixteen years, but hearing her confess beating an innocent slave in her rage minutes after finding Andross in bed with another woman was heartrending. Dislocating. To hear his mother confess was like seeing her naked.

  "And I have killed, thrice. For my son. I lost two boys; I couldn't bear to lose my last," she said. Gavin could hardly believe her. "Once I got a Blackguard who suspected him reassigned to a dangerous post during the Red Cliff Uprising, where I knew he would be killed. Once I directed pirates to the ship Dervani Malargos was taking home after having been lost in the wilds of Tyrea for years. He claimed to have been closest to the conflagration at Sundered Rock and to have seen things no one else had. I tried to buy him off, but he slipped away. And once I hired an assassin during the Thorn Conspiracies, using the cover of someone else's fight to murder someone who was about to blackmail my son."

  Gavin was speechless. In the first year of his masquerade, he'd killed three men to protect his identity and exiled a dozen more. Then two in the seventh year. He hadn't killed anyone in cold blood since-until Bas. He'd known his mother had protected him, but he'd always thought she'd done it by passing on information she learned. His mother had always been fiercely protective, but he'd never imagined how far she would go. How far he would force her to go because he'd supplanted Dazen.

  Dear Orholam, how I wish I believed in you, that you might forgive me for what I've done.

  "Each time," she said, "I told myself I was serving Orholam and the Seven Satrapies, and not just my family. But my conscience has never been clear."

  Shaken, he intoned the traditional words, offering her forgiveness.

  She stood, looking at him intently. "Now, son, there are a few things you should know before I lay my burdens down." She didn't wait for him to say anything, which was good, because he didn't think he was capable of it.

  "You are not the evil son, Dazen. You were errant, but never mean-spirited. You are a true Prism-"

  "Errant? I murdered the White Oaks! I-"

  "Did you?" she interrupted, sharp. Then, softer, "I've seen that poison eating you for sixteen years. And always you've refused to talk. Tell me what happened." His mother really was a Guile, if not by blood, by temperament. She'd wanted to talk about this all along.

  "I can't."

  "If not me, who? If not now, when? Dazen, I'm your mother. Let me give you this."

  His tongue felt like lead, but the images were there before his eyes in an instant. The leering faces of the White Oak brothers, the surge of fear paralyzing him. Gavin licked his lips, but he couldn't force the first words out. He felt the hatred once more, fury at the injustice. Seven on one, more. The lies. "Things were already bad with Gavin. Blue and green awoke for me early, but I was starting to suspect I could do more. I told him. You know, we hadn't been close since he'd been announced Prism-elect, and somehow Sevastian's murder only made things worse. I guess I thought telling him my gifts were growing would bring him back. Like we could be best friends again. But he didn't like it. Not at all." From nowhere, a wash of tears came to Gavin's eyes. He missed his brother so much it tore his soul. "I understand now how threatening it must have been for a young man to lose the one thing that made him special. I didn't, then. The day after I told him I was a polychrome, I heard him urging father to betroth him to Karris. It was the greatest betrayal I could imagine. Her love was the one thing that made me special. It was some time before I saw the symmetry to that.

  "Anyway, I thought Karris was as in love with me as I was with her. When father announced her betrothal to Gavin, we decided to run away together. She must have told someone. Maybe it was an accident. Maybe Gavin seemed a better prize. Karris and I were supposed to meet just outside her family's mansion after midnight. She wasn't there. Her maid told me she was inside. It was a trap, of course. The White Oak brothers knew I'd been trysting with Karris, and they wanted to teach me a lesson. Said I'd dishonored them, turned their sister into a whore."

  They'd grabbed him as soon as he stepped inside. All seven brothers. They'd torn off his cloak and snatched away his spectacles and his sword. He remembered the great, enclosed courtyard, servants peeking out from doors and windows. There was a great bonfire in the courtyard-plenty of light, but none for a blue/green bichrome without spectacles. "They started beating me. They'd been drinking. Several were drafting red. It got out of hand. I thought-still think-that they were going to kill me. I got away once, but the gate I tried was chained shut."

  "They chained the gates?" Felia Guile asked. It had become part of the story that Dazen had done that. Out of cruelty. Karris's father had known better, but had said nothing to combat the lie.

  "They didn't want me to get out or any guards or soldiers from the outside to be able to get in to interfere before they were done." Gavin got quiet. Glanced at his mother. Her face was all tenderness. He looked away.

  "I split light for the first time that night. It felt… wonderful. I'd thought I might be a superviolet to yellow polychrome, but that night, I used red. A lot of red. Maybe I wasn't ready for what red does to you when you're already furious." He remembered the shock on their faces when he started drafting. They knew he was a blue/green. They knew what he was doing was impossible. There was only one Prism each generation. Images of fireballs streaking from his bleeding hands, of Kolos White Oak's skull smoking while he still stood, of the White Oak
guards slaughtered by the dozen, limbs sheared off, blood everywhere. "I killed the brothers and all the White Oak guards. The fires were spreading. The front gate collapsed as I got out. I heard people screaming." He'd gone, staggering, left empty and numb, to find his horse.

  "There was a maid at the side door. The woman who'd lured me into the trap. She looked through the bars and begged me to open it. It was the same door I'd tried when I was trying to get out. It was chained on the inside, but she didn't have the key. I told her to burn, and I left. I didn't realize-I didn't even think that all the other doors were chained too. I just wanted to get away. They couldn't find the keys in time, I guess. With that casual cruelty, I consigned a hundred innocents to death." Like it was better for the guilty to die than for the innocent to live.

  Funny thing, he could weep about not being friends with his brother, but he had nothing inside himself for all those dead innocents. Slaves and servants bound to the White Oaks not by choice. Children. It was just too monstrous.

  And most of the men who'd joined Dazen in the war later hadn't even asked what had happened that night. They'd been happy to fight for a man whom they thought had killed an entire mansion full of people-because it meant he was indestructible. How he despised them.

  His mother came and held him. And now, silently, he wept. Perhaps for those dead. Perhaps only selfishly, because he was losing her.

  "Dazen, it isn't mine to absolve you of what happened that night, or of all that happens in war that you carry still. But I do forgive you of all that I can. You are no monster. You are a true Prism, and I love you." She trembled, tears streaking down her cheeks, but she glowed. She kissed Gavin on the lips, something she hadn't done since he was a boy. "I'm proud of you, Dazen. Proud to be your mother," she said. "Sevastian would be proud of you too."