by Brent Weeks
“Religion saving lives?”
“Clearly only in the short term,” Aliviana said. “Since it got all of them killed.”
“I still don’t understand,” Corvan said. “Are you saying their god intervened with their food?”
“It’s the superviolet. Disease loves darkness. We infuse all our bandages with superviolet. Men recover from wounds that would otherwise suppurate and gangrene. The chirurgeons have said our survival rates for even minor wounds are five and ten times better than those left untreated.”
“Aliviana, that’s brilliant,” Corvan said.
“It wasn’t my discovery,” she said. “I hear that there are even a few chirurgeons using it at the Chromeria now. They don’t understand why it works, but they’ve seen that it does.”
“No, I didn’t mean the discovery—though it was. I mean you, applying it like that, backward, figuring out history with what you know. Orholam’s beard, think of the tragedy of it. The Parians”—he looked around the Parian tavern—“the ancient Parians massacred the very people who could have saved them. Not to mention the countless lives that could have been saved in the centuries since then.”
“And saved countless superviolet drafters from the drudgery of only writing secret messages back and forth to each other.”
“Indeed. So you must have whole corps of superviolet healers.” He drew idly in the wetness ring that had formed around his mead cup.
Distracted, Aliviana almost volunteered more, but stopped herself. She wasn’t going to give him any details about the disposition of the Color Prince’s forces.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I was just thinking out loud. It’s a brilliant leap. Of course you’ve already put it to the best use. I’m sorry. I had no idea that my historical anecdote would intrude on our present … difficulties. How have you been? Did you get my letter—no, never mind, that doesn’t matter.”
The bar slave finally brought their mead, having served Phyros and Corvan’s men first. Stupidity, or a deliberate slight? Liv wondered. Drinking the sweet sharp mead gave her an excuse to gather her wits. She couldn’t see any harm in sharing, and if she shared, surely he would, too. So she began.
The sea had fought them all the way. Liv and her crew had been through horrible storms. They’d frequently needed to stop to make repairs. Then they’d been marooned in a fishing village for a month, stuck in what they’d come to call a crystal storm. Shards of blue luxin the size of a thumb and edged with sharp angles beat down day and night, for a count of twenty-seven, then stopped for some multiple of that long, and then began again. Anyone caught outside in the storm was shredded. The crystals themselves broke apart almost instantly in the sun afterward, leaving gritty blue dust everywhere.
It had seemed like the end of the world must be upon them, but when they finally escaped, they’d found the crystal storm was localized. People twenty leagues away hadn’t even noticed clouds.
They all knew what it had to be, though Liv didn’t tell her father. The blue bane had regrown, somewhere, and no one was in control of it. Or a madman was.
Their galley had been destroyed in the crystal rain, and they’d commandeered a new ship outside Garriston—fine, stole it. When Aliviana had seen a small river running green and wanted to go investigate, the crew had been so frightened, they’d nearly mutinied.
They’d later lost two drafters after the idiots had humiliated some pirates in a tavern fight. The pirates ambushed them in a dark alley, and mortally wounded them.
The lesson Aliviana’s men had taken from that was that when you fight pirates, kill them and all their friends. Against her orders, they’d gone looking for vengeance and sunk the pirates’ ship. With all the pirates aboard.
She’d had to execute another drafter for instigating that and disobeying her. She had qualms about that. One of the men killed in the ambush had been the drafter’s lover. The men were greens. They had a hard time obeying rules.
But after that, her authority hadn’t been questioned again.
It also meant that as they finally made it to Wiwurgh, she had only two drafters and Phyros. The captain and his men had disappeared, not even taking their pay—though they had stolen the galley.
That brought her here, carrying a fortune, looking for a ship and crew crazy enough to search the very mouth of the Everdark Gates for the superviolet seed crystal—or bane. Though of course Liv didn’t tell her father that they were looking for anything. “And that’s it,” she said. She realized as she’d been speaking that it was tremendously comforting to talk to someone who loved her. To connect.
She’d slowed down on drafting superviolet since she’d gotten away from Zymun, and she’d realized what a crutch it had been. Not that she judged those who burned through their halos joyfully—many of the Blood Robes celebrated such, though the Color Prince himself took a more nuanced approach. But for her, it was too much, too fast. She didn’t feel like herself when she was drafting all the time. Maybe she’d gone a little overboard for a while.
Talking to her father again, she saw a new respect in his eyes. He was worried for her. Of course he was. These were dangerous times. But she could tell he was trying hard not to interject advice. It was nice to be reminded of relationships that weren’t all about power. And yet, power interfered even here.
“Now…” she said. “What about you?” As if they were just old friends catching up, not father and daughter. She was an adult now, not his subordinate. She’d done amazing things in her own right, and even if he wasn’t pushing her down, she could feel herself wanting to slip back into that old role. She’d worshipped her father, and he was a great man. That didn’t mean he was infallible. It didn’t mean he was right about the Chromeria, about Gavin Guile, about any of it.
“I’ve … well, you’re going to hear it sooner or later. I took the people of Garriston and a bunch of Tyrean refugees to Seers Island. We established a city there. They’re calling it the City of Gold. Gavin Guile helped us. He drafted tens of thousands of solid yellow luxin bricks that we’ve used to build most everything. He even managed to win us back Tyrea’s old lost seat on the Spectrum.”
“That’s, that’s great news. Who would have known? They’re going to have to start calling him Gavin the Builder, what with Brightwater Wall around Garriston, and now that.”
“He’s gone now. A slave on an oar currently. With worse ahead.”
“What?”
“A bit of intelligence, as a sign of good faith.”
Kind of you, but…”Father, how did you find me?”
“You like your truth unvarnished, right?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve fallen in love. I married a woman on Seers Island.”
“Oh. Uh … congratulations. I’m so happy for you.” Married? Liv felt the twist in her guts. So fast? The detachment that superviolet had taught her helped her speak levelly, as if it were merely interesting.
“She told me I could find you here. Did you know this place doesn’t even have a name? Hard to find by description alone, I assure you.”
“You what? Married?” Easy, Liv. Not like your own love life has been particularly laudable. You have no right to feel betrayed.
“Also, I’m a satrap now.”
“What?!”
“You like it straight. That’s straight.”
“So that was your payoff for turning your cloak?” she asked.
“Was your payoff for turning yours that you be made a goddess?” He tapped a finger firmly on the tabletop.
She wanted to spit at him. “I changed sides because I saw what I’d believed before was wrong.”
“So did I.” He was calm, cool, and hard. So very rational that the superviolet part of her couldn’t help but be impressed.
“Gavin Guile is a monster. You told me so yourself.”
“Gavin Guile was a monster. People change,” Corvan said.
“People don’t change that much!”
“You did. I did.”
“You mean in the Prisms’ War? He wasn’t even at Garriston. But yes, he told his generals to take the city. But you’ve seen battle now. War is a flame. It escapes even the best-laid plans. Your actions were vital in laying Ru prostrate. And now you know all the vileness that can happen to a city laid prostrate.”
It took her breath away. She had been the decisive factor in the Battle of Ru. She had birthed a god. All those sailors dead, all those men enslaved, and all the massacres and rapes and horror within the walls, too. They weren’t her fault, not exactly, but they wouldn’t have happened without her, either.
Did she have an entire city on her conscience? Was that why she had wanted so badly to escape?
In the end, was she different from Gavin Guile only in degree, and not in kind?
“The Color Prince had some good rationale for the Rape of Ru?” Corvan asked, eyes heavy-lidded.
“A punitive action to deter others from belligerence in the future,” she said, but she felt like she was saying it far away.
“Or inspire more belligerence?” Corvan asked.
“It could do that, too,” she admitted. It was only logical.
“So the weak will surrender more quickly than they would have otherwise, while the strongest will fight to the last man and woman, knowing what will happen if they lose,” Corvan said. “He’s taken Raven Rock, since you left. It’s a small city, perhaps twenty thousand souls, perched on the side of a cliff. They refused to surrender and he put them under siege, though they didn’t hold out long against his wights. When he broke down the gates, two hundred young women who heard what he had done in Ru leapt off the cliffs. Some young mothers jumped with their children.”
Liv felt sick. “It can’t be true.”
“I don’t lie to you. Indeed, perhaps we wouldn’t be here if I did.” He tapped his fingers.
“He wouldn’t have hurt them. Ru was a one-time thing. He’s not bloodthirsty.”
Her father said nothing to that, and she heard how it sounded.
“Two hundred? Surely an exaggeration. One or two, perhaps. I know how these stories are.”
“They’re saying a thousand. They’re saying every woman in the city. It was two hundred. The Third Eye saw it herself. She counted them. It was a quick vision, though, she might have been off by ten or fifteen.”
“And you’re certain she’s telling you the truth?” Liv said.
“She has told me hard truths. I trust her entirely.”
“Fealty to One, huh?” Liv said bitterly.
“Indeed. But my ultimate fealty is not to her.”
“Nor is it to me!” Liv had to work hard to keep her voice down. As it was, people were already staring.
“No, it’s not. Fealty to your own family is the smallest possible circle beyond the self. To hold fealty to your own and to call it a high virtue is ludicrous. Even animals protect their own. It is a good, but it is a common good, an easy one. It’s a miser who says he grows rich not for himself, but for his children. His vice is not thus magically made virtue. Fealty to One is the expression of a high virtue. It is what sets Danavises apart from those who take easier roads.”
“It doesn’t set you apart if you take your fealty from one man and give it to his mortal enemy.” It wasn’t fair, but Liv didn’t care about fair. Her father was saying she was supporting a monster. That all she had done, all she had worked for, was worse than nothing.
His fingers flexed hard around his mead. For a long moment, he said nothing, but when he did speak, his voice was quiet. “Even if your father is a hypocrite of the lowest form, Aliviana, your problem isn’t his choices. It’s your own.” He drummed his fingers on the tabletop and then stood. “I have to go. My wife said I may still save her life if I don’t tarry.”
“Wait. What?”
“She’s a Seer. She can tell all sorts of things. But there’s an order of assassins that wears these special cloaks. It makes them invisible to her gift. She’s seen that in many futures she dies, but she can’t see how, which has never happened to her before. So we believe one of these assassins must be after her. Me coming here likely means that the woman I love will die. That’s how much I care for you. I came for you, knowing it might cost me her. Fare well, daughter. Orholam’s light shine upon you.”
“I’m sorry, father, I—I didn’t even congratulate you. A satrap, that’s—”
“No time,” he said, glancing down.
And he left. His people swarmed around him, and they were gone. Without so much as a parting embrace. Liv was stunned. She felt hollowed out, and suddenly more alone than she had ever been. What if she’d done the wrong thing? She’d been hasty. She’d been young. She hadn’t known—she hadn’t known much of anything.
She’d done the best she could. Better than anyone could have expected of her. Isolated and afraid, she’d chosen the best of bad options.
Hadn’t she?
And what the hell was it with her father tonight, fidgeting, acting—
She looked at the tabletop as Phyros came over to sit with her again. She tightened her eyes for an instant. On the tabletop, written in spindly superviolet luxin invisible to any eyes but hers, was a message: “Under the table. Hide it in your left boot. Tell no one.”
Phyros sat and rested his arms on the table, setting down his drink. The motion broke the fragile superviolet luxin and it disappeared. “You good?”
“It was upsetting. But I’m fine.”
“I found us a crew,” he said. “You ready?”
“More than ready.”
Phyros stood, and as his back turned, she slid her hand under the edge of the table and found it. A knife. A knife? When she had four pistols, a sword, and another knife on her belt? This was what her father gave her? Nonetheless, she swept it into her hand, palming it, and followed.
Chapter 69
“They tell me you’re good,” Murder Sharp said. He’d taken residence upstairs in a midtown porcelain shop. The large, round room had lots of windows, and Master Sharp had lots of roses. Blooming roses, at this time of year? That meant he either could draft green, or had access to the services of someone who did. He was watering the roses as Teia came in.
Teia mumbled something under her breath.
“I lied,” Sharp said. “They don’t tell me you’re good.”
She looked at him, a quick flick to his disconcertingly intense gaze, then away. What was his problem? He turned back to his watering. He wasn’t, as it turned out, bald. He’d merely kept his carrot-red hair shaved in a pattern to make it appear he was. Then he’d cut it all off so it could grow in together, without drawing attention to his old disguise. So now it was boyishly short. It made him look young.
“Truth is,” he said, putting down the watering can and turning to study her, “they tell me that you’re better than I am.”
This time when her eyes flicked up, his amber eyes were waiting, and they held her like a fish on a line.
“Do you know why they’d tell me such a thing?” he asked.
She shook her head. Was he even telling the truth?
“They hope I’ll kill you. They hope I’m that vain.” He slid knives home in his belt. “And you know what? I am.”
Her breath was suddenly short. She glanced toward the door. No. If he was going to kill her, it was too far away. And who was to say he’d use a knife? He was watching her eyes, waiting for her to widen her pupils to look into paryl.
The whole room was probably full of paryl. Her heart sank. But she tried to keep her voice light. “Why not just do it themselves?” she asked.
“You don’t know the Old Man. If they kill you out of hand, they’ll have to answer to him. Killing a paryl lightsplitter? He’d be furious. And when he’s furious, people die. On the other hand, if they take in a spy, he’ll be even more furious. He’ll wipe out the whole mission here as traitors or incompetents. But
… if they get me to kill you, it becomes my problem. And the Old Man isn’t likely to kill me. I’m too valuable.”
I didn’t even think of fighting him.
The thought pissed Teia off. She was a Blackguard. Near it, anyway. People feared her. Should, anyway. And she was thinking of running, of letting herself be pulled down from behind? Like what? Like prey. She wasn’t prey. She wasn’t a slave who had to curl into a ball while her mistress beat her, only defending, forbidden to answer rage with rage.
I am not a slave, not even to fear.
“So what’s it going to be?” she asked. “You wouldn’t be telling me if you were really going to kill me out of hand. You’re too careful for that. And I’m too dangerous.”
“Are you?” he asked, bemused.
“I am.” She smiled, and her rage smiled with her. Test me? Please do.
“I’ve half a mind to take your dogteeth for that impudence,” Murder Sharp said. He fingered his necklace, showing her the glittering pearls-that-weren’t-pearls.
“Come get ’em,” Teia said. She told herself that it was because a spy would be obsequious, desperate to do anything to get in. By putting on a mask of rebellion, she’d be above suspicion.
But that wasn’t really true, because fuck him.
“You’re not afraid of me?” he asked, smirking.
“I’m afraid all the time. It’s boring.” She felt the tiny flask of olive oil hanging inside her tunic. She still hadn’t thrown it out. Hadn’t been able to. Why was that?
His strike, when it came, was quick. But she was ready. A small deflection, and his open hand went over her shoulder rather than striking her cheek. She moved in, instantly. As she was small and not strong, everything about Teia’s fighting had to be technically sound. She went for the elbow lock, saw she wasn’t going to get it, stepped on his foot as he spun out of the elbow lock, and pushed hard.
And like a professional, he went with it instead of fighting it. He flipped, and she had no warning before his other leg clipped her in the back of the neck. It launched her into a wall, and she was so stunned, she couldn’t get her hands up in time. She smashed into the wall face first, staggered like a drunk, unable to control her limbs suddenly, and went down. Black rushed, stars winked. She felt her limbs being manipulated, bound, but it was too fast, they didn’t move right. She spasmed.
