by Brent Weeks
They did.
“If you think you see some malfeasance on the part of any other, bring it to the attention of the luxiats. A new Blackguard and luxiat will be assigned to her or him, and she shall be searched again. Appropriate punishments will follow, by which I mean death for the heretic and the Blackguard who allowed the heresy both.”
He left, and Karris stripped down. Her blushing luxiat was far more embarrassed than she was. Then he saw the bruising. Flopping into the river flat on her side had made the left side of her body look like she’d been dead and lividity had set in. His mouth moved, but he was obviously forbidden to speak. Karris ignored it. Years with the Blackguard had stripped necessary nudity of its shame. Besides, feelings about her body would distract her from the game Andross was playing, and you couldn’t play Andross and have any hope of victory if you didn’t give it your full attention.
The High Luxiat was facing seven Blackguards. Each drew a number from a bowl and moved to one of the disrobing lords or ladies. Trainer Fisk—Watch Captain Fisk now—moved to Karris. He gave her a shrug that barely moved his muscle-bound shoulders. “It was supposed to be women to search the women, and men for the men, but with our numbers so low, they said—Orholam’s beard, what happened to your—”
“Just do it,” Karris said.
He did. Not that there was much searching to do. Her hair took the most time, despite that it would be covered. Then he examined both of her hands, her eyes, her armpits, her back, her butt crack, the soles of her feet. Contraband was obviously the first target, but luxin-packing was the second. Fisk was professional and moved quickly, his face a mask.
Seven more Blackguards watched the searchers, and the luxiats, making sure nothing was passed between any of them. The randomness—assuming it was random—of the choice of guards seemed like it would defeat any plan Andross might try to orchestrate. Karris watched the others.
She saw nothing other than their obvious discomfort. She wondered, would someone being passed a—a what, precisely? A colored lens. A drafter could never go wrong with a lens. It would be small, inconspicuous, and allow lethal action.
But she saw nothing untoward.
Luxiats brought out stacks of robes, and at least two Blackguards searched each robe, bending seams to look for hidden pockets, and shifting the piles randomly. The High Luxiat himself distributed them then, also seemingly at random. The robes weren’t even different sizes, meaning Karris was swimming in hers while Jason Jorvis could barely close the robe.
The High Luxiat came to each of them while they dressed, holding a plain wooden bowl. “This is the order you’ll draw,” he said.
“We draw for the order we draw?” Karris asked, deadpan.
He sighed. “Would it shock you that there have been problems about precedence in the past? One goes first, seven goes last.”
Karris shrugged and drew. Six.
She was secretly glad to be going so late. By then, the choices would be constricted.
“There will be seven stones presented. Listen for Orholam’s voice. He will guide you. You each may bring no more than one stone back. Just to warn you, each has multiple layers of paint on it, and there is no way to tell how deep is the true one. You bring it back and plunge it into the bowl full of solvent. Whoever has the White’s stone will be revealed.”
“What do you mean we bring it back?” Karris asked. “Where are we going?”
“That’s it?” Jason Jorvis asked. “No other rules?”
“You really don’t remember?” Ismene Crassos asked.
“My family weren’t on the Jaspers last time.”
“And you didn’t hear the stories?”
“I’m just trying to get the rules clear,” he said.
All Karris could remember from the time Orea Pullawr was selected as White was a boy named Amestan Niel who’d stayed at a neighboring estate for the summer. She’d barely said two words to him in the whole time. Her best friend, whom Karris had told all about her crush on him, all summer long, had kissed him the night before he left. It had been a devastating betrayal at the time. Last Karris had heard, Amestan Niel was now the third largest exporter of wool in Paria.
Somewhere in the tower, something rumbled. Something big.
They all looked at each other.
“Was that part of … this?” Karris asked. But from the startled look on the High Luxiat’s face, she knew it wasn’t.
“We’ll proceed,” he said.
The luxiats carried away the screens, and the candidates were brought to stand in a circle.
“Brace yourselves,” the High Luxiat told the audience. “There is often a great deal of wind.”
Wind?
At some signal Karris didn’t see, all the windows in the room slid down into slots, even as the windows in Gavin’s room one floor above did. There was a cold wind, but there wasn’t much of it after the initial gust. The morning was still and warm.
Then the floor shifted. Karris instantly dropped her center and stood wide in a fighting stance. It was the floor beneath her and the other candidates. Ismene looked at her and grinned as if to say, Isn’t this exciting?
The five-pace-wide circle on which they stood rose out of the floor. Patterns on the audience chamber floor sank, revealing tracks—and the entire disk the candidates were standing on started sliding toward the open window.
“Am I the only one to whom this seems like a really bad idea?” Karris asked.
“Jump off, then,” Jason Jorvis said.
She was standing right at the edge of the disk, and she had been considering doing just that, until he spoke.
The disk slid out the window and into the air, supported on a vast arm protruding from the Prism’s Tower two stories below. They slid out ten, then twenty paces from the side of the tower, and the great windows of the audience chamber rattled shut.
Oh. Karris understood. Everyone was to see what happened, but no one was to be able to draft to affect the outcome. The nobles were craning their necks to see more clearly, but Karris’s eyes were suddenly drawn up.
Atop the Prism’s Tower, one of the massive crenellations had split off and fallen several stories. That had been the rumbling sound she’d heard. The huge chunk of stone was dangling, suspended by a woven steel cable. Karris had been atop that tower a hundred times. There were no steel cables and massive bolts in the crenellations. And the precision of the break made it look purposeful. She was trying to see more of it—where did that cable go?—when her platform shuddered again. Seven additional smaller circular platforms unfolded from beneath the larger platform. The seven circles sank geared teeth into the edge of the larger platform and began wheeling slowly around them.
Now, on each of the smaller circles sat a narrow pedestal, and on the pedestal, in teak and velvet, a white ball. They were identical. After they circled all of them once, they stopped.
Naftalie Delara had drawn number one. She said, “No point in delaying, I suppose.” She looked heavenward. “Orholam guide me. Orholam bless my choice.” She went to one of the pedestals and took the white ball there.
Out on balconies of each of the seven towers, a Blackguard and a luxiat stood as a team, watching each other, watching the other teams, and watching that no one would come out onto their balconies to interfere with the ceremony.
But whatever cheat Andross had arranged was doubtless already done. He’d arranged who would pick, and somehow told them beforehand which stone was the one. The mechanics of the cheating would never be visible, and in picking sixth, her choice would likely be moot anyway—a choice between two stones of which surely neither was the correct one. Pointless and barren, like so many years of her life.
Eva Golden Briar took longer, but settled on one in short order.
The White had sacrificed Orholam only knew what to get Karris here, and they’d lost. Karris didn’t even know which smiling face hid a liar. Maybe all six did. Andross Guile always had backup plans behind his plans, didn’t he?
/> Karris heard musket fire again and could tell that it came from the top of the Prism’s Tower. There were some few people gawking at the candidates through their windows, but no one was out on the balconies, and none was armed that Karris could see. What the hell was going on? The Blackguards on the other towers looked alarmed, too, but were glued to their stations.
Akensis Azmith had selected his stone while Karris looked. Croesos Ptolos took longer, hesitating a long time before one, praying, and then taking another. Then Ismene Crassos went. She looked at each of the three remaining for a long time. Went back to one three times, and finally picked it up.
That left Karris, and two stones.
Listen to the will of Orholam, huh?
She walked up to the first stone. White, round, small enough to fit comfortably in her palm—for whatever reason, it didn’t feel right.
Now that was odd. She approached the second, studying it closely, and felt a strong urge to take it in her hand immediately.
She crossed her arms. She’d claimed to the White that she wanted Orholam to speak to her in a way that was obvious, but here it was, and it was obvious, and she didn’t like it. If Orholam’s voice was a slap in the face, then of what value were Karris’s ears? It somehow seemed to devalue her intellect, the intellect Orholam himself had given her. She should be a participant in Orholam using her.
Shouldn’t she? Or was she being arrogant?
The fiery green/red drafter she had been not so very long ago would have made a decision and to hell with it. Orholam could do his part or not. If this was his big plan, he’d have to do it. It was all probably pointless anyway, the correct stone already taken.
But Karris wasn’t that girl anymore. She had been foolish. She had done things for which she hated herself still. She’d tried to burn herself to ash, and been too excellent to die. She’d tried to blot out the weakness with borrowed purpose as a Blackguard. And now the ache and the disappointment were as much a part of her as her passion and her wildness. She was not a creature of isolated extremes, that disjunctive bichrome, not anymore; she was a whole cloth in the making, integrated.
Ignoring the waiting nobles at the window and the waiting candidates around the disk, Karris turned toward the morning sun. The perfect fiery orb was losing its red tone as it rose, becoming gold.
Karris spread bare arms, saluting the sun, soaking up its full-spectrum light, accepting it and reveling in it.
We are the stories we tell about ourselves. But when those stories are lies, we are the most surprised of all.
When you ask for bread, Karris, would I give you a stone?
And as she raised her arms, glorying in the light, she heard the sound of something huge giving way and an enormous stone crenellation plunged right in front of her.
With the sound of a whip unfurling, a line attached to that great stone spooled out. The other end strained over a pulley at the top of the Prism’s Tower, and this stone plunged down, and down. It hit the ground and plunged through it as if the ground been designed to let it through, and it fell into the great underground yard, under vast tension. At the same time, the steel cable unspooled out, away from the tower. It sprang free of the water between Big Jasper and Little Jasper; it tore right out of the top of the walls ringing Big Jasper’s east side and then stood, straining, tight, making a straight line from the top of the Chromeria almost to the docks.
‘Would I give you a stone?’ Karris burst out laughing. And then, as she turned—everyone was watching the great cable—she saw a flash of green at the corner of her eye. What? She looked at the horizon, but she knew—she knew—that the green flash only came at sunset. And then it hit her again. She looked toward Big Jasper.
The star towers were spinning their mirrors, lighting up the crowds, festive, playful. One had caught the green tower and reflected it briefly to Karris.
Karris laughed. She shook her head at Orholam—and then watched, stunned, as a young man went flying down the cable from the top of the tower. She thought she recognized him, but he was moving too fast. Cruxer?
She went back to the stones. Her choice mattered. She knew now. Orholam had not led her to a place where her choice was pointless. She looked at each in turn, and again, felt drawn to one and repelled by the other. But she didn’t touch either. Instead, she knelt by the pedestal on which one of them sat. She couldn’t see anything there. She scratched a fingernail across it—and the tiniest shell of solid orange luxin cracked and dissolved.
And just like that, her feeling of desire to pick up this ball was gone. A hex. Magic forbidden with the sentence of death by Orholam’s Glare. But then, interfering with the choice of the White carried the same sentence, so there wasn’t much added deterrent there.
Andross—if it were Andross—had found an immensely talented orange drafter trained in forbidden arts, and had somehow defeated whatever security the luxiats had, and whatever checks were in place to make sure hexes were never placed here.
But that was a problem for another day.
Karris walked to the other ball, scratched her fingernail across the hex there, and waggled a finger toward the window beyond which Andross Guile sat. Naughty, naughty. She picked up the ball.
Some sixth sense warned her—maybe the step of a running man beneath the sound of the wind and the musket fire still ringing out from the roof. Karris pivoted and dodged as Jason Jorvis closed on her. She was only saved because he went for the ball in her hand rather than simply trying to shove her off the tower.
She spun with him, using his momentum against him to send him on toward the edge, but he snagged her weak left arm and pulled her with him.
She broke his grip with a strong move that turned his wrist; he lost his grip but grabbed again, snaring the belt rope of her robe.
He stumbled, one foot flying out over the edge, dropping his own white ball as he twisted back toward safety. The green in Karris hated to be bound. With one hand she whipped her belt rope from its two simple anchors at either side of her waist, while with the other she played out enough rope that Jason was tipping over the edge, totally dependent on the rope for balance.
She heard more steps. The backup plan to the backup plan. Of course. Everyone inside could see this, but there were no rules. Whoever came back with the correct ball was the White, and there would be no prosecution for murder.
A fist went right through where Karris’s head had been a moment before. Another punch—but this one she blocked with the white stone itself. As Akensis stood frozen with the pain in his shattered fist, Karris tossed the stone into the air. With her hand now free, she looped the rope into an open knot, and flipped it over Akensis’s hand as he watched the flying stone. Feeling the rope drape over his hand, he jerked away from her, pulling the knot tight.
Karris dove, dropping the rope, and rolled to her feet. She caught the stone.
Akensis hadn’t taken up the slack immediately, and so Jason Jorvis fell parallel to the platform they were on. But he kept his feet planted on the edge. It was an uncommonly smart move. Most people, falling, will panic and flail. Keeping his body tight, he gave himself a chance.
Akensis pulled against the rope to save himself, screaming as the knot tightened on his wrist. He grabbed the rope with both hands, and stood balanced precariously.
For a moment, Karris thought about bringing them in. They were big men, though, heavy and strong. She was still forbidden to draft; it was the only rule. If she pulled them up, they would work together to kill her. With her left side injured, there was no way she could bring them both in. Would the others intervene? And if so, on whose side? How many would die to save these two traitors?
There is a time for Orholam’s gentle gaze, and a time for his glare.
With a yell that was both dirge for her old life and rage that men would betray Orholam himself and swelling pride that she knew all of her pain and training and even her waywardness was being redeemed, Karris delivered the slippery side kick that was the pinnacle of
Blackguard perfection. With such a kick, a small woman moving masterfully could launch a man into the air. And she did.
Both men flew off the platform, and plunged to their deaths.
Everyone, silent, stared at Karris.
The windows opened and the disk slid back into its place inside. Karris dropped her stone into the clear bowl and didn’t even watch the solvents do their work to reveal the stone’s color beneath. She knew.
Karris turned and addressed a stunned audience of Colors and the promachos and the highest nobles in what remained of the Seven Satrapies.
“We’re at war,” the new White said. “We’re going to start acting like it.”
Chapter 96
By the time Kip and Teia hit the ground, they saw that the squad was safe—and they’d been joined by none other than Tremblefist.
Kip had never felt more glad to see anyone.
“Which dock?” Tremblefist asked.
“Red, berth five.”
“Good news and bad,” Tremblefist said. “There’s probably two hundred Lightguards between here and there. They’ve got a big house they use as a barracks. And they’ve signaled with mirrors that they want you dead. And everyone on both islands knows exactly where you landed.”
“How do they know that?” Ferkudi asked.
“The big steel cable pointing right to us?” Leo said.
“Oh. Right.”
“You know their codes?” Ben-hadad asked.
“Please tell me that’s all the bad news,” Cruxer said.
