The Black Prism
Page 105

Liv felt the blood drain out of her. Her father’s words were a sponge, sucking up her illusions, blotting up the thin joy she’d gotten from being in his presence again, in trusting someone to make her decisions for her. Something snapped.
“Father, I can’t do this,” she said. “I can’t kill Tyreans, not for the Chromeria, not just because you say so.”
For a moment, she saw keen sorrow in her father’s eyes. He looked—for the first time she’d ever seen in her whole life—old, haggard. “Liv.” He paused. “At some point, you have to decide not merely what you’re going to believe, but how you’re going to believe. Are you going to believe in people, or in ideas, or in Orholam? With your heart, or with your head? Will you believe what’s in front of you, or in what you think you know? There are some things you think you know that are lies. I can’t tell you what those are, and I’m sorry for that.”
It seemed to Liv that this was his long way of explaining Fealty to One.
“What did you choose, father? Ideas or men?” Liv asked. Though she had just seen him praying, she knew her father wasn’t very religious. That part of him had died with her mother. His prayer had likely been something along the lines of: “Well done, sir. This is a beautiful sunset.” Her father rejected the idea that Orholam actually cared about individual men or women, or nations, for that matter.
She saw him blink. His mouth opened, closed rapidly. Set in a line, eyes pained. “I can’t say,” he said finally.
Can’t say because you never actually made the choice? How can you lecture me, then? But that didn’t make sense. Her father was the best man she knew.
No, that wasn’t it. Her father had lived his life because he believed in certain ideas. That was what had led him to fight against Gavin Guile, to give up everything in that fight. He’d been a man of ideals. Those ideals were what had made him stay away from the Chromeria himself, what had made him oppose his daughter going to the Chromeria. He’d been afraid that she would be corrupted by the Chromeria’s lack of ideals.
A wise fear, as it turned out, Liv thought guiltily. She had been corrupted. She had agreed to spy on Gavin. She was just as bad as everyone else at the Chromeria.
But that didn’t explain why her father was suddenly fighting for the man he should hate. The ideals hadn’t changed. If anything, Gavin being here, fighting Tyreans, should have made her father fight him all the more fiercely.
Orholam, maybe her father had been corrupted too. Maybe he’d been bought. Maybe he’d sold out his ideals just like everyone else. Her heart hurt at the very thought, but why else wouldn’t he tell her the answer to what was an obvious question? Because it would make his hypocrisy undeniable.
The whole swiving Chromeria was corrupt. It defiled everything it touched. Liv had been at the bottom. She’d seen how monochromes were treated; she’d seen how Tyreans were treated. And she’d become part of the power, too. She’d become almost a friend to the Prism himself—and she’d loved it, loved talking with a powerful man, basking in his attention. She’d loved the beautiful dresses and being treated as special and worth attention. And to keep her power, she’d sold herself—so easily, so easily. But that was how things worked at the Chromeria. It had even corrupted her father.
“Liv,” her father said. “Liv, trust me. I know it’s hard, but please.”
“Trust you? When you won’t trust me?” she asked, pained.
“Livy, please. I love you. You know I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you.”
And then it all became clear and it took Liv’s breath away. How could the Prism get her father to betray everything he held dear? Why would her father evade simple questions? Because he loved her. Corvan had been corrupted, but not by money or power or sex. She knew he wouldn’t sell his soul so cheaply. So what did the Prism have over Corvan? He had Liv.
Gavin Guile was using Liv to suborn her father. She didn’t know what exactly the threat and the bribe had been, but it didn’t matter. Liv was being bribed and threatened exactly the same way, but by the Ruthgari. She knew how the game was played, now. She had betrayed her principles because she loved Vena. Her father was betraying his principles because he loved Liv.
Corvan had chosen that his fealty would be to his family only. That meant Liv. And it meant he couldn’t tell her. Because if he told her, she’d ruin it and make his sacrifices worthless.
Liv’s heart broke. She had to clamp down hard on her emotions to keep from bursting into tears. Cruel. So cruel. How could Gavin do such a thing and then smile at her?
Because that’s how the Chromeria is. Vipers and villains, all of them. And Corvan had done everything he could to try to keep Liv out of the Chromeria—everything short of ordering her not to go, because he wasn’t so imperious. It was her fault. Liv swallowed the sudden lump in her throat. Her father had been debased because of her. He deserved better than for her to expose his shame.
She smiled as bravely as she could, pretending to acquiesce. “I understand, father. I do trust you. Just tell me everything when you can. Fair enough?”
“Fair enough,” Corvan said, his relief obvious. “I love you, Livy.”
“I know you do, father.”
And Gavin Guile was going to pay for turning that love against him.
Chapter 64
It’s simple, Kip. You’re not being asked to draft a pulley or a scull. One little green ball. It’s nothing.
He was sitting cross-legged, green spectacles on, white board in his lap, willing something to happen. He’d been doing this for two hours. And what exactly was he doing? Nothing. How were you supposed to even keep your mind on drafting when nothing happened for hours? His stomach was complaining again. It was constant now as the sun approached noon.
No food until I draft? It’s cruel. It’s torture. It’s impossible.
Kip looked up. Gavin had brought them only a few hundred paces outside the Lover’s Gate to the ruins of the old outer walls. When they’d arrived, there were already hundreds of men at work, and since then, many of those who’d been stuck in the line that they’d passed had joined them. They were excavating the roots of the wall down to bedrock, which was at least four paces down in the few places Kip could see. The excavation, though, went faster than he would have thought possible, between the sheer number of men working and the sandy soil, with only thin vegetation on top.
Gavin was poring over drawings with Master Danavis. General Danavis, Kip supposed, and the natural manner with which the general commanded men to do this or that—exactly how he’d told Kip to go do this or that—made Kip wonder why he’d never wondered about Master Danavis before. The man was obviously too big for a little town like Rekton, but Kip had never even thought about him. Children only think about themselves, Kip.
“It’s not good enough,” Gavin was saying. “No, the detail’s fine. The detail’s perfect. But the old wall didn’t stop us, so why rebuild something that’s faulty?”
Rebuild the wall? Hadn’t Gavin said that King Garadul’s army was arriving in four or five days?
“We’ll be lucky if we can get something that’s merely faulty,” General Danavis said. “We’ll be lucky if we can finish anything at all.”