The Black Prism
Page 55

He remembered when they’d been children and Dazen had climbed the lemon tree to prove he could do everything his older brother could—and fallen. They thought he’d broken his ankle. Gavin had carried him all the way home. A small thing, for an adult, but Gavin had been reduced to tears by the effort. But he refused to give up. His little brother had never forgotten it.
And now the little brother is going to kill that man in cold blood, without even having the courage to face him as he did it?
Enough. All the world knows your brother is dead. You are all they know. Besides, you need your wits about you. You have to tell the Spectrum you started a war. And then you need to convince them to fight it your way.
I do have a chance. Just as long as the White’s in a good mood.
Unless…
Oh, Gavin Guile, sometimes you do play a deep game, don’t you? He grinned to himself. Seven years, seven goals. One impossible prize. A small failure could serve his greatest success.
Gavin made it back to his room and was putting everything back in place to disguise the door in the closet again when there was a sharp rap at the door. He threw the closet closed as the White opened the door.
“Good to see you, Lord Prism!” she said.
Gavin was painfully aware of the mess in front of him and the burn on the back of his shirt—a burn he had no good way to explain if she saw it. “And you, High Mistress,” he said, smiling. “Just the person I wanted to talk to, if we could meet in a few moments, perhaps in your chambers?”
Orea Pullawr looked at him sharply. “I’m afraid that’s going to have to wait. There’s a class waiting for you. A class you promised me you’d teach.” Her nose twitched. “Did you burn something in here?”
“Um, yes?” Gavin said. It came out as a question. Damn it.
“ ‘Um, yes?’ ”
Gavin cleared his throat. “Yes.”
She waited.
He said nothing more.
“Very well, then. Be like that. I thought you left to take care of that color wight.”
Ah, she was angry because she thought he’d neglected a mission whose abandonment might mean people dying. And she would have been sure, it being a blue, that he would go immediately. And she didn’t know why he’d summoned the Spectrum. The White didn’t like to be left in the dark. “Consider it taken care of,” Gavin said. Which she would interpret to be him blowing her off, but he didn’t know how to not tell her about the skimmer if he was fully honest.
After showing it to the boy and Karris, it was a secret he couldn’t expect to keep much longer, but that would be a big conversation, and he wasn’t ready for it yet.
She lifted her eyebrows, like, You’re going to be dismissive, to me?
A thought hit him. “The class is superviolets?”
The White nodded, suspicious.
“There’s a girl from Tyrea in that class, isn’t there? Alivia?”
“Aliviana Danavis, from Rekton.”
So he’d remembered correctly. A girl from Kip’s town. Perfect.
He hesitated. Kip had said Corvan was there, but…“No relation, surely?”
“Actually, she’s General Danavis’s daughter.”
Gavin let the shock show as dull surprise, like he’d just heard about some minor tragedy on the other side of the world. He’d heard the girl’s surname was Danavis before, but he’d assumed it was some distant relation, if any. Corvan’s own daughter? And why had Corvan been living in the same town as Gavin’s bastard? Coincidence? If so, that was a heavy coincidence.
Regardless, it required Gavin’s attention, right away. “Huh. You’re right, I need to go teach that class. It’s a holy responsibility.” Juggling, always juggling.
“I always distrust you when you get dutiful,” the White said.
He smiled, blandly innocent.
Chapter 37
It seemed to Kip that the entire first floor of the Prism’s Tower was a jungle of benches, desks, signs, queues, and clerks. Obviously, the whole business of the Chromeria passed through this room. There were queues for traders seeking contracts for food, queues for traders delivering contracted food, the same for every other trade good Kip could imagine, queues for redress of grievances caused by Chromeria residents, queues for laborers seeking work, queues for adjudicating fee disputes on Big Jasper. There were even queues for nobles—although there were many more clerks staffing that one than any of the others. The room had a busy hum, but despite the crowd, it was obvious that the Chromeria ran like a well-oiled mill. The people were impatient but not angry, bored but not surly.
Commander Ironfist led Kip to a desk with a single clerk, and no queue at all. “All the rest of this year’s darks were admitted weeks ago.”
“Darks?” Kip asked.
“That’s what people like you are called. Unofficially. Supplicants, officially: you want to be part of the Chromeria, but you aren’t yet. So you’re a dark. Darks, dims, glims, gleams, beams. But you don’t need to remember any of that right now.”
Kip opened his mouth, shut it. Ironfist said nothing until they reached the desk. The clerk, obviously daydreaming, sat bolt upright when he noticed Commander Ironfist.
“Yes, Commander? How may I assist you?”
“I have a supplicant for immediate testing.”
“Immediate as in…”
“Now.”
The clerk’s throat bobbed. “Yes, Commander. Supplicant’s name?”
“Kip. Kip Guile,” Ironfist said.
The clerk grabbed his quill, began writing, got halfway, froze. “Guile as in…?”
“As in, no one needs to hear it from you. Is that a problem?” Ironfist asked.
“No, sir. I’ll just go talk to my superiors. You could go ahead up to the testing room. I’m sure the testers will be along presently.” With a quick bob of his head, the clerk got up and ran to a back office.
“I understand the rest, but what’s a glim?” Kip ask as they climbed the stairs together. He trod on his sagging pant leg, which had fallen lower as he climbed the stairs, and he almost pitched forward on his face. He cleared his throat and hiked up his pants. Life would be so much easier if he had a waist.
“A glimmer,” Ironfist said.
Ah, dark, dim, glimmer, gleam, beam. A light progression, then.
Ironfist said, “Now quiet. This is supposed to be solemn. You go into the room and don’t say anything until your testing is finished. Got it?”
Kip almost said yes, then nodded instead. This might be harder than he had thought. Ironfist gestured to the door, and Kip walked in. Ironfist closed the door behind him.
The room was utterly plain. One wall curved slightly inward, so Kip guessed that was the outer wall of the tower. Other than that irregularity, the room was a square, ten paces wide, all white stone with a single wood table and a single wood chair. The room was lit by a strange white crystal set into the wall, the same kind Kip had seen in all the halls and even, now that he thought of it, in the great room downstairs with all the queues. Kip flopped into the chair. It had been an exhausting week. Had it only been yesterday that he’d been skimming across the waves, that he’d tried to drown, tried to sail? Had it only been a few days since… No, Kip wasn’t going to think about that. Too jagged. Too heavy. He’d be blubbering again if he wasn’t careful.