The Black Prism
Page 56

He’d been waiting for several hours when he heard the muffled exchange of angry words from the hall. That was definitely Ironfist, laying into somebody. Kip swallowed hard. He wanted to get up and eavesdrop, but he knew that with his luck as soon as he got to the door it would open.
Whatever the argument had been about, it was over as quickly as it began. The door didn’t open. Kip waited. And waited. He was just starting to get tired, eyes drooping, when the door popped open.
A man of perhaps thirty, wearing red spectacles hung from a red cord around his neck, came in. He was clearly furious. Apparently not the winner of the argument, then. “Darks will stand!” he snarled.
Kip shot to his feet. His chair skittered back, caught its legs, and went crashing to the floor. Kip flinched, smiled weakly in apology, and picked up the chair.
The man continued staring at him, his mouth a tight white line. He had a large hooked nose and the deep olive skin of an Atashian, though he was beardless, but it was the eyes that captured Kip’s attention. The brown eyes were interrupted by a hard circle of royal red in the middle of the iris. Scarlet streaks like sunbeams pierced the rest of the brown irises. Kip put the chair back as he’d found it, looked back to the man, and got nothing, no hint of what he expected.
Kip moved away from the chair. The man stared liquid hatred at him. “Sorry,” Kip mumbled, defensive.
“Darks will not speak! Ignorant Tyrean trash.”
“Oh, kiss my blubbery butt cheeks,” Kip said. Oops.
He squeezed his eyes shut to curse himself, so he didn’t even see the blow coming. The fist cracked across his jaw, and the next thing he knew, he was on the ground, drooling blood.
Kip was slow to anger. Usually. But he popped up to his feet almost as fast as he’d fallen, and the rage was there, everywhere. Everyone he knew was dead. Everything he cared about was gone. He didn’t care if the drafter tore him apart.
But as he bounced to his feet, he saw the light in the drafter’s eyes. Do it! the man’s eyes said. Give me the excuse. I will bounce you out of the Chromeria before you know what hit you.
And like that, Kip’s anger dropped into a more familiar channel, and he had control again. There was a footstep in the hall. “Good,” Kip said. “We’ve got something to build on there. A little clumsy for a kiss, but I understand your eagerness. I’m sure with that ugly face you don’t get much practice. But I said kiss my butt cheeks. Butt cheeks. Butt cheeks, cheeks.” He gestured. “They’re different. Try again, this time with feeling.”
The drafter’s face went from incredulity to rage. He stepped forward and—just as the door opened—buried his fist in Kip’s stomach. The drafter was distracted by the opening door and didn’t put his full weight into the blow, but Kip doubled up as if it were the hardest blow he’d ever taken. He crumpled and coughed blood, retching.
“Magister Galden, what in Orholam’s name is going on here?”
The drafter who’d hit Kip said, “I—I—He defied me!”
“So you struck him? Like the benighted do? Get out. Get out now! I’ll deal with you later.”
Magister Galden turned and stood over Kip. “I’ll remember this, and I’ll find you someday when there’s—”
“So help me Orholam, if you threaten a student in my presence for your own malfeasance, Jens Galden, I will strip you of your colors and put you off Little Jasper this very hour. Test me. Please.”
Magister Galden looked absolutely stricken. Like his life was falling apart without warning.
That embarrassment and pain could be turned to rage, oh so easily.
Sometimes Kip frightened himself. Magister Jens Galden was standing between him and the man who’d come in the door. Kip couldn’t see the man, and that man couldn’t see Kip. All he had to do was give Jens Galden a big, triumphant smile and leave his stomach open. The magister would lose control—Kip knew all about losing control—and kick him. Kip would leave his stomach open, inviting it. Jens would kick him, and lose everything.
And for what, Kip? For having a temper and being an asshole? Kip hesitated. The man had made him furious, but that was too much.
But if Kip didn’t smile, he’d have an enemy. An enemy he could destroy right now.
Wherever that thought was going, he didn’t get time to follow it. The moment passed. Jens Galden snarled and wheeled out of the room. Kip was left on the floor, the inside of his lips still lacerated, bleeding and painful. He’d done what was right; maybe he should have done what was smart.
He picked himself up. The man who’d saved him was just poking his head out the door after Magister Galden. He said, “Arien, I need you to conduct the testing.”
A woman said, “Luxlord, I’m not a tester.”
“And I don’t want to wait while a new one is summoned!” he said sharply. “I’m supposed to meet with the Prism in half an hour. We need to get started now.”
The luxlord came back into the room. He was a tall man, wearing Ilytian hose and doublet though his skin was olive like Jens Galden’s rather than deep black. He was balding; his fringe of dark, wavy hair was streaked with white and brushed out long, halfway down his back. He was somewhere in his fifties, fit, and wearing a heavy black woolen cloak embroidered with gold thread in intricate lattice. His fingers were burdened with wide gold rings and jewels of every color of the spectrum, oddly worn between the knuckles in the middle of his fingers rather than closest to his hand. But Kip was learning to look at people’s eyes—and the odd thing about the luxlord’s eyes was perhaps that they were normal. They were green; there was no foreign color shot through those eyes.
The luxlord smiled. “No,” he said, “I’m not a drafter. The Black usually isn’t. My name is Carver Black. Luxlord Black, for most purposes.” The name didn’t sound Atashian, so maybe he was Ilytian, but Kip guessed the man could just as easily have grown up here or anywhere. Obviously, there was a lot of trade and movement among certain nations. Just not Tyrea.
Kip moved to speak, stopped, pointed to his lips.
“Yes,” the luxlord said. “You can speak. We’ll begin momentarily, as soon as Arien is ready.”
“Um, nice to meet you, Luxlord Black. I’m Kip.”
“And you, Magister?” Luxlord Black asked. “Are you ready?”
“Yes, Luxlord,” she said. She sat at the chair, and the Black stood beside the table. Kip came to stand in front of the table himself.
Magister Arien was short and skinny, nervous around the Black, but happy and cute. She looked up at Kip like she wanted him to succeed. He tried not to let her orange eyes disturb him. “Supplicant,” she said, “I’m going to lay out a series of colored tiles, from one tone to another. You will arrange the tiles in order.” She smiled suddenly. “We’ll start easy.”
With that, she opened a bag in her lap, rummaged through the tiles for a bit, and extracted a black tile and a white tile. These she laid at the edges of the table. Then she laid a dozen tiles in various shades of gray in between. Kip quickly moved them into place from lightest to darkest.
Arien said nothing, simply checked the backs of the tiles, made marks on a parchment, and swept the tiles off the table and back into the bag. Then she laid out brown tiles, from a tumbleweed to sepia. This was harder, but Kip swapped tiles quickly once more.