The Black Prism
Page 57

The test was repeated with blues, greens, yellows, oranges, and reds. When Kip got the reds perfect, Arien pulled out a black bag, checked the backs of the tiles carefully—shielding them from Kip’s eyes with a hand as she did so—and lined up another series of reds, except this group had twice as many tiles, so the gradations of color were much much finer. Scarlets, vermilions, strawberry, raspberry, cerise. Kip lined them up and only had trouble with one. The color at the edge of that tile was slightly darker than the color on its face. Finally he put it in its spot by the color on its face.
She flipped the tiles over, and Kip saw that he’d put tile fourteen between tiles nine and ten. Arien winked at him apologetically, as if he’d done better than she expected, despite failing.
“That’s not right,” Kip said.
“Silence!” Luxlord Black said. “I know you don’t know our ways, supplicant, but you will not speak during the testing.”
“But it’s wrong,” Kip said.
“I’m warning you.”
Kip raised his hands in silent protest.
Luxlord Black sighed. “Magister?” he asked. “Usually protests have to be lodged after the test results are finalized, but apparently nothing is going to go according to custom today. A judgment, please?”
Arien flipped the tiles back over as Kip had had them lined up. She cleared her throat awkwardly. “Luxlord, I’m sorry, I’m not a superchromat. I tried to tell you. I can’t tell the difference myself. The key says that the—”
“The key is being challenged.” Luxlord Black scratched an eye with one finger. “Half of women superchromats, and I choose… Never you mind. Go get a superchromat, Magister.”
“Yes, Luxlord,” she said meekly.
She left and the luxlord turned his green eyes to Kip. “Who are you, really? Why are you testing today? Why the special treatment? Where are you from?”
“I’m from Tyrea, sir. King Garadul wiped out my—”
“King? What’s this about?”
The door opened and Magister Arien came in, followed by a woman who looked like a scarecrow. She was almost as tall as Luxlord Black, lean as a rail, with faded brown skin, bones sticking out at sharp angles, wrinkled, her kinky hair white and short with only a few wisps of something darker clinging to the tips, the natural mahogany of her eyes eclipsed by orange and red in jagged starbursts through her irises, reaching almost to the outer edge.
“Mistress Kerawon Varidos, I’m sorry to disturb you,” Luxlord Black said. He shot a look at Arien.
“She was just in the hall; she asked what I was doing,” Arien said defensively.
“Nearly bowled me over. What’s this challenge?” the old woman asked. The tiles were lying face up the way Kip had left them. “How did the supplicant order them?”
Silence. The mistress looked from Luxlord Black to Magister Arien. “That is the way he ordered them,” Arien said.
“So he’s a freak to his gender. Are we done?”
“The key says it should be like this,” Magister Arien said. She turned the tiles over and pointed to the numbers on the back.
“You come to me to differentiate the finest red chroma and you think I can’t read?” Mistress Varidos asked sharply.
Magister Arien looked horrified. Her mouth opened and shut.
The old scarecrow picked up tile fourteen in her bony claws. She turned it and looked at the edges. “Strip your tester of her position,” she said. “This tile has been left in the sunlight. It’s been bleached. It’s the wrong color. The boy’s a superchromat.” She turned to Kip. “Congratulations, freak.”
“Freak?” Kip said.
“Simple, is he? Too bad.”
“What?” Kip asked. He still hadn’t figured out what everyone’s titles meant, much less what he was supposed to do with all of this.
“Kip, you’re forbidden to speak!” Magister Arien said.
“That’s an injunction against cheating,” Luxlord Black said. “For when hundreds of supplicants are testing in the same room.”
“He just came today,” Magister Arien told Mistress Varidos. “The Prism himself ordered that he be tested immediately. He doesn’t know all the rules.”
“Continue the testing,” the mistress ordered.
Kip and Magister Arien glanced at Luxlord Black. Kip guessed that, technically, the luxlord was the highest-ranking person in the room, but the man gave the tiniest shrug, as if it wasn’t worth fighting over. Go on, he waved.
Magister Arien sat once more, pulled out a set of tongs, and used them to lay out another dozen tiles—except these were all the same deep red. Kip blinked. Magister Arien handed him the tongs. Um, thanks?
Kip reached a hand out for a tile, and then he understood. He could feel the heat radiating off them. He was supposed to see the differences in heat? He stared as if by sheer willpower he could tear the truth out of the tiles.
Time crawled past. Kip started to daydream. He wondered if Liv Danavis was here. Oh, no, he’d have to tell her.
Hi, Liv, great to see you. Your father’s dead.
Fantastic. Kip thought about the flames roaring through his town, about that drafter and his apprentice, throwing fireballs. Jumping over the waterfall, running down the waterfall path in the utter darkness, relaxing his eyes so he could actually see better than focusing directly. Oh, Orholam, I am simple.
“Okay, that’s long enough,” Luxlord Black said.
“No wait! Wait! I just—I just…” Kip stared at the tiles again. Relax, eyes, come on! He let his focus go soft, and abruptly it was clear. Using the tongs, he shuffled each tile into its correct place in moments from the hottest to the merely warm. This was what Master Danavis had been teaching him? The old dyer had never let on that what he was showing Kip wasn’t normal. Unbelievable.
The thought of the dyer left a hollow in Kip’s stomach. Master Danavis had been good to him. Inventing chores he probably could have done faster himself, just to give Kip a little money. And like everyone in Rekton, he’d been slaughtered.
Kip hoped Master Danavis had taken some of the bastards with him.
“Are we almost done?” he asked roughly. He wanted to be alone. He was too tired, his emotions erratic, the reality of what had happened in Rekton trying to rush in and overwhelm him now that he had a second where he wasn’t running from soldiers or bandits or having magic thrown at him.
“No,” the old scarecrow said. “Don’t bother, girl,” she told Arien, who’d only flipped over half of the tiles. “He got them all correct. Show him the superviolets.”
Magister Arien put away the hot tiles with a glance at Luxlord Black, who seemed unfazed. Then she pulled out the last tiles, which were all the same deep violet.
Relax my eyes to see one side of the spectrum, so… Kip tightened his eyes as hard as he could, and the colors leapt apart. Someone had written a letter on each tile. It read: “Nicely done!”
Kip laughed. He slapped them into place.
Magister Arien looked at Mistress Varidos. “Why are you looking at me, you fool girl?” the old woman asked. “I can’t see superviolets. I’m at the other end of the spectrum.”