The Black Prism
Page 60

Before Liv even opened her eyes, she heard Gavin laughing. Was he insane? She looked up, but his hair wasn’t even ruffled. “Now,” Gavin said. “If that egg had been made of blue luxin, when it shattered we’d all have been cut to pieces. But as you all know in your heads—if not in your hearts or your bodies, apparently—sealed superviolet frays easily. Not that it can’t be useful.” With a speed and facility that stunned Liv, he drafted another egg and filled it with liquid yellow luxin.
“Get up,” he told the class. Ana was crying quietly. She’d scraped her knee when she’d fallen, and it was bleeding. Served her right for wearing such a short skirt. The rest of the girls got up, righted their chairs, and sat. Ana stayed on the ground. “Get up,” Gavin ordered her. “You’re going to be a drafter in a few months. You want to act like a woman? You’re not even ready to act like an adult.”
The lash of his words hit Ana hard, but every girl in the class felt the sting. His statement was as true for Liv as it was for Ana. She looked away from Ana, realizing how easy it would have been to be in her place right now. She felt a momentary twinge of compassion for the girl, then irritation that she was feeling that. Ana had made her life miserable.
Gavin promptly ignored Ana. He flung a strand of superviolet skyward. It was so light, it was caught in the wind and drifted to the west off the tower, but as long as he held the luxin open and supported it and drafted more and more into it, he could send it higher, and he did, rapidly. Then he brought the yellow egg up to the thread of luxin, made loops to hold it on to the line, and then launched it into the air. His right hand snapped down with the recoil of the launch.
The egg zipped along the invisible line, curving out over the tower. At its apex, two hundred feet out, it exploded with a sharp report. Far below, Liv heard people in the yard crying out in wonder and surprise.
“Now, imagine I pointed that at a charging line of horses. It won’t kill anyone directly, but horses don’t like having things explode in their faces any more than prissy girls do.”
Blanching and blushing filled the sudden, pained silence.
“There’s a couple of other special ways you can use superviolet in dual-color drafting. Anyone?” Gavin asked.
Ana lifted her hand uncertainly. He nodded. “For distance control?”
“That’s right. You have to leave your superviolet open, and the longer you make the line, the harder it is to control. It’s like juggling when you can’t see the balls. But…” He held out his hands, a swirl of colors went through his eyes, and he was holding a red ball, a yellow ball, a green ball, a blue ball, and an orange ball. (Liv saw him wince again, as if he had a pulled muscle in his back.) Then he started juggling. The girls—all of them, even Magister Goldthorn—gasped. First because the properties of the balls weren’t right. Orange was slick, oily. Red was sticky. Yellow was liquid. Then, of course, because it was a different kind of impressive to see someone juggle five of anything.
Oh. Liv got it. Every ball had a very thin blue luxin shell, filled with luxin of a different color.
Gavin closed his eyes and kept juggling. Impossible. Was he just showing off? No, he was showing off, but he was also still teaching.
“Ah,” Liv said, pleased.
“Someone got it,” Gavin said, opening his eyes. “With my eyes closed, how am I juggling?”
“You’re the Prism. You can do anything,” someone mumbled.
“Thank you, my butt hasn’t been kissed all day, but no.”
Did he just say that?! “You’re not juggling,” Liv said, recovering first.
Gavin took his hands away from the twirling balls. They kept going in the same intricate pattern. Everyone tightened their eyes and saw the superviolet luxin connected in a track through the balls. The balls were simply following the invisible track. “That’s right. If you give a visible reason, even if it’s astounding, you can hide an invisible phenomenon right under people’s noses. That is the power of superviolet luxin. Tell you what, Aliviana, will you do me a favor?”
“Sure.”
He smiled. “Good. I’ll hold you to that.” He turned. There was a dark stain on the back of his shirt. Was that blood? Should Liv say something? “Magister Goldthorn, I’m sorry, but I have to leave. I still owe you half a class, and I’ll make it up to you. In the meantime, if you’d notify the appropriate officials, Aliviana Danavis is hereby recognized as a superviolet/yellow bichrome. Her instruction will begin immediately. I would be… disappointed if she were outfitted in a style less decent than the average Ruthgari bichrome’s. Costs should be taken from Chromeria finances. If anyone has a problem with that, direct them to me.”
Liv forgot about Gavin’s shirt instantly. She couldn’t believe what she’d just heard. With a few sentences, the Prism had changed everything. Freed her. A bichrome! In a word, she’d gone from a life writing letters for some backwater noble to a life of only Orholam knew what. She thought she was imagining it until she saw the exact same stunned expression on Magister Goldthorn’s face. It was real. The second part of what he’d said took only a moment more to sink in. Liv was to be kept in a style equivalent to a Ruthgari bichrome at the Chromeria’s expense. And the Ruthgari kept their drafters in more lavish apartments than anyone. It was all part of their strategy to attract the best talent.
If Liv played it halfway right, she could escape that hellstone harpy Aglaia Crassos.
Gavin smiled at her, a roguish, boyish joy mixing with something deeper Liv couldn’t read. Then he left.
But watching him jog down the steps out of view, Liv was filled with a vague unease. She’d gotten everything she hoped today, and everything that she hadn’t quite dared to hope. But something more had happened.
The Prism had just bought her. She didn’t know why she was worth it, but it didn’t strike her as a random gesture. She looked at Vena, who shrugged back, eyes wide. Gavin Guile had some purpose in mind for Liv, and she would perform it gladly. How could she not? But what was it?
Chapter 39
The cell’s blue was trying to sink into his brain, make him passionless, logical. No room for hatred, for envy, for fury. The dead man was muttering in his wall.
Dazen stood and walked over to him. The dead man resided in a particularly shiny section of the blue luxin wall. He was, of course, Dazen’s twin.
“The time has come,” the dead man said. “You need to kill yourself.”
The dead man liked to drop a fire in Dazen’s lap and see what he did with it.
Dazen popped his neck left and right. The dead man popped his neck right and left. “What do you mean?” Dazen asked.
“You haven’t been willing to do what you need to do. Unless you can cut deeper than Dazen, you—”
“I am Dazen now!” Dazen snapped.
The man in the wall smiled indulgently. “Not yet, you’re not. You’re still me. You’re still Gavin Guile, the brother who lost. Dazen stole your life, but you haven’t taken his. Not yet. You’re not ready. Talk to me again in another year or two.”
“You’re dead!” Dazen snapped. “You’re the dead man, not me. I am Dazen!”
But his reflection said nothing.