Chapter 9
Karris Guile, born Karris White Oak, trudged up the steps from the top floor of the Prism’s Tower to the roof. She had come directly from the docks, and had barely so much as thrown her bags onto the floor of her new room—Gavin’s room—when his room slave Marissia had demurely handed Karris the note. It was odd that the White should summon her to the roof in the rain.
Poking her head out of the door, Karris saw the White tucked in many blankets, seated in her wheeled chair, turned to face the wind and the lashing rain. She was enjoying herself. Flanking her were two large young men, Gill and Gavin Greyling. They, like Karris, were Blackguards, sworn to protect and defend the White and the Prism. The difference was that these men had fulfilled their duty. Each was holding up a waxed fabric parasol—an umbrella—over the White to shield her from the rain. But the old woman seemed to be enjoying the way the wind whipped the rain into her face despite the Blackguards’ best efforts.
“Watch Captain,” the brothers said, nodding to her in place of a salute, given that their hands were occupied.
“You may go,” the White told them. “Please wait for me at the stairs. Inside. Karris will guard me now.”
Gill gave Karris his umbrella, and the men retreated. Karris held it with both hands, protecting the White as much as possible. The old woman had a childlike glee on her face, though. Every drafter’s eyes took on the color they used, but the pattern by which it did so was unique to each. Karris had red stars on a green field. Orea Pullawr’s light gray eyes had filled in two arcs: blue on top, and green below. In recent years, as she’d stopped drafting for so long to extend her own life, those colors had become washed out, desaturated. But in the wake of the assassination attempt on her in her own chambers, the blue arc was vibrant once more, and straining at the very edges of her retinas. That, Karris had expected. But the green was vibrant as well, telling Karris that the White had been drafting green, too. She didn’t have much time left.
“I hoped it would bring the influences back into balance again,” the White said, “as green’s wildness so often balanced the ponderous logic of blue for me for so many years. I found after the attack, I was content to sit and watch and wait. It is no longer the time to sit and watch and wait, is it, child?”
“Please don’t leave me,” Karris said. Her stomach convulsed, but she held the sob down. She took a deep breath, surprised. She thought she had more control than that.
“But that is the way of this world, is it not?” the White asked. “We go ahead alone, or we stay behind bereft. All of my dear friends from my youth are dead already. Only my one old foe abides. I almost don’t know what I would do without him.
“Karris, it is in carrying heavier burdens than we think we can bear that we become stronger. Are you ready?”
“You cannot give up and die,” Karris said angrily. “You’re the best there is. No one can replace you.”
Unexpectedly, the White chuckled. “Words every megalomaniac longs to hear. But true only of the truly bad and the monumentally great. I am neither, Karris. I am merely competent, my failures significant and sadly frequent. That I am not bad perhaps makes me better than many a White before me, but the good and the great are two disparate camps that rarely overlap.”
Karris sighed, not certain she could speak of Gavin without dissolving. She looked away, unable to take the compassion in the White’s eyes. “I feel so betrayed.”
“By Gavin? For dying?” The Chromeria didn’t say that, not yet, not with what Gavin had meant to everyone. And they didn’t know that he was dead. But the White spoke of fear and anger, and such things weren’t bound by evidence and the blue virtues.
“The Third Eye. She said if Gavin made it through the battle, that he would live at least until the day before Sun Day. I thought … I thought we’d made it. The battle was over, wasn’t it? I went to bed believing I’d be wakened with kisses.” Instead it was screams, and death. Kip had tried to kill Andross Guile, they said; Gavin had intervened, been wounded accidentally, fell overboard. Then Kip had jumped in after him. The ship hadn’t been able to find Kip or Gavin’s body in the darkness.
“Even if she sees the truth infallibly, which I’m not convinced of, there’s nothing that says the Third Eye must say truthfully what she sees,” the White said. “Perhaps by lying to you, she helped the world avoid a greater tragedy.”
“I believed her,” Karris said simply. She felt so empty. She was trapped. She wanted to hold on to hope because she hadn’t actually seen him die, and because it felt like she was betraying him if she gave up on him. But on the other side, she could see resignation reflected in every face. He was dead, and there was work to do. There was a terrifying power vacuum, and parties eager to fill it, and heretics to fight, and, and, and. She couldn’t grieve until she knew. But she knew she might never know.
“I heard there were portents here, too,” Karris said. “Something about a sea demon fighting a whale?”
“Two weeks ago now. The very day of the battle.” She didn’t expand on it. She knew when Karris was trying to change the subject.
The rain lashed them. It was getting chilly.
“I should take you inside,” Karris said. Avoid it. Put it away. Face it later, alone.
“No.” The White’s one word was a leash. She spoke and expected full obedience. “Let me see your eyes, girl.”
Karris locked gazes with the old woman. Where once she had been proud of her eyes, now she was ashamed. She’d been proud of their beauty, ruby stars blooming on an emerald field, the colors pure and bright and powerful. Now the stars dominated, and her eyes showed her as a woman with only a few years left. A woman who lacked the self-control to make it to forty.
“You’re to stop drafting. Entirely and immediately,” the White said.
It was like being told to stop breathing.
“I know what I’m asking,” the White said. Of course she did: she’d done it herself. But that didn’t make it any easier for Karris. “And I’m not asking. It’s an order.”
“Yes, High Mistress,” Karris said stiffly. She’d thought that the White might give her some sympathy for the death of her husband. Apparently there was no softness to be had here. Karris’s jaw was clamped tight shut, but she kept her face as blank as she could. “If I may be excused,” she said, and turned her back.
“You may not,” the White said sharply.
Karris stopped. She was a Blackguard; she knew all about hard obedience. She kept her back turned, mastering herself.
“You married Gavin Guile, the Prism,” the White said. “You’re hereby relieved of all your duties as a Blackguard. You will return your commission, effective immediately.”
Karris stopped breathing. Her knees weakened. A gust of wind tore the umbrella from her limp fingers and threw it off the roof before she could so much as blink. She stood, accepting the rain’s stinging lash. Cold outside and in. All she was, since she’d put away that fool girl who’d enjoyed boys fighting over her, all she’d made of herself, was a Blackguard. She’d barely been allowed to try to get in to the elite unit, and she’d risen to watch captain, and found that there she was content.
For two days, she’d had everything: the man and the work she loved, a hard purpose and a way to accomplish it, surrounded by those she admired—loved. Sisters and new brothers to replace those who’d died in the fire in her youth. And then she’d lost Gavin, and thought nothing could get worse. And now the White—of all people, the White!—was kicking the last leg out from the stool.
“I’m not sure why this is a shock,” the White said calmly. “A Blackguard, married to a Prism? You had to know that this would be the most likely outcome. Were you so wrapped up in your passions that you didn’t think at all?”
“You said … you said that my case was the exception that proved the rule!” Karris said.
“That was in allowing you to pursue your love and letting you resign honorably, rather than expelling you in disgrace.”
“What’s the difference?!” Karris shouted.
Gill Greyling poked his head out the door, and he and Gavin came outside, but stayed where they were at the White’s gesture. They stood impassively in the rain, but Karris knew that stance, like a leashed hound, ready to attack at a word.
“One is shame, and one is honor, and if you can’t tell the difference, you have greater problems than we can address,” the White said.
“But, but, he’s gone! Dead! It’s a moot point. I … I thought that…” Karris had thought that the rules didn’t apply to Gavin, and that by marrying him, he would stand up for her and the rules would bypass her this once, too. She’d thought perhaps she deserved this slice of happiness, that in the end, Orholam had taken pity on her.
“He’s lost. It’s not the same thing. Not yet, not for my purposes. Some on the Spectrum will want to declare him dead immediately, of course, but we will have other problems in naming a new Prism. But at the least a new Prism-elect must be named by Sun Day. We must find him before then.” She turned back to the rain, enjoying its wetness on her face, seeming to have dismissed Karris already.
“That’s it?” Karris demanded. “Now that I’ve served my purpose, I’m to be cast off?”
“In this life, we are not garments which may be washed and worn again, Karris. We are candles, giving light and heat until we are consumed. You burned more brightly than most. It has a cost. Mediocrities like me? Dim flames burn longer.”
“I’m not finished,” Karris said angrily.
“Perhaps then you are not so delicate a flower as you have believed,” the White said.
She said nothing more, and didn’t look at Karris. Karris thought of storming off, of swearing, of crying. Instead, she stood in the rain, letting it cool her anger, tame her wildness as it soaked her hair, pushing strands in front of her eyes. It took her two tries to speak. “For the longest time, I was just going to let it go, but … Why did you send me—me—to infiltrate Rask Garadul’s army?”
“Back in Tyrea?”
“It wasn’t that long ago,” Karris said. “Rask was in love with me. I had no idea. You sent me into a situation with no warning. I was captured. Could have been killed.”
The White’s eyes weighed Karris. “Have you ever picked up a weapon in the middle of battle? Perhaps after you’d lost your own?”
“A musket once, in Garriston. When I tried to use it, it didn’t fire.”
“Mm. It happens.” The White said no more.
“Me? I was a weapon you picked up? Not knowing how I’d serve? That is … that’s horseshit. You know me! I’m hardly an unknown for you. And hardly a battlefield necessity. You could have sent any of the Blackguard, and any of a hundred other soldiers or slaves. Half of them could have done as well as I.”
“My purpose wasn’t to win a fight; it was to test a weapon.”
“What?” Karris demanded.
“You’ve many strengths, Karris Guile, but you return to the same ones over and over again. You’re afraid to stretch yourself. I’d given you chances to accomplish other tasks that could easily have been done through a bit of flattery or bribery, and you always took the direct path, relying on authority and hierarchy. But then, when I would prepare myself to cut you loose, you’d do something brilliant that showed me you were capable of thinking for yourself. You simply like to have others give the orders. So I put you in a situation where there was a vital task, but no direction on how to accomplish it. I knew you might die, and I’d have carried your death heavily for misjudging you. Instead you passed, and now I’ve gained something even better than me trusting you.”
Karris scowled. “And that is?”
“You trust yourself. A little more, at least.”
Karris shook her head. “Then why take me out of my position? I understand Andross Guile wanting to take away something I love, but you? Why wouldn’t you fight for me?” And there it was again, the hot tears threatening. Her throat tightened.
The White blinked, and her face transformed in a moment with an intensity that breathed fresh youth into her face. “You listen to me, Karris Guile. I will never stop fighting for you!” She sat back, and looked abruptly old once more. “I grow cold in this rain. Take me inside. But before we go, I have a new assignment for you, Karris Guile. One befitting your new status.”
“My new status? As a widow? As a former Blackguard?”
“As a woman with no work and ample time on her hands.”
It was a slap in the face. Karris’s anger flared. “Am I to knit sweaters and darn socks, High Lady?”
“I’ve lost my mobility. It makes it far too easy to track with whom I meet. You, Karris, are to manage my spies.”