Chapter 63
Samila Sayeh
Tap, superviolet and blue. Tap, green. Tap, orange. Tap, yellow. Tap, red and sub-red.
I’ve been having these waking dreams. Before the Guiles’ War had come to Ru, my favorite little cousin Meena was given an Ilytian dragon. Everywhere she’d gone, the toy had bobbed along in the air above her, tied to her wrist with a string, never deflating in the two months she had it. Meena had skipped everywhere, singing. Seven years old, and already she’d been training for two years. Her voice had a purity that transfixed soldiers and courtiers alike, but as often as not she’d make up her own nonsense songs, skipping through town.
Meena is dead. She would have been twenty-three years old now. She wanted to go to the Chromeria with me. I told her no. Of course, her mother never would have let her go even if I’d asked. Most likely. I hadn’t tried. Meena died in General Gad Delmarta’s purge, her body tossed down the steps of the Great Pyramid along with those of the rest of our family. Fifty-seven dead at the pyramid alone. Many more within the city, though those deaths were more pedestrian, somehow mattered less—at least to my people.
I wonder if Meena would have become a drafter, a warrior like me. I had no interest in fighting until that butcher killed all my people. I became quite a warrior, though. But evidently not enough of one.
And now my time is done.
With the precision only the best blues can manage, I study the red tent that is my cell.
The battle for Garriston was to have been my last fight. Usef and I had been overwhelmed by the wights and separated from the other veteran drafters who’d volunteered to fight to the death instead of joining the Freeing.
Usef and I had fought on opposite sides of the Prisms’ War, the False Prism’s War, the War of Guiles. One of my best friends from the Chromeria killed Usef’s first wife. And Usef had killed her in turn. Usef and I had ample reason to hate each other. Instead, we’d fallen in love. Two broken warriors tired of war.
We’d chosen to make our last stand together. All the veteran drafters had been broken into pairs, each armed with a pistol and a dagger. All of us were close to breaking the halo, so whoever broke first would have their partner put them out of their madness. And if she was left alive alone, each was responsible for ending her own life.
I wondered if Usef could kill me, when it came to it. Usef was a blue, but he was also a red. It was how he’d gotten his nickname, the Purple Bear. He hated that name with a passion, thought it made him sound ridiculous. But as I pointed out, it was really the only nickname possible. Usef was six and a half feet tall, barrel-chested, burly, and hairy, with a full, wild beard and long, wild dark hair and heavy brows. He was a bear, and a red and blue disjunctive bichrome. His growling in response to people calling him the Purple Bear had only made the name stick.
Usef’s chest exploded when a shell hit the building behind them. Impossibly, he’d stood, looking for me, relieved to find me, relieved that I wasn’t injured. His mouth moved. And then he’d died.
I’d picked up my musket, and his, but instead of turning it on myself, I attacked the bastards. Found the cannon team. Massacred them. And there I broke my halo.
At first I thought I’d been hit with musket fire. I lost consciousness, and fully believed I was dying. I was content with that.
I love you, my Purple Bear.
I woke in a blacked-out wagon, sick as a dim.
Eventually, perhaps weeks later, the wagon had been commandeered for other uses and set off from Garriston. I recovered, and now find myself daily in this tent. I pick up snatches of conversation from the soldiers and peasants who pass too close, but all I can construct is speculative. Obviously, we’re marching at the direction of this Color Prince and covering a good distance daily, despite what seems a vast caravan.
From the excitement on certain days, and the smell of smoke that isn’t woodsmoke, I know we must have cut far enough south that they avoided the Karsos Mountains, and that we have invaded Atash.
Every day, I’m chained and blindfolded carefully before we move, but otherwise I haven’t been accosted. An odd mercy. I’m on the wrong side of forty years old now, but as a warrior, I long ago prepared myself for outrages, should I be captured. Weak men like to humble women, especially great women who make them feel as inferior. I do that constantly.
So what’s the game?
I’m a formidable blue warrior, perhaps even a legend. And I’ve broken the halo.
And there it is. This Color Prince, whoever he is, wants me to join him. He thinks that the longer he lets me sit in my blueness, the more likely I am to go mad and join him.
It’s been a long time since I’ve been underestimated. I don’t like it any more now than I did as a young woman.
My tent isn’t large; I can’t stand up straight without brushing my head on the fabric. My hands are manacled in front of me, and the manacles attach to the iron collar around my neck. My legs are hobbled with chains around my ankles, held apart by an iron pole.
All in all, it gives me reasonable freedom of movement, but little possibility of attacking anyone. Truth is, I’m no Blackguard: I wouldn’t know how to attack someone with my hands even were I free. Well, I know a few punches, but that’s a far different thing than being dangerous. Truth is, without drafting, I’m simply another helpless woman.
But I’m not ready to give up drafting yet.
They haven’t taken my ring—which absolutely must mean that the Color Prince intends to recruit me. They’d taken a long, hard look at the ruby on my finger, another at the broken, pure blue halo in my eyes, and let me keep it.
It takes me two days to form my plan. The tent is red, so the light that comes through it keeps me from panicking like darkness would, but it’s worthless to me for drafting. However, the tent is also made of cloth. Standing on tiptoe, I can pull a bit of the tent that is usually covered by the frame underneath it and gnaw on it. It takes me two days to chew a hole big enough to let in a tiny spotlight of clear, white light—but still small enough to be hidden to the eyes of those who fold up the tent every morning.
The next day, I nearly panick when I find that the hole isn’t there. But there is no punishment, no mention of it. There must be more than one blue drafter imprisoned as I am; our tents had merely been switched during the march.
I begin again. This time, I’m luckier: I keep my own tent. On the twelfth day, the army takes one of its daylong breaks, camping in one spot for some kind of festival I can dimly overhear. No matter: I’m ready, and the tent has been aligned north-south, the most advantageous way with where I’d chewed the hole. I can peek out.
Above the tents is a large white canopy. I’d thought it had merely been clouds overhead, diffusing the blueness. Clouds that might burn off under Orholam’s gaze and give me the blessed blue of pure sky. It is white canvas instead, allowing in light, but blocking my color. If I had spectacles, it wouldn’t matter. I don’t. I’m no Prism; white is as useless to me as no light at all. So this Color Prince isn’t stupid. He must know the tents are vulnerable. I hate him and admire him for it at the same time. But it doesn’t dissuade me.
Silently blessing Usef for giving me the ring, I brace myself and begin slamming the “ruby” against my manacle. After a dozen attempts, I hit it right, and the top half of the jewel shears off, breaking the glue that held it in place. I spend the next twenty minutes searching my tent for the fragment that split off.
After I find it, I put it in my mouth, moistening the glue. The red half of the ring is useless to me, but if I’m interrupted I’ll need to put it back onto my ring as quickly as possible.
The bottom half of the ring is sapphire blue. It’s tiny, but if it were larger, it wouldn’t have escaped my gaolers’ notice. I pull the fabric of the tent to the left of the frame, slowly, carefully. Two hours before noon, the sun is high enough that pure light pours through it in a tiny speck, a spotlight, a pinprick of power. The fact that my hands are chained to my neck becomes another blessing, a gift from the distant Orholam. It allows me to rest my hands and yet keep them in place.
I bathe my ring in that tiny spotlight, and it sends me thready blue power.
It takes hours, hours of barely blinking, of shifting minutely every minute as Orholam’s Eye climbs to the peak of the heavens and then begins its slow descent.
With evening coming, and the certain arrival of the steward who checks on me, I bring the red glass chip to the front of my mouth and slowly reaffix it to the ring. Then I carefully move the blue luxin around beneath my skin, packing it so that it will inhabit my skin only under my clothing. I haven’t soaked up much, despite the hours, but if my steward sees it, all my efforts will have been in vain. So I move the luxin into my back and butt and thighs. They have respected my privacy so far, and if they do so for one more night…
The steward comes. He sniffs once or twice, but seems to think he is allergic to something in “this damned country.” He leaves me the daily ration. Then comes and takes the plate away when I’m finished.
He will come again at curfew. It gives me two hours. Two hours is plenty of time to die.
With trembling hands, I draft a tiny, sharp knife of blue luxin. More like a nail, really. It isn’t as dramatic as slashing my wrists, but cut wrists can be bound, my life saved. A nail driven through my own heart? That is irrevocable, and reasonably quick. Even if my flesh betrays me and I cry out, there will be no saving me.
I should have died in Garriston. I should have died with Usef. I hadn’t told Usef that Gavin is really Dazen. I hadn’t trusted how he’d respond. I regret that now. He should have known for whom he died.
But no. He died for me. He didn’t care about this war. He didn’t care about Orholam. He cared about doing what is right, gods or no gods, Chromeria or no. And he cared about me. I should have told him. I should have trusted him. It was a betrayal.
I’m sorry, Usef. I’ll come see you and apologize in person. In person? In spirit?
Usef didn’t believe in any of that. I hope the afterlife has been a pleasant surprise for my big bear.
I hold the point of the nail over my chest. Gavin Guile—well, Dazen Guile—gave a special dispensation to suicide for those who broke the halo, but it has been drummed into me for all my life that self-murder is as much murder as any other, and it is hard to disregard the thought. No, this isn’t murder. I am a casualty of war.
“Lord of Light, if this be sin, forgive me. If this be sacrilege, forgive your errant daughter.” Taking a deep breath, I brace myself.
But still I don’t press the nail home.
I am a wight. I know it. I felt the halo break. I am doomed. I will go mad. I might already be mad.
But I don’t feel mad. I feel remarkably like… myself.
Maybe that is the sign that I am mad—that I can’t see my own madness. But that doesn’t make sense. Anyone in the world might be mad if thinking you aren’t mad is a valid criterion.
Maybe blue is seducing me. Yes. Maybe it is.
But if so, it is a logician’s seduction, not a lothario’s. If the blue is some separate spirit, whispering sweet sins in my ears, I ought to be hearing them. Instead, I simply have the vague reservation that what I’ve been taught doesn’t align correctly with what I’m experiencing.
I consider a thought that I had found disgusting in the past: remaking myself with blue luxin.
Still sounds disgusting.
How about something more borderline, like making permanent blue caps for my eyes, to function as blue lenses?
That sounds difficult. If you cut off the eyes from air, they don’t do well, that has been proven, but if you leave air holes—
I’m getting caught up in the problems. Just like I always have. So… not changed. Not changed at all.
Maybe it is the drafting that changes you. Maybe once you start drafting blue after breaking the halo, it runs away with you. But I drafted blue just now. Small amounts, sure. But I don’t feel like I’m stark raving anything.
I can kill myself. I see that now. The path is open, and I can take it when it’s time.
But to suicide for no purpose? That makes no sense. How would that honor Orholam, who gave light and life?
If I wait, I might get a chance to kill the Color Prince himself. I might be able to repay this man fully for murdering Usef. Yes, that. That is reasonable.
The hard knot in my chest finally relaxes. I dissolve the nail and draft a very small straw that I poke through the hole in the tent. If the tent smells like blue luxin, they’ll search me, and they’ll find the hole and the ring. I have to cover up even the faint smell of chalky luxin. I draw the blue dust into my mouth and puff it out into the night air. Then I swallow the gritty bits that remain, swishing the watered wine they gave me around my mouth so none remain stuck in my teeth.
I will live. I will fight another day. And I will unravel the mysteries of the halo. I lie down, at peace, and sleep.
As his fingers slowly came off the five points, he realized she didn’t weep for Usef. Hadn’t wept for him since he died. It never occurred to her.