The Black Prism

CHAPTER 60





Gavin kept his face carefully neutral. After sixteen years, Corvan Danavis still looked fit, healthy, and sharp as ever. His skin was deeply tanned, no doubt to try to cover the freckles and look as Tyrean as possible, and there was no sign of his famous beaded mustache. His blue eyes were only about half-haloed with red, not much more than when Gavin had last seen him. The lines, both smile lines and deeper worry lines, were new, however. His eyes flicked to Ironfist, and then he looked dismayed.

Consummate actor, Corvan Danavis.

“Commander Ironfist, please relieve this man of his weapons, and reprimand the guards. Carefully, yes?” Ironfist would understand instantly. The Ruthgari guards couldn’t be too harshly treated or it might inspire general fury at the new boss. But if Gavin let such lax—or possibly insolent—duty stand uncorrected, the Ruthgari soldiers wouldn’t respect him. Ironfist would put the fear of Orholam into the guards, without actually making them hate Gavin.

“You wish me to leave you with this traitor, Lord Prism?” Ironfist knew as well as Gavin did that the original guards who’d allowed Corvan into the palace would have beaten a hasty retreat, which meant he’d have to go after them and wouldn’t be close if things got out of hand.

Gavin nodded curtly.

Ironfist lowered the hammer of one pistol and tucked it into his belt without taking his eyes or the other pistol off Corvan. He walked forward and took Corvan’s sword, eyes flicking only briefly to it in appreciation. After putting the sword and Corvan’s bag in a small closet off the main room, he put away his other pistol and frisked Corvan briskly.

Before turning to go, Ironfist looked one more time at Gavin. Are you sure? You know this is a bad idea, right?

Gavin nodded fractionally. Go.

The door closed behind Ironfist. Gavin looked around the room. He hadn’t been here long enough to know if there were peepholes or eavesdropping tunnels behind the walls. Corvan stood, hands folded, waiting patiently. “Come out onto the balcony, General.”

“Please, I’ve not been a general for many years,” Corvan said, but he followed Gavin out. Gavin closed the double doors behind them. The balcony was spacious, with a number of chairs and tables spread out so the governor and his visitors could enjoy the view over the bay. It made Gavin glad he’d flung the governor a long way. Dropping the man off the roof onto this wouldn’t have been quite as humorous—and he hadn’t remembered this balcony protruding quite so far. Lucky, Gavin.

Funny that I always think of it as luck, rather than Providence.

Corvan glanced over the edge. “Bay looks deep enough here,” he said, the corner of his mouth twisting wryly.

Gavin leaned on the balcony’s railing. The sun was just touching the horizon, setting the sea alight, pinks and oranges threaded through thin clouds. Suddenly, the lost years were rolling down his cheeks and he was holding the railing like a drunk, simply to be able to stand. “It cost too much, Corvan.”

Corvan glanced around for spies, checking the docks, looking back into the counsel room, up at the roof. He said, “It’s good to see you too. Now quit that or you’re going to get me started.”

Gavin glanced at him. Corvan wore his quirky grin, but his eyes betrayed him. That grin was him trying to give his face something to do so the depth of his emotion didn’t overwhelm him.

Suddenly, appearances didn’t matter. Gavin embraced his old friend.

“It’s good to see you… Dazen,” Corvan whispered. That broke open the floodgates for both of them. They wept.

The grand deception had been Corvan’s idea from the beginning, sixteen years ago. It had been a throwaway idea when he’d proposed it. Neither had really believed Dazen could beat Gavin. One night, when they’d had a rare respite from the battles and had been sharing one too many skins of wine, Corvan had said, “You could win and simply take Gavin’s place.”

“That’s sort of the point of a Prisms’ War, isn’t it? Last man standing?” Dazen had said. “Last Prism shining?”

Corvan ignored the joke. Dazen was a little further gone than he was. “No, I mean you could be Gavin. You two look almost the same. For years, every time the two of you played scrum, the only way anyone could tell you apart was Gavin’s prismatic eyes. You have those now.”

“Gavin’s a peacock. And I’m taller.”

“Clothes can be changed. And he wears lifts in his shoes to make himself as tall as you are. Which would actually make things easier.”

“He’s got that scar. Which you gave him, I might add,” Dazen had said.

“I could give you one too. Nice symmetry to that, huh?”

Now Dazen was taking it seriously. “I’ve gone a while without a haircut. The scar’s right along the hairline. I could hide the cut while it was healing.”

“If I can remember which side I cut him on,” Corvan said. “Pass me that skin, I’m getting parched.”

A few days had passed, and Dazen had asked Corvan to stay after another council of war. After dismissing everyone from the tent, he’d handed Corvan a piece of paper. On it was written a precise description of Gavin’s scar.

“I was joking,” Corvan said, looking into Dazen’s serious eyes.

“I’m not. I’ve got a chirurgeon waiting outside the tent to stitch me up. If anyone notices, we were sparring and had an accident. I’m embarrassed about my clumsiness, so I asked you not to say anything about it.”

Corvan had said nothing for a long time. “Dazen. Have you thought about what this would mean? You’d have to maintain a charade for years, maybe the rest of your life. Everyone who loves you now would think you dead. Karris—”

“I lost Karris when I killed her backstabbing brothers.”

“Are you prepared to be Gavin in her eyes?” Corvan had asked.

“Corvan, look at our allies,” Dazen had said, tense, lowering his voice. “I’ve practically sworn a port in every satrapy to the Ilytians. I’ve promised the Atashian throne to Farid Farjad. The cultists joined us in hopes that their strength would help us shatter the Chromeria. Once we win, they’ll turn on us. And the Blue-Eyed Demons have been too valuable to us to be content with mercenaries’ wages. I expect Horas Farseer to come to me on the eve of the battle with some outrageous demand: lands, titles, permanent bases. I’ll have to agree. After we win, I might renege with one group, but not with all of them. I don’t know how it got to this, but however things started, we’re the bad guys now.”

“We’re the bad guys. After what they did to Garriston,” Corvan said bitterly.

“In terms of what will happen to the Seven Satrapies if we win? Yes.”

A long silence. “You’ll be discovered eventually,” Corvan said. “You must know that. It can’t last forever.”

“I don’t need to fool them for long. A few months. Enough to consolidate the victory. Even if the Spectrum found out, they wouldn’t expose me until our enemies are crushed. Some morning, I won’t rise from my bed. I can accept that.”

“We’re not without options,” Corvan said. “I mean, if we win. These problems can be handled. We don’t know what will happen after we win. If we can take Gavin’s army relatively intact and get the Chromeria to capitulate quickly, we could counter—”

“Do you see the White capitulating quickly?”

Corvan opened his mouth. Closed it. “No.”

“It’s not a good plan,” Dazen said. “I know that. But it may be the least bad.”

“We may still lose, I suppose,” Corvan said.

“You always do look on the bright side,” Dazen had said.

Now Corvan pushed Gavin back, wiping his own tears away with the backs of his hands. “I’ve missed you, friend.”

“And I you. Now, what the hell are you doing here?” Gavin asked.

The joy at their reunion leached from Corvan’s face. “I came to warn the governor that King Garadul’s marching here. His army will arrive within five days, a week at most. And they captured Karris White Oak.”

Gavin sucked in a breath. Karris captured?

There was nothing to be done about it now, even if it did tear a hole in his stomach and hollow him out. “I knew about King Garadul,” he said. “Not… the other.”

“I figured. Why else would you be here?” Corvan said.

“You think he’ll attack just after Midsummer’s?” Gavin asked.

“The day after,” Corvan said. “Ruthgari will have withdrawn, but the Parian regiments won’t have landed.”

It was what Gavin had guessed. It gave him almost no time. “I can’t believe that Governor Crassos never got word of Garadul’s army.”

“Don’t believe it. He did know,” Corvan said. “The Ruthgari have been withdrawing early. It’s a skeleton crew now, so they make sure they all get out of the city before Garadul attacks. Why should they fight to save the city for the Parians?”

“Bastards,” Gavin grunted.

“And cowards and opportunists.” Corvan shrugged. “What do you intend to do about it?”

“I intend to hold this city.”

“And how do you hope to do that?” Corvan asked.

“Put someone in charge who’s an experienced hand at lost causes,” Gavin said.

A pause, then Corvan raised his hands. “Oh, no. You can’t. It’s impossible. Lord Prism, I’m the enemy general!”

“And since when don’t the conquered sometimes join the victor’s army?” Gavin asked.

“Not as generals. Not right away.”

“It’s been sixteen years. You’re a special case,” Gavin said. “Corvan Danavis, held in high esteem by both sides of the False Prism’s War. The man who ended the war honorably. A man of unimpeachable integrity and intelligence. It has been a long time, why could people not believe that we had put it all behind us?”

“Because I’m the one who put that scar on your temple, and you were none too happy about it. And Gavin’s men killed my wife.”

Gavin’s brow wrinkled. “There is that.”

“You don’t need me,” Corvan said. “You’re no slouch at command, Lord Prism.”

It was true. Gavin had seen good leadership and practiced it enough to know his own abilities. He also knew his weaknesses. “With equal armies and terrain and me without magic, who would win between us, Corvan?”

Corvan shrugged. “If you had a good cadre of support staff, and your field commanders would tell you the truth, I think—”

“Corvan, I’m the Prism. Men don’t tell me the truth. I ask them, can you do this? And they say yes, no matter what. They want to think the righteousness of obeying the Prism himself will magically help them overcome any obstacle. When I ask for objections to my most flawed plans, I get silence. It took months and several disasters to get our armies even halfway past that back in the war. We don’t have that time now.” It took a certain kind of mind to understand exactly how each branch of his forces would react, what kind of combat situations they could handle and what ones they would buckle under. Gavin was good at that. He was good at judging enemy commanders, especially those he’d met, and figuring out what they might do.

But making snap judgments about the disposition of enemy forces from fragmentary scouts’ reports and getting thousands of men in various branches into position was something else entirely. Splitting your forces and getting them to take different paths to an objective, each under its own commander, and having them arrive simultaneously—that was a skill very few men had. Instilling discipline in men to continue maneuvering during the battle itself, for men to disengage right now when they could kill their opponent with just one more thrust, and to get men to communicate so lines could open just a second before a cavalry charge came through the ranks themselves—that was almost impossible. Gavin was good at men and magic. Corvan understood numbers and time and tactics. And sixteen years ago, he’d certainly been Gavin’s master in the art of deception. Together, they’d been unstoppable.

“Of course, Rask did massacre my village.” Corvan said it dispassionately. He wasn’t working through his fury at losing everyone he knew; he was working through the story people would tell: I thought the Prism and General Danavis hated each other! They do, but the Prism needed a general, and Danavis’s village was just butchered by King Garadul, he wants revenge.

It worked. It would seem odd, but not incredible. It had been sixteen years.

“So we’re both using each other,” Gavin said. “I need your tactical genius, you need my army to effect your revenge. I could check in on you openly, making it clear I didn’t quite trust you.”

“I could grumble about slights in front of the men. Nothing to undermine their confidence, but enough to make it clear I wasn’t comfortable with you.”

“It could work.”

“It could,” Corvan said. He turned from looking at the bay. “Deception comes quickly to you these days.”

“Too much practice,” Gavin said, sobered from his initial joy at the chance to work with his friend once more. “You know, if this works, we can be friends again in a year or two. Even in public.”

“Unless I can serve you better as your enemy, Lord Prism.”

“I’ve got enough of those. But fair enough. Now I’ve got a surprise for you.”

“A surprise?” Corvan asked, dubious.

“I can’t be seen giving you something you enjoy, so you’ll have to go downstairs without me. The room directly below this one.” They stepped back toward the counsel room, but Gavin stopped. “How is she?”

Corvan knew who he was talking about and what he really meant. “Karris once seemed like a wilting flower, bowing to her father’s every command. And she became a Blackguard, the White’s left hand. If anyone can make it, she will.”

Gavin took a deep breath and, masks of seriousness and distrust replaced, they stepped into the counsel room. Commander Ironfist had already returned. He stood by the main doors in the loose, casual readiness of a man who spent much of his life guarding, waiting, watching. He was accustomed to inactivity and prepared for violence.

“Commander,” Gavin said. “Corvan Danavis and I find ourselves with a common enemy. He has agreed to help us coordinate Garriston’s defenses. Please notify the men that they will be overseen by General Danavis, effective immediately. The general will answer only to me. General, you can take it from there?”

Corvan looked like a man who’d swallowed vinegary wine and he wasn’t doing a good job of hiding the fact. “Yes, my Lord Prism.”

Gavin waved his hand in dismissal. Abrupt, slightly imperious. Let Commander Ironfist take it as Gavin asserting his dominance. Corvan’s jaw tightened, but he bowed and left.

Go, my friend, and may finding your daughter repay a tiny measure of the misery you’ve endured because of me.