“What documents would be worth such a thing?”
“It doesn’t matter now.”
“You’re certain the girl wasn’t lying?”
“I presumed she was lying, of course. But over the course of time, I’ve become sure she wasn’t.”
Gavin was incredulous. “Are you telling me I have a brother out there?”
“When she sent you your note, she sent me one, too.”
“Sent me a note? I never got a note—You can’t mean—Lina?!”
Andross said, “She took the name Katalina Delauria when she fled, apparently. Lina. Kip isn’t your brother’s son. He’s mine.”
Out of all the things that should have leapt to Gavin’s mind, what he thought first was how odd it had been that when his mother had come to Garriston for her Freeing, she hadn’t tried to meet Kip. Hadn’t so much as inquired after her only grandson.
Because she knew. She knew Kip wasn’t her grandson. She knew he was Andross’s bastard, and she had no interest in having that rubbed in her face.
Dear Orholam. Kip.
The funny thing was, it didn’t really matter, did it?
Instead of being the boy’s uncle and pretending to be his father, he was actually his half brother, acting as his father.
If anything, that should make things easier, shouldn’t it? It wouldn’t be, ‘I’m not your father, and by the way, I killed your real father and took his place.’ Now it would be, ‘I’m your half brother.’ Full stop. Kip already knew that the Gavin who was still alive had killed his own brother. Without the weight of being the real Gavin’s own son, Kip would be freed of a son’s burden to avenge his dead father.
But then, it didn’t matter regardless. Gavin was here. He was going to die in this black cell.
“This doesn’t have to happen,” the dead man said.
“Are you going to tell Kip?” Gavin asked.
“Someday. Maybe. It’s a card I’ll keep for the right moment. Maybe if he gets too sanctimonious with me. It’ll be fun to see the look on his face.”
“Why’d you tell me?” Gavin asked.
“I thought you deserved to know. You seem fond of the boy. I wanted you to know I’ll look out for him.”
Gavin could tell that his father was drawing this to a close. Not just for now. Andross wouldn’t be coming back.
“Draft black,” the dead man hissed. “Kill him.”
“Look out for him?” Gavin said. “You’ve tried to kill him twice!”
“The assassin was when I still thought Lina was lying, and I was hoping to hide Kip’s existence from your mother. As for a second time—you’re counting when he attacked me on the ship after the Battle of Ru? He was trying to kill me, if you recall. I was only defending myself, and I was in the grip of red. Speaking of which, where’s the knife now?”
“I haven’t seen it since I jumped…” Gavin started laughing quietly. “You asshole.”
“Pardon?”
“This was your plan all along, wasn’t it? This whole conversation. Give me so many things to think about that I’d slip up. Orholam’s balls, father. If you wanted to know where the knife was, why didn’t you just ask?”
Andross didn’t deny anything. “I have an island, off Melos. Small house there. Excellent though small library, including many forbidden books. Stocked with enough provisions for you to stay there for years. Impossible to approach if you don’t have the chart, though. Terrible reefs. You go into exile there. I’ll even let you take a couple of slaves. But you never leave, and you never try to send a letter out. You’re dead to the world, you understand?”
“And in return, I give you the Blinding Knife?”
“You really have no idea what it is, do you? We can’t make Prisms without it, son. The Seven Satrapies will dissolve. The False Prism’s War will look like a village fair compared to what comes next.”
“You can balance manually, by dictate. It’s been done before. The satrapies can stand.”
“We’re already doing that. It’s failing. We don’t have enough people obeying to make up for those who don’t. What happens when half the satrapies are pagan? When you’re a blue drafter and a firestorm lays low your village because the Chromeria’s suggestions are ignored, will you obey their call next year to stop drafting blue so that those sub-red bastards who killed your family will be safe?”
“Maybe the Chromeria deserves to fall,” Gavin said.
“Oh, most certainly. Our regime is the absolute worst way to rule, except for all the others that have been tried. The Chromeria is an idea, son, and if it’s exposed as a hollow one, civilization falls. Not only to magic, but to the cycle of retribution and the Nine Kings. Drafters reviled by their own families if they happen to be born to draft the wrong color, drafters moving to a satrapy where they can be strong. Kings trying to stop them or killing them to keep them from going. Tyrants. One king after another rising as his people’s magic waxes, rampaging across the kingdoms that have wronged them, massacring drafters of other colors. The terrible magic storms and plagues. The collapse of that king as his color’s magic fails, and then the rise of his neighbors, doing the same, and wreaking vengeance on his people in turn. That’s the alternative. For thousands of years that’s what was. That’s what we stand against.”
“He’s not going to let you out,” the dead man said. “Once you give him what he wants, he’ll kill you.”
It was probably true. Would Andross really let Gavin go? Would he trust that he could smuggle Gavin away from the Chromeria itself? What if the smuggling failed? Would he put himself at risk that way?
If he gave his word, he would. Andross Guile was scrupulous about keeping his promises.
“Then I’m not the one who’s insane,” Gavin said. “All this? You mean the entire fate of the Seven Satrapies rests on one stupid knife?”
“If the White King wins, it’ll be a moot point, but long term, if the satrapies are to survive, yes. We must find it.”
“There’s only one? Can’t you make another? I mean, who made it in the first place?”
“The luxiats have stood in the way of previous attempts to make another. It’s a holy relic. Maybe Lucidonius made it. Maybe Karris Atiriel. Maybe the one we know was a much later replica. But the luxiats’ grandstanding doesn’t matter. There’s a key ingredient in the Blinder’s Knife that is extinct.”
Of course.
“White luxin,” Gavin said. He cursed. The dead man was a liar—or at least wrong.
“Indeed. The stories say that before Vician’s Sin, things were different. Drafters of white luxin were born every generation. A piece like the Blinder’s Knife was a stunning achievement, but not unique. In the intervening centuries, all of the others have been lost.”
“So if you could find even one white drafter or find one piece of white luxin from an earlier era, you could make a new knife? So surely you have such a knife somewhere, just waiting for a bit of white luxin?”
“No,” Andross admitted. “It was tried. There’s a level of unity of will that couldn’t be achieved by any team, not even one trying to save the world. A blinding knife has to be created by one person. He or she has to be a full-spectrum polychrome and a superchromat to handle the intricacies of balancing that kind of magic.”
“You mean a person like me.”
“Now you understand,” Andross said.
“So that’s the real reason you didn’t expose me, didn’t kill me. You kept me alive just so I could make you a new knife!” Of course there had been another reason, and one tied to Andross Guile’s own well-being. “But you never so much as hinted about this.”
“I criticized your brute-force drafting,” Andross said. “I hoped it would inspire you to learn more delicate work.”
“You asshole!”
“I thought we had at least another five years to get things in place.”