Andross said, “I fell in love with Felia, not some woman who was a mirror of me. Of course I searched her out for her pedigree, for her family’s lineage of drafters, for their intelligence and hers. Those were all prerequisites. I wanted to pass on the best breeding to my sons and daughters that I could. I felt I owed it to you to give you a mother as excellent as your father is, not just some beauty or heiress or noblewoman. But there were other possibilities.
“However, it was your mother I fell in love with, because I realized she had strengths where I had weaknesses. She had not just a mind, but also a heart. She had wisdom, and discernment, but she also had compassion. I did not. Do not.
“Your brother Gavin was more like me than even I am. He was hard and cold and egocentric. Charismatic, too. Better looking than you, a little. But with no sense of others. Like a baby who forgets you exist when you play hide-and-peek and is surprised each time when you reappear, Gavin forgot to care about people unless they were directly in front of him. Everyone around him thought they were the center of his world whilst they were around him, but as soon as they walked away—usually having given him what he wanted—he forgot about their concerns. About his promises to them. I chose Gavin to become the Prism, Dazen, because he was very good at getting what we needed. But I also chose him for another and far more important reason.”
“And what’s that?” Gavin asked bitterly.
“Because usually, after seven years, the Prism dies.”
“What?” Gavin breathed.
“By choosing your brother, I was consigning him to death, so I swore I would spend as much of his last seven years with him as possible. Dazen, I chose him to die because you were my favorite. You always were.”
“You’re lying.” Gavin’s knees weakened, and he crumpled to the floor.
“You had all the strengths of your mother, and most of mine. You were the me I would have chosen to be.”
“You ignored me. You despised me.”
“Your brother was dangerous. He needed me if he was to have any chance of becoming a moral leader or even a decent human being. You, on the other hand, were destined to be upright. You erred, but you were always the son who ended up doing the right thing… had not the madness taken you. Had I understood what black luxin would do to you, I would have done everything differently. Perhaps I would have chosen you to be Prism first, and let you die young and pure, before this madness took you. I did the best I could with what I knew.”
“I hate you,” Gavin said.
“And I loved you, Dazen. And you betrayed me. Hiding your identity from me? For all those years? Every day was a twist of the knife, another ingratitude heaped on the rest. Another day of spitting on my sacrifices. But I was right about you. You’re useless, broken, worthless, and used up now, but for a long time, you were magnificent. You were the greatest Prism this world has known.”
“Strike him down. It’s our last chance,” the dead man begged.
Gavin’s breaths came like little fires into his lungs. The black luxin was right there, burning molten under his fingertips. He could use it now. Surely it was safe to use a little. Even if he lost a little piece of himself, what was losing a few memories against losing his very life?
Andross lifted the lantern and stared at Gavin as he readied himself to go.
“You can still draft black luxin, can’t you?” Andross asked.
“Yes,” Gavin hissed. It was so close.
“Kill him! Kill him!” the dead man screamed.
“And yet you haven’t,” Andross said.
Surely next there would be some gibe about Gavin’s weakness, his lack of will. All of Gavin’s hatred and fear and the long years of resentment against his father raced to his fingertips, but they were outrun by pity. A man who has strength but no love is worse than dead.
Andross Guile shook his head, astounded. Each word clear and slow, he said, “Imprisoned. Dying. Furious. And yet you won’t use the black. Not even against me.”
“This is death. His or yours,” the dead man said.
“You see?” Andross Guile said with a sad little quirk toward a grin. “I was right about you.”
The lantern snicked shut, and Gavin was plunged into the final darkness.
Chapter 66
By the time Tallach and Kip made it to the Blood Robe camp, the battle was virtually over. But battles don’t end at all the way Kip had once imagined. He’d thought battles ended all at once: there’s a winner, the losers run away, and the winners pick the corpses clean of loot.
It wasn’t like that. This battle was over. The day had been won. But there was still a lot of killing and dying to do. There were even heroics.
Kip could see that a Blood Robe soldier with a spinning spear was facing off against a dozen of the Nightbringers, and had them down to a stalemate. The bodies of four of their comrades lay on the ground, two still, and two still writhing.
Kip gestured, and Ben-hadad rode over to take care of it. Ben-hadad lofted the double crossbow he’d designed. It was a fearsome weapon. The bows were made of scrimshawed sharana ru: sea demon bone.
Aside from its scarcity, sea demon bone was hard to work with because will was necessary to its use, and will itself was so variable, so bows made entirely of the stuff were impossibly inaccurate. The bows that did use it, like Winsen’s, used it as one compound of several, and used will only to make it easier to string the bow, not during drawing or firing. At the same time, using a crossbow from horseback was usually stupid because drawing the string required either a crank, or a lot of strength and a stirrup: a crank was slow, and bracing a stirrup against the ground to draw was incompatible with riding.
Ben-hadad had surmounted both difficulties by bringing them together. His will softened the sea demon bone bow while he drew the bolts back. For the next step, he’d designed a pressure gauge. Using his will, he tightened the bow until the gauges turned blue. With this, he could shoot ten to fifteen bolts in a minute, and he thought he would get better with practice.
Winsen had scoffed at such speed, until Ben-hadad pointed the loaded crossbow at him. In a blink, Winsen nocked and drew an arrow, pointing it at Ben-hadad’s forehead.
One didn’t want to get in an insanity fight with Winsen.
But Ben-hadad merely stared at him, unblinking. The moment stretched.
Winsen’s arm started trembling from holding the incredible tension. Then his whole back and shoulders shook from the pressure of holding the arrow drawn. Winsen wasn’t tall, but his bow, of which he was a master, required incredible draw strength.
Then Winsen lowered the bow to let out the tension with a grunt. “Point made,” he said. “I suppose there are times a crossbow could be handy.” Then he grinned at Ben-hadad.
“You can call her Grace,” Ben-hadad said.
“Grace?” Kip had asked. “Why not the Mighty Thruster?”
“You all are never going to let that go, are you?” Ben-hadad said.
“Never,” they said in a chorus.
But this day, Ben-hadad offered Grace to the heroic Blood Robe surrounded by the dead and wounded and impossible odds—offered it by pointing it at his face and speaking first. “Put down the spear, and live a slave,” Ben-hadad said. “Or hold it and die. You have a count of five. Four. Three. Two.”
The man screamed and charged. “Light cannot be—”
Ben-hadad’s heavy bolt punched through his armor and he pitched facedown.
One of the Nightbringers behind him in the circle went white as a sheet and grabbed his groin.
Ben-hadad cursed. “You thought it would be a good idea to stand directly behind a man attacking me? Nine hells, man!”
But the man didn’t crumple as a wounded man would. Instead he pulled at his tunic and trousers, and found a hole. He let out a little uncertain laugh. “Shaved my balls!”
His friends laughed. Ben-hadad just shook his head. “Be happy I didn’t use the fire bolt.”