“Sometimes,” he said. “But I don’t dwell on it.”
She sat up and held his face in her hands. “You’re a man who feels deeply. It’s one of your best qualities. I can’t hold that against you.”
“But you do. A little,” he said.
“A little,” she admitted. “I’m getting over that slowly, too.” She took a deep breath, and Kip saw something flit through her eyes.
“I wasn’t thinking about her last night while we were together,” he said. “Not at all. Not at all.”
She expelled her breath and relief washed over her. “I didn’t want to ask. Thank you.”
And she let him off the hook, just like that. She really was kinder than he deserved.
“So if you’re not making a mail coat, what’s this going to be?” she asked, pointing to the length of lambent yellow luxin chain.
“Well, the chain is easy enough if I’m not hooking every link to three or four others, so I thought I’d do something harder, more subtle.”
“More subtle?” she asked.
“I’m still going to have the chain as the core, but I’m trying to make, like… an articulated rope around it. See, rope spears are awesome because you can throw knots over your opponents’ hands and do grappling and all sorts of things, but the rope itself can obviously be cut by any blade if you’re not careful. A chain spear can’t be cut, but it’s much harder to throw loops and knots and whatnot. So I’m trying to get the best of both worlds.”
“But you never trained with a rope spear, have you?”
“No, no, it’s just something to keep my hands busy.”
“Right,” she said suddenly. “That’s great. Oh, look, it’s the Ghosts. I’d better go prepare.” But she’d stiffened, and she suddenly stood and walked away. And Kip had the distinct feeling he’d loused up again.
“What’d I do?” Kip asked Winsen.
Winsen was squinting against the dawn like someone with a serious hangover. “I am asking myself the same question. But my answer is drink way, way too much wine.”
Chapter 40
As she’d arranged, Karris was still at her dawn prayers when Promachos Andross Guile arrived. She lay prostrate before the open window facing the sun, and felt the faint stirring of the wind as the inner door opened behind her.
“Orholam,” she pleaded aloud, “I could try to hide my ignorance, but I won’t. I’m not going to act in darkness. Let it all stand before the light. Orholam, this is your empire; these are your people. You will have to fight for us, or we shall perish. Will you let your name be defamed upon the earth?”
She stayed there prone for some time, praying. She’d arranged this, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t real, too. She needed to look like a zealot in order to accomplish what needed doing. It was the zealots in the Magisterium who could give her the most trouble if they allied against her. But by disarming them, she could also make unnecessary the calls for luxors. She had two luxors. She had no desire for there to be any more, by her hand or any other.
But as she said the words for Andross Guile’s benefit—let him think her a little crazy, it might make him careful around her—she realized she meant them, too. She wasn’t fighting for herself. She didn’t want power for its own sake; she wanted only to save the Chromeria and the people of the Seven Satrapies. After that was accomplished she would happily step down.
So it was only right that Orholam should take up his own fight. This war was his problem.
Finally, when she felt emptied, when she felt heard, she stood.
She hadn’t realized that Andross Guile had gotten down on his face next to her.
“A prayer as fierce as you are,” Andross said, dusting his hands off.
“My apologies for keeping you waiting,” she said.
“One must know the order of one’s loyalties,” Andross said, as if understanding her perfectly.
“But Orholam knows the heart. Our prayers are surely for our own reflection more than for his instruction, no?”
“A point for the luxiats to debate, no doubt. Tea?” He gestured to her slave to close the doors to the balcony.
It was a breach of etiquette for him to command her slaves, but a small one. He obviously thought she deserved it for keeping him waiting.
“We have much to discuss, but before we get started—” Karris said. She chewed on her lower lip, thinking. “A number of months ago, I was ambushed on Big Jasper. I was beaten, efficiently and dispassionately. It was clearly intended to teach me a lesson. Maybe a man would have taken such a beating as intended. Once he realized he wasn’t being beaten to death, he might simply endure it. Perhaps. But a woman made to feel utterly helpless at the hands of half a dozen men?” She paused. “There are different fears. Lingering fears. Fears that can be crippling, if one doesn’t know her history.”
“Perhaps that was the message instead? A beating is bad, but there are worse things possible?” Andross said innocently, as if just speculating, trying to find the answer with her.
“If so,” she said, “that message was beyond ill considered, and had the opposite effect to what was intended. No one likes to feel helpless; I have a particular loathing for it. I made a foolish oath about what I would do when I found out who had done that to me. It involved flaying and honey and insects and castration. Not a fitting oath for the White to take.”
“But then, you weren’t the White at the time,” he said, still so damnably innocent.
“No indeed. Do you think a White is bound by oaths she made before she was the White?”
“Hmm. Yes?—unless they interfere with her duties as the White. That oath and office supersedes all lower bonds,” Andross said.
“I agree. It becomes tricky, though. You see, with all the intelligence apparatus available to me as the White, I’ve uncovered who ordered my beating.”
“Indeed?” he asked. “A curious allocation of your resources, don’t you think? Still. I wish I had thought to have my own people look into that for you. What punishment may I help you inflict upon this malefactor?”
She took a breath and looked away. “None. I forgive you.”
“Me?! Beg your pardon?” He didn’t even sound that outraged. He wasn’t even trying.
“I’ll seek no vengeance against you. I consider the matter closed.”
Baffle Andross Guile.
“In return for what? Me admitting something I obviously didn’t do?” Andross asked, but his expression had already betrayed him.
“It would be nice—”
“My dear, some people only know the language of blunt objects. I speak to such people in the language they understand. You, however, are not one of those.”
She held up a hand. “I forgive you. Let it not stand between us. Clean slate.”
“Generous of you,” he said sarcastically. “Should I forgive you in turn for seducing my sons and destroying the Seven Satrapies?”
It was so unfair it almost took her breath. Andross Guile had been the one who ordered his younger son Dazen to seduce Karris, so that he wouldn’t have to marry off his elder son to her to seal their families’ alliance. It had worked, too. She and Dazen had fallen in love, but then the real Gavin couldn’t bear to see his younger brother so happy. What had happened next was Andross Guile’s fault more than anyone’s. And he blamed her? A fifteen-year-old girl at the time?
She wanted to scratch his damn eyes out. But she’d learned something in the Archers about fighting those who were bigger and stronger. Things about accounting for the trajectory of the superior force. You never try to stop it. You redirect it instead.
“Yes. Please do forgive me,” she said without a hint of sarcasm.
He stopped, suddenly emotionless. He wasn’t often taken by surprise. “Oh, I don’t think I respected Orea enough,” he said finally.
She wasn’t sure which he meant: that Orea had been brilliant in appointing Karris who was so surprisingly capable, or that it had been nice to deal with Orea and he hadn’t noticed how nice until he had to deal with her inferior.