Chapter 32
Is this to be my life now? Meetings and spying and listening and posturing? The backstabbings that Karris had once had to worry about as a Blackguard had been literal ones. Here, you never saw the blood.
Though to be fair, a metaphorical backstabbing here could lead to the actual death of thousands, not just one. Hmm. That thought put a little extra urgency to the verbal fencing, didn’t it? Especially when Karris looked around the Spectrum’s chamber and wasn’t terribly impressed by what she saw.
Colors were supposed to be chosen by their satrap for their excellence and their piety. In truth, as with all positions of great power, it was far more complicated. Family loyalties, outright bribes, and even mistakes by the contending families could have led to a Klytos Blue being selected. And depending on the strength of the satrap or satrapah who appointed the Color, the Color might be a puppet, a representative, a delegate, or a loose cannon.
It hadn’t always been thus. The satraps had once been veritable kings, with the Spectrum having to wait weeks or months to vote on the simplest measures as the Colors waited for their satraps’ commands. Successive Whites and Prisms and Colors had worked together—united in this—to concentrate power here, at the Chromeria, and here, in this very room.
And still it bored Karris. Boredom was dangerous. A Blackguard knew that. Boredom made you sloppy, careless, and dead. You couldn’t get sloppy around Andross Guile. They were waiting for the arrival of a few of the Colors still. Andross had called the meeting. Karris studied the figure across the table.
There was something different about him. Something that had changed over the course of the last weeks. In her time as a Blackguard, Karris’s identification of potential threats had always been intuitive. Her training had taught her to translate those gut feelings—not just seeing a holistic threat, but realizing that the man was sweating, twitchy, not paying attention to what others around him were. Since the Battle of Ru, Karris had felt more and more that Andross Guile was a threat.
She’d dismissed it as hypervigilance, paranoia, hatred. Now that she had married his wayward son, which he had opposed for almost two decades, he had more reason to hate her than ever. There were a thousand reasons to see Andross as a threat. But why did she now see him as the kind of threat that made her Blackguard intuitions tingle?
Andross had always been a threat, always had power close at hand. But that power hadn’t been physical in years. Now … something was different.
He wasn’t slouching anymore. In fact, he’d stopped slouching immediately after Ru, hadn’t he? He seemed stronger, had regained that Guile broadness of shoulders, perhaps simply from holding himself well again, but perhaps it was new musculature—or worse. And he walked faster. Why? He was older. He’d lost his last son. If anything, a normal man would be weakened by such things, would be hastened toward the grave. But not Andross Guile.
Orholam have mercy, he’d gone red wight. Right under their noses. He’d been aggressive and willful for so long that no one had noticed his transition. Red to red wight.
Karris felt short of breath. She knew wights. Had hunted them with Gavin. Some could maintain the mask of sanity for months. They were a walking blasphemy, but they could speak of Orholam. They could hide almost anything—but they couldn’t hide their eyes.
And Andross Guile had been hiding his eyes for years. Blocking the light, blocking temptation, he said. What if, instead, he was blocking everyone else from discovering what he was?
Karris reached to her hip unconsciously, but there was no ataghan there, no bich’hwa on the other side. Her own breath was harsh in her ears as her pulse picked up, as the battle juice began to flow. He would see her, he would take one look at her face, and he would know.
Indeed, these spectacles were different from the black lenses he’d worn before Ru. These were merely dark. He was no longer blind. No longer needed to be, because he wasn’t afraid of the temptations to draft—he’d already given in to them.
And now her rational mind picked up those details she should have seen before—Andross looking straight at people, noticing visual details that he shouldn’t have seen if he’d been blinded by blackened lenses. Mistakes, sloppy mistakes for a man keeping a secret. Perhaps understandable mistakes for a red wight, though. They were not known for their discretion.
Part of Karris was terrified—but part of her rejoiced. If he was a wight, he could be unmasked. Unmasked, he would be Freed immediately, Color or no Color. And then he would be gone. Dear Orholam, she could finally be rid of him.
She knew that a better woman would mourn losing her father-in-law to a violent death, would mourn even more that he had embraced madness and blasphemy rather than taking a dignified exit—but Karris wasn’t that woman. She wanted Andross Guile dead, dead, dead. And if he were shamed and denounced in the process, so much the better.
As Delara Orange came in, reeking of brandy, Karris started scheming how she would unveil Andross, and how she would get a weapon beforehand. Wights who were unmasked were often devastatingly fast in their response, and people facing a wight who’d thought the person was their loved one were often tragically slow. Even Blackguards.
And it was the Blackguards who had the only weapons in this room.
Perhaps, then, magic was the way. She would have to watch Andross’s skin—but the wily old goat was covered from head to toe, even wearing gloves.
Proof, then.
Karris had sworn not to draft, but she wasn’t going to take that obedience—intended to keep her alive for longer—to be an order to die. She wondered if she could fill herself with green luxin without any of these drafters or Blackguards noticing. Out of all the people in the world, these people would be the hardest to hide such a thing from.
And yet there was no other way.
Karris leaned over, putting her elbows on the tabletop, scooting her chair back, in a most unladylike but thoughtful pose. She looked from person to person at the table, but it was all a show. She wasn’t thinking; she was hoping.
The White was wheeled in slowly, and she appeared drawn and defeated. Karris sat up, and as if realizing that her chair was blocking the White’s wheeled chair’s path, she stood, bumping the young Blackguard Gavin Greyling. She scooted her chair in with an apology and moved out of the way, then sat, dropping the dagger she’d lifted into a pocket.
A dagger, against a red wight. Not the odds she’d want, but it was good to have a backup if she weren’t able to draft before he attacked.
“Before we bring this meeting to order,” the White said, “I’m afraid I bear sad tidings. Our friend and colleague Arys Greenveil has passed away in childbirth this afternoon.”
“Orholam have mercy,” Orange said. She put her hand to her mouth.
“No, no, no,” Jia Tolver said. The Sub-red was her cousin.
“What happened?” Andross Guile asked.
The White shook her head. “Her chirurgeons said that she seemed unusually tense, that she knew something was wrong, but she wouldn’t say what. She only cared about her babe, Ben-Oni, she named him, Son of my Agony. After she heard his first cries, she hugged him, looked into the distance, and lost consciousness. She never woke.”
“Damn her,” Delara Orange said with real grief, “I told her she couldn’t keep having children forever.”
“We each serve as best we know,” Andross said quietly. It was meant to be comforting, and for a moment, Karris believed him. She’d forgotten that before he’d become the spider, he’d been a man of charisma almost as great as his son’s.
She looked at him now, wondering. Could a red wight maintain such a fa?ade? Perhaps grief was a passion, too.
The Spectrum joined the White in a prayer for the deceased, and Karris found some peace in the cadences, rising and falling. Dead during childbirth. She remembered her own childbirth. The pain. She’d thought she was dying herself. She had wanted to die, for a time. And then she’d realized she didn’t hate herself, she hated her weakness. She’d come back, remade herself, joined the Blackguard, become brave.
And yet she’d run from that child. Was still running. Still felt sick at the very thought of it. She hadn’t told Gavin about it, when he’d exposed all of his shameful secrets to her. He’d bared his throat to her, and she’d held him and listened, as if she were pure.
Her child—her son, for they’d told her the gender of her child by accident, though she’d begged them not to—was out there now, deep in the woods of Blood Forest, right in the path of an army of wights. It turned her stomach.
You can’t run forever, Karris.
“I’m sorry to intrude on our grief,” Andross Guile said, finally, when the prayers were finished. “But as we all know, these present crises give us little respite, no matter how much we need it.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Andross,” Delara said. “Bring your business.”
Karris grabbed for the dagger in her pocket. A red wight, rudely contradicted? Powder, meet sparks. But …
Andross Guile smiled sadly. “Delara, I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve been rude to you. Unfeeling. You’ve endured much in these last months, and I’ve added to your burdens, not eased them. I beg your forgiveness.” At first, Karris thought he must be mocking her, a snide, stone-cold deadpan sarcasm. But his gestures were placating, his tone sincere.
Someone leaned back in her chair, and when it creaked, the whole room could hear it, loud as a musket shot.
Andross Guile looked down at his lap, as if ashamed. “These last years have been hard for me. I have seen my own power shrink. I stopped drafting to retain my sanity, and it was like shutting off the tap to Orholam’s majesty for me. I have lived in darkness. The physical darkness made me sick, and became moral darkness as well. I have only thought of myself. I mistreated you, my fellow Colors, and I abused those closest to me: my last remaining son and my wife. Now both of those have been taken from me. My wife took the Freeing against my wishes. Slipped away because she feared—rightly—that I wouldn’t give her my permission. When I lost my last son—” He stopped, a hitch in his voice.
He raised his head and turned his bespectacled eyes toward the White. “You and I have jousted for years,” he said sadly. “And for years, I have resisted your wisdom. For years, I have been on the very edge of the halo. I took to wearing gloves, and black spectacles, not just to shield myself from light, but to shield myself from your sight. So you wouldn’t know how close to that fire I stood.” He heaved a sigh, and Karris gripped her dagger tightly, wondering if he would shoot out of his chair and start killing.
“It is time,” Andross said, “for truth.”
Karris widened her stance, putting her feet on either side of her chair so she could jump.
Andross began tugging off his long gloves. “At our last meeting, I am ashamed to confess it, but I was at the break point, and when we prayed for a miracle, I had only a mustard seed of faith that Orholam could do anything for us. For me.” He looked up, intensity writ in every line of his face. “But I am here to tell you today that Orholam is mighty. And he is good. I fell asleep at prayer, believing nothing could save me, ready to suicide when I woke. I slept. I dreamed. In my dream, Orholam told me that old and frail as I am, he is greater than my frailties. He is magnified in my weakness. He is mighty to save. We are earthen vessels, but we can serve for his honor, and he will empower us to serve as he wills.” Andross took off his gloves and tossed them on the table. He threw back his hood. “I prayed, I slept, I dreamed, I heard, and I am remade.” He opened his cloak and dropped it in his chair, and took off his darkened spectacles and dropped them on the table.
Karris had known that Andross Guile was in his mid-sixties—knowing they would die young, drafters usually married early, usually bore children as soon as possible—but in her mind she’d believed he must be ninety years old at least. He was old, he was decrepit, he had one foot in the grave.
But this Andross Guile wasn’t the one she had known. She dropped her stolen dagger from nerveless fingers.
Andross Guile was bedecked in a luxin-red tunic with gold brocade that emphasized the broadness of his shoulders, the power of his straight back. His once-lank hair had been cut short, washed, combed. His skin seemed young, taut where it had been loose and flabby. But none of those were the real wonder. He laid his hands on the table, then turned them over.
Neither back nor palm was stained with red luxin. And as he turned his eyes on each Color in turn, finally coming to Karris, she saw the real miracle: Andross Guile’s halos weren’t even halfway through his irises. He looked like a man with ten more years of drafting in his eyes.
It was impossible. It had to be a hex, a phantasm of orange magic.
“Touch me,” he said. “Look and see. Delara, is this a hex?”
“N-no,” she said. She didn’t appear to be able to say anything else.
Jia Tolver did touch Andross. She touched his hand, his arm, in open wonder. The others needed no such proof.
“Orholam be praised,” Klytos said, and if nothing Andross had done or said for the last few minutes had seemed calculated, Klytos’s invocation of Orholam certainly did. It snapped Karris back to reality. Andross Guile, whatever had happened to him, was still Andross Guile. She shouldn’t lay down her wits simply because the impossible had happened. He was a Guile; the impossible always happened with that damned family.
Of course, I’m a Guile now, too. Dammit.
Andross let the silence stretch until it seemed someone else was about to fill it, and then he said, “Orholam has charged me with a task, and has equipped me for it, and today, I ask the Spectrum to concur with his will. I am to put down this heresy, this blasphemous Color Prince, and to do so, I must be made promachos.”
It was a little rushed, but perhaps Andross Guile didn’t see any benefit in waiting.
“I nominate Andross Guile to be promachos,” Klytos Blue said.
“I second my nomination,” Andross said.
“Point of order!” Delara said. “Do we even have a quorum? Green is gone with no replacement yet named, the Prism is missing, and Arys has not yet been placed at rest.”
“The election of a promachos requires a majority of the currently serving Colors,” Andross said.
Carver Black nodded, confirming the truth of that. Everyone around the table quickly calculated what that meant. Black had no vote. White voted only in ties. With Sub-red dead and no replacement yet named for her, and Gavin missing along with the vote he carried as the representative for the exiled Tyreans who’d moved to Seers Island, a majority meant he only needed three of five.
He continued, “It’s a high hurdle, to be sure, but Orholam has given us a way to move forward despite that. You all have known me for many years, and you’ve known Orholam and how he works. You all know the crisis before us. I see no need for further deliberations. I call the question.”
Klytos voted yes, of course. Andross voted yes, saying that abstaining would be a false modesty. That left Jia Tolver Yellow and Delara Orange. He only needed one of them. If he lost both of them, the White would vote.
“I vote nay,” Delara Orange said, folding her arms. “You have played me the fool for the last—”
“This is not the time for speeches,” Andross snapped. “It’s time for votes. Jia?”
Jia scowled, her unibrow squirming as her face went through a dozen expressions. “I cannot stand in the way of Orholam. Our personal differences aside, this seems to me to be a very real miracle. I vote aye.”
A breath went out around the table.
“The ayes carry it,” the White said. Her tone and face both were inscrutable. “We will administer the oaths of office tomorrow in the great hall. Acceptable, promachos-elect?” she asked.
“More than acceptable, High Lady.” Andross Guile smiled. He didn’t even try to hide his triumph.
They were adjourned. Karris stood and walked out into the hall. She handed the dagger back to a confused Gavin Greyling as the young Blackguard stepped into the hall, but her chastising quip caught in her throat as she saw a familiar figure waddling down the hall.
“Caelia?” she asked. The little woman was not only a keen mind, she was also a drafter. Caelia had been the Third Eye’s right hand, and had become indispensable to General Danavis—now Satrap Danavis—in ruling Seers Island, which Gavin had made a new satrapy. “What are you doing— Oh no.”
“That’s Caelia Green to you, appointed by Satrap Corvan Danavis of Tyrea,” the woman said with a grin. “Boat just landed a few hours ago. Would have been here sooner, but there was some mix-up at the docks. I miss anything important?”
So that’s why Andross had seemed rushed. He’d found out a dissenting vote was arriving. One vote would have been enough to ruin his plans. A mix-up at the docks? Andross’s people had been stalling Caelia while the Spectrum met.
And on a difference of three minutes, all of history changes.