Chapter 95
“This convocation is now in session,” High Luxiat Amazzal said. “None may enter. None may leave.” Karris wondered if, out of all the High Luxiats, they’d chosen Amazzal solely for his voice. He had a great booming, deep, powerful voice. Maybe the voice and the beard. He had a braided beard in the Atashian style. It was enormous and perfectly white, woven with white silk thread and pearl beads.
With a gravitas that imbued even simple actions with meaning, he held up the end of a thick iron chain. Half a dozen young luxiats were holding coils and coils of the stuff. It was a single, long chain. Unhurriedly, he walked to the main doors and wrapped the chain around the handles, rattling and clanking. There was some sound there that set off Karris’s Blackguard senses. But maybe it was just thinking of Gavin being in such chains. Gavin, here. Home again. Gavin, her love, perhaps broken.
A young assistant brought High Luxiat Amazzal an enormous lock, and he snapped it on. He repeated this at each of the doors, unwinding the chain from each relieved young luxiat’s arms, walking to each, taking his time, and winding the chain securely. By the time he reached the last door, the last assistant was trembling with fatigue. He was sweating, clearly terrified he would shame himself by dropping the chain.
Finally, they came back up the side aisle, fully encircling the nobles and drafters seated in the audience hall.
Karris realized she was supposed to be praying. She was off kilter still. Seeing her son—her son?—had been more of a shock than she’d thought it would be. He was staring at her, too.
But he wasn’t only staring. He was wearing a crown. Her son had been made Prism-elect. Karris hadn’t imagined that Andross Guile would demand that a new Prism-elect be named, not while his own son was Prism. That would have meant a loss of power for his family. Unthinkable. Or at least it should have meant a loss of power for the Guiles. Karris knew Andross wouldn’t have given such power to Kip. Andross didn’t hold Kip, didn’t control him. Not yet, though no doubt he was working on that.
But this was altogether unforeseen. A failure of intelligence, in both senses of the term.
Andross had another Guile in play: Zymun. And he’d kept him out of sight until the moment came to play him. Karris hadn’t even known that Andross knew she had a son. He hadn’t only known it; he’d insinuated himself into Zymun’s life somehow. The only thing worse than having to face her abandoned son was to face him after Andross had picked him up like an abandoned toy and taken ownership of him.
She couldn’t think about this now. She didn’t even recognize this ceremony, and somehow she was sitting in the front row.
Damn, her whole side hurt from that idiotic dive into the water. Tomorrow she wasn’t going to be able to get out of bed, she was sure of it.
But sitting here in front, she couldn’t even try to massage her shoulder. If only Lord Bran Spreading Oak didn’t like her so much. He was old now, but still perfectly genteel. She’d known the Spreading Oaks since she was a girl. Back then they’d had six sons. One had become a Prism, briefly. All were dead now: raiders, fever, the wars. When she was twelve and thirteen years old, Lord Bran had hoped she’d marry his youngest, Gracchos. He’d been a kind boy, more poet than warrior.
He’d died a hero’s death that had accomplished nothing in a battle that hadn’t settled anything.
Karris looked back to Zymun. She couldn’t help it. Was there something about him that drew the eye like iron to lodestone or was it only her? No, no. He was very handsome. He was Prism-elect. Everyone was at least glancing at him frequently. But only Karris stared with her gut churning.
She looked away, to the other Colors sitting on the platform with him. Delara Orange looked sober for the first time in months that Karris could remember. Karris’s eye was drawn to the two she didn’t know: Caelia Green and Cathán Sub-red. The dwarf Caelia Green of new Tyrea seemed like she could be a natural ally. Gavin would need those in the days to come. Karris should have already made her acquaintance. Cathán Golden Briar was the newest Color, stepping into Arys Sub-red’s place after she had died in childbirth. Cathán was a cousin of both Arys Greenveil and Ela Jorvis, and therefore to Ana Jorvis, whom Gavin had thrown off his balcony, albeit accidentally.
If Karris had been looking for someone to look at who would set her mind at ease, she was looking in the wrong place. She looked back at Zymun, and away again. Dear Orholam.
One time when she and Gavin had been hunting a sub-red wight, they’d come upon a family that had fought the wight briefly and chased it away. Through dinner, the father had acted strangely, but denied he was hurt. The next morning, he stood up and screamed. He’d taken a flame crystal in the groin. It had unmanned him, and ashamed, he’d hidden the injury. The flame crystal had cauterized the wound closed—until infection made the skin burst apart when he stood, spurting blood and pus everywhere. He’d died, of course. They wouldn’t have been able to save him even if they’d known.
Looking at Zymun, she felt like that. Stomach diseased, like a grotesque pregnancy. Sixteen years of shame and failure had distended her belly, filled her with poison.
Is not the one test of a mother how well she cares for her child? Karris had abandoned this boy. She’d not taken him once to her breast. Hadn’t even looked at him, as if he were a monster, or worse, as if in looking at him, she would love him.
And now, she was looking at him, and it was too late. Her heart was dead.
Success, Karris. Your fears were unfounded. You are colder and harder than you knew.
But the ache in her stomach only got worse. She couldn’t look at Zymun. She needed her head in this, and it wasn’t.
She knew it was kind for Lord Spreading Oak to give her his seat, but she wished he hadn’t. She felt exposed up here. People were looking at her as if they expected her to do something. They didn’t know about Zymun, did they?
“Child,” High Luxiat Amazzal repeated. He was looking at Karris.
Now everyone was looking at Karris.
“Yes?” she asked.
“Please come forward.”
She blinked, trying to remember what he’d been preaching about. She had no idea. Surely he didn’t know, did he? Was he going to shame her publicly? For simply not paying attention? Surely not.
She stood and moved forward with all the grace she could muster.
The High Luxiat gestured her to stand in a place off to his left, but as Karris was walking, she saw a muscle twitch in Andross Guile’s jaw. A wave of relief swept over her. She didn’t know what was happening, but if Andross was angry about it, she wasn’t about to be shamed. She took her spot, and finally, finally started thinking.
“Ismene Crassos,” the High Luxiat said. A middle-aged noblewoman stood from one of the other front seats and walked up to a place beside Karris. From the row behind her, her horse-faced cousin Aglaia beamed with pride.
One by one, the High Luxiat said the names of those seated in the front row, and each came to stand in line. “Eva Golden Briar. Naftalie Delara.”
Next would be Jason Jorvis, then Akensis Azmith, and Croesos Ptolos last.
Karris knew them all. Some from her time as a discipula, others only by reputation. All were drafters. Each was from either a prominent family or a formerly prominent one. Even she counted as the latter, she supposed. But she shouldn’t be here with these people.
And before the last name was even announced, Karris knew why they were here. She almost gasped aloud, though if she’d been paying attention to the ceremony, it would have been obvious. But what was she doing here?
If she had been putting together the lists, every seat was acceptable but hers. Drafters from the most important families among the satrapies that were still standing, with a special concentration on Ruthgar and Paria. Karris’s seat should have been held by a Malargos, but with Tisis gone, it had reverted to Lord Spreading Oak, who was as weak a blue drafter as one could be and still pass the test. It was why he’d survived into old age—he never drafted. Didn’t see the need.
They weren’t here for a sermon.
“Lords and ladies,” High Luxiat Amazzal said, “I present you with the cream of the Seven Satrapies. I present you with your finest, the seven candidates from whom Orholam will choose a new White.”
The room broke out into applause, but it was a fierce, competitive applause. There were factions here.
They were here to select a new White. The pool was selected by the High Luxiats, but the White was selected by Orholam himself, in a casting of lots.
But Karris? What—
‘There isn’t always a grand design,’ the White had said. It was exactly the kind of wordplay she loved. It seemed a denial, but it wasn’t one, was it? That there isn’t always a grand design doesn’t mean that there isn’t a grand design this time.
The White had been a discipula with Bran Spreading Oak, ages and ages ago. They were good friends. Bran deserved a seat at the front but could be overlooked because he was so old. If he were made the White, he would only last a year or two, surely. Thus he became a nullity in Andross Guile’s plan, whatever that plan was. But by Bran’s waiting until the ceremony was under way to vacate his seat and give it to Karris, there was nothing Andross Guile could do about it.
Then, moments later, they’d been locked in here. Not even slaves were allowed to come or go.
The White had arranged for Karris to be here.
All her tutelage was for this. The dozens of minor missions in years past. The possible suicide mission in Tyrea. The slow takeover of the White’s spy network. Those tests that Karris had seen as so harsh, so unnecessary, were harsh and unnecessary—for any position less than the White. Which meant that the White had wanted Karris to be her successor—no, that thought was too grandiose, too arrogant, too presumptuous.
And yet here she stood.
The White had wanted Karris to be the next White.
Perhaps Karris wasn’t the White’s only choice, though. Five of the seven standing here might be the White.
But as Karris looked around, she was pretty sure that wasn’t the case. That was Andross Guile’s kind of strategy: buy everyone, so whoever wins, you win. The White gambled differently; she put all her money on the long odds. Orea Pullawr had wanted Karris to be the next White.
Karris’s eyes started leaking. She couldn’t stop it. That irascible old woman had even apologized for it beforehand.
The White had been teaching Karris to take over, all this time. And Karris had never seen it? That didn’t bode well for how good of a White she would be, did it?
We all have our blind spots, but pity her whose blind spot is a person. Karris had had two—the White, whom she’d underestimated but loved, and Gavin, whom she’d underestimated and come to love when she stopped underestimating him. It was by Orholam’s grace alone that both of her blind spots had been good to her.
Karris had only one chance in seven to fulfill the White’s wishes. And suddenly, she wanted it with half her heart.
No one sane could want to be the White. But Karris could want Andross Guile’s puppet not to be the White. If she was the only stumbling block in his way, so be it.
If it be your will, Orholam, use me.
But how could she do it? Had the White been trusting Orholam to take Karris the rest of the way?
And there it was again. A distant sound that made Karris’s ears perk up. The first had been louder, but it had been buried under the rattling of the chains. A musket shot. There were multiple shots, muffled by the thick doors and thick stone, coming from another floor, perhaps? Or was she hearing the shots through the window? Was someone out on a balcony several floors down celebrating Sun Day?
It was, of course, forbidden to celebrate in such a way, but that didn’t stop many people on Big Jasper. It did, however, usually stop people within the Chromeria itself. Karris looked over at the Black, who was seated in the second row, but Carver Black didn’t appear to have heard the shots, or he was a better pretender than she’d ever guessed.
Andross on the other hand … Andross was the ultimate in pretense, in misdirection. Karris stared at him, though he shared the dais with her, and staring was obvious. What did she care? It wasn’t like they could take away her candidacy because she was socially awkward.
And then she saw it. She didn’t know why this should be the first time. She’d seen Gavin operate a thousand times a thousand—but Gavin had always been a special case. Now she saw power for what it meant to her. To her, it meant not just operating outside the social norms—she always had—it meant flouting them. It meant staring at a man past the time it was acceptable to stare, and instead of feeling awkward, making everyone else feel it. That mastery, that freedom at the expense of others, was intoxicating.
For one who had always had an affinity for the blue virtues of order and harmony and setting a plate exactly according to some point-book written by some long-dead prince of the punctilious pompacio, power was a revelation. Power, not for others, but for her.
And the heart of intoxication is toxic.
Andross Guile looked back at her calmly. He didn’t seem angry. It was a feeling, an intuition, rather than any hint of expression. He had an air of expectation. And an expectation, for Andross Guile, was an expectation of victory. He was patient because he was going to win.
Karris smiled at him, smiled like she knew the game, like she loved that he thought he was going to win, smiled like she was better than he was. He blinked, then, the barest flicker of doubt. She ducked her head demurely and smiled on sweet secrets.
He had a plan. Damn. Andross Guile wasn’t a man to leave anything to chance. He wasn’t going to take a chance, not even a six-to-one chance. Even if he owned all of the other six, he would have a favorite.
But how would he cheat? The ceremony must surely be designed to making cheating impossible.
But Andross Guile knew exactly what those safeguards were. Or who.
Karris looked at the High Luxiat Amazzal. Was he part of it?
“Orholam, all-mighty Lord of Lords,” he said. “Look upon us. Highest Lord and Highest God, thee we beseech. Look upon our efforts and bless them with thy light, thy life, thy favor. This day, Orholam, Lord and High King, Emperor of Emperors, Balancer of Scales, Mighty and Just, Honorable and Pure, Awesome in Power, Wholesome in Mercy, we seek your will and not our own. We seek this day your White, your light, your antidote to night. We, your satrapies, ask your hand to rest lightly on us, lightly on obedient hearts that need only prompting, not compulsion, only guidance, for it is thy purpose which we seek to serve, and not our own. We praise thee, Lord of Luxlords, Light of Nations, Voice in the Stillness, Guide to the Blind, and Path of Mercy to the Benighted. See and move, O God.” Each time he said ‘God’ he gave it the traditional moment of hesitation, of respect. It was a measure of his piety or simply his experience that he made the traditional seem vibrant, like he himself thought even this measure of respect was perhaps too little.
“Candidates,” he said, “come forward. From this time forward, drafting is forbidden. Drafting is an imposition of our will upon the world. Any who draft or who accept another’s drafting on their behalf will be disqualified and executed as a heretic. Understood? If so, repeat, ‘Under the Un-deceivable Eye of Orholam, I understand and I agree.’”
They did so, in unison. Then they followed him to a circle on the floor. Young luxiats carried folding screens out for each of them and set them up quickly. Karris’s luxiat was a pimply, blushing young man of no more than eighteen.
The High Luxiat spoke now only for their ears. “The ceremony must be unimpeachable. Thus, because in years long past others have attempted to destroy the sanctity of it, we have put safeguards in place. No lenses. No mirrors. No jewelry. No strips of cloth in your color. Nothing. Even your hair will be covered. In order to assure all that you are obeying these injunctions, you will strip, be searched, and be given identical garments, randomly assigned, all under the eyes of the Blackguards, luxiats, and each other. No exceptions. Even a White submits. If you object to these rules, you may remove yourself from consideration now. If you don’t object now, and are found violating the rules, you’ll be executed by Orholam’s Glare. You understand?”
They did.
“If you think you see some malfeasance on the part of any other, bring it to the attention of the luxiats. A new Blackguard and luxiat will be assigned to her or him, and she shall be searched again. Appropriate punishments will follow, by which I mean death for the heretic and the Blackguard who allowed the heresy both.”
He left, and Karris stripped down. Her blushing luxiat was far more embarrassed than she was. Then he saw the bruising. Flopping into the river flat on her side had made the left side of her body look like she’d been dead and lividity had set in. His mouth moved, but he was obviously forbidden to speak. Karris ignored it. Years with the Blackguard had stripped necessary nudity of its shame. Besides, feelings about her body would distract her from the game Andross was playing, and you couldn’t play Andross and have any hope of victory if you didn’t give it your full attention.
The High Luxiat was facing seven Blackguards. Each drew a number from a bowl and moved to one of the disrobing lords or ladies. Trainer Fisk—Watch Captain Fisk now—moved to Karris. He gave her a shrug that barely moved his muscle-bound shoulders. “It was supposed to be women to search the women, and men for the men, but with our numbers so low, they said—Orholam’s beard, what happened to your—”
“Just do it,” Karris said.
He did. Not that there was much searching to do. Her hair took the most time, despite that it would be covered. Then he examined both of her hands, her eyes, her armpits, her back, her butt crack, the soles of her feet. Contraband was obviously the first target, but luxin-packing was the second. Fisk was professional and moved quickly, his face a mask.
Seven more Blackguards watched the searchers, and the luxiats, making sure nothing was passed between any of them. The randomness—assuming it was random—of the choice of guards seemed like it would defeat any plan Andross might try to orchestrate. Karris watched the others.
She saw nothing other than their obvious discomfort. She wondered, would someone being passed a—a what, precisely? A colored lens. A drafter could never go wrong with a lens. It would be small, inconspicuous, and allow lethal action.
But she saw nothing untoward.
Luxiats brought out stacks of robes, and at least two Blackguards searched each robe, bending seams to look for hidden pockets, and shifting the piles randomly. The High Luxiat himself distributed them then, also seemingly at random. The robes weren’t even different sizes, meaning Karris was swimming in hers while Jason Jorvis could barely close the robe.
The High Luxiat came to each of them while they dressed, holding a plain wooden bowl. “This is the order you’ll draw,” he said.
“We draw for the order we draw?” Karris asked, deadpan.
He sighed. “Would it shock you that there have been problems about precedence in the past? One goes first, seven goes last.”
Karris shrugged and drew. Six.
She was secretly glad to be going so late. By then, the choices would be constricted.
“There will be seven stones presented. Listen for Orholam’s voice. He will guide you. You each may bring no more than one stone back. Just to warn you, each has multiple layers of paint on it, and there is no way to tell how deep is the true one. You bring it back and plunge it into the bowl full of solvent. Whoever has the White’s stone will be revealed.”
“What do you mean we bring it back?” Karris asked. “Where are we going?”
“That’s it?” Jason Jorvis asked. “No other rules?”
“You really don’t remember?” Ismene Crassos asked.
“My family weren’t on the Jaspers last time.”
“And you didn’t hear the stories?”
“I’m just trying to get the rules clear,” he said.
All Karris could remember from the time Orea Pullawr was selected as White was a boy named Amestan Niel who’d stayed at a neighboring estate for the summer. She’d barely said two words to him in the whole time. Her best friend, whom Karris had told all about her crush on him, all summer long, had kissed him the night before he left. It had been a devastating betrayal at the time. Last Karris had heard, Amestan Niel was now the third largest exporter of wool in Paria.
Somewhere in the tower, something rumbled. Something big.
They all looked at each other.
“Was that part of … this?” Karris asked. But from the startled look on the High Luxiat’s face, she knew it wasn’t.
“We’ll proceed,” he said.
The luxiats carried away the screens, and the candidates were brought to stand in a circle.
“Brace yourselves,” the High Luxiat told the audience. “There is often a great deal of wind.”
Wind?
At some signal Karris didn’t see, all the windows in the room slid down into slots, even as the windows in Gavin’s room one floor above did. There was a cold wind, but there wasn’t much of it after the initial gust. The morning was still and warm.
Then the floor shifted. Karris instantly dropped her center and stood wide in a fighting stance. It was the floor beneath her and the other candidates. Ismene looked at her and grinned as if to say, Isn’t this exciting?
The five-pace-wide circle on which they stood rose out of the floor. Patterns on the audience chamber floor sank, revealing tracks—and the entire disk the candidates were standing on started sliding toward the open window.
“Am I the only one to whom this seems like a really bad idea?” Karris asked.
“Jump off, then,” Jason Jorvis said.
She was standing right at the edge of the disk, and she had been considering doing just that, until he spoke.
The disk slid out the window and into the air, supported on a vast arm protruding from the Prism’s Tower two stories below. They slid out ten, then twenty paces from the side of the tower, and the great windows of the audience chamber rattled shut.
Oh. Karris understood. Everyone was to see what happened, but no one was to be able to draft to affect the outcome. The nobles were craning their necks to see more clearly, but Karris’s eyes were suddenly drawn up.
Atop the Prism’s Tower, one of the massive crenellations had split off and fallen several stories. That had been the rumbling sound she’d heard. The huge chunk of stone was dangling, suspended by a woven steel cable. Karris had been atop that tower a hundred times. There were no steel cables and massive bolts in the crenellations. And the precision of the break made it look purposeful. She was trying to see more of it—where did that cable go?—when her platform shuddered again. Seven additional smaller circular platforms unfolded from beneath the larger platform. The seven circles sank geared teeth into the edge of the larger platform and began wheeling slowly around them.
Now, on each of the smaller circles sat a narrow pedestal, and on the pedestal, in teak and velvet, a white ball. They were identical. After they circled all of them once, they stopped.
Naftalie Delara had drawn number one. She said, “No point in delaying, I suppose.” She looked heavenward. “Orholam guide me. Orholam bless my choice.” She went to one of the pedestals and took the white ball there.
Out on balconies of each of the seven towers, a Blackguard and a luxiat stood as a team, watching each other, watching the other teams, and watching that no one would come out onto their balconies to interfere with the ceremony.
But whatever cheat Andross had arranged was doubtless already done. He’d arranged who would pick, and somehow told them beforehand which stone was the one. The mechanics of the cheating would never be visible, and in picking sixth, her choice would likely be moot anyway—a choice between two stones of which surely neither was the correct one. Pointless and barren, like so many years of her life.
Eva Golden Briar took longer, but settled on one in short order.
The White had sacrificed Orholam only knew what to get Karris here, and they’d lost. Karris didn’t even know which smiling face hid a liar. Maybe all six did. Andross Guile always had backup plans behind his plans, didn’t he?
Karris heard musket fire again and could tell that it came from the top of the Prism’s Tower. There were some few people gawking at the candidates through their windows, but no one was out on the balconies, and none was armed that Karris could see. What the hell was going on? The Blackguards on the other towers looked alarmed, too, but were glued to their stations.
Akensis Azmith had selected his stone while Karris looked. Croesos Ptolos took longer, hesitating a long time before one, praying, and then taking another. Then Ismene Crassos went. She looked at each of the three remaining for a long time. Went back to one three times, and finally picked it up.
That left Karris, and two stones.
Listen to the will of Orholam, huh?
She walked up to the first stone. White, round, small enough to fit comfortably in her palm—for whatever reason, it didn’t feel right.
Now that was odd. She approached the second, studying it closely, and felt a strong urge to take it in her hand immediately.
She crossed her arms. She’d claimed to the White that she wanted Orholam to speak to her in a way that was obvious, but here it was, and it was obvious, and she didn’t like it. If Orholam’s voice was a slap in the face, then of what value were Karris’s ears? It somehow seemed to devalue her intellect, the intellect Orholam himself had given her. She should be a participant in Orholam using her.
Shouldn’t she? Or was she being arrogant?
The fiery green/red drafter she had been not so very long ago would have made a decision and to hell with it. Orholam could do his part or not. If this was his big plan, he’d have to do it. It was all probably pointless anyway, the correct stone already taken.
But Karris wasn’t that girl anymore. She had been foolish. She had done things for which she hated herself still. She’d tried to burn herself to ash, and been too excellent to die. She’d tried to blot out the weakness with borrowed purpose as a Blackguard. And now the ache and the disappointment were as much a part of her as her passion and her wildness. She was not a creature of isolated extremes, that disjunctive bichrome, not anymore; she was a whole cloth in the making, integrated.
Ignoring the waiting nobles at the window and the waiting candidates around the disk, Karris turned toward the morning sun. The perfect fiery orb was losing its red tone as it rose, becoming gold.
Karris spread bare arms, saluting the sun, soaking up its full-spectrum light, accepting it and reveling in it.
We are the stories we tell about ourselves. But when those stories are lies, we are the most surprised of all.
When you ask for bread, Karris, would I give you a stone?
And as she raised her arms, glorying in the light, she heard the sound of something huge giving way and an enormous stone crenellation plunged right in front of her.
With the sound of a whip unfurling, a line attached to that great stone spooled out. The other end strained over a pulley at the top of the Prism’s Tower, and this stone plunged down, and down. It hit the ground and plunged through it as if the ground been designed to let it through, and it fell into the great underground yard, under vast tension. At the same time, the steel cable unspooled out, away from the tower. It sprang free of the water between Big Jasper and Little Jasper; it tore right out of the top of the walls ringing Big Jasper’s east side and then stood, straining, tight, making a straight line from the top of the Chromeria almost to the docks.
‘Would I give you a stone?’ Karris burst out laughing. And then, as she turned—everyone was watching the great cable—she saw a flash of green at the corner of her eye. What? She looked at the horizon, but she knew—she knew—that the green flash only came at sunset. And then it hit her again. She looked toward Big Jasper.
The star towers were spinning their mirrors, lighting up the crowds, festive, playful. One had caught the green tower and reflected it briefly to Karris.
Karris laughed. She shook her head at Orholam—and then watched, stunned, as a young man went flying down the cable from the top of the tower. She thought she recognized him, but he was moving too fast. Cruxer?
She went back to the stones. Her choice mattered. She knew now. Orholam had not led her to a place where her choice was pointless. She looked at each in turn, and again, felt drawn to one and repelled by the other. But she didn’t touch either. Instead, she knelt by the pedestal on which one of them sat. She couldn’t see anything there. She scratched a fingernail across it—and the tiniest shell of solid orange luxin cracked and dissolved.
And just like that, her feeling of desire to pick up this ball was gone. A hex. Magic forbidden with the sentence of death by Orholam’s Glare. But then, interfering with the choice of the White carried the same sentence, so there wasn’t much added deterrent there.
Andross—if it were Andross—had found an immensely talented orange drafter trained in forbidden arts, and had somehow defeated whatever security the luxiats had, and whatever checks were in place to make sure hexes were never placed here.
But that was a problem for another day.
Karris walked to the other ball, scratched her fingernail across the hex there, and waggled a finger toward the window beyond which Andross Guile sat. Naughty, naughty. She picked up the ball.
Some sixth sense warned her—maybe the step of a running man beneath the sound of the wind and the musket fire still ringing out from the roof. Karris pivoted and dodged as Jason Jorvis closed on her. She was only saved because he went for the ball in her hand rather than simply trying to shove her off the tower.
She spun with him, using his momentum against him to send him on toward the edge, but he snagged her weak left arm and pulled her with him.
She broke his grip with a strong move that turned his wrist; he lost his grip but grabbed again, snaring the belt rope of her robe.
He stumbled, one foot flying out over the edge, dropping his own white ball as he twisted back toward safety. The green in Karris hated to be bound. With one hand she whipped her belt rope from its two simple anchors at either side of her waist, while with the other she played out enough rope that Jason was tipping over the edge, totally dependent on the rope for balance.
She heard more steps. The backup plan to the backup plan. Of course. Everyone inside could see this, but there were no rules. Whoever came back with the correct ball was the White, and there would be no prosecution for murder.
A fist went right through where Karris’s head had been a moment before. Another punch—but this one she blocked with the white stone itself. As Akensis stood frozen with the pain in his shattered fist, Karris tossed the stone into the air. With her hand now free, she looped the rope into an open knot, and flipped it over Akensis’s hand as he watched the flying stone. Feeling the rope drape over his hand, he jerked away from her, pulling the knot tight.
Karris dove, dropping the rope, and rolled to her feet. She caught the stone.
Akensis hadn’t taken up the slack immediately, and so Jason Jorvis fell parallel to the platform they were on. But he kept his feet planted on the edge. It was an uncommonly smart move. Most people, falling, will panic and flail. Keeping his body tight, he gave himself a chance.
Akensis pulled against the rope to save himself, screaming as the knot tightened on his wrist. He grabbed the rope with both hands, and stood balanced precariously.
For a moment, Karris thought about bringing them in. They were big men, though, heavy and strong. She was still forbidden to draft; it was the only rule. If she pulled them up, they would work together to kill her. With her left side injured, there was no way she could bring them both in. Would the others intervene? And if so, on whose side? How many would die to save these two traitors?
There is a time for Orholam’s gentle gaze, and a time for his glare.
With a yell that was both dirge for her old life and rage that men would betray Orholam himself and swelling pride that she knew all of her pain and training and even her waywardness was being redeemed, Karris delivered the slippery side kick that was the pinnacle of Blackguard perfection. With such a kick, a small woman moving masterfully could launch a man into the air. And she did.
Both men flew off the platform, and plunged to their deaths.
Everyone, silent, stared at Karris.
The windows opened and the disk slid back into its place inside. Karris dropped her stone into the clear bowl and didn’t even watch the solvents do their work to reveal the stone’s color beneath. She knew.
Karris turned and addressed a stunned audience of Colors and the promachos and the highest nobles in what remained of the Seven Satrapies.
“We’re at war,” the new White said. “We’re going to start acting like it.”