The Black Prism

Chapter 38

Liv Danavis climbed the last steps to the top of the Chromeria, glancing around nervously. She was at the head of the short line of her classmates, carrying her chair awkwardly high so she didn’t catch it on the steep stairs. At first she thought the deck was empty, then she saw him. Her target. Her last chance.

The Prism was standing right at the edge of the building, leaning out, looking east, past the red tower, studying the ships in Sapphire Bay. Though Gavin Guile was literally twice Liv’s seventeen years, he cut a fine figure in the afternoon sun. A sharp V from broad shoulders to narrow waist, arm thick with muscle where the wind was blowing one sleeve up. His copper-colored hair streamed in the wind. He had that odd combination uncommon even among the high houses of the Seven Satrapies of red hair and—instead of the freckled skin that would mark him a Blood Forester—deeply tanned skin. Could it be true? Could this man be Kip’s father?

“Liv! Move!” Vena hissed.

Liv started. She’d stopped right at the top of the steps, blocking the rest of the class. She hurried forward, blushing. She knew it was bad when oblivious Vena noticed something. Perfect. Liv was going to hear about this. If not from Magister Goldthorn, certainly from a few of the less friendly girls in the class.

As the six girls took their places—there were no boys in the class—the Prism saw them. He pulled himself away from the edge of the tower and walked to the head of the class. As when they sat in their normal class—though mercifully the days of solid book learning were mostly past—Liv took the second row, her Poor joining her friend Vena’s Oblivious Artist and Arana’s Plain Merchant’s Daughter. The girls who somehow embodied beautiful, rich, connected, noble, preening, and gifted into only three bodies took the front row, as they always demanded. Magister Goldthorn, barely three years older than her disciples, did everything those girls wanted.

Gavin Guile came to stand in front of the class. “Hail, disciples,” he said. It was the traditional teachers’ greeting.

“Hail, Magister,” they said in unison, answering without thinking about whether they actually should address him by some other title. He was the Prism, after all.

“Good,” he said, giving a lopsided grin. Orholam, he was cute. “Today, I am only a magister. And you are only glims.”

“Gleams,” Liv corrected without thinking.

She shrank into her chair as Magister Goldthorn hissed and all the girls turned disbelieving stares at her. Correcting the Prism! He could say up was down and everyone should nod and smile. But he didn’t look upset. He just stared at Liv for a long moment with those unsettling prismatic eyes.

“Ah, yes,” he said. “Well, since you are advanced students, I suppose you have questions for me? What’s your name?”

“Me?” Liv asked. Of course he meant me, he’s looking right at me. “Um, Liv.”

“Umliv?”

She blushed harder. “Aliviana. Liv. Liv Danavis.” Had she added that last part hoping he would notice? Wouldn’t she have just said Liv otherwise? Was she trying ingratiate herself, just as her Ruthgari masters wanted?

“Well done,” Beautiful whispered from the front row. “Only took you three tries.”

“Related to General Danavis?”

Liv swallowed. “Yes, sir. He’s my father.” Committed now. Well done, Liv.

“He was a good man.” He said it as if he genuinely respected the man who’d been responsible for so many of his own men’s deaths.

“He was a rebel.” She couldn’t keep the bitterness out of her voice. Bitterness that her father had lost everything in the war, including her mother. Bitterness that she was always going to be different. Bitterness that her father never spoke of the False Prism’s War, never even tried to justify fighting for the wrong side.

“And not many of the rebels were good men, making your father even more remarkable. Do you have a question, Aliviana?”

All the students were supposed to have prepared questions, but Beautiful, Rich, and Connected in the front row usually dominated any time the class had with important drafters, so Liv hadn’t expected to get the chance to ask hers. She hesitated.

“I have a question,” Beautiful said. Her real name was Ana, and she leaned forward eagerly, crossing her arms under her breasts. It was reasonably warm on top of the Chromeria, but Ana had to be cold, considering how little of her body that dress covered. The combination of Ana’s frustratingly effortless natural beauty, short skirts, and deep cleavage was rarely lost on male magisters.

“Wait, I do have a question,” Liv said. She’d already brought up that she was Corvan Danavis’s daughter. The only way she could be more interesting to him—and make him suspect more that she was a spy—was by volunteering that she was from Rekton and knew Kip.

And the only way out was to go much, much further. Dear Orholam, please…

“Yes, Liv,” Gavin said. But he didn’t look at her. Face expressionless, he was staring hard at Ana. He glanced down at her propped-up cleavage then back to her eyes and shook his head just a fraction. Yes, I see. No, I’m not amused.

Ana blanched. Her eyes dropped, she sat up and shifted in her chair to pull her skirt down. Thank Orholam Liv was in the back row, because she couldn’t suppress her grin, despite everything.

“Liv?” Gavin asked, turning those prismatic eyes on her. Entrancing.

She cleared her throat. “I was wondering if you could talk to us about uses of yellow/superviolet bichromacy.”

“Why?” Gavin asked.

Liv froze. Her prayer was answered. A chance.

Magister Goldthorn interjected. “How about we talk about superviolet/blue bichromacy instead? It’s far more common. Three of my disciples are bichromes. Ana here is nearly a polychrome.”

Gavin ignored her.

Liv hadn’t thought this moment would ever come. She’d been trapped so long in this class, with these girls. In one more year, she’d be finished. In fact, she’d mastered enough drafting that she could take the final examination right now and pass easily. She hadn’t because there was nothing good waiting for her when she finished. A terrible position decoding official, non-secret communications for the Ruthgari noble who held her contract. She wouldn’t even be trusted with secret communications. No matter that she’d been a babe in arms during the war and felt no loyalty to the rebels, she was Tyrean. It was enough to curse her in the Chromeria’s eyes.

Each of the Seven Satrapies was responsible for the tuition of its own students. It was an investment every satrapy gladly made because drafters were so vital to every part of their economies, their armies, their construction, their communications, their agriculture. But Tyrea had nothing. The corrupt foreign governors of Garriston sent a pittance every year. Those students who came from Tyrea mostly had to pay their own way. The Danavises’ wealth had been stolen during the war, so Liv had needed to pledge her services to a Ruthgari patron just to stay at the Chromeria.

If Liv were from any other satrapy, her ambassador would have forced her patron to pay for bichrome training for her or surrender her contract. But there was no Tyrean ambassador anymore. There was an official bursar’s purse for “hardship” cases like hers, but it had long ago become a slush fund for bureaucrats to reward their favorites. Tyrea had no voice, no place.

“Liv asked because she’s a yellow/superviolet bichrome,” Vena said.

Gavin turned and looked at her. Vena was an artist and dressed like one. Boyishly short hair, artfully disheveled, lots of jewelry, and clothing she’d tailored for herself. Half the time you couldn’t even tell what country’s style she was borrowing from, if any. But despite not being pretty, she was always striking and—in Liv’s opinion anyway—looked great. Today, Vena wore a flowing dress of her own invention, with silver embroidery at the hem reminiscent of the Tree People’s zoomorphic designs. The designs in the visible spectrum were echoed cleverly in the superviolet.

“What a marvelous young woman you are,” Gavin said to Vena. “And a good friend. I love your dress.” As Vena blushed crimson, Gavin turned to Liv. “Is this true?”

“No, it’s not,” Magister Goldthorn said. “Liv’s Threshing was inconclusive, and since then she’s shown no further abilities.”

Liv pulled out the broken yellow spectacles—really only a monocle—that she’d bought secretly two years before. She held it up, squinted through one eye, and stared at the white stone of the Prism’s Tower. In a moment, yellow luxin filled her cupped hands.

It sloshed like water. Yellow luxin’s natural state was liquid. It was the most unstable of any luxin, not just sensitive to light but also to motion. At its best, it could be used mainly for two things: if held with will in liquid form, it made great torches. Or, in a thin, sealed sheet, it would slowly feed light to other luxins, keeping them fresh the same way that lanolin and beeswax rejuvenated leather.

Liv threw the cupped liquid aside. It didn’t even make it to the ground, instead flashboiling in midair into pure yellow light.

Magister Goldthorn spluttered, “This is outrageous! You are forbidden to draft—”

“You are forbidden,” Gavin interrupted her, “to squander the gifts Orholam has given you. You’re Tyrean, Aliviana?”

Magister Goldthorn stopped cold. One did not interrupt the Prism himself, not twice.

“Yes,” Liv said. “Little town not far from Sundered Rock, actually. Rekton.”

His eyes seemed to flash for a second, but it might have been Liv’s imagination, because he said, “How long before you pulled the threshing rope?”

“Two minutes five seconds,” she said. It was considered a very long time.

He looked hard at her. Then his expression softened. “As stubborn as your father, I see. I barely made it past one. Well done. So… superviolet and yellow. Watch this.” He held out both of his hands.

Every girl’s pupils tightened to tiny apertures. Superviolet luxin was invisible to normal sight. Even a woman who could draft superviolet wouldn’t see it unless she was looking for it. “Your normal lessons have covered—doubtless to the point of your nausea—crafting missives with superviolet luxin.”

Had they ever. Its invisibility was why superviolet drafters were used for communications. But on top of that, every satrapy was also looking into ciphers and methods of stacking, twisting, and obfuscating the superviolet-written messages, locking the messages into fragile loops that would be broken by any but someone who knew the exact method to open and read them. Fun, for a while. But they’d passed the fun place a long long time ago.

“You know what superviolet is great for?” Gavin asked. “Tripping people.” Every girl in the class grinned guiltily. All had done that at one time or another. “No, seriously. The pranks are where you learn to apply your color in ways no one else has thought of. You have to be a little bad to make history. Sealed superviolet isn’t as strong as blue or green, but it weighs almost nothing, and for Orholam’s sake, it’s invisible!” Gavin drafted a hollow superviolet egg the size of his hand. He winced for an instant, as if something was paining him. “The trick with yellow, Liv, is to understand how it releases its power. So, into the middle of this egg, draft liquid yellow.” He did. “The important bit is to leave absolutely no air inside the container. It has to be solid.” He closed it while looking at the girls, not paying attention. He’d just left an air bubble in the egg. He hadn’t noticed.

“If it’s solid, totally airtight, then even if you shake it—”

Liv raised her hand, opened her mouth, but she was too slow.

Gavin shook the egg. It exploded with a blinding flash.

Everyone hit the ground.

Before Liv even opened her eyes, she heard Gavin laughing. Was he insane? She looked up, but his hair wasn’t even ruffled. “Now,” Gavin said. “If that egg had been made of blue luxin, when it shattered we’d all have been cut to pieces. But as you all know in your heads—if not in your hearts or your bodies, apparently—sealed superviolet frays easily. Not that it can’t be useful.” With a speed and facility that stunned Liv, he drafted another egg and filled it with liquid yellow luxin.

“Get up,” he told the class. Ana was crying quietly. She’d scraped her knee when she’d fallen, and it was bleeding. Served her right for wearing such a short skirt. The rest of the girls got up, righted their chairs, and sat. Ana stayed on the ground. “Get up,” Gavin ordered her. “You’re going to be a drafter in a few months. You want to act like a woman? You’re not even ready to act like an adult.”

The lash of his words hit Ana hard, but every girl in the class felt the sting. His statement was as true for Liv as it was for Ana. She looked away from Ana, realizing how easy it would have been to be in her place right now. She felt a momentary twinge of compassion for the girl, then irritation that she was feeling that. Ana had made her life miserable.

Gavin promptly ignored Ana. He flung a strand of superviolet skyward. It was so light, it was caught in the wind and drifted to the west off the tower, but as long as he held the luxin open and supported it and drafted more and more into it, he could send it higher, and he did, rapidly. Then he brought the yellow egg up to the thread of luxin, made loops to hold it on to the line, and then launched it into the air. His right hand snapped down with the recoil of the launch.

The egg zipped along the invisible line, curving out over the tower. At its apex, two hundred feet out, it exploded with a sharp report. Far below, Liv heard people in the yard crying out in wonder and surprise.

“Now, imagine I pointed that at a charging line of horses. It won’t kill anyone directly, but horses don’t like having things explode in their faces any more than prissy girls do.”

Blanching and blushing filled the sudden, pained silence.

“There’s a couple of other special ways you can use superviolet in dual-color drafting. Anyone?” Gavin asked.

Ana lifted her hand uncertainly. He nodded. “For distance control?”

“That’s right. You have to leave your superviolet open, and the longer you make the line, the harder it is to control. It’s like juggling when you can’t see the balls. But…” He held out his hands, a swirl of colors went through his eyes, and he was holding a red ball, a yellow ball, a green ball, a blue ball, and an orange ball. (Liv saw him wince again, as if he had a pulled muscle in his back.) Then he started juggling. The girls—all of them, even Magister Goldthorn—gasped. First because the properties of the balls weren’t right. Orange was slick, oily. Red was sticky. Yellow was liquid. Then, of course, because it was a different kind of impressive to see someone juggle five of anything.

Oh. Liv got it. Every ball had a very thin blue luxin shell, filled with luxin of a different color.

Gavin closed his eyes and kept juggling. Impossible. Was he just showing off? No, he was showing off, but he was also still teaching.

“Ah,” Liv said, pleased.

“Someone got it,” Gavin said, opening his eyes. “With my eyes closed, how am I juggling?”

“You’re the Prism. You can do anything,” someone mumbled.

“Thank you, my butt hasn’t been kissed all day, but no.”

Did he just say that?! “You’re not juggling,” Liv said, recovering first.

Gavin took his hands away from the twirling balls. They kept going in the same intricate pattern. Everyone tightened their eyes and saw the superviolet luxin connected in a track through the balls. The balls were simply following the invisible track. “That’s right. If you give a visible reason, even if it’s astounding, you can hide an invisible phenomenon right under people’s noses. That is the power of superviolet luxin. Tell you what, Aliviana, will you do me a favor?”

“Sure.”

He smiled. “Good. I’ll hold you to that.” He turned. There was a dark stain on the back of his shirt. Was that blood? Should Liv say something? “Magister Goldthorn, I’m sorry, but I have to leave. I still owe you half a class, and I’ll make it up to you. In the meantime, if you’d notify the appropriate officials, Aliviana Danavis is hereby recognized as a superviolet/yellow bichrome. Her instruction will begin immediately. I would be… disappointed if she were outfitted in a style less decent than the average Ruthgari bichrome’s. Costs should be taken from Chromeria finances. If anyone has a problem with that, direct them to me.”

Liv forgot about Gavin’s shirt instantly. She couldn’t believe what she’d just heard. With a few sentences, the Prism had changed everything. Freed her. A bichrome! In a word, she’d gone from a life writing letters for some backwater noble to a life of only Orholam knew what. She thought she was imagining it until she saw the exact same stunned expression on Magister Goldthorn’s face. It was real. The second part of what he’d said took only a moment more to sink in. Liv was to be kept in a style equivalent to a Ruthgari bichrome at the Chromeria’s expense. And the Ruthgari kept their drafters in more lavish apartments than anyone. It was all part of their strategy to attract the best talent.

If Liv played it halfway right, she could escape that hellstone harpy Aglaia Crassos.

Gavin smiled at her, a roguish, boyish joy mixing with something deeper Liv couldn’t read. Then he left.

But watching him jog down the steps out of view, Liv was filled with a vague unease. She’d gotten everything she hoped today, and everything that she hadn’t quite dared to hope. But something more had happened.

The Prism had just bought her. She didn’t know why she was worth it, but it didn’t strike her as a random gesture. She looked at Vena, who shrugged back, eyes wide. Gavin Guile had some purpose in mind for Liv, and she would perform it gladly. How could she not? But what was it?