The Black Prism

Chapter 52

Karris knew she was even deeper in trouble than she’d feared within five minutes of being captured. King Garadul’s Mirrormen walked her at gunpoint over to a wagon. They didn’t bind her hands, which she thought was curious and gave her a momentary hope. Then the Mirrormen handed her off to half a dozen drafters, all women. Two Mirrormen stayed, their pistols leveled at her head, barely blinking.

The women—two reds, a green, a blue, and a super—stripped her naked and searched her and her clothes, quickly finding her eye caps. The two Mirrormen barely even glanced at her body, and though men around the camp turned to see whatever they could between all the drafters surrounding her, there wasn’t a single ribald comment.

Disciplined. Damn it.

Crossing her arms over her breasts, Karris looked down, feigning embarrassment. Well, maybe not completely feigning.

“Eyes up!” one of the reds commanded.

Karris looked up. They wanted to see her eyes so they would know as soon as she tried to draft. Smart too, damn it twice.

In rapid order, they went through all her clothing, scrunching every seam to look for hidden pockets. Then they went through her bag, one carefully cataloguing all the items in a codex. After they’d found everything, Karris hoped they’d give her back her clothes.

No such luck. Instead, they opened the door of the wagon and threw a violet dress and shift inside.

“Get in,” the same red who’d spoken before said.

Karris got in and the door slammed behind her. She heard a bar being lowered and chains pulled into place. The inside of the wagon was fairly spacious. There was a pallet to sleep on, a chamber pot, a cup of water, several blankets and pillows—all violet, the deepest into the blue spectrum they could find. And from the noxious smell, all freshly painted. The windows were fitted with bars and violet glass, draped on the outside with violet cloth. Apparently they were taking her drafting seriously, and from their study of her eyes and the mag torches, they knew she could draft green and red. Rather than risk a color that was between her colors, they’d picked the one farthest to the end of the spectrum she didn’t draft.

It was a strange kindness. They could have just blindfolded her, of course, but blindfolds slip. But most captors would have painted the wagon black and made her live in darkness. This was just as effective, but a lot more work. If a drafter couldn’t see her color, or didn’t have lenses and white light, she couldn’t draft. Karris was about as close to helpless as she got. She hated the feeling with a passion.

She threw on the slip and the shapeless violet dress, and immediately scratched the paint. It had been heat-dried by a sub-red. She would be able to chip it eventually, but with the only light coming in through the violet curtains and violet glass, it wasn’t going to matter anyway. Still, she tried. She couldn’t help herself. Under the layer of violet paint was a layer of black. Under that, the wood was a dark mahogany. No luck.

The wagon began rolling within minutes.

That night, after she was fed a hunk of black bread and given water in a blackened iron cup, two drafters came in, their skin already full of red and blue luxin respectively. Behind them came, of all things, a tailor. She was a tiny woman who barely came up to Karris’s shoulder. She took Karris’s measurements rapidly, never writing them down, just committing them to memory. Then she stared at Karris’s body for a long time, studying her like a farmer studying a rocky sidehill that he needed to plow. She double-checked her measurement of Karris’s hips, and then left without a word.

Over the next five days, Karris learned little. Apparently her wagon was close to the cooking wagons, because all she heard all day was the rattle of pots at every bump in the road. The shadowy figures of horsemen, maybe Mirrormen, sometimes passed close enough to her covered windows for her to see their silhouettes. If they spoke, though, she could never make out the words. At night, she was given food in a blackened iron bowl, with a blackened iron spoon and black bread and water, never wine—damn them, they even thought of the red of wine. A Mirrorman accompanied by a drafter took her chamber pot, bowl, spoon, and cup each night after sunset. When she kept the spoon one night, hiding it under a pillow, they didn’t say a word. Neither did they give her water the next day. When she surrendered the spoon, she was given water again.

The boredom was the worst. There were only so many push-ups you could do in a day, and anything more strenuous was impossible. There were no musical instruments, no books, and certainly no weapons or drafting to practice.

On the sixth night, two blues came in. “Choose a position that’s comfortable,” one of them said. Karris sat on her little pallet, hands folded in her lap, ankles crossed, and they bound her arms and legs in about five times the amount of luxin necessary. Then they put violet spectacles over her eyes and left.

King Garadul entered the wagon, carrying a folding camp chair. He wore a loose black shirt over his shirt, which Karris could barely see, and voluminous black pants over his pants. Karris understood being careful around her, but this was ridiculous. The king settled into the camp chair. He stared at her wordlessly.

“I don’t suppose you remember me,” he said. “I met you once, before the war. Of course, I was just a boy, three years younger than you, and you were already head over heels for… well, one of the Guile boys, I can’t remember which. Maybe you can’t either. There seemed to be some confusion for a time, wasn’t there?”

“You’re a real charmer, aren’t you?” Karris asked.

“You might be surprised,” he said. He shook his head. “I always thought you were a beautiful girl, but the stories of you took on a life of their own. A tragic love triangle between the two most powerful men in the world sort of demands a beautiful girl, doesn’t it? I mean, otherwise, why would two men tear the world apart? For her insights about history? Her witty repartee? No. You were a pretty girl made beautiful by the bards’ need to make some sense of what you wrought. Don’t get me wrong,” he said, “I was so in love with you it kept me up nights. You were my first great unrequited love.”

“I’m sure you’ve had many. Or do women pretend to find you attractive, now that you’re king?” Karris asked.

Temper, Karris, temper. But the truth was, it wasn’t the red that made her say that. She’d always hated to perform for others, to do just what they wanted.

He scowled. “The shrewish tongue somehow was omitted from the panegyrics. Or is that a new addition?”

“I feel a bit freer to speak my mind these days. I already destroyed the world, what’s one man’s ego?” Karris said.

“Karris, I was on my way to pay you a compliment before you made us descend to this unpleasantness.”

“Oh, dear. Please do go on then, there’s nothing that would mean more to me than to hear praises from the Butcher of Rekton.”

He rubbed his palms together thoughtfully. “I’m sorry you had to see that, Karris.” He kept using her name. She didn’t like it. “I hope you know I took no joy in what I ordered there, but I also hope you understand that that small monstrosity will forestall larger ones in the future. You’re familiar with the manuscript called The Counselor to Kings?”

“Yes,” Karris said. “Loathsome advice and cruelty that not even he had the stomach to countenance, when he himself ruled.” The Counselor asked whether it was better for a ruler to be loved or feared. Both was best, he decided, but if a ruler had to choose, he should always choose to be feared.

“His advice was good. He was simply personally weak. I don’t hold that against him. The fact is, Karris, when kings aren’t feared, they end up having to instill fear eventually, at grievous prices. That’s what happened at Ru. That’s what happened at Garriston. Those men you loved—or at least bedded—learned the lesson eventually, but because they learned it late, what they had to do was far worse than destroying one little village. So tell me, how can you hold the death of a thousand against me, but not the death of tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, against them?”

Karris hadn’t been allowed to see the royal steps at Ru, stained with the blood and shit of hundreds murdered coldly one at a time and thrown down the steps to the gaping, horrified crowds below. She’d been kept from going to Garriston even after the war, where tens of thousands—they didn’t even know how many—had perished in the red luxin fires of the besieged city. That was Gavin’s and Dazen’s doing. Somehow, it had never seemed possible that men she knew so well would have done such things. Men she thought she knew so well.

“The people of this land are my people. I am no mere satrap, no guardian of some other man’s land; I am king. These people belong to me. To kill a thousand of my own was to cut a chunk out of my own flesh. But cancers have to be cut out. I am this land. My people work this land and bring forth crops at my good pleasure. I protect them and provide for them, and they in turn must render to me of their crops and of their sons. Those who would not are rebels, traitors, thieves, and heretics, apostates. They defy the holy compact. To defy me is to defy the gods’ order. I had to do this because my father wouldn’t. If he had hanged half a dozen mayors when they first defied him and refused to send levies, that thousand would be alive now. He was weak and wanted to be loved. No one may acknowledge it during my life, but by killing that thousand in Rekton, I saved many more. This is what it is to be a king.”

“You’re awfully passionate in your defense of decapitating babies and stacking their heads.” The gods’ order, not Orholam’s?

“Karris, you’re making me understand why men beat their wives.” King Garadul rubbed his black beard, but made no move to strike her. “By making the display so awful, I ensured it would be seared into every mind that saw it. Do you think the dead care what happened to their bodies? Better that their example save the living than that I bury them all in a hole and my descendants have to kill their descendants. That monument will stay for a dozen generations. That is the legacy I will leave to my children’s children, a secure rule, without the need to commit such massacres themselves. And the reason I tell you, Karris, is that I had hoped you of all people might understand. You’re a woman now, not some frightened little girl surrounded by great men. You’re a woman who’s seen great men and terrible deeds. I had hoped you might understand the burdens of greatness. At least a little. Perhaps I give you too much credit.”

Karris swallowed, trembling with rage and maybe a little fear. There was a sick logic to everything he said, but she had seen the bodies. The blood. The piled-up heads.

“As I wanted to say earlier,” King Garadul said. He took a deep breath, clearly pushing away his frustration, and continued. “You were a very pretty girl, but only pretty, despite the tales. But you, to my great delight and surprise, are one of the few women I’ve ever seen who’s gotten more beautiful as you’ve aged. You look better at thirty than you did at twenty, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you look better at forty than you do now. Of course, I’m sure it helps that you haven’t squeezed six or ten brats out of your crotch. Most pretty girls do manage to find a husband before they get so old, but let’s not look a gift horse in the mouth.”

Real charmer. What was it with King Garadul, did he just say everything that popped into his idiot head?

“Yours is, indeed, a face to inspire poets. This, however”—he gestured to her vaguely, she wasn’t sure what he meant—“this must change. You have shoulders like a man.” The bastard! How did he know how much she hated her shoulders? Whenever the fashions were such that she could hide her shoulders, they showed off her upper arms, or vice versa. And he’d said exactly what she said to herself at least once a week: I have shoulders like a man. But the king wasn’t done. “Your ass looks like a ten-year-old boy’s. Maybe it’s that dress. We’ll hope so. And your breasts. Your poor magnificent breasts. Where have they gone? They were bigger when you were fifteen! Your training ends now. I’ll allow you to resume dancing and riding when you no longer resemble a starved Dark Forest pygmy.”

“I won’t be here that long,” Karris said. She frowned. Had she just admitted she looked like a starved pygmy?

“Karris, my dear. I’ve waited for you for fifteen years. And whether or not you know it, you’ve been waiting for me, too. You and I don’t settle for second best. Why else would you still be unmarried? So we can wait a few months. I’ll come visit you when your dress is done.” He glanced around. “Oh, and I noticed you’ve nothing in here to entertain you. It must get boring. It’s good for a woman to excel in the pleasant arts. I’ll have my mother’s psantria brought in for you. That’s what you play, isn’t it?” He smiled and went out.

The worst part of it was that Karris did feel thankful. A little. The bastard.