'He was trying to save people. But Liv, they completely surrounded the town. No one got out.'
'You got out.' She didn't believe him; he could see it on her face.
'I was lucky.'
'My father is one of the most talented drafters of his generation. Don't tell me that you made it out and he didn't.'
'They had drafters and Mirrormen, Liv. I watched the Delclara family get run down. All of them. The whole town was on fire. I watched Ram and Isa and Sanson die. I watched my mother die.'
'I don't care about your drug-addled mother. I'm talking about my father! Don't you tell me he's dead. He's not, damn you. He's not!'
Liv left the room in a whirlwind and slammed the door behind her.
Kip stared at the door, his shoulders slumped, tears that he didn't even understand in his eyes.
Well, that went well.
Chapter 47
Seven years, seven great purposes, Gavin.
Gavin held his right hand out and counted up from his thumb, drafting each color in turn: thumb to pinky, to ring finger, to middle finger, to index finger, back to middle, to ring, to pinky. A seven count, each color in turn, from sub-red to superviolet, feeling the little thread of emotion from each.
For Orholam's sake, I'm the Prism. I am the whole man. Master of all colors. In my prime. Stronger than any Prism in living memory. Maybe the strongest for hundreds of years. Most Prisms only lived seven years after their ascension. Only four had made it to twenty-one years. Always in multiples of seven-of course, they could be killed or die of natural causes too, but none burned out except on the multiple years. Gavin had made it to sixteen, so he had at least five years left. In fact, if any Prism could make it past twenty-one years, he would be the one to do it. He felt strong. He felt stronger and more in control of his colors than he had in his whole life.
Of course, it could all be an illusion. He'd been exceptional in other ways; perhaps he'd pitch over and die tomorrow.
He felt that familiar tightness in his chest again at the thought. He wasn't afraid of death, but he was afraid of dying before he accomplished his purposes.
He stood outside his father's apartments in the Prism's Tower. His father's slave-Gavin knew the man's name was Grinwoody, though it was rude to use a slave's name if they didn't reveal it to you themselves-was waiting, holding the door open. It was a door into darkness of more than one kind. There was sharp pain in Gavin's chest. It was hard to breathe.
Andross Guile didn't know Gavin wasn't Gavin. He didn't know his elder son was rotting under the Chromeria. He thought Dazen was dead, and he'd never seemed concerned about it, much less sorry. Traitors were to be dismissed and never spoken of.
'Lord Prism?' the slave asked.
Gavin shook the last tendrils of luxin from his fingers, the waft of resinous smells a small comfort.
Andross Guile's room was kept completely dark. Thick velvet drapes had been hung over the windows, then the whole wall hung with more of the same in layers. An entry chamber had been erected around the entrance so that light from the hallway wouldn't come in with his few visitors. Gavin drew in superviolet light and then stepped into the entry.
Grinwoody pulled the door shut behind them. Gavin drew a little ball of superviolet into his hand, drafted imperfectly so it would be unstable. The instability caused it to slowly disintegrate back into light of its own spectrum. For a superviolet drafter, it was like carrying a torch whose light was invisible to everyone else. Neither Grinwoody nor Andross was a superviolet, so Gavin could have as much of the eerie violet light as he wanted.
As Gavin watched, Grinwoody pushed a heavy pillow in front of the slight crack at the bottom of the door behind them. The man paused, letting his eyes become used to the darkness. He wasn't a drafter, so he couldn't directly control his eyes. In darkness, it took a dull-a non-drafter-half an hour or more to reach full sensitivity to light. Most drafters naturally could do it in ten minutes, just from spending so much time attuned to light. A few could reach full light sensitivity in seconds. But Grinwoody wasn't trying to see. He had obviously memorized the layout of the room years ago; he was simply making sure he wasn't allowing any light into High Master Guile's chamber. Finally, satisfied, he opened the door.
Gavin was glad to be holding superviolet. Like all drafters, he'd been taught not to rely on colors to change his moods. Like most, he failed often. It was a particular temptation for polychromes. There was a color for every feeling, or to counteract every feeling. Like right now. Using the superviolet spectrum was attended by a sense of remove or alienation or otherness. Sometimes it seemed ironic or cynical. Always it was like looking down at himself from above.
You're the Prism, and you're afraid of an old man.
In the superviolet light of his torch, Gavin saw his father sitting in a high-backed padded chair turned toward a covered, boarded-up window. Andross Guile had been a tall, powerfully built man. Now his weight had dropped from his broad shoulders to form a little ball in his paunch. He wasn't corpulent; it was just that what weight he had was in his gut. His arms and legs had grown thin from years spent hardly moving from that chair, his skin loose and spotted already at sixty-five.
'Son, so good of you to come visit. An old man grows lonely.'
'I'm sorry, father. The White keeps me very busy.'
'You shouldn't be so supine with that wheeled wench. You should arrange for the hag to join the Freeing this year.'
Gavin let that pass without comment. It was an old argument. The White said the same things about Andross, minus the derogation. Gavin sat beside his father and studied him in the eerie superviolet light of his torch.
Despite the absolute darkness of the room, Andross Guile wore blackened spectacles molded tight around his eye sockets. Gavin couldn't imagine living in utter darkness. He hadn't even done that to his brother. Andross Guile had been a yellow to sub-red polychrome. Like so many other drafters during the False Prism's War, he'd pushed himself to his absolute limit. And beyond. He'd fought, of course, for his eldest son. Using too much magic, he'd finally destroyed his body's defenses against it. But after the war, when so many drafters had taken the Freeing, Andross had instead withdrawn to these rooms. When Gavin had first come to visit Andross here, there had been blue filters set on the windows. With his own power at the opposite end of the spectrum, Andross had felt safe with blue light. Since then, the chirurgeons had told him he needed complete darkness if he was to keep fighting the colors. If he was taking such extreme precautions, he must be very close to the brink indeed.
'I hear you're trying to start a war,' Andross said.
'I rarely try without succeeding, I'm afraid,' Gavin said. He didn't bother marveling that his father already knew. Of course Andross Guile knew. The man owned the loyalty or the fear of half of the most powerful women and men in the tower.
'How?'
'I received a letter that I had a natural son in Tyrea. When I arrived, the town was burning. I stumbled across some Mirrormen about to murder a child and I stopped them.'
'Killed them.'
'Yes. The child turned out to be my natural son, and the men turned out to be Rask Garadul's. He was making an example of the town for refusing to send levies. He claimed a special interest in the boy, but I'm not sure if that was just because he thought it would hurt me.'
'A special interest? I thought he was there to punish the village.'
'He said Kip had stolen something from him.'
'And had he?'
'The boy claimed his mother had given him a jewelry case just before dying from injuries she took during the attack. He didn't steal it, though.'
'But you have the dagger? Is it the white luxin?'
A chill shot down Gavin's spine. He'd thought the worst part of this interview would be his father picking
