Gavin chuckled.
“Is something funny, Lord Prism?” Tisis Malargos asked.
“Just had a small personal revelation.” He smiled indulgently, and didn’t tell her more, just to infuriate her. You’re playing with the big guns now, Tisis, are you sure you’re ready?
“And that is?” she asked, insincerity oozing down her chin.
“Why you don’t like me. Which isn’t the reason you shouldn’t like me.”
“Perhaps we should get started,” the White said quickly. Ever the peacekeeper, if not always a peacemaker. “Andross, it is so good to see you. It’s been too long. Would you like to lead the invocation?”
“No,” the old man said. He didn’t elaborate, excuse, or apologize.
The White tented her fingers. Waited a long moment.
Klytos Blue couldn’t handle the tension. “I–I would be happy to-”
“Are you feeling unwell, Andross? Too feeble for a prayer?” the White asked.
Gavin saw where that was going. Implied weakness, implied unfitness to remain on the Spectrum. It was unusually blunt for the White, who preferred a gentler hand. But she also didn’t suffer rudeness.
Andross cocked his head, as if admitting a point scored by his opponent. “Of course not,” he rasped. “My voice is no longer a thing of beauty. The ravages of many years in Orholam’s service. I thought perhaps the mellifluous tones of Tisis Green’s voice might be more uplifting for us all.”
“Orholam judges the hearts of men, not their voices,” the White said. “He hears any prayer lifted to him in humility.”
So my father might as well save his breath.
Gavin let his bemusement show on his face. His father, his eyes shuttered even beneath his blacked-out spectacles, was literally playing blind. Taking on the whole Spectrum, without being able to see anyone’s facial expressions? Balls.
Perhaps it was handicap enough to help Gavin.
But his father’s words actually cast doubt into Gavin’s mind. Why would Andross point to the new Green? Of course she was young and beautiful, and she did have a pretty voice, all things that Andross did appreciate, Gavin knew. But by singling her out, Andross suggested that Tisis was his.
Gavin had assumed she was. But why would Andross need to point it out to everyone, unless perhaps she wasn’t? Or wasn’t fully.
The tightness around Tisis’s eyes, above her phony smile, told Gavin his father was pushing it. Greens hated to be bound, hated to be controlled. Careful, father. I might just pull that jewel away from you. Despite everything.
Relaxing his eyes into sub-red, Gavin looked at each member of the Spectrum in turn, doing his best to be subtle about it. In sub-red, the nuances of a person’s facial expressions couldn’t be seen: that spectrum of light was too fuzzy for fine details. What he could see was the temperature of each person’s skin. It varied from woman to woman, of course, depending on their natural temperature and how close their blood vessels were to the surface of the skin, but if you could establish and remember a baseline for each person-and Gavin had very carefully done that over the years for everyone here except Tisis-you could tell when someone was feeling unusual stress. As their heart pounded faster, even if they were able to control more overt signs like swallowing, fidgeting, or clenching their jaws, they would glow hotter in sub-red.
Of course, a person could be nervous for dozens of reasons, and their temperature could be affected by any number of factors from drinking a glass of wine to wearing heavy clothes, but every once in a while it would give him a clue that nothing else would. With this group, he needed every advantage.
Andross Guile prayed. “Father of Lights, we humbly beseech you attend our supplication.” Andross despised prayer, Gavin knew. He could do what he had to do, of course. He knew all the rituals backward and forward, and in front of the common folk was capable of all apparent sincerity. Here, among those he could almost consider peers, he had more trouble hiding his contempt. To him, the entire religion was a con, but a con on which all their power rested. Thus the faux-archaisms, delivered deadpan enough that one couldn’t quite be sure if he was devout and old, or mocking them all: “Prostrate before you, we fall, O Lord. May our pretensions wither in the heat of your glory, may our presumptions fade in the light of your truth. May you bestow upon us clarity in counsel, obscurity in obfuscation, ocular acuity in action. Thus, in our wretchedness do we implore. May our young defer to old and our old defer to the grave. May our labors flower in your sight, with peace and truth and long-suffering.”
Crotchety old bastard.
“Thus be it,” Andross ended.
They all made the sign of the four and three. “So may it be,” each murmured.
The White looked furious. But the sledge of her gaze had no effect on a blind man.
“Gavin,” she said, “your meeting.” You want to sow the wind? she was asking Andross.
His father’s hatred of the White and his contempt had pushed her too far. Presiding was a huge advantage, enough of one to give Gavin a fighting chance. He took a deep breath. “Clearly some things have changed in the time I was gone.” He stared at Tisis Green. “For all of us.”
“I was rightly appointed to this body-” Tisis said, bristling.
“Tisis!” the White said. “Gavin is presiding. All Colors will be recognized in due course and heard fully, but we are a collegial body, and interruptions shall not be tolerated.”
“As you are no doubt aware,” Gavin said, as if the interruption and counterinterruption hadn’t happened, “when last I met with you-that is, those who were present at that time, and those who were not have doubtless read the minutes of that meeting pursuant to diligent fulfillment of their duties-” That is, if you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’re lazy and bad at your job, Tisis. Gavin had no doubt that his father had memorized the minutes from the last meeting. He’d gotten his memory from the old man, after all. He continued: “When last I met with you, I warned you that King Garadul had rebelled, and would doubtless seize Garriston. I urged us to prevent war, though in a way that proved too painful for this council to countenance. This august body rejected my proposal, and war did indeed follow.”
Klytos raised a forefinger, asking for recognition to speak. Gavin extended his hands out and downward, as if smoothing away the problem. “I don’t come to refight old debates. I understand that there were excellent reasons to be skeptical of what King Garadul intended and what he would be able to do. I have no intention of dwelling on the past.” Except to remind you all that I was right. “Merely summarizing for those who might not have noticed the nuances of the minutes.” He looked at Tisis, as though this last comment were directed at her, and indeed, she flushed.
In truth, his summary was for everyone else, framing the old conversation for his own purposes. He who controls the past, and all that. Gavin could do all this with his brain handing over control of the ship to the first mate. He was thinking furiously. Orholam, Lunna. After all the work I did cultivating her.
Andross Guile moistened his lips. If anything, he looked perversely proud of his son.
Which didn’t mean he wouldn’t yank the rug out from under Gavin as soon as the opportunity presented itself.
For a moment, Gavin wondered. What if Lunna Green had been murdered, but not by the Order? What if his father had done it?
No, that wasn’t Andross Guile’s way. He would bribe a Color, or blackmail her, but not murder. On the other hand, it would be vintage Andross Guile to have a plan to replace each and every one of them, in case they did break the halo or resign. Andross would be ready. That didn’t mean he would get an ideal candidate in place each time, only that he could steer the nomination. Perhaps that was why Tisis wasn’t fully his.
If Andross really was willing to murder a Color, he would have made sure that he murdered one whose replacement was fully his. Right? Otherwise, why risk murder?
Gavin was taking too long. Take the facts as they are, and work with them. Move forward. Figuring out the past can wait. What advantages did having Tisis on the council give him?
The Spectrum expected Gavin to head straight for the discussion of a declaration of war. Then they thought he’d ask to be made promachos again. So Gavin said, “In truth, I don’t think the first thing we should discuss today is the war raging in Tyrea and eastern Atash.”
Klytos raised his finger again. Gavin motioned for him to speak. “We’ve not established that the troubles in Tyrea and eastern Atash are war, Lord Prism,” Klytos said.
He was about to go on, but Gavin knuckled his forehead and said, as if mystified by Klytos’s stupidity,
