Zymun looked like he was going to tear into her, but then his mouth twitched. “ ‘Forehanded insult’?” he asked. “That your own invention?” But he grinned.
“I was hoping you wouldn’t notice.” She scowled, feeling stupid. “I thought you weren’t a blue,” she said quickly. He had five colors on his cloak and vambraces, but not blue and not superviolet.
“Not yet,” he said. He drafted another blue disk. Liv could tell the color was off, and in barely more than a second it frayed apart and dissolved. “Hoping I grow into it. It’s so close it’s infuriating. Blue has so many uses. Plus, as nice as it already is to be a five, I can’t help but dream of being a full-spectrum polychrome.”
He was reaching to be a seven-color drafter with exactly the same kind of statements Liv had used a few months ago when she was longing to have her second color recognized. It was never enough, was it? There’s always someone better than you.
Still, if seven colors might be within reach for Zymun, that meant the boy was on another plane altogether.
“Sorry about forgetting,” Liv said, looking at her feet. “I didn’t think I was important enough for you to wait around for me.”
He smiled, and broken nose, black eyes, and all, he was terribly handsome. “Come on,” he said. “I’ve got something to show you.”
Chapter 35
It was strangely freeing to be so busy that he had no time for friends-or his lack thereof. Over the next weeks, Kip spent his mornings in class and working, spent hours more on the Blackguards’ field, and then headed to the library. He got to know the staff, and they him. As often as not, a stack of books was waiting for him-the ones he requested every day, plus whatever ones Rea Siluz thought he might find helpful.
He would find an isolated desk, and not leave for eight or ten hours, depending on when the last librarian left. Every day he scowled at the older students, and stayed late with them a few times-until he was discovered and banned from the library for a week. Students also weren’t allowed to reshelve their own books. Apparently so many had done so incorrectly for so long that it became a nightmare for the librarians. Now, after being read, books were to be deposited at one of the two desks for the purpose on each level of the library. Kip also quickly learned that despite taking up three full levels of the Prism’s Tower, this library was only a small sliver of the total number of books the Chromeria owned. Many more were kept below ground. Dims were not allowed in the secondary libraries, period.
All of which combined to make Kip’s other searches nearly impossible to even begin. He had sworn to avenge his mother-and crushing King Garadul’s head somehow hadn’t made that ache go away. Then he’d sworn to find out if his mother was lying about Gavin Guile. He couldn’t imagine the man had actually raped her, but liar and addict and horror though she was, she still deserved that of her son.
Of greater concern, though, was that he’d sworn to make Klytos Blue step down.
He really had to stop swearing.
The problem with both goals was that he barely knew where to start. He couldn’t exactly ask, “Pardon, can you tell me where the damning evidence about the currently serving Colors and Prisms is kept?” And with his books being checked up on, any wider reading he did want to do had to be done carefully. Kip had found several books of genealogy to learn about Klytos Blue, and then waited until he saw one of the young women who assisted the libraries reshelving books and slid his books into her stacks.
At this rate, he’d never find anything. There was only one shortcut to get to the libraries that might have the information he needed: make it into the Blackguard.
So what had begun as something he attempted to please his father whose ultimate purpose he didn’t understand now became the only possibility. Kip trained and studied and read books in the library and didn’t sleep much, nightmares interrupting his rest every night, until he would crash and sleep for a day or two straight.
There was no punishment for missing class. The Chromeria let the sponsors handle that. It made Sponsor Day deeply unpleasant for those students who loafed. But Kip didn’t have a sponsor. He went to class, though, even when he hated it. To miss would be to disappoint his father, to be a failure.
And then fight day came, the culmination of the month’s training.
Though Kip was clearly the worst in class, by entering at number four he’d made it terribly unlikely that he could fail out this month. But the entire system was designed to force the cream of the class to rise. On testing day, each student was given a fight token. The testing started at the bottom, with the lowest-ranked students given a chance. Number forty-nine would go first. He could only challenge someone within three places, and if he won, he would be awarded that person’s fight token, which he could immediately use again to keep climbing.
Before they started, a boy asked the trainer, “Trainer Fisk, sir? Why do we have to fight with the spotlights instead of giving us spectacles?”
The trainer said, “You ask now? Why not ask when you started?”
“I, uh-everything was new,” the boy said. Kip could tell the truth. The boy had been too intimidated to ask then.
“Anyone have a guess?” the trainer asked.
“Spectacles could break in training, and they’re worth a fortune,” Teia said.
“And the glass could blind us if it broke,” someone else chimed in.
“True, but those aren’t the most important reasons,” Trainer Fisk said. “Let me tell a little story. Far as I know, it’s true. Back in the days of Prism Karris Shadowblinder, just after Lucidonius himself had introduced colored lenses to the world, there was a young man who joined the Ilytian Heresy, though the same could have happened to anyone. Blue drafter named Gilliam. He had his blue lenses, and he never took them off. It was a time of wars to make ours look paltry, so none blamed him. The lenses were a symbol of power, and of status, of course. The technology to create colored lenses was known to only a few, so having the lenses showed that you were wealthy as well. He was in many battles over the years, mostly on the wrong side, but that’s neither here nor there. A number of years later, he tried to assassinate Prism Shadowblinder. He cut through her guards handily, and then he faced the Prism herself. She berated him for using the spectacles her own husband had given him to fight her. She berated him for using them too much.
“But of course he thought she was stalling, and he tried to kill her again. She snatched the spectacles from his face. It was an overcast day; there was no blue for him to draft, and in moments he was hamstrung. She asked him then if he understood. He didn’t. She picked up a simple iron spear and told him to stop her. Of course it was impossible. He looked everywhere for blue. There was none. And then, as she came closer, he felt the reds and greens and yellows sliding into his eyes. He was a full-spectrum polychrome, and he’d never known.
“But having never used the colors, he couldn’t control them, couldn’t bind them to his will in the time he had. And she slew him as he screamed. He who has ears, let him hear.”
Kip looked around. Some of the scrubs were nodding, like this all made perfect sense. Others looked like he felt.
“He who looks through only one lens lives in darkness,” Teia murmured. He could tell she hadn’t just made that up. It had a weight of antiquity to it.
“Enough questions, we’ve got work here. Places!” Trainer Fisk said. And that was it. No explanation. Fantastic.
Forty-nine, a slight, awkward boy with crooked teeth, challenged forty-six as everyone expected he would. Forty-six was a beefy girl, nearly twice his size, but slow. If she lost, she would lose her fight token and her chance to challenge those above her, so it was do or die for both of them.
“What’s your strategy?” Teia asked Kip.
Forty-nine and forty-six approached the great wheels, each spinning one. Depending on where the whizzing counters landed, they would have different rules for their fight. It was another aspect of the Blackguard ethos: you never knew under what circumstances you might have to fight, or with what weapons. You could get lucky or unlucky, and you had to deal with it.
The boy’s roll landed at yellow and green. The girl’s at staves.
“What do you mean?” Kip asked, entranced by what was happening in front of them.
