“I see outside of time. And if that doesn’t make sense to you, it doesn’t to me either. Nor is it perfect, how I see. I’m not Orholam. I still have my own desires and prejudices that can color what I see or how I interpret what I see-how I put into words those visions that come before my eye. Tell me, Prism, do you think mercy is weakness?”
“No.”
“Wrong question; your pardon. What I meant was, do you think justice is better, or mercy?”
“It depends.”
“Who decides?” she asked.
“I do.”
“Are pity and mercy the same?” she asked.
“No.”
“What’s the difference?”
“I don’t believe in pity.”
“Liar.” She grinned.
“Excuse me?” Gavin said.
“There are two kinds of people who make excellent liars: monsters with no conscience, and those who become excellent liars from practice and necessity because they’re deeply ashamed. I don’t think you’re a monster, Lord Prism. You’ve played beautifully. Your mask is compelling, gorgeous, alluring. It makes me want to get naked and subdue you with pleasure until you’re too exhausted to maintain that facade and I can rip it off and show you what’s underneath. Because I already know, and I judge that man beneath your mask much less harshly than you do.”
Fortune-teller tripe. Albeit tripe with a fine sexual edge to it.
“Are you sure you’re not trying to seduce me?” Gavin asked lightly.
“Ah, Prism, you always do like to cut corners, don’t you? It’s a strength, I suppose. Remember it. But then, you remember most everything, don’t you?”
He was confused.
She smiled. “What I’m sure of is that bedding you would be a disaster for you and for Karris and for the Seven Satrapies. I’m also pretty sure it would be really, really good for me. Both in the moment and in the long run. Which is why I’m doing everything I can to be completely over the top and disgust you with my wanton ways. If I make you uninterested, then that disaster won’t be an option anymore.”
He laughed-and could tell she wasn’t joking. She was acting as sex-starved as he felt, and something about her relentlessly frank style convinced him that she would be the best he’d ever had. He said, “The ‘wanton ways’ gambit is having an effect, but perhaps not the one you’d planned.” Orholam’s royal blue balls, Karris wasn’t ten paces away. Gavin was going to die.
The Third Eye stared up at the sky and scowled. “I really thought it would start by now, hmm. What do you think is the worst decision you ever made in your life, Lord Prism?”
That was easy. Not killing his brother. “I had pity once.”
“You’re wrong. You didn’t spare Gavin out of pity. And you wouldn’t do any differently than you did if you could do it again.”
She said it so matter-of-factly that he almost missed it. And then it yanked him up short, like a dog catching scent of a rabbit and charging heedless-right until he got to the end of his chain. She’d said sparing Gavin. She knew both that he wasn’t that Gavin and that he had spared his brother. The air got dense, hard to breathe. Gavin’s chest tightened.
“What, did you think I was a charlatan? Adjust to the new reality, Dazen, and move on to the real point.”
There was no denial. No point. She hadn’t ventured it as a guess, or a trap, and if he made her repeat it, Karris might hear. Gavin’s heart was thundering. He swallowed, took some wine, swallowed again.
“My worst choice was not telling her.” Gavin was in a fog, a fugue. He didn’t want to say Karris’s name. They were far enough away that their voices should be a murmur to her, but hearing one’s own name tended to pique the ears.
“No, not that either. If you’d told her the truth when she was younger, she’d have exposed you. What you did wasn’t kind, or perhaps fair, but it was wise, and I’d advise you not to apologize for what you did when the time comes. Karris is better at adjusting to hard realities than she is at forgiving. It’s a character flaw.”
It was true. Deeply true. Telling Karris, “I was doing my duty” would probably work better than, “I’m so sorry.” She understood duty, cared about it. And yet something in Gavin bristled, wanted to defend Karris.
“So, what was it then?” Gavin asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t see everything. I just know what it wasn’t. I know that you’ve been asking the wrong questions, so you’ve had no hope of getting the right answers. So my part is done, sadly with no cries of passion or clawing of your back. Aside from two things. First, your people may stay. They will, I’m fairly certain, destroy our way of life. But perhaps it will one day turn into something better. I have little hope of that, but I’m too close to see this clearly, and I know that pushing fifty thousand starving people into the sea is not what Orholam would ask of me, regardless of what they will do to us once they are no longer starving.”
“And second?” Gavin asked. It was a huge victory. She was giving him everything he wanted, but you don’t laud victories, you consolidate them and press forward.
“And second, you’ve lost control of blue, and your… counterpart has broken out of his blue prison. I’d advise you to do something about it, because without a Prism, strange things start happening. First, they’re innocuous, weird little things. But they get worse.” She seemed to retreat into herself.
Gavin felt naked. Not in a good way. The news about his brother-if it was true-was cataclysmic. Not just a terrible shock, and not just terrible news, but too coincidental. Gavin had woven alarums into the drafting, of course, but they were alarums to notify someone in his own room in the tower: Marissia when he was gone. There was no way he should have been aware, no matter how dimly or on how visceral a level, that Dazen had broken out.
He had sunk a huge amount of his will into that prison, in ways long forbidden, so maybe he’d felt that breaking of his will dimly over the leagues. But huge talent though he was, the Chromeria was halfway across the sea.
Perhaps his losing blue had weakened the prison or broken it. There need be no coincidence. The one could have caused the other-but he didn’t know which way that causation flowed. Gavin felt like he was burrowing into the roots of a mountain, and the deeper he went, the faster he moved forward, the sooner the entire thing was going to come down on top of him.
But he didn’t know any way out.
Orholam, his brother was out of the blue? Did Marissia even remember how to switch over the chutes? Maybe Dazen would starve to death. No… no, he’d shown her, years and years ago, how to do it, against just this eventuality. She had an excellent memory. She’d do it right.
Nonetheless, he had to get back. And going back meant heading right into the middle of everything that threatened him most.
“Aha!” The Third Eye sniffed. “Here it is.”
Scrunching his forehead, Gavin glanced over at her. Noticed her nipples-dammit, got bigger things to worry about here, Gavin! She was leaning back, looking up again, this time not in prayer, though it again outlined her cold-stiffened nipples clearly against the fabric of her dress. He sniffed to see what she was talking about.
Smelled nothing. Sniffed again, and caught something very faint.
Something prickled on his skin, the lightest of touches. He looked over at the Third Eye.
She was grinning like a little girl. He didn’t understand. Then something touched his arm. He brought it close, but it melted before he could get a look at it. Snow?
It was cool tonight, but it wasn’t cold enough for snow. Not even close.
He could smell it now-the familiar mineral, chalky odor. Blue luxin.
More hit his upturned face, his arms. It was snowing.
“Blue delights in order,” the Third Eye said. “I know you can’t see it, but every flake is blue. Utterly beautiful, Lord Prism. I’ve never seen so stunning a harbinger of doom.”
Gavin’s heart dropped. Other than in the mountains of Paria and Tyrea, most of the Seven Satrapies went
