Finally, after telling her about Gavin, he said, “I didn’t know what he did to you, back then. How he… humbled you. I should have figured it out, but I’ve been so worried about myself that I couldn’t see even the most obvious things about those around me. I’m sorry, Karris, and I know I haven’t acted like it, but I love you and I want to spend the rest of my life with you, if you can ever forgive me.”
The silence was deep enough to drown in.
“Infuriating. Incorrigible. Inelegant. Inefficient. Incredible in both senses. But not, in the end, insincere, are you, Dazen Guile?”
“Huh?”
“Kiss me,” Karris said.
“Pardon?”
“It wasn’t a request.”
He stood up from his chair and sat on the edge of her bed. She grunted with pain as his movement jostled her.
“Sorry,” he mumbled. “Maybe—”
“Not a request.”
“But your lips are cracked and—”
“Not a request.”
“Ah.”
He kissed her with the gentleness of a man kissing an invalid.
She pulled back, peering at him through swollenness-slitted eyes, disapproving. “That was horrible, Dazen Guile. That was not the kiss I’ve been waiting sixteen years for.”
“Second chance?” he asked.
She looked unconvinced. “Hm. You don’t deserve it.”
“I don’t,” he said seriously.
“You don’t,” she said gravely, “but then, if you and I aren’t about second chances, I don’t know who is.” She grinned a bit, though.
He kissed her again, tenderly, but drawing her in. But what began as a gift for her benefit, a smooth, strong seduction soon morphed. He folded her small form into his, wrapping protective arms around her. As they kissed, he could feel a tension loosening in him, a tension that had been knotted for so long he’d come to think of that pain as part of the pain of being alive.
She pulled back, and instantly back on guard, fearing rejection, Gavin pulled back, too.
But Karris murmured, “I’m afraid you’ve left me breathless, Lord Guile—”
“Well thank you.” Relief beneath his grin.
“—because I can’t breathe through my nose right now.”
She laughed and he joined her ruefully. “You are so beautiful,” he said. He felt as if his heart had swollen too large for his chest.
A dubious look. “I might be part blind right now, but you shouldn’t be. I got beat up, what’s your excuse?”
He chuckled. “I didn’t mean particularly, precisely at this moment—You know what? I think my lips can make a more convincing case without words. Come back here.”
They kissed, and kissed, and chuckled together about Karris needing to take little breaths and Gavin misreading her little moans of desire and her little moans of pain when he got too passionate. The world ceased. No worries, no cares. That knot Gavin hadn’t known he carried eased and opened and disappeared, and he felt suddenly stronger than he had been in his entire life. Free. The power of the secret broken, chains shattered.
“Orholam have mercy, how I want to make love with you,” she said.
“I can be persuaded,” Gavin said quickly.
She made a little sound of frustration. “If only my body were so amenable.”
“I could be… gentle,” he offered, giving a roguish grin.
She pulled him close and whispered in his ear, “After sixteen years of missing you, Dazen Guile, the last thing I want from you is gentle.”
He swallowed. Speechless. “Will you marry me, Karris White Oak?” Damn. He could have done better than that. Such questions should have some eloquence.
Then again with his history with Karris, perhaps a simple truth was better than an artful one.
“Karris, why are you crying?”
“Because it’s past time for my pain medicine, you big idiot.”
There was a knock on Gavin’s door. “Oh, you have got to be joking,” Gavin said, looking at the door like he could kill it with his eyes. He turned back to her. “Does that mean yes?”
“You’ve worn me down and taken advantage of my incapacitated state, so…”
“So that means yes?”
Another knock on the door.
“You stupid, stupid man, of course it does.”
“I love you, Karris White Oak.”
She smiled mischievously. “You ought to.”
The door opened, and a Blackguard wheeled the White in. Gavin couldn’t keep the huge grin off his face.
“Oh dear, have I interrupted something?” the White asked.
“No,” Gavin said. At the same time Karris said, “Yes.”
“I see.”
“You were just the person I was hoping to see,” Gavin said. “High Mistress White, would you be so good as to marry us?”
The White inclined her head, looking over the corrective spectacles she was wearing. “Well, Gavin Guile, it certainly took you long enough. And Karris White Oak! Slowest seduction in history! A woman with your charms.” The White sniffed.
“Is that a yes?” Gavin asked.
“Of course it is,” Karris answered for her. She was grinning from ear to ear.
“I imagine that Gavin’s heading straight off to war, and that you’ll want this done as soon as he gets back?” the White said.
“No,” Gavin said. “Right now.”
“Right now?” Karris said. “Don’t you want to give this some thought? We have no idea what we’re getting into.”
“And when will we? Some things you can’t know until you’re in them. I’ll be in it with you. That’s more than enough for me.” Gavin turned to the White. “Right now.”
The White grumbled. “Figures.” But she smiled. “Gavin, you’re willing to have your father disown you over this?”
“I’m feeling invincible right now,” Gavin said. “How’d you know about that, Orea?”
“Disowned?” Karris asked.
“I’ll explain. Later,” Gavin said.
“Me, too,” the White said. “Karris, you know what this may mean for your tenure?”
“Yes,” Karris said.
“Rules are made to bend for the right people,” Gavin said.
“Promise me a big wedding when you get back,” Karris said.
“Huge.”
And so they were wed. The vows were simple. In the discharge of his normal duties as Prism, Gavin had prompted brides and grooms through the vows himself, but today he forgot them. And as soon as they were out of his mouth, they became a blur. He was barely aware even of the White, he had eyes only for Karris. He was filled with an inexplicable tenderness for this wild, frustrating, beautiful, stubborn, amazing woman.
He kissed Karris again, and she grimaced under her smile.
“Time for more medicine?” he asked.
She nodded, apologetic.
He found the tincture and poured her the dose. She accepted it gratefully and lay back on her pillows. “Come back to me, my lord. Come back soon, you hear me?”
“Yes, my lady,” he said. He couldn’t stop grinning.
She was asleep in less than a minute.
Finally, Gavin turned to the White. “Well done, Lord Prism,” she said. “Perhaps I was right about you after all.”
“I do my best.”
“I hope your best is enough to save us.”
And with the quiet moment, he remembered why he had worked so hard not to have quiet moments with the White. She would ask that they go to the roof and that he balance. She had all sorts of reasons. She would have heard all the stories that Marissia had told him. She would know what they meant.
“Do you know,” she said, “I was on the roof the other day. And do you know what I saw? Cranes. Thousands of them, migrating. Have you ever seen them?”
“Not that I remember.”
“They fly in Vs. Something about it makes it easier.”
It was an odd thing to say. Like y
ou’d explain to a child. Gavin had, of course, seen migrating birds before.
“This year, they weren’t flying in a V. They were flying in a single line. Thousands of them. So odd. Cranes never fly over water for long when they migrate. I could see they were struggling. Without the efficiencies of their normal formation, birds were dropping out, falling, dying. They flew straight toward me. And then, suddenly, as they reached Little Jasper, that odd line broke apart. The cranes rested that day on the Jaspers, as they have not for many years. And when they left, they flew normally.” She didn’t really finish her story, she simply stopped talking. “Regardless, they were saved.”
He’d broken the bane—and saved some cranes. Orholam’s nipple. “That’s marvelous,” Gavin said.
“Have you had a chance to go up to the roof yet?” she asked.
“Yes, yes I have.” Face bland.
She studied him. Did she buy it? Surely, this was her telling him she knew. Unless—unless it was the ramblings of an old woman. Maybe senility came like this on a woman as bright as Orea. Maybe she had the pieces, and some part of her was desperately trying to put it all together by talking it out, out loud.
Or she was warning him, because of their friendship. Their friendship? Were they friends, after all? But she was utterly dedicated to the Chromeria, to her duties, to the Seven Satrapies. Her next words—he knew her next words were going to be: “Gavin, we need to talk about how to ease you into retirement.”
“Gavin,” she said, “the generals are in my room, planning the invasion. I think they could use your expertise.”
Gavin took a deep breath. That meant his father would be there. Frying pan, fire. He stood, bent over to kiss Karris’s forehead, and popped his neck right and left. “Very well, Orea, let’s save the world.”
Chapter 95
Gavin walked into Orea’s room to find the generals and their aides gathered around a table on which a number of maps of different scales were laid out. “So you’ve got spies with the Color Prince’s army,” Gavin said.
“More than a dozen,” a bearded, balding Parian general said. Caul Azmith was the Parian satrapah’s younger brother. He was affable, polite, and not terribly bright.
“Projection or actual data?” Gavin asked. He wanted to know if he was staring at the positions the prince’s army had been in eight or ten days ago, or if these were estimates of the current positions.
“Projection, on excellent data,” the Blood Forest general said. He was also bald, though he was a young man, freckled and foolish. A political weasel who had no business leading a hunting expedition, much less an army.
“How old is this?” Gavin asked.
General Azmith said, “Ten days. Takes my handler two days to get to the smuggler who’s carrying the letters. The smuggler had good wind. Earned himself a bonus for getting it here in seven days. It arrived last night.”
“You using that smuggler for the return trip?”
General Azmith shook his head.
Which to Gavin meant that the smuggler had probably lied about how fast he’d made the trip in order to get his bonus. Most of the smugglers on the Atashian coast still used galleys so they couldn’t become becalmed, with the low displacement that allowed the long wide ships to traverse bays that the pirate hunters couldn’t. This time of year, the winds would rarely make it possible for a galley to come from Atash in seven days. Probably more like nine. Maybe ten.
If Gavin had been here, things could have been different. If Gavin were promachos, things still could be. But that was out of reach for now. His father had done that, and his father wasn’t going to give it back for nothing. Gavin’s own personal defiance, his own happiness in marrying Karris, was going to cost men their lives.
But that wasn’t his fault. Gavin wasn’t going to accept the blame for that. He would have, not so long ago. No, these generals had no business being generals, and they’d all been put into position by people who ought to have known better. There were plenty of veterans from the last war who could have been put in charge. Gavin had done the best he could by the people of Garriston. He couldn’t make the right decisions for everyone else.
“How fast is your turnaround?” he asked.
The idiot Blood Forester spoke. “We’re not actually going to start strategizing until your luxlord father arrives. He should be here any minute, Lord Prism.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Gavin said.
“Lord Prism?”
“When you arrive in Ru, I think you’ll find that the army is here.” Gavin pointed to a little town called Voril, two days from Ru. “You’ll find that the corregidor has maybe half the working guns he’s told you, and less than half the powder, because he’s always been more worried about his ego than about defense. So rather than look like a fool to you who are trying to save him, he’ll act like one and lie to you, which you won’t find out until it’s too late. And I’ve marched through this country. If you’re not being harassed and being made to pay for letting your wagons get spread out, this section is easy. I covered it in three weeks, but my brother had saboteurs and raiders who made us paranoid at every step. If they’ve been allowed to just march through here, they’ll be on top of Ru before you know it.
“Your spies have been cataloguing the wrong things. What’s important isn’t the exact number of horsemen or who’s a freed slave versus a volunteer. Those are good to know, but what you needed to know was how many anvils do they have, how many skilled blacksmiths, how much scrap iron? Have veterans from the False Prism’s War been put in positions of leadership, or have those slots gone to the Color Prince’s favorites who don’t know anything? How long are their supply lines, and how much food are they delivering every time? It’s too late for a lot of those questions to be answered now. Too late for you to have raiders intercept the supply wagons, or to destroy the anvils or murder the blacksmiths and sabotage the wagons’ wheels before they hit the Little Sisters’ Pass. You could have bought yourself weeks, and only put a dozen men in danger to do it. The Color Prince hasn’t led an army before either, and it’s not your fault that none of you have—but it is your fault that you haven’t asked the men who marched with me or my brother to advise you. You’re going to ask those men to die, and not for good reason. The fact is, no matter what you do, you won’t save Ru. It’s already over. If you were wise, you’d send messages to tell them to evacuate the city and regroup at the neck of Ruic Head, and to take out of the city whatever supplies the Color Prince’s army needs most. But you won’t do that, because you’re looking to win a battle instead of win a war. I’ve got my own fights, gentlemen. Fights that I can still win, and that will help you in ways you don’t know. So good day, and I’ll see you on the field.”
Chapter 96
Gavin headed down to his own room. He spied his father coming up the lift just as he stepped into his room. Good thing the old bastard was blind. Grinwoody was with him, but the old slave had his back turned, helping the old man out of the lift.
Karris lay on his bed, asleep. In a chair beside the bed, Commander Ironfist sat. He rubbed his temples, and then his bald head as Gavin came in.
“Commander,” Gavin said.
“Lord Prism.” There was something oddly distant in the big man’s voice.
“Is something the matter?” Gavin asked.
Ironfist looked at him levelly. “I almost lost one of my watch captains, one of my friends, in what appears to be a targeted attack. And someone murdered one of my students yesterday. A couple of the scrubs swear that the man was aiming at Kip and the girl stepped into the line of fire on accident. Do you have any comment, Lord Prism?”
“Can I trust you enough to bare my throat to you, Ironfist?”
Ironfist hesitated, as well he should.
“Well then,” Gavin said.
Ironfist heaved a sigh and looked down at his hands. “We’re doomed, aren’t we?”
Gavin didn’t follow. They were doomed because they didn’t trust each other? br />
“The Chromeria is a lightning-struck tree. Still standing, but dead on the inside. That’s why we’re going to lose, I think,” Ironfist said. “We have all the power in the world, but our faith is dead. If we don’t believe in what we’re doing for its own sake, we’re just doing it to maintain power. And I think some of us are too good to continue throwing lives into the trough simply to feed the beast.”
“Are we?” Gavin asked very quietly.
“When Ru falls, this will become a real war. And once it’s a real war, and not simply an uprising of a few disgruntled madmen, then the questions begin. At some point, every one of us will have to ask if we’re on the right side. If we’ve already decided our own side is wrong—that there’s no Orholam, that the Chromeria is simply making the best of a bad situation—then where do men looking for certainty turn?”
“Maybe men shouldn’t look for certainty,” Gavin said.
“Should. Shouldn’t. Doesn’t matter. They do.”
He was right. Of course he was.
Gavin quirked an eyebrow. “Why Ironfist, are you asking me to come back to religion?”
Ironfist met his levity with a flat stare. “My own faith is dead, Lord Prism. Not least because of you. I’d not ask you to embrace a lie, but I want my people to have a reason to die. I won’t lie either. I can’t tell them what we do matters. If that’s beside the point, if you want us to die because it’s our duty to die, I can accept that. That can be enough for me. That will be enough for the Blackguard. It won’t be enough for everyone else.”
“Does the Blackguard love me so much?” Gavin asked grimly.
Ironfist looked startled Gavin should ask. “We don’t die for you. We die for each other, for our brothers and sisters. We die for the Blackguard.” Then he grinned. “Looks the same from your side though, I suppose.” Ironfist stood, looked at Karris, swallowed, then turned back to Gavin. “You should give her a ring, you know. Especially if you’re going off to your death.”