Had he really never kissed Tisis on the lips?
It was as if without really realizing it he’d been holding on to that for Teia, holding back one intimacy because he’d given away so many others. To kiss Tisis—his wife, for Orholam’s sake!—seemed to finally let the latch fall closed…
The woman’s voice says, ‘You Guile men, so intelligent with your brains, and so cluelessly, hopelessly stupid with your hearts.’
My cheek is stinging from Zee’s slap. Give the woman this, even at fifty, she’s got arms and shoulders to make many young warriors jealous. I’m just glad she hit me with an open hand.
She says, “Our houses and our nations need heirs to knit together the Oakenshields and the Guiles, else this war will never die. We’ve talked this all through. We’ve agreed on this course. We had our chance, Darien, all those years ago, and we missed it through our own pride. It’s a closed door. Don’t make us both pathetic by banging on it. You’ve married my daughter to give us an heir. None of us liked that choice, but we all made it. Now you act like a spoiled child, not willing to pay the price of your choice, and making everyone else miserable with you. Darien, if you give my daughter a child but not your love, you’re treating her like a whore, a broodmare, nothing more than a receptacle for your seed. She’s my daughter, and I won’t have you treat her like that. You will treat her like a lady, like your wife, like a woman making the best of a bad situation, like a woman offering you not just her body but also her heart. If you spurn that, you never deserved my love in the first place.”
“But I love you hopelessly, helplessly.”
“The seeds of love may sprout where they will, but we choose whether to water them and give them light or to pluck them like weeds from the soil. We always have a choice.”
“This choice seems impossible.”
“Seems,” she says, her back straight and eyes pitiless.
And in the mirror of her eyes, I see how callow, how selfish, how self-absorbed I’ve been. This marriage puts me in the arms of a young woman, willing to give me children and love; it puts Selene with an older man who loves her not, and breaks her relationship with her mother at the same time; it puts Zee alone, with her daughter married to the man she herself loves. As a lover, how can she wish her daughter happiness with the man she herself once loved? As a mother, how can she not?
“Is he having one of his fits?” Ferkudi asked.
“No,” Kip said, coming back to the moment. “Just feeling ashamed for my stupidity.” Darien Guile had been more than fifty years old, and he’d loved Zee Oakenshield for more than three decades. When they’d finally made peace, she’d been too old to give him an heir, and he had no sons. He’d had to marry her daughter Selene. Darien had had an excuse for being an idiot.
Kip had been in love with Teia for a few months. Before that, he’d been infatuated with Liv Danavis. Before that, it had been Isa. Always, he’d panted after the safely impossible.
He walked to Tisis and looked down into her questioning hazel eyes, her face more open than he deserved, more beautiful than he could imagine. “Forgive me?” he said.
“Just this once,” she said, smiling.
He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her gently on the lips. She reacted like red luxin just waiting for a spark. Her body molded into his as if it had been made for it. Her lips were—
Big Leo cleared his throat noisily.
—her lips were, oh, Orholam, her lips were the best—
“Hey! Newlyweds!”
“You were the one who reminded him of impending death,” Winsen said.
“‘Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,’ and all that,” Ferkudi said. “I mean, we do need to let the trap develop a bit. Maybe they have time for a quick throw behind those bushes over—”
“Breaker,” Cruxer said.
“‘Gather ye rosebuds,’ Ferkudi?” Ben-hadad said, incredulous. “You read poetry?”
“I’m a gentle soul!” Ferkudi protested.
“‘And lo! they saw that the ape could speak, and they were much amazed,’” Big Leo said under his breath.
“‘And sore afraid!’” Tisis said, finally pushing Kip back. It took him a moment to realize she was finishing the quote. He hadn’t read either poem. Aside from Master Danavis’s scrolls of military history and tactics and drafting—boy, did some things about the general seem obvious in retrospect—there had been few books or scrolls in Rekton, and fewer people willing to let a fat kid with pie-sticky fingers handle their treasures. His mother had kept books for years, despite her addiction. Finally, most of those had been sold to fund her haze smoking and self-loathing.
“You don’t look like a man who’s just been thoroughly kissed,” Tisis said.
“Mmm. Just putting on a good show for the boys,” he said.
“Come back,” she said. “And I’ll put on a good show just for you.”
“Oh my.”
There was something cosmically wrong with being horny when you left your wife to go to battle. There were traditions to follow, dammit: there was supposed to be a night of passion first, then the husband left deeply satisfied, carrying a nice memory of what awaited when he returned. It was a nice incentive to live.
Of course, unrelieved horniness with the promise of relief if he lived was a nice incentive, too.
Yes, sir! Thank you, sir! I would prefer the other incentive, sir!
Chapter 30
Stand straight and tall.
Done and done.
Maintain the dignity of the White.
That was probably a lost cause, considering she’d just kicked a man in the head in front of tens of thousands of people.
Speak loudly and clearly. Don’t talk fast because you’re nervous.
Karris took a deep breath. Say this for executing a man: it does rather overshadow one’s fear of public speaking.
She looked out over the many thousands of faces staring at her and the charred corpse of High Luxiat Tawleb and the huddled young luxiat Quentin at her feet. She had moved out from under the shadow of Tawleb’s corpse. She had fought enough to know that even a roasted body can drip fluids. Not something she wanted to wear.
But coincidentally, her move had arrayed her so that she stood in the center as judge, and the dead man hung to her left, and now to her right huddled the repentant young luxiat Quentin. It wasn’t an arrangement she had planned—Gavin certainly would have thought of it, standing here like the sign of the three, but then, he’d had a lot more practice with theatrics, and he was able to pull off symbolism effortlessly. Karris would simply have to muddle through, and accept luck when it came knocking.
“Luxiat Quentin Naheed,” she said loudly. “You have earned expulsion from the Magisterium for the violation of your vows. You deserve to be stripped of your title.”
He said nothing. He was already on his knees, and he simply slumped forward. Silent.
“Quentin Naheed, you have earned being disowned by your family for the shame you have brought upon them. You deserve to be stripped of your name. Quentin, you have earned exile from your satrapy for dishonoring the gift of your education. You deserve to be stripped of a home. And most of all… convict, you have earned death for the murder of Lucia Agnelli. You deserve to be stripped of your life.”
Two Blackguards came forward and lifted Quentin to his feet. He wasn’t weeping, nor did he have the ten-league stare of the doomed. He was staring toward Teia, who had pulled off her eye caps, and was meeting his eyes, with a resolute, calm strength Karris hadn’t known the young woman had. Almost too quietly for Karris to hear, Quentin was repeatedly whispering a breath prayer: “Orholam, give me strength for the path you’ve laid before me.”
They took his arms, and, as he stepped into place, offering no resistance, he stepped on the foot of one of the Blackguards. “Pardon me, sir, I did not mean to do that,” he said.
“Hold,” Karris commanded. She turned her gaze to the crowd, that restive, hungry hound, eyeing her hands fo
r its next treat. She glanced at Quentin, but his eyes were down. To the crowd, she announced, “We are called to do justice, but to love mercy. How do we do those things on any day? How do we do those things in war? We have not Orholam’s perfect sight. The traitor we spare today may return to the fight and kill our allies tomorrow. But…
“But even a traitor may repent truly. And today I have seen a vast gulf between the attitudes of these two men doomed to die. Thus, today I will extend the hardest mercy I know. Quentin, you will not die for your crimes.”
The young man stared at her as if she were speaking a foreign tongue.
“We are at war,” Karris said, “and I will not cast aside a weapon that can be used. Quentin, your sin was pride, a pride carefully banked in hot coals under false humility. The body can die but once, pride can die every day. You, Quentin, shall live a slave. You shall be my slave until you learn what true humility is. I expect it may take all the years of your life.
“And why my slave? Because you are to be a lash for me. We are called to do justice and to love mercy—so I will extend the mercy of your life to you. But we are also called to walk humbly in the light. And this is the lesson that too many of us have forgotten. A lesson that the Chromeria has ignored. You, Quentin, will not be ignored. Despite what you deserve, you will not be expelled from the Magisterium. You shall be a luxiat still. You will be a badge of their shame, for failing Orholam, for allowing darkness to enter the temple of light. You will be dressed in gold, to remind them how easy it is to love gold and to be led astray by a love for earthly pleasures. You will be assigned to study beside and tutor luxiats, to turn your brilliant mind to helping them in their work, and to helping us win this war. You will be Orholam’s justice to them, you shall be a lash against their pride, and the High Luxiats and I shall continue to talk about whether this is punishment enough to cleanse the stain they have allowed into the House of Light.”
Before Karris had climbed up onto the platform, Andross Guile had reminded her that this was no amphitheater. Whatever tricks they did to project her voice, those at the back wouldn’t hear a word she said. Naturally, her words were being transcribed and would be published all around the Seven Satrapies, but what could be seen should be considered separately from what could be heard. If she wasn’t careful, Karris would be seen doing nothing to a traitor. That would look like weakness. So Quentin’s enslavement had to be seen.
So Karris now walked over to the seated High Luxiat Amazzal. She pulled out a large ceremonial dagger and handed it to him.
“If you’ll do the honors of clipping his ear, High Luxiat?” she asked.
“I prefer we handle such discipline privately,” he said.
“Oh, I know what you prefer,” Karris said. “Orea Pullawr trusted you to handle your own affairs faithfully, and you rewarded her trust by raising at least one traitor to the High Magisterium itself. You have loved the darkness of your privacy. Now we banish darkness from the House of Light.”
He held her eye, jaw clenching.
“Don’t be a fool,” Andross said to High Luxiat Amazzal from his seat, pitching his voice low so no one beyond the platform would hear him. “Every moment you hesitate you show the people that you are reluctant to give either justice or mercy or both. Accept the loss, or change the game and fight.”
High Luxiat Amazzal flushed, but he took the knife. He took the steps toward the kneeling Quentin, and held a hand up in the sign of the three, moving it through the four quadrants in the circle of blessing, but he wasn’t praying. He said, “You will pay for this.”
He wasn’t speaking to Quentin.
“Happily,” Karris said. And she meant it. There was something refreshing about the kind of man who would tell you he was angry at you. Frontal attacks were so much easier to defend against.
But something changed in his posture, and Karris’s old Blackguard senses began tingling.
“By the power vested in me as High Luxiat—” Amazzal declared to the crowd.
“One moment, High Luxiat,” a voice interjected. Andross Guile’s. Faster than she would have expected he could move, Andross was already standing beside the furious old man. “Let us show that we are united in this, the promachos together with the White and the luxiats against the pagans and traitors. I will hold the boy.”
Andross put his hands on Quentin’s shoulders, but then whispered to Amazzal, “You have to move faster than that if you wish to change the game. Too late now.”
Too late for what? For a moment, Karris didn’t understand.
Then she did. The old man had intended to say Quentin had gone too far. He’d intended to kill him, to assert Magisterial privilege over its own, despite whatever the White wanted. He’d intended not to have the constant embarrassment of Karris’s slave’s being around, humiliating his luxiats.
And Andross Guile had figured it out before perhaps even the old man had. Certainly Karris would have been too late.
The vein in Amazzal’s forehead throbbed. “And if I—”
“I swear to God I’ll put you up on the Glare next,” Andross said.
Amazzal looked like a bully punched between the eyes, disbelieving. But then he saw the look in Andross’s eyes—and believed.
The rage went out of the old High Luxiat in a whoosh. He spoke loudly again. “By the power vest—vested in me… By the power vested in me, here is the Chromeria’s justice and mercy, Luxiat Quentin Naheed. You are hereby enslaved.”
He sliced Quentin’s ear, blood spitting out onto the High Luxiat’s hands and his lambent white robes.
Amazzal was not a bad man, nor a bad luxiat. But he was a bad leader, and that made him a bad High Luxiat. He looked perfectly the part with flowing white beard, dignified disposition, speaker’s voice, and gracious manners. He cared for others deeply, and offered mercy wherever he went.
But mercy ceases to be a virtue when it enables further injustice.
The tower guards dragged Quentin away, and Karris ghosted through the next speech, barely aware, condemning the traitor prophet to death on the Glare for fomenting rebellion, placing spies, and blasphemy.
Pheronike was the man who’d been confirmed to be a spy handler by the Mighty in one of their training missions. Karris had gotten a spy close to him through that operation, and just before she passed away, Orea Pullawr had had her people scoop up the lot of them. Of them, only this man was a drafter. He was a sub-red, but he’d not been Chromeria-educated, so he was probably little danger, but despite that, he was kept in the special garb for condemned drafters, which was woven with hellstones to disrupt any luxin he tried to gather; he was also blindfolded to forbid him light, and subjected to a litany’s worth of other traditions that Karris didn’t even know about, much less comprehend the reasons for.
But despite the strangeness of the black garb and blindfold, it was only as they lifted Pheronike onto the mirror that Karris snapped back into focus on the moment. She’d never seen a drafter executed on the Glare.
It was supposed to be the worst way for a drafter to die. Or the two worst ways, really, depending on whether you decided to draft or not. She’d heard it described as choosing whether to die of constipation or diarrhea.
On the other hand, how could it be worse than burning to death?
They moved into place, and Karris donned dark spectacles as he was lifted high. Again the people’s mirrors came out, and Sadah Superviolet came forward. Again, it was only as Sadah swung the mirrors into focus that a blade sliced the blindfold from the condemned’s face.
Though Karris was prepared for it this time, it was still like standing in a thunderstorm of light. It was like going from the snowy slopes of Atan’s Teeth to the hottest desert of the Cracked Lands in an instant. The heat alone was a hammer. The light itself had a physical presence—a thickness, a reality so heavy that it made all the material universe seem like a ghostly realm in comparison. A concussive force pressed out Karris’s breath. She wanted to drop to her knees. She wanted to hide. br />
In that moment, Karris believed those who swore that Orholam himself was within that beam of light, and she prayed only that he turn not his eye upon her.
The black drop cloth hiding the accused had already caught fire. The cloth was both symbolic and practical: intended to represent sin and attempting to hide from Orholam’s eye, and intended as a mercy, to keep the people’s mirrors from burning the condemned and torturing him before all the mirrors could come into place.
Orholam’s Glare was excruciating, but it was brief.
All the light in the world illumined the traitor, and he screamed. He soul-screamed a name.
But it was impossible to catch the disembodied syllables over the flame and the pain.
The air above Pheronike undulated as he let out a huge wave of sub-red—a beam into the sky. Unable to form luxin anywhere else because of the hellstone clothing pressing in on his skin, he tried to shed the excess heat from his face.
It was too much to handle, too much to draft artfully; it was a gush. It was also why the condemned’s face on Orholam’s Glare was angled skyward, so he couldn’t attack the crowd around him.
The geyser of heat crackled and cracked like a flag in the wind, even flickering into flames. And it kept going.
As did Pheronike’s howl, a lone, long ululation of agony as skin burnt and cartilage burnt and bone burst forth, blackening.
Then they stopped altogether, drafting and screaming both, cut off with a name: “Nabiros,” the prophet said, a soft life-sloughing sigh. A summons.
For one heartbeat, nothing happened. It was long enough that Karris realized Pheronike’s body wasn’t burning.
Then his skin burst apart in a spray of gore, his head tearing apart as his neck vomited out three dogs’ heads, black and red, growling and snapping. His shoulders bulged, and muscles knotted in his skinny legs, splitting the skin like a bursting boil. But his limbs stayed bound, and in the next heartbeat, he sagged, deflated, defeated, and died.