The Blinding Knife

Chapter 104

Gavin barely made it to the Chromeria before nightfall, the skimmer going slower and slower as his eyes strained for light. At least the waters were still enough that he was able to land directly on the back side of Little Jasper, where there was a tiny dock, rather than having to draft an entire dory by starlight and row in to Big Jasper and walk.

Stepping onto the creaking wood, he disintegrated the yellow skimmer. He rubbed his arms and shoulders, hoping they didn’t cramp. The muscles were trembling and weak from his journey even though the last two hours had been slow going. He was starting to feel a sick foreboding that yellow was getting harder to draft. He hoped it was simply the gathering night, and not that he would wake tomorrow unable to draft yellow at all. If so, he was going to have a hard time getting back to the fleet before the battle was over.

He tried to smile over the rising terror. At least he was going to spend tonight in Karris’s arms. To the evernight with everything else. What had the Third Eye said? “Bruised and broken as you are, it might be your only chance”? Gavin was sore and fatigued, but he was neither bruised nor broken, so either she had meant the “you” to mean Karris or she was simply wrong. Regardless, he wasn’t going to solve the mysteries of prophecy and he didn’t care to. He just wanted to see his wife. His wife. How odd that phrase seemed. And yet how he’d missed her. He felt it keenly now, now that she was so close and his mind wasn’t crowded with fighting, plotting, doing, doing, doing. Some part of him thought that she was going to be snatched away if he didn’t hurry. He opened the lock on the stout oak door. The hinges were rusty. Pulling the door open made him aware again of how tired his arms were. He tried to lift a hand over his head and couldn’t.

The door opened to a long, claustrophobia-inducing tunnel, barely wide enough for one man to pass with his shoulders turned. Gavin touched his hand to one of the ingenious sub-red switches, and from the heat of his hand, it triggered a reaction that opened panels of yellow down the length of the tunnel. Sometimes it was the simple, elegant things that could be done with magic that impressed him far more than his own brute-force behemoths.

Five minutes down the tunnel deposited him at an iron gate with a different lock. He opened that and took a narrow staircase up into the front yard of the Chromeria. By the time he reached the lifts, two Blackguards had fallen in step beside him. He grinned at them. “Gentlemen.”

“Lord Prism,” they said.

He took the lift up, and then the second lift to his own floor, walked past the Blackguards, who didn’t look surprised in the least to see him-how did they do that, anyway? He walked to his own door, then, thinking he heard something, he looked down the hall. The White’s door was closing, very slowly.

She must be asleep. Her guards are being careful not to wake her.

But still Gavin hesitated. You should go check that out. For a second he was aware of himself, poised between going in to a beautiful woman and going to an old crone. What kind of an idiot even thinks that’s a choice?

Cursing himself for a fool, he left his door and strode quickly down the hall. It was rude to enter anyone’s room filled with luxin; it was treated like coming in with a pistol leveled at your host’s head, and if Gavin could get away with many things, that wasn’t one of them. Not with the White. So he drew in superviolet. What they couldn’t see couldn’t be rude, could it?

He opened her door as stealthily as it had just been shut. A crack, and then more. Bodies wearing Blackguard garb lay on the floor and a figure was treading slowly toward the White’s bed, clad all in black.

The light streaming in from the well-lit hallway betrayed Gavin. The figure spun, drawing a pistol from his belt in a smooth, fast motion.

Gavin blasted the door open with his shoulder and dove into the White’s room, shouting, “Assassin!”

The pistol roared. Its ball shattered wood and whined, ricocheting off the stone behind it.

A gray ball nearly two feet across shot out of the man’s hands, catching Gavin’s first Blackguard as he was jumping into the room and drawing his pistol. It knocked him horizontal and back into the other Blackguard.

The assassin had dropped his first pistol and drew another, turning to kill the White, who was awake and scrambling to get off her bed.

From the floor, Gavin shot the tiniest spotlight beam of superviolet out, and as the assassin turned, Gavin’s superviolet played over the man’s hand. Then Gavin shot the rest of his superviolet.

Superviolet is delicate. All the superviolet Gavin held probably weighed only as much as a hairpin, and it wasn’t strong, but even a hairpin flung at great speed can have some effect. The superviolet burned the air and slammed into the back of the assassin’s hand, cracking bones and flinging the pistol out of the man’s grip.

Gray-white light flooded the chamber from a dozen sources. Gavin popped up off the floor, instinctively drawing in light to hurl blue spears at the assassin.

He was all the way up and throwing his body forward to ready itself for the massive recoil of the magic he was about to throw when he realized he hadn’t drafted anything.

The assassin’s counter of another ball of gray light caught Gavin full in the chest. It launched him backward and he slammed into a wall, the impact driving his breath from him.

Green, his brain told him helpfully. He’s not drafting gray, that’s green. I just can’t see it anymore.

The assassin pulled out another pistol and leveled it at Gavin. From this range, with Gavin still trying to suck in his first breath, the man couldn’t miss.

A sunburst of white-gray light lit the man, and Gavin saw the White standing in her bedrobe, a cloud of tiny glowing particles floating in front of her, like motes of dust. Her hands snapped forward, and so did the entire cloud. The sound of the tiny flechettes hitting the assassin was like the sound of Blackguards at archery practice, when an entire volley studded the targets.

The assassin froze, and a moment later, tiny droplets of blood formed on his skin, everywhere. His back had been turned to the White, and the tiny glassine flechettes had gone all the way through him. The assassin blinked bloody eyes, confused, knowing only that something was terribly wrong, and then he collapsed on the floor and began convulsing.

The world didn’t stop. Even as the man was falling, Blackguards were bursting into the room, whistles were shrilling. A sword descended on the assassin’s convulsing wrist, separating his still-loaded gun and gun hand from his body.

The sudden press of bodies was almost a relief. The Blackguards had their priorities. Subdue the threat, secure the area, check the health of the guarded, check the health of the downed guards, notify the chain of command, and so forth. Gavin let it roll over him. He’d taken a good shot, and he’d be lucky if it turned out he hadn’t cracked a rib, but he was alive, and so was the White.

Oddly enough, it seemed that both of the Blackguards who’d been guarding Orea Pullawr were alive, too. One was still unconscious, and the other could only remember being grabbed from behind and having a foul-smelling rag pressed over his face. Apparently whoever had sent the assassin was trying to make some point about the vulnerability of the entire Chromeria by making the assassination as clean as possible. The guns and magic had only come out when the assassination was threatened with failure.

They found the White’s balcony door cracked open, and climbing ropes hanging past it. The ropes were hanging from the roof. The assassin must have tied the rope above and, finding the White’s balcony deadbolted, decided to go to the roof and enter through the door. It was a bold plan that would allow the assassin to escape after the murder by opening the balcony door from the inside and sliding down the rope without alerting anyone. It would have given the assassin valuable minutes to escape alive. This had been no suicide mission. The Blackguard immediately began going down the tower to check every room that had a window or balcony on the north side, looking for accomplices.

Gavin was shaken. A few months ago, he would have killed that assassin by himself. This time, his color-blindness had almost gotten both him and the White killed. He looked at the gray lights burning everywhere in the room. They weren’t gray; they were blue and green. The White had been a blue/green bichrome, so she’d obviously put in colored lux torches so that if something like this happened, she could immediately have light available to draft in a heartbeat. With a lesser assassin, the sudden flood of light itself might have bought her a few seconds. Not this one. But regardless, between Gavin and the Blackguards interrupting, it had worked.

He wondered if the White was well. She hadn’t drafted in years, and she wasn’t in particularly good health to begin with.

Gavin stood with the Blackguards’ help just in time for Karris to come in the door and crash into him. She grabbed him so fiercely, it almost knocked him off his feet. Then he recovered his senses and hugged her back.

“I heard there was an assassination attempt and you were involved and-and you scared me half to death, Gavin Guile!”

“You changed your hair,” he said stupidly. She’d bleached to blonde from its previous dark Tyrean hue. He liked it blonde.

“You like it blonde,” she said.

“He saved my life,” the White said. She walked over. Walked, instead of being wheeled over. Gavin couldn’t see the halo in her gray eyes, but he could see that her eyes were no longer washed out, desaturated. Now they looked like a drafter’s eyes again. And there was fine red color in her cheeks. She looked stronger, younger, and yet her halos were still intact. Mercifully. “They say he spoke before he died. He said, ‘Light cannot be chained.’ Do you know what that means, Gavin?”

“It means we have a problem,” Gavin said quietly.

“It means the Order of the Broken Eye exists and is choosing to reveal itself. And that means we have a problem. The Order has risen. They mean war. Now go, I know you’ve other things in mind for tonight, and I’ll be up until all hours telling my story and giving orders and taking questions. I’ll handle all this. You…” She waved him toward Karris. “You handle all that.” And then she winked.

“Thank you,” Gavin said. He might have blushed a little.

“No, Gavin, thank you,” the White said. “Thank you.”

Of course, it wasn’t as easy as simply going back to his room. The room had to be searched-and Gavin held his breath when they searched the closet-and then guards had to be posted. Marissia sat on her little slave’s stool by the door, looking like she was trying to be invisible to Karris, but didn’t want to leave without being dismissed in case Gavin needed anything. Gavin absolutely refused to have a Blackguard in the room with him. “Karris is here. She’s a Blackguard.” While he argued, he gave Marissia a glance and a tiny wave. She looked grateful, and slipped out the door silently.

“Mmm, we’re assuming she might be… preoccupied, Lord Prism,” Watch Captain Blademan said dryly. What, did Ironfist offer a class in that attitude? “Someone attacked the White by climbing up to her balcony; we’re not leaving you in danger.”

In the end, they posted two Blackguards out on the balcony and pulled a curtain. The men were both given heavy wool cloaks and hats and told not to come inside until Gavin rapped on the glass- if he rapped on the glass. Other guards were posted outside the definitely-not-soundproof doors.

Being worth killing was a real pain in the ass.

“How are you?” Karris asked as she closed the door.

He barely heard her. He was taking the chance to look at her, really look at her for the first time. It seemed he’d been gone forever. He hadn’t noticed earlier, but she still moved gingerly. The blackness and swelling had faded, though not completely. Karris healed fast. “Your eyes are healing well, how’s the rest of you?” he asked.

“My eyes? I look like a raccoon!” She scrunched her face up like a rodent and made little chirping sounds that Gavin supposed were supposed to be a raccoon.

“Do that again,” he said.

She laughed, embarrassed, and he laughed with her.

“You’re the prettiest damn raccoon I ever saw.”

“Oh, Gavin Goldentongue,” she teased. “With that kind of eloquence, you’re going to charm my-Oh, look at that.” By some feminine magic, without apparently using her hands, her undergarments slid down her legs. She kicked them aside with a hmm, and grinned a self-satisfied grin at him. She looked positively devilish.

Gavin’s mouth went dry. She opened her robe and let it slide down her shoulders and then pool on the floor and she walked toward him. Her chemise was a silk confection, clinging to her lean curves, barely coming down to her hips.

“Are you well enough for me to have my way with you, my lord?” she asked.

“A bit bruised and broken,” he said. He suddenly smiled. Damn Seers. “And a lot pungent. I’ve crossed the seas entire today. And I see that-” No, no don’t mention Marissia. “I see that there’s a bath drawn. I could-”

“You come back and find me half-naked and you want to take a bath?” she asked. But she was teasing.

Instead of matching wit for wit, Gavin looked straight into her eyes and said, “I want this to be perfect for you.”

“I don’t want perfection. I want you, Dazen Guile.”

There was a right answer to that. Gavin cupped her cheek with a hand and pulled her lips to his. She was all that was warm and soft and safe in all the world. He pulled her into his arms and she pulled into him, glorying in the muscles of his shoulders and arms, his sheer size in comparison to hers. He obliged her by enfolding her completely in his arms. Then she squeaked.

“Ow, ribs, ribs,” she said, breaking their kiss. Bruises. Right.

She used the interruption to grab his shirt and pull it over his head. He gasped. “Shoulder, shoulder,” he grunted. She freed the shirt more gently, and they grinned at each other.

“Whew,” she said. “You are stinky.”

“Hey, I-”

“Teasing!” she said.

“Oh shut up and get back here,” he said.

She grabbed his belt, tugging it loose, but he grabbed her and kissed her again. He slid his hands over the silk, gently, back to waist to hips to ass, and then up to cup her ass beneath the nightgown. He made a sound low in his throat and suddenly picked her up and carried her to their bed.

Karris held him as they made love. Held him with her lean muscular legs, pulling him into her, into her. Held him with her sex, writhing against him. Held him with her arms, glorying in his muscles and in him, digging her fingers into his back and subtly guiding him to what pleased her most. And she held him with her eyes, the intensity of her hunger startling him, the intensity of her desire for him inflaming him, and the intensity of the connection almost too much for him to bear. But when he looked away, she grabbed his chin, pulled him back, kissed him, and then nipped his lip in punishment. She held him, and held him tight as he climaxed, and held him in place afterward, running her fingers through his hair, playing with his ear.

He’d never felt so known and accepted in all his life.

When the capacity for reason came back to him, he propped himself up on an elbow and caressed her body. Her skin was aglow in the golden lamplight and she made no effort to cover herself, instead enjoying his gaze. There were a million ways he wanted to praise her beauty, but none of his words seemed adequate to the task. How could words tell her how she fascinated him, inflamed him, awed him? He remembered an old Blood Forest wedding vow. “With my body, I thee worship,” he said. He leaned over and kissed her neck, her breasts, her lips.

They made love again wordlessly, and he gave his all to please her, interpreting every sigh and stretch and curled toe to guide him. And he took his reward. Repeatedly. She only shook her head and laughed when she saw his familiar pleased-with-himself grin. They lost themselves in each other for hours, talking, holding each other, crying, talking, making love again, finally bathing together when they were sure they could make love no more, and then just holding each other, skin to skin, her back to his stomach, watching as the dawn light rose.

“I love you so much I hate you, Dazen Guile,” she said.

“I love you, too, Karris Guile.”

She sighed, pensive. “Can we run away?” she asked.

“Where do you want to go?” he asked.

She harrumphed. “You stupid man, you broke the first rule of running away, and we haven’t even gotten dressed yet.”

“We have to get dressed? Then forget it,” Gavin said.

Her elbow into his ribs would have been a gentle nudge if he hadn’t been flung into a wall last night.

“Ouch!” he said.

“Serves you right,” she said.

“So what’s the first rule of running away?” Gavin asked. The dawn was red, magnificent, and he had a beautiful woman in his arms. This seemed to be the best place in the whole world.

“You can’t bring logic or practicality into running away. Everyone knows that.”

“Ah. So we can go naked?”

“You’re impossible.”

“True, but on the other hand, you can’t say you didn’t know what you were getting yourself into.”

“No. That’s true.” She said nothing for a while, and Gavin thought she might have drifted off to sleep. What was the saying about a red sky in the morning? Something about storms coming? Thanks, Nature, I appreciate some omens with breakfast.

“I…” She sounded tentative. “I know that you’ve been trying, with Kip I mean. I heard you went to his testing.”

“While I should have been with you. Protecting you.”

“Protecting me? Don’t make me hurt you.” She rolled over, braced her head on an elbow. “You were exactly where you should have been.”

He said nothing.

“So… how’s it going?” she asked.

“He’s a good boy. Smart. My plan is working perfectly, so far. He has no idea how talented he is. I put him with the best young fighters in the world, and he’s hanging in there. By his fingernails, but hanging in.”

“He’s not that good of a fighter, is he?” Karris asked. “Without previous training?”

“No, he’s not. But he’s made the right friends, and he’s got the respect of the right people. They’ve made it possible for him to stay in-which is as much a success in my eyes as if he’d been the best fighter there. The point of him being in the Blackguard wasn’t to teach him to fight; it was misdirection; it was so he would measure himself against the best people rather than against the best whisperers and the best drafters.”

“You’re brilliant, and your plans always work, my lord husband, but that wasn’t what I was asking about and you know it. Misdirection indeed.”

He was glad she could catch him, glad to be known that much by this amazing woman-but not glad to be caught. His face fell. How’s it going? “He’s a good boy…”

She waited for the but. He could tell she knew it was coming.

“But he’s not my son.” It was a failure to speak it. “He grins this quirky grin and I see his father.”

“All of you Guile men have that grin. Even your father used to charm-”

“I killed Kip’s father, Karris. The boy is so desperate not to be an orphan he’s latched on to me. So desperate to please he’ll do anything I ask. What will he do if he ever finds out the truth? If he came after me, tried to kill me, who could call him the betrayer? I’m raising him and making him formidable, and the more he loves me, the more he’ll hate me when he finds out I’ve deceived him from the beginning. Through no fault of his own, he’s a viper, Karris. And the tighter I hold him to me, the more likely he is to bite me.”

Karris studied him quietly. “All true. All beside the point. You kept a secret for sixteen years from me. Keeping it from a boy who hasn’t known you and will never know your brother? Child’s play. What’s really going on?”

“Look, this soul-searching is deeply meaningful and everything, but what I did before, I’d do again. Karris, if you were falling off a cliff, and I could save only you or me, I’d save you. No question. Because even though I know that I can do things for the world that you can’t, I don’t care. I knew I should kill you, that you were the person most likely to destroy me. I knew that this… this was incredibly unlikely. But I love you, so I didn’t care. When I look at Kip? I’d make the rational choice. And I feel bad about that, but I feel bad when I send soldiers into war. I like Kip; I wouldn’t want to lose him. I want to get to know him more. But I don’t love Kip, and there’s nothing I can do about that.”

Someone pounded on the door. “Lord Prism.”

“One minute!” Gavin called.

Karris had an odd intensity in her eyes. “My lord, I was never helplessly in love with you-well, maybe when we were children I was. But in the years since, my feelings for you have come and gone. But my admiration for the man I saw you to be never changed. You twisted me in knots because the good man I felt you were-my Dazen-and the man I thought I knew you to be-Gavin-were so different. But I saw that you were the kind of man who was worthy of my love. I knew the man I would marry would be good and strong and gentle and honorable and smart and stubborn enough to handle me and… Hold on, I know there must be some other virtue,” she teased.

“Charming? Never forget charming.”

“Sometimes I could do with less of that,” she said. She got serious. “I chose you.”

“Ah, you couldn’t resist me.”

“Yes, yes I could,” she said flatly. “I chose you.”

“How startlingly… unromantic,” he said. He was reminded of her affinity for the blue virtues, despite being a red and a green, for thinking things through, for making the columns add up.

“I love you body, soul, and breath. Is that unromantic? Love is not a whim. Love is not a flower that fades with a few fleeting years. Love is a choice wedded to action, my husband, and I chose you, and I will choose you every day for the rest of my life.”

There was another knock on the door. “Lord Prism! The Spectrum is meeting right now, and they wish to speak with you. Lord Prism?”

“Dazen,” Karris said suddenly, “no matter what happens, I love you.” Something about her voice was raw, as if she were right on the edge.

Gavin had a sudden intuition. “Karris, what are you talking about? What’s going on?”

“I just-”

“What did the Third Eye tell you?”

Silence. He’d hit it; he could tell.

Karris moved to get up, but Gavin grabbed her hand. “Karris, please…”

She looked back at him, then looked away. “I’ll tell you, but I’m not telling you anything else no matter what you say, understood?”

“Understood,” Gavin said. He grimaced, but he knew Karris when she got stubborn.

“She hedged, of course, said she doesn’t see everything perfectly…”

“The Third Eye, with less than helpful help? Yes, I’m familiar with-”

“She told me when you’re going to die,” Karris said in a rush. Then she stood and threw a robe around her shoulders. “Now get up, lazybones, we’ve got a long day ahead of us.” She smiled, but it didn’t touch her eyes.