The Blinding Knife

Chapter 68

“Corvan, am I a good man?” Gavin asked.

“You’re a great man, my friend.”

“Not the same, are they?” Gavin asked. There had been blood in his dreams, blood staining the water from the blue he couldn’t see to the red he most certainly could. Red on gray. In his incipient blindness, he’d traded blue beauty for blood, all unwillingly.

Corvan said, “When you move the world, some will be crushed. How could it be else? When you sank the pirates at Tranquil Point, the slaves chained to the oars died first. What else were you to do? Leave the pirates to capture and make slaves of thousands more? But that’s not what I meant, my lord. You are a great man.”

Gavin chewed on that, put it in the hold of his memory. “And you, Corvan? What kind of man are you?”

“I am simply competent. A red by training but not by nature. Not a leader except when leadership is lacking. But you know these things better than anyone.” A quizzical, amused expression.

Not a leader except when leadership is lacking? It was true: Corvan had proven himself to be perfectly content to take orders-even orders he didn’t understand-from those who had won his trust. Then, without changing his nature, he’d assumed command of entire armies. He knew what needed to be done, and did it, somehow without it changing his appraisal of himself. He probably really had been content as a small-town dyer.

Gavin wondered how Corvan did it. He himself had never been content in any place but the first. Even under those wilier than he, like his father, or those wiser than he, like the White, he’d chafed. Burned.

It was, no doubt, a flaw in his character.

“I’m making you a satrap,” Gavin said. And let be crushed by that whoever may be.

Corvan coughed up tea. Most satisfying.

“Are you insane?” Corvan asked. “My lord.”

“It’s pretty much what you already are, and I am still the Prism. It is my prerogative. They’ll try to stop me, but so long as you don’t massacre the Seers, no one of the other satraps or members of the Spectrum are losing anything. I will propose that you get to name a Color on the Spectrum, but allow myself to lose on that point so they have some victory for their egos. Your new satrapy will be a second-rate satrapy for a few generations. Those will be political battles those who follow us will have to fight. Survival first.”

“But why?” Corvan asked. “What do you get?”

“We’ve already discussed this. Food. Seeds. We already know things are going to be tight, but the island is big enough to keep us from starvation until spring. But if we don’t get seeds for next year-”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I give our people a sense of purpose, and I give them another reason to obey you, to make a new life here and stay, even once things start to go well enough that they could leave.”

Corvan set his teacup down. “Your pardon, Gavin, but you forget how well I know you. There’s more to it than that.”

Gavin smirked. “I need you to believe in me, Corvan. When the time comes. There are crises coming, and I will need to move quickly. I need to know you have my back, instantly.”

Corvan’s back stiffened, brow darkened. Gavin hadn’t seen the man angry in many years. “My lord, some men believe in Orholam, some believe in gold, but I believe in you, and to this I will hold. Fealty to One, as you should know.”

“You think it unworthy of me to question you?” Gavin asked.

Corvan’s lips were tight, eyes lidded.

“It is,” Gavin said. “You’ve more than proved yourself. But your faith will be tested.”

“And will come through the fire purer than before, doubtless.”

“Thank you, Corvan. Your pardon. Satrap Danavis.”

“My lord,” Corvan said quietly. “Thank you for what you did. With the blue bane. I know… I know it must have been awful, but thank you for doing it.”

Gavin stood, said nothing. Popped his neck right and left. He’d summoned the people to the great square. There were plans to build a stadium, but they hadn’t progressed far on it yet. Regardless, he was going to have to give a talk. Bolster support for Corvan.

“Lord Prism,” Corvan said quietly. “I don’t know if I can be a satrap. Not even of a second-rate satrapy.” It was a mercy, switching the subject, saying his piece about Gavin’s slaughter and then letting it go.

“Nonsense. It’s just like being a general, except that if you’re any good at it, you’ll rarely have to watch your people die.”

The general snorted. It would be harder than that, in the environment he was leading his people into, and they both knew it. Then Gavin’s friend squinted. “My lord,” Corvan said. “The rebels have my daughter. You making me a satrap will make Liv a thousand times more valuable to them.”

Corvan always was quick.

Gavin stood, and looked to the people crowding the stadium, gathering to listen to him, hoping he’d speak, but willing to just get a glimpse of him. He said, “You know what you can’t do with a satrap’s daughter when you’re looking for support among neutral parties?”

For once, Corvan didn’t have a ready answer.

“Kill her,” Gavin said. “I hold you in my eyes, Corvan. I won’t forget.”

The man’s face contorted for an instant with sudden grief, sudden hope, and his shoulders heaved. He looked away from Gavin, trying to control himself. Then he dropped to his knees, and farther, lying prostrate at Gavin’s feet. More than respect and thankfulness, it was veneration. Worship.

“You would do this, for me?” Corvan said.

“I do it for many reasons, my friend. There is no unadulterated altruism.”

“But altruism abides. I know you, lord.”

“Please stand, my friend, it grows awkward.” And indeed, around the square, and from the wood-hewn balconies of golden buildings all around, men and women, and even children who couldn’t have known to what they paid obeisance, were dropping to their knees, to their faces where there was room.

It touched Gavin’s heart. They’d lost everything because he’d failed. Not one had eaten his fill for the last months, because they didn’t know how long their food would last. Everyone had worked from dawn to dusk and beyond, every day. They lived in great longhouses, not homes, stuffed with strangers. They had no wealth, little hope, and lots of pain, and yet what little they had, they offered him freely.

“My people!” Gavin shouted, pitching his voice to his orator’s tone, his general’s tone. “Downtrodden, destitute, devastated but not dismayed. My people, dearest to my heart…” And so he spoke. He bade them rise, and they rose. He could bid them into the teeth of hell, and they would descend, singing praises all the way. He was good at this. Not born to it, but he’d stolen this crown and worked it so long in his hands that now it fit him.

He addressed their fears, and fired their desires, and acknowledged their sorrows and their sacrifices, and braced them for coming hardship and made them feel noble about it all.

By what right do I bend men to my will? Or is there no right, only ability? Are these women here mere slaves on my pirate ship? Are these children mere victims in the path of my plague?

But on he spoke, urging peace and honest dealing with the people of Seers Island, laying foundations, frankly assessing the difficulties coming their way, and throwing the full weight of his support behind Corvan.

He swore he would be with them when he could, and that when he left he would go to better protect them, and that he would always come back. He would work beside them, and prevent the suffering that he could, and mourn the dead beside them when death couldn’t be avoided.

Gavin saw that there were at least two scribes copying his every word in shorthand. He was surprised that there were scribes here among the poor, but he shouldn’t have been. Corvan would have, of course, scoured the refugees for scribes so they could distribute copies of his decrees to those camped far out in the woods and send messages to the Seers.

It made him temper what he would say. He hoped it would take months, but eventually, his father would end up with a copy of every word. Still, the good it would do in spreading support through the refugees was worth the damage it would do him later.

Not even you will be able to stop this, father.

And last, bracing them that the Spectrum and the other satrapies would look down on them-as if they should care about such things when their bellies were gnawing on their navels-he built up the audience and himself as their champion, and announced the new satrapy.

The people roared in approval.

I really am very, very good at this.

They looked radiant. Perhaps he was a gifted orator; he was a gifted drafter for sure, the best for many years, perhaps. Their respect, their admiration, these were his due, but he didn’t deserve their love. He wondered that he was the only one who knew it.

Half an hour later, he and Karris skimmed away with little more than they’d brought with them three months ago. He didn’t explain himself. She’d seen the blood on him when he got back last night. She’d seen the look on his face. She didn’t berate him for leaving without her. She knew him. And without asking whether they were leaving, she’d said her goodbyes. She knew.

The crowds gathered once more as they walked to the beach, and they roared as he waved to them. Men and women wept for him. It was an insanity of kindness that Gavin couldn’t understand, but he treasured it nonetheless. And then they left.

As Seers Island slowly disappeared into the distance behind them, Gavin examined it over his shoulder, discomfited. He and Karris talked little that day, each introspective, and camped on a beach near Ruic Head in Atash.

The next day, as Gavin switched the skimmer for the manual labor of the scull to close the final leagues to Little Jasper, he spied the towers, rising majestic against the noon sun. Against the stark colors of the other towers, the blue sat mute, gray. Its sister tower and neighbor, the green tower, was adorned with illusions beneath the luxin to make it look like a towering tree-this year they honored Atash by depicting the extinct atasifusta. But the color wasn’t right. Before the war, Gavin had seen the last grove of atasifusta.

There were storm clouds gathering over the Chromeria, and at first Gavin thought perhaps it was simply a trick of the light, but as they got closer, he became certain that wasn’t it.

Why would they make such a mistake? Surely some Atashian who remembered the trees would complain. The leaves of the giants were vibrant, radiant, a perfect complement to the green tower, not this sickly, gray-green mishmash.

Oh hells. Gavin drafted the green he needed for the scull’s flexibility. He could still do it, but it was like he was building the whole damn Brightwater Wall all over again, just to give a few corners of his boat some flexibility.

In that moment, he knew: after all he’d just done to save the world from a blue calamity, now he was losing green.