The Blinding Knife

Chapter 70

Idoss was a city of ancient ziggurats. Some luxiats said they were man’s attempt to scale to the heavens. They called them blasphemy. But those luxiats’ attempts to have the ziggurats torn down had never been successful. There were thirteen of the great terraced pyramids in the city arrayed geometrically, six and six around one. The central one was easily taller than the Prism’s Tower that Liv had thought was the tallest structure in the world.

Having surrendered to Dazen’s general Gad Delmarta rather than fight during the Prisms’ War, Idoss had escaped the torch and the sword and the flux. Most of the men pressed into service in Dazen’s army-at least those who survived the Battle of Sundered Rock-had made their way home within a couple months and the city had recovered more quickly from the war than any other city on the southern rim of the sea.

The city’s corregidor was the Atashian satrap’s son, Kata Ham-haldita. The term was Tyrean, one of the few remnants left of the time when Tyrea had included what was now eastern Atash. When the corregidor came out to parley, the Color Prince had the central avenue up which the young man traveled lined with all the color wights in the army, and instructed them to all be outside and in full view, but to ignore the corregidor and go about their chores so that he might believe there were far more of them in the army than there were.

It doubtless made for a terrifying walk, and the boy arrived rattled. And boy he was, for though he nominally ruled one of the richest cities in the Seven Satrapies, he was only twenty years old, and clearly young for his age.

Liv met Corregidor Ham-haldita and his two bodyguards outside the Color Prince’s tent. Her presence seemed to brace the young man. He smiled at her as if he was used to wooing women with that smile alone. He was a pretty boy, though skinny and narrow-shouldered. Liv preferred a man who looked like a man; she gave a pleasantly neutral nod. In truth, her heart was pounding-not from the boy, but with being trusted to be here. She’d worn the nicest of her dresses, and she could tell that the young man appreciated it.

“Corregidor, we’re delighted that you’ve come to join us. The prince is resting within. Will you join us?” she asked.

He looked at his bodyguards, but Liv stepped inside the tent, not waiting for a response. After a short hesitation, the corregidor and his men followed her.

The tent was dark, darker than usual, darker than necessary. There was one chair inside, a throne, and nothing else, not even rugs. In the chair, slouching, sat the Color Prince. He didn’t move when Liv came in. Then, when Corregidor Ham-haldita came in, the Color Prince lifted his head, and his eyes began to glow dull red, the color of new-forged iron. He stood, and the layers of luxin scraping across each other gave a sound like steel rasping over steel.

A shimmer of pale yellow light passed down his form, illuminating every crack and joint and seam, he flexed as if shaking himself from sleep, and every blue plate of armor on his body glowed, dimmed, then every red seam, then every green joint, all the way up to the barely visible pale violet that pulsed around his head in a crown.

The slack-jawed expression on the corregidor’s face almost made Liv laugh aloud, but she tucked her chin and bit her tongue. His men were right on the verge of pulling their weapons, but they looked terrified, too.

“Corregidor,” the prince said. “Welcome. Walk with me?”

The corregidor had to clear his throat before he could speak. “Of course.”

Liv joined the leaders and their guards, walking as she’d been instructed on the corregidor’s right while the prince walked on his left. Trapped between hope and fear, the prince had said.

Hope of what? Liv hadn’t quite dared to ask.

She didn’t think she was pretty enough to catch a future satrap’s eye, though if the Color Prince was successful, this boy would never be a satrap. But he didn’t know that yet. What then? A mistress? A night’s entertainment? Liv was abruptly aware again that she was a woman alone. If the Color Prince wanted her to accept one of the whores’ chits from Corregidor Ham-haldita, there was no way she could refuse. Not exactly the great purpose that the prince kept alluding to, but she wasn’t the person who got to choose, was she?

A quiet fury rolled through her.

When they strode into the full sunlight, the corregidor missed a step again. Seeing the Color Prince’s luxin form fully lit with natural light was at least as impressive as seeing him glow in a darkened tent. Again, not a mistake.

The Color Prince led the way through the camp, as if walking aimlessly, though Liv was sure he wasn’t. He didn’t leave much to chance.

“You’ve come with something to say,” the Color Prince said. “A deal, perhaps.”

“The city mothers have asked that I tell you we wish only peace, but if we must fight, you will pay dearly to take this city, and perhaps not before our reinforcements arrive.”

“Which I’m sure you expect any day.”

“Yes, we do.” The boy colored, as if fearing he was being made fun of. “And we can hold you until they arrive and smash you against our walls.”

They passed by Zymun, who was training with the other drafters. He stood shirtless, lashing an old tree with great whips of fire, awing his fellows. He stopped when they walked by, bowing respectfully to the Color Prince, his eyes full of jealousy at the sight of the other young man. Zymun’s wounds had faded, and if his shirtless body didn’t fill Liv with the speechless desire that Gavin Guile’s once had, he was still quite handsome. Powerful, intelligent, charismatic-and always, always interested in her. Always flattering. Always flirting.

She’d flirted with boys at the Chromeria, of course-mostly before that disastrous Luxlords’ Ball. But those had mostly been the flirtations of impossibility: playing at being adults. Playing at being outrageous. Zymun’s flirtation was the flirtation of possibility. She had only to say the word, just once, one night when he came by her tent and asked politely if he could come in. That she could say yes, that none would stop her, that none would even question her was more of an erotic charge than that she could say yes to Zymun in particular, dashing as he was.

Her students would envy her the assignation, of course, for she had students now. Not discipulae, not among the Free.

“So Delara Orange has been successful in persuading the rest of the Spectrum to go to war? Or am I to be on watch for the elite Ruic troops?”

“Both,” the boy said. Even Liv could tell he was lying.

“You are a young man,” the prince said. “And I think you’re a hair’s breadth from being stripped of your position by those frightened old harridans.”

They walked through a narrow alley between two tents, stepping over the guy wires. As they emerged, the corregidor’s guards found themselves looking into the barrels of twenty loaded muskets and at half a dozen drafters with arms loaded with luxin.

“Disarm them, and keep them thirty paces away, but don’t harm them,” the Color Prince said. “Unless they do something stupid, in which case, shoot for the groin.”

With the men thus detained, the Color Prince kept walking, as if nothing had happened. “Both of those men report to the mothers, and I think we can agree we don’t need their interference, can’t we, Corregidor?”

“How do you know that? Or are you just guessing?” the corregidor asked, trying to keep his voice level.

“Can’t we?”

The corregidor choked down his fear. “Very well. I’m-I’m sure we can settle this together.”

“Mmm. I believe in choices, Kata. We are free men, making free choices, and bearing the consequences. So here are yours: First, you can surrender. I will give you less than generous terms. You will free your slaves, the city will pay a million danars, and you will give us twenty thousand ephahs of barley, sixty wagons laden with fruit, ten thousand barrels of wine, and twenty thousand barrels of olives. You will give us five thousand swords or spears and a thousand working muskets, with five hundred barrels of gunpowder and a hundred barrels of shot or eight hundred bars of lead. You will send with us fifty smiths and fifty wheelwrights and half a dozen chemists, and you will pay them double wages while they’re gone. You will empty your city of brothels-the prostitutes can make their own choice on if they travel with us, but you will not allow any of them within your city for one year so as to encourage them to choose wisely. You will send all of your drafters to speak with me. Same with the slaves. They will be allowed to choose whether to join us or to go elsewhere, but they won’t be allowed to return to your city until the war is completed, on pain of death. You will arrange a parade through the city, welcoming us with trumpets and hailing us for giving you freedom. And before we come into the city, you will send all your luxiats out to this camp.”

The details were washing over the young man, and he grabbed on to the last like a raft in a maelstrom. “What is to happen to them?”

“We’ll kill them all,” the Color Prince said bluntly. Then he continued as if the man hadn’t interrupted. “Then, in every church, you will allow to be established new forms of worship: one for each of the old gods. You will not be required to maintain or attend services at any of these, however, and our new priests will abide by your laws so long as you don’t interfere with their worship.

“In return, you and the city’s mothers will be allowed to retain your lives, your estates, and your positions, unless you betray me. The city will be unmolested; the countryside will go unplundered; no men or women will be pressed into service. I expect you to communicate this offer to the city’s mothers. I’ve put it in writing already.

“All of it is true, except one part. I don’t trust the city mothers. I know what kind of women they are. I have reports on all of them. They aren’t young, and smart, and flexible like you are. When I leave this city, you will rule alone. I am not a hard master with my friends. I hope you can be such.”

The corregidor was pale. “And if we refuse?”

They had arrived at the place where Liv now realized the Color Prince had been heading all along. He gestured to a large group of wretched people behind them, guarded by soldiers. It was the five hundred women and children captured from the small town of Ergion. “These unfortunates were taken from the last city that opposed us. They will be herded in front of our army for the first attack. When your ballistae and cannons and catapults start, you will massacre them-or do you think perhaps the city mothers will instruct you not to fire? And there will be attacks within your city. You know I have people inside. You don’t know how many. I know about your secret exits along the river and below the Great Abbey.”

The corregidor’s eyes widened for a fraction of a second. Either surprise that the prince knew about this or surprise that there was another exit he hadn’t known about.

“You remember the stories about the massacres at Ru, which led to Idoss surrendering during the last war? I will simply do the same, in reverse. Idoss will be a beacon to the world, and you get to choose which kind-a beacon of my munificence, showing how kind I can be to those I conquer, or a beacon of my malfeasance, showing how ferocious I am with those who oppose me. The children in your city will be killed-too many mouths to feed, too likely to get sick or bear grudges when they’re grown. The women will be killed or put to service if they’re pretty or useful enough. The only men and women who will survive unmolested will be your slaves. And they will be free to keep any of their masters’ goods they wish. My people in the city are already letting them know this now. How much do you trust your slaves, Corregidor Kata? If by some chance you do hold out for a week, two weeks, a month, do you think the slaves might join us? Or have you treated them so well that their loyalty is unshakable?

“You, I will do my best to capture alive. I will send your genitals to your father. I will cut off your arms and legs and dress you in purple and put a crown on your head. I may blind you. I haven’t decided yet what makes a better example. Tongue, no tongue? It will probably depend on your attitude. Regardless, I’ll take my time. You will live a long time, and in great pain, I promise you.”

The corregidor looked positively sick. “You’re insane,” he said. “You talk one second like you’re some luxiat and you have all these principles, and the next you’re talking about murdering a hundred thousand people.”

The same thought had struck Liv before, but now she had another one. There were only a few people in the entire world who were absolutely overawing in their abilities-and she’d met the best of them: Gavin Guile and now Koios White Oak. Those two, and perhaps a few others like the White were far above Liv. But no one else was. She could have done better here than this boy was doing-and he was two or three years her elder and had all the benefits of being raised as a satrap’s son. The reason the Color Prince was treating her as a capable adult wasn’t because he was flattering her-though he was, and they both knew it-it was because she deserved to be treated as such. It wasn’t that she was so incredibly gifted; it was that the people she had always assumed were incredibly gifted were in fact no more gifted than she was. She was their peer. And she was young yet. In time, she would be superior to most. Why hadn’t the Chromeria ever treated her this way?

Why hadn’t her own father?

The Color Prince said, “We all make choices, and then we bear the consequences for those. Unfortunately, right now, you get to make the choices for those people and for me. They’re your victims, not mine. When I’m in charge, they’ll be free to choose for themselves. There’s no way to overturn the Chromeria without people like you forcing massacres. If there were, I’d take it in a heartbeat. This is the only way I can bring the change needed, so this is how I will do it.”

“You’ll do it because you can,” the corregidor sneered over his fear.

“Because I can. Because I will it.”

“So might makes right?”

The Color Prince was steel. Unamused, unapologetic, unyielding. “Might doesn’t make right. Might makes reality.” He stared at the corregidor for long enough to drop the weight of certainty on the boy, then turned and looked at the women and children. His gaze was sad but resolute. He would march these people to their deaths to shield his own people’s lives, and he would blame the corregidor for it.

If it was a bluff, it was as brassy a bluff as Liv had ever seen. But she didn’t think it was a bluff. Neither, she could tell, did the corregidor. His face slowly worked through horror, revulsion, astonishment, and finally resignation. He wasn’t facing a man, he was facing a force of nature. There was no reasoning with a cyclone, no pleading with a hurricano. You batten down the hatches and ride it out, praying you survive.

“We don’t have close to a million danars,” the corregidor said, and Liv knew he had surrendered.

“Not in your treasury, you don’t. You’ll let every rich and noble family in the city know that if they don’t pay their share, they’ll be first to die. Substitutions can be made on the food. I’m not unreasonable. You may not have that much barley. You can make it up in other grains. And the fruit will be difficult if you don’t hurry. We won’t take spoiled produce. One noble family will be killed for each wagon you’re short.”

The corregidor blanched. “I’ll have to take this to the city mothers, of course. It’ll probably take two days.”

“In one day, our catapults will be constructed. We’ll start hurling one woman of Ergion over your walls every quarter hour. We won’t stop until the luxiats arrive. I know your guns will be able to reach our catapults, so please know that the women and children of Ergion will be camped around the catapults as well. Your gunners are half-trained at best. There’s no way they’ll be able to hit our catapults on the first shot-or even the tenth.”

The corregidor swallowed. “I understand.”

“My people will post lists of the women’s names in the order they will be flung, so that people inside Idoss can know when to listen for their friends’ deaths-or perhaps their enemies’, I suppose. We’re starting with known acquaintances of the city mothers. My engineers tell me that the forces generated in the catapult’s sling will have an even chance of killing a woman before she’s even released. I’ve told them to work on it. I want you to hear their screams as they fly.”

Kata Ham-haldita cursed quietly and left. He glanced at Liv, glanced away, ashamed.

“So that’s it?” Liv asked once he was gone. She wouldn’t have dared ask, before. She would have been too awed, too frightened. But now she wasn’t going to waste the opportunity to learn from the best.

The prince was still looking at the women and the children. The children were playing together, shrieking and squabbling, unaware of their probable impending deaths. “Most likely,” the Color Prince said. “It all depends on how smart young Kata is. One of the city mothers is a shrewd old harpy named Neta Delucia. The guards were her men. If Kata isn’t careful, he has just signed his own death warrant by meeting with me privately. She’ll know immediately that I offered to buy him off. And I put Mother Delucia’s enemies at the top of the list of women to be killed. With her friends right behind them. The mother and the corregidor will fight. If Mother Delucia wins, we’ll fling half a dozen women into town, and suddenly Idoss will see reason. If Kata wins, it make take more or less time, depending on how decisively he moves.”

“And either way, you win?” Liv asked.

“We choose freely, Aliviana. That doesn’t mean we can’t set up the choices so that both benefit us.” He smiled, and that smile reminded Liv of Gavin Guile’s crazy reckless indomitable smile, but without the warmth.

“That’s not really freedom then, is it? Not for them,” Liv said.

“Are you ready for another truth, then, Aliviana? You learn so fast. Very well. Freedom isn’t the highest good. Power is. For without power, your freedom can be taken.” He smiled again. It was a hard smile, but this was a hard world.