The Blinding Knife

Chapter 72

“Aliviana, come, I have something for you,” the Color Prince said. He turned to the engineer in charge of the trebuchet. “Ten chits if you make it into the city on the first shot. But you owe me five if she doesn’t scream.”

The engineer bowed low, almost prostrating himself. The people still didn’t know how much deference to pay to the Color Prince.

The entire camp had turned out for this. Noon was coming, and everyone knew that noon was the deadline. The guns on the city’s walls were trained on them, but they hadn’t fired during the entire setup of the trebuchet, three hundred paces from the city’s walls. Some of the prince’s followers stayed farther away, fearing that the guns would open up and try to destroy the trebuchet first, despite the women and children of Ergion held hostage around its base. More, however, crowded close, wanting to see the spectacle for themselves, heedless of the danger.

Liv had joined them because the prince had asked her to. “I will not shield you from the realities of war, Aliviana. This is our path, and you must know it. I trust you with hard truths.” She caught his implication: Unlike her father. Unlike the Chromeria.

She would be worthy of that trust. So she watched, from close up. The crowds didn’t jostle her. Her violet and yellow drafter’s dress guaranteed that. Drafters were treated as lords and ladies. They had power, and power was a virtue.

“You said you had something for me, my prince?” Liv said.

“A letter came for you,” he said. “And before you ask, of course I read it.”

He gestured, and a steward brought a letter. Liv knew the handwriting. She felt tingles up her arms, up her neck. It was from her father.

The Color Prince said, “It’s time for you to decide who you are and who you will be, Aliviana Danavis.”

The engineers began cranking the great counterweight up into the air, sticking long staves into a wooden gear, ratcheting it down. The counterweight rose, slowly racing the sun, which was approaching its own zenith.

Liv opened the cracked seal: “My Dearest Aliviana, Light of my Eyes.” A rush of tears came to her eyes, just at seeing her father’s hand. When Kip had told her Corvan had died in Rekton, Liv’s world had ended. She blew out a slow breath, blinked.

The crowd was jubilant and nervous by turns. The cannons could open up at any moment, spraying death everywhere, or the gates might open in surrender, or in attack, or nothing at all might happen. Men laughed too loudly. Some placed wagers. Liv could hear the women who were in line to be thrown over the walls crying quietly. Quietly only because they were trying not to upset the children, who still had no idea what was happening.

She kept reading: “Daughter, please come home. I know you think I’ve forsaken my oaths. I have not. I can tell you no more in a letter that may be intercepted, but I will tell you when you come.” What he said was true, but it was infuriating, too. She’d been with him. She’d asked him-and he wouldn’t tell her what he was doing. And now he would?

Now that she wasn’t under his control.

Wood groaning, ropes straining, the trebuchet’s enormous counterweight made it to its height before the sun. The engineers didn’t leave off their work, though, rushing around checking how their machine was bearing up under the pressure, preparing the basket for the woman, warning the crowds before and behind the trebuchet to move back.

Eventually, the chief engineer came to the Color Prince. “We’re ready, sir, should we load the cargo?”

Cargo. Oddly impersonal verbiage, wasn’t it? The prince nodded.

An older woman was led forward. There were tears on her cheeks, but she wasn’t crying now. Her clothes had been rich, Liv could tell, and she had the pale skin of a woman who’d never worked outdoors in her life. Wavy, silvered hair, brown eyes. Out of all the people staring at her, she saw Liv, and met her gaze.

“It’s a bluff, isn’t it?” the old woman asked. “Or am I fooling myself?”

Liv looked away. Trust me, her father had said. Was that just another way of saying, submit?

The woman let herself be folded into the net, meek, powerless. “Keep your head resting on the ropes,” the chief engineer said. “Relax.”

Relax, we’re trying to win our chits, lady.

“Ready,” the chief engineer said quietly to the Color Prince.

The prince beckoned Liv forward. His eyes were swirling red, and then blue, and then red. “Tell me, Liv. Should I wait until noon, or show them what it means to cross me?”

It was less than a minute until noon. Liv saw at once that part of him wanted to punish the city for standing against him, wanted to make them pay, was afraid that they would surrender too soon. Liv hadn’t finished her letter. She hesitated, somehow thinking it was important. “You might stiffen their resolve if they think you haven’t been fair. You’ve set up a deadline and a consequence, let it be their fault if this woman dies.” For some reason, she had to finish the letter before that woman died.

The Color Prince relaxed. “Yes, yes of course. It would be wrong to blink first.” Then orange flooded his eyes, and suddenly he seemed to be enjoying the tension he’d created.

She’d been right, she realized. He had asked her opinion because her opinion was valuable. She- she — was smart enough, strong enough to be trusted. She was no child.

She read: “Livi, I don’t know what lies they’ve told you, but you’ve joined monsters. If you stay with them, you’ll become monstrous yourself. Our home is gone, but come home, Livi. No matter what’s happened. No matter what you’ve done. I love you. Papa.”

Come home, and admit you were wrong. I’ll enfold you in all the old rules you understand. I’ll embrace you into childhood again. And it will be warm and safe.

“It is monstrous, isn’t it?” the Color Prince said quietly to Liv. He didn’t turn from looking at the gate.

“I suppose it-”

“Monstrous how they keep a place like Laurion, and call us the beasts, because we’re willing to punish one slave owner, this woman. How many slaves do you suppose she kept? How many did she beat, or send to the mines, or the brothels? Or allow her husband to dishonor? Monstrous, how they turn our very hearts against our own interests. They’ve trapped us in this, Aliviana. They made this system. They made it so that we can’t change it from within. They made it so we must kill to break it. If we be monsters, we’re monsters made in their image.”

Every eye was turned to the city’s great gates. The top of the city’s walls was crowded with spectators as well.

“Regardless of whether they fight or surrender, Aliviana, fewer will die here than died in one year in Laurion. And we ended Laurion forever. Sacrifices, Liv. Sacrifices must be made.”

Though she knew better, Liv hoped that the gates would open at the last second, that a fluttering flag would appear. It didn’t.

“Noon,” an engineer intoned.

“Proceed,” the Color Prince said loudly.

The old woman screamed, “No, please! I haven’t done any-”

The release pin was pulled. The great counterweight came barreling down, swinging beneath the great groaning struts, and the longer arm whipped forward, the ropes pulling the basket skyward at incredible speed. The sound of the ropes whipping the air layered below the woman’s shriek.

She flew through the three hundred paces between the trebuchet and the wall so fast it was hard to follow, but Liv could see the woman clearly flail for one moment before crashing headfirst into the wall, halfway up.

Gasps rose from the entire crowd simultaneously, and then cheers and laughing and cheerful insults for the engineers. To Liv, it was all distant and horrifying. There was a splotch on the great tan walls, like a giant had swatted a mosquito on its arm.

Liv drafted superviolet and felt the paradoxical relief of not feeling. There was logic here, logic to this horror. If they attacked the city, how many men and women would die in the first charge alone? Better for one woman to die noisily and horribly-but quickly for all that and without much bodily pain-than for thousands to die in taking the city. And tens of thousands to die when they took the city itself. Once the Idossians had spilled the blood of thousands of the Free Men, there would be nothing the Color Prince could do to keep those men from exacting a terrible vengeance. This wouldn’t be like retaking Garriston, which had been the army’s own city, a place they wanted to preserve as much as possible so they could live in it themselves. This would be annihilation.

Though slaves no more, the slaves of Laurion weren’t blank slates, weren’t merely innocent farm boys who’d been made slaves and now might revert to a peaceful life. Many had been brutes before being forced into the brutish life of a mine slave. Outlaws, pirates, rapists, rebels, and those who’d fomented revolt among slaves went to Laurion. What proportion those men made up of the total, Liv had no idea, but even in her drafter’s robes there were times walking the camp late at night she felt nervous. Those men, cut loose in a city that had killed their friends?

This was better, for everyone except a few unfortunate women. Sacrifices. The city must be taken, and this was the best way to do it. It was better that a few should die than many, wasn’t it? Averting those greater horrors demanded this of them. Given war, this was the most moral way to wage it, horrible though it still was.

With no return fire from the city walls, the atmosphere quickly relaxed. Men began taking bets, serving food, spreading blankets on the grass, making a picnic of the day.

The Color Prince turned to Liv. She was struck again by his visage, but now her shock lasted only half a second. He did look a monster at first glance. And yet he’d been nothing but honest with her, even when the truths were hard. Especially when they were hard. He’d seen her for what she was, for who she was. And though she was a young Tyrean girl, he’d treated her as she deserved. He said, “I’ll give you a horse, two sticks of tin danars, and letters of passage.”

“That’s not-” Liv started.

“I’m not finished. If you go, you never come back. You’ll be my enemy and I’ll never trust you. And if you don’t go now, you never go. You choose, one way or the other, today. I’ve been patient with you, but I need to know if I can count on you. So this is it. Look at us at our worst, and decide. You have until the city falls. Then march in with us, or go your own way.”

The second woman screamed the whole time they brought her forward, shrieking loudly enough that Liv had no doubt she could be heard on the walls. The Color Prince told the men not to silence her. When she tangled her limbs into the ropes of the basket, the engineers were stumped for a moment. With the incredible forces applied, the woman would still fly out of the basket, but she could seriously hamper the distance and trajectory, making them fail again.

They solved the problem by pulling her out of the basket and crushing her hands with a rock. Then they broke her elbows for good measure. She shrieked and shrieked, and Liv found herself wishing the woman would shut her mouth and just die.

But the Color Prince waited until the fifteen minutes had passed. On the grain, he said, “Proceed.”

The straining whomp of the counterweight falling and whooshing and the long arm flinging the basket forward drowned the woman’s screams. Maybe it knocked the wind out of her, because for a moment she was silent. Then, airborne, they heard her scream again.

To be fair, this woman had much longer to scream. The engineers had shifted the release peg, and the woman flew high, high into the air, hundreds of paces deep into the city.

The crowd cheered, although some seemed a little disappointed not to get to see the woman die in such a spectacular fashion as the first one had.

The Color Prince seemed to have had enough. He retired to his tent, handing over control to one of his favorite blues, a powerful young man named Ramia Corfu. Liv was transfixed, the letter in her hand. There was nothing more. Reading it again changed nothing. There were no hidden messages.

Two hours and seven deaths later, the gates opened, and four hundred and fifty black-robed luxiats were marched out, under guard. The Color Prince’s men met the guards in the very shadow of the walls. The prince’s military adviser had suggested that the besieged might dress up armed men in luxiats’ robes and then attempt an assassination when they got close to the Color Prince.

Instead, the hundreds of luxiats docilely accepted the change of guard, accepted being checked for weapons, and marched willingly to the Color Prince.

Odd, Liv thought. Suicidal. Using their freedom to lose their freedom. Surrendering power. Insane. She looked at the letter again.

When they were finally brought forward, the Color Prince met them himself. He was mounted on his spectacular white stallion Morning Star.

“Why Neta Delucia, I had no idea you’d taken the black robe,” the Color Prince said, addressing a woman in the front row. “Your devotion, though deluded, is… refreshing.”

Neta Delucia was the city mother who the prince had said would head the opposition. So apparently the young corregidor had been successful after all.

Neta spat toward the Color Prince. “You bought him. That little coward. That little traitor. I knew you would.”

“I knew you were the only one who had a chance to stop him,” Koios said. “So how he’d win, your bad luck?”

“He struck half an hour before my men were to arrive to take him to prison.”

“I could use a smart woman willing to do what needs to be done,” the prince said.

Neta looked like she couldn’t believe she was being given a second chance. After a moment, she fell to her knees, heedless of all the condemned men watching. “My lord, I would be happy to-I would be delighted and honored to serve.”

“Who’s the traitor now?” the Color Prince asked. He turned his back on her.

“But my lord! You said you needed me!” she shrilled.

“Enough,” the prince said.

“My lord! My lord! Please! Please!”

“Silence her,” the prince said.

A soldier stepped forward and slashed a dagger across her neck. Blood sprayed out of her throat and she crumpled. She lay on the ground, gasping out her last breaths.

Liv felt a wave of nausea, and quickly drafted superviolet to gain control of herself.

“I didn’t mean kill her!” the prince said. “I-it doesn’t matter. She didn’t deserve to be with these servants of Orholam anyway.” He raised his voice. “Luxiats, I detest everything you love, and I hate what you’ve done to the Seven Satrapies. But I admire your courage. Your deaths will spare thousands on both sides. For this one act, I admire you. Die well.”

The Color Prince turned to the soldiers guarding them. “Bind them, hand and foot. All of them.” Some few wept, but none fought, none screamed. Then, as hundreds of soldiers descended with ropes and bound the unresisting luxiats, he turned to his own gathered people.

“My brothers and sisters, today is the first day of a new order!” Cheers interrupted him, and he had to wait while they quieted. “Today, we take our first steps out of darkness.” More cheers. If anything, to Liv Koios looked irritated that he wasn’t able to finish. She gathered that he hadn’t spoken to huge groups very often, especially not huge and enthusiastic groups flushed with victory and bloodshed. “We have been kept chained by the Chromeria and by her luxiats. Are we going to stand for it any longer?”

“No!” a few men cried.

“Are we going to let the Chromeria tell us what to do?”

“No!” the crowd joined in, now catching on. It was like the old call and response, but this time against the luxiats, rather than with them.

“Are we going to go quietly into the darkness?”

“No!” This time, everyone joined, even those far enough back that they couldn’t possibly have heard the prince’s question.

This is the mob, Liv thought. This is the beast. But beasts can be harnessed.

“Our future lies before us. Our victories lie before us. They lie there!” He pointed to the city, where the gates were opening even now.

Nice timing, Liv thought. But then, maybe he’d been stalling until he saw the gates about to open. Well done, regardless. Well played.

A huge cheer, but the Color Prince wasn’t done. “Between us and our future stand the luxiats.” He pointed to them. “Are we going to let them stop us?”

“No!”

“Then I say we march. I say we march right over those who would stop us.”

“Yes!”

“If sacrifices must be made, let them be their sacrifices!”

“Yes!”

“Are you with me?”

“Yes!”

He glanced at Liv and said quietly, “Are you with me?”

She swallowed. Looked at the letter one last time. Dropped it in the mud. “Let’s go.”

And, so help them Orholam, that’s what they did. The soldiers laid the bound luxiats across the road, and the whole army marched over them. The army kept in lockstep, marching heedless, as if they were simply traversing difficult terrain, ignoring the living beneath their boots.

After the army passed, the Color Prince’s white-robed drafters followed. Their long white robes and dresses trailed into blood and took on a scarlet edge.

Then all the rest of the people came. Some tried to step around the groaning, screaming men and women. Others deliberately stomped groins and fingers, carried rocks to crush heads. Soon, it didn’t matter. The bodies turned to jelly, the road bloody mud as gore was churned with the uncaring soil. Liv heard later that through good luck or bad, some of the luxiats had survived until the heavy-laden wagons’ iron-rimmed wheels passed over them at the tail end of the army.

The army entered the city, victorious, cheering, drunk on their own omnipotence. And soon they were marching on, but now they had names, names they’d won in blood and battle. Names for their implacability. Some called them blasphemers, and so they were. Some called them luxiat-hunters, and so they became. Some called them Red Robes, and saw the blood as a sign of their viciousness. They accepted them all, and marched. And among them, every drafter cherished the blood on the hem of her robe, and after washing, they would dip their hems in cow’s blood to renew the stain. It gave a stench to them, especially when they passed en masse. But they called it the smell of freedom, the sacrifice of others. Some quietly called them animals. They called themselves invincible. They called themselves the Blood Robes.

Liv’s status meant she stayed in one of the Idossian nobles’ own apartments that night. She got drunk, and when Zymun came knocking on her door once again after midnight, this time she didn’t turn him away.