The Blinding Knife

Chapter 84

The shimmercloak made it easy for Gavin to get back to his room. Indeed, he passed only a single Blackguard who glanced toward the door to the roof when a bit of wind gusted in, but Gavin closed it quickly behind him.

The young woman looked up the stairs but dismissed it. Gavin made it past her, and when she finally decided to go check, he used the opportunity to slip into his room.

Clearly, they’d searched the room for him, but it had been a cursory search. What had he been thinking, inviting a search of his room? They could have found the door in his closet.

Not that it mattered now. Gavin went to the picture of the blue colossus and pulled it open. He almost laughed. The alarm panel was glowing yellow.

His brother had broken out of green, last night. Insanely, Gavin felt proud of him. He was a fighter. Maybe enough of one.

Well, at least the second alarm worked. Gavin swung the painting shut and went to his closet and began moving his clothes.

“My lord, may I help?”

Gavin wheeled around to find Marissia. She was kneeling beside the bed, head down. Apparently waiting for him, paying some sort of penance by making her vigil here. Her face was drawn, haggard.

He felt a rush of warmth for the woman. She’d been more than his room slave. She’d served with her whole heart, and in difficult circumstances.

“Marissia, there’s a letter in my desk drawer. I’m sure you’ve seen it. Please get it for me.”

She got it for him while he continued piling his clothes out of the way in the closet. She brought it back, wooden. It was her letter of manumission. Instead of having the standard thing written up and then signing it, Gavin had written it all in his own hand. He’d heard tales of room slaves being accused of forging their own manumission papers and kept in slavery because of it. Marissia was beautiful and valuable for a dozen reasons. Gavin wasn’t going to let them have her.

He looked it over, though he had the contents memorized. It was not only manumission, but also a grant of ten thousand danars. A fortune, enough to start a business and marry, or just to live off for the rest of her life. He signed it. Then he grabbed another scrap of paper and wrote down a series of letters and numbers. “My father might seize this money through some pretext or another. They know I care about you, so they’ll suspect that I’d leave you something. This code will open another account to you. Speak to the Ilytian banker Prestor Onesto at Varig and Green.”

“My lord, why are you speaking this way?” She sounded on the verge of tears.

“Please give five thousand of what’s in that account to Karris and five thousand to Kip. The rest is for you.” He handed the writ to her. “Memorize that sequence and then burn that; Onesto will release the money to anyone who has that number.”

“Lord Prism…” She held the papers limply. She looked bereaved.

“I’ve freed you. You’re supposed to be happy.” Gavin looked away. Of course it stroked his ego that his slave didn’t seem delighted to be free, but perhaps that was simply because she knew to cover her delight for his sake. In case it was a lie, he didn’t want to see through it, so he looked away.

“This is my fault, isn’t it, my lord?” she said. “I did something wrong, didn’t I? I missed the alarm somehow.”

He put his hands on her shoulders. “It’s not your fault. My alarm failed. It was my work. Everything had to go right, for too long. Something happened. But it wasn’t you.”

“I should have been here for you. That Ana girl… I should never have left. I’m so sorry, my lord.” She was right; if Marissia had been in his bed where Gavin wanted her, things would have been very different. But he was the master of his own fate. No one had forced him to throw that girl out onto his balcony.

What had he been thinking, anyway? Just that he wanted her out of his room? Just that he wanted to frighten her? Or had his rage been murderous all along?

Maybe intent didn’t matter. She was dead. It was all finished.

“It’s not your fault, Marissia. It’s mine. You have been a good servant, a good companion, a good friend. I want you to go now so you don’t get sucked down by the wreckage.”

Her eyebrows tented in dismay. “My lord, you are a good man. Please don’t-”

He snorted. “A good man would have freed you long ago. I was afraid of how you’d use your freedom, so I withheld it from you. I’ve a small and mean spirit. The master who fears the choices his people will make enough to take those choices away isn’t worth serving. You’ve served me well, despite my shortcomings. Thank you, Marissia. Please take these two cloaks down to my secret room. Then go. I may not come back up alone. I may not come back up at all, but someone else will. You oughtn’t be here when he does.”

She turned her hands up, helpless for once. “My lord,” she said plaintively.

He opened the closet and drafted the board for his feet-out of yellow luxin now, since he couldn’t do blue.

“Tell Kip I’m sorry. Tell Karris… No, I suppose you can’t. Fare thee well, Marissia.” He stepped into the closet and closed the door.

He could hear her weeping as soon as the door closed, though she was trying to hold it back.

Gavin slid open the floor, found the rope, and fitted the board onto it. In moments, he was whizzing downward into the darkness.

When he got to the bottom of the shaft, he groped around until he found the lux torches, then pulled one off the wall. He hadn’t been able to use them before because he hadn’t wanted to cast yellow light into any of his brother’s cells. Now that Dazen was in the yellow cell, it didn’t matter anymore.

He found the controls and pulled the levers to bring the yellow cell up. It would take about five minutes for the cell to lift and rotate into position. He’d built it that way so that his brother would always think that the place where the window sat was a weakness in the design, when in fact he’d hardened that spot above all others.

The wait gave him time to think about the spasm of creative genius he’d had in constructing this prison. He’d built the first, blue cell in a month, and then spent the better part of a year constructing all the other cells. He wondered how much different the world would be if he’d simply killed his brother and turned his attention immediately to fighting the Spectrum and changing the injustices he saw them committing everywhere. A waste, all for one man.

Never had the guts to let him go. Never had the guts to murder him in cold blood.

Slowly, slowly, the orb came into view, and then slowly settled. There was a slide to pull back to reveal the window, but Gavin found himself looking blankly at that slide, afraid to pull it open.

Ridiculous. He was here to die. He was here to let his brother out. This should be easy. It was all finished. His heart hammered protests in his chest, and he thought it was going to seize up. His throat constricted. He was sweating.

He pulled back the slide.

A man charged from the other side and swung a club straight at his face.

Gavin threw himself backward. His brother’s lux torch hit the yellow luxin window and shattered in a flash of released yellow brightwater. But the prisoner wasn’t finished. He didn’t laugh with cool resolve at scaring Gavin. Instead, he attacked with the fury of a rabid wolf, beating the lux torch against the window with great blows until the wood shaft splintered in his hands, broke.

“You motherfucker!” the prisoner shouted. “I am going to kill you and everyone you ever loved. I’m going to rip your fucking head off and sodomize you with it.”

Gavin stood, brushed himself off, and put his own lux torch into a bracket.

“You hear me, Gavin?” the prisoner shouted. “You think you’re so clever. Good! You know what? You are clever. You always wanted me to say you’re the smarter brother. You know what? You are. You know what else you are? You’re the weaker brother. You ever wonder why I’m father’s favorite? Look at this. This prison. Ingenious. And pathetic. I thought you made this prison to prove you were smarter than me, brother. I know better now. You made it because you can’t kill me. Because you’re afraid.

“That’s why father loves me. Oh, I’m a disappointment, too. He wishes his son were both smart and ruthless, fearless, but he had to choose one, and he chose me. And he chose right, you spineless, scrofulous sack of shit. Because I can hold a grudge. I can nurse it, feed it, grow it. And I will. You’re going to sit out there, worrying. Just like when you were a kid, huh? You still get the bad dreams, don’t you? You still wake up crying, don’t you? You still piss yourself, Gavin? Now you’ve got a reason to. I’m coming!” The prisoner was so close, his spit flecked the window.

“You could kill me,” he said, “but you won’t. I bet you think about it every single morning when you send me my bread. I could poison this, you think. I could just not feed him, you think. But you can’t. You don’t have it in you. You know, Gavin, you’re right. You don’t. But I do. If our positions had been reversed, I’d have killed you as you lay unconscious at Sundered Rock. I would have cut off your head and filled your mouth with your own feces and put you on a pike. Because that’s how you win, Gavin. That’s how you show you can’t be crossed. Peace through terror, Gavin. That probably doesn’t even make any sense to you, does it? No, you were always like mother, all sweet manipulations and bullshit. She-”

“Mother’s dead,” Gavin said. He didn’t want Dazen to slur her in his moment of anger.

“Fuck her,” Dazen said. “As good a liar as she was, she never even bothered to pretend she didn’t love you more.”

What?

“You killed her?” Dazen asked, seeing a chink in Gavin’s armor in the shock on his face. “You shrive her first? What’d she tell you? Do you think she was honest with you, even then? Or was she angling you to do what she wanted, even then? She might be dead, but I bet she’s not gone, is she? Little spider bitch.”

“That’s your mother you’re talking about, you sick bastard,” Gavin said.

“So what’re you going to do, little brother? Make me stop? You’ll do nothing, like always. You’re going to wait for me, and have your nightmares. I got out of the other prisons, and I’ll get out of this one. You know, I was worried at first, when I fell into the green. I thought that blue was the only one, and green-that was cruel, brother, brilliant. I thought then that there must be seven prisons, one for every color. But there aren’t, are there?”

Gavin said nothing.

“You couldn’t make a cell of superviolet. There’s no way you can make one of sub-red. I don’t think you could make one out of orange or red either. I think this is the last cell. I think I’m a hair’s breadth from ending everything you’ve ever built.”

“You might be surprised,” Gavin said quietly.

“You’re a failure, little brother. An embarrassment. An empty shell.”

Gavin stood looking at his brother in the pitiless yellow light.

“Karris never told you about our night together, did she?” the prisoner said.

“You’ve regaled me with your sexual prowess before. I’m not interested,” Gavin said. The prisoner wasn’t in his right mind. He’d just fallen into the yellow prison in the last twelve hours, doubtless thinking that this time he was really going to escape. The disappointment, the heartbreak would be enough to make anyone lash out. But Gavin didn’t want to hear it.

“So she didn’t.” Dazen laughed, an edgy, grating laugh unlike any Gavin had ever heard from him. “I used to be kind of ashamed of it, really. But I’m past that now. She wasn’t quite so eager as I might have made out before. We were at dinner, my men and her and her father, and I was telling these outrageous jokes, and even her father laughed along, and I had this moment, Gavin, when I realized just how different I am. How I can do whatever I want. I put my big cock in the world, and the world shuts up and takes it. I talked about fucking Karris all night long and making sure she was up to my standards and that coward laughed along. Can you believe it? And Karris, little coward Karris, she just got drunk.

“Sad to say, it was nothing special. She didn’t give me much of a ride after I got mounted. You ever try to finish while the woman’s bawling? And I know it wasn’t because I took her maidenhead. You took care of that, didn’t you?”

“You sick piece of-”

“I didn’t think I was going to be able to finish. I was drunk and she wasn’t doing much for me, with all her tears. But then she said your name, and I knew I had to. To show you that you couldn’t take what was mine. And do you know what’s mine? Anything I want. Anyone. She kept crying afterward so I kicked her out. I was kind of embarrassed, to tell you the truth.” He shrugged. “I got over it.” He leered at Gavin, saw how aghast he was. “She never mentioned it, huh?”

Gavin couldn’t speak.

“You never married her, did you?”

Gavin felt gutted. He’d told his brother a hundred lies about his happy little life and his happy little wife. “No.”

The prisoner’s face contorted. His eyes darted to the side, then back to his gaoler. “Sixteen years of lies, crumbling, huh? You’re probably better off without her anyway. You think while she was making the rounds of the Guiles she slept with father, too?”

Begging his brother to stop or commanding him to stop talking about Karris would be equally ineffectual. “I thought… I always thought you were the good brother,” Gavin said.

“Good brother?” the prisoner barked. “Like we’re the good twin and the bad twin? We’re not twins, Gavin, and neither one of us is good.”

“Have you always been like this, or have you gone mad down here?” Gavin asked.

“You made me, little brother, just like I made you.” Dazen tossed the shattered pieces of the lux torch away. “Now why don’t we end this farce? Open the door. Release me.” He spread his hands wide and leaned against the window, intent on Gavin.

Gavin could see blood trickling down his brother’s chest from a thickly scarred wound, torn open in his fall. He could see another trickle of fresh blood from the little spikes of hellstone he had rigged to take away all of Dazen’s luxin when he fell into yellow.

Dazen was thin, ragged, unhealthy. He was furious, as he had every right to be. Doubtless he was lying about Karris to hurt Gavin. Or exaggerating at the least. But though Karris had never meant anything to him, their mother should have.

I was mother’s favorite? Of course I was. Maybe first she’d lavished more attention on me because she saw how much father’s abandonment hurt me, how much I needed a parent. But we were kindred souls. She’d probably felt guilty that she loved me more. She’d certainly felt relieved when she learned Gavin was actually Dazen. He’d seen that in her face, sixteen years ago, and tried to deny it since.

I’m like the dog with a bone who crossed a low bridge in the fable. I see another dog passing beneath me carrying a bone, and I snap to take his bone-and drop my own into the water, into my reflection.

He looked at the prisoner, who was glancing at one wall of his cell repeatedly, as if in conversation. It might well have been Gavin’s fault that his brother was mad. After all, he was the one who’d kept the man caged, alone, for sixteen years. But it wasn’t the kind of transgression he could fix.

Gavin leaned against his own side of the window, hands pressing the immaculate, unbreakable yellow luxin opposite his big brother’s hands. “I’m sorry, brother. I’m sorry if I drove you mad, and I’m sorry if you were always like this and I never knew it. But I don’t think I can let you out. Not like you are. My world is falling apart. I won’t lie to you about that. I murdered a girl. I’m losing my colors. I’ve lost the woman I love. I… I’m losing everything. But I haven’t lost my mind, and in that, I’m up on you.”

He felt a sudden wave of peace roll through him like a tsunami, obliterating everything in its path, burying his objections, smashing his protests. His brother deserved to be here. Maybe they didn’t get to simply switch places-maybe Gavin didn’t get to be the good brother in his own mind now that he’d determined that the prisoner was the bad brother. But his brother was a bad brother. A bad man. A danger.

If the seed of megalomania had already been sprouting when he was nineteen years old, what would boundless power have done to him if Gavin had let him walk free all those years ago?

Maybe he’d even done the right thing, not just the least bad thing. Maybe locking his brother up had been just.

Maybe not. It didn’t matter. He took a deep breath.

“You started the war on purpose to rally allies around you, didn’t you? You wiped out that village where I’d been hiding and then men flocked to me. Just to oppose you. You could have gotten me to surrender. I would have. And after that first clash where my men won, you killed our messenger. Why’d you do that? All you had to do was grant clemency to my men, and you could have had me. Was that father’s idea, or yours?”

Dazen shot a quick sneer over at the wall. “Look, brother, as nice as this little scam that Lucidonius pulled together is, it doesn’t work for some kinds of threats. Take Ilyta. Which satrapies are going to vote to go to war to bring Ilyta back into the fold? None. But a promachos could do it. The Aborneans have been cheating their tributes for decades. The Parians barely pay attention to the Chromeria. The Ruthgari openly manipulate and dominate with their wealth and their lies. The Tyreans-well, I suppose I’m not in much of a place to say what’s happened to Tyrea since the war changed everything. Am I right?”

“Yes,” Gavin said. His stomach was churning. His joints felt weak.

“You think the Everdark Gates are going to stay closed forever?”

“Ah, the amorphous threat from beyond the Everdark Gates,” Gavin said. “You’re a student of history, at least. Wasn’t it Prism Sayid Talim who nearly got himself named promachos to face the ‘armada’ that waited beyond the gates? That was forty-seven years ago. Long time for an armada to wait around.”

“You look around, Gavin, and you tell me if what we have is working.”

Gavin couldn’t even get the Spectrum to declare war even after Tyrea had been lost and Atash invaded. How was that possible? His brother was right. Their system was broken, and it would take a man of will to make something new.

“War is the only way to be named promachos,” Dazen said. “You need a great crisis. You were our perfect opportunity. We could look reluctant going after you. You were my brother. You were Andross Guile’s son. No one would think it was a ploy. But you kept trying to end our war before it could really begin.”

Gavin felt sick. “And General Delmarta. Was he your man all along?” It had been the general’s slaughter of the Atashian royal family that not only mobilized the satrapies against Gavin but also got rid of one of the families that had opposed Andross Guile.

“It was fifty-seven people. You killed more than that in the skirmish at Tanner Creek.”

“It’s different when it’s in cold blood.”

“Is it?” the prisoner asked. “Do they end up less dead?” He blinked, looked over at the wall, as if someone was speaking to him.

Gavin didn’t answer.

“You tell me, brother,” the prisoner said. “Honest question, because I have no way of knowing the answer: how much trouble have you had from Atash since our war?”

It was a body blow. Before the war, the Atashian royals-last remnant of the orders that had existed before Lucidonius-had caused problems and small wars constantly. If the royal family had still been around with their money and influence, their safe havens and their smuggling ships, the Red Cliff Uprising would have been horrendous. As it was, the uprising had failed almost as soon as it began. The slaughter had worked.

“Let me out, brother,” Dazen said. “You’re finished, and you know it. Forgive me for what I said before. Threats and vileness. I didn’t mean it. I just fell into this cell hours ago. I’d thought I was out, and you beat me again. You’ve got an excellent mind, little brother. But your time is done. I can see it in your eyes, and not just in the colors that you’ve lost. You have the smarts, but I have the will, and now the world needs will. There is a threat out there, and it is growing, and only I can save the Seven Satrapies.”

“You were always willing to do what needed to be done,” Gavin said. “That was the difference between us, wasn’t it?” His breath escaped in a long sigh. “It’s all coming apart. There’s no way I can save it. Gavin,” he said, and it was a relief to call his older brother by his real name. “Gavin, I want assurances. Swear to me, swear before Orholam that you won’t take any vengeance on Karris. I don’t know how she’ll react, and I know you may have to exile her, but swear to me you’ll see she’s provided for. And Kip. Same terms.”

Gavin-the real Gavin-squinted, as if considering the terms and the implications they would have on his reign, moving seamlessly from the mad prisoner to the earnest emperor. “In the sight of Orholam, I so swear.”

Gavin the false reached his hand up to the node on the yellow window.

“Wait,” the prisoner said. “Before you let me out. We’ve unfinished business, brother. What do I do with you?” He glanced quickly over at the wall again, a quick crinkle of irritation, instantly smoothed away.

Gavin hesitated. His brother really was magnificent. “I figured you’d kill me. While I’m alive, I’m a threat, aren’t I?”

“You’ve only got a year or so left. Killing you isn’t necessary. Father owns a little island off Melos that would be perfect for an exile. Used to keep a mistress there.”

“That is… quite kind,” Gavin said. “I, I’ve missed you, big brother.” He raised his hand to the node and dissolved the window between them. Then he drew the dagger-pistols from his belt and pulled both triggers. The roar filled the little space as the lead balls blasted through the prisoner’s body. One punched a perfect hole in his sternum. The other smashed through his teeth and blew out the back of his head. The prisoner’s body dropped. Didn’t even twitch. The acrid, comforting aroma of gunpowder followed.

Both pistols had fired. Ilytian handiwork. Gavin could admire that. The Ilytians made fine pistols.

He looked over at the wall, where the prisoner had been glancing repeatedly, but he saw nothing but the reflection of a dead man.