And his father would have been scared, and distant, and angry, and watchful, and intrigued, and enraged, and uncertain. As he had.
Dazen had thought he’d been so clever. He thought he’d fooled the people closest to him. In reality, they’d played along, pretending to be deceived because they had no other options, no other sons, because in their own ways they both still needed him: his mother needed him to keep her own hopes alive, and his father needed him in order to rule through him.
“It didn’t take everything, though, did it?” the dead man asked. “Despite the black luxin, you knew certain truths. Or perhaps only certain hungers. You had to kill to keep drafting. You knew it would all fail eventually. That’s why you had the nightmares, the attacks of panic. You knew that you were shameful, that you were a murderer, and everything you did to atone for your sins was a pile of glass baubles next to the mountain of shit that you built higher every year to keep yourself in power, to stay alive. You thought you were so clever. You thought yourself nigh unto a god, when in reality you were propped up by those who feared and hated you as much as by those who loved you. And even that wan love was tainted with fear and despair.”
“You’re wrong,” Gavin said.
“You know I’m not.”
“No, you’re wrong about one thing,” Gavin said. “And perhaps one thing only.”
“Pray tell.”
“My father didn’t know. There’s no way my father has known all this time. He could never let anyone think they were fooling him. It isn’t in him to play along. I—”
“Oh,” a voice said, “I think you’d be surprised at what is in me, son.”
Gavin hadn’t noticed the chamber moving, hadn’t heard the slot open. He fell, nerveless, sliding against the unforgiving luxin wall to the ground.
Not him. Not now. Please. No, God!
“I came to see if you’d grasped the truth yet,” Andross Guile said. “And I find you ranting to a wall.”
The dead man laughed, but Andross Guile didn’t hear it.
“I want you to know, boy, I came down here just now seriously considering putting you back in power. Your brother’s son Zymun is a worm who will become a terror if I let him survive. Kip is fled and too sensible to return soon, if ever. The Color Prince—he now calls himself the White King—is grown more powerful than we could have imagined. You are needed at this hour, Dazen. Not all of your power was magical, though you refused to see that. Not all of your leadership was based on light, though you were blind to that. But you’ve gone only ever deeper into madness. Perhaps this is my fault. Perhaps I left you down here too long. But you’re mad now, and that I cannot change.”
“It can’t be true,” Gavin said. “I wouldn’t do all this for no reason.”
“Couldn’t. Wouldn’t,” Andross scoffed. “You did.” It was a death sentence. “This is your work. All of it. Once I knew to look for it, it was obvious. Brute-force drafting, even where it was elegant. Always using lots of luxin, even where a little would serve as well. No aesthetic except that bigger was always better, and strongest was best.”
“This is all lies.”
“I won’t leave you here, though. Lest all of this madness is an act, meant to lull me into a false confidence that you’re broken. Your cunning is without peer. You’ve doubtless put in an escape hatch of some sort. So. One last game, where the stakes are light. Every day, I will send down two loaves. One will be poisoned. You can try to figure out which, if it pleases you. Eventually you’ll fail, and when you’re unconscious, you’ll be moved somewhere more secure. Somewhere terminal. Or you can attempt to figure out where the drug is in each loaf, and hoard a stash of it, and take it all at once to kill yourself. That would solve a lot of problems for both of us, but you’ve never been interested in solving problems for me, have you?”
“I hate you,” Gavin said.
Andross stared at him with inscrutable eyes for a long time.
“I know. And it’s too bad, because I have only ever loved you, Dazen.”
Chapter 46
“What is this?” Conn Arthur demanded. “You said nothing about this.”
“This?” Kip asked. “What are you mad about, and why are you bringing it to me right now?”
The sun was rising on another perfect morning on the Great River. According to their guides, they were about five minutes from Fechín Island. There they would rendezvous with the Cwn y Wawr.
“You were supposed to take care of this!” Conn Arthur said, pointing at Tisis.
“Easy!” Cruxer warned.
The Mighty’s skimmer, already small with nine people on it, especially when that nine included men the size of Big Leo, Kip, and Conn Arthur, felt downright minuscule when the big bear was angry.
“I was planning to!” Tisis said.
“How?!” he demanded.
“I hadn’t figured that out yet!” Tisis said. “I was kind of hoping we’d have a chance for you to show how useful… Shit!”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Kip said. “You have to tell—”
“Ah shit!” Conn Arthur said. “There’s their scout. They’ve seen us. Now we’re committed.”
Kip couldn’t see anyone until he flickered his vision to sub-red and saw the warm blotch in the trees along the riverbank.
“Slow down to half speed,” Kip ordered. “It’s, um, only polite to give them a chance to prepare for our arrival.” He turned to Conn Arthur and Tisis. “You’ve got ten minutes.”
“The Cwn y Wawr?!” Conn Arthur said. “You never told us we were meeting with the Cwn y Wawr.”
“I wasn’t hiding it,” Kip said. “I told you we saved two-hundred-some men. Why do you care?”
“I thought the last conflict between you was a hundred years ago,” Tisis said.
“That’s because we haven’t wanted to be slaughtered again. We’ve had to live so we can disappear at any moment, for any amount of time. When we hear they’re coming to the Grove in force, we leave and stay away until they lose interest.” Bitterly, he said, “It’s another reason they call us Ghosts.”
“Wait,” Kip said. “Why do they hunt you?”