It was one thing for a color wight to run: not even blues were immune to cowardice. But an attack on Orholam himself was a heresy that cut to the root of the world. If you called Orholam a fraud, and said everyone in power must know it, the Chromeria became the purveyor of lies, an oppressor who stole from you, not a friend who needed your help to sustain their worthy efforts. “I haven’t believed in Orholam for years,” Gavin said, honestly. “But why trade one superstition for another?”
The giist glanced at Gavin’s shirt, noticing the buttons weren’t done properly. Good. Any time it spent looking at his buttons was time it didn’t spend looking at his eyes. “You stop believing lies so you can believe the truth, not so you can believe nothing at all. King Garadul has…” He trailed off, looking at Gavin suspiciously. Putting something together.
“King Garadul, is he who leads the Unchained?” Gavin asked.
“Who are you?” it demanded. “You aren’t nervous. And you should be.” It tore the dagger out of its shoulder, sealed the wound, and tossed the dagger aside. It drew a long, ball-handled matchlock pistol from the ragged pouch, began loading in a precise manner with the odd, quick, but absentminded mode blue wights sometimes had. It used blue luxin like an extension of its hands. Blue luxin ramrod, blue luxin fingers to hold the slow match, blue luxin to draw out the powder horn and a lead ball. It grabbed the still-burning mag torch from the sand and held it up to light the slow match. “Foolish, rash red drafter,” the giist said, glancing down at Gavin’s misbuttoned shirt. “You should always spend the extra to buy a mag torch in your own color.”
“I did,” Gavin said.
The giist’s eyes snapped from the white torch to Gavin’s eyes. Even through the buggy eye cover and the frozen luxin face, Gavin read realization in every line of the giist’s body.
Before it could move, Gavin leapt forward with an insane scream.
Taken off guard, the giist lost concentration on the luxin hand holding the mag torch, and that hand disintegrated, dropping the flaming brand. The giist didn’t forget its great sword or the pistol, though. It lifted the blade to impale Gavin, raised the pistol.
Drafting parrying sticks of blue luxin in each hand, Gavin slapped the blade aside. He flung the giist’s hands wide. Letting the parrying sticks disintegrate, he drafted. A narrow blue blade sprang from his palm. He stepped close, inside the blue wight’s arms even as the pistol’s hammer clicked and the match slapped down. He slammed blade and palm into the giist’s chest, its carapace yielding with a popping sound. Gavin shed the remaining blue luxin with a flick of his arms and pulled in the hottest sub-reds he could handle into each hand. Flames curled around his fists as he clenched them.
The pistol roared and went spinning harmlessly out of the giist’s hand.
It staggered back, but Gavin stepped in close once again. He threw two quick jabs, left hand to the giist’s right eye, right hand to its left eye. The blue bug-eye lenses cracked, melted, releasing a quick burst of resin and chalk smells. It all happened so fast the blue wight couldn’t resist. Blues were slow to react when they found their presuppositions were wrong.
Broken, the giist sank, sat, tried to catch itself, and fell on the sand. Despite its solid blue lidless eyes, despite the burned skin and the crosshatched blue luxin through the cut on its cheek, to Gavin it looked abruptly human once more.
The startled look in those broken-haloed eyes.
The red red blood spilling down its chest.
And suddenly, the figure looked more like a man than like the monster that Gavin had found standing over Sevastian’s bed all those years ago, the window broken open behind him, light gleaming off blue skin and red blood.
Gavin took a deep, unsteady breath. He’d stopped it this time. No innocents had died. And there was one decency left to extend, not because Rondar Wit deserved it, but in spite of the fact that he didn’t.
“You gave the full measure, Rondar Wit. Your service will not be forgotten, but your failures are blotted out, forgotten, erased. I give you absolution. I give you freedom. I—”
“Dazen!” the giist shouted, hands clutching its wound, writhing.
Gavin was so startled he lost his place in the funerary rite.
“Dazen leads us, and the Color Prince is his strong right hand.” The giist laughed, blood flecking his segmented blue lips.
“Dazen’s dead,” Gavin said, his gut twisting.
“Light cannot be chained, Prism. Not even by you. You’re the heretic, not…” And then the darkness of death closed over the giist at last.
Chapter 32
Kip barely had time to get scrubbed down with towels, dressed in some soldier’s pants and a dry shirt and heavy boots—surprisingly enough, it all fit; apparently they were used to big soldiers out here—and plopped in front of a fire before Ironfist showed up. His tightly curled hair was damp, but otherwise there was nothing to give away that he had just been in the ocean too. He wore a regulation gray uniform like Kip’s, though with a gold seven-pointed star and two bars on his lapel, where Kip’s uniform was blank.
“Up,” Ironfist said.
Kip stood, rubbing his arms in what seemed a vain effort to get warm. “I thought you were a commander of the Blackguard. Why are you wearing a captain’s uniform?”
Ironfist’s eyebrow barely twitched. “So you know Chromerian ranks?”
“Master Danavis taught me all the military ranks of all Seven Satrapies. He thought—”
“That’s nice. You have all your belongings?” Ironfist said.
Kip scowled, at being interrupted and dismissed and at the thought of belongings. “I don’t have any stuff. I didn’t have that much to start with, and—”
“So the answer is yes,” Ironfist said.
So that was how it was going to be. “Yes,” Kip said. “Sir.” He was only a little sardonic with the sir, but Ironfist looked at him sharply, no humor at all in the one raised eyebrow. He really was very big. Not just tall, not just really tall. Rippling with muscle. Intimidating. Kip looked away. He cleared his throat awkwardly. “I’m sorry you had to dive in and get me. I’m sorry I made you lose your spectacles. I’ll pay you back, I promise.”
Suddenly, to his complete horror, Kip felt tears welling up from nowhere. Orholam, no! But the pull was as irresistible as the riptide. His stomach convulsed as he tried to choke back the sob, but it escaped anyway. He was so sick of being weak. He was the child who couldn’t even hold on to the rope someone put in his hands. He hadn’t been able to do anything. He hadn’t saved Isa when she needed him. He hadn’t saved his mother. He hadn’t saved Sanson. He was powerless, stupid. When it had come down to it, he’d panicked. His mother was right about him.
Half a dozen expressions rushed over Ironfist’s face in quick succession. He raised one hand awkwardly, lowered it, raised it again, and patted Kip’s shoulder. He cleared his throat. “I can requisition another pair.”
Kip started laughing and crying at the same time, not because Ironfist was funny, but because the big man thought Kip was crying about his spectacles.
“There you go,” Ironfist said. He thumped Kip’s shoulder with the side of his fist in what Kip thought was supposed to be a friendly manner—except it hurt. Kip rubbed his shoulder and laugh-cried harder.