The Black Prism

“They say we take a Pact! We make an oath! And with that oath, they bind us, they bury us,” Lord Omnichrome said.

Liv was pushing carefully through the throng, moving toward the front. She swore she’d seen Kip led there, black spectacles bound to his head. But everyone else was paying rapt attention to the freak up front, so she couldn’t move too quickly. Instead, she pretended to listen, too, and moved slowly.

“Like this,” Lord Omnichrome said. He gestured to the rounded stone on which he stood. “This is all that’s left of what was once a great civilization. You have seen these relics scattered throughout this land. Statues of great men, broken by the pygmies who followed.” Liv’s ears perked up. Rekton had had a broken statue, out in an orange grove. No one had ever said anything about where it came from. She thought that was because no one knew.

“You think these statues are a mystery?” Lord Omnichrome asked. “They’re no mystery. You think it was a coincidence the Prisms’ War ended here, in Tyrea? You think the Guiles simply wandered the Seven Satrapies until their armies found each other? And it happened to be here? Let me tell you something you already know, something that all of you have believed but no one dared to say: the wrong Guile won the Prisms’ War. Dazen Guile was trying to change things, and they killed him for it. The Chromeria killed Dazen Guile. They killed him because they were worried he would change everything. They feared him, because Dazen Guile wanted to Free us.” There was some consternation in the crowd at that phrase. They all knew what day it was, and that the Prism was in Garriston, not even a league away, performing the Freeing this very night.

“You see?” Lord Omnichrome said. “You feel that uneasiness? Because the Chromeria has twisted our very language against us. Dazen wanted to Free us. Dazen knew that light cannot be chained.”

“Light cannot be chained,” some of the drafters echoed. It was an almost religious refrain.

“The Freeing, they call it. Lay your burdens down, the Prism says. I give you absolution and freedom, he says. Do you know what he gives us? Do you know?!”

“I give you absolution,” Gavin said, his heart in his throat as Aheyyad knelt at his feet, eyes up, right hand on Gavin’s thigh. “I give you freedom. Orholam bless you and take you to his arms.” He drew his knife and buried it in Aheyyad’s chest. Right in the heart. He withdrew the blade. A perfect thrust. But then, he’d had a lot of practice.

He didn’t look at the wound, didn’t watch the blood bloom on Aheyyad’s shirt. He held the boy’s eyes as the life went out of them. And when it did, Gavin said, “Please forgive me. Please forgive me.”

Gavin had sheathed the dagger, and he was scrubbing his hands on the blood rag he carried—though they were clean. He stopped.

“They murder you!” Lord Omnichrome shouted. “They stick a knife in you and watch you die. As you beg, they watch—and they say their god smiles on this! Tell me, is this any way to treat our elders? Under the Chromeria, we barely have elders. They’ve killed them all. Oh, except for the White. Except for Andross Guile and his wife. The rules don’t apply to them, but you and me, and our mothers and our fathers—we should be killed. They say this is Orholam’s will. They say it is the Pact. Like something we swore to as ignorant children makes their murder of our parents good and right. What insanity is this? A woman serves the Seven Satrapies for all her life, and then as a reward, she’s murdered? Is this freedom? This is what they call ‘Freeing’ her?”

Liv caught sight of Kip, but she wasn’t pushing toward him anymore.

“You know it’s wrong. I know it’s wrong. They know it’s wrong. That’s why they speak about it in hushed tones and euphemisms. It’s not just. It’s not a Freeing, it’s a murder, let’s be clear about that. And then they don’t even have the decency to give your body back to your family. They use it in some dark ritual instead. Is that what our fathers served so long to get? Is that just? The Chromeria soils everything it touches. And do you think that all who are ‘Freed’ have volunteered?”

Lord Omnichrome laughed derisively.

As the Blackguards took Aheyyad’s body out of the room, careful not to spill any blood, there was a single knock on the door. One strike, followed by nothing. It took Gavin a moment to remember: Bas the Simple had never really understood knocking.

“Come in, Bas,” Gavin said. Children and idiots. This is who I kill? I bathe in the blood of innocents.

The man came in. He was actually quite handsome dressed in his finery. Unlike other simpletons Gavin had known, there was no sign of Bas’s difference in his facial features.

“I am sorry for coming out of turn, Lord Prism. I have a question, and I did not wish to interrupt my Freeing to ask it.”

That he was interrupting someone else’s Freeing to ask the question didn’t occur to him, of course.

“Please, ask,” Gavin said.

“I heard Evi Grass talking about Brightwater Wall. Evi is a green/yellow bichrome. She’s from the Blood Forest, but I don’t think she’s scary at all. My mother used to tell me that anyone with red hair is just as like to set you on fire as look at you, but Evi isn’t like that.”

Gavin knew Evi well. Not classically bright, she was incredibly intuitive but rarely trusted herself. At least she hadn’t years ago.

“Evi once saved me from a charging—”

“What did she say, Bas?” Gavin asked.

“She didn’t say anything, she just saved me. I guess she might have yelled. I couldn’t tell you for sure—”

“What did Evi say about Brightwater Wall?”

“I don’t like it when you interrupt, Lord Prism. It makes me nervous.”

Gavin stifled his impatience. Pushing harder would make Bas completely incapable of speech.

Bas saw that Gavin wasn’t going to push and then thought for a moment. Gavin could see him find the mental path once more. “Evi said the brightwater was drafted perfectly. She said she didn’t remember you being a superchromat. I can’t see the color differentiations myself, of course, but I don’t think she’d lie, and Gavin Guile wasn’t a superchromat. His brother Dazen was. And you’re taller than Gavin. He wore boots to make himself look taller, but Dazen was taller by his thirteenth birthday. I remember that day. It was sunny. My grandmother said that Orholam had always smiled on the Guiles. I was wearing my blue coat…”

Gavin wasn’t listening. He felt like the floor had dropped out from under his feet. He’d known this moment was coming. He’d expected it for sixteen years. He’d gone into his first meetings as Gavin expecting anyone, everyone, to point and scream, “Impostor! Counterfeit!” Others had figured it out, but never in a way he couldn’t contain. He couldn’t discredit Bas. The man was immune to political currents, and everyone knew it. And if asked, Bas would point out a hundred differences between Gavin and Dazen. By the time he was done speaking, the Gavin mask would be destroyed.

And yet he’d come alone. On this night, of all nights.

“So my question was… my question was, why are you lying, Dazen? Why are you pretending to be Gavin? Dazen is bad. He kills people. He killed the White Oaks. All of them. They say he went from room to room in their mansion, even killing the servants, and then he burned it all down to hide his crimes. The children were trapped in the basement. They found their little bodies in a pile. They were hugging each other. I went there. I saw them.” Bas stopped speaking, evidently consumed by that old image. With his perfect memory, it must have been vivid indeed. “I told those little charred bodies that I would kill Dazen Guile,” Bas said.