The Black Prism

Gavin grabbed the second to the last rope. Secrecy meant he couldn’t take the last one, though if someone saw and recognized him, they would wonder why he wasn’t taking the lift reserved for a man of his rank, so it was probably a wash as to which way was more discreet. He drafted a brake, threw the lever to double his own weight, and kicked the release.

He flew upward at great speed. Though he started deep beneath the earth, the lifts were brightly lit. At the top of each chute were holes to the outside, and mounted there were highly polished mirrors from Atash that sent natural light down the chutes for as long as the sun was visible to that chute each day. Adjusting the mirrors every few minutes was another fun job for the dims, and every evening they would have to crank all the counterweights back into place. Gavin could remember doing that himself. As memories went, it wasn’t a terribly pleasant one.

The lift didn’t go all the way to his chamber near the top of the Chromeria, of course. That would be far too convenient—or, as the Blackguards preferred to say, insecure. No reason to give assassins a direct path to the Prism or anyone else important. Instead, after whizzing upward at high speed halfway up the Chromeria, zipping past students and magisters and servants and slaves so fast that they had no chance to see who was in such a hurry, Gavin threw the brake.

He stopped at the top of the chute and stepped out in front of the guard station that protected this floor. There were four men here, guards, not Blackguards, all looking up from their dice guiltily. Apparently they hadn’t noticed the whizzing rope until too late. Their mouths hung open at the sight of him, Gavin Guile himself, sweaty, dirty, and here.

“Tell you what,” Gavin said, tucking the brake into his belt. “You keep this quiet and I will too.” He stared significantly at their dice and the coins on their table. Guarding the lift at this high a floor had to be boring, but Luxlord Black wouldn’t be pleased to learn that his soldiers were gambling on duty.

Four heads bobbed as one. Gavin stepped into the next lift, which was right next to the one he’d exited, and got in his accustomed position. This time, he chose a more human speed.

There were two Blackguards guarding the lift at his level, and these men weren’t dicing. They were barely even blinking. Both had their spears in hand, knees lightly bent, spectacles on.

When the Blackguards were on duty, they were on duty.

The men snapped salutes and slapped their spears crisply to their shoulders, swiveling smoothly back into their spots. Gavin walked past and slipped into his room. A bit of superviolet dropped all the shades, giving him light. He pulled a summons chain by his desk and walked over to his bathtub. Today was going to involve a lot of diplomacy, but most importantly, it was going to involve his brother, and there was no way he could appear before Dazen disheveled. It might be interpreted as weakness. He opened the tap, tested the water, and heated it with sub-red.

He was starting to take off his clothes when the door opened and his room slave Marissia walked in. She’d been captured during the war between Ruthgar and the Blood Foresters. Like most of her people, she was red-haired and freckled, eyes like jade. Karris had Blood Forester blood. Gavin had never thought it a coincidence that his room slave was a young, pretty girl from the Blood Forest. The White had hoped, doubtless, to dull some of his appetites that had caused so much trouble before the war. The girl had even been a virgin when she came to serve him ten years ago, which meant that the Ruthgari who’d captured her had had more of a taste for gold than flesh.

Marissia helped him strip off his filthy clothes and piled them to take them for laundering. Then Gavin stepped in the bath. “I have messages for you,” she said. “Are you ready to take them?”

Gavin held a hand out, telling her to wait, then sighed as he slipped into the hot water. Messages, demands, barely a minute to think.

“Call a meeting of the full Spectrum. When do you think is the earliest possible, Marissia?”

Marissia had already loosened the laces of her dress, and now she pulled it and her shift over her head, folding them right side out next to the tub. If there was one skill Marissia hadn’t mastered in her ten years serving Gavin, it was pretending that the rest of the world ceased to exist when there was the possibility of making love with him. She would bathe with Gavin, she would make love with Gavin if he wanted to, but she wouldn’t let her hair get wet, and afterward she would pick up her perfectly folded dress, slip it on in a moment, and be on to her next duty. Marissia was many excellent things, but “abandoned to the moment” wasn’t one of them.

“Luxlords Blue and Yellow are over on Big Jasper today,” she said, picking up soap and a washcloth. “Yellow has family visiting and is hiding out in one of the taverns. Black is working on his ledger and swearing at anyone within a league, and Red is likely in the kitchens. So far as I know, the others are in their normal places on Little Jasper.”

For as pretty as she was—and how the White had obviously chosen her because she looked like Karris—the most surprising thing about Marissia was how competent she was. She knew everything, and carried everything she knew right at her fingertips. Gavin had taken great care to win her full loyalty, knowing there was no way he could keep his prisoner’s existence secret from his room slave—not forever—and knowing full well that she’d been sent to spy on him by the White.

Gavin’s options had been simple: to let a succession of room slaves parade through his chambers, getting rid of each quickly, hoping that they didn’t have enough time to discover his secret, or win one’s loyalty completely. Karris didn’t like Marissia, but she ignored her. It would have been ten times worse if Gavin had a new room slave every month—and doing so would doubtless also have meant that over time he was allowing a spy for every noble family to ransack his room and report the most intimate details about him to all the satrapies.

Besides, he needed someone to throw bread down the chute when he was gone.

Still, the White had shown impeccable taste in choosing Marissia. Though her body was nearly as familiar as his own after ten years, it was still a joy to see her lean curves. She slid into the tub behind him, holding soap and a washcloth, and began washing his back and shoulders.

“Tonight, then, after dinner. Let the White know I would like to see her in an hour.”

“Yes, Lord Prism. Is there anything else before I give you the messages?”

“Go ahead.”

“Your father wishes to speak with you.”

Gavin gritted his teeth. “He’ll have to wait.” He lifted an arm as Marissia scrubbed his armpit.

“And the White wishes to remind you that you promised to teach that cohort of superviolets when you returned.”

“Oh, hell.” How’d she even know he was back?

“Would you like me to wash your hair, Lord Prism?”

Gavin wanted nothing more than to enjoy Marissia and then relax in a hot bath until evening, but there was something he had to do before he spoke with the White, before he met with the whole Spectrum, and definitely before he spoke with his father.

“No time,” he said, trying to shut off the rising feeling of panic, ignoring the tightness in his chest at the prospect of what he had to do.

She soaped his chest, her body warm and slippery against his back. Soft, comforting. It was almost enough to relax him. She kissed the spot on the back of his neck that always made him shiver, and trailed her fingernails down his soapy chest, over his stomach, lower. She kissed his neck again, hesitated. A question in that pause.