The Black Prism

“I didn’t see the dagger,” Gavin said. “It was in a box. It didn’t even occur to me it might be the white luxin.” White luxin was impossible. Gavin would know. He’d tried to make the mythic material himself—and as a Prism, he would be the one who was able to do it if it could be done at all.

“Idiot boy, I don’t know why I always favored you. Dazen was smarter by half, but I always took your side, didn’t I?”

Gavin looked at the ground and nodded. The first kind word he’d heard from his father about himself in years, and it was delivered as a rebuke.

“Are you nodding your head or shaking it? In case you’d forgotten, I’m blind,” Andross said bitterly. “Never mind. I understand your own secrecy in hunting the dagger—even my spies haven’t heard of you bumbling about, so bravo for that—but when you stumbled across a suspicious dagger that some halfpenny king wanted badly, that didn’t send shivers up the back of your neck?”

“I was surrounded by thirty hostile drafters, Mirrormen, and an extremely put-out king. I had plenty of shivers.”

Andross Guile waved his hand, like none of that was worth considering. “With no Blackguards guarding you, I suppose. Stubborn, fool boy. What was the box made of?”

“Rosewood, maybe?” Gavin said honestly.

“Rosewood.” Andross Guile sighed deeply. “Alone it proves nothing, of course. But it tells you what you have to do.”

“I was planning to rally the Seven Satrapies, speak to each directly, see if I could sway them,” Gavin said. “The Spectrum, of course, will do nothing.” He knew how this went. His father would announce what Gavin would do and run right over everything Gavin threw in his path. For Orholam’s sake, I’m the Prism.

“And by the time you’ve done that, King Garadul will have taken Garriston. You were right in everything you told the Spectrum, though you drew the wrong lesson and the wrong course of action. Which is why you have me. If you’d spoken with me as soon as you returned, I’d have told you this. By withdrawing unilaterally and giving a jewel into Tyrean hands—”

“Hardly a jewel, father—”

“You dare interrupt! Come here.”

Woodenly, Gavin sat across from his father. Andross Guile extended a hand and found Gavin’s face. He traced Gavin’s cheek almost gently. Then he drew his open hand back and cracked it across Gavin’s cheek.

“I am your father, and you will give me the respect you owe me, understood?”

Gavin trembled, swallowed, mastered himself. “Understood, father.”

Andross Guile’s chin lifted as if he was sifting Gavin’s tone for anything displeasing. Then, as if nothing had happened, he continued. “Garadul covets Garriston, so even if it’s a tower of feces built on a plain of ordure, giving it to him is weakness. The right course would be to raze the city, enslave the inhabitants, and sow the fields with salt—and leave before he arrived. But you’ve destroyed that option with your incompetence. And once King Garadul holds Garriston with twenty thousand men, you’ll find it a lot harder to take back than he’s going to find it to take when only a thousand are holding it.”

“The Ruthgari only have a thousand men holding Garriston?” Gavin asked. It was less than a skeleton crew. If he hadn’t been in such a hurry when he sculled through Garriston, he surely would have noticed.

“Troubles with the Aborneans hiking the tariff to travel through the Narrows again. The Ruthgari are making a statement with a show of force. They pulled the ships and most of the soldiers from Garriston.”

“That’s moronic. They have to know Garadul is massing troops.”

“I agree. I think the Ruthgari foreign minister has been suborned. She’s smart, she must know what she’s doing. Regardless, you must go to Garriston. Save the city, kill Rask Garadul, but even if you fail those, get that dagger. Everything rests on that.”

What “everything”? Here was the problem with pretending to know secrets you didn’t know. Secrets, especially big, dangerous secrets, tended to be referred to obliquely. Especially when the conspirators knew spies were frequently eavesdropping on them.

Maybe I should have taken my chances with claiming to have forgotten what the dagger was.

There had been a time when Dazen had known all of Gavin’s secrets, even those that were supposed to be just between Gavin and their father. Dazen and Gavin hadn’t just been brothers. They’d been best friends. Though Dazen was two years younger, Gavin treated him like an equal. Sevastian was younger; they made him stay home. Gavin and Dazen had the same friends. Together, they won and lost fistfights against the White Oak brothers. Gavin missed the simplicity of those fights. Two sides, lots of fists, and once one side started bleeding or crying, the fight was over.

But Gavin had changed on the day he turned thirteen. Dazen was not yet eleven at the time. Andross Guile had come in his dress robes, looming, impressive in red-gold brocade and red-gold chains around his neck. Even then, after having been a member of the Spectrum for a decade, Andross Guile had always been referred to as Andross Guile, never Andross Red. Everyone had always known which was the more important. Andross had taken Gavin away.

When Gavin came back the next morning, his eyes were swollen like he had been crying, though he angrily denied it when Dazen asked. Whatever had happened, Gavin was never the same. He was a man now, he told Dazen, and he refused to play with him. When the White Oak brothers tried to pick a fight, Gavin filled himself with such deep sub-red that the heat emanated from him in waves, and he quietly told the brothers that if they attacked him, the result would be on their own heads.

In that moment, Dazen knew Gavin really would have killed them, too.

From then on, Gavin had spoken to their father as a confidant. Dazen had been left to fall by the wayside. For a time, he’d played with Sevastian. Then Sevastian was taken too, and he’d been alone. Dazen had hoped when he turned thirteen he’d be welcomed back into their graces, but his father had barely acknowledged the date. When it came time for it to be divined whom Orholam had chosen to be his next Prism, all of Big Jasper and Little Jasper was a whirl of speculation, but Dazen knew his older brother was the one. How it happened didn’t matter. Andross had been grooming Gavin to be Prism for his whole life.

And I was groomed to be nothing. A castoff to marry Karris White Oak or some other girl to deflect some other father’s ambitions. Until Gavin tried to take even that from me.

The hardest part of maintaining his disguise was here—not in pretending to be Gavin, but in being reminded of all Gavin had had and that Dazen never would.

“So, go to Garriston, save it or burn it, kill Garadul, and get the dagger. Sounds simple enough.” If Gavin did things right, that would fulfill one of his purposes, and set the stage for another.

Andross said, “I’ll give you letters to the Ruthgari to make sure they’ll obey you.”

“You’re going to make me the governor of Garriston?” Every time Gavin forgot how powerful his father was—even from this little room—Andross did something to remind him.

“Not officially. If you fail it would besmirch our name. But I’m making sure that the governor does whatever you tell him.”