“Sad to say, it was nothing special. She didn’t give me much of a ride after I got mounted. You ever try to finish while the woman’s bawling? And I know it wasn’t because I took her maidenhead. You took care of that, didn’t you?”
“You sick piece of—”
“I didn’t think I was going to be able to finish. I was drunk and she wasn’t doing much for me, with all her tears. But then she said your name, and I knew I had to. To show you that you couldn’t take what was mine. And do you know what’s mine? Anything I want. Anyone. She kept crying afterward so I kicked her out. I was kind of embarrassed, to tell you the truth.” He shrugged. “I got over it.” He leered at Gavin, saw how aghast he was. “She never mentioned it, huh?”
Gavin couldn’t speak.
“You never married her, did you?”
Gavin felt gutted. He’d told his brother a hundred lies about his happy little life and his happy little wife. “No.”
The prisoner’s face contorted. His eyes darted to the side, then back to his gaoler. “Sixteen years of lies, crumbling, huh? You’re probably better off without her anyway. You think while she was making the rounds of the Guiles she slept with father, too?”
Begging his brother to stop or commanding him to stop talking about Karris would be equally ineffectual. “I thought… I always thought you were the good brother,” Gavin said.
“Good brother?” the prisoner barked. “Like we’re the good twin and the bad twin? We’re not twins, Gavin, and neither one of us is good.”
“Have you always been like this, or have you gone mad down here?” Gavin asked.
“You made me, little brother, just like I made you.” Dazen tossed the shattered pieces of the lux torch away. “Now why don’t we end this farce? Open the door. Release me.” He spread his hands wide and leaned against the window, intent on Gavin.
Gavin could see blood trickling down his brother’s chest from a thickly scarred wound, torn open in his fall. He could see another trickle of fresh blood from the little spikes of hellstone he had rigged to take away all of Dazen’s luxin when he fell into yellow.
Dazen was thin, ragged, unhealthy. He was furious, as he had every right to be. Doubtless he was lying about Karris to hurt Gavin. Or exaggerating at the least. But though Karris had never meant anything to him, their mother should have.
I was mother’s favorite? Of course I was. Maybe first she’d lavished more attention on me because she saw how much father’s abandonment hurt me, how much I needed a parent. But we were kindred souls. She’d probably felt guilty that she loved me more. She’d certainly felt relieved when she learned Gavin was actually Dazen. He’d seen that in her face, sixteen years ago, and tried to deny it since.
I’m like the dog with a bone who crossed a low bridge in the fable. I see another dog passing beneath me carrying a bone, and I snap to take his bone—and drop my own into the water, into my reflection.
He looked at the prisoner, who was glancing at one wall of his cell repeatedly, as if in conversation. It might well have been Gavin’s fault that his brother was mad. After all, he was the one who’d kept the man caged, alone, for sixteen years. But it wasn’t the kind of transgression he could fix.
Gavin leaned against his own side of the window, hands pressing the immaculate, unbreakable yellow luxin opposite his big brother’s hands. “I’m sorry, brother. I’m sorry if I drove you mad, and I’m sorry if you were always like this and I never knew it. But I don’t think I can let you out. Not like you are. My world is falling apart. I won’t lie to you about that. I murdered a girl. I’m losing my colors. I’ve lost the woman I love. I… I’m losing everything. But I haven’t lost my mind, and in that, I’m up on you.”
He felt a sudden wave of peace roll through him like a tsunami, obliterating everything in its path, burying his objections, smashing his protests. His brother deserved to be here. Maybe they didn’t get to simply switch places—maybe Gavin didn’t get to be the good brother in his own mind now that he’d determined that the prisoner was the bad brother. But his brother was a bad brother. A bad man. A danger.
If the seed of megalomania had already been sprouting when he was nineteen years old, what would boundless power have done to him if Gavin had let him walk free all those years ago?
Maybe he’d even done the right thing, not just the least bad thing. Maybe locking his brother up had been just.
Maybe not. It didn’t matter. He took a deep breath.
“You started the war on purpose to rally allies around you, didn’t you? You wiped out that village where I’d been hiding and then men flocked to me. Just to oppose you. You could have gotten me to surrender. I would have. And after that first clash where my men won, you killed our messenger. Why’d you do that? All you had to do was grant clemency to my men, and you could have had me. Was that father’s idea, or yours?”
Dazen shot a quick sneer over at the wall. “Look, brother, as nice as this little scam that Lucidonius pulled together is, it doesn’t work for some kinds of threats. Take Ilyta. Which satrapies are going to vote to go to war to bring Ilyta back into the fold? None. But a promachos could do it. The Aborneans have been cheating their tributes for decades. The Parians barely pay attention to the Chromeria. The Ruthgari openly manipulate and dominate with their wealth and their lies. The Tyreans—well, I suppose I’m not in much of a place to say what’s happened to Tyrea since the war changed everything. Am I right?”
“Yes,” Gavin said. His stomach was churning. His joints felt weak.
“You think the Everdark Gates are going to stay closed forever?”
“Ah, the amorphous threat from beyond the Everdark Gates,” Gavin said. “You’re a student of history, at least. Wasn’t it Prism Sayid Talim who nearly got himself named promachos to face the ‘armada’ that waited beyond the gates? That was forty-seven years ago. Long time for an armada to wait around.”
“You look around, Gavin, and you tell me if what we have is working.”
Gavin couldn’t even get the Spectrum to declare war even after Tyrea had been lost and Atash invaded. How was that possible? His brother was right. Their system was broken, and it would take a man of will to make something new.
“War is the only way to be named promachos,” Dazen said. “You need a great crisis. You were our perfect opportunity. We could look reluctant going after you. You were my brother. You were Andross Guile’s son. No one would think it was a ploy. But you kept trying to end our war before it could really begin.”
Gavin felt sick. “And General Delmarta. Was he your man all along?” It had been the general’s slaughter of the Atashian royal family that not only mobilized the satrapies against Gavin but also got rid of one of the families that had opposed Andross Guile.
“It was fifty-seven people. You killed more than that in the skirmish at Tanner Creek.”
“It’s different when it’s in cold blood.”
“Is it?” the prisoner asked. “Do they end up less dead?” He blinked, looked over at the wall, as if someone was speaking to him.
Gavin didn’t answer.