“I’m really delighted that you are here for me, but I, uh, won’t be joining you for yours. You know that, right?”
Orholam scoffed like yeah, he knew. Then he frowned.
“There’s my old Wrath again, rearing up inside,” Orholam said as if disappointed in himself.
“I piss you off that much, huh?” Gavin asked. And here he’d been being as respectful as he could manage. Wrath was going to be a tough circle for him, too.
“This is your chance to decide whether you want to be that old deceiver Gavin Guile or if you want to be a Dazen Guile made new. I know you want that. You’ve made attempts before. This is an opportunity to change, Guile. And you’ve been offered more of those than most get. Take it.”
The old prophet hunkered down with his own salt fish, turning his back on Gavin. The conversation, clearly, was finished.
Gavin sighed. Some company for his pilgrimage.
He’d mostly given up trying to understand the magic of whoever had created this tower. It had to be a highly advanced will-casting-focused magic, from the way it triggered Gavin’s memories. He’d had multiple flashbacks during every circle: the makers of this thing had weaponized his own mind against him.
This wasn’t a hike up a tower; it was a trek through everything he’d ever done wrong, everything he’d never done right. This was his every failure held up to the light and splintered into its component deadly sins through a black prism.
It was not a magic to be understood, merely one to be endured. He was gaining no new knowledge of magic, but only of himself.
How the tower’s Tyrean makers (if this wasn’t older than even their empire) had understood vice and virtue was different than what the Chro-meria taught. He’d learned, and as the Highest Luxiat, even taught the seven virtues as being the four worldly virtues (prudence, courage, justice, temperance) and the three heavenly ones (charity, hope, and faith).
Believers were to meditate on these virtues, and how they might embody them better, as they made the sign of the four and the three touching hand, heart, and lips. If you counted hands as a collective singular, you would count them as number three, whereas if you counted each hand in turn separately, they would count as three and four—thus symbolizing a paradox, and the connection of all the virtues (or all the vices) to one another.
Here, though ultimately the lists basically covered the same territory as the Chromeria’s, the tower’s builders had divided up the pilgrimage into Seven Contrary Virtues: Patience against Wrath, Abstinence against Gluttony, Liberality against Greed, Diligence against Sloth, Chastity against Lust, Kindness against Envy, and Humility against Pride.
Gavin hadn’t thought that Lust was going to be a difficult circle for him. After all, he’d been (unwillingly) chaste for quite a while now. Sure, he was as virile as the next two guys, but he hadn’t been promiscuous—especially for a Prism with all the opportunities he’d had! But the memories he’d triggered at every step had focused not on numbers of women he’d taken to his bed but mostly on how he’d treated Marissia, not only in bed but out of it.
He’d prided himself on treating Marissia very, very well for a room slave. That she hadn’t been a slave at all but was only masquerading as one was, if anything, a reason for him to be angry with her.
The tower hadn’t let him off so easily. It hadn’t cared whether she was slave or free. It triggered his own memories of how he’d treated her. They weren’t flattering.
Marissia had been, in Gavin’s careless estimation, supposed to feel only gratitude or desire toward him. That was pretty much the entire range of emotions he’d expected from her, and it was all he’d allowed her to express.
He’d seen undeniably over the years that the true range was far, far greater. He’d seen her despair, he’d seen her love for him, and her self-loathing at times, seemingly because she did love him—but he’d written them all off, as if they, and she, weren’t worthy of his attention.
It must have been torture for her. Gavin would treat her well, showering her with compliments, thanking her for how well she was running his household and managing the servants and slaves. Some days he would ask her opinion on matters of all kinds, confide in her, give her gifts, and take her to his bed and make sure she reached her pleasure rather than merely take his own. Other days he would demand she serve him sexually at a moment’s notice, pretending instant arousal and total desire—though her dryness betrayed the pretense, he’d ignored it or blamed her for it—then he’d banished her from the room as if she were no more than a rag to mop up his semen.
That’s what room slaves are for, he’d told his protesting conscience. I treat her well!
And she had endured it, while knowing she could end her torture at any moment by revealing she wasn’t a slave at all. But she had believed in her mission too much to do that. Or she’d loved him so much that she stayed, despite it all.
Or, his conscience asked, had the abuse so worn her down that she contented herself with taking the emotional scraps that fell from his table, and slowly come to believe it was all she deserved?
How long can everyone around you tell you that you’re a slave, how long can every mirror show you to be a slave, and you not believe you really are one?
He had destroyed a great woman. He’d taken the best years of her life, and told himself he was doing right by her.
And he’d known better.
Fuck me. Fuck this climb.
He rubbed his face, inadvertently brushing the eye patch. It didn’t hurt anymore. Now, if anything, that shock of sensation it sent through his whole body was pleasantly numbing.
After climbing the circles of Pride, and Envy, and Lust so far, the picture of himself that was emerging was as devastating as it was undeniable. But if this journey was supposed to be purgative, Gavin didn’t see how. Purgatives are supposed to make you puke but then feel better.
Gavin didn’t feel better, nor any more humble, kind, or chaste, only more aware of how much he wasn’t those things.
Rubbing the eye patch deeper into his eye, oily pain canceling out sharp pain for a brief moment, he stood up and walked to the edge overlooking the sea.
“What the—? Gunner’s gone!” Gavin said.
Slowly, troubled, Orholam said, “Yeah.”
Gunner had been drinking out there.
He must have gotten drunk and fallen off. There was no way he would have abandoned his big gun to the waters, no way he would have tried to swim when there were still so, so many sharks gathered from leagues around to feed on all the bodies floating in the lagoon.
When sober, Gunner was a master of timing. If he’d decided he was going to have to abandon the gun and swim, he would have waited until everything calmed in the lagoon. A few days, at the least, while the sharks sated their hunger devouring all the bloating dead.
“You told him he was going to live,” Gavin said, snarling.
“I know,” Orholam said apologetically.
God damn. And Gavin had been starting to believe that Orholam wasn’t a holy-talking charlatan, that—wherever it came from—he really did see the future sometimes, and the past.
Brushing past the old man, Gavin snarled, “What circle’s next?”
“Wrath.”
“Perfect.”