“You think me senile? Me?! I’m the mad one? Not you, the wight?”
“You wouldn’t have approved of the things we did if you hadn’t believed. You wouldn’t have joined me in them.”
“Andross, I didn’t love you so much I wanted to take over the world with you. I loved the world so much that when you did, I wanted to be there to keep you from destroying it.”
“You believed in what we’re doing. I know you did.”
“Maybe I did. For surely the Lightbringer must be a man unstoppable. And then I fell in love with you, and I justified everything. I made my reason a whore. If you were the greatest man ever, that made me the right hand of the greatest man ever. That made me special. That justified my sins, my suffering. Whatever was good for us was surely for the good of all. It is the same convenient deception the powerful so often believe. And for it, I know I’ll answer. But it didn’t matter what I believed. Not really. The Lightbringer might be greater than Lucidonius himself, so of course you would believe that person must be you. Lightbringer! Ha! You went to Lucidonius’s statue and wept, because by the time he was your age, he’d conquered the world. You think you’re the Lightbringer because you couldn’t bear to stand in another man’s shadow! You needed it. You need it still. The text of every prophecy was illuminated by that need in you. How many prophecies did we skip as incomprehensible or decide were clearly not authoritative or corrupted because they didn’t fit you?”
She’s trembling with rage that should be mine.
If there’s proof that breaking the halo doesn’t necessarily make one a wight, it is this: she raves; I listen.
“Look at you!” she shouts, despite those that might hear through these walls. “You’ve gone wight! You think that’s bringing light? It’s over! We deluded ourselves!”
“You think I don’t know that?!” I shout, flinging a crystal decanter to shatter against the wall.
But she goes on, heedless, voice cracking. “We sacrificed our boys for our ambition. We murdered our sons! Our own sons!”
“Felia, stop it! Stop it!”
“My sons, Andross. My sons. Better I had put them in pagans’ fires as babes. Sevastian! God curse me, all these years gone and I still see his sweet, trusting face every time I close my eyes!”
There is no answer.
“We sold our souls for this wretched dream. We sacrificed our sons with our own hands. Our beautiful boys. To our pride. Not just yours, Andross. Mine too. I thought I was part of something so important, but we’re nothing but schemers. We’re just like everyone else. You hold on to whatever you need to, but I’m finished. I deserve death, and I will have it. I will join the Freeing this year,” she says. She’s been bringing this up for five years. But this time is different.
“I forbid it.”
“If you stop me, I’ll reveal what you are. I want my own apartments, Andross. Immediately. I won’t share a room with you anymore. Your face is as revolting to me as a bloody mirror.”
Chapter 83
Andross had already been extending a pair of decks toward Kip, and his eyebrows dipped, lips tightened. “Yes?”
Kip’s heart had leapt into his throat.
‘You won’t be the next Prism,’ Janus Borig had told him. But was she telling him—or was she steering him? But Kip wasn’t so worried about whether the prophecy was predicting the future or forming it; he was wondering how it could help him.
Like, if I play to become the next Prism, I’ll definitely lose. But if I play for stakes other than becoming the next Prism, maybe I can win? But how could the outcome of the game be affected by the choice of the stakes? It was the same game, and Kip certainly wasn’t going to play differently depending on what he won; he had too much to lose to give it anything less than his best regardless. It didn’t make any sense.
And Andross was the cold, unblinking master of Nine Kings. He wouldn’t play differently, either.
Unless . . . unless the stakes were high enough to rattle even Andross Guile.
“Please,” Andross said languidly. He sipped his almond tea. He didn’t offer Kip any. “Take your time. I’ve no other pressing matters to attend to while you sit there in uffish thought.”
Janus Borig had said something else that night she died, hadn’t she? Not just ‘You won’t be Prism.’
“If I win, I don’t want to be named Prism; I want you to publicly acknowledge me as the Lightbringer.”
The teacup hovered halfway to Andross’s mouth. His lower eyelids tensed and his eyebrows moved almost imperceptibly—merely surprise, or was that fear?—then his lips narrowed and his eyes tightened, back into an expression Kip had seen before.
“Now, that was interesting,” Kip the Lip said. “Why would you be afraid of that?”
The anger hardened. “Not ‘afraid.’ It’s certainly audacious. I guess you learned something about overawing your opponents when you demanded to be made satrap in Dúnbheo. Well done. It won’t work here.”
“My God,” Kip said, ignoring him. “You think you’re the Light-bringer!”
The stricken look on Andross’s face was priceless. And it was confirmation. Kip was so surprised, he laughed aloud and clapped his hands.
Andross’s face went black. He banged down his teacup and snatched up a pistol and bolted out of his seat, sending his chair crashing. He cocked the jaw and pointed the pistol at Kip’s upturned face. His hand trembled.
Kip looked at him, serene.
Andross’s finger lifted from the trigger. He lowered the cockjaw, clearing his throat. Then he put the pistol back down on the table and sat in the chair, which Grinwoody had put back in place.
Grinwoody mopped up a bit of spilled tea.
“Yes, I do,” Andross said. “Forty years of preparations, and gathering prophecies, and sacrificing . . . everything. Everything, that I might save our empire, and our very world. Well done, Kip, you have found me out. I daresay not even Grinwoody had guessed it. Had you, Grinwoody?” he asked, turning to him.
“No, my lord. I stand in awe, sir, that one could possibly conceal something so profound about one’s identity from the person at your very shoulder.” The slave bowed deeply, respectfully.
“But . . . but you’re not even a full-spectrum polychrome,” Kip said. This he hadn’t meant to say aloud.
“Am I not?” Andross asked.
“Holy shit,” Kip breathed. “You kept yourself from drafting half your colors for forty years?!”
“It was the least of my sacrifices, I assure you. But—” He raised a finger suddenly, as if to forestall questions about what the other sacrifices were. “But I’ll admit that it’s not escaped my attention that there are certain ways of reading the prophecies that could indicate you are he, and certain qualifications that you currently lack might, after all, not emerge until you’re older. I’ve thought about this no small amount. So . . . yes. Yes, should you win, I will begin paving the way immediately; I will protect you; and I will fully champion you the moment you’re ready to announce your identity—in the unlikely event it’s not immediately apparent to the whole world.”