But she’d learned in the last year that what the Chromeria’s drafters did with superviolet exploited only a fraction of its potential. With what Aliviana now did? The body had to learn how to deal with so much magic, and it simply didn’t handle all of it well. Her mortal body failed her immortal will. She would figure out fixes later. Work-arounds. Eternity would be a long time.
For now these crystals grew on her skin like barnacles on the hull of a boat, slowing her down. If she tore them off, they too often tore her delicate human skin—which seemed to be thinning all the time. This was especially bad on her face. The tears left her with scars to which the crystals accreted even more quickly. It was slowly immobilizing her face from showing even the few emotions she now betrayed. But she didn’t want to lose function, not in anything, not because of magic she didn’t control. That reeked of failure.
Another cannon shell exploded, closer. She fixed the damage with an irritated thought. Soon it would be time to rise.
All this power, yet I’m losing control over my own body.
Perhaps this was what it was like for humans to grow old? She would have to think on that.
Beliol had offered to help her with this, of course, groveling as he did, the little spirit. She rejected him this time, as she usually did. And as usual when rejected, Beliol quickly went on his way. He treated his time on this world as if it were precious. Any chance he might have of worming his way further into Liv’s thoughts, he took, but when rejected, he acted as if he had other places to be.
He grew more powerful the more Aliviana depended on him. She’d figured that out almost immediately, though she hadn’t let on, she hoped. Theirs would be a game played over centuries, she thought. He was, likely, malevolent. But he had limitations, too. She would be careful not to put herself under his power. The groveling might stop at the most inconvenient time.
She saw the signal from her partner, her god of gods, Koios. She couldn’t help but roll her eyes as she thought of him and his overly intricate battle plans.
Battles. It was so hard to concentrate on them.
Just tell me who wins and who’s left alive at the end, please. I have things I need to do once we get to that point.
When everyone lets down their guard in victory, that’s when things get really interesting. Aliviana was looking forward to that.
Oh, right. The signal.
The Chromeria was funny like this: for all that their powers came from sunlight, for all that they worshipped a god they believed to exist literally above them, the cretins so rarely looked up.
Aliviana gathered her powers and lifted the bane up, out of the waves and into the sky.
Chapter 110
“Put on the wraparound blue spectacles,” Kip told the messenger. “Ride as fast as you can. Tell High General Danavis the orange bane rises. Go now!”
Blue was the best color to use to sharpen the mind against orange. He didn’t know how well it would work, though. The Chromeria’s damnable fear of teaching hex-casting left them ignorant of how best to defend against it. After all, ‘Don’t look at the hex’ isn’t very useful advice during a battle, when the hex might be painted on your enemies’ very shields and helms. How are you supposed to fight without looking at your enemy?
For more than an hour now, Kip had been carefully scanning the horizon with chi, as instructed. He’d toyed with melting open the silvery globe of gallium he wore on his neck to access the chi bane, but he had no idea what he’d do with it. He’d drafted chi only a handful of times in his entire life, and none of them had been pleasant. He hadn’t jumped on any opportunity since then to practice with it.
It was just another mistake he’d made. He should’ve practiced to find out what he could do with chi instead of vaguely thinking that it could be used for signaling, and that it was better in his own hands than in someone else’s. No, he should have brought the Keeper with him. She should be doing this.
But bringing the Keeper with him would have been a death sentence for her and her sect, and maybe for Kip, too. Consorting with heretics? Bringing a bane to the Jaspers, at the very time the White King was? With her masks and gaudy armor and tumors, the Keeper wasn’t exactly concealable, either.
“Breaker, sir? Should we go?” Big Leo asked.
“Not yet,” Kip said. “I’ve got my orders.” He wasn’t supposed to come back until he saw a signal, Andross had said.
What signal?
‘You’ll know it when you see it,’ Andross had said.
Which drove Kip crazy.
Quit that. Too much thinking. And the wrong kind.
Kip had thought he understood the old soldier’s maxim that the waiting is the worst part of war. He’d waited before. He’d waited to spring traps. He’d waited to order men to fire. He’d waited for the rush of the battle’s beginning.
But once it began, he’d always been right there, in the thick of it. Now the battle was about to begin—but not for him.
He was going to watch. Once the bane rose, he’d make his way up to the top of the Prism’s Tower to do what he could from up there. Which might not be much of anything at all.
He might be stuck watching all day, depending on what the Wight King did. Watching, while others died.
With the bane still submerged, and with the great number of the Blood Robes’ ships and sea chariots, all of them in constant motion, the bane were initially hard to find, but Kip had finally discerned their locations with chi and had sent word to Corvan. The high general had rearranged his defenses appropriately—and without any help asked or needed from Kip on where to put them.
At regular intervals, Kip had shielded his eyes and gazed in chi toward each arc encircling the island, then in paryl, then he put on each of the colored spectacles he carried at his hip in turn, hoping to see something. He kept it up now so that he didn’t get caught unawares by the others rising. It was easy to get war-blind and focus all your attention on only the one threat in front of you.
But he’d spent his time debating with himself about what he should do: Use the chi bane? Don’t use it? View Andross’s card? Don’t View it?
That was what he wanted: a magical salvation, a solution from out of nowhere to solve all his problems for him, because he was so goddam special.
A lifetime ago—and only three years ago—Gaspar Elos had asked him, just before Koios White Oak (and Zymun, that asshole) had burned down Rekton, ‘Do you know why you think you’re special?’ And had laughed as Kip’s young heart had welled with hope that he was the prophesied one, the one chosen to do great things—‘Because you’re an arrogant little shit.’
Kip shook his head. Wrong thoughts. Not the time.
Corvan’s books had taught him years ago that a commander should use his quiet hours to obsess over two questions only: what does the enemy know, and what are the enemy’s problems? If you knew those two things, you might guess what he would do. If you knew the enemy himself, you would know.
He felt it more than saw it. A trembling under the waves. Move ment.
Kip squinted against the reflection of the rising sun in its many-colored glory.
“Why has the orange waited so long?” Tisis asked. “Worse leadership? Fewer drafters?” Her spies had said that the orange ‘god’ was considered distinctly inferior to the others, and the orange corps of drafters and wights smaller and poorly trained compared to the others. This last, at least, was one benefit of the Chromeria’s tight strictures on orange—it had made orange drafters less useful. Thus, fewer lords and satraps went to the expense of sponsoring orange drafters, which meant fewer were around to defect to the Wight King.