“What are you talking about?” Ironfist said. “Who told you not to draft? What ‘attention’?”
“I’m trying to awaken the white luxin in the sword. I know it’s there.” He stared up at the ceiling. “C’mon, you told me white luxin isn’t overcome by black.”
He tossed the chunk of white luxin to Ironfist, then passed him the sword. “Here, you try.”
“Try what?” Ironfist demanded, but before the words were out of his mouth a scintillating shine flashed down the length of the blade in every color. The muted seven stars surfaced through the darkness and now shone as hot in the blade as Orholam’s Eye at noon. In the light of the blade, every color in the room suddenly glowed brighter, sharper, and more real.
“Great! That’ll do,” Dazen said. He took the sword from Ironfist’s limp hand and quickly wrapped it back up in the cloths, as if worried someone would see it, though there was no one else in the room, and no windows, and no one who even knew where it was hidden.
“Huh,” Dazen said, now that it was fully covered once more. “Guess that’s what I get for thinking I’m so special. Good job. You can probably put away the white-luxin chunk now. It might draw attention, too. They weren’t terribly specific.”
“Who?” Ironfist looked at him, but he looked more troubled than in awe. “What have we just done?”
“Not ‘we.’ You. You just fixed the sword. It’s what I figured out. Before Vician’s Sin, drafters used to retire. The Knife passed through a drafter’s heart, purging her of the buildup of toxic luxin but also taking away her drafting. You ever hear about this?”
“Some.”
“Between the drafter’s conscience and the Prism’s judgment and Orholam Himself, other things might happen: a blue drafter who’d misused his Color would find himself blind to blue, where one who’d used his Color well might find himself granted more drafting ability even than before—even more years, or an additional color. A faithful artist might find herself made a superchromat, or a traumatized woman might find her memories eased or even erased. And lastly, some few would be judged worthy of death for what they’d done with their gifts. And the sword would then blind them to all color forever—or to all light forever, with death. It prefigured the final judgment of the afterlife, not only for drafters but also for those who watched, and they called it the Freeing, because once judgment is rendered, we’re freed from fear, and because so often mercy prevailed. You know about Vician’s Sin now?”
“The others told me, yeah.”
“After Vician’s Sin, the white luxin went dormant in the blades—all of them. The Knives would still kill and steal, but unbalanced by white, the Knife almost always killed, and it never gave gifts. Orholam sent prophets to call the Chromeria to repent, but they beat and killed the prophets, and when Vician finally died, the Chromeria began murdering innocents in order to make their own Prisms and to cover up their sins. The stories kept leaking out, so they commissioned their most fanatical as luxors to suppress the truth, even wielding black luxin to erase lines from books and from memories. Handling the black luxin repeatedly corrupted the luxors more than they already were, whereupon the purgers themselves were purged and the crime deemed complete.
“The Chromeria henceforth was a house of hypocrisy, its jealousy for power held side by side—sometimes within the same heart—with all its acts of mercy and tending to the indigent and sick.”
“And you think we just fixed it?” Ironfist asked.
“We? You.”
“Why me? I didn’t do anything!”
“Despite all your doubts, you held on to the white luxin, didn’t you?”
“Doesn’t seem like enough, does it?” Ironfist rubbed his lower lip. “You really believe Orholam intervenes personally?”
Dazen snorted. “How’s your prayer go? ‘God hears. God sees. God cares. God saves’? I more than believe it now. I know it.”
Ironfist looked away. “Do you know this word ‘ebenezer’?”
“What’s that, Old Abornean . . . some kind of stone?”
“The word’s Old Abornean, but the practice is ours. Means ‘rock of remembrance.’ When a great event happened in our communal life, we would set up a stone there so we’d be reminded every time we saw it. A great event in our own lives might even necessitate replacing our name. My birth name, Harrdun, means ‘gazelle.’ ”
“Let me guess, ‘rhinoceros’ was already taken?” Dazen asked.
“If you’re going be so you, I’m gonna need more poppy.”
“Fresh out,” Dazen said. It wasn’t true, but he needed Ironfist sharp for what they were going to do next. “Please, go on.”
“After . . . a race I did, they called me Izdârasen Winaruz.”
“They gave you a double name for a race? Must have been some race. What’s it mean?”
Ironfist seemed reluctant, but said, “ ‘He Carries His Hope with the Strength of a Lion.’ But, you know, that’s way too long to ask the trainers to shout at a Blackguard scrub—”
“And it was a Parian double name, so everyone would have known you were a big deal. For winning a race.”
“We didn’t win,” Ironfist said. “Anyway, it was a burden, so I welcomed it when they named me Ironfist. Not too flashy, not too original, but solid. I wanted to be hard enough to protect those I loved, because I didn’t believe that Orholam cared about me. I’d accepted early on that I wasn’t important enough to attract the attention of the maker of all things. So I remade myself into one who would be strong, and one who would be important. I took it as Orholam revealing to me who I was. I was become a hand raised in violence, my flesh turned to iron. To save my sister’s life, I’d already sworn myself to the Order, and now to save my brother from our family’s enemies for his murders at Aghbalu, I had proven our worth to the Chromeria. I had to become the best. So I did. But to save them, I lost them. And myself.
“Then that day at Ruic Head, He spoke to me. Orholam Himself. He helped me. Helped me in war. I had turned myself into someone utterly worthy of rejection, but He accepted me. He saw. He reached out his hand to save me, and I took it, and I . . . then didn’t acknowledge it in the days after that battle. I didn’t come clean. Didn’t change my name or my life. I was too embarrassed. I had too much to lose—like the Magisterium in your story, after Vician was dead.
“I knew, at the very least, that confessing would mean I would lose my position as commander. Even self-confessed, an Order traitor as the commander of the Blackguard? Unthinkable. Would Andross Guile be content with less than my head? And then, how would I blunt the Chromeria’s rage with my sister? What about the Order’s? I . . . I had to think it through.
“But I didn’t. Not really. I simply fell back into my old ways, telling myself I’d come clean soon—and then I lost it all anyway. And when my uncle was there, right in front of me, and all he asked for was the black bane . . . Though he is what he is, he was the last family I had left. I obeyed him from sheer habit. And then I left, ashamed. And then my brother died, and I learned he’d been trying to save me for all those years, to stitch back to wholeness a man split down the middle—while himself so wounded and guilt-stricken from Aghbalu. He served, for me. I damned myself by seeking vengeance and to save my sister’s life. I saved her life, but I lost her soul and mine. My brother served humbly instead, and somehow I missed him for all those years. Right beside me, standing faithfully in a blind spot so large I missed the best thing around me. I had my chances to turn around. And with every one I didn’t take, I brought a little more hell to earth. I even killed my best student, a young man like my own son. It’s too late for me, Guile.”