“You misunderstand. I don’t care if he really is the Lightbringer.”
She couldn’t follow that at all. Either he’d gone mad, or . . . “You know something I don’t,” she said.
He looked at her as if surprised by her astuteness.
That rankled. Underestimating me? Still? I will burn you.
The White King said, “As long as the Lightbringer’s not on the Jaspers when I arrive, the Jaspers will fall.”
“How do you know that? Because some prophecy says so? I thought all this superstitious horseshit was just a put-on until you fully seized power, like your ‘freeing’ of the slaves.”
“Silence!” he roared.
His guards shifted uncomfortably, looking at each other uncertainly. Oh, hadn’t everyone seen through that foolishness by now?
She turned her attention to Koios. She couldn’t tell if he’d yelled because she was right or because she was wrong. Even as she was getting better at divining the tells that showed this emotion or that, her own emotions were growing more distant, more mysterious, and her intuition getting worse. Reading anger and fear didn’t tell her for which reasons he was angry and afraid.
“You don’t understand how this works at all, do you?” he sneered. “Hell, it could be real.”
“This prophecy?” she asked.
“Since Guile burned me, I’ve seen things that bent my mind in half. The Chromeria’s too quick to dismiss what it doesn’t control. I’m sorry to see that you do the same. Maybe you didn’t escape their tutelage soon enough. Maybe their weakness infected you.”
“How dare you!” she said, but he didn’t even stop.
Him talking about things that had bent his mind in half didn’t bode well. Even if the Chromeria oversold the dangers of going wight, this man was a wight seven times over, and was trying for nine.
“But the accuracy of the prophecy doesn’t matter,” he went on. “The belief in it is what matters. The prophecy I’m talking about is not well-known—but by the time my armada arrives, it will be. Everyone on Big and Little Jasper will know they need this young Guile—that their own prophecies, written by one of their most credible prophets, say they need him.”
“You’ll be making things even easier for Kip, then. If you position him as the only hope for the satrapies, you’ll be helping unite the satrapies behind him. Do you not see that as more than a little dangerous? I’m no strategist, but maybe uniting our enemies isn’t the best idea?”
Actually saying she was no strategist was a bit difficult. It was only partly true. Far more difficult still was accepting the look he gave her: like she was stupid.
“The loyalists will know that their sole and slim hope of victory rests on Kip being there when I arrive—and he won’t be. So they’ll know they’re doomed. Do you know what happens when people know that if they fight you, they’re doomed to certain death and gruesome tortures? I do. I’ve tested it out.”
“So you have priests on the Jaspers to spread your messages.”
“I’ve got more than that, but you don’t need to know all my plans.”
“And you’re certain Kip can’t get there?”
“I know how long it takes to move an army a lot better than he does. Even moving at the greatest possible speed, he can’t arrive here in time to stop us unless he marches from Dúnbheo in the next two days. And I’ve arranged for that to be impossible.”
She didn’t know how he intended to do that, but at the least it meant the White King had people in Dúnbheo, and a way to communicate with them rapidly, exactly as she’d suspected.
“And how do you have any idea who he is at all? He’s surprised you again and again. He’s destroyed your forces at every turn. You’ve never even met him.”
“You think I underestimate your friend?”
“He is a Guile,” Liv said.
“A Guile made me this!” the king roared, and his skin flared hot and red.
But he calmed suddenly. The fierce heat died down. Liv saw one of the king’s bodyguards gulp.
“Pardon,” Koios said. “I misspoke. I made myself into this regal shape before you, carved of pure will. But a Guile made it necessary. Kip’s uncle Dazen, when he was about Kip’s age. Or had you forgotten?”
“I only knew there was a fire,” Liv said, and her voice came out softer than she’d have liked.
“Dazen planned to elope with my sister Karris. The family needed her to marry Gavin, the elder brother. Love be damned. And we might remarry her after forcing a divorce, of course. But not to her ex-husband’s brother. It would smack of old taboos, and our family honor couldn’t take that. Nor could we give Andross Guile such power over us. So we set a trap for Dazen. Sealed the windows. Chained the doors and gates shut after he got in. He was only a blue/green bichrome, and it was after midnight. We got Karris’s maid to take his lenses under some pretense, to pack with Karris’s things or some such. He was disarmed.” His eyes took on a distant look, red pain outlined with spiky black hatred, or black hatred impregnated with red pain, such that the two had mingled to a hue that stained the soul forever.
“We set upon him. Started beating him. It got out of hand. All the years of White Oaks being humiliated and outmaneuvered. Those smiling, beautiful, adored and entitled and deified fucking Guile brothers. There was this moment when Rodin tried to stop us, and my brothers and I looked at each other . . . and without a word, the rest of us decided to kill Dazen. And in that split second where we hesitated? That son of a bitch split light. He was a natural Prism, as the world hadn’t seen since Vician’s Sin. Four hundred years—and we stumble upon a true Prism. I remember the look in his eyes as it happened. I think he was as surprised as we were.
“Rodin threw up a shield—trying to help the Guile, against his own brothers. That’s what Guiles do, Aliviana. They turn brother against brother. Rodin went down first in the crossfire.”
You mean you killed him. Or one of your brothers did. Otherwise you’d blame Dazen for that murder, too.
“But it was still one bloodied man against all the rest of us, and we were drafters all. And he had no light! Around corners so he couldn’t draft off them, we popped mag torches, and then we came at him. And you want to know what this lightsplitter does next?”
“What?”
“He absorbs everything we throw at him. Luxin missiles and streams of fire. Darts. Spears. Blades and waves. Projectiles and pure heat. Everything.”
“What?! That’s not how lightsplitting works—” Liv started.
“Black luxin. As if he didn’t have enough tricks. He soaked up everything we threw at him, and he threw it all back at us. Killed us all. Only I made it to the courtyard fountain. Others of our household tried to take refuge with me there from the smoke and heat and flames, but I fought them off lest we all die. The water heated, unbearably. I burned, boiling like a crab in a kettle. And only that night’s breeze kept the smoke from killing me as it did so many others. Some mercy. The pain is with me daily, still.”
“I’m sorry,” Liv said. It didn’t seem at all adequate, but what could be?