On a sudden hunch, Kip tightened his eyes all the way to chi. “That’s why you wear the armor,” he said. “That’s what you meant when you said you’re not safe.”
The Keeper’s body itself had become so infused with chi that it emanated chi. She had become a living lantern of lethal light. That was the reason for the heavy armor she wore—not to keep attacks out but to keep them in.
No wonder she didn’t want anyone to stand close. No wonder others feared her so. No wonder the Chromeria feared chi and its drafters. Like paryl drafters, chi drafters could kill invisibly, but unlike their paryl counterparts, they did so unwittingly, unknowably, uncontrollably.
“That’s correct,” she said stiffly.
“You may have given us a cancer already,” Kip said.
“Yes.” Bitterness leaked through her clipped tones. It wasn’t enough that she was dying, disfigured, and in pain, but she must be avoided by even caretakers, worse than a leper.
Kip didn’t fight the sudden wave of fear that pushed through him, but neither did he step farther away. He looked for the seed of compassion he’d felt for her instead. He took a slow breath, choosing to see her as a brave and noble woman while ignoring himself. “You’re a good person, strong and brave,” Kip said, “ so—”
“Are you mocking me, my lord?”
Oh, she was angry. Right on the edge. Or she was terrified.
“Actually,” Kip said, “I was using this tricky rhetorical device we learn in the hinterlands of far Tyrea where I was born. We call it a ‘compliment.’ ”
She didn’t seem to know how to take that.
“So . . .” Kip said, “since you’re that person. I can only figure that you’ve decided that deceiving me is the right thing for you to do. Can you help me understand why?”
“Excuse me?” she said.
“Answering a question with a question is a classic telltale of a lie.”
“I haven’t lied!” she said. “What do you want of us, Guile?”
“Your secret is no secret,” Kip said. “You use the Great Mirror to pass messages to Green Haven. That’s a stunning distance for a simple beam of light, so you can’t be doing it directly. You’ve got to be using other smaller mirrors in between. Relay stations, like bonfires on hilltops. That’s the only reason you’d need three axes for this mirror, so you could move the beam elsewhere in case one of those hilltop mirror stations is taken or needs repairs. But then it occurred to me that if you have mirror stations already, there’s no reason you’d only communicate with Green Haven. With a few dozen stations, you could reach the entire satrapy. A message could be relayed from one end of the satrapy to the other in the course of a night. This is what I want from you—I want to use your network. I have people far afield. If I can reach them, I can coordinate this satrapy’s defenses in ways the Wight King couldn’t hope to counter. He’s blockaded the Great River. Do you know that? With your mirrors, I could find out where, and I could speak with our allies. Even if I could only get a message halfway across the satrapy but on the other side of the blockade, we could—”
“It’s gone,” she said.
“What?”
“There was such a network, long ago, before the Blood Wars. It was a huge defensive advantage—but the Ruthgari realized it, too. They murdered any chi drafters they could find and destroyed the mirror holds. Chi drafters have always been short-lived, and many of those few people who can learn to draft chi choose not to, given the costs. So we were always rare. The network fell centuries ago. A few mirrors still remain, some buried, hidden by their old keepers for the day when all could be restored, but they’ve no one tending them now. Where they’re known at all, they’re mere curiosities. Messages are only possible between here and Green Haven now, the old capital and the new.”
“Why is it a secret, then?”
“We’re not supposed to have it at all. The Chromeria wanted us to shut down all our defenses. They required it, but with the Ruthgari raiding, our ancestors broke that part of the treaty immediately. All this was centuries ago, mind you. The Chromeria didn’t care, as long as we kept our defiance discreet. That need for discretion and their long revulsion for chi drafters has enforced us keeping a low profile. An overly zealous Magisterium or a hostile Prism could mean our deaths.”
There was still something she wasn’t telling him. “You use chi to adjust the mirror’s positioning?” A yes-or-no question.
“We can use it for all sorts of things. Sending the beam of the signal, of course, being the most important,” she said.
Not a direct answer. “You use chi to adjust the mirror’s position?” he insisted.
She hesitated.
That was the problem with an unpracticed liar. She hoped to mislead Kip without lying outright. She hadn’t considered exactly how far she was willing to go to hide her secrets, or what Kip was likely to already know.
“I thought it went without saying,” she said.
“Odd thing to lie about,” Kip mused.
“Are you quite dense?” she asked.
“Again a question in reply to a question,” Kip said, as if commenting on the weather.
It was strange. What was it that allowed him to react so differently to her than to the Divines? She was lying to him. She’d just called him stupid. But he was able to see that this wasn’t about him at all, so he didn’t need to win here.
Stranger still, without him pushing back, she had nothing to push against, and she was falling over.
She said, “The Mirror has to be adjusted for weather conditions—some of which we understand and others we don’t,” she said. “For example, the light will travel differently after or during a rain or on a very humid day. Other times, it seems some quality of the sunlight itself changes how clearly the beams travel over these great distances. So minute movements are necessary even with our well-known target of Green Haven. Using even small amounts of chi repeatedly is, as you’ve seen, quite hazardous.”
“Still hiding. Still deflecting,” Kip said.
A perfect black globe broader across than Kip’s shoulders rested in the trunk of the vast white oak itself, sunk into the wood—but leaving no rupture in the living wood, nor any oozing sap from a wound, nor any sign of the bark curling around it the way a natural tree might grow around a fence post. It looked as unnatural as if an image of a sphere had been superimposed on the tree trunk.
Inset around it were a number of similar black, featureless plates, only the oils of past fingers proving they weren’t illusory.
But Kip wasn’t drawn to those. Instead, he set his hands directly on the globe, and extended his will into it.
“What are you doing?” the Keeper of the Flame asked. “Don’t touch that!”
He ignored her.
“You could die!” she said. She turned to Cruxer. “He could die! You have to stop him!”
None of the Mighty moved.
“We could all die if he does the wrong thing!” she said.
She reached a hand out to grab Kip, but suddenly found her arm held immobile.
“Then whatever he’s doing,” Cruxer said, his voice calmly professional but his grip on her arm unyielding, “I suggest you don’t louse it up.”