“He’s my subject, and therefore mine to do with as I will.”

Only one card left. Gavin said, “You asked earlier why I came to this boiling latrine you call a country. Kip is the reason. My claim to him is greater than yours. He’s my bastard.”

Rask Garadul’s eyes went stony, and Gavin knew he had won. No man would publicly claim a dishonor if it weren’t true. He also knew from that look, before the man even spoke, that he was going to have to kill Rask Garadul. But not today.

“Your time is finished,” Rask Garadul said. “Yours and the Chromeria’s. You’re done. Light cannot be chained. Know this, Prism: We will take back what you’ve stolen. The horrors of your reign are almost at an end. And when it ends, I will be there. This I swear.”

Chapter 18

Karris floated the punt downstream until she rounded a corner and disappeared from sight. She didn’t think the soldiers had seen her leave, so she beached the punt on the opposite side of the river and found a hill from which she could see Gavin. She climbed the hill on her hands and knees. There were several trees and bushes and long grasses between them. Ideal. What wasn’t ideal was the distance. One hundred and twenty paces. She was a great shot, but the bow she’d brought was a simple recurve, not a longbow. Good and portable, very accurate to seventy paces. One twenty was a different question. She shuttled the mental abacus. She should be accurate within four feet, and she could shoot rapidly. If Satrap Garadul stood still, she could shoot four arrows within a few seconds, correcting for her mistakes. Good enough. At least, better than any of her other options. She scooted back from the top of the hill and strung her bow, checked the fletching and trueness of her arrows, and crawled back into position, hidden and deadly.

When Gavin and the satrap talked for a few minutes, Karris relaxed. In conversation, Gavin could tie anyone in knots except maybe the White. Though Gavin was standing amid piles of Rask Garadul’s dead, now it was probably just a matter of how much the satrap would pay Gavin for troubling him.

Making sure she could still see Gavin and that her weapons were close, Karris opened her pack. The White had told her not to read her orders until she’d left for Tyrea, so Karris had put the orders in the bottom of her pack, beneath a change of clothes, spare spectacles, cooking implements, a few flares and grenadoes—thank Orholam those hadn’t ignited when she fell during the fight, but they were worth the risk. She pulled out the folded note. As sensitive orders always were, it was made of the thinnest paper possible, the outer folds covered with scribbles so the translucent paper couldn’t simply be held up to the light to read what was within. The seal had a simple spell trigger: anyone who simply broke the seal would bring two luxin contact points together, and there would be a small but instant fire. It wasn’t foolproof, of course: any careful drafter could disarm it, or any non-drafter could simply cut around the seal, but sometimes simple precautions worked where more elaborate schemes did not.

Karris checked on Gavin. Still talking. Good.

Drafting a bit of green from the grass she was sitting on, she unhooked the trap on the seal. Gavin had told her not to believe what was on this note, which had been written by the White herself. So who was more likely to lie to her? Gavin, ten times out of ten. The thought made her sick to her stomach. No, she was getting ahead of herself. She almost put the note away—she could deal with this later.

But her orders had to do with Tyrea, maybe even with Satrap Garadul, and the satrap was standing in her sight. The orders could be to kill him—or to make sure no one else did. She had to know right now.

She opened the note. The White’s script was a little shaky, but still expressive and elegant. Karris translated the thin code automatically. “Inasmuch as purple may be the new color, we’d all be gratified to know the new fashions.” Infiltrate and ascertain the satrap’s intentions. The Seven Satrapies and the Chromeria are nervous about the new satrap and what he wants.

There was a curlicue on the last “s” to let her know the formal code was ended, but the note continued. “I also have news of a fifteen-year-old boy in a town called Rekton. His mother claims he is G’s. If you have the chance, find out. I’d love to meet them.” Gavin had a bastard in Rekton. Bring mother and son to the Chromeria.

Karris looked toward Gavin in time to see him draft a cudgel and crack it over the back of the boy’s head. It would have been either funny or alarming, except that she felt like she’d been hit the same way. She watched, dumbfounded, as Gavin threw up a luxin wall, quenched an attack, and kept talking—cool to the end.

She was so stunned, she didn’t pick up the bow, didn’t draw. This was Rekton. That boy could draft. It was too much of a coincidence. She had been the one who insisted Gavin turn the flying contraption here. She felt a chill. For them to be here now was nothing less than Orholam’s hand moving. Karris knew Orholam didn’t care about her. She wasn’t important enough. So what was this? A test for Gavin?

Fifteen years old. Son of a bitch. That child had been conceived while she and Gavin were betrothed.

Gavin picked up the boy, straining—the boy was both tall and chubby—and threw him over a shoulder. Then he walked toward the river, as if he didn’t have a care in the world. The man really was walking away from a satrap, leaving thirty of the satrap’s bodyguards dead. As always, Gavin was audacious, unstoppable, unflappable. The ordinary rules just didn’t apply to him.

Never had.

For a single, perilous moment, Karris was sixteen again, with everything she had known, everyone she had loved torn away. She’d wept that day, wept until she realized no one was going to comfort her. She’d drafted red to take comfort from its heat and fury. She’d drafted so much red it had almost killed her. Today, she didn’t even need to draft. The fury was there in a heartbeat. “Don’t believe what’s in your orders,” Gavin had said. Of course he had. The liar. The son of a bitch.

That was why the White had told her not to open her orders immediately. She’d wanted Karris to cool off before she had to face Gavin. To not cause problems.

Nice to see that the two most important people in her life were both manipulating her.

Gavin drafted a scull onto the river and set the boy down. He didn’t hurry, merely let the current take him, not so much as turning. It must have been a near thing, then. He was treating Satrap Garadul like he was a dog and eye contact might provoke him. Being treated like a dog, well, Karris knew all about that, didn’t she?

She found herself on her feet, striding back toward the river. Her spectacles had mysteriously found their perch on her nose. If Satrap Garadul weren’t just two hundred paces away, Karris thought she’d have hurled a fireball at Gavin’s head. He rounded the corner on the punt and saw the look on her face.

He blanched. And, for once, said nothing.

Karris stood on the bank of the river, trembling as he floated nearer and nearer.

Gavin didn’t ask if she’d read her orders, he could tell. “Get in,” he said. “If you have that black cloak, cover yourself. Better that they don’t get a good look at you.”

“Go to hell. I’ll make my own way,” Karris said.

He extended a hand and blasted a fist-size hole in her punt with a bullet of green luxin. “Get in!” he commanded. “King Garadul’s coming any minute.”