“I wasn’t even aware that you’d begun your testing. How long did they say you lasted?” Gavin asked.

“Four minutes, I guess,” Kip said.

“Four twelve,” the old mistress said.

Gavin physically stopped. It had seemed like a long time up in his room, but he’d supposed it had only seemed long. Four minutes was astounding. Passing had only taken him five.

Mistress Varidos drew close to Gavin and whispered, “There was some irregularity that I think you should know about.”

Gavin smiled at Kip. “Well done, we’ll just be a moment.” He came aside, leaving Kip with the men and women who were asking him which part he thought was hardest, how he’d managed to hold out so long, and generally treating him like the center of the world. It was pretty intoxicating for a young drafter, and it was supposed to be.

Grinning, Gavin walked toward the tester’s table with Mistress Varidos. They came to stand right over the stone table. A black samite cloth was spread over a hole in the middle of the table. The testing stone would be right in there. Gavin tried to remember exactly how it was positioned. He’d only get one shot at this. “What was the irregularity?” he asked. The samite blocked out any outside light that would interfere with the testing stone.

The old woman exhaled slowly. “He threw the rope out of his hand at about three thirty. Before I could stop her, one of the women put it back in his hand.”

“Are you joking?” Gavin said.

“They send the beautiful ones for the testing. Half of them barely have the brains to remember their lines, much less remember some of the more obscure rules governing situations that have never arisen in living memory. Even Dazen didn’t throw the rope aside.”

“Which one did it?”

“The green.”

Of course it was the green. Wild, unpredictable, chafing at the slightest restriction. “Get her over here!”

The green tester saw the mistress’s summons and walked right over. All the testers were beautiful, and if being light-skinned was a detriment on the battlefield, it was favored for this and a few other ceremonies. The visual effect of a man or woman whose skin was green or blue or red was more muted the darker their natural skin tone. Even the Parians chose coastal, lowland, or mixed-blood countrymen to represent them in this ceremony. This woman was Ruthgari, and light-skinned even for them. She moved with the easy grace of a dancer. Her thin green robe, thrown on during the ceremony so that all the testers would be clad in their colors when the supplicant emerged—which might be only ten or fifteen seconds after their testing began—was, in her case, open deep between her large breasts. She walked up eagerly, throwing her hair back, back straight, standing just on the other side of the table.

The nudity and near-nudity of some of the ceremonies were shrouded in religious and cultural symbolism that made them almost non-erotic. Almost, because no matter how high-minded you might be, you couldn’t completely ignore the fact that you were looking at someone who was naked and astoundingly attractive. But the parties afterward, especially at initiations, were always a gray area. Everyone beautiful, everyone half-clad, everyone with the fresh memory of everyone else stark naked, the atmosphere jubilant, the wine flowing freely, and the somber ceremonialism suddenly removed.

This green knew exactly what she was doing. Gavin was taller than the woman, so he could barely help but stare down her barely closed robe. Instead, he looked at her heart-shaped face, hazel eyes, the pupils barely haloed in green. She looked familiar.

“Over here,” he said, pointing next to him, between himself and Mistress Varidos. She stepped around the stone table to where he’d pointed, but closer in than necessary.

“Who are you?” he asked, his voice cool.

“My name’s Tisis,” she said, her smile showing off great dimples.

“Tisis what?”

“Oh,” she said, as if she didn’t have a thought in her head. “Tisis Malargos.”

“What happened, Tisis?” he asked, pretending not to recognize the name. Her father and uncle had been his friends—that was, his Dazen’s. They’d disappeared after the war. Killed by bandits or enslaved by pirates, most likely. She had the family look. No doubt she hated him. She’d seen that Kip had a chance of passing the test, so she’d sabotaged him. Gutsy. Foolish and infuriating, but gutsy.

“The supplicant cheated,” she said. “He threw out the rope. I put it back in his hand.”

“You’re not to touch the supplicant in any way during the testing. Is there something about that rule that’s unclear?”

“I didn’t touch him—Pardon me, High Luxlord Prism, I put the rope back in his hand without touching his skin. I was trying to preserve the integrity of the test.”

“Malargos,” Gavin said. “You’re Ruthgari, right?”

“Yes, Lord Prism.”

Gavin looked at her flatly. “When your own Blessed Satrap Rados crossed the Great River to fight the Blood Foresters who outnumbered him two to one, do you remember what he did?”

“He burned Rozanos Bridge behind his army,” she said.

“Was that cheating?”

“I—I don’t follow,” she said.

“He burned the bridge so his men knew they couldn’t flee. He gave them no way out. Every last man knew he had to win or die. It’s where we get the expression ‘burning your bridges behind you.’ ”

“But I saw him reaching for the rope,” she complained weakly. She swallowed, suddenly unnerved to have contradicted the Prism to his face.

“And you gave it back to him.”

“Of course.”

“So you would have built a new bridge behind Blessed Satrap Rados?”

“Of course not, that would be…”

“And doomed him. How long did you last before you pulled the rope?” Gavin asked.

She flushed and looked away. “Seventeen seconds.” She pulled her robe tighter around herself, finally covering up.

“And you destroyed a young man’s chance at passing.”

“We could retest—” she started.

“You know we can’t. Once supplicants know it’s not real, the Thresher doesn’t work. Everyone would say it was because he got special favor for being my nephew—”

“I didn’t mean—”

“And you know it!” Gavin said, only keeping his voice down with effort.

“It doesn’t matter what you meant,” Mistress Varidos hissed.

While the mistress was speaking, Gavin split some superviolet from the light of the torches. Just a little. The beauty of superviolet was its invisibility. Even though there were at least half a dozen people in this room who could see superviolet luxin if they tightened their eyes, Gavin was betting that none of them was tightening her eyes at this very moment. And even if someone was, what Gavin was about to do was so small and so quick that even someone looking might miss it. Magical sleight of hand. The superviolet settled into his fingertips.

“You broke the rules, Tisis,” the mistress said. “You botched your duties, and you may have destroyed a young man’s future.”

“But nobody passes!” the young woman protested. It had become a mark of pride just to hold on for a long time. Conspiracies, the dark, tight spaces, heights, spiders, snakes, rats—the Thresher hit all of the most common fears. Usually, believing that failure would mean the loss of everything and with their eyes dilated from fear, the applicant drafted any and all colors before they pulled the rope. It wasn’t perfect, of course, but it was the best test they had.