They all thought about it for a moment. It was the best Kip could do without scouts or any real idea of the enemy forces.

“Well, it sounds great,” Conn Arthur said. “Of course, plans usually do.”

Chapter 28

“How did the High Luxiats take it?” Andross asked, pitching his voice low and quiet. Teia was walking beside Karris White as they crossed the delicate green bridge between Little Jasper and Big Jasper toward the execution platform, so she couldn’t help but overhear.

“As well as we expected they would,” the White said.

“But they’ll not rebel?” he insisted.

“We’ll find out presently, won’t we?” Karris said.

Teia was glad she’d already applied the dark eye caps. Karris was working with Andross Guile?

Of course she has to work with him, T. She’s the White, and he’s the promachos. But this sounded like more, like they were on the same side. Andross Guile was an open sewer. He was the human embodiment of evil. Teia didn’t want Karris any closer to him than was absolutely necessary.

But the promachos was already taking his leave. “I despise not knowing beforehand exactly how others are going to react.”

“And imagine,” Karris said drily, “some of us always live that way.”

“The horror,” Andross said, but Teia thought he seemed secretly pleased that his daughter-in-law was making fun of him.

Ugh. Teia didn’t like it when the old man acted human.

As the Blackguards emerged from the tunnel that was the Lily’s Stem, Teia saw the crowd for the first time. The muffled roar of their murmuring washed over her as if she had suddenly slipped into a full bathtub of their speculation. Though she was second in the line of Blackguards, it felt as if every eye were upon her.

The entire Embassies District was packed from building to building with bodies. The large execution platform had been built against the wall, beneath the great mirrors that were known as Orholam’s Glare. Nearest to the platform in the plaza were Chromeria officials, nobles, soldiers, Lightguards, and Blackguards, but as Teia mounted the steps, she saw an ocean of humanity.

Teia had thought that there would be a big crowd. She hadn’t guessed the half of it. Nearly every man, woman, and child living on Big Jasper had turned out for this event. Slave, free, Parian, or Tyrean, it didn’t matter. A bobbing mass of humanity filled the plaza and the great avenue and every street that converged here throughout the Embassies District. Balconies of mansions and embassies and roofs of shops were filled to bursting with onlookers.

Everyone wanted to see what would happen. Everyone wanted to hear what the Chromeria had to say. With the death of the old White, the ascension and near murder of the new White, the unveiling of the secret escape lines from the Chromeria, and the explosion of the cannon tower, it seemed the Big and Little Jasper Islanders’ veil of safety had been torn away. Everyone had heard the reading of the lists of the dead. They’d heard about the battles. But all this, plus the arrest of traitors, here?

Suddenly the reality of war had come home.

The Chromeria hadn’t played off the explosion of the cannon tower as a mistake. It hadn’t lied, exactly. It had merely said, ‘It wasn’t an accident.’ Everyone assumed that the Color Prince had attacked.

Believing themselves to have been attacked, the people wanted assurances. Many wanted blood. That the people to be executed today had nothing to do with the attack seemed not to matter. This was the people’s chance to hear the new White and judge her, to be soothed or to be inflamed—or to be disheartened.

No wonder Karris was nervous.

The Blackguards spread out across the platform. Teia and Stump, being the shortest, would flank Karris so as not to make her appear smaller than necessary. The commander would stand among the Colors and High Luxiats behind Karris.

The crowd fell silent as Carver Black stepped forward to introduce Karris as the new White. Teia didn’t pay attention; it was all titles and trivia. She was doing what she was here for: scanning the crowd for dangers, alternately in paryl and in the visible spectrum. She had already looked through the clothes of everyone on the platform. With paryl she could see through cloth but not skin, and the very bodies of the men and women already in place could conceal weapons.

It was a discomfiting thing, being able to see through people’s clothes. Most people, she decided, looked better with their clothes on. She now knew things about the High Luxiats that probably no one else knew.

From the fresh cuts and welts on his back atop old scars, High Luxiat Amazzal obviously practiced self-flagellation. It was a practice frowned on, though not explicitly forbidden unless it impeded the penitent’s performance of his or her duties. High Luxiat Mohana had the stretch marks of at least one pregnancy, which might or might not be scandalous. Certain orders of luxiats were allowed to marry, but generally not those who wished to progress high into the Magisterium. Perhaps Mohana had lost her child and joined the luxiats late? Or switched orders at some point?

Secrets, secrets everywhere, and Teia didn’t want to know most of them, and couldn’t use others that lay open to her eyes.

It seemed unfair. Godlike. How did she have this power? This power to see, and to kill? How did she have the right?

And a year ago, I was whining that my color was useless.

Suddenly everyone was bowing, and Teia flinched. She hadn’t even noticed that Carver Black was finishing his introduction. Throughout the plaza, everyone bowed or curtsied as deeply as possible.

Standing in front of those tens of thousands, Karris waited until everyone had risen. Then waited some more. Then more, until it was painful. Had she frozen up? Did someone need to do something?

Just when Teia was sure one of the Colors was going to move to rescue her, Karris began speaking in a strong, clear voice that carried well. “War is here. Would it were not so. Too many of us have thought of this war as something far away. The proclamations have meant nothing to us, for our own people are near. Our loved ones have been safe. So we have turned deaf ears to the widows keening at the lists. We have turned hard hearts to the weeping mothers of boys and girls who will never come back. What is some distant war to us?

“But war is here. Would it were not so. You have noticed the shortages in the markets. How long has it been since you’ve had a Tyrean orange? But an orange is a luxury, surely we can let that go. Then, cotton is expensive, too, from the loss of Atash, is it not? And wool, as the Ilytian traders have reconsidered the journey. But so what? What is this war to us? Perhaps more patches on our clothes, and our children having to make do with tunics and dresses they’ve outgrown. Builders, have you not seen the price of lumber double? Why? Because our brothers in the Blood Forest have laid down their saws to pick up swords, or turned their axes from hewing wood to hacking wights. So what? What is this distant war to us? The rest of us will put off those repairs our homes need until next year. You builders will have to charge the rich double, and pray they will pay so you can feed your families. You shipowners and fishermen, you’ll be paying double for wood for the repairs without which your ships will sink, so you’ll have to charge double for your goods, for your fish. But what is this distant war to us? We will pay in coin, lest we have to pay in blood. For those with money, that sounds like an acceptable trade.