But Kip had been careless. Part of a warrior’s duty was to remember what it had been to be a civilian. To protect that innocence, and not sneer at it.

Kip recognized the quote. “Erastophenes, Tactics, the fourth scroll, if I recall correctly?”

The conn shook his head. He didn’t know where it was from.

“It’s from the conclusion in the sixth scroll, actually,” Kip said. “You pass. I’m glad to see you’re not a man who pretends to know what he doesn’t. At least in some things.”

“You’re testing me now?” Conn Arthur said.

“Have you heard the quote from Veliki Eden: ‘It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it’? Do you think he was kidding?”

“I’ve heard it,” the conn said. “I’ve always taken that to mean that to their sorrow, men are fools, ever rushing to arms.”

“I take it different: war is hell, but hell’s where all my friends are.”

Conn Arthur looked pensive. “Time will tell which of us is right. Perhaps both. I only hope for us all that your knowledge becomes wisdom painlessly. Your pardon, Lord Guile.”

Kip nodded, surprised that the man would ask to be dismissed. But before he had gone far, the conn stopped and turned back.

“One last thing. As I said, my people aren’t shy about matters of the root and cave… but a little consideration for those trying to sleep nearby does go a long way.”

“Right,” Kip said. Root and cave? Oh. “Right!”

When the hour and a half had passed, Ben-hadad hadn’t yet fixed the first skimmer, and he’d also found other potentially catastrophic cracks on three of the other skimmers.

Kip elected to leave them behind, and headed out with only four skimmers loaded with the best fighters. Tisis stayed behind. She said, “I’m more use to you as an ear and tongue than as another gun.” She looked momentarily perplexed. “Not that that was supposed to rhyme.”

“Such things occur from time to time.”

“Very funny, you’re such a tease,” she said.

“You know I always aim to please.” He frowned. What the hell? “I know that’s the kind of silly thing I’d do,” Kip said, “but I swear I didn’t intend… to.”

He blinked. “That also wasn’t my intent—”

“It’s fine, my dear, I know what you…” She seemed to struggle to form a different word. Then in defeat, she said, “… meant. Kip, what’s going on?”

“I don’t know, but the effect is strong. Let—”

“Superviolet!” she said.

It seemed the first line could be anything, but as if in some inescapable chain of cause to effect, it was impossible not to follow it with a rhyming couplet. Slant rhymes worked. How about if you ended a line with a word that didn’t have a rhyme? Oh… superviolet! She hadn’t simply meant to rhyme with let; she meant he needed to look at superviolet!

He narrowed his eyes to the superviolet spectrum and saw the color storm whipping past them in ordered violence. Like a mechanical octopus, every arm articulated with a million hinges, the storm swept the camp, but each segment of the arm moved only in right angles.

Kip handed his superviolet lenses to Tisis so she could see it, too.

A few people were looking up around the camp, quizzical looks on their faces. Of those who were moving about, they too were moving only in the same straight lines.

The superviolet was everywhere.

And then, before he could even say anything, it was gone.

“Are you okay?” Tisis asked.

“Why?” he asked.

“Because it all swirled around you in a weird funnel cloud before it disappeared.”

“It did?” He’d thought it was everywhere, but then, if he had been in the middle of a cloud of it, he would have.

“It was like it was looking for you.”

And it found me.

Chapter 43

It was one part practicality. A pinch of indecision. A dash of kindness. And four parts cowardice.

Teia flicked on only the blue and superviolet lights as she came into the Prism’s practice room again. She’d taken to training more and more here while she marshaled her courage to talk to Gav Greyling.

Fine, while she avoided talking to Gav Greyling.

She tried not to come here too much, but the practice room had become her haven. There were good memories here, and light controls, and mirrors, and privacy—all the necessary ingredients to practice light splitting.

She tried not to come here too much, but she didn’t try very hard.

With the master cloak, invisibility had become stunningly simple. She put it on, opened herself to paryl, and it did the rest, flawlessly.

Ah, blessed, blessed invisibility.

There were still things to be aware of. She was invisible, not silenced. She still left footprints. If she pulled the cloak over her eyes, she was blind herself, so in well-lit areas, she had to stare down at her feet and only steal glimpses up, knowing her disembodied eyes might appear to anyone who happened to be looking in just the right place. The cloak was long enough to cover her feet, but any movement that displaced it, such as running or descending stairs, could expose her legs. Also, its length meant that it brushed the ground. Any dirt it picked up from the ground, it carried, visibly.

Similarly, if she didn’t launder it regularly, the dust it picked up from the air slowly made it less effective. Of course, slaves did all the laundry in the Chromeria, and of course, Teia wasn’t going to let the master cloak out of her sight, so she had to figure out ways to launder it herself. Sometimes in this very room.

She’d even prepared her lies: the washboard was good for hand strength, those incompetents had torn her cloak the last time, she kind of enjoyed a simple task like this…

Weak lies, and she’d not had to use them yet.

But after much practice, the cloak had become simply another tool. It enabled things impossible without it, and it had limitations, but it quickly became a known quantity. It wasn’t a sword or spear that required years of study to master, it was more like a pair of boots: you figured out what grip they gave you, you broke them in, and then you forgot about them.

What was more interesting for Teia than learning how to use it was trying to learn how it worked. She’d put on a single red light in the practice room, and use the cloak, then extend her will into the cloak to discern how it was splitting that red light. Then she’d repeat with orange, then yellow, then green, then blue, for hours.