Karris set the glass down on the table, stood, and walked to the door without a word. She opened it and, looking back, saw woman, and storm, and light. The eye can see all at once, but only focus on one at a time. The clouds were still dark, angry.

She said, “You know, sharing a glass with you is—” one thing, but there’s no way I’m sharing my husband with a …

But the words didn’t make it to completed thought, much less out of her mouth. There was a sudden stiffness in Marissia’s spine, a grief in her eyes at all that was denied her. As Karris had been a warrior in the Chromeria’s open battles, so had Marissia been one in its secret battles, and perhaps neither was content anymore to fight alone.

Karris started over. “Sharing a glass with you is the best thing I’ve done in months.”

Chapter 53

~Samila Sayeh~

Today is the day we make a god. The crowds are gathering, paying obeisance to me and to the other Elect around me, and above us, to the Color Prince himself. All the people are gathering today. A special day, a special victory, but also to commemorate our people’s great victory at Ox Ford, and mourn our losses. The Color Prince wishes to tie all these together in the small folks’ minds.

I find it terribly uninteresting, so instead I regard the mathematical precision with which I have remade my left hand with blue luxin. No, remade is too grandiose. Augmented. My hand has become superior in most ways to a human hand, but I am a mere mechanist. Perhaps I would have become a creator had not the Guiles’ War made a warrior of me.

It is, however, a masterpiece. Blue luxin is crystalline, solid, hard, nearly unbreakable on one plane but easy to snap or shatter if pushed from the side. Supplementing the human animal with all its shifting and bending and twisting forms is well nigh impossible to do without impinging on its functionality. Sheathe your arm in a blue luxin carapace? Easy. And then you sweat, and the sweat and oil gets trapped. The skin softens and, chafed incessantly, peels. Exposed to that sweat and oil and dead skin, after a time, infection sets in. Then the body attacks itself. Unable to swell, the blood gets cut off, the infection spreads, fever comes, and throughout, incredible pain.

It is my hypothesis that much of the madness of color wights has had nothing to do with luxin. It has been the result of unending pain, the sadly self-inflicted torture of incorporating luxin into one’s self imperfectly. Perhaps such madmen are so dangerous they must be put down for the safety of others, but to call madness evil is a grave error. The pre-Lucidonian philosopher said, ‘Every act intends some good.’

The damage done by wights has been done through ignorance. One doesn’t punish ignorance with death. One fights it with knowledge. Not darkness, but light.

My companion and I have long talks about this. She isn’t real, of course. She is merely a dialectical prop. She—I picture her as a grown-up version of my niece Meena, who was murdered at the Great Pyramid—questions my research, and we debate. It is the only way for me to have an equal here.

It makes me miss the Chromeria. So many fine minds there. Of course, they forbid all this research, but if they could overcome their fears as I have overcome mine … But of course, I know the Color Prince has people recruiting within the Chromeria. The people here are eager, but they aren’t disciplined thinkers. They think being Free means being free of the consequences of their actions, free of nature’s laws. It is an attitude the prince has not seen fit to curb. Not yet, not when he still needs soldiers and drafters to die for him. Later, he promises me, we will work to channel such fervor.

‘Light cannot be chained, but it can be directed,’ he tells me. He seems to like the phrase, and I can tell he will use it again. Later. After victory, after the first phrase has bought him willing martyrs and power, he will add that second clause to nullify the first. And those fool martyrs will have died only to put a new king with a different title on a new seat in the same place. Thus ever does a tyrant’s noose tighten, I suppose. Expanding, building that future speech in his head, he says, ‘All the world is open to the light, but our eyes can only look one way at a time.’

I see these rhythms, with Meena’s help. How nine kings became seven satraps, and how failed attempts at making a high king yielded to a successful attempt to make a Prism, and how the Prism’s power and the satraps’ was eroded by jealous Colors. As a wolf hungers for meat so a man lusts for power. It is unwise to get between either one and his prize. This is not a condemnation but a fact. And only a fool allows herself to become the prize.

This is the reason why someone else is becoming Mot today, not I, though I stand in the first rank for that honor. Dubious honor, I think. We each ‘get’ to wear a necklace of what the Color Prince claims is black luxin. Most likely it’s simply a clever illusion, but I find it unsettling.

Meena and I have discussed this position for me, at some length. She thinks that— Oh, more cheering. Everyone else on the podium is applauding. I join them.

She thinks that having an overseer would grate on me. I say, what’s the difference between having one overseer to direct me to do the Color Prince’s will, or having two overseers to direct me to do the Color Prince’s will? Plus, those who fail the prince directly feel his wrath directly. Dervani Malargos and Jerrosh Green fought tooth and nail to be the Atirat, and when the prince made his choice, he gave one godhood, and the other a musket ball in his brain pan. And soon thereafter Dervani had joined Jerrosh in death, albeit at Gavin Guile’s hand. Godhood is a dangerous business.

Still, Meena thinks I will chafe under the rule of a lesser mind. Ramia Corfu is certainly that, though the man is beautiful. One oughtn’t discount the power of beauty. It is a change I notice in myself. It has been months since I last took Usef Tep. We’d made love nine times in that last week before the Freeing, knowing it would be our last. We’d even slipped out of the line at the Freeing, fooling none, and not trying to fool them, either. Human delicacies break down in death’s acid gaze. While I had not Usef’s daily hunger, by now I would usually feel the lack keenly. Now my libido lies dormant. I look at Ramia’s well-proportioned face, and I understand that other women see only boyish charm and willfulness, smoldering good looks. It’s not that I don’t see it, or understand from memory what it will do to others; it’s that its effect on me is limited.

It matters not. My sole strategy with Ramia Corfu will be to make myself appear to be what I actually am: indispensable and utterly without ambition. Meena pretends to be content with this, though I think she has more ambitions for me than I do.

The Color Prince is going on, and seems to be doing a good job of it. He usually does. Then he gestures to Ramia to stand.

Ramia stands, with an arrogant grin that I suddenly realize I’m going to really, really hate within the span of—oh, I already hate it. He nods to the rest of us, as if we’re lucky to be seen with him. My face remains impassive, but some of the others bristle. It’s one thing to revel in such a triumph; it’s another to act as if you got there because you were smarter than the rest of us.

Why him? I know the Color Prince likes him, but I had assumed it was something to do with the Color Prince feeling a need to have attractive people around when his own looks had been forever destroyed. The Color Prince is now a marvel to behold, a wonder, but not remotely beautiful in human terms, and those who’ve tried to go to his bed have all been rebuffed. The word is that the fire unmanned him, which means the damage must have been severe. It has never been taught officially in the Chromeria, but the uses of luxin in sex have been explored by drafters from time immemorial.