“Not until it’s my time, girl,” the White said.

Karris scowled again. “Well, that’s meaningless.”

The White waved a dismissive hand. “Bah. People say meaningless things all the time when they’re about to die. How about this one: ‘As long as I’m in your heart, I’ll never truly die.’ Ha! Please don’t keep me trapped in your heart after I die, girl. I get claustrophobic.”

“How about, ‘You’ll be watching over me’?” Karris asked, only half joking.

“Sure—so please spend less time in latrines, because I don’t want to see it!”

Karris laughed. And then she couldn’t bring up what she’d come to ask about. Her courage wasn’t doing so great today.

“You’ve had a little talk with Marissia,” the White prompted.

“I just came from there, how do you know? I thought we had all your spies!”

“What need for spies, when I have eyes?”

“Huh?”

“Or a nose. You reek of that whisky she drinks. Crag Tooth, which means she was trying to make peace. Otherwise she’d have given you that swill Barrenmoor.”

Oh. Right. Not everything was about spies and betrayal. You still had to use your wits. Karris took a deep breath. “You brought me on to handle your spies, you said. But you’ve already got Marissia. She’s been your spy handler for years, hasn’t she?”

“Yes,” the White said.

“So why did you ask me to do what she’s already doing, probably better than I ever will? Were you just trying to give me purpose? You thought I’d kill myself without Gavin around, without the Blackguard?”

“I don’t see you as one for self-slaughter.”

Karris said, “You’re giving me nothing here. Please.”

The White smiled sadly. “For many years now, Marissia has handled my spies within the Chromeria. I personally handled the external spies. She is very, very good. She would be better than I am at such work, were it not that I am the White and meeting me personally tends to carry weight. With the spy we’re handling in this matter, it’s unclear whether this should be treated as an internal Chromeria matter or an external threat.”

So the White was simply transferring a spy from one handler to the next. “That’s all?” Karris asked.

“This didn’t come up when you fought with her?” the White countered.

“There weren’t that many words exchanged.”

“Oh dear. You didn’t break any of her bones, did you, darling?”

Karris kept a straight face. “You’d be surprised how much pain I can inflict without doing permanent damage.”

The White winced.

“But that’s it?” Karris asked. Fun as it was to mislead the White in something harmless, Karris had gotten awfully wound up over something that turned out to be utterly trivial.

The White lifted her hands. “There isn’t always a grand design.”

‘With you there is,’ Karris almost said. Instead, “I could have used some warning.” About Marissia, she meant.

“You needed to have it out with her. I expected you to do it on your own long ago. Perhaps your abstention from red and green is doing you more good than I’d hoped.”

“About that,” Karris said. “How long—”

“No.”

“But—”

“No.”

“I’ve—”

“Absolutely not.”

“Very well, then,” Karris said. “If you’ll excuse me, I have a desire to go the training room and destroy something.”

“You’re dismissed. I’m sure Marissia will be eager to come give me her version of events.”

Chapter 55

Kip woke from another nightmare, drenched in sweat, fists balled so tight he had to massage his hands together to keep them from cramping. Remembering the specifics of the nightmare was like grasping smoke, though. He sat up.

An exploding head, the bullet blessing, that was it. Again.

Thunder rumbled outside. The nightmares must have been triggered by the storm lashing the Jaspers. It was nothing.

Wait, that had only been the second dream. In the first, he’d been on the deck of the Wanderer again, stabbing his father, taking out all his fury of abandonment while his father’s eyes went wide—

Gavin had looked at Kip. In that look, Kip had seen acceptance, self-sacrifice for his son. In that look, Kip had seen love chosen, knowing the cost but undeterred by it.

What Kip hadn’t seen was prismatic eyes. The light had been poor—it had been night, after all—but Kip’s eyes were fully adjusted, and he remembered. He was sure of it.

Kip got up, throwing off the clinging webs of dream-hatred, and went out. He’d never been to the luxiats’ rooms, but he remembered Quentin saying his room was in the blue tower, the floor called Justice, six. The luxiats sometimes referred to floors by names of sins (dark sides of the towers) or virtues (light sides). It was an acolytes’ mnemonic so old that it had passed into orthodoxy.

He found the floor and walked brazenly into the room. It was a barracks like any of the Blackguards’ or discipulae’s, so it was no problem finding the right one, or finding Quentin’s bed among the rows. He nudged the sleeping luxiat.

“Oh, it can’t be time for morning prayers already—” Quentin cut off at the sight of Kip looming over him, and the whites of his eyes became fully visible around his irises.

Some people lash out when they’re terrified. Quentin was a freezer.

For a long moment, he didn’t blink, didn’t breathe. It lasted longer than Kip would have expected. Surely Quentin recognized him?

“I’ve got a question for you,” Kip said, quietly so as not to disturb the other sleepers.

Something about that unlocked the luxiat, and he took a big breath. He got out of his bed, his body scrawny, no muscles at all. Kip was so used to being surrounded by the training-honed physiques of the Blackguards that he was kind of shocked by what was surely a more normal body than theirs.

Again he thought, My father did this on purpose. He surrounded me with the best, so I would always use them as my comparisons, so I would always stretch myself. It was a little cynical, very smart, mean in the short term, and probably best in the long term. Damn. Gavin Guile was rightly a legend.

Quentin followed him out into the hall. “This, is, uh, good,” Quentin said. “I just figured out the shelving scheme.”

“Huh?”

“For the library.”

“Oh, that. Great. Look, I need you to tell me how a Prism is chosen. Walk with me.”

Quentin fell in beside him, and they talked with lowered voices. “Chosen? They aren’t chosen. They’re discovered. I mean, they’re chosen, of course—by Orholam.”

“Right,” Kip said. “Sure. So how are they ‘discovered’?”

“All luxiats report to their superiors, passing along possibilities gleaned from their areas, those pass it on up the hierarchy of the Magisterium, and the High Luxiats meet with the Spectrum to confer and test whoever has been sent.”

“Let me guess that whoever’s been sent is always from one of the leading families.”