“A strange idiom, from you who’d beat a man, but not a horse.”

“A horse can’t deserve it.”

“Well, I hope that narrow-shouldered filly can hold the weight you’ve saddled her with. She’ll be a warhorse, if.”

“If I don’t kill her first,” the White said grimly. “I know. One loses men and horses both to training. Is that reason not to train?”

“This isn’t training.”

She moved as if to quarrel further, then sat back in her wheeled chair. She took a chain from around her neck, produced a key she’d kept hidden beneath her neckline.

“The master key to all the restricted libraries. This is what you came for, isn’t it? You were scheduled to see me before the girl came back from Big Jasper. What is it you’re hunting?”

“A fantasy. A suspicion. Foolishness.”

“But I’ll know first, if you find something?”

He took the key from her and tucked it away. It was acquiescence.

“Be ware, Harrdun. My defenses are stretched thin.”

He walked to the door.

“Harrdun,” she said.

He stopped.

“The ghotra. You’re wearing it again.”

He grunted.

“It suits you.”

Chapter 24

Gavin dreamed after the storm, but knew this was no dream. It was memory. For a brief moment, he fought. No, not this. Orholam, have mercy on me, not—

It was his first Sun Day as Prism. He was in his own apartments atop what was now his tower. It was just after noon, and the dawn and noon rituals were finished. Now he had only to murder four hundred drafters.

There was a knock at his door, and his mother came in. Gavin had barely had time to get home, grab a quick meal, and bathe. His room slave Shala—a woman his mother’s age, whom his mother had appointed in place of the original Gavin’s room slave, apparently trying to keep her second son celibate for the rest of his days—had shaved his chest, and two of the High Luxiats, Daeron Utarkses and Camileas Malargos, had anointed his whole body with oil and myrrh. Having the sister of two men he’d betrayed lay hands on his naked body had not been an experience he was eager to repeat, for they’d anointed his entire body, and when choosing, who would you prefer to have oil your rod and stones: an old man, or an old woman who had reason to hate you, though she might not know it?

A Prism was not his own; a Prism belonged to the satrapies entire, and to Orholam, and to his family, and to peace, and whatever scraps he could collect after all had taken their bites, he might enjoy for himself.

His copper-colored hair was bound back and the High Luxiats placed a crown on his forehead with a single diamond the size of a robin’s egg. He wore a ceremonial shirt of red silk and cloth-of-gold open down the front, with sleeves so short as to be vestigial. His trousers were red silk so tight he thought they’d tear if he moved too quickly. But he was Orholam’s hand on earth; it behooved him to look potent, virile, even sexual. Orholam was, after all, a creative force, a generative being. How much the creative and the reproductive overlapped swung back and forth between which High Luxiats held sway at any particular time. Creation was meant to reflect creator, they argued. As above, so below.

That the worship guided by the Prism often turned into worship of the Prism seemed to bother no one. Or no one in power. To Gavin’s understanding of theology, that seemed a problem, but he was an impostor, and to protest too loudly might expose him. He did what he was told.

Felia Guile dismissed Shala and a young glowering Blackguard named Ironfist. When they were gone, she said quietly, “My son, if you can make it through this, you will be Prism for a thousand years. You’ve done magnificently all day, better than you did when … you were younger.” She meant he’d done better than the real Gavin had done.

“I’ve killed more than four hundred men before. It won’t be a problem.” The dreaming Gavin suddenly separated from the remembered boy. Had he really thought that, or had he been trying to impress his mother? He had wanted so desperately not to fail her. She had been magnificent, and he had known some of what she must have risked to keep him alive. “These ones won’t even be fighting back,” he said with a lopsided grin.

Felia didn’t smile. “Take off your shirt, I need to anoint you.”

“I’ve been anointed.”

“Not with this.” She produced a small jar with a yellowish-orange paste or lotion in it. She began to rub in into his skin carefully, only touching the areas that wouldn’t be covered by clothing, as if the paste were terribly precious.

“What is it?” he demanded.

She didn’t answer the question, saying instead, “Gavin, I know so far you haven’t taken your duties as the Highest Luxiat seriously, but on this night … Your leadership of the satrapies, your balancing for all the world; these are necessities, but distant ones. This night is the one bloody pillar on which all your power rests. It matters not that only you and the sworn one are in each room. When a Prism takes his duties lightly, or enjoys them, or gets blind drunk to brace himself for this burden—word always gets out. Those Prisms never last more than their seven, and many don’t last that long. Sun Day is the death of an entire community, of a whole convocation of peers. This is where our communal worship meets one intense and final personal experience of faith.”

“I wasn’t intending to take it lightly, mother. Merely trying to break the tension.”

She ignored him. “You’ll have only two minutes with each. We prefer to give each five minutes with you, but the sheer number of drafters who’ve burned themselves out in the war precludes that.”

“We could have begun sooner.”

“The High Magisterium and the Spectrum agreed that drawing out this Freeing for days would only draw more attention to the war and all its wounds. They want us to move on. All the drafters understand. Most have already been shrived by the lesser luxiats. Some, however, fear that the luxiats keep lists of their sins to use against their families in the future—”

“That’s strictly forbidden!”

Had he been that young? That naïve?

“Strictly. But it happens. We root such out as quietly as we can, but with so many luxiats coming from noble families, the temptation is often too great for them; they can’t help but pass along some helpful tidbit. As I was saying, some of the shrived will keep their most serious sins to themselves to be revealed to the Prism alone. You will find yourself in possession of many dark secrets. With your memory, it will be a potent tool. That is as it should be. But don’t share those secrets with anyone. Not your father. Not me. He will pressure you to do so. The Prism sharing such things with his own powerful family would undermine your power at a thousand times the rate a mere luxiat leaking such things would.”

“Of course,” Gavin said. He’d had a sudden insight: the kind that now he would not expect such a young man to have. “Some die with sin on their souls, just to keep the Prism from knowing, don’t they?” He’d been young, but not stupid.

“Doubtless. Prism Spreading Oak was worthless, but Prism Eirene Malargos before him had a way of showing mercy to such. She would, after shriving one who had been an enemy, ask if they had any silent sins for which they could together beseech Orholam’s forgiveness. It’s outside of orthodoxy, you understand, for to speak sins is to let them be exposed to the light, and is theologically necessary, but it was also very merciful. Such things get out, you know. She was well loved.”