Ada Gil. Made a funny little ‘eep’ when he stabbed her.

Livnah Elo. Wet herself copiously as she died. Dammit, they were supposed to take them to the toilets a few minutes beforehand to avoid that.

Naamiy Patel. Vomited blood.

Ora Jon. Attacked, badly.

Yiska. Rambler.

Ameretet Ali. Amazing beauty. Tried to seduce him. Gavin actually thought about it until he realized she was simply afraid, and that she would do anything for a few more minutes of life. Even cheat on her husband as her last act, instead of going to Orholam clean.

Ihsan. Mediocre drafter, mediocre looks, mediocre sins.

Ercilia. Died proudly.

Evi Black. Nice name?

Dulcina Dulceana. He didn’t want to remember Dulcina, but he couldn’t forget her. By the time he got to her, he’d been killing for almost nine hours. The drafter in the room was standing, leaning at ease against the kneeler. She was only perhaps sixteen years old. A dark-haired beauty with halos stretched to bursting with red and orange and yellow and green. She smiled at him, a full and innocent smile, neither seductive nor afraid, simply happy to see him. He was instantly smitten.

“Greetings, daughter. May the light always shine upon you. Dulcina, if you would like to—”

“Shh,” she said, touching her lips with a finger. “I’ve already confessed.”

“Then would you like me to lead us in some prayers or songs?”

She shook her head. “My High Lord Prism, you’ve been doing Orholam’s work all day, and will do so all night and through the morrow. Let me give you a gift. The only gift I have. The gift of my five minutes. You may speak or we can be silent. You can Free me first if you prefer solitude, or at the end if you prefer company. As you will.”

He didn’t understand. There had to be some angle, some advantage. It was all she had. It was her last five minutes, whereas to him it would just be another grain in a full hourglass.

There was no angle. There was no deceit in her open eyes. He stared at her for ten seconds, thirty. And then he was furious for no reason he could understand.

And then he broke.

And he wept.

And she held him. And they wept together.

And after five minutes, the accursed bell jingled. And he stood. And he begged her forgiveness. And he kissed her lips.

And he slew her.

And with her died his faith in Orholam. It had survived war and abandonment and massacres and deceit, but it could not survive the holiest night of the year.

It was midnight. He had killed one hundred drafters.

Three hundred and twenty-seven to go.

Thirty hours later, Gavin killed the last man just before the sun rose. And he went to his chambers, and for the first time since he’d brought hell to earth, he drafted black luxin.

Chapter 25

Kip took the lift down to head out to the Blackguards’ training yard, but when he got to the ground floor, he couldn’t force himself to get out. He was overwhelmed with people, with having just faced down his grandfather. He was trembling.

He’d figured out in his weeks coming back to the Chromeria that with both Kip and Gavin being lost to the waves, the Red wasn’t going to let the blame for it land on his own shoulders. Nor would he be deprived of the services of his favorite slave, Grinwoody. That meant whatever story he’d invented blamed Kip.

Knowing he would have to answer for the crime he had tried to prevent, Kip had prepared as well as he could, charting a course whereby he might find some rapprochement with the man who’d probably accused him of murder and treason.

When he got off the boat, he’d asked the first person he’d seen what had happened to Gavin.

Regardless, going into that meeting should have been the prelude to imprisonment and execution. Kip still wasn’t sure why it hadn’t been. Part of what he’d been betting on was that Andross was a wight. And he wasn’t. Not anymore.

Andross still wore his hood. Still wore his dark spectacles, but Kip had known, instantly. There was something different about his voice, and he hadn’t been wearing gloves.

Kip’s best card had suddenly disappeared. He’d planned to threaten to reveal that. If nothing else, before they took him away to prison, he could yank back Andross Guile’s hood to show the man for what he was.

In the chamber, Kip hadn’t had a moment to think about the further implications: a man had gone wight, and was now a wight no longer? Impossible.

Kip had merely spoken, weaving lies with a facility he didn’t know he had, so befuddled and intrigued by the puzzle that he’d forgotten to be befuddled and overwhelmed by addressing the entire Spectrum.

And it had worked. Somehow.

There had been a little spark of joy dancing at the corner of Andross Guile’s mouth. Surprise, but then pleasure. Like he enjoyed playing against a worthy opponent. Maybe that was why he’d let Kip off the hook, simply so they could keep playing.

Kip felt suddenly ill. He was alive because of Andross Guile’s mercy? No, not that. He was alive because Andross longed for entertainment. There. That was more in line with the old horror. That made sense.

But now, suddenly, the people he should most want to see—his Blackguard compatriots—he couldn’t bear to see, and he couldn’t have even said why. He took the lift down, and down. He got off at the level where the Prism had his private training room. Kip had lost the key Commander Ironfist gave him long ago, but the door had a superviolet panel next to it. Kip had never really noticed them before—they were flat black, and only a few thumbs wide. He’d dismissed them, not realizing what they were, but he realized they were made of the same stuff as the Prism’s room controls.

After gathering some superviolet, Kip extended it into the panel. Ah, there was another lock inside, so that the door could be locked against superviolets as well, but it wasn’t locked now. Kip pressed superviolet in, and the mundane lock popped open. He went inside.

The silence was a balm. He wrapped his hands in long strips of cloth the way Ironfist had taught him. The old widow Coreen had given him clothes, and while they weren’t exactly good for exercise, Kip knew that they would be replaced soon with Blackguard garb and a Chromeria discipulus’s clothes, so he set to work on the heavy bag.

He started slow. Seven to ten minutes, Ironfist said, to warm up your fists and joints to the shock of hitting. Kip bent his wrist on an errant punch. He grumbled. He’d done the wrappings wrong. But instead of untying the whole mess and trying again, he drafted a green luxin brace around his wrist. Then he went ahead and made a full glove out of it. He matched it on the other hand.

Much better. He punched the bag lightly for the seven minutes, his fists warming, the pain somehow welcome, the loss of thinking, thinking, thinking a relief.

He moved over to the stretch bag, a smaller target that when hit snapped back toward you, building reflexes. After he got used to its movement, he looked beyond it, using the periphery of his vision to react. Then he went to the chin-up bar, and found he could do three now. Three! It seemed both an impossible achievement and pathetic at the same time. Three. Then back to the heavy bag.

By some accident, he turned on the lights on the bag. It lit up sections to tell him his next target: right kidney, gut, left jaw. With each punch, the bag reacted to how hard Kip hit it by blossoming in color from his punches. Light touches lit the bag blue. Kip’s hardest kicks reached up to orange.