That was a bit too complicated a construction for the sailors. These were simple men. But Gavin didn’t interrupt. Let the boy play his gambit. Gavin was ascendant once more. This was his game. He wasn’t going to have a crew he’d served with for months be taken out from under him. He wouldn’t allow it. He saw Orholam staring at him, his prophet eyes intent.

“But these are not normal times. As I heard from you all last night, Luxlord Andross Guile stabbed his own son and threw him overboard.” He paused. “I tell you now that the luxlord has not been idle since his son has been gone.”

Men were looking at Gavin, and he felt dread rising in him.

“Andross Guile has been named promachos,” Antonius said. “And he has consolidated power in a way that even Gavin Guile couldn’t do during the False Prism’s War. He doesn’t want the enemy son he thought he murdered to come back. For your own sakes and for Gavin’s, the last place you want to go is Big Jasper.”

It took Gavin’s breath. In that moment, he knew it was true.

And, too late, he realized that they had only Antonius’s word on this. But these sailors, not schooled in oratory, many of them unable even to read, were able to read a face. Gavin’s undisguised dread was a confirmation of everything Antonius said.

“But Gavin is the Prism. That’s gotta count for—”

“Is he?” Antonius said. “I know you believe he is. I believe he is, too. But if he came into Big Jasper and his father’s men seized him, and he shouted, ‘I am the Prism!’ would they not say, ‘Then draft, Prism, save yourself, prove yourself!’? He can’t draft. He can’t prove who he is. Gavin is our friend, and our Prism—aye, I believe it! But now, in wanting to go home, he is like a drunk friend who wants to swim across the sea. It is not a good friend who encourages that drunk to swim. Prove your friendship to Gavin, and your devotion to your Prism—by not letting him throw his life away.”

Gavin had no answer, no counter. His golden tongue was too heavy to make words. He hadn’t thought it through, had been too busy thinking about the wrong things. He’d been outmaneuvered by a boy. He was slipping. He was lost.

“Tell me,” Antonius said, “what happens to the simple sailor who comes between two warring giants? I tell you what doesn’t happen. A simple sailor doesn’t get paid double. He doesn’t get rewarded. He gets killed outright. So tell me, who wants to head to Rath?”

Chapter 40

Kip didn’t know why he was surprised. He’d thought once he got into the restricted libraries his problems would be solved. As if merely because you’d had to fight for something that meant it was good. The truth was harder to find. The books were filled with accounts the luxiats didn’t want read, but finding exactly what Kip needed—when he didn’t know what that was—was far harder.

The forbidden library had become the squad’s second home. When Kip wasn’t training with Karris or attending lectures or training with the Blackguards, he was here. If Andross Guile had been initially irritated that Kip had used his writ to get all of his friends access to the library as well, he’d been placated when Kip reported how the luxiats had been secretly defying the promachos.

Kip was sure there were some very unpleasant discussions between Andross and the High Luxiats after that, but of course he didn’t get to see any of that. He was also glad to see that Andross had blocked any direct vengeance the luxiats might have wanted to take on Quentin. Not that the young scholar took much hope of that. “Light never forgets,” he said.

“Huh?” Kip asked.

“It’s how we say luxiats have long memories,” Quentin said, not even looking up from some boring tome of archaic theology. Quentin mostly filled his time doing his own research, exploiting the access Kip had given him to restricted materials for a treatise he was writing, but he’d also become a vital resource and good friend to the squad.

“Orholam have mercy,” Cruxer said. He’d finished his own studies for the day and had been helping Kip search for books on the black cards. He sat back from the scroll he had unrolled in front of him.

“What?” Ferkudi asked.

All of them were seated around a table. Ferkudi and Daelos—who had only learned to read in the last year and still read slowly—were agonizing over their own studies nearly as much as Ben-hadad, who’d known how to read for years, but still had trouble with the words swimming around the page.

All paused from their work. It had turned out there was a lot of boring material that the Magisterium had banned, but every once in a while they found a gem.

Big Leo said, “You can’t not tell us. I’ve been reading about flowering plants for two hours. Flowering plants, Cruxer. Flowering. Plants.” Kip liked Big Leo a lot. His mother had been an acrobat and his father a strongman for a traveling circus. They’d been killed in the False Prism’s War; Ferkudi had said it was because Leo’s father didn’t know how to fight, despite his enormous strength. Big Leo had vowed to become the best fighter he could, to never be vulnerable. But other than the intensity that sometimes came out when he was drafting red or sub-red, he was good-humored and wry.

Cruxer said, “I sort of had this picture of the greens worship—” He looked around at them, suddenly embarrassed. “Sorry, Teia.”

“Shut up,” she said. “Go on.” The squad treated her like one of the boys most of the time, but neither the squad nor Teia was terribly consistent about when she wanted to not be treated like one of the boys.

He shook his head. “It sounds like fun, right? Orgies and wild drunkenness and dancing and, uh, temple girls—”

“It wasn’t only temple girls,” Teia said.

They looked at her.

“Don’t even,” she said.

Cruxer cleared his throat. “Uh, anyway. I just came across instructions for the planting ritual. It’s, uh, it’s instructions on how to prepare the infants for human sacrifice. It’s not just how to remove the heart from such a small space, but also how to have musical instruments play loudly at the point when the infant starts wailing as they’re cut open so that the worshippers don’t … don’t lose faith.”

The whole squad went silent for a moment. “Orholam curse them,” Big Leo said.

“I could handle that. I mean, I’d heard they passed babies through the flames, and I…” Cruxer shrugged. “It was just a story. But this … the worst part is it details how to choose the babies by lot, ‘due to the usual problem of there being many more infants offered by parents than the dozen needed.’ This wasn’t some evil priest ripping a babe out of the arms of some young mother. They did it willingly. Our ancestors. Our people. How could they?”

Quentin said, “If I may? There was a warrior-priest once named Darjan who they say saw and participated in all the worst of war: massacres and murders and torture and worse, and excelled at all of it. He was a leading pagan priest, but he became one of Lucidonius’s personal converts, and after a lifetime of war around seven of the nine kingdoms, he put out one of his eyes, moved to Tyrea and lived out his days as an ascetic, climbing daily to the top of—well, a statue or what is now Sundered Rock or—there are arguments, and—not important. He spent the last thirty years of his life praying dawn to dusk, and—more not important stuff. He once said, ‘For most of our lives, that Orholam is just should fill us with fear, but there are moments when that truth is the only thing that can fill us with peace.’”