Gavin didn’t follow. They were doomed because they didn’t trust each other?
“The Chromeria is a lightning-struck tree. Still standing, but dead on the inside. That’s why we’re going to lose, I think,” Ironfist said. “We have all the power in the world, but our faith is dead. If we don’t believe in what we’re doing for its own sake, we’re just doing it to maintain power. And I think some of us are too good to continue throwing lives into the trough simply to feed the beast.”
“Are we?” Gavin asked very quietly.
“When Ru falls, this will become a real war. And once it’s a real war, and not simply an uprising of a few disgruntled madmen, then the questions begin. At some point, every one of us will have to ask if we’re on the right side. If we’ve already decided our own side is wrong—that there’s no Orholam, that the Chromeria is simply making the best of a bad situation—then where do men looking for certainty turn?”
“Maybe men shouldn’t look for certainty,” Gavin said.
“Should. Shouldn’t. Doesn’t matter. They do.”
He was right. Of course he was.
Gavin quirked an eyebrow. “Why Ironfist, are you asking me to come back to religion?”
Ironfist met his levity with a flat stare. “My own faith is dead, Lord Prism. Not least because of you. I’d not ask you to embrace a lie, but I want my people to have a reason to die. I won’t lie either. I can’t tell them what we do matters. If that’s beside the point, if you want us to die because it’s our duty to die, I can accept that. That can be enough for me. That will be enough for the Blackguard. It won’t be enough for everyone else.”
“Does the Blackguard love me so much?” Gavin asked grimly.
Ironfist looked startled Gavin should ask. “We don’t die for you. We die for each other, for our brothers and sisters. We die for the Blackguard.” Then he grinned. “Looks the same from your side though, I suppose.” Ironfist stood, looked at Karris, swallowed, then turned back to Gavin. “You should give her a ring, you know. Especially if you’re going off to your death.”
Of course. And he should make sure she was provided for, should he die. Damn.
Ironfist left, and Gavin followed him. Gavin got off at the level of his father’s and mother’s apartments, nodding amiably to the discipulae who passed him in the lift, on their way to do chores. He went into his mother’s apartments.
He’d thought he’d accepted his mother’s death, but going into her room and smelling the familiar, comforting smells of the place made him pause, barely inside the door. There was the wood polish, the waft of lavender, the stargazer lilies he’d always hated, a bit of orange, and spices he could never place. All that was missing was the smell of her perfume. A lump grew in his throat, threatening to choke him, making it hard to breathe.
“Oh, mother, I finally did it. I finally did the right thing with Karris. I wish you could see it.”
“My lord?” a timorous voice intruded. “I’m so sorry, my lord. Should I withdraw?”
It was his mother’s room slave. Gavin didn’t even know the young girl’s name. Different girl than last time. No wonder the room was immaculately clean, without even dust on the mantelpiece.
“Caleen,” Gavin said. “You’ve done well. It’s beautiful. It reminds me powerfully of her.”
“I’m so sorry, my lord.” She buried her face.
Gavin shook his head. The girl was young. His mother had always trained her help exquisitely, and had chosen only intelligent slaves, preferring that over physical beauty, unlike other leading families. But there are some situations you don’t get around to training a fourteen-year-old girl for.
“Did my mother leave no instructions for you?” Gavin asked. Usually, like himself, his mother had kept at least half a dozen slaves in her household. She’d trimmed back in recent years, mostly manumitting those who’d provided long years of good service. Now Gavin knew why.
“She told me…” The girl blanched, then bulled forward. “She told me she was giving orders for my manumission to Grinwoody, seeing as how a slave can’t deliver her own manumission to the records keepers. I hain’t—your pardon, my lord—I haven’t heard anything since then.”
“You old bastard,” Gavin whispered to himself. His father was still denying that his wife was dead, so he’d simply ignored the girl. The girl had been stuck here for four months, with nothing to do but dust the room and get fresh flowers and hope. “Did she leave you a letter?” Gavin asked.
“Yes, my lord,” the girl said, her voice was barely a whisper, obviously picking up on Gavin’s pique. “Believe Grinwoody put it in the lord’s chamber.”
“Of course he did.” And they wouldn’t appreciate Gavin breaking into his room.
But you know what? To the everlasting night with them. Gavin was more than half convinced that his father had orchestrated Karris’s beating. The attempted murder of Kip seemed too heavy-handed, but at this point he wasn’t going to excuse his father preemptively for anything.
Look to what you love indeed.
Gavin headed across the hall, drafted red luxin into the lock, jimmied it until he felt tumblers loosen, and then injected yellow luxin, steeled his will, and twisted. The lock clicked open.
He might be half dead, but he wasn’t neutered yet, thanks. He set a light to burning, casting a pale yellow glare through the Red’s rooms. He went to the desk, rifled through the papers. Andross Guile was upstairs, and a council of war would surely take hours, even for a man as ignorant of war as his own father. Andross seemed to think that being brilliant meant being good at everything, and his generals would have to fill in the gaps in his knowledge carefully and slowly, lest they infuriate the old man. Considering how ignorant they themselves were, it ought to take a while.
It was almost comical how much excellent intelligence his father had left in the open. Gavin wished he’d come in merely to poke around. Andross was simply here so often that he clearly never thought about the danger of someone coming into his rooms while he was gone. He was never gone.
Gavin found the note about the slave girl quickly. His mother’s handwriting was on the outside, a beautiful looping script that she hadn’t lost even as age advanced on her.
We drafters are robbed of life before age can rob us of our faculties. Gavin didn’t know if it was the greatest cruelty of all, or a small kindness. He glanced at the letter. It was as the girl had said, a simple, straightforward manumission, and a grant of four hundred danars. The girl would leave slavery with more in her hand than she would have earned at a servant’s wages in two years. It was a fortune for a young girl. Enough for a dowry in those rural areas of the few satrapies where such things were still customary. The only unusual bit was the instruction that the girl be given an armed guard from the Cloven Shield mercenary company to take her home—Felia Guile had doubtless thought through the fact that sending a very young and attractive girl home with a fortune in hand would put her in grave peril. Of course, sending a guard from the Cloven Shield would cost more than two hundred danars, but they had a sterling reputation.
Like many socially conscious women, Felia Guile had always had deep reservations about slavery. Are we all not brothers and sisters under the light? she would ask. He could almost hear her voice as she talked through it: From Orholam’s perch, what difference is a man’s garment? And like so many others, she’d still had slaves. Impossible to think of a world without them. Men wouldn’t volunteer for the galleys, or the silver mines, or the sewers, would they? And what does one do with the widows and orphans when a country is conquered? Simply let them die at the first winter? Leave them as prey for slavers with less scruples than the civilized satrapies had?