Kip remembered her. She was the homely girl at the table. Big smile, overweight, birthmark across her face. “What are you going to do?” Kip asked.
“Her parents sold six of their fifteen cattle to pay for her passage to the Chromeria. She’s going home tomorrow. Because of you.”
“What? Why? That doesn’t make any sense. That’s not fair!”
“You lost,” Andross Guile said. “We’ll play again. Next time the stakes will be higher.”
Chapter 30
“And you,” the Third Eye said, turning to Karris, “The Wife. You’re not right either.”
“Excuse me?” Karris said.
Gavin felt like he’d been kicked in the stomach, so it was nice to see Karris equally stunned.
But the Third Eye looked genuinely confused. “What are you here for, Prism?”
“I have fifty thousand refugees in need of a home. If I put them anywhere else, they’ll either be held hostage to the politics of satrapies, or massacred outright by the Color Prince.”
“You plan to put them here?”
“You’re the Seer.”
“You’ll destroy the community we’ve built here,” she said.
“You built a community to serve Orholam. Serve him by saving his people.”
“You don’t even know what you’re destroying,” she said.
“Nor is it in me to care overmuch. When the emperor sends a ship to Paria, he doesn’t concern himself with the comfort of the rats in the hold. If you want to serve Orholam, start putting together food. ‘Faith without deeds is dust,’ is it not? Fifty thousand starving people are going to arrive in three days.”
The men surrounding Gavin and Karris bristled. He shouldn’t have said it, but the sun was up and he needed every minute of daylight to finish the harbor before the fleet arrived. They would most likely have run out of food today. If he didn’t clear the coral and make a safe port, the ships would run aground, the men and women and children die.
“Are you a man or a god, Gavin Guile?” the Third Eye asked.
“I’m busy,” Gavin said. “Join me or get out of the way, because I’m going to do what I will, and if you oppose me, I’ll do what I must.”
“I don’t think I like you very much, Gavin Guile.”
“In another time, I think you would. Now pardon me, but I’ve a harbor to build.”
“Dinner,” the Third Eye said. “After the sun has set, of course. Join me for dinner. You’ve given me much to think about, and I would like to return the favor. Unless dining with a rat is beneath you?” She lifted a challenging, cool eyebrow.
A very palpable hit. “I would be… delighted,” Gavin said.
He walked down the beach, drawing in light. He stripped off his tunic. It wasn’t so warm yet that it was necessary, but he wanted the Third Eye and her men to see the waves of color flooding through his skin as he walked away. Yellow first, making his body glow golden. He threw a spout of yellow up into the air, and had it formed into a skimmer by the time it hit the waves.
Karris stepped onto the skimmer with him. “Not sure why you always put yourself in a position where you have to turn your back on armed men,” she said.
“All the world is armed,” Gavin said. “I’ve got to have my back to half of it.”
She grunted. “Which means I walk backwards a lot.”
He looked over at her. She was smirking.
“You’re not mad at me?” he said. He thought he could have handled things better.
“You’re the Prism,” she said, making a gesture as she said “the Prism,” as if the words themselves sparkled. “How can I be mad at the Prism?”
He laughed. He spent his whole life with women, and he still didn’t understand them. “No, really,” he said.
She joined him on the oars. “I don’t know what your ultimate objective is with Tyrea’s refugees. I’m sure you have some endgame in mind. But I don’t care. You really are doing this to save people who right now don’t have anything to give you in return. People who are terribly inconvenient. People you could ignore. You’re not ignoring them. That’s—that’s a good thing. I don’t need to take that away from you.”
So there’s something in you that wants to take it away from me, though. “Thank you,” Gavin said. He meant it, but his heart ached, too.
One year. Maybe it’s a good thing I’ve only got one year left. I don’t think I could take this for another five.
They worked, and gradually the pain faded. Gavin drafted the great posts that would support the seawalls. There was more blasting to clear the sea floor and dig deep enough to give the posts a solid foundation, but it was mostly brute drafting. Layers of yellow for strength and green for flexibility. He would have loved to use blue, but he thought this would work.
By night, they’d finished all the posts. Tomorrow, the seawalls. The next day finishing touches and double-checking that everything was working the way he’d intended. Then he could get the hell out of here.
They rowed to shore after sunset. Gavin was thinking that after today’s labors, he should probably bathe before meeting for dinner with the Seer.
“Are you going to bed her?” Karris asked.
Gavin coughed. “What?”
“Is that a ‘yes,’ or a ‘yes if the opportunity presents itself’?”
Gavin flushed, but had no words.
Karris turned away first, though. The muscles in her jaw jumped, relaxed. “I’m sorry, Lord Prism. Inappropriate question. I apologize.”
Well, that takes that off the table.
I can’t bed you, but I sure as hell better not bed anyone else, huh? Perfect.
The Third Eye greeted him at the beach, her walk an aristeia of corporeal grace, sensuous, sinuous, suggestive without seeming practiced. Standing, she was striking. In motion, she was a woman for whom the world reveled that Orholam had given bodies to his creation, that he had given light that man might see beauty. She was smiling, lips full and red and inviting, eyes bright and large. She was made up exquisitely and wearing a white gown so thin that he could see the dark circles of her nipples through it.
Just. Fucking. Perfect.
Chapter 31
Kip went back to the barracks dismayed. He didn’t know what to do. If he told the Rejects that he was responsible for getting Tiziri sent home, they might turn on him, afraid that they would be next. And it was a rational fear, too.
What else could higher stakes next time mean? Kip had no money. All that could mean was that Andross would send home someone closer to Kip—or do something even worse.
The barracks was empty, though. Evidently the other students weren’t back from practicum yet. Kip walked toward his own pallet at the back, double-checking that no one else was present. Four down from his own, he threw open the chest at the foot of one of the empty beds. He dug under the blankets.
He heaved a deep sigh. The dagger was still there.
Covering it back up, he closed the box carefully, making sure nothing looked different than it had before. Then he went to bed.
He slept, dreamlessly for once. He woke amid excitement the next morning. Students were chattering with each other, making no attempt to be quiet for those who were still in bed—though Kip realized as he sat up that he was the only one still in bed.