“They were men like us: some were good, some evil, some believed nonsense. There were religious proscriptions that made no sense—like a deep suspicion that the use of spectacles was sinful, unnatural. But then some sects were happy to sacrifice their firstborn to bribe the gods to give them a fruitful harvest. Some venerated their color wights. Others drove them out. Others stoned them. The successful wights—for they claimed that such existed—would reign as demigods.”
“I don’t understand how this connects,” Kip said.
“Just because a man bases his entire life on nonsense doesn’t mean everything he believes is wrong.”
Kip raised his eyebrows. So…“The suspense is torture, sir.”
“Some pagans believed light splitting was a separate gift. Our teaching has been that light splitting is the sole gift of the Prism. It’s not holy writ, but it has been the teaching for hundreds of years.” Commander Ironfist waved the Shimmercloak card. “This is one card. It says, ‘If Lightsplitter…’ Which means light splitting is possible. Even if people denied what happened to you, these cards are true. They can’t be denied. This one card wouldn’t destroy the faith, but it would make every luxiat who’s ever spoken about light splitting look like a fool. It will be like when Pevarc proved once and for all that the world is round two hundred years ago. A few scholars had been whispering the same things for five hundred years before him, but no one thanked him for making fools of the luxiats. The navigational corrections that his better calculations allowed all came about years after he was lynched.”
“Lynched?” Kip asked, eyebrows climbing.
“For something else altogether—he proposed that light was an absence of darkness, rather than the inverse.” Seeing the befuddled look on Kip’s face, he said, “Don’t worry about that. Point is, light splitting is real. Some of us had always suspected as much, which is why the Blackguard has always recruited drafters like Adrasteia. Not just because she can see concealed weapons, but because she could see an assassin who is invisible.”
“But how does it work?” Kip asked. “I didn’t think such things were possible.”
“You’re a dim, Kip. You don’t have the background to understand—”
“And if I did, I’d only know wrong things. So you don’t have to unteach me all the things I think I know.”
A dip of the head and a momentary grin conceded the point. Ironfist took a breath. “Light is power. The power always goes somewhere. Sunlight hits a cherrywood floor. We know that the sunlight is full-spectrum, from sub-red through superviolet, but the floor reflects only reddish brown. Where does the rest of the light go? It’s absorbed. And years later, compare that wood floor with a section of the same floor that was covered with a rug, or a shadow. The sun-exposed part is bleached. The light very slowly changed the nature of the wood itself—broke it down. Just like light darkens a man’s skin or lightens a woman’s hair. Just like a color does to a drafter’s body. Prisms don’t break the halo despite drafting vast amounts of light because they’re able to release all the light that hits them. The rest of us are less efficient, more susceptible to the damage. The point is that the light hitting a surface can’t be changed unless you can put a lens over the sun. The energy is constant. It must be dealt with.
“If it works the way I’ve heard guessed at, a lightsplitter acts like a wedge in the stream of light, lengthening the long spectra and shortening the shorter, so that all the visible light hitting her is released above and below the visible spectrum. If she does it perfectly, she’ll glow bright as a torch in the superviolet and the sub-red. I’ve heard tales of lightsplitters burning up if there’s too much light to handle, say on a bright day—because they’re turning so much visible light into heat, they can burn out. These cloaks make what they do easier. Like lenses make it easier for a drafter to draft her color.”
Kip had seen so many wonders in the past months, he had no trouble believing it. “So you’re telling me there may be hordes of invisible people walking among us?”
“Not hordes. Splitting light well enough to be invisible is probably close to impossible. And there are only—if the legends are right, which is a big if—twelve of these cloaks, created for the original Order of the Broken Eye, if not before. Some have surely been lost or destroyed, and we now have two of them. So at most there are five more teams of assassins out there. Maybe only two or three. Maybe none.”
“At least we have these cloaks now.”
“Which is better than our enemies having them, but they’re probably useless to us. Having denied their existence, I don’t think the Chromeria has any method of testing drafters to find lightsplitters. Even if someone knew of such a thing, could they be convinced to share it when the very idea verges on heresy? The Atashian luxors suppressed something uncomfortably similar a hundred ten, maybe a hundred twenty years ago now.”
“And that’s one card,” Kip said.
“And you have a deck full. Breaker indeed.” Commander Ironfist started laughing quietly.
“What’s so funny?” Kip asked.
“I was just thinking that with how important these cards are and who can view them most clearly, you’ve probably just condemned a few of my least favorite people to spending the rest of their natural lives in a library somewhere, touching cards and taking notes.”
“You realize,” Kip said grumpily, “that that may well be my future you’re laughing about?”
“Doubtful,” a voice said behind Kip. “I imagine that you’ll be killed within the next year or live forever.”
Kip turned around, and there, in front of the most silent door in history stood Gavin Guile, his Gavin Guile smirk on his lips.
“But I wouldn’t bet against the boy who convinced Janus Borig to give him her life’s work.”
Kip couldn’t speak. Gavin’s presence filled the room.
“How is the old goat?” Gavin asked.
“Dead,” Kip said, his voice flat and lifeless. He hadn’t realized how much he’d cared for the woman until now.
A respectful pause. “I should have gathered as much from the cloaks. No evidence who sent them, I suppose?”
Kip had nothing to say. Obviously, his first instinct had been wrong.
“Don’t look at me, Lord Prism,” Commander Ironfist said. “I wasn’t there. I didn’t kill them. Kip did.”
Gavin shot a look at Kip. “You killed them? That’s a story I’ll want to hear. But later. Well done, son.”
Son. Son! With one word, Gavin was overturning months of Lord Andross Guile’s torment. Kip wanted to fall all to pieces. He wanted to shove all the cards and the knife into his father’s hands and blubber.
Gavin raised a finger. “First things first. Commander, your Blackguards sent Grinwoody packing. I intercepted him. He was on his way back to my father. He seemed to think that when he returns, you’ll be deprived of your position.”
“I think that faithless worm is being optimistic,” Ironfist said.
“I sent Karris to stall him, but if there’s anything you need to do, I suggest you do it now. I’ll intervene for you so far as I can, but you’re not under my purview. You’re certain he’s wrong, and you’ve done nothing, and you’re sure Carver Black will save you?”