should nod and smile. But he didn’t look upset. He just stared at Liv for a long moment with those unsettling prismatic eyes.
“Ah, yes,” he said. “Well, since you are advanced students, I suppose you have questions for me? What’s your name?”
“Me?” Liv asked. Of course he meant me, he’s looking right at me. “Um, Liv.”
“Umliv?”
She blushed harder. “Aliviana. Liv. Liv Danavis.” Had she added that last part hoping he would notice? Wouldn’t she have just said Liv otherwise? Was she trying ingratiate herself, just as her Ruthgari masters wanted?
“Well done,” Beautiful whispered from the front row. “Only took you three tries.”
“Related to General Danavis?”
Liv swallowed. “Yes, sir. He’s my father.” Committed now. Well done, Liv.
“He was a good man.” He said it as if he genuinely respected the man who’d been responsible for so many of his own men’s deaths.
“He was a rebel.” She couldn’t keep the bitterness out of her voice. Bitterness that her father had lost everything in the war, including her mother. Bitterness that she was always going to be different. Bitterness that her father never spoke of the False Prism’s War, never even tried to justify fighting for the wrong side.
“And not many of the rebels were good men, making your father even more remarkable. Do you have a question, Aliviana?”
All the students were supposed to have prepared questions, but Beautiful, Rich, and Connected in the front row usually dominated any time the class had with important drafters, so Liv hadn’t expected to get the chance to ask hers. She hesitated.
“I have a question,” Beautiful said. Her real name was Ana, and she leaned forward eagerly, crossing her arms under her breasts. It was reasonably warm on top of the Chromeria, but Ana had to be cold, considering how little of her body that dress covered. The combination of Ana’s frustratingly effortless natural beauty, short skirts, and deep cleavage was rarely lost on male magisters.
“Wait, I do have a question,” Liv said. She’d already brought up that she was Corvan Danavis’s daughter. The only way she could be more interesting to him—and make him suspect more that she was a spy—was by volunteering that she was from Rekton and knew Kip.
And the only way out was to go much, much further. Dear Orholam, please…
“Yes, Liv,” Gavin said. But he didn’t look at her. Face expressionless, he was staring hard at Ana. He glanced down at her propped-up cleavage then back to her eyes and shook his head just a fraction. Yes, I see. No, I’m not amused.
Ana blanched. Her eyes dropped, she sat up and shifted in her chair to pull her skirt down. Thank Orholam Liv was in the back row, because she couldn’t suppress her grin, despite everything.
“Liv?” Gavin asked, turning those prismatic eyes on her. Entrancing.
She cleared her throat. “I was wondering if you could talk to us about uses of yellow/superviolet bichromacy.”
“Why?” Gavin asked.
Liv froze. Her prayer was answered. A chance.
Magister Goldthorn interjected. “How about we talk about superviolet/blue bichromacy instead? It’s far more common. Three of my disciples are bichromes. Ana here is nearly a polychrome.”
Gavin ignored her.
Liv hadn’t thought this moment would ever come. She’d been trapped so long in this class, with these girls. In one more year, she’d be finished. In fact, she’d mastered enough drafting that she could take the final examination right now and pass easily. She hadn’t because there was nothing good waiting for her when she finished. A terrible position decoding official, non-secret communications for the Ruthgari noble who held her contract. She wouldn’t even be trusted with secret communications. No matter that she’d been a babe in arms during the war and felt no loyalty to the rebels, she was Tyrean. It was enough to curse her in the Chromeria’s eyes.
Each of the Seven Satrapies was responsible for the tuition of its own students. It was an investment every satrapy gladly made because drafters were so vital to every part of their economies, their armies, their construction, their communications, their agriculture. But Tyrea had nothing. The corrupt foreign governors of Garriston sent a pittance every year. Those students who came from Tyrea mostly had to pay their own way. The Danavises’ wealth had been stolen during the war, so Liv had needed to pledge her services to a Ruthgari patron just to stay at the Chromeria.
If Liv were from any other satrapy, her ambassador would have forced her patron to pay for bichrome training for her or surrender her contract. But there