“You’re the blood of my blood. Did you think you could deceive even me?”
“I didn’t think it would work this long, mother. I expected any of a hundred people to see through this farce, but what else can I do?”
“I understand why you’ve done what you’ve done,” she said. “I just had braced myself against your death, not your brother’s, and now to see you… It’s like having to choose which of my remaining sons I’d prefer to die.”
“No one’s asking that of you.”
“Just tell me this,” she said. “Is Gavin dead?”
“Yes,” he’d said. “I didn’t want… He gave me no… I’m sorry.”
Her eyes had streamed tears, but she ignored them. “What do you need, Dazen? I’ve lost both of your brothers; I swear to Orholam I won’t lose you.”
“Tell them I’m convalescing. Tell them the battle nearly killed me. When the time is right, tell them it changed me. But don’t make me look weak.”
And so she’d become his only true ally in the Chromeria. And after she left, he’d barred the door and opened the chest where his drugged brother lay, not a foot from where their mother had stood. He studied the unconscious figure minutely, and then himself in a mirror. Taking note of every difference, he set to work. His brother’s hair had a cowlick that stuck out whenever he cut it short; the new Gavin would have to wear his hair long so no one noticed this disparity. Gavin was a little shorter than Dazen, and had liked to wear boots with more heel; the new Gavin would wear flatter shoes. He began writing lists of his brother’s mannerisms, the way Gavin liked to pop his neck to the left and right. Or was it right and left? Damn it, Dazen didn’t even know how to pop his neck. Gavin liked to shave every day, even twice a day, to keep his face smooth; Dazen had shaved a few times a week, finding it too much bother. Gavin always wore a particular scent; Dazen had never bothered. He’d have to send a servant to fetch it. Gavin cared about his clothing and made sure he was at the forefront of every trend; Dazen didn’t even know how he did that. He’d need to look into it. Had Gavin plucked his eyebrows? Dear Orholam.
Other changes were harder to make. Dazen had a mole on the inside of one elbow. Grimacing, he sliced it off. It would become a little scar. No one would notice.
His mother helped, coming every day, handkerchief in hand for her silent tears, but back ramrod straight. She pointed out quirks Dazen never would have remembered, like the way his brother stood when he was thinking, and what foods Gavin loved and what he hated.
But the biggest reason for his success had been the real Gavin himself. Gavin had painted Dazen as a False Prism. He’d sworn that Dazen deceived his retainers with parlor tricks that would never convince anyone who wasn’t criminal or insane or who stood to benefit by standing with a False Prism. Everyone knew there was only ever one Prism every generation, so they’d believed the old Gavin implicitly. So from their first glance at Dazen’s prismatic eyes, they knew he was Gavin. Those who knew better, who knew that Dazen had never needed parlor tricks, who knew he was as much a Prism as Gavin—in other words, Dazen’s closest retainers and friends—had been scattered to the four winds after the Battle of Sundered Rock. He’d betrayed them, and if it was a betrayal for the greater good, it still kept him up nights to know that Ilytian pirates were selling his people for slaves in a hundred ports. He drew up his first list of seven great purposes, and he did what he could.
And through it all, his mother had saved him a dozen times. She deserved the truth.
“More,” he told her now. It was more of a surprise to him than to anyone that he had a son. He and his men had been living in caves and on the run, and even if he’d had the energy for entertaining some of the camp followers, he’d been heartsick over Karris’s engagement to Gavin. Dazen hadn’t slept with anyone during the war.
She stood and walked to the door, opened it to see that no one was eavesdropping, and returned. Quietly, she said, “So you’ve adopted your brother’s natural son. Why?”
Because you’re always bothering me about giving you a