they study it. Their experience of it is less nuanced than yours or mine. Now, quite honestly, we don’t know if what you and I see is the totality of what is actually there, or if some people from beyond the Great Desert might think we’re as blind as we think the men are who can’t tell this from this.”
“That’s weird.”
“I know. In class, the magisters usually have every boy come to the front and attempt the test, just because so many of the girls who can see the differences can’t believe that everyone else can’t see them too. It’s pretty humiliating. Actually, I think it’s worse for the girls who can’t see it either. The boys aren’t expected to pass. The girls who can’t see it feel awful.” She shook herself. “Tangent. The point to remember, even if you don’t believe it now, is that color doesn’t inhere in a thing. Things reflect or absorb colors from light. You think this cloth is green. It’s not. Really it’s a cloth that absorbs all colors except green.”
“This is us saving color theory for later?” Kip asked lightly.
She paused, then she saw he was teasing and she smiled. “No you don’t, I’m not going to get drawn into more tangents. The point is, light is primary. This cloth, in a dark room, is worthless to you. Obviously, you can take the religious significances pretty deep, but you and I are only going to talk about the physical, not the metaphysical. You can draft green light. There are only a couple of ways for you to do that. The best is to have green things around you. Especially if you have lots of them. Especially if you have lots of different hues and tones available.”
“So, like a forest.”
“Exactly. That’s why before the Unification, the green goddess Atirat was worshipped in Ruthgar and the Blood Forest more than anywhere else. Green drafters flocked to the forests and the Verdant Plains because they were more powerful there than anywhere else. In turn, those lands were dominated by the green virtues and the green vices, either simply because of the sheer amount of green being drafted there or because Atirat was real. Take your pick.”
“That I don’t understand.”
“We’ll worry about all that later. The second-best way to draft is to have spectacles. Like these.” She reached into her pack and pulled out a little cotton pouch. Loosening the drawstring, she withdrew a pair of green spectacles.
“You don’t draft green,” Kip said.
“No, I don’t,” Liv said, smiling.
“They’re for me?” Kip asked. Tingles shot down his spine.
Liv smiled broadly. “Usually there’s a little ceremony, but it amounts to a congratulations.”
Kip took the spectacles gingerly. They had perfectly round lenses set in a thin iron frame. He put them on his face. Liv stepped close and measured where the arms of the spectacles passed over his ears. Kip could smell her. Somehow, after a full day skimming across the entire sea and fighting pirates and then baking in the sun, she smelled wonderful. Of course, Kip hadn’t been this close to a woman very often—except his mother, usually covered with sweat or vomit on the nights he was unlucky and had to carry her home. Isa had smelled good too, but different than Liv.
Isa had barely crossed Kip’s mind in the last days. He’d thought about her, but there was something hollow there. He’d let himself daydream about kissing Isa someday, but maybe that had been more because she was there than that she was perfect for him. Or because she was there and Liv wasn’t, and Kip needed something to distract him from thinking about Liv.
And now here she was. She’d measured both sides, and she took his spectacles off and was carefully bending the arms to fit behind his ears.
“Hmm,” she said. “Your right ear’s higher than the left.”
“My ears are lopsided?” Kip said. As if I didn’t have enough to be self-conscious about.
“Don’t worry, mine are too! Really, most people’s are off a little bit.” She paused. “Just not quite so much.” She shook her head in disbelief.
“I’ve got freakish ears?”
Liv grinned wickedly. “Gotcha.”
“Orholam’s ba—Ahem, beard.” Kip scowled. Every time. Every stinkin’ time.
She smiled, self-satisfied, and gave the nose pieces a final bend, then propped the spectacles on his face. “There. You might have to play with them to make them more comfortable, but they aren’t really meant to be on your face all day long anyway.”
He looked around, and was not terribly surprised to