the trees were aflame, but the flame was constant and never consumed the wood, which was ghostly ivory white aside from the blackened soot smudges above each flame hole. Gavin knew that the flames couldn’t be truly eternal, but after allegedly burning day and night for five hundred years, these atasifustas’ flames gave little indication of going out anytime soon. Perhaps the flames nearer the top were a little duller than those lower as the sap settled in the wood, but Gavin wouldn’t have bet on it.
When the wood wasn’t mature, it made incredible firewood. A bundle that a man could carry in his arms would warm a small hut all winter. No wonder it was extinct.
No torches were necessary in the great hall, of course, but outside the stained glass windows, each also a horseshoe arch, torches burned so that the colored glass would glow day or night, white or green or red.
Again, the colors, the shape itself, all were meaningful to the people who’d built this wonder, and Gavin had no idea what any of it meant. It gave him a sense of insignificance. He didn’t think anything he made would survive five hundred years after he was gone. Indeed, it was mostly luck that his brother Gavin hadn’t razed this very wonder when he’d destroyed this city.
As Gavin walked in, his eyes were pulled from the majesty of those atasifusta pillars to the men and women seated at the great table, every face turned toward him. He was distracted briefly as he stepped past twin shadows flanking the halls. His head snapped to the side, expecting an assassin. No, it was a Blackguard. One on either side of the doorway, and dozens more around the hall, all of them familiar to him. Blackguards? Here?
Oh, the ships of those to be Freed have come. Ironfist must have commanded all these Blackguards to come along.
His eyes returned to the table. There were at least two hundred drafters waiting for him. A small class, as the White had told him. What she hadn’t told him was who was in this class. Gavin knew all of them by face, and most of them by name. He recognized Izem Red and Izem Blue, Samila Sayeh, Maros Orlos, the discontiguous bichrome Usef Tep whom they called the Purple Bear, Deedee Falling Leaf, the Parian sisters Tala and Tayri, Javid Arash, Talon Gim, Eleleph Corzin, Bas the Simple, Dalos Temnos the Younger, Usem the Wild, Evi Grass, Flamehands, and Odess Carvingen. Everywhere he looked, heroes from the Prisms’ War, from both sides. These were some of the most talented drafters in the Seven Satrapies, and they represented every single one of the Seven Satrapies too, even the Ilytians were represented, albeit only by Flamehands, and Eleleph Corzin was Abornean.
Gavin stopped in his tracks, disbelieving. Every year, some drafters from the war were Freed, but Gavin hadn’t had this many of the greats since immediately after it, when so many had been pushed to the brink by the amount of power they’d handled in fighting.
These drafters had all been young during the war, and Gavin had known and dreaded that they’d start passing, but so many, all in one year?
“We had us a pact,” Usem the Wild said, answering Gavin’s obvious confusion. “Some of us who fought together. Said once the first of us had to go, we’d all go together. Wanted another year or two, myself, but better to go out on top, isn’t it?”
“Better to go out sane,” the Purple Bear growled.
“Better to go together,” Samila Sayeh said. “And stop making Deedee feel bad.”
Indeed, Deedee Falling Leaf did look worse than most of them. Her skin was tinged a permanent green, and the halo of her eyes was straining under the green that had overwhelmed her formerly blue irises. She smiled weakly. “Lord Prism, it’s an honor. I’ve been looking forward to this Freeing for a long time.” She curtsied, choosing to ignore, as most of the old warriors did, that she had been on the other side of the war than Gavin.
The rest of them followed her example, bowing or curtseying in the formal style of their homelands. Gavin bowed formally, meeting their eyes, careful that he too gave equal respect to drafters from each side.
Inside, as it always did, his heart broke. He wanted to tell those who’d fought beside him that it was him, that he wasn’t Gavin, that it had all been for the best. Instead, he sat with