pain. He pulled his shirt around and showed it to Corvan. The shirt was cut over his kidney, but his skin was unbroken. “A near thing,” he said.
Corvan whistled. “Orholam’s hand must be on you, my friend.”
Gavin grunted. From how his head felt, he wished Orholam’s hand were a little gentler. “Well, time to go play emperor, then,” he said. Together, they walked to the door of the cabin—and who had drafted cabins onto the barge?
Gavin paused. “Corvan, something was bothering me.”
“Yes?”
“All those years you spent in that little town. Seems like an awful coincidence that both you and Kip were in the same place.”
“Not a coincidence,” Corvan said soberly.
“You tracked him down. You were looking out for him. Watching him.” Gavin didn’t need Corvan to confirm it. He knew. “But you never got very close to him.”
“Tried not to, anyway. He’s a good boy. But he is who he is,” Corvan said. He meant, He is your brother’s son. Corvan looked down at his hands and lowered his voice, so that even if someone had been eavesdropping just outside the room, they couldn’t have made out the words. “I knew you might need me to kill him someday. I didn’t want to make it harder than it had to be.”
Neither said anything for a long moment.
The Danavis motto was Fealty to One. Corvan didn’t believe in Orholam, or the Chromeria, or any creed. He believed in Gavin. Sometimes it was frightening to have someone believe in you like that. For a second, Gavin considered telling Corvan his seventh and final purpose. Trusting him. But no. Safer this way. He’d tell him when the time came.
“Some world,” Corvan said finally.
“Some day,” Gavin said, looking out on the gray skies. Blah.
Corvan grunted. “At least it’s nice out,” he said, and went on his way.
Sometimes Corvan’s sarcasm was so deadpan.
Gavin shrugged and went around patting shoulders, checking on the wounded, asking about supplies and their course, mostly being seen and being seen to care and to be in charge. Karris watched him the whole time, but never said a word to him. There was another problem he’d have to address.
He checked in on Kip. The boy was curled up, asleep. As well he might be. Gavin was still sorting out the tales. According to the stories, Kip had drafted green, blue, red, and maybe yellow. At fifteen years of age. Gavin had hoped to buy them both some time by falsifying the testing stone; Kip’s road was going to be hard enough as it was. Too late now. Smart, brave, and now a polychrome, the boy had more than proven himself a Guile—Gavin would have to work twice as hard to keep the truth from him.
There was a lot of work to do.
Not least of which was facing his father and telling him his wife was dead, that his bastard grandson had killed a satrap, and trying to fend off a conversation about marrying some satrap’s daughter in order to patch things up—a conversation Gavin was going to lose.
He went to the side of the barge to draft a scull to head over to the other barge. He looked around for something blue to draft from. There was nothing. He looked up. There were no clouds. He was on a barge on the sea under a bright sky. But something was wrong.
He tried to draft blue. He was a Prism; he could split white light into anything.
But nothing happened.
A bolt of panic flashed through Gavin. He counted off his colors on his fingertips, thumb to forefinger first, down then up. Sub-red, red, orange, yellow, green, bl—Nothing. He stared at his offending middle finger as if this were its fault. There was no blue. He couldn’t draft it. He couldn’t even see it. It was starting. Not on the seventh year. Now. He’d never even known how a Prism knew when the end began. Now he knew. He was losing his colors. He didn’t have five years left; it was starting now. Gavin was dying.
Acknowledgments
Two years ago, I sent my Night Angel trilogy into the world with the typical triumph and terror. I’ve burned to be a novelist since I was thirteen. This was my shot, my chance to run the gauntlet of the masses. A hundred things can bury a debut, and just to push off the necessity of getting a real job, I needed my debut to do better than most. But dreams burn to the ground every day. Tragedies happen.