Blood Forester heritage, but with that skin? Of course, he had grown up in a noble family, and a family breeding its sons for war. The perfect combination for a warrior drafter was black skin with blue eyes. Even caramel skin was far better than pale Blood Forester skin to give a warrior an extra fraction of a second before their opponents knew what color they were drafting. So it was possible. Noble families had certainly married off their daughters and sons for lesser reasons. Fearing that your children wouldn’t look like natives of their own land might move far down the list of concerns when pure survival was at stake.
“When I went downstairs,” Corvan continued, “I knew they’d come after me, so I covered every surface in the room with red luxin. I sealed the room completely and coated myself in the luxin as well. When the soldiers came in, I closed the door behind them and set it all afire. The conflagration devoured all the air in the room, and both the fire and the soldiers died.” So that was why the red luxin had had a crust rather than burning away cleanly. No air.
“And the tubes?” Karris had crashed through some tubes when she’d fallen.
“They led outside. So I could breathe.”
“So why didn’t you leave after you killed them?”
He stared hard at her. “Because if I didn’t wait until every last ember burned itself out, I’d be inviting the entire room to explode. As you might have noticed when you brought burning embers with you and made the entire room explode.”
Oh.
“Why is King Garadul gathering an army?” Karris said. “Why now?”
“To assert himself, I’d imagine. New king, wants to show he’s tough. Does it have to be more complicated? Rask Garadul was always a crazy little bastard.”
“If you really are Corvan Danavis, you just lied to me,” Karris said. A general of Corvan’s standing would have been delving into the possible strategies Rask might be pursuing. A general with Corvan’s record of success would have come up with a dozen already.
Corvan paused, and if anything, Karris thought he looked pleased. “So little Karris White Oak is all grown up,” Corvan said. “Joined the Blackguard, and now a Chromeria spy.”
“What are you talking about?” Karris said. She felt like she’d been hit in the stomach.
“The only question is, who wants to kill you, Karris? Not only are you more conspicuous in Tyrea than even I am, what with that fine hair and fair skin, but you of all people? They sent you? Here?”
“Why shouldn’t I be here? I came to research the southern desert reds—”
“Seriously, Karris. Don’t demean us both. At the very least, I’m an enemy of your enemy. You’re here for information. I’ll give it, but not if you lie to me. If you go unprepared against these people, you’ll die.”
He could have killed her in the church, Karris realized. Or he could have left her and let the fire do it. Corvan did have a sterling reputation, even among his enemies, and she needed to know what he knew. She surrendered, lifting her open hands. She winced. Ow, her left arm was killing her. “Why can’t I be here?” she asked.
“Do you have any idea what happened to all the men and women who fought for Dazen?” Corvan asked.
“They went home.”
“It’s always harder for the losers to go home. Dazen’s armies were a motley bunch. A lot of bad men, and some good ones who’d been wronged.”
“Like you,” Karris interjected sarcastically.
“This isn’t about me. Point is, a lot of us couldn’t go home. Some went to Green Haven; the Aborneans accepted a few small communities, and the Ilytians claimed to be willing to take anyone, but the only thing anyone got from them was a clipped ear.”
Karris shuddered. It was how the Ilytians marked slaves. They heated shears red-hot and cut the slave’s left ear nearly in half. The scar tissue kept the ear from ever fusing back together and made it easy to identify who was a slave.
“Some of us were more fortunate,” Corvan said. “Our armies raged back and forth across this land for a few months, and the people here had no reason to love either side. We wiped out whole villages. Those that survived had nothing but young children, old men, and a few women. Most of the towns reviled the soldiers, and where former soldiers tried to stay by force, Rask’s father, Satrap Perses Garadul, wiped them out. But a