the wine flowing freely, and the somber ceremonialism suddenly removed.
This green knew exactly what she was doing. Gavin was taller than the woman, so he could barely help but stare down her barely closed robe. Instead, he looked at her heart-shaped face, hazel eyes, the pupils barely haloed in green. She looked familiar.
“Over here,” he said, pointing next to him, between himself and Mistress Varidos. She stepped around the stone table to where he’d pointed, but closer in than necessary.
“Who are you?” he asked, his voice cool.
“My name’s Tisis,” she said, her smile showing off great dimples.
“Tisis what?”
“Oh,” she said, as if she didn’t have a thought in her head. “Tisis Malargos.”
“What happened, Tisis?” he asked, pretending not to recognize the name. Her father and uncle had been his friends—that was, his Dazen’s. They’d disappeared after the war. Killed by bandits or enslaved by pirates, most likely. She had the family look. No doubt she hated him. She’d seen that Kip had a chance of passing the test, so she’d sabotaged him. Gutsy. Foolish and infuriating, but gutsy.
“The supplicant cheated,” she said. “He threw out the rope. I put it back in his hand.”
“You’re not to touch the supplicant in any way during the testing. Is there something about that rule that’s unclear?”
“I didn’t touch him—Pardon me, High Luxlord Prism, I put the rope back in his hand without touching his skin. I was trying to preserve the integrity of the test.”
“Malargos,” Gavin said. “You’re Ruthgari, right?”
“Yes, Lord Prism.”
Gavin looked at her flatly. “When your own Blessed Satrap Rados crossed the Great River to fight the Blood Foresters who outnumbered him two to one, do you remember what he did?”
“He burned Rozanos Bridge behind his army,” she said.
“Was that cheating?”
“I—I don’t follow,” she said.
“He burned the bridge so his men knew they couldn’t flee. He gave them no way out. Every last man knew he had to win or die. It’s where we get the expression ‘burning your bridges behind you.’ ”
“But I saw him reaching for the rope,” she complained weakly. She swallowed, suddenly unnerved to have contradicted the Prism to his face.
“And you gave it back to him.”
“Of course.”
“So you would have built a new bridge behind Blessed Satrap Rados?”
“Of course not, that would be…”
“And doomed him. How long did you last before you pulled the rope?” Gavin asked.
She flushed and looked away. “Seventeen seconds.” She pulled her robe tighter around herself, finally covering up.
“And you destroyed a young man’s chance at passing.”
“We could retest—” she started.
“You know we can’t. Once supplicants know it’s not real, the Thresher doesn’t work. Everyone would say it was because he got special favor for being my nephew—”
“I didn’t mean—”
“And you know it!” Gavin said, only keeping his voice down with effort.
“It doesn’t matter what you meant,” Mistress Varidos hissed.
While the mistress was speaking, Gavin split some superviolet from the light of the torches. Just a little. The beauty of superviolet was its invisibility. Even though there were at least half a dozen people in this room who could see superviolet luxin if they tightened their eyes, Gavin was betting that none of them was tightening her eyes at this very moment. And even if someone was, what Gavin was about to do was so small and so quick that even someone looking might miss it. Magical sleight of hand. The superviolet settled into his fingertips.
“You broke the rules, Tisis,” the mistress said. “You botched your duties, and you may have destroyed a young man’s future.”
“But nobody passes!” the young woman protested. It had become a mark of pride just to hold on for a long time. Conspiracies, the dark, tight spaces, heights, spiders, snakes, rats—the Thresher hit all of the most common fears. Usually, believing that failure would mean the loss of everything and with their eyes dilated from fear, the applicant drafted any and all colors before they pulled the rope. It wasn’t perfect, of course, but it was the best test they had.
“Get out of my sight,” Gavin said.
She went, huffing, furious, crossing between Gavin and the mistress, just as Gavin had planned. He pulled a stone from his pocket, holding the short rod behind his wrist, slid the samite off the hole, flicked invisible superviolet out of his fingertips and used it to snatch the testing stone out of its grooves. He snapped the luxin back to his wrist, binding the testing stone to his forearm with bands of superviolet, and with the last of the superviolet in