Chapter 77

Her son. Here.

Karris felt like she was watching her own body move from hall to hall to lift. She passed the Blackguard station and couldn’t even identify the men on duty. Her chest was constricted; it was hard to breathe. She could only focus on one thing at a time. Step, step, woman, dammit. Now knock. Her son.

Dear Orholam, it was all coming down.

Knock, damn you.

She lifted a hand and knocked on the White’s door.

The oddest thing happened with that simple, irrevocable action: she felt relief. It was all coming down, and somehow, no matter what that cost, no matter what came next, the lies were finished.

The Blackguards at the door, Gill and Gavin Greyling, looked at each other over her head. “Lady Guile?” Gill asked. He opened the door for her.

“Thank you.” She walked in, back straight, features clear. She had been taught by the best; she wasn’t going to disgrace them now. Here at the end of all things, she would be brave, and stoic, and take her punishment like a lady and a Blackguard.

The White was in her wheeled chair, and she looked stronger than she had in years. She saw Karris and said, “Leave us.” Her attendants and secretaries and Blackguards left immediately; there was a steel in her voice that brooked no argument or delay.

When the room was empty, she studied Karris.

Karris moved to speak, but the White lifted a finger, silencing her, and studied her more.

Then, abruptly, the White said, “Look at this invention. One of the young Blackguard inductees, Ben-hadad, made it for me. At first I didn’t think he quite realized what he’d stumbled upon, but now I’m pretty certain he does.”

She put her hand down on the arm of her chair, and the barest tendril of blue luxin moved down the rice-paper-thin skin of her arm—and the chair turned, and then rolled out from behind her desk as if a ghost had turned and pushed it.

“What the h—? Your pardon, High Mistress,” Karris said. “I’ve never seen such a thing. How…?”

“Gears and pulleys, he told me. All made of luxin. His trick was to completely encapsulate some open luxin within a couple of the belts, he said. It being open, I can push it with Will alone. Because it’s encapsulated, it doesn’t evaporate. Were I younger, I’d be flipping this chair over right now to understand exactly what he’s done. It can’t be as simple as he’s said, but if it is, or if it’s even close …

“We each tend to think of our time as the end product of all that has come before, which is true, but we like to believe our time is therefore the pinnacle, rather than another pearl on the string. This invention may remake a thousand things, or it may remake only one or two, depending on how efficient it can be made, and over what distances and for how long it can operate, and across what color bands. I may be dying just before the most interesting time in history. I may miss out on a revolution by this much. It’s either intolerable, or very hopeful. I can’t decide which.”

“Come now,” Karris said, “you’re going to live forever.”

“I’ll be dead by Sun Day,” the White said.

Steel bands crushed Karris’s chest. “You mean Sun Day next, surely,” she said, meaning more than a year away.

“I said what I meant.” The way the White said it, it was obvious she meant the Sun Day three days away. “And not another word about that. I’ve been gifted with a long life and a certainty about the date of my passing. Debate about a foregone conclusion is a waste of the little time I have left.”

Karris swallowed the dozen contentions warring to get out of her throat. Not only, if she was honest with herself, to try to convince the White and herself that the White would be around for a long time yet, but also to keep her from bringing up worse things. Sitting in the judgment seat beneath an authority you can’t deny is no place of comfort.

“It is almost sunset,” the White said. “Push my chair to your balcony, would you? I could Will myself there now, I suppose, but I tire.”

So Karris pushed her down the hall to her and Gavin’s rooms. And out to the balcony. The Blackguards insisted on being in the room, at least, with their recent bad experiences with balconies and assassins.

Karris found a heavy cloak for herself and some blankets for the White.

“Take my hand, dear,” the White said.

They watched the sun set together. And in flares of pink and orange and every red, the sun went down to the sea, leaving flaming clouds as a promise of its return. And in the beauty of the sun and sea and clouds and the iron grip of a frail hand that had protected and guided her in ways her own mother never had, Karris found her cheeks damp with tears for all the woundedness in the world. And for her own.

“Look upon the city, and tell me what you see,” the White said.

With the sun so close to the horizon, the city was being swallowed in soft shadows, rising from the ground up. The gleaming domes of every possible color and metal and design shone bright against the whitewashed walls, and the Thousand Stars sparkled, beaming their rays to and fro in their districts. The seven towers of the Chromeria were stunning in this light, too, reaching like longing hands toward the heavens. “I see the most beautiful city in the world,” Karris said. “I see a treasure worth protecting.”

“The Thousand Stars, odd, aren’t they?”

Karris shrugged. They were wonders; their oddness was undeniable, but also unquestionable.

“A vast expense to build such towers, merely to bring drafters a few extra minutes of light each morning and night, don’t you think?”

They were, of course, used for many other things than that: ceremonial, celebratory, practical, but the White knew all that. She meant something else.

Karris turned a questioning glance to the White, but the old woman had turned away from the city to look over the sea as the disk of the sun disappeared.

“Will you tell me about the second time you saw the green flash?” she asked the White.

“The second?! Did I tell you about the first?” the White asked, still looking over the sea. But the sun was fully down; there would be no green flash tonight.

“Gavin told me about the first. Said you saw it at a party and were so excited you jumped—and broke your future husband’s nose as he leaned past you for his wineglass.”

The White’s face broke into a grin at the memory, but she didn’t turn from the sea. “You know, he snored after that. Nose didn’t heal right. I knew I couldn’t really complain about it, but I was young, and I did.” Her smile was tugged down by that old sin, but rebounded. “I miss him so much. He told me I should remarry when he was gone. He never wanted me to be lonely, but I couldn’t find a man who compared to him. Problem with being exceptional, as you know. Perhaps great men are content with marrying a woman who is not their equal, but we great women … Our equals are rare enough in the first place, and then most of those we do find have married twits.”

“We’re victims of our own refined tastes?” Karris asked.

“If Gavin Guile is a refined taste. He’s a rare one, that’s for sure.”

Karris couldn’t talk about Gavin now. Couldn’t begin to touch the well of sorrow that was beginning to turn to rage: how dare he leave her here, alone, to face all this? And the guilt that followed the rage: where was he? What was he suffering? He wouldn’t be away if he could help it, she knew.