Drafters of every stripe, even in that ancient, fractured time, had fought in their waves. Blues tried to draft domes over entire fields. Oranges had tried to manipulate the hordes and turn them to foreign lands. Reds and sub-reds had sprayed the skies with fire. And like candles thrown into the ocean the drafters were extinguished, one by one by one by the thousands.

And everywhere the locusts went, they devoured everything. Nothing green was left. They wiped out not only crops, but whole forests. Trees, denuded of their leaves, simply died in their wake. Men went mad during the assault, screaming, open mouths filled with locusts. Men went mad after, as starvation’s scythe swung. The insect armies left nothing good and green and growing. Nothing but hollow-cheeked children with huge eyes and hunger-swollen bellies, walking on stick legs until they could no longer stand. They curled, not even waving the flies from their eyes. And they died.

And that had been Karris’s life, since the war. Even with Gavin’s coming back, and marrying her, she couldn’t but think of those sixteen years of her life, the flower of her youth, lost, blighted, devoured. And an impotent rage smoldered there, an ever-burning fire that she hadn’t even known was still aflame.

This was her slow suicide. This was her drafting red, so much red she would die young, not precisely on purpose, but not precisely not.

The words themselves were a fist that punched through her stomach, ripped off a dozen layers of ill-fitting plate, and gave her a warm, clean robe in their place.

“Karris, you will be at your most formidable when you bear no sword and wear no armor,” the White said gently. “This is the power of the word.”

Karris couldn’t move. She held herself rigid. I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten. That promise held everything she’d ever hoped to hear, and from Orholam. It felt like someone had picked her soul up out of her body and shaken it gently, and all the dirt and grime and hatred and rage had simply sloughed off and fallen, and he dropped her back into her own shoes. Everything was the same, but her eyes were different, healing. She didn’t trust herself to speak.

Finally, she said, “You have been the mother to me that my mother could never be. You have been more. Thank you.” She knelt, and kissed the White’s hand.

The White held her cheek fondly, then patted her, signaling she should stand. “I must go now, my dear. I will pray for you, Karris, and I will pray that Orholam gives you your own green flash when the time is right.”

“I don’t want you to leave,” Karris said. “Not ever.”

The White smiled sadly. “Thank you, child. Do me a favor, will you?”

“Anything. Anything.”

“Be kind to Marissia. She has done excellent service in harder circumstances than you can know.”

The request, as reasonable as it was, reached nonetheless straight into that hot core where the rage fire had burned. For what was that red-haired beauty but a walking symbol of all Karris had lost in those sixteen years? She, a slave, had had what Karris with her wealth and position could not have. Not just a man—as if a man’s affections could be traded as one would trade a cow—but a position, a purpose, a place that she fit perfectly. ‘Blackguard’ had been a cloak that Karris had worn because she was excellent enough at the attendant skills that she couldn’t be denied it, but she hadn’t been Blackguard as Commander Ironfist was Blackguard. It was not a task to him, but an identity. Thus Karris had always been given the odd assignments, as the White’s fetch-and-carry girl, as Gavin’s partner in hunting wights, as liaison here and there. She’d always been different, and not just in the tone of her skin or background. Her Blackguard brothers had accepted her as you accept a sister with a limp: fiercely, because it was so obvious that she didn’t quite fit.

Marissia had always fit. Her staff was invisible, because they served perfectly. And so too had she served excellently at a myriad other duties that Karris was only seeing now. And of course, Gavin Guile’s longtime room slave was accorded treatment no other slave in the Seven Satrapies got. Not even Grinwoody was treated like Marissia. The younger, wilder Gavin fresh from the war had made sure of it.

A young lord Seaborn had gotten grabby and, when his advances were rebuffed, had blackened young Marissia’s eyes.

Gavin had melted his face and mounted his head over the Chromeria’s front gate—briefly. The White had seen it taken down within hours.

It was enough of an insult that the family had sworn vengeance. But through mysterious circumstances that most of the Blackguards later attributed to the Red, the Seaborns quickly found themselves without allies. The family had eventually sided with pirates attacking the Guiles and their retainers’ ships.

They’d all been hanged, and their lands seized and given to the Red’s friends, including, incidentally, some of the Seaborns’ old allies who’d abandoned them.

And Gavin showed not the least sorrow for it. He was a hard man, but that made him a safe friend, and a fearsome foe. When he came to your door and gave you the choice which to be, such stories came to mind.

The White said, “I know you envy her, though truth be told, she envies you more.”

“She envies me? But she’s a slave.” A slave shouldn’t dare to envy her owners.

“And yet a woman still.”

“More’s the pity.”

The White folded her hands in her lap, her very silence a reproach. When Karris met her gaze, chagrined, the White said, “The choice to give up bitterness is not easy, but it is simple: peace or poison. And don’t wait until you feel like making it. You never will.”

Karris took a deep breath and went back inside. The White followed her in.

“Gill has a package for you. It’s your inheritance. Please don’t open it until you hear of my passing.”

Karris swallowed. She opened the door and Gill handed her a package tied with red ribbon. It felt like nothing more than half a dozen pieces of paper. Seemed a small inheritance, but then, the White had treasured information above all, and who was to say what was written there. Thinking of that—“What am I supposed to do with the spies? I’ve spent all this time…”

“I’ve explained that in those papers. Maybe not to your full satisfaction, but as well as I can. Please don’t let those fall into enemy hands.”

“And burn them as soon as I’ve memorized them, which I should do instantly. Yes, I’m familiar,” Karris said. They shared a grin.

“One last thing,” the White said. “While you’re doing hard things. When the time comes, please, forgive me, too.”

“For what?”

“For failing you a thousand ways, as every mother does. Know that you are loved, Karris. And remember this: even a small woman, if she stands near a great light, casts a long shadow.”

“A small woman? You’re a giant,” Karris said through damp eyes.

The White grinned, and it wasn’t until she and her Blackguards had disappeared into the hall that Karris realized the White hadn’t meant herself; she’d meant Karris.

Chapter 78

Days passed. Weeks.

Gavin was fed and given watered wine, but the guards who tended him never said a word. Never answered a query. Avoided eye contact. When one did accidentally meet his eyes, Gavin saw the worst thing possible: pity.