The younger woman blushed and flipped over the tiles. They were in the correct order.

“Congratulations, boy,” Mistress Varidos said. “You can be some satrap’s gardener.”

“What?” Kip asked.

“It’s one use for excellent color matchers, and a step up for you, Tyrean.”

The door opened and Commander Ironfist stepped in. “What’s this?” he asked.

“We’ve just finished testing the supplicant,” Magister Arien said. “He’s a full-spectrum superchromat!”

“You’re wasting his time with tiles? I don’t care what colors he can see, I want to know what he can draft. Where’s that idiot tester I started with? I told him to put Kip through the Thresher.”

“You’re putting a raw supplicant through the Thresher?” Mistress Varidos asked.

“Wait, this wasn’t the Thresher?” Kip asked.

“Do you feel threshed?” Ironfist asked.

“You’re putting a raw supplicant through the Thresher?” the mistress asked again.

“He’s leaving in the morning. The Prism demands to know his capabilities before they go.”

“This is highly irregular,” the mistress said. “Who is this boy?”

“I’m right here,” Kip said, irritated.

“Regular or irregular is irrelevant,” Ironfist said. “Can you and this magister assist in the testing or not?”

“Me?” Magister Arien asked, alarmed. “I don’t think I—”

“We can do it—” the mistress began.

“Good, then—” Ironfist said.

“—but I demand to know who he is first.”

“I’m right here!” Kip said.

“Don’t you raise your voice to me, boy,” the mistress said, stabbing the air in front of his nose with one bony claw.

“Who are you, boy?” Luxlord Black asked quietly, even as the voices continued to rise.

“I think I’d really prefer not to help with the Thresh—” Arien was saying.

“You have no standing to make demands, Mistress—” Ironfist was saying to the old woman.

“I’m Kip Guile!” Kip shouted. “I’m Gavin Guile’s bastard, Kip.”

Silence.

Kip looked from one face to another. Luxlord Black merely looked shocked. Magister Arien looked stunned to the point of tears. Commander Ironfist looked peeved. Mistress Varidos looked oddly satisfied. “Ah,” she said. “Then we’ll start the Thresher immediately. Girl,” she ordered Arien, “go get the room ready. Summon the testers.” She looked at Kip. “So, maybe not a gardener after all.”

Go bend yourself over a fence, Kip said—but only to himself.

Chapter 38

Liv Danavis climbed the last steps to the top of the Chromeria, glancing around nervously. She was at the head of the short line of her classmates, carrying her chair awkwardly high so she didn’t catch it on the steep stairs. At first she thought the deck was empty, then she saw him. Her target. Her last chance.

The Prism was standing right at the edge of the building, leaning out, looking east, past the red tower, studying the ships in Sapphire Bay. Though Gavin Guile was literally twice Liv’s seventeen years, he cut a fine figure in the afternoon sun. A sharp V from broad shoulders to narrow waist, arm thick with muscle where the wind was blowing one sleeve up. His copper-colored hair streamed in the wind. He had that odd combination uncommon even among the high houses of the Seven Satrapies of red hair and—instead of the freckled skin that would mark him a Blood Forester—deeply tanned skin. Could it be true? Could this man be Kip’s father?

“Liv! Move!” Vena hissed.

Liv started. She’d stopped right at the top of the steps, blocking the rest of the class. She hurried forward, blushing. She knew it was bad when oblivious Vena noticed something. Perfect. Liv was going to hear about this. If not from Magister Goldthorn, certainly from a few of the less friendly girls in the class.

As the six girls took their places—there were no boys in the class—the Prism saw them. He pulled himself away from the edge of the tower and walked to the head of the class. As when they sat in their normal class—though mercifully the days of solid book learning were mostly past—Liv took the second row, her Poor joining her friend Vena’s Oblivious Artist and Arana’s Plain Merchant’s Daughter. The girls who somehow embodied beautiful, rich, connected, noble, preening, and gifted into only three bodies took the front row, as they always demanded. Magister Goldthorn, barely three years older than her disciples, did everything those girls wanted.

Gavin Guile came to stand in front of the class. “Hail, disciples,” he said. It was the traditional teachers’ greeting.

“Hail, Magister,” they said in unison, answering without thinking about whether they actually should address him by some other title. He was the Prism, after all.

“Good,” he said, giving a lopsided grin. Orholam, he was cute. “Today, I am only a magister. And you are only glims.”

“Gleams,” Liv corrected without thinking.

She shrank into her chair as Magister Goldthorn hissed and all the girls turned disbelieving stares at her. Correcting the Prism! He could say up was down and everyone should nod and smile. But he didn’t look upset. He just stared at Liv for a long moment with those unsettling prismatic eyes.

“Ah, yes,” he said. “Well, since you are advanced students, I suppose you have questions for me? What’s your name?”

“Me?” Liv asked. Of course he meant me, he’s looking right at me. “Um, Liv.”

“Umliv?”

She blushed harder. “Aliviana. Liv. Liv Danavis.” Had she added that last part hoping he would notice? Wouldn’t she have just said Liv otherwise? Was she trying ingratiate herself, just as her Ruthgari masters wanted?

“Well done,” Beautiful whispered from the front row. “Only took you three tries.”

“Related to General Danavis?”

Liv swallowed. “Yes, sir. He’s my father.” Committed now. Well done, Liv.

“He was a good man.” He said it as if he genuinely respected the man who’d been responsible for so many of his own men’s deaths.

“He was a rebel.” She couldn’t keep the bitterness out of her voice. Bitterness that her father had lost everything in the war, including her mother. Bitterness that she was always going to be different. Bitterness that her father never spoke of the False Prism’s War, never even tried to justify fighting for the wrong side.

“And not many of the rebels were good men, making your father even more remarkable. Do you have a question, Aliviana?”

All the students were supposed to have prepared questions, but Beautiful, Rich, and Connected in the front row usually dominated any time the class had with important drafters, so Liv hadn’t expected to get the chance to ask hers. She hesitated.

“I have a question,” Beautiful said. Her real name was Ana, and she leaned forward eagerly, crossing her arms under her breasts. It was reasonably warm on top of the Chromeria, but Ana had to be cold, considering how little of her body that dress covered. The combination of Ana’s frustratingly effortless natural beauty, short skirts, and deep cleavage was rarely lost on male magisters.