“So Delara Orange has been successful in persuading the rest of the Spectrum to go to war? Or am I to be on watch for the elite Ruic troops?”

“Both,” the boy said. Even Liv could tell he was lying.

“You are a young man,” the prince said. “And I think you’re a hair’s breadth from being stripped of your position by those frightened old harridans.”

They walked through a narrow alley between two tents, stepping over the guy wires. As they emerged, the corregidor’s guards found themselves looking into the barrels of twenty loaded muskets and at half a dozen drafters with arms loaded with luxin.

“Disarm them, and keep them thirty paces away, but don’t harm them,” the Color Prince said. “Unless they do something stupid, in which case, shoot for the groin.”

With the men thus detained, the Color Prince kept walking, as if nothing had happened. “Both of those men report to the mothers, and I think we can agree we don’t need their interference, can’t we, Corregidor?”

“How do you know that? Or are you just guessing?” the corregidor asked, trying to keep his voice level.

“Can’t we?”

The corregidor choked down his fear. “Very well. I’m—I’m sure we can settle this together.”

“Mmm. I believe in choices, Kata. We are free men, making free choices, and bearing the consequences. So here are yours: First, you can surrender. I will give you less than generous terms. You will free your slaves, the city will pay a million danars, and you will give us twenty thousand ephahs of barley, sixty wagons laden with fruit, ten thousand barrels of wine, and twenty thousand barrels of olives. You will give us five thousand swords or spears and a thousand working muskets, with five hundred barrels of gunpowder and a hundred barrels of shot or eight hundred bars of lead. You will send with us fifty smiths and fifty wheelwrights and half a dozen chemists, and you will pay them double wages while they’re gone. You will empty your city of brothels—the prostitutes can make their own choice on if they travel with us, but you will not allow any of them within your city for one year so as to encourage them to choose wisely. You will send all of your drafters to speak with me. Same with the slaves. They will be allowed to choose whether to join us or to go elsewhere, but they won’t be allowed to return to your city until the war is completed, on pain of death. You will arrange a parade through the city, welcoming us with trumpets and hailing us for giving you freedom. And before we come into the city, you will send all your luxiats out to this camp.”

The details were washing over the young man, and he grabbed on to the last like a raft in a maelstrom. “What is to happen to them?”

“We’ll kill them all,” the Color Prince said bluntly. Then he continued as if the man hadn’t interrupted. “Then, in every church, you will allow to be established new forms of worship: one for each of the old gods. You will not be required to maintain or attend services at any of these, however, and our new priests will abide by your laws so long as you don’t interfere with their worship.

“In return, you and the city’s mothers will be allowed to retain your lives, your estates, and your positions, unless you betray me. The city will be unmolested; the countryside will go unplundered; no men or women will be pressed into service. I expect you to communicate this offer to the city’s mothers. I’ve put it in writing already.

“All of it is true, except one part. I don’t trust the city mothers. I know what kind of women they are. I have reports on all of them. They aren’t young, and smart, and flexible like you are. When I leave this city, you will rule alone. I am not a hard master with my friends. I hope you can be such.”

The corregidor was pale. “And if we refuse?”

They had arrived at the place where Liv now realized the Color Prince had been heading all along. He gestured to a large group of wretched people behind them, guarded by soldiers. It was the five hundred women and children captured from the small town of Ergion. “These unfortunates were taken from the last city that opposed us. They will be herded in front of our army for the first attack. When your ballistae and cannons and catapults start, you will massacre them—or do you think perhaps the city mothers will instruct you not to fire? And there will be attacks within your city. You know I have people inside. You don’t know how many. I know about your secret exits along the river and below the Great Abbey.”

The corregidor’s eyes widened for a fraction of a second. Either surprise that the prince knew about this or surprise that there was another exit he hadn’t known about.

“You remember the stories about the massacres at Ru, which led to Idoss surrendering during the last war? I will simply do the same, in reverse. Idoss will be a beacon to the world, and you get to choose which kind—a beacon of my munificence, showing how kind I can be to those I conquer, or a beacon of my malfeasance, showing how ferocious I am with those who oppose me. The children in your city will be killed—too many mouths to feed, too likely to get sick or bear grudges when they’re grown. The women will be killed or put to service if they’re pretty or useful enough. The only men and women who will survive unmolested will be your slaves. And they will be free to keep any of their masters’ goods they wish. My people in the city are already letting them know this now. How much do you trust your slaves, Corregidor Kata? If by some chance you do hold out for a week, two weeks, a month, do you think the slaves might join us? Or have you treated them so well that their loyalty is unshakable?

“You, I will do my best to capture alive. I will send your genitals to your father. I will cut off your arms and legs and dress you in purple and put a crown on your head. I may blind you. I haven’t decided yet what makes a better example. Tongue, no tongue? It will probably depend on your attitude. Regardless, I’ll take my time. You will live a long time, and in great pain, I promise you.”

The corregidor looked positively sick. “You’re insane,” he said. “You talk one second like you’re some luxiat and you have all these principles, and the next you’re talking about murdering a hundred thousand people.”

The same thought had struck Liv before, but now she had another one. There were only a few people in the entire world who were absolutely overawing in their abilities—and she’d met the best of them: Gavin Guile and now Koios White Oak. Those two, and perhaps a few others like the White were far above Liv. But no one else was. She could have done better here than this boy was doing—and he was two or three years her elder and had all the benefits of being raised as a satrap’s son. The reason the Color Prince was treating her as a capable adult wasn’t because he was flattering her—though he was, and they both knew it—it was because she deserved to be treated as such. It wasn’t that she was so incredibly gifted; it was that the people she had always assumed were incredibly gifted were in fact no more gifted than she was. She was their peer. And she was young yet. In time, she would be superior to most. Why hadn’t the Chromeria ever treated her this way?

Why hadn’t her own father?

The Color Prince said, “We all make choices, and then we bear the consequences for those. Unfortunately, right now, you get to make the choices for those people and for me. They’re your victims, not mine. When I’m in charge, they’ll be free to choose for themselves. There’s no way to overturn the Chromeria without people like you forcing massacres. If there were, I’d take it in a heartbeat. This is the only way I can bring the change needed, so this is how I will do it.”