“Ramia Corfu, Lord of the Air, come forward,” the Color Prince says. As the young man joins him, the Color Prince goes on. “It is my place as a leader of free men and women to recognize and reward excellence. In your ascension, you will bow the knee to no man and no woman, but to your prince alone. We establish order not so that we may have lords, we establish lords that we may have order. Ramia Corfu, do you pledge your magic, your sword, your will, and your obedience to me?”

“I so swear,” Ramia Corfu says. He gets down on one knee and touches the Color Prince’s foot.

“Then today I declare the restoration of the Old Order,” the Color Prince says. “It is not my wish to rule. It is only my wish to see a people who rule themselves. Free women. Free men. So what authority you have trusted to me, I turn back to you. The white light of the sun is all colors working in concert. Our ancestors, the nine kings of old, forgot this. They pitted themselves against each other, and in their weakness, a heresy came among them. A Prism shattered them. We shall not fail as they failed. I have been your Color Prince, a man only, wounded, made whole with many colors. But today I tell you I have a vision for all of us to be united in freedom under the light. The Prisms have split light, have split satrap from satrap, have split us into those who steal and those who are stolen from. We will unite all of us instead, and we will find strength together. Nine gods, nine kingdoms, and all peoples, united under one White King.” He holds up a multicolored arm, blue plates and green seams and luxin running beneath it all, constantly. “But a poor White King am I. One day, when we have taken back our kingdoms, I shall remake myself. On the day when you unite the satrapies, I, too, shall be made whole. My friends, will you serve—”

“Yes!” many shout.

“We will serve!”

But he quiets them, playing to the critical. “Will you serve not me, but this noble ideal?”

“We will!”

“Will you give your all to see the nine kingdoms come again?”

“We will!”

He goes on, but I stop listening. The rest of it is mere whipping the crowd up. Interesting turn there, making his own healing synonymous with ‘healing’ the Seven Satrapies under his banner. Healing with war. With tens of thousands listening, I can’t be the only one to find that darkly amusing. Better is when he tells them he’s looking for those who will serve mightily, that’s there’s ‘room at the top.’ The veiled appeal is ‘serve me, and I’ll make you powerful,’ but the very fact that there’s a top must means there’s a bottom. Could a statement be more transparently at odds with his talk of all being equal?

Regardless, if nothing else, the Color Prince has given himself a new title: he is now the White King. I seem to remember him swearing at some point that there would be no kings among us. Does no one remember?

But through it all, he’s left Ramia Corfu on his knees, and the young man is clearly uncomfortable and peeved about it.

When the cries of “The White King! The White King!” fade, the newly dubbed king steps back to Ramia Corfu. He produces a small ivory box and opens it. He pulls out a many-pointed crystal, holding it between thumb and forefinger. It spins, seemingly of its own volition, scintillating in a thousand shades of heaven.

The White King hands the crystal to Ramia. The young man stands. He doesn’t move at all for a long moment, but when he does, he looks around at the others on the platform. He looks at the soldiers nearby. He looks at the king.

Ramia Corfu’s eyes are sapphires lit from within, and crystals race across his skin, breaking as he moves, and reforming, renewing from within instantly.

“A king?” Ramia says. “What is a king before a god? You have given me the power over the luxin in your very body!” His entire body is sheathed suddenly in crystalline armor so thick a cannon shot would bounce off. He raises a razor-edged arm as the king’s men cry out in alarm.

“And you have given me an excellent demonstration,” the White King says.

The blue crystal carapace shatters at Ramia Corfu’s neck, and he crumples to the ground as if his strings have been cut. His head rolls free and as all his blue luxin armor blows apart into grit, the scent of chalk and blood fills the air.

Most of the crowd can’t see what decapitated him, but I can. It was the necklace the Color Prince gave us and commanded us to wear at all times. The so-called black luxin pendant has pierced Ramia’s neck front to back, tearing through the spine and emerging behind him, and the chain tightened until it cut all the way through his neck, popping his head off.

Or maybe it isn’t ‘so-called’ black luxin. Maybe it really is black luxin. Maybe I’ve been studying the wrong color all this time.

“Some of us, sadly, are not worthy of trust,” the White King says loudly. “And such traitors will be winnowed out mercilessly. However! There are in our ranks many more faithful who are true to our cause, and who will never betray us. Who will serve us all, high or low, to the best of her capabilities—which are great indeed.”

Oh no. How can I be so late to see it?

“Samila Sayeh, heroine of the old wars, but a true convert to our ways. Samila Sayeh, will you serve as Mot, our blue goddess?”

I stand unsteadily, feeling the weight of the black luxin crystal about my throat, heavy and corrosive. I bow my head, incapable of speech. Beside the new king, I can imagine Meena. She looks fierce; she looks triumphant.

She looks like she was planning this all along.

Chapter 54

“You haven’t been entirely honest with me,” Karris said once the secretaries and slaves had cleared out of the White’s rooms to give them privacy.

“I am entirely honest with Orholam alone, and him only when he forces it from me, I’m afraid,” the White said.

“None of that,” Karris said. “Don’t turn this religious. I’m not taking over your spy network because you’re roombound and you can’t go see them all yourself.”

“Oh?”

“At least that’s not the only reason,” Karris said.

The White’s wrinkles deepened as she smiled. She had lines aplenty, of course, and the smile lines were not so deep as the worry lines. “Push me to the window, dear.”

Scowling, Karris did so. One couldn’t push the woman’s chair across her apartments without being painfully aware of how thin and saggy her skin was, how delicate the bones. It was as if Death were gently announcing his impending arrival by these hints at how close to a skeleton this woman was, how near the end of her term of service on this earth.

“Hold. Are you deliberately reminding me how frail you are so I don’t yell at you?”

The White laughed. “Not everything is a trick, girl.”

Karris frowned deeper. “Oh. Well, sorry then.”

“But that was.”

The White’s grin was infectious, and Karris couldn’t help but grin along with her. She took back all her thoughts about Death’s arrival. This woman was going to live forever. Somehow Orea Pullawr was a little girl caught filching sweetmeats, smiling like, ‘Mommy, you can’t be mad at me, I’m too cute!’ and simultaneously the wisest old crone in all the world.

Karris couldn’t lose her. She sat down on the floor with her back to the blue luxin wall, looking up at the woman who had become hero and mother to her. “Please don’t leave me,” she said. She couldn’t help it.