He grinned back. “You get one free for being my daughter.”
“What’s he doing here? The Prism’s men burned this city, killed tens of thousands. He’s showed no interest in Garriston since then, so what does he want now? Like it didn’t matter when no one wanted it, but now that someone does, he can’t lose it?”
“There weren’t two Guile brothers, there were three. The youngest one, Sevastian, was murdered by a blue wight when Gavin was about thirteen. Gavin’s first purpose is to protect the innocent from color wights. Or, if you want to look at it uncharitably, to kill color wights wherever he finds them. King Garadul is using color wights, or at least the Prism believes he is. So he must be stopped.”
“A blue wight? That doesn’t make sense. Blues are rational, aren’t they?”
“Liv, people talk about breaking the halo like you go instantly mad, like it’s as clean a separation as between living and dying. It’s not. Some color wights hold on to something like sanity for weeks or even months. Some are fine during the night, but in light, they’re fully in the grip of their color. The madness is different every time. A blue can go into a murderous rage; a red can seem calm and philosophical. It’s why they’re so dangerous. Now, are you going to help me?”
“Fine, what can I do?” she asked.
“Do you know how to make luxin grenadoes?”
“What? No.”
“What are they teaching you dims at the Chromeria these days?”
“Hey!”
Corvan smiled. “You have your specs?”
“Of course,” Liv said.
“Good, I could use a yellow.”
“I’m not a very good yellow. I mean, I can’t make a solid brightwater.”
“That’s not what I need,” Corvan said. “Do you know what happens when you mix red and liquid yellow, seal it airtight in a blue shell, and then shatter it against something?”
“Uh, something good?” Liv asked.
“Boom!” Corvan said. “You could use superviolet for the shell, too, but it makes throwers nervous.”
Picking up an explosive when you couldn’t see whether the shell was intact? Liv could see how that might make someone nervous.
Corvan tossed her a blue luxin ball. She caught it and was surprised that it rattled. She looked closer. The ball had round shot inside it, like small musket balls. For some reason, it stunned her. “These, these…”
“Those are what make grenadoes kill. That’s what we’re doing, Aliviana. We’re killing people. Right here, right now. We’re using Orholam’s gift to kill Orholam’s children. Most of whom are fools who could be our friends at any other time. It’s a hard world. You want me to lie about it? You want to be protected after all?”
Liv felt the blood drain out of her. Her father’s words were a sponge, sucking up her illusions, blotting up the thin joy she’d gotten from being in his presence again, in trusting someone to make her decisions for her. Something snapped.
“Father, I can’t do this,” she said. “I can’t kill Tyreans, not for the Chromeria, not just because you say so.”
For a moment, she saw keen sorrow in her father’s eyes. He looked—for the first time she’d ever seen in her whole life—old, haggard. “Liv.” He paused. “At some point, you have to decide not merely what you’re going to believe, but how you’re going to believe. Are you going to believe in people, or in ideas, or in Orholam? With your heart, or with your head? Will you believe what’s in front of you, or in what you think you know? There are some things you think you know that are lies. I can’t tell you what those are, and I’m sorry for that.”
It seemed to Liv that this was his long way of explaining Fealty to One.
“What did you choose, father? Ideas or men?” Liv asked. Though she had just seen him praying, she knew her father wasn’t very religious. That part of him had died with her mother. His prayer had likely been something along the lines of: “Well done, sir. This is a beautiful sunset.” Her father rejected the idea that Orholam actually cared about individual men or women, or nations, for that matter.
She saw him blink. His mouth opened, closed rapidly. Set in a line, eyes pained. “I can’t say,” he said finally.
Can’t say because you never actually made the choice? How can you lecture me, then? But that didn’t make sense. Her father was the best man she knew.
No, that wasn’t it. Her father had lived his life because he believed in certain ideas. That was what had led him to fight against Gavin Guile, to give up everything in that fight. He’d been a man of ideals. Those ideals were what had made him stay away from the Chromeria himself, what had made him oppose his daughter going to the Chromeria. He’d been afraid that she would be corrupted by the Chromeria’s lack of ideals.