A quick grin flickered over the young man’s face. “It is a pretty great piece, huh?”
“Not bad for your first try,” Gavin said.
Aheyyad laughed, his whole demeanor changed. He was a light indeed. A gift to the world, beautiful and so burning with life.
“Are you ready, son?” Gavin asked.
“Gavin Guile,” the young man said. “My Lord Prism. You, sir, are a great man, and a great Prism. Thank you. I am ready.”
“Aheyyad Brightwater, Orholam gave you a gift,” Gavin began. The last name was the invention of the moment. In Paria, the only people given two names were great men and women, and sometimes their children. From the sudden tears welling in Aheyyad’s eyes and the deep breath he took, his chest swelling with pride, Gavin knew he’d said the perfect thing. “And you have stewarded well the gift he gave you. It is time to lay your burden down, Aheyyad Brightwater. You gave the full measure. Your service will not be forgotten, but your failures are hereby blotted out, forgotten, erased. Well done, true and faithful servant. You have fulfilled the Pact.”
“They say we take a Pact! We make an oath! And with that oath, they bind us, they bury us,” Lord Omnichrome said.
Liv was pushing carefully through the throng, moving toward the front. She swore she’d seen Kip led there, black spectacles bound to his head. But everyone else was paying rapt attention to the freak up front, so she couldn’t move too quickly. Instead, she pretended to listen, too, and moved slowly.
“Like this,” Lord Omnichrome said. He gestured to the rounded stone on which he stood. “This is all that’s left of what was once a great civilization. You have seen these relics scattered throughout this land. Statues of great men, broken by the pygmies who followed.” Liv’s ears perked up. Rekton had had a broken statue, out in an orange grove. No one had ever said anything about where it came from. She thought that was because no one knew.
“You think these statues are a mystery?” Lord Omnichrome asked. “They’re no mystery. You think it was a coincidence the Prisms’ War ended here, in Tyrea? You think the Guiles simply wandered the Seven Satrapies until their armies found each other? And it happened to be here? Let me tell you something you already know, something that all of you have believed but no one dared to say: the wrong Guile won the Prisms’ War. Dazen Guile was trying to change things, and they killed him for it. The Chromeria killed Dazen Guile. They killed him because they were worried he would change everything. They feared him, because Dazen Guile wanted to Free us.” There was some consternation in the crowd at that phrase. They all knew what day it was, and that the Prism was in Garriston, not even a league away, performing the Freeing this very night.
“You see?” Lord Omnichrome said. “You feel that uneasiness? Because the Chromeria has twisted our very language against us. Dazen wanted to Free us. Dazen knew that light cannot be chained.”
“Light cannot be chained,” some of the drafters echoed. It was an almost religious refrain.
“The Freeing, they call it. Lay your burdens down, the Prism says. I give you absolution and freedom, he says. Do you know what he gives us? Do you know?!”
“I give you absolution,” Gavin said, his heart in his throat as Aheyyad knelt at his feet, eyes up, right hand on Gavin’s thigh. “I give you freedom. Orholam bless you and take you to his arms.” He drew his knife and buried it in Aheyyad’s chest. Right in the heart. He withdrew the blade. A perfect thrust. But then, he’d had a lot of practice.
He didn’t look at the wound, didn’t watch the blood bloom on Aheyyad’s shirt. He held the boy’s eyes as the life went out of them. And when it did, Gavin said, “Please forgive me. Please forgive me.”
Gavin had sheathed the dagger, and he was scrubbing his hands on the blood rag he carried—though they were clean. He stopped.
“They murder you!” Lord Omnichrome shouted. “They stick a knife in you and watch you die. As you beg, they watch—and they say their god smiles on this! Tell me, is this any way to treat our elders? Under the Chromeria, we barely have elders. They’ve killed them all. Oh, except for the White. Except for Andross Guile and his wife. The rules don’t apply to them, but you and me, and our mothers and our fathers—we should be killed. They say this is Orholam’s will. They say it is the Pact. Like something we swore to as ignorant children makes their murder of our parents good and right. What insanity is this? A woman serves the Seven Satrapies for all her life, and then as a reward, she’s murdered? Is this freedom? This is what they call ‘Freeing’ her?”