Liv caught sight of Kip, but she wasn’t pushing toward him anymore.
“You know it’s wrong. I know it’s wrong. They know it’s wrong. That’s why they speak about it in hushed tones and euphemisms. It’s not just. It’s not a Freeing, it’s a murder, let’s be clear about that. And then they don’t even have the decency to give your body back to your family. They use it in some dark ritual instead. Is that what our fathers served so long to get? Is that just? The Chromeria soils everything it touches. And do you think that all who are ‘Freed’ have volunteered?”
Lord Omnichrome laughed derisively.
As the Blackguards took Aheyyad’s body out of the room, careful not to spill any blood, there was a single knock on the door. One strike, followed by nothing. It took Gavin a moment to remember: Bas the Simple had never really understood knocking.
“Come in, Bas,” Gavin said. Children and idiots. This is who I kill? I bathe in the blood of innocents.
The man came in. He was actually quite handsome dressed in his finery. Unlike other simpletons Gavin had known, there was no sign of Bas’s difference in his facial features.
“I am sorry for coming out of turn, Lord Prism. I have a question, and I did not wish to interrupt my Freeing to ask it.”
That he was interrupting someone else’s Freeing to ask the question didn’t occur to him, of course.
“Please, ask,” Gavin said.
“I heard Evi Grass talking about Brightwater Wall. Evi is a green/yellow bichrome. She’s from the Blood Forest, but I don’t think she’s scary at all. My mother used to tell me that anyone with red hair is just as like to set you on fire as look at you, but Evi isn’t like that.”
Gavin knew Evi well. Not classically bright, she was incredibly intuitive but rarely trusted herself. At least she hadn’t years ago.
“Evi once saved me from a charging—”
“What did she say, Bas?” Gavin asked.
“She didn’t say anything, she just saved me. I guess she might have yelled. I couldn’t tell you for sure—”
“What did Evi say about Brightwater Wall?”
“I don’t like it when you interrupt, Lord Prism. It makes me nervous.”
Gavin stifled his impatience. Pushing harder would make Bas completely incapable of speech.
Bas saw that Gavin wasn’t going to push and then thought for a moment. Gavin could see him find the mental path once more. “Evi said the brightwater was drafted perfectly. She said she didn’t remember you being a superchromat. I can’t see the color differentiations myself, of course, but I don’t think she’d lie, and Gavin Guile wasn’t a superchromat. His brother Dazen was. And you’re taller than Gavin. He wore boots to make himself look taller, but Dazen was taller by his thirteenth birthday. I remember that day. It was sunny. My grandmother said that Orholam had always smiled on the Guiles. I was wearing my blue coat…”
Gavin wasn’t listening. He felt like the floor had dropped out from under his feet. He’d known this moment was coming. He’d expected it for sixteen years. He’d gone into his first meetings as Gavin expecting anyone, everyone, to point and scream, “Impostor! Counterfeit!” Others had figured it out, but never in a way he couldn’t contain. He couldn’t discredit Bas. The man was immune to political currents, and everyone knew it. And if asked, Bas would point out a hundred differences between Gavin and Dazen. By the time he was done speaking, the Gavin mask would be destroyed.
And yet he’d come alone. On this night, of all nights.
“So my question was… my question was, why are you lying, Dazen? Why are you pretending to be Gavin? Dazen is bad. He kills people. He killed the White Oaks. All of them. They say he went from room to room in their mansion, even killing the servants, and then he burned it all down to hide his crimes. The children were trapped in the basement. They found their little bodies in a pile. They were hugging each other. I went there. I saw them.” Bas stopped speaking, evidently consumed by that old image. With his perfect memory, it must have been vivid indeed. “I told those little charred bodies that I would kill Dazen Guile,” Bas said.
Gavin felt an old dread, like the sting of an old master’s lash. Bas was a green/blue/superviolet polychrome. Every drafter was changed over time by his colors. Only the wildness of green would make the formerly order-obsessed Bas skip his place in line. But the orderliness of blue was making him crazy to know why, to see how things fit together. “Bas, I’m going to tell you something I’ve only told one other person in the world. I’m going to answer your question. You deserve it.” He lowered his voice. “When I was sixteen years old, I had a… a vision. A waking dream. I was in front of a presence. I fell on my face. I knew he was holy, and I was afraid—”