Rask moved to speak, but Gavin wasn’t about to let him.
“But let’s pretend for a moment that by some chance you actually killed me without being killed in turn. I see what you’re doing here: razing a town so you can raise an army. Founding your own Chromeria. The question is, do you think you’re ready, right now, for war? Because if I go back now, armed only with words, the Spectrum might not believe me. But if you kill me, that will be a more elegant testimony than any I could muster. And do you really think your version of what happened is the only version that’s going to get out? You are a young king, aren’t you? And here you were talking about spies just moments ago.”
Silence stretched cool hands between them. Gavin had won as completely as he’d probably ever won a pure argument.
“The boy is my subject and a thief. He stays.” Garadul’s whole body was quivering with fury. He wasn’t calling Gavin’s bluff. He was simply refusing to lose.
Gavin hadn’t been bluffing. Nine times out of ten, he could probably kill every one of these soldiers and drafters—depending on how good the drafters were. And he’d probably emerge with nothing more than a singed eyebrow. Protecting the child during such a fight was another matter. Is it better that the guilty should perish, or that the innocent should live?
And not all of the Seven Satrapies would be quite as quick to forgive as he’d pretended.
“He’s no thief,” he said, looking to redirect the conversation from a pure I-win/you-lose bifurcation. “He’s got nothing but the clothes on his back. Whatever his mother may or may not have done, it’s nothing to do with him.”
“Easy enough to test, isn’t it?” Rask asked. “Search him.”
From the look on his face, apparently Kip was a thief. Unbelievable. Where was hiding whatever he’d stolen? Between rolls of fat?
“No! It’s the last thing she gave to me! You took everything else. You can’t have it! I’ll kill you first!” There was a wildness in the boy’s voice that Gavin recognized immediately, even before Kip’s irises were flooded with jade green. The boy was going to attack King Garadul, his Mirrormen, and his drafters. Very brave, but more stupid.
King Garadul’s drafters would see it too.
Gavin threw his left hand up in a quick arc, forming a wall of red, green, yellow, and blue luxin intertwined between Kip and King Garadul’s men. With his right hand, he drafted a blue cudgel and clubbed Kip over the back of the head. The boy crumpled. Only Karris, Gavin thought, could have done it faster.
A single red luxin fireball thrown by one of Garadul’s drafters hit the wall and sizzled as it plunged into Gavin’s shield, instantly extinguished.
Everyone else stood stunned. Gavin released the shield. A few of the Mirrormen were looking again at the corpses of their comrades, maybe thinking that their deaths were no fluke. Rask Garadul alone seemed unfazed. He dismounted, walked over to the unconscious boy, and searched him roughly.
Rask Garadul produced a slender rosewood case that had been tucked inside the back of Kip’s belt. He opened it a crack, shot a satisfied smile at Gavin, and tucked it in his own belt. He walked back to his horse and mounted.
“A thief and an attempted assassin. Thank you for your service in foiling the attack, Lord Prism.” King Garadul motioned one of his men toward Kip. “I think that tree should support a noose. Will you be staying for the execution, Gavin?”
So this is where it ends. This is the cost of my sins.
“There was no attempt on your life, King Garadul. We both know that. The boy didn’t even draft. I was merely disciplining him as a Chromeria student for considering drafting without permission. You have the box, and you’ve already murdered the supposed thief, his mother. A harsh punishment to be sure, but this is your satrapy—er, ‘kingdom.’ It’s obvious he knew nothing of it except that his mother gave it to him. Whatever claim you have to him pales in comparison to mine.”
“He’s my subject, and therefore mine to do with as I will.”
Only one card left. Gavin said, “You asked earlier why I came to this boiling latrine you call a country. Kip is the reason. My claim to him is greater than yours. He’s my bastard.”
Rask Garadul’s eyes went stony, and Gavin knew he had won. No man would publicly claim a dishonor if it weren’t true. He also knew from that look, before the man even spoke, that he was going to have to kill Rask Garadul. But not today.
“Your time is finished,” Rask Garadul said. “Yours and the Chromeria’s. You’re done. Light cannot be chained. Know this, Prism: We will take back what you’ve stolen. The horrors of your reign are almost at an end. And when it ends, I will be there. This I swear.”