What had he been thinking, anyway? Just that he wanted her out of his room? Just that he wanted to frighten her? Or had his rage been murderous all along?
Maybe intent didn’t matter. She was dead. It was all finished.
“It’s not your fault, Marissia. It’s mine. You have been a good servant, a good companion, a good friend. I want you to go now so you don’t get sucked down by the wreckage.”
Her eyebrows tented in dismay. “My lord, you are a good man. Please don’t—”
He snorted. “A good man would have freed you long ago. I was afraid of how you’d use your freedom, so I withheld it from you. I’ve a small and mean spirit. The master who fears the choices his people will make enough to take those choices away isn’t worth serving. You’ve served me well, despite my shortcomings. Thank you, Marissia. Please take these two cloaks down to my secret room. Then go. I may not come back up alone. I may not come back up at all, but someone else will. You oughtn’t be here when he does.”
She turned her hands up, helpless for once. “My lord,” she said plaintively.
He opened the closet and drafted the board for his feet—out of yellow luxin now, since he couldn’t do blue.
“Tell Kip I’m sorry. Tell Karris… No, I suppose you can’t. Fare thee well, Marissia.” He stepped into the closet and closed the door.
He could hear her weeping as soon as the door closed, though she was trying to hold it back.
Gavin slid open the floor, found the rope, and fitted the board onto it. In moments, he was whizzing downward into the darkness.
When he got to the bottom of the shaft, he groped around until he found the lux torches, then pulled one off the wall. He hadn’t been able to use them before because he hadn’t wanted to cast yellow light into any of his brother’s cells. Now that Dazen was in the yellow cell, it didn’t matter anymore.
He found the controls and pulled the levers to bring the yellow cell up. It would take about five minutes for the cell to lift and rotate into position. He’d built it that way so that his brother would always think that the place where the window sat was a weakness in the design, when in fact he’d hardened that spot above all others.
The wait gave him time to think about the spasm of creative genius he’d had in constructing this prison. He’d built the first, blue cell in a month, and then spent the better part of a year constructing all the other cells. He wondered how much different the world would be if he’d simply killed his brother and turned his attention immediately to fighting the Spectrum and changing the injustices he saw them committing everywhere. A waste, all for one man.
Never had the guts to let him go. Never had the guts to murder him in cold blood.
Slowly, slowly, the orb came into view, and then slowly settled. There was a slide to pull back to reveal the window, but Gavin found himself looking blankly at that slide, afraid to pull it open.
Ridiculous. He was here to die. He was here to let his brother out. This should be easy. It was all finished. His heart hammered protests in his chest, and he thought it was going to seize up. His throat constricted. He was sweating.
He pulled back the slide.
A man charged from the other side and swung a club straight at his face.
Gavin threw himself backward. His brother’s lux torch hit the yellow luxin window and shattered in a flash of released yellow brightwater. But the prisoner wasn’t finished. He didn’t laugh with cool resolve at scaring Gavin. Instead, he attacked with the fury of a rabid wolf, beating the lux torch against the window with great blows until the wood shaft splintered in his hands, broke.
“You motherfucker!” the prisoner shouted. “I am going to kill you and everyone you ever loved. I’m going to rip your fucking head off and sodomize you with it.”
Gavin stood, brushed himself off, and put his own lux torch into a bracket.
“You hear me, Gavin?” the prisoner shouted. “You think you’re so clever. Good! You know what? You are clever. You always wanted me to say you’re the smarter brother. You know what? You are. You know what else you are? You’re the weaker brother. You ever wonder why I’m father’s favorite? Look at this. This prison. Ingenious. And pathetic. I thought you made this prison to prove you were smarter than me, brother. I know better now. You made it because you can’t kill me. Because you’re afraid.
“That’s why father loves me. Oh, I’m a disappointment, too. He wishes his son were both smart and ruthless, fearless, but he had to choose one, and he chose me. And he chose right, you spineless, scrofulous sack of shit. Because I can hold a grudge. I can nurse it, feed it, grow it. And I will. You’re going to sit out there, worrying. Just like when you were a kid, huh? You still get the bad dreams, don’t you? You still wake up crying, don’t you? You still piss yourself, Gavin? Now you’ve got a reason to. I’m coming!” The prisoner was so close, his spit flecked the window.