The Blinding Knife(243)

Gavin had no idea what he was talking about. Then he saw the ring on Corvan’s finger a moment before the man stepped over to the Third Eye and kissed her, picked her up, and spun her in a quick circle.

Gavin laughed. “No disaster?” he asked the Third Eye.

She smiled mischievously. “It was… a political necessity,” she said with mock gravity, teasing Corvan.

“A duty. A burden,” Corvan said gravely.

Gavin couldn’t believe he hadn’t seen it. Of course it probably had been a political necessity. Corvan the leader of the invaders; the Third Eye not quite the leader but the most respected among the island’s inhabitants. Both single, both desperately needing to bind their people together. It had been a duty. But sometimes fate is kind, and that which is your duty is also exactly what you were made for.

It also would have made things incredibly awkward if Gavin had bedded the woman his best friend ended up marrying. A disaster.

“Are you going to tell him?” the Third Eye asked.

“Tell him?”

“Men!” she said. “You went to the Spectrum and…”

“You know?” Gavin asked. “Oh, of course. Orholam, that’s unnerving. You haven’t told him?”

“I hate spoiling the future. Besides, you’re the one who paid the price for it. It’s only right you should get to tell him.”

“Tell me what?” Corvan asked.

“You’re a full satrap, High Lord Danavis,” Gavin said.

“I’m a—What? What?” Corvan said.

“Full satrap, full responsibilities, full privileges. You get to name your own Color. A small flotilla of ships carrying supplies and diplomats is already on its way here.”

“Three weeks out,” the Third Eye said, “and bringing along more than a few problems, along with their lifesaving goods and medicines.”

“You knew about this?” Corvan asked.

“You didn’t think I’d marry some mere washed-up general, do you?” the Third Eye asked.

Gavin could tell it was an inside joke. Corvan smiled fondly and shook his head. “A satrap? You said it would be honorary at best. That getting votes would be the work of future generations.”

“Meh.” Gavin shrugged. “They stabbed me in the back. I replied in kind. By the way, you voted for war.”

“Did I have good reason?”

“Mmm.”

“Color Prince?”

“None other.”

“You left me here, you know. Abandoned me. Do you know how hard it is to be married to a woman who knows everything?”

“Almost as hard as it is to be married to a man who exaggerates,” the Third Eye said.

They were deeply in love. Smitten. At their age. Sad.

“I hear you finally came to your senses,” Corvan said to Gavin.

“She told you about Karris?” Gavin asked.

“Orholam is kind,” Corvan said.

Orholam? I thought you barely believed in him. “Corvan, I’d love to spend the next six months here, but I need to speak with your wife. The war’s moving on, and I need to leave within two hours to make it back before I run out of light.”

They went to a tavern nearby and sat outside—“Absolute necessity for civilization,” Corvan had said when Gavin commented sardonically—and took seats in the back. Gavin filled them in on everything that had happened. Everything, from destroying the blue island to throwing that girl off the balcony. He was glad to see that the Third Eye hadn’t known all of it.

Then he asked her, “Can we save Ru?”

“The real question is if we can save the Seven Satrapies.”

“Can we save Ru?” he insisted.

“One time in a thousand,” she said. “Your father would have to think that he was the brilliant mind coming up with half a dozen strategies that you simply aren’t in a good place to feed to him.” She touched Gavin’s hand, and the yellow luxin eye tattooed into her forehead glowed. She took a deep breath, continued to hold his hand, and the glow brightened, brightened until it was blinding.

She threw Gavin’s hand away from her like it was a serpent. She stood abruptly and went out. Gavin stood, bewildered, but Corvan was faster. “Stay,” he said. “I’ll take care of this.”

He was gone for five minutes. Gavin tried some of the ale that a very nervous woman handed him. It was surprisingly good. If he hadn’t known that the Third Eye was the real thing, he would have been suspicious. The skeptic in him was stirring even now. This seemed perfectly orchestrated to paralyze or terrorize him.

The Third Eye came back in unsteadily. She avoided looking Gavin in the eye as she sat across from him.