Kip was too absorbed in what was happening on the floor to even begin to parse the scenes depicted above them in the stained glass. “So what do we do?” he asked.
“Mmm?” Ben-hadad asked.
“We listen,” Teia said. Her tone was short, withdrawn, unusual for her. “It’s the second week of the cycle, so I think the Blue himself will be speaking.”
“Oh no,” Ben-hadad said. “He’s the worst. I heard from one of the glims that last year Gavin Guile preached on the Blue day and that he was amazing. But what’s-his-name is awful.”
“Klytos Blue,” Kip said. He felt a weight of dread. His target.
“He tries to be scholarly because he thinks that’s how blues are supposed to be, but I’ve heard the real scholars mocking him.”
Kip didn’t care, though he hoped he could dislike the man he had sworn to destroy. It would be his first chance to see Klytos Blue in person. He found that his heart was pounding.
The great hall slowly filled, with a big rush of people coming in at the last minute before noon. Even as the people were still entering, a low choral chant rose from a pit hidden near the front. “What’s that?” Kip whispered.
“The sub-reds’ men’s choir,” Ben-hadad said, still staring up at the light pouring in through the clerestory.
“Shh,” Teia said, intent on the music. Cranky.
“Why don’t the blues do their own music?” Kip asked Ben-hadad.
“Don’t know. It’s just a special thing they do.” Ben-hadad grinned suddenly and pulled his eyes down from the ceiling. “Sub-reds are always passionate, of course, but the men are almost always sterile. Both of which make them quite popular with the ladies.”
“Musically talented doesn’t hurt either,” Teia said wistfully.
“What?” Kip asked Ben-hadad. “Why?”
Ben-hadad’s eyebrows shot up.
“Why Kip, hasn’t your father explained the Seventy Ways of a Man with a Maid to you?” Teia asked.
“That wasn’t what I meant. I was—?” Oh, she knew that. She was grinning as he blushed.
Seventy?
She relented and, speaking low, said, “No one knows why they’re sterile. It’s just part of their burden and their sacrifice to Orholam.”
“Shh!” a girl in the row in front of them said, turning around, irritated.
The choir began a new song, and this time many of the congregation joined in. Kip had no idea what they were saying. He could only guess that it was archaic Parian. It was beautiful, though, and he was glad that he didn’t understand it. He could soak in pure music.
Two great skylights lit up suddenly with more than the noonday sun. Kip guessed that two of the great mirrors on top of the other towers had been turned toward the great hall, which of course had an entire tower above it, so it couldn’t let in light from straight above. So the mirrors stood in to let Orholam’s light shine upon his people.
There was more singing, and then a procession of blue-robed men and women, some swinging censers full of smoking incense. Kip watched as Klytos Blue, dressed in a blue silk robe with a high starched collar and wearing a strange blue hat, walked within several paces of him. The man looked uncomfortable, barely enduring this.
Kip didn’t like him.
Orholam, Seventy Ways? Kip could only really imagine two.
Who could you ask about that sort of thing? They’d laugh at him like he was a bumpkin.
There was kneeling and prayers and readings and responses from five thousand throats. Kip moved his mouth and pretended to know what was going on. His mother had never had time for luxiats. She’d feared Orholam’s judgment, mostly saying that if you kept your head down, you might escape the wrath you deserved.
Then Klytos Blue came to the lectern and began speaking so softly that even the people in the front row probably couldn’t have heard a word. He was so awkwardly shy that Kip felt a stab of cruel compassion for the man. One of the luxiats approached him quietly and whispered to him.
Klytos raised his voice to a mumble: “… under eye of… this forty-ninth day…”
Kip saw the luxiat eyeing another luxiat, communicating with glances. The other luxiat got up and murmured to Klytos Blue, who spoke sharply back to the man, flushed, and then turned back to his papers.
“As I was saying,” Klytos shrilled, finally speaking loudly enough that even those in the back could hear him. He sneered, “It is part of the Chromeria’s work to bring the most recent work of scholars to blinkered corners of our world. Not long ago, it was considered heresy to speak of our world as if it were anything but a rolled-out parchment. People believed that the world had actual corners—luxiats most of all. Thanks to the blues and to the blue virtues, we now know this to be superstition and not in conflict with the scriptures which were speaking only metaphorically of the satrapies being the center. The center of Orholam’s will is a metaphorical statement, not a spatial one.”