But there was no answer. Doesn’t care, can’t fix, or doesn’t exist. No matter what, things were not as Liv had believed. It was like having a nice warm cloak of comforting suppositions ripped off her shoulders.
So be it. This was what it was to be an adult, to be a strong woman. Her father had raised her to believe certain things, but her father wasn’t omniscient. He could be wrong. And if he was, Liv wasn’t going to be a moral coward. She would face the world as it was.
She’d once heard an old philosopher quoted in one of her classes: ‘The truth is so dear to me that if Orholam stood on one side and truth on the other, I would turn my back on my creator himself.’
So be it. Fealty to One, that was the Danavis motto. Liv’s fealty would be to the truth.
Simply considering that was scary, terrifying as she thought about the decisions she made all the time based on what was right—which was based on what was holy—which was based on what the Chromeria taught was holy—which was based on what the Chromeria believed about Orholam. Taking out that linchpin?
But at the same time, it was tremendously freeing. She would be strong. This was hard, but she would do it. She wouldn’t shrink from hard truths or embrace comforting delusions. She would be a warrior for truth.
She finished bathing, the impulse to tears forgotten, steel in her spine. And then she ate what the old woman brought her, though it was only a thin broth dotted with a few potatoes.
“It isn’t up to my normal standards, but well, war, you know,” the old woman said, a twinkle in her eye.
Liv laughed.
“After I finish your dresses, I’ll be able to serve you something much better, I promise.”
When she was finished, Liv felt a thousand times better. She thanked the old woman and stepped outside.
Zymun was sitting on a crude bench, tossing little blue disks out of one hand into the air and shooting them with green from the other.
“You were waiting for me the whole time?” Liv asked.
He tossed a blue disk up and blasted it into oblivion, harder than necessary.
“Oh. I forgot about you,” she said. Oops, that didn’t come out quite like she meant it.
“You get away with that shit because you’re beautiful?” Zymun asked. “If so, quit it.”
“You keep saying that. I don’t know if you’re trying to make a backhanded compliment or a stupid forehanded insult.” She wasn’t beautiful. She knew that. On her best day, she could manage a bit of cute. Anyone who said different was trying to get something from her.
Zymun looked like he was going to tear into her, but then his mouth twitched. “ ‘Forehanded insult’?” he asked. “That your own invention?” But he grinned.
“I was hoping you wouldn’t notice.” She scowled, feeling stupid. “I thought you weren’t a blue,” she said quickly. He had five colors on his cloak and vambraces, but not blue and not superviolet.
“Not yet,” he said. He drafted another blue disk. Liv could tell the color was off, and in barely more than a second it frayed apart and dissolved. “Hoping I grow into it. It’s so close it’s infuriating. Blue has so many uses. Plus, as nice as it already is to be a five, I can’t help but dream of being a full-spectrum polychrome.”
He was reaching to be a seven-color drafter with exactly the same kind of statements Liv had used a few months ago when she was longing to have her second color recognized. It was never enough, was it? There’s always someone better than you.
Still, if seven colors might be within reach for Zymun, that meant the boy was on another plane altogether.
“Sorry about forgetting,” Liv said, looking at her feet. “I didn’t think I was important enough for you to wait around for me.”
He smiled, and broken nose, black eyes, and all, he was terribly handsome. “Come on,” he said. “I’ve got something to show you.”
Chapter 35
It was strangely freeing to be so busy that he had no time for friends—or his lack thereof. Over the next weeks, Kip spent his mornings in class and working, spent hours more on the Blackguards’ field, and then headed to the library. He got to know the staff, and they him. As often as not, a stack of books was waiting for him—the ones he requested every day, plus whatever ones Rea Siluz thought he might find helpful.
He would find an isolated desk, and not leave for eight or ten hours, depending on when the last librarian left. Every day he scowled at the older students, and stayed late with them a few times—until he was discovered and banned from the library for a week. Students also weren’t allowed to reshelve their own books. Apparently so many had done so incorrectly for so long that it became a nightmare for the librarians. Now, after being read, books were to be deposited at one of the two desks for the purpose on each level of the library. Kip also quickly learned that despite taking up three full levels of the Prism’s Tower, this library was only a small sliver of the total number of books the Chromeria owned. Many more were kept below ground. Dims were not allowed in the secondary libraries, period.