The sudden stab of fear was so sharp that he thought for a moment someone actually had hit him in the gut. He took a deep breath.
Corvan came up, eyes locked on the crow’s nest, hands in a death grip on each rung. Gavin hated to do this to his friend, but there were some conversations that one simply couldn’t risk having overheard.
Gavin helped him into the box. He let the general catch his breath. At least the safety rails up here were nice and high and stout. Below, the sailors were going about their work. The morning wind was rising, and the first watch was out, checking lines and knots, the captain on the poop with a sextant, making sure of their position.
“I’ve lost blue,” Gavin said. Get it out. Clean it up afterward.
He could tell from the expression on his face that Corvan Danavis had no idea what he was talking about. He stroked the red mustache he was growing back. He’d been known for dangling beads from that mustache, back during the Prisms’ War. “Blue what?”
“I can’t see blue anymore, Corvan. It’s a sunny morning, I’m staring at the sky and the Cerulean Sea—and I can’t see blue. I’m dying, and I need your help deciding what I should do.”
Corvan was one of the smartest men Gavin knew, but he looked lost. “Lord Prism, such a thing isn’t—wait, tell me one piece at a time. Did this happen during your fight with the sea demon?”
“No.” Gavin looked over the waves. The rocking of the ship was soothing, perfectly complemented by the harmonious blues of sky and sea. He could remember the color so clearly he could swear he almost saw it. He was a superchromat, one who could differentiate colors much more finely than other men. He knew blue from its lightest to its darkest tones, from its violet hues to its greenest ones, blue of every saturation, blue of every mixture.
“After the battle,” Gavin said. “When we sailed away with all the refugees. I woke the next day and I didn’t even notice for a while. It’s like looking at a friend’s face and realizing you don’t know her name, Corvan. Blue’s there; it’s close. It’s like the color is on the tip of my eyes. If I don’t concentrate, I don’t even notice it, except that the world seems washed out, flat. But if I concentrate as hard as I can, I can see gray where the blue should be. Exactly the right tone and saturation and brightness, but… gray.”
Corvan was silent for a long minute, red-haloed eyes squinting. “The timing isn’t right,” he said. “Prisms are supposed to last some multiple of seven years. You should have five years left.”
“I don’t think what’s happening to me is normal. I was never ordained the Prism. Maybe this is what happens when a natural polychrome doesn’t go through the Spectrum’s ceremony.”
“I don’t know that that’s quite—”
“Have you ever heard of any Prism going blind, Corvan? Ever?” The last Prism before Gavin—the real Gavin—had been Alexander Spreading Oak. He’d been a weak Prism, hid in his apartments mostly, had likely been a poppy addict. The matriarch Eirene Malargos had been before him. She’d lasted fourteen years. Gavin had only the barest recollection of her from the Sun Day rituals when he was a young boy.
“Gavin, most Prisms don’t last sixteen years. Maybe the Spectrum’s ceremony would have made you die earlier. If you’d died after seven years or fourteen, you’d never have experienced this. We can’t know.”
That was one problem with being a fraud. You can’t elicit information about something that’s terribly secret that you should already know. The real Gavin had been initiated as Prism-elect when he was thirteen years old. He had sworn never to speak of it, not even to once-best-friend and brother Dazen.
It was one oath that, so far as Gavin could tell, each member of the Spectrum had honored. Because in the sixteen years he’d been impersonating his brother, no one had said a word about it. Unless, of course, they had made sidelong references to it—which he never picked up, and thus didn’t respond to, and thus let them know that he valued the secrecy of the ceremony highly and they should, too.
In other words, he was caught in a trap of his own devising. Again.
“Corvan, I don’t know what’s happening. I may wake up tomorrow and not be able to draft green, and the next day and not be able to draft yellow. Or maybe I’ve just lost blue and that’s all, but I have lost blue. Best-case scenario, if I manage to stay away from the Chromeria and am absent during every blue ritual, I’ve got one year left—until next Sun Day. There’s no way I could maintain a fraud through the ceremonies, or skip them. If I can’t draft blue by then, I’m dead.”