“No, not that either. If you’d told her the truth when she was younger, she’d have exposed you. What you did wasn’t kind, or perhaps fair, but it was wise, and I’d advise you not to apologize for what you did when the time comes. Karris is better at adjusting to hard realities than she is at forgiving. It’s a character flaw.”
It was true. Deeply true. Telling Karris, “I was doing my duty” would probably work better than, “I’m so sorry.” She understood duty, cared about it. And yet something in Gavin bristled, wanted to defend Karris.
“So, what was it then?” Gavin asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t see everything. I just know what it wasn’t. I know that you’ve been asking the wrong questions, so you’ve had no hope of getting the right answers. So my part is done, sadly with no cries of passion or clawing of your back. Aside from two things. First, your people may stay. They will, I’m fairly certain, destroy our way of life. But perhaps it will one day turn into something better. I have little hope of that, but I’m too close to see this clearly, and I know that pushing fifty thousand starving people into the sea is not what Orholam would ask of me, regardless of what they will do to us once they are no longer starving.”
“And second?” Gavin asked. It was a huge victory. She was giving him everything he wanted, but you don’t laud victories, you consolidate them and press forward.
“And second, you’ve lost control of blue, and your… counterpart has broken out of his blue prison. I’d advise you to do something about it, because without a Prism, strange things start happening. First, they’re innocuous, weird little things. But they get worse.” She seemed to retreat into herself.
Gavin felt naked. Not in a good way. The news about his brother—if it was true—was cataclysmic. Not just a terrible shock, and not just terrible news, but too coincidental. Gavin had woven alarums into the drafting, of course, but they were alarums to notify someone in his own room in the tower: Marissia when he was gone. There was no way he should have been aware, no matter how dimly or on how visceral a level, that Dazen had broken out.
He had sunk a huge amount of his will into that prison, in ways long forbidden, so maybe he’d felt that breaking of his will dimly over the leagues. But huge talent though he was, the Chromeria was halfway across the sea.
Perhaps his losing blue had weakened the prison or broken it. There need be no coincidence. The one could have caused the other—but he didn’t know which way that causation flowed. Gavin felt like he was burrowing into the roots of a mountain, and the deeper he went, the faster he moved forward, the sooner the entire thing was going to come down on top of him.
But he didn’t know any way out.
Orholam, his brother was out of the blue? Did Marissia even remember how to switch over the chutes? Maybe Dazen would starve to death. No… no, he’d shown her, years and years ago, how to do it, against just this eventuality. She had an excellent memory. She’d do it right.
Nonetheless, he had to get back. And going back meant heading right into the middle of everything that threatened him most.
“Aha!” The Third Eye sniffed. “Here it is.”
Scrunching his forehead, Gavin glanced over at her. Noticed her nipples—dammit, got bigger things to worry about here, Gavin! She was leaning back, looking up again, this time not in prayer, though it again outlined her cold-stiffened nipples clearly against the fabric of her dress. He sniffed to see what she was talking about.
Smelled nothing. Sniffed again, and caught something very faint.
Something prickled on his skin, the lightest of touches. He looked over at the Third Eye.
She was grinning like a little girl. He didn’t understand. Then something touched his arm. He brought it close, but it melted before he could get a look at it. Snow?
It was cool tonight, but it wasn’t cold enough for snow. Not even close.
He could smell it now—the familiar mineral, chalky odor. Blue luxin.
More hit his upturned face, his arms. It was snowing.
“Blue delights in order,” the Third Eye said. “I know you can’t see it, but every flake is blue. Utterly beautiful, Lord Prism. I’ve never seen so stunning a harbinger of doom.”
Gavin’s heart dropped. Other than in the mountains of Paria and Tyrea, most of the Seven Satrapies went years without seeing snow. Gavin caught a flake on his sleeve, squinted at it. It looked like a snowflake. The blue luxin, free of his control, was running amok—but for blue, running amok meant randomly imposing order. Like organizing the crystals of a snowflake. It was a tenuous order; the unnatural snow was melting almost immediately.