The Blinding Knife(81)

His jailer—his brother—apparently hadn’t yet figured out that Dazen had broken out of the blue prison. There must surely be some advantage to that fact, but Dazen couldn’t figure out what it was. All he knew was that since he’d come to this prison, there had been no bread. He hated that thick, lumpy, coarse, dense bread—but now he would have begged, would have licked broken glass for it.

Perhaps his brother did know. Perhaps this was punishment.

Nonetheless, Gavin hadn’t had the guts to starve him to death before, and he’d had sixteen years to do that, so Dazen didn’t think Gavin would starve him now. At least not on purpose.

He felt weak, and that weakness was temptation. He hadn’t drafted green since the fever passed, and green was strength, wildness.

Green had doubtless saved him, but it was death now. Because it was strength, and strength would be addictive here. Every time he drafted a tiny sip, he would want to draft more. And green was irrationality, wildness. Wildness in a cage meant insanity, suicide.

I’m close enough to that as is.

He started building the towers of suppositions again. That was the beauty of years spent drafting blue. It ordered your thoughts, smothered passion.

Blue still hated the illogic of how he thought of his brother as Gavin and himself as Dazen, but he’d held firm to that decision. Gavin was a loser. Gavin had lost the war, Gavin had let himself be imprisoned. Dazen had stolen Gavin’s identity, so let him have it. “Gavin” was the dead man in the wall now, he the prisoner, he was Dazen now. He was a new man, and as Dazen, he would escape and he would win back all that should be his.

It was a touch of black madness, he knew. But perhaps a bit of madness is the only way to stay sane alone in a dungeon for sixteen years.

Recenter, Dazen. Dazed. Dozed. Dozen. Doozie. Double. Doubt. Certainty. T’s. Bifurcations. Intersections. Directions. Direct. Deceased. Dead. Dozing. Dazed. Dazen.

He expelled a long, slow breath. Glared at the dead man, who glared back, defiant.

“I’d tell you to go to hell, but—” he told the dead man.

“I’ve heard that one before,” the dead man replied. “Remember?”

Dazen grumbled into his beard. He held out his right hand. Either Gavin knows I’m in the next prison, or he doesn’t.

No, back up.

Either Gavin had put into place a system that would tell him when I moved from one prison to another, or he hadn’t.

If he’d gone to the trouble of making more than one prison, he’d have put a system into place to know when I went from one to the other.

Either his alarm worked, or it didn’t work.

I’m betting it worked. Nothing Gavin has done has failed so far.

So if the alarm worked, it showed that I’ve come here.

If it showed I’ve come here, either Gavin hasn’t seen the notice or he has.

But I’ve already established that he doesn’t have the guts to starve me.

So maybe he hasn’t seen that I’m here.

Which leaves another question: what does Gavin do when he travels? Either he never travels, or he’s set up a system to get me fed when he does. There’s no way he’d let himself be chained as much as I am, so he’s set up a system.

Either he leaves someone else in charge of feeding me, or he has an automated system. Automated systems can easily break, and Gavin wouldn’t want to kill me accidentally. But people can’t be trusted.

Tough choice.

Meh, Gavin believed in people. It was always one of his weaknesses. It was why Gavin had been able to foil his plan to escape with Karris.

That “Gavin” stuck in his blue brain irritated him. Made it hard to think about the time before the prison. Regardless, his brother’s trust was why his brother’s elopement with Karris had failed. Either the new Gavin had learned not to trust people from that failure or he hadn’t. Hmm. Gavin had been successful in taking Gavin’s place as Prism, which he couldn’t possibly do on his own. So Gavin hadn’t learned not to trust. So Gavin did trust someone.

So there was someone up there, who had either seen or not seen the warning that Dazen had moved from one prison to another. Either that someone was punctilious in fulfilling their duties or not. Gavin wouldn’t have trusted someone who wasn’t careful. So that someone was careful. Either that someone knew what the warning meant, and what he was supposed to do when he saw it, or he didn’t.

Or… back up. Either that someone was a woman or a man. Not that it mattered, but somehow the thought of some woman running around panicking because there was a blinking green luxin light and she didn’t know what to do about it pleased the prisoner immensely. He hoped she was a proud woman. How he missed humbling proud women.