Back in the Chromeria, the magisters had warned their disciples constantly not to rely too much on their luxin to shape their thoughts or their feelings. Here, it was encouraged, and Liv wasn’t sure yet which approach was better. If you were burning away your life by drafting as the Chromeria taught, it made sense to train young drafters not to draft when they didn’t have to. But it had never been clear to Liv that the prohibitions were solely utilitarian. They’d been moral warnings, as if luxin were wine and those who relied on it were morally weak.
If so, she was weak. But the superviolet gave her clarity, and distance from her feelings of inadequacy, of loneliness. She used it and then yellow to pull problems apart, examine them from new angles, and peer right through them, all the time.
He poured himself some brandy, held up a finger, watched it as it turned a dull hot red, and touched it to his zigarro. “That’s all you have for me?”
“You were Koios White Oak,” Liv said. Karris White Oak’s supposedly dead brother.
“Past tense?” he said grimly into his brandy.
She had no answer.
“How’d you find out?” he asked.
“I asked,” she admitted. Not exactly genius deduction.
“And what does this revelation tell you?” he asked.
“Not as much as I’d hoped.”
He swallowed the rest of his brandy in a gulp. “Come with me.”
They walked through the camp in the low light of the shrouded moon and a thousand campfires. As soon as he stepped out of the tent, two drafters and two soldiers clad in white fell in beside them.
“The Whiteguard?” Liv suggested. It smacked of desperation to be taken seriously, a mockery of the Prism.
“Are there no mirrors in nature?” he asked, seeming to read her thoughts. “There have been four attempts on my life. One by one of my former generals. Three by parties unknown. Light cannot be chained, but the Chromeria hopes it can be extinguished.”
They passed the camp in its thousands. It was more organized than when it had marched on Garriston. Practice, Liv supposed. Few people even noticed their leader moving down the path, and those who did didn’t seem to know how to salute him. Some bowed. Some prostrated themselves. Some gave a more military salute.
“The blues want me to standardize the response to me,” the prince said around his zigarro. “But I only want to impose what order is needful. More order is needful while directing an army than I would like, but once we tear down what the Chromeria has built, the needs will change. All will be free in the light.”
They stopped in front of a gallows on the western edge of the camp. Four men were hanged there. In the low light of torches, Liv couldn’t see their faces, but she did see the unnaturally elongated necks. The prince held up a hand and a beam of yellow light shone on the dead men. There was dried blood down each man’s chin. Their features were swollen. The birds had been feeding on them.
Liv didn’t know much about how bodies rotted, but she knew enough to be able to tell that these men had been dead for more than a day. So they couldn’t be criminals; the army had just arrived here.
“They’re our zealots. Martyrs now. These were men I sent to spread the news to Atash, to prepare the way for us. They went unarmed. They were only to speak, to convince. Their tongues were torn out and they were tortured before they were hanged. The Atashians didn’t even wait for them to cross the border. Invading our land to kill the unarmed? This is a declaration of war and commencement of hostilities. Atash has sown the wind. They will reap the whirlwind.”
“You tell a lot of lies, don’t you?” Liv asked. Then she swallowed. The superviolet made her understand structures, but not necessarily obey them.
The prince’s guards stiffened. Liv saw glares of hatred from them. But the prince looked over at her curiously. “I forget who you are,” he said. Then his voice cooled. “But perhaps you do, too.”
She swallowed again.
“I don’t deny that I already intended to liberate Atash, but they have drawn first blood. Against innocents. And let me tell you this, Aliviana Danavis. It’s time for you to step beyond the illusions of your childhood. A lie told in the service of truth is virtue. Do you know why Ilytian pirates have plagued the Cerulean Sea for centuries?”
“Because they have safe havens and the Ilytian coast is treacherous for those who don’t know—”
“No. Because men are bad at judging their own long-term interests. Satraps hate the pirates. Traders hate the pirates. Families whose fathers are pressed into their service hate them. Parents whose sons are enslaved to pull an oar hate them. But though the pirates have been bruised a few times—and I’ll be the first to acknowledge this is one good thing that the so-called Prism has done—they always come back. And why? Because satraps find it easier to pay them off than to crush them forever. There are currently four pirate lords in Ilyta, and each of them has signed contracts with the Abornean satrapah swearing not to attack ships flying the Abornean flag. Do you know what happens to the money that satrapah sends to those pirates?”