The Blinding Knife(94)

Liv grimaced. “It enriches the pirates.”

“It finances more piracy, and the dreams of every pirate to become a pirate lord himself. Satraps have looked at the problem and despaired. From time to time, they’ll go after one pirate lord who broke a treaty, and sometimes they’re even successful in hanging a boatful of men. But it never sticks. No one is willing to put her money or men on the line to help others, so then when it’s her ships getting stolen and scuttled, no one is willing to help her in return. Now, don’t you think the Seven Satrapies would be better off if they worked together for once and simply took care of the problem? Not just better off now, but better off for a hundred years?”

“If you could really stop it. You really think you can accomplish what satraps and Prisms have failed to do?”

“Absolutely. It’s purely a matter of will, and that I have in infinite supply.”

His audacity was breathtaking.

“That’s small, Liv,” he said. “Slavery. Nature made not slaves, nor should man. You’re Tyrean, and your land hasn’t been tainted as much as others, but slavery’s a curse. I’ll end it. The Chromeria is the same. It comes and sweeps up the flower of a nation—its drafters—and takes them away. Indoctrinates them. Returns them only to those places it favors, and fools the young drafters into thinking they’re doing it for their own good. Like slavery, a curse that corrupts those on both sides. Everyone has said these institutions are too big to change. I say they’re too big not to change. I lie in pursuit of that. Say it will be easier than it will be. I admit it. I lie carefully, and only to motivate people toward their own good and the good of the Seven Satrapies.”

Liv believed him, but the superviolet part of her compelled her: “Who decides which ends are worth lying for?”

He shook his head sadly. “You think I do this lightly? Look at what the Chromeria has wrought. Your father is a drafter. He’s my enemy right now, but I can recognize him as a great man. A great soul. Would not almost anything be better than murdering him? Are your hands any cleaner because you ask someone else to do the murdering for you?”

She felt sick thinking about it. Her father was old for a drafter. He’d drafted little for most of her youth, but now, fighting, he would be drafting almost every day. He had a couple years at most. “Can’t… maybe they can be convinced that the Freeing is unnecessary? That wights aren’t evil? That—”

“Convinced? Liv. The Freeing isn’t incidental to the Chromeria’s order. It’s the central pillar. Without the Freeing, there’s no necessity for the Chromeria. If drafting isn’t oh so very dangerous, you needn’t send your daughter to a far country to learn it. Without that, there’s no indoctrination, and no capture of the most valuable commodity in the whole world—drafters. Without control over and a monopoly on the drafters, the whole house comes down. That’s why this.” He pointed to the dead men.

A wind gusted and blew foul putrefaction into Liv’s nose. She coughed and turned away.

“You might wonder why I haven’t cut them down, given them a decent burial. I will. After all of our people march past this, and see what kind of animals we’re fighting. Because I refuse to cover up the Chromeria’s sins, and I refuse to take part in them.” He stared at the bodies for another moment, sadness in his eyes, or at least Liv thought she read sadness there. He looked at her. “You have questions.”

“Not about this. Not… now,” Liv said, looking at the bodies, feigning hardness.

“I favor you because of your mind, Aliviana. You needn’t restrict yourself to the lecture at hand.”

She wondered at that. How much was true, how much was flattery? But it warmed her nonetheless. “The gods,” she said, “are they real?”

A twist of a smile. “What does Zymun say?”

“He says they are.”

“But?”

“But he’s Zymun, and you’re you.”

The Color Prince laughed aloud. “Perfectly put. You ought to be an orange.”

She thought he was teasing her for her ineloquence, but then realized he meant it. What she’d said was the safest thing she could have said: it could mean anything or nothing.

“Yes, they are real. Though I don’t believe their exact nature is like either the Chromeria or the new priests think. I like you, Aliviana. You ask the right questions. You think big. But you don’t think big for yourself. You’re too modest. I need my drafters trained, of course. That is a purpose, and a worthy one—but it’s not a great purpose.”