“I’m just trying to get the rules clear,” he said.
All Karris could remember from the time Orea Pullawr was selected as White was a boy named Amestan Niel who’d stayed at a neighboring estate for the summer. She’d barely said two words to him in the whole time. Her best friend, whom Karris had told all about her crush on him, all summer long, had kissed him the night before he left. It had been a devastating betrayal at the time. Last Karris had heard, Amestan Niel was now the third largest exporter of wool in Paria.
Somewhere in the tower, something rumbled. Something big.
They all looked at each other.
“Was that part of … this?” Karris asked. But from the startled look on the High Luxiat’s face, she knew it wasn’t.
“We’ll proceed,” he said.
The luxiats carried away the screens, and the candidates were brought to stand in a circle.
“Brace yourselves,” the High Luxiat told the audience. “There is often a great deal of wind.”
Wind?
At some signal Karris didn’t see, all the windows in the room slid down into slots, even as the windows in Gavin’s room one floor above did. There was a cold wind, but there wasn’t much of it after the initial gust. The morning was still and warm.
Then the floor shifted. Karris instantly dropped her center and stood wide in a fighting stance. It was the floor beneath her and the other candidates. Ismene looked at her and grinned as if to say, Isn’t this exciting?
The five-pace-wide circle on which they stood rose out of the floor. Patterns on the audience chamber floor sank, revealing tracks—and the entire disk the candidates were standing on started sliding toward the open window.
“Am I the only one to whom this seems like a really bad idea?” Karris asked.
“Jump off, then,” Jason Jorvis said.
She was standing right at the edge of the disk, and she had been considering doing just that, until he spoke.
The disk slid out the window and into the air, supported on a vast arm protruding from the Prism’s Tower two stories below. They slid out ten, then twenty paces from the side of the tower, and the great windows of the audience chamber rattled shut.
Oh. Karris understood. Everyone was to see what happened, but no one was to be able to draft to affect the outcome. The nobles were craning their necks to see more clearly, but Karris’s eyes were suddenly drawn up.
Atop the Prism’s Tower, one of the massive crenellations had split off and fallen several stories. That had been the rumbling sound she’d heard. The huge chunk of stone was dangling, suspended by a woven steel cable. Karris had been atop that tower a hundred times. There were no steel cables and massive bolts in the crenellations. And the precision of the break made it look purposeful. She was trying to see more of it—where did that cable go?—when her platform shuddered again. Seven additional smaller circular platforms unfolded from beneath the larger platform. The seven circles sank geared teeth into the edge of the larger platform and began wheeling slowly around them.
Now, on each of the smaller circles sat a narrow pedestal, and on the pedestal, in teak and velvet, a white ball. They were identical. After they circled all of them once, they stopped.
Naftalie Delara had drawn number one. She said, “No point in delaying, I suppose.” She looked heavenward. “Orholam guide me. Orholam bless my choice.” She went to one of the pedestals and took the white ball there.
Out on balconies of each of the seven towers, a Blackguard and a luxiat stood as a team, watching each other, watching the other teams, and watching that no one would come out onto their balconies to interfere with the ceremony.
But whatever cheat Andross had arranged was doubtless already done. He’d arranged who would pick, and somehow told them beforehand which stone was the one. The mechanics of the cheating would never be visible, and in picking sixth, her choice would likely be moot anyway—a choice between two stones of which surely neither was the correct one. Pointless and barren, like so many years of her life.
Eva Golden Briar took longer, but settled on one in short order.
The White had sacrificed Orholam only knew what to get Karris here, and they’d lost. Karris didn’t even know which smiling face hid a liar. Maybe all six did. Andross Guile always had backup plans behind his plans, didn’t he?
Karris heard musket fire again and could tell that it came from the top of the Prism’s Tower. There were some few people gawking at the candidates through their windows, but no one was out on the balconies, and none was armed that Karris could see. What the hell was going on? The Blackguards on the other towers looked alarmed, too, but were glued to their stations.