Then again with his history with Karris, perhaps a simple truth was better than an artful one.
“Karris, why are you crying?”
“Because it’s past time for my pain medicine, you big idiot.”
There was a knock on Gavin’s door. “Oh, you have got to be joking,” Gavin said, looking at the door like he could kill it with his eyes. He turned back to her. “Does that mean yes?”
“You’ve worn me down and taken advantage of my incapacitated state, so…”
“So that means yes?”
Another knock on the door.
“You stupid, stupid man, of course it does.”
“I love you, Karris White Oak.”
She smiled mischievously. “You ought to.”
The door opened, and a Blackguard wheeled the White in. Gavin couldn’t keep the huge grin off his face.
“Oh dear, have I interrupted something?” the White asked.
“No,” Gavin said. At the same time Karris said, “Yes.”
“I see.”
“You were just the person I was hoping to see,” Gavin said. “High Mistress White, would you be so good as to marry us?”
The White inclined her head, looking over the corrective spectacles she was wearing. “Well, Gavin Guile, it certainly took you long enough. And Karris White Oak! Slowest seduction in history! A woman with your charms.” The White sniffed.
“Is that a yes?” Gavin asked.
“Of course it is,” Karris answered for her. She was grinning from ear to ear.
“I imagine that Gavin’s heading straight off to war, and that you’ll want this done as soon as he gets back?” the White said.
“No,” Gavin said. “Right now.”
“Right now?” Karris said. “Don’t you want to give this some thought? We have no idea what we’re getting into.”
“And when will we? Some things you can’t know until you’re in them. I’ll be in it with you. That’s more than enough for me.” Gavin turned to the White. “Right now.”
The White grumbled. “Figures.” But she smiled. “Gavin, you’re willing to have your father disown you over this?”
“I’m feeling invincible right now,” Gavin said. “How’d you know about that, Orea?”
“Disowned?” Karris asked.
“I’ll explain. Later,” Gavin said.
“Me, too,” the White said. “Karris, you know what this may mean for your tenure?”
“Yes,” Karris said.
“Rules are made to bend for the right people,” Gavin said.
“Promise me a big wedding when you get back,” Karris said.
“Huge.”
And so they were wed. The vows were simple. In the discharge of his normal duties as Prism, Gavin had prompted brides and grooms through the vows himself, but today he forgot them. And as soon as they were out of his mouth, they became a blur. He was barely aware even of the White, he had eyes only for Karris. He was filled with an inexplicable tenderness for this wild, frustrating, beautiful, stubborn, amazing woman.
He kissed Karris again, and she grimaced under her smile.
“Time for more medicine?” he asked.
She nodded, apologetic.
He found the tincture and poured her the dose. She accepted it gratefully and lay back on her pillows. “Come back to me, my lord. Come back soon, you hear me?”
“Yes, my lady,” he said. He couldn’t stop grinning.
She was asleep in less than a minute.
Finally, Gavin turned to the White. “Well done, Lord Prism,” she said. “Perhaps I was right about you after all.”
“I do my best.”
“I hope your best is enough to save us.”
And with the quiet moment, he remembered why he had worked so hard not to have quiet moments with the White. She would ask that they go to the roof and that he balance. She had all sorts of reasons. She would have heard all the stories that Marissia had told him. She would know what they meant.
“Do you know,” she said, “I was on the roof the other day. And do you know what I saw? Cranes. Thousands of them, migrating. Have you ever seen them?”
“Not that I remember.”
“They fly in Vs. Something about it makes it easier.”
It was an odd thing to say. Like you’d explain to a child. Gavin had, of course, seen migrating birds before.
“This year, they weren’t flying in a V. They were flying in a single line. Thousands of them. So odd. Cranes never fly over water for long when they migrate. I could see they were struggling. Without the efficiencies of their normal formation, birds were dropping out, falling, dying. They flew straight toward me. And then, suddenly, as they reached Little Jasper, that odd line broke apart. The cranes rested that day on the Jaspers, as they have not for many years. And when they left, they flew normally.” She didn’t really finish her story, she simply stopped talking. “Regardless, they were saved.”
He’d broken the bane-and saved some cranes. Orholam’s nipple. “That’s marvelous,” Gavin said.
“Have you had a chance to go up to the roof yet?” she asked.
“Yes, yes I have.” Face bland.
She studied him. Did she buy it? Surely, this was her telling him she knew. Unless-unless it was the ramblings of an old woman. Maybe senility came like this on a woman as bright as Orea. Maybe she had the pieces, and some part of her was desperately trying to put it all together by talking it out, out loud.
Or she was warning him, because of their friendship. Their friendship? Were they friends, after all? But she was utterly dedicated to the Chromeria, to her duties, to the Seven Satrapies. Her next words-he knew her next words were going to be: “Gavin, we need to talk about how to ease you into retirement.”
“Gavin,” she said, “the generals are in my room, planning the invasion. I think they could use your expertise.”
Gavin took a deep breath. That meant his father would be there. Frying pan, fire. He stood, bent over to kiss Karris’s forehead, and popped his neck right and left. “Very well, Orea, let’s save the world.”
Chapter 95
Gavin walked into Orea’s room to find the generals and their aides gathered around a table on which a number of maps of different scales were laid out. “So you’ve got spies with the Color Prince’s army,” Gavin said.
“More than a dozen,” a bearded, balding Parian general said. Caul Azmith was the Parian satrapah’s younger brother. He was affable, polite, and not terribly bright.
“Projection or actual data?” Gavin asked. He wanted to know if he was staring at the positions the prince’s army had been in eight or ten days ago, or if these were estimates of the current positions.
“Projection, on excellent data,” the Blood Forest general said. He was also bald, though he was a young man, freckled and foolish. A political weasel who had no business leading a hunting expedition, much less an army.
“How old is this?” Gavin asked.
General Azmith said, “Ten days. Takes my handler two days to get to the smuggler who’s carrying the letters. The smuggler had good wind. Earned himself a bonus for getting it here in seven days. It arrived last night.”
“You using that smuggler for the return trip?”
General Azmith shook his head.
Which to Gavin meant that the smuggler had probably lied about how fast he’d made the trip in order to get his bonus. Most of the smugglers on the Atashian coast still used galleys so they couldn’t become becalmed, with the low displacement that allowed the long wide ships to traverse bays that the pirate hunters couldn’t. This time of year, the winds would rarely make it possible for a galley to come from Atash in seven days. Probably more like nine. Maybe ten.
If Gavin had been here, things could have been different. If Gavin were promachos, things still could be. But that was out of reach for now. His father had done that, and his father wasn’t going to give it back for nothing. Gavin’s own personal defiance, his own happiness in marrying Karris, was going to cost men their lives.
But that wasn’t his fault. Gavin wasn’t going to accept the blame for that. He would have, not so long ago. No, these generals had no business being generals, and they’d all been put into position by people who ought to have known better. There were plenty of veterans from the last war who could have been put in charge. Gavin had done the best he could by the people of Garriston. He couldn’t make the right decisions for everyone else.