Chapter 63
Brent Weeks
The Blinding Knife
— Samila Sayeh~
Tap, superviolet and blue. Tap, green. Tap, orange. Tap, yellow. Tap, red and sub-red.
I’ve been having these waking dreams. Before the Guiles’ War had come to Ru, my favorite little cousin Meena was given an Ilytian dragon. Everywhere she’d gone, the toy had bobbed along in the air above her, tied to her wrist with a string, never deflating in the two months she had it. Meena had skipped everywhere, singing. Seven years old, and already she’d been training for two years. Her voice had a purity that transfixed soldiers and courtiers alike, but as often as not she’d make up her own nonsense songs, skipping through town.
Meena is dead. She would have been twenty-three years old now. She wanted to go to the Chromeria with me. I told her no. Of course, her mother never would have let her go even if I’d asked. Most likely. I hadn’t tried. Meena died in General Gad Delmarta’s purge, her body tossed down the steps of the Great Pyramid along with those of the rest of our family. Fifty-seven dead at the pyramid alone. Many more within the city, though those deaths were more pedestrian, somehow mattered less-at least to my people.
I wonder if Meena would have become a drafter, a warrior like me. I had no interest in fighting until that butcher killed all my people. I became quite a warrior, though. But evidently not enough of one.
And now my time is done.
With the precision only the best blues can manage, I study the red tent that is my cell.
The battle for Garriston was to have been my last fight. Usef and I had been overwhelmed by the wights and separated from the other veteran drafters who’d volunteered to fight to the death instead of joining the Freeing.
Usef and I had fought on opposite sides of the Prisms’ War, the False Prism’s War, the War of Guiles. One of my best friends from the Chromeria killed Usef’s first wife. And Usef had killed her in turn. Usef and I had ample reason to hate each other. Instead, we’d fallen in love. Two broken warriors tired of war.
We’d chosen to make our last stand together. All the veteran drafters had been broken into pairs, each armed with a pistol and a dagger. All of us were close to breaking the halo, so whoever broke first would have their partner put them out of their madness. And if she was left alive alone, each was responsible for ending her own life.
I wondered if Usef could kill me, when it came to it. Usef was a blue, but he was also a red. It was how he’d gotten his nickname, the Purple Bear. He hated that name with a passion, thought it made him sound ridiculous. But as I pointed out, it was really the only nickname possible. Usef was six and a half feet tall, barrel-chested, burly, and hairy, with a full, wild beard and long, wild dark hair and heavy brows. He was a bear, and a red and blue disjunctive bichrome. His growling in response to people calling him the Purple Bear had only made the name stick.
Usef’s chest exploded when a shell hit the building behind them. Impossibly, he’d stood, looking for me, relieved to find me, relieved that I wasn’t injured. His mouth moved. And then he’d died.
I’d picked up my musket, and his, but instead of turning it on myself, I attacked the bastards. Found the cannon team. Massacred them. And there I broke my halo.
At first I thought I’d been hit with musket fire. I lost consciousness, and fully believed I was dying. I was content with that.
I love you, my Purple Bear.
I woke in a blacked-out wagon, sick as a dim.
Eventually, perhaps weeks later, the wagon had been commandeered for other uses and set off from Garriston. I recovered, and now find myself daily in this tent. I pick up snatches of conversation from the soldiers and peasants who pass too close, but all I can construct is speculative. Obviously, we’re marching at the direction of this Color Prince and covering a good distance daily, despite what seems a vast caravan.
From the excitement on certain days, and the smell of smoke that isn’t woodsmoke, I know we must have cut far enough south that they avoided the Karsos Mountains, and that we have invaded Atash.
Every day, I’m chained and blindfolded carefully before we move, but otherwise I haven’t been accosted. An odd mercy. I’m on the wrong side of forty years old now, but as a warrior, I long ago prepared myself for outrages, should I be captured. Weak men like to humble women, especially great women who make them feel as inferior. I do that constantly.
So what’s the game?
I’m a formidable blue warrior, perhaps even a legend. And I’ve broken the halo.
And there it is. This Color Prince, whoever he is, wants me to join him. He thinks that the longer he lets me sit in my blueness, the more likely I am to go mad and join him.
It’s been a long time since I’ve been underestimated. I don’t like it any more now than I did as a young woman.
My tent isn’t large; I can’t stand up straight without brushing my head on the fabric. My hands are manacled in front of me, and the manacles attach to the iron collar around my neck. My legs are hobbled with chains around my ankles, held apart by an iron pole.
All in all, it gives me reasonable freedom of movement, but little possibility of attacking anyone. Truth is, I’m no Blackguard: I wouldn’t know how to attack someone with my hands even were I free. Well, I know a few punches, but that’s a far different thing than being dangerous. Truth is, without drafting, I’m simply another helpless woman.
But I’m not ready to give up drafting yet.
They haven’t taken my ring-which absolutely must mean that the Color Prince intends to recruit me. They’d taken a long, hard look at the ruby on my finger, another at the broken, pure blue halo in my eyes, and let me keep it.
It takes me two days to form my plan. The tent is red, so the light that comes through it keeps me from panicking like darkness would, but it’s worthless to me for drafting. However, the tent is also made of cloth. Standing on tiptoe, I can pull a bit of the tent that is usually covered by the frame underneath it and gnaw on it. It takes me two days to chew a hole big enough to let in a tiny spotlight of clear, white light-but still small enough to be hidden to the eyes of those who fold up the tent every morning.
The next day, I nearly panick when I find that the hole isn’t there. But there is no punishment, no mention of it. There must be more than one blue drafter imprisoned as I am; our tents had merely been switched during the march.
I begin again. This time, I’m luckier: I keep my own tent. On the twelfth day, the army takes one of its daylong breaks, camping in one spot for some kind of festival I can dimly overhear. No matter: I’m ready, and the tent has been aligned north-south, the most advantageous way with where I’d chewed the hole. I can peek out.
Above the tents is a large white canopy. I’d thought it had merely been clouds overhead, diffusing the blueness. Clouds that might burn off under Orholam’s gaze and give me the blessed blue of pure sky. It is white canvas instead, allowing in light, but blocking my color. If I had spectacles, it wouldn’t matter. I don’t. I’m no Prism; white is as useless to me as no light at all. So this Color Prince isn’t stupid. He must know the tents are vulnerable. I hate him and admire him for it at the same time. But it doesn’t dissuade me.
Silently blessing Usef for giving me the ring, I brace myself and begin slamming the “ruby” against my manacle. After a dozen attempts, I hit it right, and the top half of the jewel shears off, breaking the glue that held it in place. I spend the next twenty minutes searching my tent for the fragment that split off.
After I find it, I put it in my mouth, moistening the glue. The red half of the ring is useless to me, but if I’m interrupted I’ll need to put it back onto my ring as quickly as possible.