“Corregidor, we’re delighted that you’ve come to join us. The prince is resting within. Will you join us?” she asked.
He looked at his bodyguards, but Liv stepped inside the tent, not waiting for a response. After a short hesitation, the corregidor and his men followed her.
The tent was dark, darker than usual, darker than necessary. There was one chair inside, a throne, and nothing else, not even rugs. In the chair, slouching, sat the Color Prince. He didn’t move when Liv came in. Then, when Corregidor Ham-haldita came in, the Color Prince lifted his head, and his eyes began to glow dull red, the color of new-forged iron. He stood, and the layers of luxin scraping across each other gave a sound like steel rasping over steel.
A shimmer of pale yellow light passed down his form, illuminating every crack and joint and seam, he flexed as if shaking himself from sleep, and every blue plate of armor on his body glowed, dimmed, then every red seam, then every green joint, all the way up to the barely visible pale violet that pulsed around his head in a crown.
The slack-jawed expression on the corregidor’s face almost made Liv laugh aloud, but she tucked her chin and bit her tongue. His men were right on the verge of pulling their weapons, but they looked terrified, too.
“Corregidor,” the prince said. “Welcome. Walk with me?”
The corregidor had to clear his throat before he could speak. “Of course.”
Liv joined the leaders and their guards, walking as she’d been instructed on the corregidor’s right while the prince walked on his left. Trapped between hope and fear, the prince had said.
Hope of what? Liv hadn’t quite dared to ask.
She didn’t think she was pretty enough to catch a future satrap’s eye, though if the Color Prince was successful, this boy would never be a satrap. But he didn’t know that yet. What then? A mistress? A night’s entertainment? Liv was abruptly aware again that she was a woman alone. If the Color Prince wanted her to accept one of the whores’ chits from Corregidor Ham-haldita, there was no way she could refuse. Not exactly the great purpose that the prince kept alluding to, but she wasn’t the person who got to choose, was she?
A quiet fury rolled through her.
When they strode into the full sunlight, the corregidor missed a step again. Seeing the Color Prince’s luxin form fully lit with natural light was at least as impressive as seeing him glow in a darkened tent. Again, not a mistake.
The Color Prince led the way through the camp, as if walking aimlessly, though Liv was sure he wasn’t. He didn’t leave much to chance.
“You’ve come with something to say,” the Color Prince said. “A deal, perhaps.”
“The city mothers have asked that I tell you we wish only peace, but if we must fight, you will pay dearly to take this city, and perhaps not before our reinforcements arrive.”
“Which I’m sure you expect any day.”
“Yes, we do.” The boy colored, as if fearing he was being made fun of. “And we can hold you until they arrive and smash you against our walls.”
They passed by Zymun, who was training with the other drafters. He stood shirtless, lashing an old tree with great whips of fire, awing his fellows. He stopped when they walked by, bowing respectfully to the Color Prince, his eyes full of jealousy at the sight of the other young man. Zymun’s wounds had faded, and if his shirtless body didn’t fill Liv with the speechless desire that Gavin Guile’s once had, he was still quite handsome. Powerful, intelligent, charismatic-and always, always interested in her. Always flattering. Always flirting.
She’d flirted with boys at the Chromeria, of course-mostly before that disastrous Luxlords’ Ball. But those had mostly been the flirtations of impossibility: playing at being adults. Playing at being outrageous. Zymun’s flirtation was the flirtation of possibility. She had only to say the word, just once, one night when he came by her tent and asked politely if he could come in. That she could say yes, that none would stop her, that none would even question her was more of an erotic charge than that she could say yes to Zymun in particular, dashing as he was.
Her students would envy her the assignation, of course, for she had students now. Not discipulae, not among the Free.
“So Delara Orange has been successful in persuading the rest of the Spectrum to go to war? Or am I to be on watch for the elite Ruic troops?”
“Both,” the boy said. Even Liv could tell he was lying.
“You are a young man,” the prince said. “And I think you’re a hair’s breadth from being stripped of your position by those frightened old harridans.”
They walked through a narrow alley between two tents, stepping over the guy wires. As they emerged, the corregidor’s guards found themselves looking into the barrels of twenty loaded muskets and at half a dozen drafters with arms loaded with luxin.
“Disarm them, and keep them thirty paces away, but don’t harm them,” the Color Prince said. “Unless they do something stupid, in which case, shoot for the groin.”
With the men thus detained, the Color Prince kept walking, as if nothing had happened. “Both of those men report to the mothers, and I think we can agree we don’t need their interference, can’t we, Corregidor?”
“How do you know that? Or are you just guessing?” the corregidor asked, trying to keep his voice level.
“Can’t we?”
The corregidor choked down his fear. “Very well. I’m-I’m sure we can settle this together.”
“Mmm. I believe in choices, Kata. We are free men, making free choices, and bearing the consequences. So here are yours: First, you can surrender. I will give you less than generous terms. You will free your slaves, the city will pay a million danars, and you will give us twenty thousand ephahs of barley, sixty wagons laden with fruit, ten thousand barrels of wine, and twenty thousand barrels of olives. You will give us five thousand swords or spears and a thousand working muskets, with five hundred barrels of gunpowder and a hundred barrels of shot or eight hundred bars of lead. You will send with us fifty smiths and fifty wheelwrights and half a dozen chemists, and you will pay them double wages while they’re gone. You will empty your city of brothels-the prostitutes can make their own choice on if they travel with us, but you will not allow any of them within your city for one year so as to encourage them to choose wisely. You will send all of your drafters to speak with me. Same with the slaves. They will be allowed to choose whether to join us or to go elsewhere, but they won’t be allowed to return to your city until the war is completed, on pain of death. You will arrange a parade through the city, welcoming us with trumpets and hailing us for giving you freedom. And before we come into the city, you will send all your luxiats out to this camp.”
The details were washing over the young man, and he grabbed on to the last like a raft in a maelstrom. “What is to happen to them?”
“We’ll kill them all,” the Color Prince said bluntly. Then he continued as if the man hadn’t interrupted. “Then, in every church, you will allow to be established new forms of worship: one for each of the old gods. You will not be required to maintain or attend services at any of these, however, and our new priests will abide by your laws so long as you don’t interfere with their worship.
“In return, you and the city’s mothers will be allowed to retain your lives, your estates, and your positions, unless you betray me. The city will be unmolested; the countryside will go unplundered; no men or women will be pressed into service. I expect you to communicate this offer to the city’s mothers. I’ve put it in writing already.
“All of it is true, except one part. I don’t trust the city mothers. I know what kind of women they are. I have reports on all of them. They aren’t young, and smart, and flexible like you are. When I leave this city, you will rule alone. I am not a hard master with my friends. I hope you can be such.”