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. But let s pretend for a moment that by some chance you actually killed me without being killed in turn.Isee what you re doing here: razing a town so you can raise an army.Founding your own Chromeria.Thequestion is, do you think you re ready, right now, for war? Because if I go back now, armed only withwords, the Spectrum might not believe me.But if you kill me, that will be a more elegant testimony thanany I could muster.And do you really think your version of what happened is the only version that sgoing to get out? Youare a young king, aren t you? And here you were talking about spies just momentsago.Silence stretched cool hands between them.Gavin had won as completely as he d probably ever won apure argument. The boy is my subject and a thief.He stays. Garadul s whole body was quivering with fury.He wasn tcalling Gavin s bluff.He was simply refusing to lose.Gavin hadn t been bluffing.Nine times out of ten, he could probably kill every one of these soldiers anddrafters depending on how good the drafters were.And he d probably emerge with nothing more thana singed eyebrow.Protecting the child during such a fight was another matter.Is it better that the guiltyshould perish, or that the innocent should live?And not all of the Seven Satrapies would be quite as quick to forgive as he d pretended.Page 66  He s no thief, he said, looking to redirect the conversation from a pure I-win/you-lose bifurcation. He s got nothing but the clothes on his back.Whatever his mother may or may not have done, it snothing to do with him. Easy enough to test, isn t it? Rask asked. Search him.From the look on his face, apparently Kipwas a thief.Unbelievable.Where was hiding whatever he dstolen? Between rolls of fat? No! It s the last thing she gave to me! You took everything else.You can t have it! I ll kill you first!There was a wildness in the boy s voice that Gavin recognized immediately, even before Kip s iriseswere flooded with jade green.The boy was going to attack King Garadul, his Mirrormen, and hisdrafters.Very brave, but more stupid.King Garadul s drafters would see it too.Gavin threw his left hand up in a quick arc, forming a wall of red, green, yellow, and blue luxinintertwined between Kip and King Garadul s men.With his right hand, he drafted a blue cudgel andclubbed Kip over the back of the head.The boy crumpled.Only Karris, Gavin thought, could have doneit faster.A single red luxin fireball thrown by one of Garadul s drafters hit the wall and sizzled as it plunged intoGavin s shield, instantly extinguished.Everyone else stood stunned.Gavin released the shield.A few of the Mirrormen were looking again atthe corpses of their comrades, maybe thinking that their deaths were no fluke.Rask Garadul aloneseemed unfazed.He dismounted, walked over to the unconscious boy, and searched him roughly.Rask Garadul produced a slender rosewood case that had been tucked inside the back of Kip s belt.He opened it a crack, shot a satisfied smile at Gavin, and tucked it in his own belt.He walked back to hishorse and mounted. A thief and an attempted assassin.Thank you for your service in foiling the attack, Lord Prism. KingGaradul motioned one of his men toward Kip. I think that tree should support a noose.Will you bestaying for the execution, Gavin?So this is where it ends.This is the cost of my sins. There was no attempt on your life, King Garadul.We both know that.The boy didn t even draft.I wasmerely disciplining him as a Chromeria student for considering drafting without permission.You have thebox, and you ve already murdered the supposed thief, his mother.A harsh punishment to be sure, butthis is your satrapy er,  kingdom. It s obvious he knew nothing of it except that his mother gave it tohim.Whatever claim you have to him pales in comparison to mine. He s my subject, and therefore mine to do with as I will.Only one card left.Gavin said,  You asked earlier why I came to this boiling latrine you call a country.Kip is the reason.My claim to him is greater than yours.He s my bastard.Rask Garadul s eyes went stony, and Gavin knew he had won.No man would publicly claim a dishonorPage 67if it weren t true.He also knew from that look, before the man even spoke, that he was going to have tokill Rask Garadul.But not today. Your time is finished, Rask Garadul said. Yours and the Chromeria s.You re done.Light cannot bechained.Know this, Prism: We will take back what you ve stolen.The horrors of your reign are almostat an end.And when it ends, I will be there.This I swear.Chapter 18Karris floated the punt downstream until she rounded a corner and disappeared from sight.She didn tthink the soldiers had seen her leave, so she beached the punt on the opposite side of the river and founda hill from which she could see Gavin.She climbed the hill on her hands and knees.There were severaltrees and bushes and long grasses between them.Ideal.What wasn t ideal was the distance.Onehundred and twenty paces.She was a great shot, but the bow she d brought was a simple recurve, not alongbow.Good and portable, very accurate to seventy paces.One twenty was a different question.Sheshuttled the mental abacus.She should be accurate within four feet, and she could shoot rapidly.IfSatrap Garadul stood still, she could shoot four arrows within a few seconds, correcting for her mistakes.Good enough.At least, better than any of her other options.She scooted back from the top of the hilland strung her bow, checked the fletching and trueness of her arrows, and crawled back into position,hidden and deadly [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]