He’d held her while she mourned her brother last night. Held her until she slept, and then got up and kept watch. He’d envied her tears even as it warmed him and made him ache for her. He’d envied her for clean grief for a dead brother rather than his horror and guilt over a living one. No wonder he’d dreamed about Dazen when it had been his turn to sleep. Regardless, last night changed nothing between them. He expected a brusque thank-you today, if anything. Then things would be back to normal.
Except normal couldn’t hold. Karris wasn’t stupid: pretty soon she’d notice that he couldn’t draft blue. And her questions had already been unsettling.
The truth was, all his purposes were focused in one direction, except for the one about telling Karris the truth, which ran directly opposite. Karris was the greatest threat to his plans. And she was immune to flattery or pressure. She had nothing but her own sense of justice. If she thought ruining him was the right thing to do, she’d do it regardless of the cost.
The smart thing to do was to treat her like any other obstacle, and take her out.
It didn’t mean killing her. He could take her to one of the outer islands, where even merchants came only once a year, and simply leave her there. Then whatever happened with him, she couldn’t interfere. But stealing a year of the life of a woman who had, quite likely, only five years left to live was no small offense.
He sat up. This was going nowhere.
Karris was just coming back from making water in the woods.
“Any itch weed?” Gavin asked.
She blushed, remembering that misadventure. “I’m a touch more careful about that these days.”
“Once bit twice shy, eh?” Gavin asked, standing and stretching. He had to go make water himself.
“In some things.” She had an odd look in her eyes.
He stepped into the woods and started to urinate. It had been awkward, fifteen years ago, to have someone standing two paces away while he relieved himself. Having Blackguards protect him made him have to get over that fast. Especially when they traveled in wilderness, a Blackguard wasn’t going to let him out of her sight.
“Gavin? Thank you,” Karris said.
Gavin pissed. He knew better than to talk, better than to laugh in amusement at being right. He cleared his throat. “So, you figure this Third Eye is going to come today?” he asked.
“Safe bet,” Karris said, voice suddenly tense. He heard her pistol cocking.
Chapter 22
“You may not know it now, but this class will be the most important topic some of you will ever study,” Magister Hena said. She was both impossibly tall and impossibly skinny, with bad posture, bad teeth, and thick colorless corrective lenses that made her eyes look different sizes. “For most of you boys, it will be the only time you get to taste the greatness of making real structures with luxin, so it will behoove you to pay attention, so you know what the women for whom you work are doing. If you’re good at it, you may be allowed to do the arithmetic, of course, so a large part of this class will have to do with the decidedly mundane task of teaching the abacus and the skills of drawing. Engineering is knowing. Building is an art. Everyone can do the former, the latter is reserved for the best women.”
One of the boys, scowling, raised his hand. She called on him.
“Magister Hena, why can’t we build?”
“Because only superchromats are allowed to build with luxin. You boys, your eyes are inferior. In some applications, you can cover your flawed drafting with enough will and by spraying enough luxin at the problem. But not in a structure people have to trust. Only women, and only superchromat women, are allowed to build. It’s not worth death to risk trusting a man.”
“But why, Magister Hena? Why can’t we draft as well?” the boy asked. He sounded whiny. Even to Kip, who thought it was unfair, too.
“I don’t care,” Magister Hena said. “Ask a luxiat or one of your theology teachers. For today, I’ll isolate the superchromats. Yes, I know you already tested this, but an engineer doesn’t trust, an engineer tests. If it’s not demonstrable, it’s not real. On your slate before you, there are seven sticks of luxin. Only at one place on those sticks is the luxin drafted absolutely perfectly. Make a mark beneath that spot with your chalk. I’ll come around and check your work, and the superchromats will move to the front of the room.”
Kip looked at the sticks of luxin and picked up the chalk. He was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t, he knew. He was a superchromat and a boy. A freak. Being in the in group wasn’t going to help him at all, because none of the other boys would be in it with him. They’d hate him for being with the girls, and the girls wouldn’t treat him like he belonged either. He’d be different, no matter what.
And because Magister Hena had seen the earlier test results, if Kip failed, she’d ask him if he’d failed on purpose. She didn’t look like the type to think that “It’s too embarrassing to be a superchromat boy” would be an acceptable answer.
Kip made his marks. It was easy. Around the room, boys and girls both were squinting, looking at the sticks from different angles, holding them up to the light. Kip suddenly felt sorry for the girls who didn’t make it. It was one thing for boys to fail. No one expected them to pass. But half of girls passed. That was a big enough number that failing was embarrassing. To fail was to be like the boys. It was to be a second-class drafter. He could see them agonizing.
“It’s not a test you can pass by trying harder,” Magister Hena said. “You either see the differences or you don’t. It’s a failure, but it’s not a personal one. There’s nothing you can do to pass it. Either you were born blessed, or you weren’t. Chalk down.”
Either you were born blessed, or you weren’t? Thanks. That makes it so much better.
Magister Hena walked around the room. She ticked through the students. “Up front, up front, stay here, stay here. Stay, stay, stay.” She walked behind Kip’s place, “Stay-er…”
She looked at his slate, then at the slates of his neighbors. Kip guessed that there were only so many tests, and she was seeing if he could have cheated off of a real superchromat to get the correct answers.
Apparently, she hadn’t heard about him. Great.
“The boy next to you, take his test,” Magister Hena ordered.
Kip grimaced to himself as the class looked at him. He picked up his chalk and quickly marked the spots on the boy’s slate-of course, the boy’s marks had been all wrong.
“Hmm, a superchromat boy. It’s been years,” Magister Hena said. “Very well. Up front.”
She separated the rest of the class, and then went back up front herself to address those who had passed. “Very well. Girls… and boy… you’ve been moved up front because you’re favored by Orholam. You can appreciate the beauties of Orholam’s creation in ways the rest of this class and most of the world is blind to. However, that means more will be expected of you. That is why I’ve had you come to the front, not because I care what accident of birth gave you better eyes than the rest. You do have better eyes than the rest, so you have a responsibility to Orholam and to me to use those eyes well. Understood?”
“Yes, Magister,” the girls said weakly.
She raised her eyebrows and peered at them over her goggly lenses. They repeated it, louder. Kip joined them, lest he be even more different.
“Good. Now, the abacus. Any of you here from Tyrea?”
“No? Oh, the boy, of course,” she said as Kip raised his hand. She went on, “Tyrea was, despite all evidence to the contrary, once the seat of a great empire, long before Lucidonius came. Perhaps it was crumbling by the time he did come, or perhaps he hastened its demise. That is for another class. The Tyrean Empire gave us a few gifts and a few curses. The only one I care about for this class’s purposes is the base twelve number system. Tyrea is the reason our day is broken into twelve-hour halves, and sixty-minute hours. Some of you Aborneans and Tyreans may have been taught to use the base twelve system in counting and in arithmetic. If so, this class will be much, much harder for you. That number system is unholy, and you will not use it henceforth. Unholy? you ask. Yes, blasphemous. How can a number system be unholy? Well, how can a number system be based on twelves? What is our number system based on, anyone?”