“Please don’t leave me,” Karris said. Her stomach convulsed, but she held the sob down. She took a deep breath, surprised. She thought she had more control than that.

“But that is the way of this world, is it not?” the White asked. “We go ahead alone, or we stay behind bereft. All of my dear friends from my youth are dead already. Only my one old foe abides. I almost don’t know what I would do without him.

“Karris, it is in carrying heavier burdens than we think we can bear that we become stronger. Are you ready?”

“You cannot give up and die,” Karris said angrily. “You’re the best there is. No one can replace you.”

Unexpectedly, the White chuckled. “Words every megalomaniac longs to hear. But true only of the truly bad and the monumentally great. I am neither, Karris. I am merely competent, my failures significant and sadly frequent. That I am not bad perhaps makes me better than many a White before me, but the good and the great are two disparate camps that rarely overlap.”

Karris sighed, not certain she could speak of Gavin without dissolving. She looked away, unable to take the compassion in the White’s eyes. “I feel so betrayed.”

“By Gavin? For dying?” The Chromeria didn’t say that, not yet, not with what Gavin had meant to everyone. And they didn’t know that he was dead. But the White spoke of fear and anger, and such things weren’t bound by evidence and the blue virtues.

“The Third Eye. She said if Gavin made it through the battle, that he would live at least until the day before Sun Day. I thought … I thought we’d made it. The battle was over, wasn’t it? I went to bed believing I’d be wakened with kisses.” Instead it was screams, and death. Kip had tried to kill Andross Guile, they said; Gavin had intervened, been wounded accidentally, fell overboard. Then Kip had jumped in after him. The ship hadn’t been able to find Kip or Gavin’s body in the darkness.

“Even if she sees the truth infallibly, which I’m not convinced of, there’s nothing that says the Third Eye must say truthfully what she sees,” the White said. “Perhaps by lying to you, she helped the world avoid a greater tragedy.”

“I believed her,” Karris said simply. She felt so empty. She was trapped. She wanted to hold on to hope because she hadn’t actually seen him die, and because it felt like she was betraying him if she gave up on him. But on the other side, she could see resignation reflected in every face. He was dead, and there was work to do. There was a terrifying power vacuum, and parties eager to fill it, and heretics to fight, and, and, and. She couldn’t grieve until she knew. But she knew she might never know.

“I heard there were portents here, too,” Karris said. “Something about a sea demon fighting a whale?”

“Two weeks ago now. The very day of the battle.” She didn’t expand on it. She knew when Karris was trying to change the subject.

The rain lashed them. It was getting chilly.

“I should take you inside,” Karris said. Avoid it. Put it away. Face it later, alone.

“No.” The White’s one word was a leash. She spoke and expected full obedience. “Let me see your eyes, girl.”

Karris locked gazes with the old woman. Where once she had been proud of her eyes, now she was ashamed. She’d been proud of their beauty, ruby stars blooming on an emerald field, the colors pure and bright and powerful. Now the stars dominated, and her eyes showed her as a woman with only a few years left. A woman who lacked the self-control to make it to forty.

“You’re to stop drafting. Entirely and immediately,” the White said.

It was like being told to stop breathing.

“I know what I’m asking,” the White said. Of course she did: she’d done it herself. But that didn’t make it any easier for Karris. “And I’m not asking. It’s an order.”

“Yes, High Mistress,” Karris said stiffly. She’d thought that the White might give her some sympathy for the death of her husband. Apparently there was no softness to be had here. Karris’s jaw was clamped tight shut, but she kept her face as blank as she could. “If I may be excused,” she said, and turned her back.

“You may not,” the White said sharply.

Karris stopped. She was a Blackguard; she knew all about hard obedience. She kept her back turned, mastering herself.

“You married Gavin Guile, the Prism,” the White said. “You’re hereby relieved of all your duties as a Blackguard. You will return your commission, effective immediately.”

Karris stopped breathing. Her knees weakened. A gust of wind tore the umbrella from her limp fingers and threw it off the roof before she could so much as blink. She stood, accepting the rain’s stinging lash. Cold outside and in. All she was, since she’d put away that fool girl who’d enjoyed boys fighting over her, all she’d made of herself, was a Blackguard. She’d barely been allowed to try to get in to the elite unit, and she’d risen to watch captain, and found that there she was content.

For two days, she’d had everything: the man and the work she loved, a hard purpose and a way to accomplish it, surrounded by those she admired—loved. Sisters and new brothers to replace those who’d died in the fire in her youth. And then she’d lost Gavin, and thought nothing could get worse. And now the White—of all people, the White!—was kicking the last leg out from the stool.

“I’m not sure why this is a shock,” the White said calmly. “A Blackguard, married to a Prism? You had to know that this would be the most likely outcome. Were you so wrapped up in your passions that you didn’t think at all?”

“You said … you said that my case was the exception that proved the rule!” Karris said.

“That was in allowing you to pursue your love and letting you resign honorably, rather than expelling you in disgrace.”

“What’s the difference?!” Karris shouted.

Gill Greyling poked his head out the door, and he and Gavin came outside, but stayed where they were at the White’s gesture. They stood impassively in the rain, but Karris knew that stance, like a leashed hound, ready to attack at a word.

“One is shame, and one is honor, and if you can’t tell the difference, you have greater problems than we can address,” the White said.

“But, but, he’s gone! Dead! It’s a moot point. I … I thought that…” Karris had thought that the rules didn’t apply to Gavin, and that by marrying him, he would stand up for her and the rules would bypass her this once, too. She’d thought perhaps she deserved this slice of happiness, that in the end, Orholam had taken pity on her.

“He’s lost. It’s not the same thing. Not yet, not for my purposes. Some on the Spectrum will want to declare him dead immediately, of course, but we will have other problems in naming a new Prism. But at the least a new Prism-elect must be named by Sun Day. We must find him before then.” She turned back to the rain, enjoying its wetness on her face, seeming to have dismissed Karris already.

“That’s it?” Karris demanded. “Now that I’ve served my purpose, I’m to be cast off?”

“In this life, we are not garments which may be washed and worn again, Karris. We are candles, giving light and heat until we are consumed. You burned more brightly than most. It has a cost. Mediocrities like me? Dim flames burn longer.”