The Blinding Knife (104 page)

Associated vice: Envy

Associated virtue: Kindness

Superviolet drafters:
Superviolets tend to have a removed outlook; dispassionate, they appreciate irony and sarcasm and word games and are often cold, viewing people as puzzles to be solved or ciphers to be cracked. Irrationality outrages superviolets.

Associated vice: Pride

Associated virtue: Humility

Chi (pronounced
KEY
):
The postulated upper-spectrum counter-part to paryl. (Often referred to in tales as “far above superviolet as paryl is below sub-red.”) Also called the revealer. Its main claimed use is nearly identical to paryl—seeing through things, though those who believe in chi say its powers far surpass paryl’s in this regard, cutting through flesh and bone and even metal. The only thing the tales seem to agree on is that chi drafters have the shortest life expectancy of any drafters: five to fifteen years, almost without exception. If chi indeed exists, it would mostly be evidence that Orholam created light for the universe or for his own purposes, and not solely for the use of man, and would move theologians from their current anthropocentrism.

Black:
Destruction, void, emptiness, that which is not and cannot be filled. Obsidian is said to be the bones of black luxin after it dies.

Paryl:
Also called spidersilk, it is invisible to all but paryl drafters. It resides as far down the spectrum from sub-red as most sub-red does from the visible spectrum. Believed mythical because the lens of the human eye cannot contort to a shape that would allow seeing such a color. The alleged color of dark drafters and night weavers and assassins because this spectrum is (again, allegedly) available even at night. Uses unknown, but linked to murders. Poisonous?

White:
The raw word of Orholam. The stuff of creation, from which all luxin and all life was formed. Descriptions of an earthly form of the stuff (as diminished from the original as obsidian supposedly is from black luxin) describe it as radiant ivory, or pure white opal, emitting light on the whole spectrum.

Students at the Chromeria are encouraged to use the proper names for each color, but the impetus to name seems unstoppable. In some cases, the names are used technically: pyrejelly is a thicker, longer-burning draft of red that will burn long enough to reduce a body to ash. In other cases, the reference becomes precisely the opposite of the technical definition: brightwater was first a name for liquid yellow luxin, but Brightwater Wall is solid yellow luxin.

A few of the more common colloquialisms:

Sub-red:
Firecrystal

Red:
Pyrejelly, burnglue

Orange:
Noranjell

Yellow:
Brightwater

Green:
Godswood

Blue:
Frostglass, glass

Superviolet:
Skystring, soulstring, spidersilk

Black:
Hellstone, nullstone, nightfiber, cinderstone, hadon

White:
Truebright, starsblood, anachrome, luciton

Sub-red:
Anat, goddess of wrath. Those who worshipped her are said to have had rituals that involved infant sacrifice. Also
known as the Lady of the Desert, the Fiery Mistress. Her centers of worship were Tyrea, southernmost Paria, and southern Ilyta.

Red:
Dagnu, god of gluttony. He was worshipped in eastern Atash.

Orange:
Molokh, god of greed. Once worshipped in western Atash.

Yellow:
Belphegor, god of sloth. Primarily worshipped in northern Atash and southern Blood Forest before Lucidonius’s coming.

Green:
Atirat, goddess of lust. Her center of worship was primarily in western Ruthgar and most of Blood Forest.

Blue:
Mot, god of envy. His center of worship was in eastern Ruthgar, northeastern Paria, and Abornea.

Superviolet:
Ferrilux, god of pride. His center of worship was in southern Paria and northern Ilyta.

The Seven Satrapies are in a time of great leaps in understanding. The peace since the Prisms’ War and the following suppression of piracy has allowed the flow of goods and ideas freely through the satrapies. Cheap, high-quality iron and steel are available in every satrapy, leading to high-quality weapons, durable wagon wheels, and everything in between. Though traditional forms of weapons like Atashian bich’hwa or Parian parry-sticks continue, now they are rarely made of horn or hardened wood. Luxin is often used for improvised weapons, but most luxins’ tendency to break down after long exposure to light, and the scarcity of yellow drafters who can make solid yellows (which don’t break down in light), means that metal weapons predominate among mundane armies.

The greatest leaps are occurring in the improvement of firearms. In most cases, each musket is the product of a different smith. This means each man must be able to fix his own firearm, and that pieces must be crafted individually. A faulty hammer or flashpan can’t be swapped out for a new one, but must be detached and reworked into appropriate shape. Some large-scale productions with hundreds of apprentice smiths have tried to tackle this problem in Rath by making parts as nearly identical as possible, but the resulting matchlocks tend to be low quality, trading accuracy and durability for consistency and simple repair. Elsewhere, the smiths of Ilyta have gone the other direction, making the highest-quality custom muskets in the world. Recently, they’ve pioneered a form they call the flintlock. Instead of
affixing a burning slow match to ignite powder in the flashpan and thence into the breech of the rifle, they’ve affixed a flint that scrapes a frizzen to throw sparks directly into the breech. This approach means a musket or pistol is always ready to fire, without a soldier having to first light a slow match. Keeping it from widespread adoption is the high rate of misfires—if the flint doesn’t scrape the frizzen correctly or throw sparks perfectly, the firearm doesn’t fire.

Thus far, the combination of luxin with firearms has been largely unsuccessful. The casting of perfectly round yellow luxin musket balls was possible, but the small number of yellow drafters able to make solid yellow creates a bottleneck in production. Blue luxin musket balls often shatter from the force of the black powder explosion. An exploding shell made by filling a yellow luxin ball with red luxin (which would ignite explosively from the shattering yellow when the ball hit a target) was demonstrated to the Nuqaba, but the exact balance of making the yellow thick enough to not explode inside the musket, but thin enough to shatter when it hit its target, is so difficult that several smiths have died trying to replicate it, probably barring this technique from wide adoption.

Other experiments are doubtless being carried out all over the Seven Satrapies, and once high-quality, consistent, and somewhat accurate firearms are introduced, the ways of war will change forever. As it stands, a trained archer can shoot farther, far more quickly, and more accurately.

Adrasteia (Teia):
  A student at the Chromeria. She is slave to Lady Lucretia Verangheti of the Smussato Veranghetis; a Blackguard candidate and a drafter of paryl.

Aheyyad:
  Orange drafter, grandson of Tala. A defender of Garriston, the designer of Garriston’s Brightwater Wall; dubbed Aheyyad Brightwater by Prism Gavin Guile.

Ahhanen:
  A Blackguard.

Aklos:
  A slave of Lady Aglaia Crassos.

Amestan:
  A Blackguard at the Battle of Garriston.

Aram:
  A Blackguard scrub. His parents were Blackguards, and he has been training in martial arts since he could walk.

Arana:
  A drafting student, a merchant’s daughter.

Aras:
  A student at the Chromeria, a Blackguard scrub.

Arash, Javid:
  One of the drafters who defended Garriston.

Aravind, Lord:
  Satrap of Atash. Father of Kata Ham-haldita, corregidor of Idoss.

Arias, Lord:
  One of the Color Prince’s advisers. He is an Atashian in charge of spreading news about the Color Prince.

Arien:
  A magister at the Chromeria. She drafts orange and tests Kip on Luxlord Black’s orders.

Ariss the Navigator:
  A legendary explorer, discoverer.

Asif:
  A young Blackguard.

Asmun:
  A Blackguard scrub.

Atagamo:
  A magister who teaches the properties of luxin at the Chromeria. He is Ilytian.

Atiriel, Karris:
  A desert princess. She became Karris Shadowblinder before she married Lucidonius.

Ayrad:
  A yellow drafter. He was a Blackguard scrub years before Kip entered the class. He started at the bottom of his class (forty-ninth) and worked his way up to the top, fighting everyone. It turned out he’d taken a vow. Became commander of the Blackguard and saved four different Prisms at least once before someone poisoned him.

Azmith, Caul:
  A Parian general, the Parian satrapah’s younger brother.

Balder:
  A Blackguard scrub who has it in for Kip.

Bas the Simple:
  A Tyrean polychrome (blue/green/superviolet), handsome but a simpleton, sworn to kill the killer of the White Oak family.

Ben-hadad:
  A Ruthgari student at the Chromeria. He has been accepted into the Blackguards in an earlier class. A blue/yellow bichrome who has created his own mechanical spectacles that allow blue or yellow lenses to be used, he’s highly intelligent.

Big Ros:
  A slave of Aglaia.

Blademan:
  A Blackguard watch captain. He leads one of the skimmers in the battle at Ruic Head, along with Gavin and Watch Captain Tempus.

Blue-Eyed Demons, the:
  Mercenaries who fought for Dazen’s army.

Borig, Janus:
  An old woman. She is bald, smokes a long pipe, and is apparently a Mirror.

Bursar:
  The Omnichrome’s most important adviser. She is constantly doing figures with her small abacus and is in charge of one-third of the chits for the soldiers to use for prostitutes.

Burshward, Captain:
  An Angari captain (from beyond the Everdark Gates).

Burshward, Gillam:
  Captain Burshward’s brother.

Buskin:
  Along with Tugertent and Tlatig, the best archer Commander Ironfist has on the approach to Ruic Head.

Caelia:
  A dwarf servant of the Third Eye.

Carver Black:
  A non-drafter, as is traditional for the Black. He is the chief administrator of the Seven Satrapies. Though he has a voice on the Spectrum, he has no vote.

Carvingen, Odess:
  A drafter and defender of Garriston.

Cavair, Paz:
  Commander of the Blue Bastards at the Great Pyramid of Ru.