It was late, but Ishmael tracked Luc down in the nearly empty workroom, staring into a spectrum.
Luc looked up when Ishmael walked in. “Brother of mine,” he said without a trace of emotion.
Ishmael licked his lips, suddenly nervous. “Luc,” he said.
Luc raised an eyebrow and waited silently for Ishmael to speak.
“I think, that is, we all think … Without Color Master here … I need …” Ishmael slumped against a workbench, and his words faded into silence.
“You need my help?”
Luc’s tone was so understanding that Ishmael almost believed he had been forgiven, that Luc had returned to being the older brother Ishmael had known and loved all these years.
“Please. I don’t know what to do.”
“About what?”
“Come see the posticum.”
Ishmael explained what he and Michael had done while they walked to the posticum. When they arrived, Luc studied the foundation.
“It was supposed to be like what you and I did in the tower room. And it was—at least it was when I left before dinner. But something must have happened.”
“Your colors mixed,” Luc said, kneeling down to study the foundation. “You made a new color.”
“But how? This didn’t happen in the tower room.”
“The walls—the surfaces of stone—already have color so the dappled colors can’t permeate them. This”—Luc pointed to the foundation—“was colorless, so the colors soaked in and mixed together. While the color is nice—deep and rich—I’m afraid you’re going to have to contend with Color Master. I don’t think she’ll take kindly to you veering from the plan, even if you had good intentions.” Luc touched Michael’s contraption. “Especially when she finds out an apprentice from another Hall was doing your work.”
“But he wasn’t doing my work! He just gave me the light—”
“It’s not the way things are done here,” Luc interrupted.
Ishmael was desperate. “Is there anything I can do? Can I pull the colors back out—like with the second law of color? Make a spectrum and let them separate?”
Luc shook his head. “It’s kind of hard to fix something that covers the whole foundation.”
“I’m doomed.” Ishmael slumped down.
Luc walked a few paces, then said slowly, “Not necessarily.”
“No?” Ishmael clung to a shred of hope.
“What if you covered the foundation with trees and bushes and plants? That way you could hide the new color, and Color Master will never have to know.”
“But I’d need hundreds and hundreds of plants and trees to cover the foundation,” Ishmael said with dismay.
“It’s up to you, little brother. But I know what I’d do.” Luc walked off, his hands in his pockets.
The problem was that Ishmael didn’t know what he should do. He liked the new color. It was warm. It was comforting. It held most of the colors, except blue. Seen against the blue of the sky, Ishmael felt like the spectrum was complete. But would Color Master be angry about the way he colored the foundation? Luc thought so, and if Luc thought so, he must be right. Ishmael didn’t want to face her anger. Luc’s anger had been bad enough; he couldn’t possibly face anyone else’s.