Teia said, “She hadn’t mentioned any figures. And I wasn’t listening, anyway. I’m not in this for coin.” Change the subject, change the subject.
“Why are you, then?” Master Sharp asked.
“Are we really going to have this conversation in front of her?” Teia asked. “Now? You said we needed to—”
“We don’t need to worry about her.” His voice lowered dangerously. “And don’t question me.”
Orholam have mercy. That cemented it. If you were in the Order of the Broken Eye, there was only one reason you didn’t worry when someone learned your secrets: Marissia was going to die. Teia said, “I’m here for revenge.”
“Revenge? On who?”
Teia cocked her head as if it were an odd question. “On all of ’em.”
He grinned, this time for real. “You’ll get plenty of that. And you’ll come to the Crimson Path eventually.” The true friendliness should have made him less scary, but any comfort she might have felt was ground to paste between those inhumanly wide teeth.
He walked over to Marissia, still on her knees. “How much would you give us?”
Tremulously, she said, “As much as you want, I swear. I can get access to the Prism’s account if we act fast. Please, sir, please.” She broke off as if terrified. It twisted Teia’s guts because she couldn’t tell which was real: Marissia’s earlier bravery or her current terror. Maybe both.
“I’ve changed my mind,” Master Sharp said. “If she yells, kill her.” Had he forgotten he’d already threatened that?
Or did he actually mean it this time?
Marissia collapsed, sobbing quietly.
“Hmm,” Sharp said, standing so close to Teia his sweet breath washed over her face. “How have I never noticed…” As if it were the most natural thing in the world, he pushed her lower lip down with a finger. “You have a beautiful lower left dogtooth.” He pushed her lip right and left, examining her teeth as if she were a mare. “No, just the one. Good color on the rest, but boring.” He shrugged, smelled his finger, licked off her saliva like a chef tasting soup. “Better. You listened to me about the parsley, didn’t you? Add mint, fresh leaves when you can. Tuck them in the gums. Don’t chew or you’ll get bits in your teeth. Unsightly.”
He turned away, and she hoped he didn’t notice her tremble.
He said, “I need to check the White’s room and make a distraction. Be ready to go quick. If I’m not back in five, untie her, throw her off the balcony as if she suicided, and make your way out the same way we got in.” He threw his hood over his head and pulled the laces through the grommets quickly, cinching the mask tight over his nose and mouth, leaving only his eyes clear, and those shadowed under the hood. He turned and began shimmering.
On the back of his gray cloak, the image of a tufted gray owl appeared with its wings spread and talons extended to strike. The image shimmered out of phase with the rest of the cloak, and disappeared last.
The door opened, showing a hallway marked with smoke and pools of blood and scratches and divots in the stone walls from arrows and bullets from the Mighty’s battle with the Lightguards earlier. That felt like a lifetime ago. Then the door shut quietly.
Teia instantly shot a wave of paryl gas in an arc where Murder Sharp had been standing to make sure he was really gone. He was.
“Quickly,” Teia said, “what do you want me to do?”
Marissia got up on her knees. Her voice was breathy with controlled fear. “Did he take the papers from my desk? Package. All tied together in red ribbon.”
“Yes.”
Teia could hear the heavy sigh of despair expelled into the hood over Marissia’s head. The spymistress said, “Teia, you have to get those papers. I was to keep them safe for Karris.”
“What are they?”
“They’re the White’s instructions for her successor. They have everything Karris needs to know how to rule. Secrets. Plans. Names. There are things in there Karris can’t learn any other way.”
Oh hell no. How was Teia to steal papers from Murder Sharp? “We weren’t sent for the papers, Marissia. We were sent for you. I think Sharp’s just grabbing whatever is lying about.”
Marissia sagged. “Any other day. Any other hour, and all those papers would be locked away safe… No matter. No time.” She bent for a moment. “He’ll take it all to the Old Man’s office anyway. That parchment you grabbed from my desk. It’s a code. Crack it. It’s the combination or key word to the Old Man of the Desert’s office. Teia, that office is here, in the Chromeria. Maybe in this very tower. That means he—or she, we don’t even know for sure that the Old Man of the Desert is a man—is here. But if you open the office without using the code, it’ll wash the room in fire. Everything in it will be destroyed. You can’t let that happen. Not least because the White’s papers will be destroyed, too.”
“I’ll find it, I swear. But what—” Teia cut off at the sound of steps outside the room. She tapped Marissia’s shoulder to tell her to be silent, and drafted, disappearing with her own borrowed shimmercloak.
But whoever it was walked past, and Teia heard the banging of the door to the roof. She and the squad had had quite the fight up there, only hours ago, but only a single Blackguard was standing watch now. Master Sharp said the commanders of the Blackguard would isolate the area until they could examine it to try to figure out what had happened.
“What about you?” Teia asked. “How do we save you?”
A pause. Teia wished she could see Marissia’s face, but the bag stayed perfectly still, giving no hint of her fear or her bravery or her hatred or her desperation.
“We don’t,” Marissia said quietly.
“You’ve seen Sharp’s face. They’re going to kill you.”
Marissia’s head bowed. “Just… pray for me,” she said, and there was her fear again.
“At least let me give you a knife.”
“And what happens to you when this assassin finds your knife on me?” Marissia asked.
Before Teia could protest further, the door opened and closed. Master Sharp was speaking before he was even fully visible. “Give me that cloak.”
“My shimmercloak?” Teia asked.
“It’s not yours. It’s the Order’s, and don’t forget it.”
“I’m the one who stole it! I risked everything to—”
“Now!”
Teia unclasped the choker and handed Master Sharp the burnt-hemmed shimmercloak. He lowered his own hood, threw Teia’s cloak on over his cloak, attaching the choker awkwardly. He pulled his hood back up, but couldn’t lace it properly. He swore.
“What are you doing?” Teia asked.
He swore again, and said to Marissia, “You do other than what I say, and you die now, and not easy. Understand?”
Her head bobbed, the sack trembling as she wept. He slashed the rope between her neck and her wrists, and slung her over his shoulder. “Teia, help me with the cloak.”
Teia spread out the second, bunched cloak over Marissia’s body. Given that Marissia was slung over Sharp’s shoulder, it covered her fully, if awkwardly.
“I have to sneak out without a cloak?” Teia asked.
“You go out the way we came in. Outside. Collect the climbing crescents as you go down. Be quick. You won’t have long before people start looking up here.” He poked Marissia. “You, when I tell you, you scream that there’s a fire in the White’s quarters. Because there is.”
Oh, that was why he hadn’t gagged Marissia. The Blackguards would recognize her voice when she called out.
Still holding Marissia over his shoulder, Master Sharp stooped to pick up the bag full of papers he’d stolen.
“You want me to take the bag?” Teia asked.
He almost handed it to her, then paused. Anxiety hammered great blows against her mask of nonchalance. He said, “Better not. Get climbing.”
“I could bring it to—”
“Now,” he said, and there was quiet menace in his voice. Without waiting, he turned his back, and far more slowly than usual, the cloaks began shimmering, the fox emblem on Teia’s burnt cloak showing dark gray against the gray and then fading.
The door opened, and Teia smelled smoke.
“Fire! Fire in the White’s quarters!” Marissia shouted. “Fire!”