And then the door closed behind them.
The obvious course was to hurry up and climb down the wall. Once the smoke started billowing out of the White’s windows, eyes would turn toward the Prism’s Tower. Teia couldn’t be clinging to the walls in full view when that happened.
But Teia had a card to play that Master Sharp didn’t know about.
She had her own cloak, the master cloak that Kip had given her. She pulled it out of her pack, the material thin and weightless as liquid light. She put it on. Drew the choker around her neck. Pulled up the hood, snapped it closed over her face. She could follow Sharp unseen.
But after extinguishing the fire, the Blackguards would search the tower exhaustively. If Teia followed Sharp, the Blackguards would find the climbing crescents stuck to the outside of the tower. The Order had spies in the Blackguard, so they would learn of it, and they would know Teia had disobeyed.
It wouldn’t be proof that Teia was a spy, but the Order didn’t need proof. They would kill her.
But if she didn’t follow Sharp, they would kill Marissia.
Marissia had ordered Teia to let her die. The old Teia, the slave Teia, would have accepted that order and shrugged off responsibility for what happened next. Teia wasn’t that Teia anymore.
This was war, and Teia was behind enemy lines, alone. She had to make her own decisions and live with the consequences. Like a warrior. Like an adult. Like a free woman.
In the unholy calculus of war, Teia was somehow suddenly worth more than a woman older, wiser, smarter, and better connected than she was. Teia was starting to suspect that the Order was a greater threat to the Chromeria than even the Color Prince. Saving Marissia—even if Teia could figure out how—would jeopardize the Chromeria’s best chance ever to destroy the Order. And only Teia knew now about the Old Man’s office. Only she had the code.
It’s war, T. Friends die.
Jaw clenched, heart leaden, Teia went out onto the balcony, closed the door behind her, and stepped onto the climbing crescents. She descended, taking away the evidence of Marissia’s murder with each step.
It’s war, T. The innocent die. And the best their friends can do is get vengeance.
Later.
Chapter 3
“Oh, my lord, what have they done to you?”
Gavin knew that voice. He opened his eye, tried to turn, but he was bound to a table, arms extended, nothing beneath them, as if on a raft over an ocean that was no longer there. His tongue was thick and parched, and a bandage covered his left eye.
Marissia came hovering into view above him, and the pity on her face told him how awful he must look.
“Wa… water,” Gavin rasped.
But the first thing she did was unbind his arms and legs. Marissia had been his room slave for more than a decade. She knew how he hated to be bound, how even the encumbrance of blankets twisted around his legs in bed made him panic and flail. Marissia, here? But where was here?
He remembered now. He must be at Amalu and Adini’s, the chirurgeons on Big Jasper. He must have been panicking, delirious. It had all been nightmares. Marissia was here. There was no prison. Everything was going to be fine.
Karris had pulled him out of the hippodrome where they’d put out his eye, and he must have come down with a fever. He’d only dreamed he was in that blue hell he’d made for his brother. He’d only dreamed that his father knew everything. Fever dreams. Impossible dreams.
Oh, thank Orholam.
Marissia put a wet cloth in his mouth, and he sucked weakly. She wet it again and repeated the process, until he motioned that he’d had enough. She wiped the crusted spit from the corners of his mouth.
Only then did he try to speak. “Marissia, where’s Karris?”
“Your lady wife is safe, my lord. She’s been made the White.” It was oddly formal for Marissia, but Gavin hadn’t yet sorted out the blurred boundaries between his room slave and his new wife. Doubtless Marissia was upset that he had married, and who knew how Karris had been treating her? With Gavin’s absence, he was lucky Marissia was even still employed in his household. A more jealous wife would have sold off the room slave who’d been so close to her husband.
But Gavin didn’t have time to worry about a slave’s feelings with all the problems facing him.
“The White?” he asked. “You didn’t just say…”
“Orea Pullawr has passed into the light, my lord. My lady Karris Guile has ascended to serve as the new White.”
“I thought that old crone was going to live forever,” Gavin said. But he felt an intense surge of pride at his wife’s accomplishment. The White!
In retrospect, though, maybe Orea had been preparing Karris for that all along.
Orholam’s balls, the other families were going to lose their minds. Andross Guile as promachos, Karris Guile as the White, and Gavin Guile as the Prism?
Well, that brought up a host of other problems. But Gavin was back, and with Karris beside him, there were few things he—“Marissia, is there something odd about the sound in here?”
“My lord.” There was a dread monotone to her voice.
With difficulty Gavin sat up. His bed was the kind of palanquin on which nobles were carried when injured, with drapes on all sides for privacy, but small and light so that slaves could navigate corners and narrow streets.
A wall was not far behind Marissia. It curved.
“Oh, Marissia, no.”
That gray wall curved like a teardrop or a squashed ball. Gavin tore back the palanquin’s other curtains. Everywhere the one curving wall, sparkling quietly with inner light. Gavin couldn’t see the blue of it, but he could see all he needed to from that winking crystalline luxin. He was in the blue hell. His gaoler had somehow brought Marissia here to care for Gavin’s wounds. To keep him alive. For punishment.
“How are you here?” he asked.
“I was kidnapped. By Order assassins who were contracted by your father.”
“What?!”
“My lord, I have secrets I would tell you. I don’t know how long I have.”
“You expect them to kill you.” He could see it in the tight calm of her face, like an improperly tanned hide stretched too far over a drum.
“I was allowed to see my kidnappers’ faces. And High Lord Guile’s. Your father brought me here himself. Alone.”
Gavin’s arm shook from the mere effort of holding himself seated. He fell back on the palanquin. “Of course he did,” he said. “He couldn’t let anyone know about this place. But someone had to care for me, and he guessed that you would know about these cells after so many years with me, so he accomplished numerous tasks at once. That’s my father. May Orholam damn him.”
It was also very much Andross Guile to discard the slave after she’d served her purpose.
He wouldn’t even guess that Gavin would be put out by it. Andross wouldn’t think of it as murdering Gavin’s lover; he would think of it as destroying a piece of Gavin’s property. Gavin could always buy another room slave, one prettier and younger, even. This one had to be more than thirty years old, after all.
“Marissia, I’m—”
He could see on her face that she knew it, too. “I don’t know how much time we have, my lord. Please don’t. My courage is leaking away by the moment. Please treat me like a scout or a captain in your armies, so I can think of myself as a warrior, because I can’t bear…” Her throat clenched as she lost her words to fear, the thief.
Gavin hesitated and then gathered himself. “Water. The cup this time.” He didn’t try to sit up. With a trembling hand, she gave him water. He took it, clumsily, his left hand missing the third and fourth fingers.
“Report,” he said when he was done, and though he lay on his back, his voice was all command.