Or she could point out that by the rules of the selection as it had been presented, other than that none of them were to draft, there were no rules, no laws. Whoever came back would be the White, and the White would be immune to prosecution. Another perfectly good and true defense.
But her path, alleging treason? That would tear those families apart. If, during the ensuing investigations, someone folded and admitted they’d tried to manipulate the selection of the White, Karris had no doubt the fingers would end up pointing at Andross Guile. He would have to be executed as a traitor and heretic on Orholam’s Glare, along with who knew how many others.
Andross said, “If you take that path, you’ll fatally weaken our war effort.”
“Even if I succeed,” Karris admitted. Rallying allies wouldn’t be easy after decimating several powerful families and showing that there was corruption at the very heart of the Chromeria. “I’ve not been elected to be the Gray. I am the White. What is white without purity? Bad enough that our promachos is faithless.”
Andross Guile gave her a long, appraising glance. “Are you suddenly so ins—so zealous.”
“Hmm,” Karris said.
After a long moment, Andross said, “I’ll take care of the Jorvises and Azmiths. A trial won’t be necessary.” He nodded and moved as if to leave, then stopped. He smirked. “May I be excused, High Lady Guile?”
She grinned a little back—no harm letting him think his charisma worked even on her—and motioned that he was dismissed.
Only after the door closed behind him did she breathe again.
Survive first meeting with Andross Guile.
Chapter 5
It was Sun Day night when Teia discovered the note on her bed. It was simply folded and dabbed with red wax, no seal impressed on it. Teia flared her eyes to paryl, saw nothing suspicious, and picked up the note: “Report to Cowardice 27. Now.”
No signature.
Cowardice was the nickname of the sixth floor on the dark side of the red tower, not just the apparition strangling Teia.
Here was the problem with serving two masters who demanded total discretion: Teia had no idea whether Karris or Murder Sharp had left this message.
She hoped it was Karris. She had so much to report it was ridiculous.
She also hadn’t slept for two days, and she wasn’t at her best. Sleep deprivation led inexorably to bad decisions. If this note was from the Order, she couldn’t afford any bad decisions.
The more immediate problem was what Teia should do with the master cloak. But what could she do with it now? Leave it in the trunk at the foot of her bunk? A treasure worth empires, hanging quietly on a hook from her bedpost? She could disguise it, sure, but as what? What if the laundresses came through and grabbed it? What if laundering destroyed the magic in it?
Trainer Fisk had once badly translated an Old Parian proverb for his classes: ‘A sword unneeded can be laid, but a sword needed can’t be made.’
Once they deciphered what it actually meant, all the young Blackguards took the message to heart: they carried two pistols or more; they carried backup blades and hidden blades; during the entire fight to get out of the Chromeria, Teia’d kept thinking of her rope spear. She’d left it in the practice room. It was still down there. She’d made do with paryl and swords and her dagger and a blunderbuss.
Orholam have mercy on her soul, that blunderbuss. How many of those Lightguards whom she’d raked with the blunderbuss at the lift had died? She’d killed men. Perhaps more worryingly, she didn’t feel bad about it.
But fuck them. They’d been trying to kill her friends.
She looked at the cloak, still undecided. She really didn’t know much of how it worked. The Blackguard had taught her that you don’t take a weapon you’re unfamiliar with into battle.
She glanced around. No one. She closed her eyes and pictured a flamboyant Abornean musketeer’s cloak. Looked down.
Leagues of brocade and a starry sky’s worth of gold medallions on blue velour, pointed shoulder pads in burnished silver and a starched collar.
She touched it, expecting her fingers to pass through the illusion.
It was all solid. Real.
It couldn’t be. It must be an insanely powerful hex, tricking not just her eyes, but her mind. Teia closed her eyes tight, waited a few breaths, and touched the cloak again, locking in her mind her certainty that the illusion would be gone.
It was solid. Real.
The master cloak didn’t fuck around.
It was too dangerous to take it until she figured out how to control it. She concentrated again, and the cloak went the flat, solid gray of a Blackguard nunk’s cloak, color muted with use, and too short for any of the other nunks to borrow. She hung it on the hook at the end of her bunk with a quick prayer, grabbed her actual nunk’s cloak, and left.
The trip to the red tower was a quick walk across the elevated bridges that hung in the air between the Prism’s Tower and the six other towers without external supports, glimmering like a spiderweb bedecked with dew. Teia jogged up the slaves’ stair to Cowardice and Courage, went to the dark side of the tower, and found room twenty-seven. She knocked.
No one answered. Room twenty-seven was on the outer curve of the dark side of the tower; Teia looked down the bending hallways each way, wondering if she’d caught a glimpse of a slave leaving down the shadowy hall. Best not to be seen at all. Unless that was her contact?
He wouldn’t appreciate being accosted in the open if he was, so she tried the latch instead. Unlocked. Took one breath, drew in paryl, and went in.
She was struck in the face by a beam of light, blinding her after the relative darkness of Cowardice. The light was streaming from the lightwell, the communal reserve of pure sunlight shot down the middle of each tower from the many mirrors atop them.
“Lock the door,” a voice said. It sounded slightly off, and Teia knew immediately that it was being altered. Karris had a collar that did that. But Karris wouldn’t be concealing her identity from Teia now.
That meant Teia was meeting one of the Order’s goons.
Oddly, the realization calmed her. At least she knew what she was up against.
She locked the door. “You mind?” she asked, squinting. The room was dark other than that single beam of light, and the door behind her was draped in black cloth so as to absorb the light so it wouldn’t bounce around the room and illuminate it.
“Light blinds,” a figure seated in the depths of the room said.
Teia held up a hand against the beam. “Which is why I tend not to stare straight into it,” she said. “Who are you? I’ve got a lot to do. I’m not in the mood to play children’s games.”
With a clatter, the shutter shut and the room was plunged into blackness.
She drafted a paryl torch immediately, flaring her eyes.
“None of that!”
She froze. “None of what?” It could have been a guess.
There was a reptilian silence. Teia felt the stirrings of Fear, deep in his lair, twisting in her stomach like an old dragon in unquiet slumber.
“Diakoptês was a lens maker, you know,” the voice said.
When the Order spoke, it was as if it had another language. Diakoptês. Teia still had to mentally translate it to Lucidonius. To the Chromeria, he’d been the one who enlightened them when they were imprisoned in the darkness of paganism. To the Order, he was the great betrayer, the one who’d broken them.
“So I’ve heard,” Teia said.
Kip’s father Gavin had given him some lenses supposedly crafted by Lucidonius himself, the most valuable among them sub-red and superviolet lenses that allowed any drafter to see in their respective spectra. Whether they were actually Lucidonius’s work or some other genius’s, those lenses had never been duplicated. But that dragon thrashed now, fully awake.
“You’ve got paryl lenses?” Teia asked. She couldn’t believe it.
“Not stupid. Good. I require a certain bare minimum intelligence even of my Shadows, though your own master dances close to that flame.”
Of the few who knew of him, no one spoke of Murder Sharp so dismissively. None would dare, except…
Teia dropped to her knees. “Master. My lord.”
It came easily to her, obeisance, prostration. So many years a slave.