“Oh.” Tisis brightened and took Kip’s hand. “He is not only my lord. He is my love.”
The thought sent a frisson through Kip. Sure, they had some commitment (at least until one of them revealed they’d never consummated their marriage), and they’d had some sweetness and excitement in the privacy of their tent (at least until recently), and he liked Tisis, and he respected her far more than he had ever expected to. But was that love?
Or was she just lying to save their cause?
But even if Kip didn’t quite believe her, Antonius clearly did. A slow grin broke over his broad face. “Then my prayers are answered.”
“Mine, too, cuz,” Tisis said.
Easy, dear, don’t lay it on too thick.
Antonius looked down at his hands as if to find an answer there. “I don’t want to kill Foresters. Or Guiles. Especially not for this White King. Somehow you boxed in Andross Guile, forcing him to do the right thing in agreeing to your marriage.” He looked up and smiled, and Kip felt all the tension whoosh out of Tisis. “It’s only fair if we box in Eirene, too. Right?”
Giving a perfect court bow and then taking one knee in front of Kip, Antonius said, “Lord Guile, I took an oath to Lady Eirene Malargos, but my allegiance to Orholam is higher. By the inner light that is my conscience, I know I must disobey her. So, Lord Guile, if you would take the oath of a man others may justly call Oathbreaker, then until the Blood Robes are destroyed, I pledge my life, my honor, my men, and my fealty to you.”
And… that didn’t go how I expected at all.
Kip decided that in the future, his legend would be that he moved enemies to break their oaths and swear fealty without him even saying a word. He would be the Unmoved Mover. Kip Golden-Tongue the Silent.
In other words, he was really going to have to be nicer to Tisis.
Chapter 52
“That asshole,” Karris said. “Just when I thought Andross and I were really working together. When’d you get this?”
“I came directly,” Teia said. She’d had to lie to Essel to switch guard schedules with her. It wasn’t the preferred way for Teia to arrange a private meeting with the White, but this couldn’t wait.
“And you’re certain Andross ordered this?” Karris asked.
It had been a long summer and autumn for both of them. Karris had been juggling all the logistics and politics of running a distant war and, once it seemed the White King had stopped his advancement completely, gathering reinforcements for next spring. In every spare moment, she’d been scouring for information from every source at her disposal for any hint of Gavin’s whereabouts anywhere in the Seven Satrapies, and sending out teams of Blackguards she could ill afford to spare to investigate any rumor.
Teia had been training constantly, and trying to figure out how to kill slaves and how not to kill them. After she’d killed a few to show that she was willing to do so, she’d left one alive with a note that she’d devised an experiment that would take three weeks. She’d left the man—they were always old men—blindfolded, and prayed. He’d been alive the next week. If she took three weeks to kill a slave rather than killing one every week, that was two lives she saved, wasn’t it?
Or at least two lives she didn’t take, which wasn’t quite the same thing at all, was it?
Sharing the burden with Karris had helped some. The White had agreed that Teia needed to continue the killing and training no matter what. But Teia was still killing innocents. Nothing made that acceptable.
Every honest conversation was a huge risk. If their plans were uncovered, every murder was for naught. So Teia swept her gaze around the roof of the Prism’s Tower again, and then put on her dark lenses and did it again with paryl. The White had taken to soaking up some sun to think on these late-autumn afternoons, and it was impossible for anyone to eavesdrop here, but there was no such thing as too careful where the Order of the Broken Eye was concerned.
“My contact called this ‘a little project for our sometime friend,’” Teia said. “‘Our sometime friend’ was the same phrase he used once when he described who ordered Marissia’s kidnapping. And I was there when Andross ordered that one, though I didn’t know then that they were talking about Marissia.”
It was funny, in a not-funny-at-all sort of way. Teia had been waiting for months to be activated by the Order. She’d needed to be given something to do that would enmesh her more deeply into their hierarchy. Something, at least, that would stop her murdering innocent old men. Now that something had come, and she felt not relief but fear.
Karris sighed. “All of us are become weapons in this war, aren’t we? But Andross Guile is all blade. I know that to not pick up that naked blade is to perish. But he cuts my hand to the bone with every move.” She turned to Teia, eyes resigned. “I will never be able to exact justice for Marissia from him, Teia. You know that, right? He’s too valuable.”
“But you want justice for her, right?” Teia asked. She knew the answer, she thought, but she needed to hear it.
The White held her eye. “I hated her, for a time, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“I didn’t mean to—”
“How do you feel about Tisis?”
“Excuse me?!” Teia said.
“If someone murdered her, how would you feel?” Karris asked.
“Uh, she’s… I mean, I’d be outraged. Of course I’d want—but what’s that got to do with—”
“Are you actually insulted that I know a thing or two about you, Teia? You, who know what we do? How we live? How secrets are our currency?”
“I don’t know what you’ve been told, but they’re clearly mistaken about that,” Teia said.
“It was an illustration, not an attempt to embarrass you,” Karris said. “How you and Kip feel toward each other only becomes my concern if you threaten his marriage to my very tenuous ally in Ruthgar. What I was trying to say—”
“Daelos. It was Daelos, wasn’t it? That little crippled piece of shit. You interviewed him like three times.”
“Peace,” Karris said. “What I meant to say is that I long ago burnt through all my hatred for her. In fact… we were close to becoming friends. She disappeared too soon for that. But enough. Enough of all that. The question now is what to do about this. Whether we can stop it. Whether we should.”
“Whether we should?” Teia asked, at first happy not to be talking about Kip. She shot another paranoid look around. They were still alone. This was the whole reason they’d met. “Andross Guile has hired the Order to kill the Nuqaba! I mean, I know you’re mad at her, but—”
“Mad? Mad?! Because she kidnapped and blinded my husband, the Emperor of the Seven Satrapies himself? You think that makes me merely angry?” Karris asked.
Teia walked a circuit around the rim of the tower, streaming paryl down over the edge to make certain there were no climbers on the outside who might overhear them. Again. Then she said, “I’m not saying she doesn’t deserve death, but you’re the one who was just talking about using dirty weapons when they’re the only weapons you have. The Nuqaba is a bitch, but she’s the bitch who runs Paria. Paria.”
Paria had a satrapah, of course. One of the Azmith family. The damned Azmiths, who included General Caul Azmith, who’d led the Seven Satrapies army to the disasters at Ox Ford and Raven Rock, and Akensis Azmith, who’d been nominated to be the White before he tried to kill Karris. Shamed on the one hand, aggrieved on the other, they were like a mad dog you didn’t want to get too close to. They might cower, or attack for no reason.
But even Teia knew that Paria’s satrapah was a figurehead. The Nuqaba was in charge, in charge of the satrapy that two out of every three Blackguards and the best soldiers in the world came from.