But Karris knows all that. Right?
Teia realized how foolish it was for her to lecture the White about this, but she couldn’t help saying, “If I fail as I attempt to kill the Nuqaba—hell, even if I succeed but get caught or found out—Paria will turn against you. Even if you and Andross aren’t deposed and executed for sending an assassin, you’d lose Paria.”
There was no hope of winning the war without Paria.
Quietly, Karris said, “We may have already lost them.”
“What?” Teia asked.
“The messenger you’ll be accompanying for this mission is taking an ultimatum to the Nuqaba. Ever since the Battle of Ox Ford, they’ve contributed nothing to the war effort. They lost ten thousand men there, which is grievous, but compares not at all with the thirty-five thousand the Ruthgari lost. But since then, they’ve been saying they’re still mobilizing, and we know they are. But they won’t move. Cowardice or caution or treason, they aren’t coming. Apparently, Andross expects her to say no to our ultimatum, or to stall again. So Andross wants to kill her so someone more amenable can take over.”
“Or maybe he’s upset that she imprisoned and blinded his son?” Teia ventured.
Karris looked at Teia, and thought about it. “More likely someone moving against one of his own offends his ego. Regardless, it’s not a bad move. He probably would even expect me to be pleased if she turned up conveniently dead. I don’t know that he has anyone in place behind her, though. The Nuqaba conducted a purge recently. I think it may have wiped out some of Andross’s spies and agents over there. Now that I could see him being upset about.” Karris pursed her lips. “So that’s why he’d order it. But why would the Order take the job?”
“Anything that destabilizes the major powers is a net positive for the Order,” Teia said. “They want to institute some kind of new world on the ashes of the Seven Satrapies.”
“That might be enough reason,” Karris said. “And I suppose an erratic figure like the Nuqaba is no fun for them, either. Who knows but that they lost people in the purges as well. And perhaps the Old Man of the Desert is more motivated by passions like revenge than our icy promachos.”
Karris looked up toward the fading sun in what might have been prayer. “What if… what if I have you intentionally fail… or what if you frame someone for the deed instead? Who? How? Hmm… Or I could just prevent you from going at all, but that might tip my hand…” She crossed her arms under her breasts and scrunched her shoulders against a sudden cold wind. “What would Orea do? Something gentler, no doubt. Something clever and even kind. Of course, it’s her fault I have all these Azmiths to deal with in the first place. In this world of bloody-minded men, is there not a smarter way? Must the Iron sometimes be a blade?”
She was quiet for a long time. Then, finally, Karris straightened her back and turned to Teia. “It won’t be enough to kill the Nuqaba. You’ll also need to kill her master of spies, Satrapah Tilleli Azmith.”
“Am I to be your official assassin, then?” Teia asked. She couldn’t keep the grief out of her voice.
“You have a problem with that?” Karris asked coolly.
“High Lady… I had a chance to murder… two men I find loathsome, and it would have stopped much trouble. I didn’t because I felt Orholam tell me that I’m not an assassin; I’m a soldier. I’m a Blackguard. Not a knife in a darkness, a shield.”
“You train much with a shield?” Karris asked.
“A little. Trainer Fisk said he’d rather I was in the enemy’s shield wall than his own.” He’d actually said he’d use Teia as a scout instead, even if he had to go one man short.
Trainer Fisk, of course, had hurled insults at all of them while they practiced. But a single day of charging at another line from a mere twenty paces, each side equipped only with shields, had convinced Teia not only that Fisk was right, but that no amount of training could help her overcome her limitations. Many of the men in the lines were twice her weight; some were three times her weight. Charging full speed into them? She got flattened, every time. And holding up a shield for several hours? She couldn’t have done that with both hands, even while not fighting.
Thank Orholam that magic and black powder had rendered shield walls and phalanxes mostly obsolete. Teia preferred a buckler or even a targe, which required more agility and perhaps more luck, but less strength and endurance.
“Then from your training you should know,” Karris said. “Shields also kill.”
Teia remembered the lesson now. She quoted Trainer Fisk: “Those who use a shield only to block are ignoring a weapon in their hands.”
Well, shit. There went her whole metaphor about being a shield.
“Teia, you are my shield. You guard me well, but if I get the chance, I absolutely will bring you down on the neck of my enemies.”
And when I shatter, you will cast me aside. Teia didn’t say it aloud.
But Karris must have seen the look on her face. “Yes. If you break, I will take up another. We are not so different. I too am serving in greater hands, and I too fear that I am inadequate for what I’ve been called to do. I too wanted something different from this life.”
“A slave to your duties, huh?” Teia asked.
Karris shot an iron glare at her. She hadn’t missed the notes of bitterness and scoffing in Teia’s voice. “Yes,” she said. “If I had my way, Teia, I would send you and every drafter after my husband, and then I would add every slave and every tradesman and every soldier in my command, and to hell with it if all the satrapies together burnt. Gavin would be ashamed of me, but I could live with his disappointment if I could but live with his presence as well. No, mine is not actual slavery. No one beats or rapes me, but you’re a fool if you think my cold, empty bed is much more a comfort to me than a slave’s pallet or a soldier’s bunk.”
“I’m sorry,” Teia said. The one person she could trust, the one person who knew her now that Kip was gone, and she was venting her bile on her.
“As am I,” Karris said. “Not least for what I’m doing to you. The good news is that this will give us your first solid scent in your hunt for the Order.”
“How so?”
“Here’s one of the few beauties of war. Sometimes pieces put into place secretly must be used openly if they are to be used at all. In the same way that you had to break our normal protocol so that you could meet quickly with me today, someone will have to work hard to get you—of all the Blackguards—onto that ship. That someone will be in the Order. There are really only two options: it’s one of my watch captains or someone of high rank will ask a watch captain to do it for them. So when that captain comes in and shows me the deployment orders, I’ll say that I’d prefer you to stay here; you’re my favorite. If that captain is himself the Order’s plant, he’ll insist on you for some reason. If it’s just a favor he’s doing for some ambassador, he’ll say who asked him to get you on this detail. The watch captain could lie, of course, but I can check on lies. No matter what they do, it gives us something. Given enough time, I’m sure the Old Man could come up with a better stratagem, but he has to act fast here, and he’s juggling other subordinates and tasks—as I am. He’ll have to opt for a direct approach.”
A lead on the Order. That meant an end to infiltration, and an end maybe to all of them. Teia could hardly wait.
“Wait,” Teia said. “Did you say that my second target was the satrapah? The satrapah of Paria? The satrapah is the Nuqaba’s spymaster? I’m to kill both of the most powerful people in Paria?”
Chapter 53