Chapter 23
“Sir? You don’t seem surprised,” Teia said to Ironfist. “Did—did you know?”
“I look like a babe in the woods to you, nunk?”
“Sir?”
“The Blackguard is the best of the best. The houses try to get their hooks into most of our students, one way or another. They’ve been successful often enough that we’ve had to grow canny ourselves.”
“So you knew?”
“Come with me,” he said.
He put his ghotra on carefully and they walked to the lift. “When I look at you, ask me if I want you to stay at the checkpoint,” he said. He set the weights and they took the lift to the top, where the Blackguards greeted him at the checkpoint.
“The White in?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” Samite answered.
Ironfist paused, looked at Teia.
“You want me to stay here, sir?” Teia asked. Ironfist was being this careful? With Samite? He was worried about his own Blackguards reporting … what? That Teia was accompanying him on a meeting with the White? Such a meeting would be innocuous enough, wouldn’t it? But that he was being careful meant that he was protecting even this from betrayal—by Blackguards he’d worked with for his whole adult life. Part of Teia wilted. She wanted the Blackguards at least to be pure. Something had to be pure and good, even if she wasn’t. It also made the guileless Blackguard commander seem more crafty than she’d ever considered.
“It’ll be fast,” Ironfist said, as if weighing it and dismissing the thought without too much thinking. “Come.”
They walked together to the White’s room. The Blackguards there announced him and Teia both—Teia was surprised that they actually knew her name. One should never underestimate the Blackguard, she supposed.
The White dismissed her old room slave and her secretary as they came in. The old woman had been drafting since Teia saw her last. It made her look healthier, but Teia knew it was only a veneer of health. If the White had decided it was permissible to draft, it meant she was planning to join the Freeing come Sun Day.
The White studied Teia as Teia studied the White. Teia wondered what the old woman saw.
“Aglaia,” Commander Ironfist said without preamble. “Trained her in theft. Has probably been keeping the items for blackmail. Explains Teia’s facility with disguises. She came to me. Unprompted.”
The White looked unperturbed by the revelation, or by how Ironfist had launched into it without warning. “When did you find out that there was no Lady Verangheti?” she asked Teia.
“Just before we left—wait, you know about that, too?” Teia said. Lady Aglaia Crassos had said that concealing her own ownership of slaves under the pseudonym Lady Lucretia Verangheti had allowed her to place spies in all sorts of places.
“If one is to go to the trouble of having spies, it behooves a lady to have the best,” the White said. She gave a small smile. “How did you figure out that she was going to blackmail you? Surely after Andross Guile forced her to sell you to him, you must have thought that you were free—free of her at least.”
“I did,” Teia said. The truth was more complicated. She’d thought she would be free until today.
Her first thought had been that Aglaia had sent Master Sharp to pull her back into her web. But why frame her for murder?
It wasn’t how Lady Crassos usually played things. As Lady Verangheti, she had been disciplined, making Teia steal harder and harder things, making her enmesh herself more and more in the web so that she would be fully caught before she thought to struggle. Lady Verangheti would have taken the steps one at a time: give Teia harder jobs until she balked, then reveal that Teia had been damning herself all along, then make her continue doing worse things until Teia would do anything at all. Such a spy—especially if she made it onto the Blackguard itself—would be an excellent weapon. And Lady Crassos seemed clever enough not to do anything that might break Teia out of her web early.
Like the shock of witnessing a murder.
Seeing a murder, Teia might logically go straight to Commander Ironfist and tell him everything. Lady Crassos wouldn’t risk that.
So why would she frame Teia for murder?
No reason. Literally. Lady Crassos hadn’t done it.
Before the Battle of Ru, her handler had been uninterested in the assassination Teia had seen in the marketplace. There was no reason for her to pretend that if assassination was what she wanted Teia to do. It would have been a great motivator: ‘If you disobey, Adrasteia, I can have you killed like that. No one can stop me.’
In fact, it was still a good motivator. A good motivator to not tell the White, or Commander Ironfist, or Kip, or anyone else, about Murder Sharp.
Teia realized her silence was getting suspiciously long. “I couldn’t really believe I was free, and I had this terrible feeling, and the more I thought about it, the more plausible it seemed that she would keep something of what I’d done to use against me. She’s … frightening.” Which was understating. “But how’d you know about this? Did you both know?”
Teia looked over at Ironfist. He stared back at her, silent. He said, “Adrasteia, in this game, one must either be as wise as serpents, or trust implicitly someone who is. I’ve always opted for the latter.” He inclined his head to the White. Odd how only moments ago he’d seemed jaded, and now he seemed the old Ironfist, too straightforward to be political. Teia wondered if it had something to do with his highly public loss of faith—and highly public regaining of it.
“Come here, child,” the White said. When Teia approached, the old woman examined her closely, studying her eyes with a sharp gaze. “Commander, is there a slight violet tinge to her eyes, or am I fooling myself?”
The commander stared at Teia’s eyes. “Could be. I wouldn’t see it if I weren’t looking for it, though.”
“Spectral bleed, then. Affects even the paryl drafters, apparently.” The White heaved a sigh. “Oh, child, if only you could be two separate girls. I should love to study both of you. But studying precludes using, and there is but one of you. Orholam knows best, one supposes. Still.” She cast her eyes skyward, though there was only ceiling there, as if gently castigating the creator of the universe. “Tell me, daughter, about your family.”
“That’s none of your—” Teia bit off her words, realizing who she was talking to. She swallowed. It was a perfectly neutral question, even friendly, but Teia had hoarded up the knowledge and the shame of her family for so long that any inquiry felt hostile.
“High Lady, perhaps this isn’t the time,” Commander Ironfist said. “We have only minutes—”
The White didn’t take her eyes off Teia, but her tone sharpened. “I’m known to have a keen interest in young people. Age is allowed her eccentricities. When you leave, Commander, you’ll shrug and say, ‘You know how she is with young people.’ Then smile and go about your business, and the spies will, too. Family, child.”
“Father’s a trader. Was. Day laborer now. Two sisters, younger. My mother isn’t worth speaking of.”
“Your shame says different.”
Teia clenched her jaw. She stared at the window. This was the White asking. That Teia was even thinking of not answering was practically irreligious; it was certainly insubordinate.
She answered, but her voice came out flat. “My mother lost her sense for a while during one of my father’s journeys. Brought home any man who would come bed her. Finally found one who liked her enough to stay for a while. She held parties we couldn’t afford, hired dancers and musicians like the rich do. We weren’t rich. She ruined us. And when my father came back, I think she thought he’d kill her. I think she hoped he would. She’d sold all of us into slavery to pay back the debts she ran up.
“My father sold everything he had left—his ship, mainly—and bought back my sisters. I’d shown my talent by then, and I was too valuable. He didn’t have the money to redeem me and he couldn’t borrow that much.”
“And what did he do to your mother?” the White asked.
“Nothing.” There was no hiding the bitterness. Father, why didn’t you fight for me? Why did you choose the one who betrayed you?
“And how do you feel about that?”
“I despise him for his weakness.”
“Rather than admire him for his goodness. Interesting.”
“Is it goodness to do nothing when wronged?” Teia asked sharply.
“You have no idea what he did or didn’t do. Parents often shield their children from the truth of their fights, and you were living elsewhere by then, a slave already. You judge too soon, and too sharply. Something you would do well to grow out of. Only a fool judges with the heart alone.”
Teia took the rebuke, unjust as it was. Her father had passively accepted that crazy whore, said something about love and forgiveness. “Are we finished?” she asked.
“Do you know,” the White said, “that I had two daughters? I remember their teenage years. It was hell.”
Teia smirked despite herself. I’m sure you deserved a bit of that. “Where do they live now? They aren’t on Big Jasper, are they?”
“They’re dead. One during the Blood Wars, and one immediately afterward, killed by men who refused to accept that the Blood Wars were ended. They thought their side hadn’t meted out sufficient vengeance yet. My daughters’ children were killed or whisked away into illegal slavery somewhere. Perhaps out there still, suffering. Their grandmother is the White, one of the most powerful people in all the satrapies, and they are slaves, all my wealth and my thousand spies worth nothing, for who sees a slave?” Her eyes seemed lit with fire. “Slavery is an evil without which our world cannot function, but it is an evil nonetheless.” She grimaced. “Which is why I will not have those bound to me bound by that, at least insofar as I am able. Ironfist.”
The man picked up a note from the White’s desk and handed it to Teia. It had copies of receipts that she couldn’t even read, at least not in a glance, and then a letter in an old familiar hand that she knew immediately. Her father’s:
“My debts have all been paid in your name, Adrasteia. I’ve already got investors lined up to buy one of the new caravels come spring. Putting together a crew now. I failed you, but you never failed me. As soon as I can, I’ll come to Big Jasper or wherever you’re posted. Sisters are well. Kallea married a butcher and is expecting her first in spring. Husband’s good for naught, but at least she’s close. Marae now hoping to marry an officer. Good man. Any news?” He must have been limited on the amount of paper he had to use, because the last sentences were cramped, even briefer than usual.
Her sister was expecting her first child? Kallea was fifteen years old. Many poor girls married that young, of course. But Teia wasn’t putting it together. It was facts, notes about another life, not hers. This kind of thing didn’t happen to Teia.
“Why?” Teia asked. There had to be some trap, some trick, some way it would be whisked away. It was too good. “Why?”
“Because sometimes I can do good,” the White said. “No strings, Teia. The tragedies that befell me have left me with some gifts. Money, for one. What use has a dying old woman for money? I can bless you as freely as Orholam has blessed me. Light, life, and freedom, my child.”
It rolled over Teia like a rushing quake-wave. She had to fight it, push back. “How did you…? Now?”
“We began work on it as soon as you tested into the Blackguard. We want all our people to choose us freely. It cannot always be so, but we always make the attempt. This was delivered while you were away at Ru. I’ve been meaning to send for you since. It’s been a busy time.”
“You were going to … all along?”
“In the scheme of things, Teia, it was a small thing for us, and we knew how big it might be for you.”
It took Teia’s breath. She would cry later, but in this moment, she could barely breathe, barely believe this dying woman’s goodness, her father’s steadfastness, her sisters’ lives veering so far to one side that Teia couldn’t even see them anymore from where she stood. Good done for people she would like as not never see again. In this moment of compassion, somehow, though, she felt more alone than she had in all her years training and thieving in shame, hiding who she was in more than just the disguises they taught her.
“She wasn’t the only one blackmailing me,” Teia blurted out. “There’s another. Worse.”
And she told them about Master Sharp. And about the spy, and the murder, and the flight, and Kip seeing her, and the theft of her papers, and their return. And when she was done speaking, then, finally, she felt free. She could take a full breath.
Oddly, the White looked, if anything, younger and more alive than ever. Her eyes lit with a readiness to fight. “Teia,” she said, “how brave are you?”
Ten minutes later, Commander Ironfist ushered Teia out the door, saying he would follow her in a moment.
When the door closed, he turned a skeptical eye to the White. “You planned that.”
“I hoped for it.”
“You knew about the other. This Murder Sharp.”
She didn’t admit it. “Kindness can break chains that cunning cannot.”
“Is that what you are? Kindness and cunning coiled?” he asked.
“Was not the caduceus once the White’s symbol?” she asked. Then her whimsy disappeared. “The Order of the Broken Eye, Harrdun. There have been pretenders before, but how many pretenders have had the shimmercloaks? We have a chance here.”
“To smash them?”
“Or bring them back into the fold. But yes, probably. Heresy is a horse that takes the bridle in its teeth and won’t submit to any hand unless it is beaten.”
“A strange idiom, from you who’d beat a man, but not a horse.”
“A horse can’t deserve it.”
“Well, I hope that narrow-shouldered filly can hold the weight you’ve saddled her with. She’ll be a warhorse, if.”
“If I don’t kill her first,” the White said grimly. “I know. One loses men and horses both to training. Is that reason not to train?”
“This isn’t training.”
She moved as if to quarrel further, then sat back in her wheeled chair. She took a chain from around her neck, produced a key she’d kept hidden beneath her neckline.
“The master key to all the restricted libraries. This is what you came for, isn’t it? You were scheduled to see me before the girl came back from Big Jasper. What is it you’re hunting?”
“A fantasy. A suspicion. Foolishness.”
“But I’ll know first, if you find something?”
He took the key from her and tucked it away. It was acquiescence.
“Be ware, Harrdun. My defenses are stretched thin.”
He walked to the door.
“Harrdun,” she said.
He stopped.
“The ghotra. You’re wearing it again.”
He grunted.
“It suits you.”