Chapter 49
Teia was following Murder Sharp again, to a different neighborhood. The winter night was cold, but at least this time there was no fog. It didn’t make her feel much better.
“So, this lightsplitter thing…” Teia said. That was what tonight was about, and Teia was worrying at the knotted rope of anxieties in her gut.
“Was that a question?”
“I don’t get it. I mean, I get it. A Prism doesn’t need spectacles. Handy for him, I’m sure, but I’m a monochrome and paryl doesn’t require spectacles. So even if I were a lightsplitter, that would be like … what? Like being the best juggler in the satrapies, only I don’t have any arms?”
“Exactly like that.”
“Really?”
“No.”
They arrived at a dark-windowed home in Weasel Rock, were handed their hooded robes and ushered in to darkness.
“Strip naked.” The voice was gruff, deliberately altered, the figure hooded, a splotch of black against the darkness.
The room was almost pitch black, a tiny thread of light let in under the door, and pants-wettingly scary, but Teia wasn’t anyone’s slave, not anymore. Not Aglaia Crassos’s, not Kip’s, not Andross Guile’s, and certainly not Fear’s.
“Well, that answers one question,” Teia said to the heavily cloaked figure. “You’re definitely male.” Her voice was snide, superior, anything but terrified. That knot in her guts wasn’t fear, it was apprehension, anxiety, animus, bitterness, bile, belligerence, contempt, contumely … cravenness.
Fuck.
No, fuck him.
“Strip.” Definitely male, definitely irritated, definitely not very good at disguising his voice when vexed. A bit of a haze smoker, if she didn’t miss her guess, from the rough edges on that voice.
“That’s not going to happen,” she said. Fucking amateurs. She cursed mentally when she was trying to convince herself of her own toughness. Her knees weren’t trembling from fear. It was fucking cold in this fucking place.
Damn. Doing it double time. Much more of this, and my underwear is going to need an extra washing.
“Your disobedience has been noted. I have whores to humiliate for my pleasure. This is no test of your virtue. Nor indeed, of your will. This is a test of lightsplitting.”
A part of her thrilled with sudden hope, but she hid it. “And I need to be ass-naked to do it?”
“It works best if—”
“So no.”
“When beginning—”
“You want me naked for one of two reasons. Either to humiliate me and make me feel vulnerable, or for the gratification of your sick desires. Go to hell.”
“Oh, Teia.” Low and amused, somehow more dangerous when he said “Teia.” Oh hell. “Sick desires? To see a comely young woman naked? In what world is that a sick desire? True, your curves are late in coming, but I’ve noticed a change even in the last few—”
“Fuck you!” She trembled. He’d been watching? For months? Orholam’s poxy gemsack! How dare he comment on—fuck! She was not going to be extra aware of her body because of one word from this asshole.
She looked around the dark room. Nondescript, nothing to differentiate it from any of a thousand other rooms in a thousand other houses in the bad neighborhoods of Big Jasper. What was she playing at? Why was she here? Who did she think she was, playing these games, with these people?
She’d been at the reading of the Lists. She knew the stakes. There might have been a time when being a Blackguard inductee would have protected her, when fear of what the Blackguard would do to avenge her if she were harmed would have kept her safe anywhere in the world.
That was before the war. Now, she knew, even here on Big Jasper she wasn’t safe.
The worst of it was the secrecy. Not being able to tell her squad, not being able to tell Kip? It tore her up, but it was the only safe way. For them.
“This isn’t a debate. You’ll serve or you’ll die. It would be a terrible waste to lose you at this point, but if you’re disobedient now, how would we ever trust you with more power?”
“You’re an asshole,” Teia said. “I’ll wear my underthings.”
A pause. “Good, I’d distrust you if you gave in too easily.” He’d let the alteration on his gruff voice fade a bit there, and it gave Teia some small measure of victory.
She stripped. It was pitch black in here anyway, right?
“Put this on,” he said, voice gruff again.
With some difficulty, she widened her eyes to sub-red and saw that the hooded figure wasn’t extending the bundle exactly to her. She’d taken a step to the side as she’d stripped, and he hadn’t noticed. He wasn’t a sub-red drafter, then. Or paryl. She tucked the information away. Someday she’d need it. Maybe. It made her feel less like a victim to do something, regardless. She took the bundle.
A sack, no, another weasel-bear mask, this one bedecked with patches and straps.
The man said, “The test requires that you not use your eyes at all. Everyone cheats. It’s impossible not to.”
It’s impossible not to? Said like someone who’d taken the test and failed, perhaps?
Teia pulled on the hood. She didn’t have any idea if she’d put it on the right way, where the straps went. Orholam, it was hot and stuffy and she couldn’t breathe right in—
Someone touched her naked shoulder.
She jumped, but it wasn’t the startled little-girl response it would have been even a year ago. She jumped, one foot shifting back, head ducking the blow that must be coming, center of mass dropping until that back foot gave her a base, and one fist snapping forward with the speed and force of all her emotional and muscular tension together.
Her fist sank into a stomach. In Blackguard training, one of the less fun drills involved taking hits in the stomach. You’d stand with a partner and trade blows. There were different strategies depending on how big you were. Clench and move back just as the punch hit you so you didn’t take the full force, or if you were bigger and rock-hard, clench and move into the punch so it hit you before it was in the golden zone. But always, always, you clenched your muscles hard. This stomach wasn’t fat, but it wasn’t clenched either: it was soft, muscles loose, and her fist sank into it easily.
There was a moment of total silence as Teia realized what she’d just done. The scuff of a shoe as the man took a step back, and then the sound of him collapsing on the ground. A moment later, there was a huge gasping breath as he got his wind back.
Teia froze. Chuckles sounded around the room. Five, six people?
“Faces out!” the man snapped. “You’re not to see her!”
Teia heard the man she’d hit—the same man who’d been tormenting her?—stand up.
“No!” a second voice said. Master Sharp? “We wanted a fighter. We got one. Strike her and I’ll strike you.”
The first man stood close to Teia, his breath on her mask. She stood still, very still, not giving him any more excuse than she already had—and noted how tall he was, to tuck away in her head.
“My apologies,” she said, putting real apology into her tone and speaking loudly and clearly so she could be heard through the hood.
“To the test,” he said. “Let’s not take all night.”
“I’ll be adjusting your hood,” the man said. “Do that again, and I’ll…” He barely disguised his voice this time. Nobleman’s voice. Ruthgari accent. Younger. Got you, Teia thought.
He turned the hood so that two thick pads were over her eyes and a hole was over her mouth. Thank Orholam, she could breathe! Then he tightened the straps behind her head and under her chin. There were many layers of cloth and leather between her closed eyes and the outside world. He stepped away from her.
Then something changed; Teia couldn’t even tell what.
The commander spoke: “To split light is to touch the raw stuff of creation and to bend it to your will. To draft light is to participate in the divine, but to manipulate light itself in its pure form is to be divine. Adrasteia, we seek the spark of divinity within you. We begin easily. This test will determine if you can see colors with your skin.”
“Pardon?” It just sort of slipped out. It sounded girly and scared, which was exactly how Teia felt, dammit.
“You’ll hear a chime, and you’ll have a few seconds to say a color. We’ll continue the test long enough to make sure you’re not getting them right by guessing. If you fail, you won’t leave here.”
“Pardon?” Again, but worse.
“If you fail, you’re useless to us, and know too much. So do your best.”
“Red!” she said.
“Easy. We haven’t started the test yet. Calm down.”
“No! I’m color-blind red-green. You must know that! I can’t possibly—”
“Then guess well.”
There was no way. They wanted to kill her. She should take the mask off and take her chances.
But then she had a moment of doubt. At the Threshing in the Chromeria where every discipula was tested to see what colors she could draft, the discipulae were told things to frighten them beforehand—even during. Fear made their pupils dilate. Could this be the same? Were they lying? Surely Teia could still be of use to them even if she weren’t a lightsplitter, right?
But dilating the eyes wouldn’t help her in a test where her eyes were covered, and though she might be of use, there was no telling if they thought she would be of enough use to counterbalance the danger she posed for them. Orholam have mercy.
Orholam, I’m sorry for talking about your gemsack. I’m sorry for my terrible attitude toward—
A chime rang.
Teia’s first thought was that now she was standing in her underthings in full light, with at least two older men staring at her. Not helpful.
Put it out of your head, T. Vengeance later. Store it up, hold it back, buckle down, take care of the now first. Feel first.
She tried to drop all her awareness into her body. The room was cool, and gooseflesh covered her from toes to nose. Her legs were clamped together so tight she could have cracked a walnut between her knees, as much for warmth as for modesty.
Modesty’s a distraction right now, T. Battlefield rules. Feel your skin. You’re a survivor.
The chime rang again.
“Color?” a voice asked. It could only be Murder Sharp.
Those bastards had wanted to see her stripped, right? What better for that than full light? “White,” Teia said with a conviction she didn’t feel.
A silence.
“Correct,” he said. “A good guess, I think. We’ll proceed.”
The chime rang.
Nine hells! Not even a break in between? Fine, let’s go, T. We can do this. Hell, it’s possible I actually am a lightsplitter, after all, right? It must follow logically that I could pass this test legitimately, right?
The chime rang again, before she was even ready to start sinking into her body again.
“Fuck!” she said aloud.
“Not a color,” the man said. “Your answer?”
There were only seven choices, right? Eight if you counted white. “Blue.”
A brief silence. “Very good.”
She got it right? What the hell?
A chime.
Dammit! These assholes! How many times could she get lucky? Of course, if they only tested all the colors once, her chances should get better every time. One in eight, one in seven, one in six, one in five. Right?
Stop thinking and feel, T!
Nothing. She felt nothing.
Ding!
“Yellow?” she said.
“Correct.” Murder Sharp didn’t sound pleased.
Ding.
Oh, come on. How long could her luck hold? They were just going to keep going until they had an excuse to kill her. She was trapped. She needed to get free. She needed to tear this damned hood off and draft paryl and kill them all. She had to—
Ding!
“Green!” she shouted.
He didn’t even answer.
Ding.
She was going to kill every last Orholam-damned son-of-a-bitch out there.
“Red!” she screamed, not even waiting for the chime.
“Correct,” the voice said in her ear. “And this?”
The chime rang.
Something in that chilly voice brought Teia back to herself. What was she doing? Flailing blindly? She had to think about this, put herself outside the situation. There was no reason they had to exhaust all the colors before they repeated new ones, was there? Surely they would understand that it made guessing easier. She didn’t have only three colors left, she had all of them, or none.
Ding.
“Superviolet,” she said.
Ding.
And suddenly, she felt warmth in her skin. This one wasn’t a guess. She nearly burst into tears. Ding.
“Sub-red,” she said.
He didn’t even bother to tell her she was correct. She knew she was.
Ding.
That left her only with orange, but she felt nothing. After the physical, tangible obvious warmth of sub-red, the contrast was even more stark. Orange would feel cold after that warmth, wouldn’t it? The room itself was quite cool. But …
Ding.
“Darkness,” Teia said. “Black, whatever.”
Ding.
“Orange,” Teia said, “but I’m just guessing now, because you’ve hit everything else.” Then she immediately thought, Not very sneaky, T.
Ding.
She wasn’t done. Oh, Orholam have mercy. They’d seen right through her. Luck could only get you so far. Unless … feel it, Teia, feel it.
Ding.
“Paryl.”
A long, long silence. The room felt lighter.
“We don’t have a chi drafter, so you’re finished,” the man said. “You passed. Perfect score. Get dressed and get out. We’ll contact you when it’s time.”
After Teia dressed, someone helped her remove the hood and pushed her out the door. Before it closed behind her, she heard the man say, “Brothers, sisters, we have much to discuss.”
She’d passed? She’d passed?
More than that, she’d done it perfectly? Even with red and green? How was that even possible? Was it luck? The mathematical chances of guessing ten colors right had to be—what was it?—one in ten times one in nine times one in eight times one in seven times one in six, and so forth? Even with the gimme that was sub-red … No, it couldn’t be luck. It hadn’t been luck.
Or maybe, maybe they were trying to fool her. Maybe they were playing some long confidence game because they thought she could be useful to them in some other way.
But Teia didn’t think that was it. There had been something a little different each time. A slight but appreciable difference in how she’d thought, how she’d felt. But if that was true, Teia was a …
Sweet Orholam have mercy. She didn’t know what it meant, or why it was important, but … I’m not a slave. I’m a lightsplitter.