Chapter 50
Even sitting in the library, outwaiting possible tails, Karris was finding that she enjoyed spycraft far more than she had any right to. For all that she’d thought that sixteen years of being a bodyguard and warrior would have no transferable skills, it turned out she was wrong. Eyes honed to razor sharpness looking for the suspicious could still look for the suspicious. Looking for weapons was less important, but differentiating between the people looking with interest at the powerful and those who looked like hunters out for prey, that was the same.
And now she had toys. It turned out that generations of Whites had created or confiscated certain items that they didn’t share with anyone. But she’d never had to use this one.
She fingered the spiky choker in her lap, concealed behind a heavy manuscript on Atashian royalty in the previous century that someone had left in a pile. It was a forbidden magic, but in a very limited way that had been tested for safety by every White for a hundred years at least. You had to wear it tight enough for two little spikes to reach blood, then—if you were a drafter, of course—your own magic empowered the choker to alter your voice lower or higher.
All the best things I learn, I can’t tell anyone.
She twisted the big ruby ring on her finger. Sometimes it felt like the only thing in her life that averred that her marriage was real. But even looking at it was too painful.
Maybe it’s time to come to grips with the possibility that he’s dead.
The hot-cold feeling that shot through her was so strong it took her breath. She blinked, slamming the lid down hard. None of that. None of that. Kip said he was alive.
Kip wants him to be alive. There hasn’t been so much as a whisper. Of the Prism. You think drunk sailors coming in to ports are going to keep such a thing quiet? This quiet?
I’ve work to do.
Karris stood up abruptly and headed to the lift. She took it down two floors, then snapped her fingers as if she’d forgotten something, and went up five floors. Of course, if she were being followed by a rotating team it was a worthless gesture—but one can’t plan for everything.
Don’t overestimate your enemies’ capabilities, the White had told her. Assume they’re as prone to mistakes as our people are. Every time Karris delegated a task, she had fresh appreciation for the second half of that statement. Like when a maid had dropped a cipher out of her basket of laundry onto the floor. It had turned up—with the seal apparently unbroken—in the found items basket on the main floor.
Given the sensitivity of the thing, though, the cipher had to be abandoned, and every spy or spy handler in the network contacted personally to be given the new one. And of course, Karris now had to remember that particular maid was either inept, unlucky, or suborned. The sheer amount of information Karris had to keep in her mind was ludicrous—and it was all far too sensitive to write down.
Two meetings this afternoon, and then one this evening with her most important handler: her hairdresser. His job not only gave him a perfect excuse to meet with Karris for long periods of time; it gave him cover to debrief the often nobly born spies he handled at length and put him directly in the gossip circuit. The sums the man demanded, however, were mind-boggling. All of his tastes were expensive. Sometimes Karris still had trouble with that.
I’m too cheap for this work. My roots do need some touching up, though. Is that more gray hair coming in? Black, this time, I think.
Easy meeting first today. A new contact, who couldn’t be allowed to know that Karris was Karris: the slave turned Blackguard Teia. Karris had trained some with Teia. She liked the girl, and saw her as a younger version of herself—albeit one who was a slave and hadn’t made all the mistakes Karris had made.
Yes, other than that—and the color-blindness and her paryl drafting and that she didn’t start a war that devastated the Seven Satrapies—we could be twins.
Still, she liked the girl. But Teia was sixteen years old. Too young for the burdens they’d already put on her shoulders. Karris knew what that was like. Too young to be trusted with more than they had to trust her with. Teia was working with people who wouldn’t hesitate to torture her to get the identity of her handler out of her. Best she didn’t know, even if Karris longed to mentor the girl.
And what’s that about? Am I feeling maternal?
Or is it lonely?
She ducked into the empty apartment she kept on this floor for this purpose. Locked the door behind herself. The room was divided by heavy curtains so she could question and debrief her spies without being seen. The curtains hid chairs so Karris at least could be comfortable, and slits for her to look through. Precautions, precautions, and all of them for naught if the wrong person came walking down the hall at the wrong time.
Speaking of precautions, as Karris took up her place, she picked up the mail cowl and aventail and pulled it on, draping it over her head and chest and hooking the cowl shut so only her eyes were exposed. Ridiculous, but Teia was a smart girl, curious. She wouldn’t be able to help but look for her handler’s identity with paryl. It was a little unnerving that the girl could see through cloth.
Not as unnerving as her other abilities, Karris supposed.
A quick triple knock, and then the door opened just as Karris finished putting on the choker.
“Come in, sit, that side. No drafting,” she said, her voice lowered to an odd tenor.
Teia’s body was tight as lute string, ready to attack. The heightened awareness was a good response to fear for a Blackguard, but tightness made your body slow. “I was told to report?” It was actually her code phrase. Good, the girl could follow instructions, even when afraid.
“And report you shall, little flower.” That was the answer phrase. “Now sit.”
“I hate flowers,” Teia said. “Did you know that? My other handler did. And what’s going on, anyway? I mean, I understand that the White can’t meet with me personally, but two handlers in a couple months?”
Karris’s breath caught. There were other handlers?
For a moment, she was glad of the mail cowl covering her face.
“You know, I’m sure you have good reasons for hiding your identity from me,” Teia said, “and I’m doing my best not to look right through this curtain, though I could.” Good, so she hadn’t actually tried. If she had, she’d have seen the mail. “But there are dangers to hiding who you are from me, too. If someone found our code phrases, they could replace you, and I’d never know.”
“You’re infiltrating a group that would happily torture you to find out my identity. Do you want the burden of keeping that secret?”
“I can handle it,” Teia said.
Ah, the bravado of youth. Karris missed it, sometimes. It was a good attribute in a Blackguard, believing nothing was impossible for you. But it was also why Blackguards had officers, and why those officers answered ultimately to those who were not Blackguards.
“In time, perhaps,” Karris said. “You are already carrying so many burdens, and so admirably. Speaking of which, tell me the latest.” Karris had received a brief, coded report of Teia’s assignments—all written on flash paper, with luxin igniters woven in, either to burn when tampered with or when she’d finished reading them. The report, like others, had simply appeared on her desk in her chambers.
Through the slits in the curtain, she saw Teia hunch forward in her seat, propping elbows on knees. “The Order tested me. I don’t even really know how. They say I’m a lightsplitter. I mean, I passed. They said they would have killed me if I hadn’t.”
“Tell me everything.”
Teia told her everything, and Karris did her best—using the mnemonic tricks the White had taught her—to memorize every word. Karris thought she could see the outlines of how the lightsplitter test must have worked, and was surprised that Teia didn’t. Then again, Teia’s mind had been occupied by other things, not least being forced to strip almost naked in front of terrifying, masked, leering assholes.
When she thought of it that way, Karris was surprised Teia had done as well as she had. If she were honest with herself, Karris didn’t know if she would have done as well herself.
“Did you know your last handler’s identity?” Karris asked.
“I already told you I did.”
“Who was it, then?”
Teia’s head cocked. “You don’t know?”
“Do you have any reason not to tell me?”
“Pardon me if it seems strange that you wouldn’t know. If you don’t know, maybe I shouldn’t—”
“Your place is to obey orders,” Karris snapped. “You’re under my command now.”
“Spoken like someone who’s served in an army,” Teia said. She obviously couldn’t help but try to figure out who Karris was. “But things in this field are a little less clear.”
Dammit, girl. I hope we don’t get you killed. You’re a natural at this.
And Karris couldn’t let someone she was handling think she was inept. If your agent doesn’t trust you, and you have to give them an order that doesn’t make sense with their limited perspective, they might not obey it.
“Feel free to speculate on my identity, but realize that the closer you get to the truth, the more likely you are to get me killed. There’s no benefit to—”
“I already told you the benefit.”
“This is not an argument,” Karris said sharply.
Even as she said it, she could remember her dearly departed father saying those very words to her when she was a girl. Clearly, it is an argument, young Karris had snapped back. All her defiances had been petty, back then.
Teia’s chin floated up. “I am not a slave,” she said.
“No one is saying—”
“But I was one. And let me tell you, slaves know how to obey an order without actually accomplishing anything. People like you think that slaves are stupid. Slaves are smart enough to use that belief against their masters. ‘So sorry I did what you said, and not what you meant, Mistress, I’m just a dumb slave.’ Treat me like I’m stupid, and you’ll get stupid out of me.”
The red in Karris reared up, and she nearly lost it. She was the commanding officer. She would be obeyed. But then for an instant, she tried to imagine the White shouting at a subordinate.
Of course, the White was the White. There was an institutional power in addition to the woman’s personal presence. When you answered her, you were addressing all the weight of the Chromeria. But still.
How large could the pool of possibilities of who had been Teia’s handler previously be? Because the key wasn’t someone who was smart and ambitious and willful—in the upper echelons of the Chromeria, that ruled out practically no one—the key was that the person had to be able to report to the White. The White’s infirmity had confined her to her own floor in recent months.
So it had to be someone with easy access to her floor. Who had that access? The Colors … but most of them have their own agendas, and they’d have spies tracking them, too, because they’re already so important. Who else? The Blackguards.
Orholam have mercy. A Blackguard? Of course, and it would have to be someone who could juggle watch schedules so that he or she could report to the White immediately if there were an emergency that demanded it. That meant one of the watch captains, as she herself had been.
Blademan was too straightforward to manage spies. Beryl was a gossip and had been since her youth. Tempus was possible. Loved his books, good administrator. But he never got out. He was always either on duty or in his office. Blunt was too dumb. Not that he was stupid, but you had be very, very bright to handle all of this. Unless he faked that?
No, not Blunt.
So, none of them. Her breath escaped. Unless … Commander Ironfist? The man was always working, always going places and meeting with people. Karris had always thought of him as a man who kept his own counsel, but one could just as easily label him secretive, even reclusive.
But he seemed like he would stand out too much. Too famous, too recognizable. On the other hand, his official duties had him rubbing shoulders with everyone, high and low. If he checked in with the kitchens, no one would be surprised. If he talked with room slaves, no one would bat an eyelash. If he spoke with a Color, or with that Color’s personal guards …
He was the perfect spy. His position gave him enough access, and was so obviously impossible, that he could hide in plain sight. Teia’s handler was Commander Ironfist.
“Marissia,” Teia said, apparently unable to bear the silence.
Karris couldn’t find breath.
“Because when slaves aren’t invisible, they must be beautiful. And when a slave is beautiful, she can only be good for one thing, right?” Teia said, the acid in her tone spraying all over Karris’s face, and burning, burning.
Anyone but her. Anyone else.
“Funny. She trusted me with her identity,” Teia said. “But to you, I’m just a former slave.”
Karris had fought when wounded. Had fought with that sick feeling that something was terribly wrong, but you couldn’t stop to gauge how wrong it was. Stopping to judge meant death. It was the same here. Fight on, fight on, turn your eyes to the task.
Teia was a good girl. Defiant, but every Blackguard had steel in them. Study her, figure how to use her best, and don’t let her get under your skin—either to anger or to love.
You’ve got to keep your distance, Karris. What’s the most likely outcome here?
That she disappears at some point, and is simply gone. That’s what the Order does. We’re going against them where they’re strongest. They practically invented spycraft.
“At some point,” Karris said, as if the storm had washed past her without leaving a trace, “they’ll want you to steal a shimmercloak.”
“What?” Teia asked. She’d wanted a fight, Karris could tell. Without it, Teia was like a ship becalmed.
“The White’s been studying the shimmercloaks. You need to be a lightsplitter to use them. We thought light splitting was a gift only given to Prisms. We were wrong. But more to the point in your case, a lightsplitter without a shimmercloak is useless. None of their current Shadows—if there is indeed more than one—is going to give you theirs, are they? So if the Order can use you to steal a shimmercloak for them, then even if you’re a spy and they have to kill you eventually, they still come out ahead. If they distrust you, you’ll be getting that assignment soon.”
Teia slumped in her seat. She knew a death sentence when she heard it.
“You have to understand, Teia. The Order are masters of subterfuge. They’re very, very good at finding and killing spies.”
Teia turned and looked at the curtain between them. Her eyes were dead. “You expect me to fail. That’s why you can’t let me know who you are.”
“Odds are.”
There was only bitterness and resignation in Teia’s voice. The sound of a soldier sent to die, who thinks his death won’t even accomplish anything. “So what do I do? Feed that perception that I’m a clueless young girl?”
Pretending to be stupid enough that she couldn’t be used by their enemies, but still smart enough that the Order would trust her? It would be a difficult line to tread. Impossible for one so young.
Suddenly, Karris remembered what it was like to have her future taken out of her own hands and decided by her elders, to be thought beneath consideration. She’d hated it, railed against it, and finally, she’d left a wake of destruction rebelling against it. She was still paying the price of that rebellion, and still dodging the cost of it—the son she’d abandoned, the damnation she felt.
With an uncertain hand, Karris pulled open the curtain. Teia looked up, jaw clenched. Scared. Karris unsnapped the voice-modifying choker. She took off the mail cowl and aventail. “So,” she said. “Now we’re in this together.”
Tears welled up in Teia’s eyes. “I hoped it would be you,” she said.