by Brent Weeks
She grabbed her spectacles and tucked them into a pocket and hurried into the main stream of traffic ever flowing across the bridge, past the Chromeria’s guards, standing in mirrored armor in the usually empty sentry boxes. The war. The war was real now, and they were prepared for an attack. Here. Surreal.
“Is it true?” one of the guards asked the Blackguards. “Is the Prism dead?”
“Lost,” one of them said.
“Lost? What? Like he’s a penny? Lost at sea ain’t just lost. I heard you combed the shores for days, looking for him. Ain’t you lot supposed to keep him from being lost?”
One of the Blackguard nunks, Ferkudi, snarled and leapt at the guard. But the others pulled him back and toward the tower.
“You lot let our Prism die!” the guard shouted. “What good are you if you let a Prism drown on your watch? None of you even jumped after him?”
Ferkudi cursed, and Cruxer got right in the guard’s face. He said something Teia couldn’t hear, but made no move. The guard said nothing more, but he had tears streaking down his face.
These people loved Gavin. They barely knew him, and they weep.
No, maybe that wasn’t right. They didn’t know him personally, but Gavin had been everywhere visible for longer than Teia had been alive. And he’d been a good Prism. The rumors had to be flying everywhere on the Jaspers, with the official word being so pitifully incomplete—not a position at all, really. ‘Lost.’
‘Lost.’ Not a word you want to toss around lightly at the beginning of a war whose two battles had both been… setbacks for the Chromeria.
Gavin had been nigh unto a god to these people, and they’d lost two battles despite having him fight on their side. How would they do without him?
It had been a question the Blackguards had been asking themselves for days. And their failure had not passed their notice, either.
Teia said nothing, though, and walked past with her head down.
Despite that the Lily’s Stem was covered in a dome of blue and yellow luxin, translucent and insanely strong, Teia walked for twenty or thirty paces before she took off her hood. The tide was rising, and the wind was causing whitecaps. The Lily’s Stem crossed the waterline, so now the waves were smashing against the bridge, which didn’t so much as shudder. It was a symbol of the Chromeria itself. All the tumult and the roar of the world crested and smashed against it, and it stood, unchanged, unmoved, impervious.
It was always eerie, though, walking through the light-tunnel, watching bursts of water flare high over your head, sometimes crashing all the way over the tube. There had been attempts to blow the bridge before with barrels of black powder. At least three attempts had been stopped. One wagon had made it, the Tellari separatist inside bleeding, dying from his wounds even as he maniacally set fire to his cargo.
The explosion, confined to the tube, had blasted out both sides like a musket firing two directions. Dozens had died, and yet the bridge held. Ahhana the Dextrous had been the superchromat yellow drafter who’d been the lead drafter creating the bridge, more than two hundred years ago. There were engineers even now who claimed succession down a line of tutors to the woman, so famous had she been.
Teia tried to remind herself of that strength when a wave smashed against the side and washed all the way over the top.
She avoided the others: Ferkudi and some of his friends from the earlier Blackguard classes. For a moment as they laughed, though, happy, not two minutes after grieving and being ready to fight, Teia saw them as her instructors must: children, sixteen and seventeen years old, laughing about someone’s awkward attempts at kissing, and yet warriors at the same moment, lethal and lazy, implacable and silly, man and child.
Too much thinking, T.
She somehow made it into the lift without them noticing her among the others. It was a good thing about being slight. Sometimes you wanted to be overlooked. She didn’t feel like talking, but she wondered if they’d think her unfriendly. No, they were too involved with themselves.
Staying on the lift when the inductees got out, Teia left instead at the level of Kip’s room. The clerks had been too busy in the days immediately before the fleet left to do any normal business. That had meant Teia and Kip couldn’t file her paperwork. It meant she was still, technically, a slave. With Kip gone, she needed to file that paperwork immediately. If old Andross Guile remembered her, he would surely seize her as his grandson’s property, if only to spite Kip.
You idiot, Kip, why’d you attack Andross Guile? Of all people, you attack him?
And where was Kip now? Would he ever come home?
Come home? To where Andross Guile and a noose are waiting for him?
Kip could be alive, but Teia would still probably never see him again. He’d been her partner for only a few months, but their time together had been intense. They’d been outcasts together, and fought together, both figuratively and literally. Teia’s heart ached.
She tugged on the vial of olive oil she still wore at her neck. She would wear it until she got the confirmation from the secretaries that her manumission papers had gone through fully, irrevocably. Then she would smash it. Soon, she hoped.
The key turned easily in the lock, and Teia opened the door and stepped inside quickly.
“Hello, little dove,” a man said from the darkness. “Turn around.”
Teia froze up for a moment, then turned, keeping a hand on the latch. “Who are you?” she asked. “What are you doing here?”
“Two… excellent… questions,” the man said. He had fair skin, freckles, a fringe of orange hair brushed over in a vain attempt to conceal a knobby bald pate. He wore a rich trader’s garb with a thin black cloak, and held a velvet-brimmed petasos in one hand, but most striking were his eyes. They were amber-colored. Not from drafting yellow or orange luxin, but naturally amber. He smiled, showing stark white teeth. “When we’re in public, you shall call me Master Sharp.”
Which prompted the obvious question, “But in pri—”
“Murder.”
“Excuse me?” Teia asked. Fear shot through her, and she hated it.
“Murder. More of a title. Murder Sharp. Had a real name, once. Gave it up.”
Which prompted more obvious questions. But to hell with him. “What are you doing in here?” she demanded.
“Recruiting.”
“You fail. Now get out.” Recruiting?
He made no move to leave. “You made a good decision back there at the docks, though it made my life more difficult. Bright girl, aren’t you? Seeing the paryl but ignoring it? You saw an enemy with unknown abilities asking you to meet on ground of their choosing—and you chose not to come into that fight. That was… wiser than your years. It makes me want you more. I have a job for you. And if you do it, I will give you your papers.”
“What papers?” Teia asked, playing stupid.
“Indeed?” he asked archly. “After I’ve complimented your intelligence? You are a child, aren’t you? An uncut gem, though. If you perform my task today, I will give you your papers, I swear by my very soul and my hope of illumination. If you do not, I will give them to Andross Guile, for whom I have worked in the past. A little reminder to him of who and what you are will be sufficient to make your life difficult, don’t you think? Do you think these manumission papers will ever see the light of day if I take them to High Luxlord Guile?”
The answer was obvious. “How do I know you’ll give them to me?”
“I hold oaths holy. If, however, you attempt to circumvent my plans again by going to some other authority—”
Teia attacked him, jabbing a fist at his throat.
And promptly fell, nerveless, into his arms. He lifted her easily and laid her on Kip’s bed as gently as a lover. She couldn’t feel anything. Her body was simply gone, a blank in her senses. She smelled the odd man named Murder. He smelled of orange peel and ginger and mint, invigorating, appealing even. She hated him for that.
He smiled toothily with the whitest, mo
st perfect teeth she’d ever seen, and arranged her limbs for her. He put two fingers against her upper lip, not shushing her but instead feeling her breath, and withdrew when he did, seeming content. “Can you speak?” he asked.
She opened her mouth, but there was no control of her air to scream, she couldn’t even whisper. Something was very, very wrong. Confusion threatened to break into panic.
“The body is such a mystery, don’t you agree? The sheer number of things that must go right from moment to moment to keep this meat operating.” He picked up her limp arm and dropped it. It fell, lifeless. “Let me tell you the most interesting thing: the more you know, the greater you realize the mystery is. The wisest chirurgeons in the satrapies still believe blood sits static in our limbs, that it ebbs and flows like tides, perhaps even tied to the moon. My people, on the other hand, have known for centuries that blood circles the body, that the heart is a pump. We know because we can see it. And yet even to us, we who see plainly what a hundred generations of chirurgeons have not yet discovered, there are mysteries. We are not so much greater than they are, after all. Different in degree, but not in kind. I know that a pinch here or a crystal there will, if I’m lucky, produce this and this. You moved so fast. So fast. Do you feel any tingling in your feet yet? Blink once for yes, twice for no.”
Teia felt nothing. Nothing. She was a prisoner, trapped in her own unresponsive flesh. She felt tears forming. Then, tingling, one foot and then the other. She blinked, almost involuntarily.
“Good. Tingling should begin in your fingers any moment.”
He was right. For all his supposed ignorance, he was exactly right. That didn’t make it less terrifying, just differently so.
Murder said, “Stop thinking about your fear. Your feeling will all come back. I’m very good at what I do. By the time you’re able to speak, I want you to guess how I did it.”
Teia hated being easily biddable, but there was something intoxicating about the man. Further, he was right. She took a deep breath, and realized she could feel it in her chest when she did so. Thank Orholam.
It took a few more breaths and frustration before she could relax enough to open her eyes full to see paryl. What she saw took her breath away.
The entire room was filled with paryl. A gaseous, luminous cloud of the stuff filled every nook and cranny. More than that, the paryl appeared to suffuse both her and Murder’s bodies. It went through them. Murder had used that property to reach inside her body and tweak something. Her Blackguard training had only begun to delve into what kinds of wounds resulted in what kinds of damage. She knew that was something the full Blackguards studied. And her own experiences of battle, of watching the dead and the dying and the injured, were still too raw for her to take them apart and think about what kind of wound produced what. But she had seen animals slaughtered at Lady Lucigari’s estate growing up. Goats and pigs and cattle. The cook preferred a deep slash across the throat to bleed the animal, but her husband Amos had liked to use his ax.
He was one of those men who’d never been to war, but liked to talk about how great he would have been if he had. Butchering an animal was as close as he could get. Teia had seen his wood ax fall, and an ox fell lifeless and limp when the ax bit through its spine. She’d seen him make a mistake while drunk, and only crush a vertebra with a clumsy stroke, seen the cow’s back legs drop limp while the front still stood.
“You pinched my spine,” Teia said.
Murder brushed her cheek tenderly. “Smart. True, as far as it goes. But I don’t recommend you go around pinching spines randomly to figure it out. Do it wrong and you stop the heart or lungs. It took me six tries before I got it right. And then after I thought I’d mastered it, I paralyzed a boy permanently. Had to arrange it so it looked like he fell down a well. He lived for six months until someone forgot to give him water and he slipped away.”
“How many of you are there?” Teia asked.
“Few enough we’re always looking for more. Enough so we don’t take those unfit for duty. Can you move now?”
“Yes. May I?” Teia hated herself for asking, but Murder was like a wild animal. Any sudden move might set him off.
“Open your mouth,” he said. She did. “Good girl.”
With a wide finger and thumb, he pushed her lips back like she was a horse. She pulled back. “Be still!” he hissed.
She froze.
He pushed her lips up and down, manipulating them to give himself a better look in her mouth. Then he stuck a long, delicate finger in her mouth, feeling her teeth one by one, seeking out every imperfection, moving from the front of her mouth to the back. There was odd pleasure in his eyes.
Teia had the sudden, wild impulse to bite his finger off. She had no idea why his touching her like that felt like such a violation, but he made her feel dirty, his eyes wide with desire, not magic.
And then he was done. He pulled his finger out of her mouth. It was wet. He smelled it, then held it under her nose.
“Parsley,” he said. “Chew parsley, and your breath won’t be so foul.” Then he sucked his finger. “Smell.” He put his finger back under her nose.
She smelled. It smelled like spit to her. Ugh. Why had she obeyed him?
“So much better, don’t you think?” Master Sharp asked.
Teia said nothing. Her stomach was in knots, and she didn’t trust her voice. She was suddenly sure that he’d been tempting her to bite him. What would he have done if she’d given him that excuse? It was like a nightmare she couldn’t wake from.
He stood. “Smart. And young. You’ll be formidable, Adrasteia. If you live. If you’re not given to an owner who decides to break that spirit in that most effective way a young woman’s spirit can be broken. I know you think you’re so strong nothing can break you. It’s a comforting lie, but don’t test it.
“Believe me, no one is that strong. But I don’t ask you to live in fear, Adrasteia. I merely suggest you use that wisdom you’ve shown before. Think not just about the fallout for you if you tell someone. Consider what happens to Commander Ironfist if he takes up your cause. Perhaps it would go well if I were to give your papers to any ordinary slaveholder. But if you pit Commander Ironfist against Andross Guile? Who do you think would win in that kind of fight? Ironfist is a good man, and he’ll go to his destruction for you, if you tell him.”
Teia wanted to kill him. How dare he threaten Ironfist?
“Or perhaps you can go to Karris? You have trained with her, after all.”
Teia hadn’t even thought of that, though now that he said it, she was sure she would have. Karris was a woman in the Blackguard, an Archer who knew their special burdens, and she was a good woman. But that Master Sharp had thought of it made her heart sink. He knew everything, and he was fast, faster than he had any right to be. Of course, he’d been preparing for this meeting, too.
There was a thought that was important behind that fact, but Teia couldn’t get to it past her fear. “What would happen to her?”
“Maybe nothing. High Luxlord Guile already hates her. Of course, now that she’s Gavin’s wife—or widow—they are family now. So I imagine the White will be pressing Karris to make peace with the old man. Karris might not be too eager to take up another cause that puts her in direct opposition to one of the most notorious grudge-holders in the Seven Satrapies. How well does she really like you? Or perhaps she will take up your case, and you’ll not only cost her her chance at peace, but he will win. The law is on his side, so he will win. And then what will he do to you to spite her?”
Teia licked her lips. “He might want peace, too, you know. He could give me up as a gesture of goodwill.”
“Goodwill?” He chuckled, as if it were droll. “Andross Guile is full of will, I grant, but little of it is good.”
The whims of the great crushed the lives of those who labored beneath them. Bringing yourself to their attention was always risky. Teia was doomed.
“Of course, you’re right,” Murder Sharp said. “Lo
gically, that is a possibility. I suppose you’ll have to weigh the odds. In the meantime, I advise you to keep your head down. We’ll give you orders soon. One simple assignment, and you’re free. Pardon, let me amend that. One simple assignment, and one meeting afterward if you do well, for my masters would like to take their own roll of the die at recruiting you.” He walked to the door. “Think carefully of all the costs of acting rashly. You have so much potential, Adrasteia.” He slipped out and closed the door. Her last glimpse of him was of the sigil across the back of his cloak, the silent-winged night hunter, the owl, wings flared, claws extended, nearly invisible, stitched in gray thread on gray fabric.
Teia jumped to her feet and ran to the door, snatching up a dagger on her way from its hook on the wall. She put her hand on the latch to throw it open—stopped.
Seconds drained past. Open the door, Teia. Go after him and stick this dagger straight into his back!
She locked the door. Sat heavily on the bed. The weight of her tiny olive oil vial was like an anchor dragging her down, down. A slave again, after freedom had been this close. It was worse than death. She crawled under the covers and curled into a ball. But she didn’t cry.
Her eyes were leaking, but she didn’t cry. Damn it.
Chapter 11
Rowing. The pain had become either bearable or so familiar that it couldn’t keep his attention.
Ten days after Gunner cored the apple in Gavin’s mouth with a musket ball, the drummers rattled an odd tattoo in response to some order the slaves couldn’t hear. Gavin looked over at his oarmates. He didn’t expect anything from the man next to him, Orholam. The nickname was for his number—Seven—but Gavin had slowly realized the Angari slaves had a darker sense of humor in their naming. Seven radiated kindness, but he almost never said anything, and when he did, it was rarely helpful. That these very qualities were why he’d been named Orholam was a sentiment so profane and disrespectful that the Highest Luxiat and head of Orholam’s worship on earth had laughed for a good ten minutes when he finally understood.