by Brent Weeks
“Orholam bless, that’s awful,” she said. She meant it. A wave of emotion rose up from the depths. She swallowed hard, clenched her fists and jaw.
Not now, Teia. Not. Now.
“That sort of thing doesn’t happen up here,” he said. “We’re good people here.”
She made a sound of agreement and kept moving. He barely noticed her go.
It was terror to walk against the flow of the curious, knowing that looking over her shoulder would make her look guilty. She heard someone running. “Make way! Make way! Watch coming!”
She kept walking. A sharp whistle blew twenty paces behind her.
Don’t run. You look like a helpless little girl. He won’t tackle you; he’ll grab your arm. Then you counterattack. If you run, he tackles you. With his weight against yours, you’re dead.
The whistle sounded again, almost right in her ear. When he grabs your arm, turn with it, bring your elbow to his head to stun him. Then run. Two blocks to an underground gutter. Figure it out from there.
Then, from the pounding footsteps, she realized there wasn’t one guardsman, there were two. Two? Her plan wasn’t going to work for two.
She froze.
The two guardsmen ran right by her.
“Watch coming! Make way!” one of them bellowed. They ran on, and were swallowed by the evening crowds.
Within another block, everything resumed as normal, the crowds unaware of the death so nearby. Teia made her way to a fountain in a market, where some of the vendors were already closing up. She sat on the edge and trailed her fingers in the water as if idly. She sat up, looked around for anyone watching, and rubbed her fingernails on the folded tunic.
“Whatcha doing?” a little boy asked her. He was irritatingly cute. One of the merchants’ boys, no doubt.
“I’m a drafter,” she said. “Begone or I’ll set you on fire.”
The boy’s eyes widened. She faked a lunge toward him, and he bolted. She rubbed her other hand quickly and stood. She had to keep moving, had to get rid of the bloody clothes.
A few blocks away, she found a large mud puddle. She pretended to stumble and pitched the folded clothes into the middle of the puddle, then stepped on them. Mud stains over bloodstains. She pulled the caked, dripping clothes out and put them back into the hat distastefully.
It didn’t look like anyone even noticed.
A block later, she threw away the clothes and hat in a rubbish heap. She circled a few more blocks to make sure she wasn’t being followed, stopped at another fountain and scrubbed her face and hands. Satisfied, she finally headed back for the Chromeria.
No one stopped her. No one knew. She’d gotten away with it. She even still had the letters. Her mind wasn’t ready to start wrestling with what had just happened, though.
Coming back to the Chromeria was like entering another world. A world without murder, without shadows that sprang to life. A safe world. She crossed the Lily’s Stem and headed toward the entrance of the Prism’s Tower, where her room was.
She was almost to the door when she saw a man who looked a lot like Kip, leaning against the wall, flipping through playing cards as if memorizing them. As if there was nothing strange about it.
He didn’t look up.
“Kip?” she said. “Kip!” She ran over to him and threw her arms around him. “You’re alive!”
He didn’t return her embrace, and for one moment she had the terrible thought that this wasn’t Kip after all. She let go of him, stepped back. He did look different: he’d dropped probably another three sevs, his broad shoulders emerging more and more as his fat receded. His jawline more pronounced, face harder without the baby fat to soften it. But it was Kip. Something else was different about him, too. She’d thought she’d seen him in town—and she had. And suddenly fear took her by the throat.
“I just arrived. I was so excited to see you,” he said. There was no joy in his tone. “This isn’t how I pictured this.”
A weight dropped into her stomach. It was hard to breathe. Guilt raced all over her face. Kip saw it.
“Kip.” The word came out barely above a whisper. It was hard to breathe. “Kip, I’m a slave. You don’t understand what that means.”
“You’re not a slave.”
“How long did you follow me?” she asked. He couldn’t have followed her for long without her noticing, could he?
Kip’s expression flickered from looking like a puppy you’d kicked and a hard man, hiding his wounds. “You should probably change that bloody shift before anyone else notices it.”
She panicked, and set off rapidly, but his long gait kept him with her easily. When had he gotten so tall? Of course he hadn’t been able to follow her all the way from the city. What had he seen? Maybe he’d followed long enough to see her steal the clothes. Bad but not damning, and he’d seen the blood, worse, but still not damning.
On the other hand, if he had seen everything—from a clear vantage—he would know she wasn’t a killer. If he’d seen almost everything, he might think she was.
And what was the cost of telling him? You’re a slave Teia, not a fool. What does it mean? Think!
She got in the lift, where there was another discipulus with them, so Teia was spared having to come up with more lies.
The question wasn’t, what am I doing, the question is, what are they doing? There wasn’t one thread here, there were two.
As she and Kip stepped off the lift, her breath caught. So simple. Everything she’d stolen for Lady Verangheti—actually for Lady Aglaia Crassos, though she hadn’t known that then—had been metal so she could see it. But everything had also been easily identifiable. She’d thought it was so she would know what to steal. It wasn’t.
They’d been keeping everything she stole so they could blackmail her later—it was all proof that she was a thief.
Kip grabbed her arm painfully and pulled her around. She was suddenly aware of how big he’d gotten. Muscle was filling in everywhere the fat had been, but so slowly that none of them had noticed, until now, when he must have been starved for weeks to lose so much weight.
“Teia, dammit, tell me the truth!”
It wasn’t fair, she thought, how boys do that. How one second they’re big children, and the next second they can tear your arm off.
Looking up into her friend’s face—no, her master’s face, still, despite everything, still her master until those papers went through—she felt something inside break, but it was sweet; it was honey dripping from a broken honeycomb. He knew. She had to tell him everything and hope for the best. Even if he recoiled, even if he ran away, she wouldn’t be alone with this burden anymore. The very prospect was light and hope.
Kip seemed to realize how hard he was holding her arm, and he dropped it. “You get in a fight or something?” he asked.
Teia’s heart started beating again. He didn’t know. Relief rushed through her in waves.
He scowled, and she saw that he knew he’d botched it.
“I need to change, and we need to have this conversation somewhere where we can’t be overheard,” she said. In control once more, buying time, getting a little space to think.
Surely she wasn’t the only one who would be interested to learn that Kip was back. Surely spies would be reporting to everyone in power that he was here. Surely at least the White and the Red and the commander of the Blackguard would hustle as soon as they learned Kip was here. How long did it take the spies around here, anyway?
Then again, it would be best for Teia if she made it to the lavatories before meeting any of the servants of the most powerful and interested people in the Seven Satrapies.
“This will go better for both of us if I can get cleaned up first, Kip,” she said as she hurried.
She saw Gavin’s room slave Marissia coming from the direction of Kip’s room just as they reached the girls’ barracks. Teia kept her head down. “I’ll be five minutes,” she said as she ducked inside. “Maybe ten.”
There were no
girls in the barracks. Thank Orholam for small mercies. Most were out studying or working or at dinner—which reminded Teia that she hadn’t eaten since breakfast. She closed the door behind her, and then waited, listening.
“Kip,” Marissia said, her tone constrained. “I’m delighted to see you alive. You’re needed upstairs, immediately—”
“I’m sorry, but I’m busy—”
“—at an emergency meeting of the Spectrum. It’s not a request, Kip. You can come with me and we might straighten this out, or you’ll be seized by the Black’s watchmen and probably beaten, and the Red will get what he wants. What are you doing wasting time with a slave? You should have reported to the White immediately. Pray Orholam your foolishness does not cost us lives.”
“I just got here not ten—”
“Now, Kip.”
For one stupid moment, Teia wanted to go out there and slap Marissia’s face. How dare she talk to her friend like that? Slave? Slave? You’re a slave yourself, you stupid—
Teia leaned close to hear how Kip would respond. The opening door smacked her in the cheek, stunning her, though it didn’t hit hard.
“Don’t think you’ve escaped notice, caleen,” Marissia said quietly through the crack in the door. “Why haven’t you filed your manumission papers? What game are you playing? For whom?”
The door shut, and footsteps receded, and Teia was left alone swimming with an anvil.
One thing at a time, she told her panic. You’re still covered with blood, stupid. That first. She went to her bed and opened her chest and grabbed a clean shift. She went to the lavatory, poured water into a basin, and looked at herself in one of the mirrors.
Checking quickly to see that no one was coming, she stripped off her dress. Seeing the splash of blood across the front of her shift, darker where it had dried, but still livid up at her neck where her warmth and sweat had kept the gore liquid, she had the sudden urge to tear it off, to weep, to vomit. That man, the look in his eyes, that knowledge that he was dying and there was nothing he could do—
She took a deep breath, steadied herself against the basin.
Careful not to smear blood against her face, she pulled the shift off. She stopped her first instinct: to plunge the shift into the water and try to clean it. It was blood. The stains wouldn’t come out, and it would leave the water a bloody mess. Instead, she looked at herself for any evidence of blood on her own body. She dipped the hem into the water and cleaned her neck, between her breasts.
Orholam have mercy, she had blood in her ear. She couldn’t get it off.
Her stomach convulsed, but she held back the vomit. Slowly, meticulously, she dipped another clean portion of cloth into the water and cleaned her ear, behind her ear, her cheek. She checked her hands once more. Cleaned under two fingernails. She folded the ruined shift carefully so that none of the bloodstained parts were visible, toweled off with the hand towel, and pulled on her fresh shift.
She tried to smile at the mirror. Weak.
It was the best she could do.
Now to dispose of the shift—the last direct evidence of a murder that could be tied to her. The shifts were numbered on the back so the laundry slaves could return them to the appropriate girls. Teia tore the shift and ripped out the number, which was harder than she expected. Just a small square of cloth, not even as wide across as her thumb, and thin. She popped it in her mouth and swallowed it.
She stuffed the shift into the bag for menstrual rags and headed to Kip’s room. She opened the door carefully, her eyes wide to paryl, certain she would find that damned man inside again. There was no one, no traps, but there was a folded square of paper on Kip’s dresser. Teia approached it slowly, certain it hadn’t been here when she left.
It read: “T., As promised. —M.S.”
Had this been here when Marissia had checked the room? Teia’s throat tightened again. Orholam, what would she have done if Kip had been with her when she came in and found this? The weight of the secrets was suffocating.
Opening a letter from Murder Sharp was like handling serpents. Teia picked it up carefully, saw that there was only paper inside, and leaned back as she opened it.
It was her papers, the deed to her very body. Signed, everything in order. Ready to be filed.
Teia walked downstairs, waited in a line for a few minutes, and handed her papers to the clerk. He checked and double-checked everything, and then talked with an older clerk, who gave him a key. The man came out with several fat coin sticks. He counted them out for Teia, and had her sign a document stating she intended to join the Blackguard, then handed the coin sticks to her.
“Congratulations,” he said. “You are hereby released from all oaths of loyalty to any other than the Blackguard and the Chromeria.” He smiled at her and patted her hand. “Perk up, why don’t you? You’re free.”
Teia had achieved what she’d yearned for above all else, what she’d sought for years, and she was richer than she’d ever dreamed, but she’d never felt less free in her life.
Chapter 20
Karris took the spy following her on a merry chase through the worst neighborhoods of Big Jasper. She’d walked through the poverty a thousand times, and never felt nervous, but today was different. Without the aegis of her Blackguard garb, she felt oddly vulnerable. She didn’t like it. In fact, she hated it. She nodded to shopkeepers she’d known for a dozen years, and they barely responded. They didn’t recognize her when she was wearing a thobe.
Worse, their heavy-browed sons didn’t, either. She could beat any five of them, of course, depending. But the skirts of a thobe were too easy to snag, and her own experience with getting beaten in that alley not two months ago was too fresh for her to be haughty. She felt a stab of that same feeling of helplessness she’d spent her whole life fleeing.
Someone whistled at her. Her fists clenched. Dammit, all her instincts were wrong here. It was like the world had changed, and no one had bothered to tell her—all because she was wearing a thobe. Going and punching the whistler in the face wasn’t going to get the same cowed reaction that it would have when she was wearing her Blackguard garb. Neighborhoods that should have been dangerous for her prey were instead dangerous for her.
It felt like a failure when she put on her green spectacles to let them know she was a drafter. Thank Orholam she had that at least. At a single disapproving raised eyebrow above those spectacles, the men gathering blanched and disbursed.
It made her wonder. Other women dealt with this kind of thing every day, without bloodshed, without incident—and without a drafter’s spectacles. Karris literally didn’t know how they did it. She wondered if that didn’t make her weaker, somehow, in her strength. Another woman would have defused the situation before it became a situation. Karris only knew how to intimidate, to evince superior power one way or another. She’d had drafting for so long, she wasn’t sure how she would deal with life if she didn’t have it. Humbling thought.
And now, she didn’t have drafting. Not really. She could wear the spectacles, but if she drafted, the White would know. Even if she didn’t know, if she asked, would Karris lie to her?
No. Not to the White.
She was still being followed.
She took off the spectacles and walked straight until she found the alley she’d been waiting for—long, without any other entrances, nor other alleys running parallel to it. If she were to be followed at all, her tail would have to follow down this alley. She stepped into the weaver’s shop on the alley corner. “Scarves?” she asked. “Silk if possible? I’m a wedding guest.” She smiled blandly, and the delighted woman disappeared into the back of the shop, as Karris knew she would, leaving her undisturbed. Karris put a danar on the counter to pay for the deceit and the ambush place, and hid among the free-flowing bolts of cloth hanging from the ceiling.
Her tail passed the doorway blithely.
Karris was on top of him in a moment, side kick—left foot behind her right, power gathered in her hips, and righ
t foot shooting out sideways into the man’s passing shoulder with the force of a horse’s kick. Petite as she was, it didn’t matter, with all her power applied so perfectly. The man shot up to his tiptoes and was thrown sideways. He hit the wall of the alley, three paces away, with a crunch. Before he could even crumple all the way to the ground, Karris was on top of him, fingers locked around his windpipe, pinning him to the wall, fist drawn back.
The man was caught in an awkward half crouch. He groaned. He’d been wearing a hat, and now it lay at his feet. He was perhaps forty, greasy, had sun-dark skin, a messy semblance of an Atashian’s beaded beard.
He grunted. “Tol’ me you might hit me. Thought to myself, little woman like that, how hard can she hit?”
“Who sent you?” Karris asked.
“He’s too careful for that, girl. He told me to tell you, this could have been another rough lesson like the last time. This is mercy.”
“What? Another lesson?”
“When you got beat to hell. And I didn’t have anything to do with that, so don’t take it out on me. Hey, you mind letting me sit down or stand up?”
Karris let the man go.
“My thanks.” He looked at her, and blanched. “Nine hells. You’re the white Blackguard, aren’t you? The girl, changes her hair. That bastard. Sending me after you. You didn’t even draft.”
“Tell me something that convinces me not to hurt you.”
“Fine, hell with him. Didn’t pay me that much. He told me to string you out, make this take as long as possible. He didn’t even set up a time for me to meet up with him again and tell him what I’d learned. You got somewhere else you’re supposed to be?”
Karris didn’t think so. But she didn’t let the man’s words distract her. He could be talking so that his friends could take her unawares. But there was no one else in the alley.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
He grimaced. Gave up. “Dayan Dakan.”
“You owe me, Dayan Dakan.”
“Ah, balls.”