by Brent Weeks
“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.
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 t
o 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.