The Burning White (105 page)

Red light. It was definitely, definitely red light.

Wait. What was he talking about?

“Ridiculous, huh?” He looked up at her face just as her first shock had worn away to be replaced with revulsion.

He saw her expression, and his own darkened instantly.

Ah, shit, Teia. A little pretending would’ve gone a long way right there.

“Yeah, I know,” he said hoarsely. “Stupid. Instead we gotta do it this way.”

“How’d you find me?” Teia said quickly.

“You really gonna try to stall me?”

“You did kidnap me a second time. If that wasn’t to talk over our little contest, why would you do that?”

“No, it wasn’t that. More the loneliness. So maybe sort of? But more for . . . another reason. A darker one.” He scowled at the candle. Reds were not known for their deviousness. He threw the bag over her head, and then she heard the flare of a candle again. A normal one, apparently, because he sighed. “Oh, that’s much better. Don’t know why it’s affecting me so bad these days.”

“You know, I ran across you at the corner of Farbod and Low,” she said. What time was it? How long had she been unconscious? Were they underground?

“Really? Why didn’t you kill me there?” Sharp asked.

“Thought I had a chance at the Old Man. I followed him instead,” she said.

“You always did have guts,” he said. “But now, tell me, why didn’t you come after your father? I sat on him for
weeks
waiting for you to make your move.”

“You did?” she said. “I had no idea where he was.” Still don’t.

“What?! I left hints everywhere! I mean, I went to all your old haunts and left things that’d point you to him. Blackguard taverns. Parks you liked. That place where you bought fruit.”

“Well, I was
avoiding
those places because I thought you’d be stalking me at them.” He’d known where she bought fruit?

“Huh. Good thought,” Murder said. “Great discipline. You always had great discipline. Just tended to try things that were a little much for your skills. It’s too bad.”

“So how did you find me?” Teia asked. She did not like him using the past tense about her.

“When your friends came. The Mighty. I knew you’d go to them right away. Trouble was, there’s a bunch of them. But Kip and Ben-hadad split off from the others. Really thought you’d go for your old bed buddy first, see if he wanted a quick roll while his wife’s head was turned. But then I camped out on Ben-hadad. Scared the hell out of me once I realized they were working on cracking open the Old Man’s office! I was like, Do I go report this right away, or wait? So I split the difference and waited until they had the solution—or thought they did. Anyway, I knew you’d come. How could you help it? Patience is so key in our work, isn’t it?” He sighed. “Forget about earlier. Don’t know what got into me. Never been the sensitive type before.”

Did he not know he’d gone wight? How could he not know?

Because he had no one to tell him. He’d been alone so long, he’d become a monster and he didn’t even know it.

Could she use that?

Murder Sharp said, “You’re not getting out of here, Teia. You’re too resourceful for me to leave in this room until after the walls come down. You have to die. Just one more soul on my tally when you could have been so much more.”

“ ‘After the walls come down’?” she asked.

“The Order’s made a treaty with the White King. Our people mob the gates, a few Shadows take down the cannon crews, and they reward us beyond our wildest dreams.”

“But that’ s—that’s, you haven’t even explained—”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said sadly. He seemed back in control now. Himself again.

“Well, sure it matters—” Teia said.

“It doesn’t matter
for you
. Your part ends here. I’m sorry.”

“Please,” Teia said, fear gripping her throat. She’d been testing her bonds. There was nothing she could do. She couldn’t even move her extremities.

She’d missed her chance. Drafting now was impossible.

She tried it anyway, her eyes flaring wide.

“Uh-uh-uh,” Murder Sharp scolded. He tore the bag off her head, gripped her hair in a fist, and pulled her face up, almost gently. But she had no illusions he would stay gentle if she resisted.

He looked at her, eye to eye, and then he kissed her forehead gently, like a father. “I want to ask you a favor,” he said.

“I want to ask you one back,” Teia said quickly.

He laughed. “Not really in the position, are you?”

“I’ll do anything you want if you hear me out.”

“That’s not how this works,” Murder Sharp said.

“My father. They’ll kill him if they learn I betrayed them,” Teia said. “He doesn’t know anything about this. You know that. He’s just a merchant. Can you have them let him go?”

She was actually surprised at how level and calm her voice came out. Sharp seemed to be surprised, too.

“I’ve got no reason to help you,” Sharp said.

“No . . . no, you don’t. But maybe, maybe a little redemption is better than none. Maybe that’s how you close a little bit of separation, Elijah ben-Zoheth.”

He snorted. “You got balls,” Sharp said with a little smile that showed his everyday dentures: plain, white, but not so perfect as to draw attention. “I wish we didn’t have to do this.”

“Me, too,” Teia said lightly.

He laughed. Then he looked down at her body and shook his head. “I can’t believe I put you in my mother’s dress. What the hell was I thinking? Anyway . . . about my request.”

He cleared his throat, suddenly awkward.

“Anything,” Teia said.

He cleared his throat. “You’ve got a beautiful lower left dogtooth. Immaculate. Gorgeously, flawlessly formed, from all I can tell. Its only defect, I think, is that it’s a bit large for your mouth—but that makes it perfect for mine. I would like your permission to . . . um, add it to my best pair of diplomatic dentures. You know the ones. I find a beautiful smile cuts right through people’s defenses. Melts them inside. It’s magical, really. But I shouldn’t like for my best smile to be tarnished by some shadow of guilt that I’d . . . violated you. You’d be part of something perfect, long after your death. It’s immortality. Of a sort.”

“Orholam have mercy,” Teia whispered.

“Well, clearly
not
,” Murder Sharp said, laughing suddenly. “But I will. I’ve had poor luck with teeth when I’ve killed the donor in advance—the rot sets into the tooth so, so fast it seems. That’s why you’re still alive, actually. I can’t risk losing your perfection in such a way, so I intend to sedate you before relieving you of it. You’ll feel very little. But you will be alive.” He pulled forward two vials on the table. He cleared his throat again. “Two lovely tinctures here: first, I give you a heavy dose of poppy dissolved in brandy. Tastes wretched, but it’ll give you a total euphoria, and some say visions akin to entering the afterlife, if there is such a thing. This second one is . . . a marvel. A wonder. Very odd. The Braxians were trying to find an opposite to nightshade—you know it?”

Teia did, of course. In drops applied to the eyes, nightshade or belladonna caused the pupils to flare wide, allowing drafters to soak in more light—or women to look more comely. It also made you blind if you used it too often, so the Chromeria frowned on its use, preferring drafters to learn the skill of widening or tightening their pupils at will.

“What would the opposite of belladonna do?” Teia asked. “Constrict pupils? Oh . . . to starve drafters of source light.”

“Yes, yes, I’m always forgetting how sharp you are. Aha. Sharp. Anyway, the different narcotics they tried at first were too obvious when used at the doses necessary. I actually don’t know if they ever found what they were looking for, but they stumbled across this:
lacrimae sanguinis
. Eaten or drunk, this poison takes a few hours to make its way to the eyes—I’ve not had enough occasion to practice to find out how long exactly. But in a few hours, it
sets
somehow. It crystallizes within the eyes. Then, upon the pupil contracting or dilating strongly, the poison’s released into the body.

“One drop is supposed to be able to kill a dozen men. I’ll give you two. Then I’ll leave my drapes open. You’ll have pleasant poppy dreams all night, and when light flashes over the horizon with the dawn of Sun Day, you’ll die instantly.” He cleared his throat again. “It is as kind as I can be while I do what I must.”

“That . . . does sound very kind,” Teia said.

There was nothing else to say. She’d failed. This was the end for her.

Her heart pushed through the thickets of panic and found, suddenly, the barren plains of resignation. Her breath slid from her mouth like a bit falling from her teeth.

She felt strangely better. Death wasn’t the freedom she’d choose, but it was one kind of freedom.

Unless there was a hell.

She’d find out soon enough.

“Just the one tooth?” she asked, her voice level and scoured clean of fear.

With a slurping sound, he took out his dentures and set them aside. He began washing his hands in a basin, with soap. But even still, he never took his eyes off her for more than an instant. There would be no surprising him with paryl.

“Oh, I pride myself on my tidiness. I won’t deface you unnecessarily.” He dried his hands on a pretty, nicely folded cloth, unhurried. There was some element of ritual, of nearly erotic fixation, barely contained, in his voice. “I want you to know, Teia, I’ll think of you always when I wear them.”

“You’ll help my father?” she asked.

He put a blindfold over her head, but didn’t lower it over her eyes yet.

He stared at her in the half dark of the hidden chamber for a long moment. A last, guttering goodness flickered in his eyes. She hoped it was an assent.

“Open your mouth,” he commanded, filling a tiny silver spoon full of dark liquid. Behind him on his table sat shining tools: a jaw stretcher, pliers, more awful things. She’d not be able to see or speak once he got to work on her.

“Murder?” she said.

“Yes, Adrasteia?”

“Fuck you.”

He flashed a sudden grin, showing broken stubs of teeth beneath his gleaming, violet-shrapnel eyes. “They all say that.”

She opened her mouth and accepted the bitter drops.

One day wasn’t nearly enough time to get ready, but through the triple miracles of preparation, competence, and the total focus of every human on the Jaspers, things were actually coming together. Kip had meetings with Tisis and the generals. Tisis would be managing Corvan Danavis’s scouts and intel, and the generals simply needed to hear Kip say to their faces that he really did want them to follow every order Corvan Danavis gave them. It was worth the half hour Kip spent recounting all of Danavis’s exploits and brilliance and showing Kip’s own absolute faith in the man. These generals would be repeating the stories to their own men and women. Plus, they needed to see that what Kip was doing was intimately tied to their success.

He spent all of two minutes with his wife that weren’t practical and tactical.

“Have you seen Ben-hadad?” Kip asked. “I could really, really use his big brain on this.”

“No,” Tisis said. “I haven’t seen Cruxer, either.”

Kip felt the cold hand of dread around his heart. They knew the Order was here. “What?” he said. “I assumed he was with you, making sure the new members of the Mighty were squared away.”

“I know, and I thought he’d be here. But none of the others have seen them, either. Ben I could imagine disappearing to work on something he thought was important and forgetting to tell anyone. But Cruxer? Kip, he was really upset about Ironfist’s betrayal . . . and then Ironfist shows up half dead . . .”

Ironfist hadn’t woken. It wasn’t certain that he would.

“Orholam have mercy,” Kip said. He swallowed.

“I’ll let you know the instant I hear anything,” Tisis said. He saw the agony in her eyes, but there was also a steel practicality there. They both had things to do, at opposite ends of the Jaspers. No matter what. Even if Cruxer was dead.

And she was right.

“Likewise,” Kip said.

They held each other then, forehead to forehead, all too aware that it might be the last time. Their parting kiss was both too much and too little by far. And then they went to their work again: he to the Chromeria, and she to set up scouts and signal-mirror communications lines.

Kip had to bust a few heads—one nearly literally, he’d bruised his knuckles—but he’d gotten control of all the Thousand Stars right around the time the White King’s fleet had arrived on the horizon.

Probably not coincidental that the last stubborn jackasses were convinced by that.

Then he got the missive.

“Downstairs. Now. Not a suggestion.—Promachos G.”

“Downstairs?” Kip asked the messenger. At least Andross hadn’t sent the message through that smug jackass, Grinwoody.

Ferkudi and Winsen accompanied him as he followed Andross Guile’s servant down the lifts, then through the small door that headed to the back docks. Hard-faced Blackguards stood at either side of the door, lips tight. They wouldn’t meet Kip’s eyes.

Oh no.

Kip’s neck went tight. He couldn’t draw a full breath.

His feet seemed to move independently of his will. He was being carried along by pure momentum and social expectation.

If he didn’t find out, maybe it wouldn’t have happened.

But he couldn’t stop himself. The world was closing in, vision narrowing even as the tunnel widened out.

More Blackguards. More stony faces. No, no, no.

He walked down the path toward the docks toward Andross, who stood impassive over . . . something.

A body, of course, Kip knew. Covered.

He saw Gill Greyling there, opposite Andross, on the other side of the body. Gill stood ramrod straight, face still, but his eyes streamed tears, and he swallowed as Kip came close. He backed away to make room for Kip.

The body had been covered by Blackguard cloaks. It was a sign of the tremendous respect they wouldn’t have given to one who wasn’t one of their own.

“Aside from laying their cloaks on him,” Andross said, “nothing’s been touched, in case you wanted to examine things for yourself. When you’re ready, I’ll tell you what we know.”