The Burning White (43 page)

“They gave you the same assignment, same lies, didn’t they? Gavin or Andross or Orea or Karris. One of them.”

She gulped. If he asked her now who it was, what did she say?

He really didn’t know?

“No, you don’t need to tell me. I see the horror on your face.”

She couldn’t even understand what he meant for a moment. Oh, the horror that she’d heard the same lies, not horror at one of the names. She hadn’t given Karris away.

Not yet.

“Who knows?” Sharp said. “Maybe you’ll go left where I went right. It’d figure, huh? That’s what mirror images do. Always confused me how that works.”

Teia could say nothing.

“Never mind. The Old Man came to me after Talim died. Bastard didn’t even leave last instructions for me in our dead drop. But no one signaled me, either, so I knew he’d kept my existence secret to the grave. Or forgotten me. What did it matter, then? No one was coming for me. No one saw me. No one had heard about me. No one cared. No one was going to save me. The Old Man didn’t know about my mission, either. I was still safe. As safe as a spy gets when they’re trying to do what we do, anyway, right? He said he wanted to trust me, but he didn’t.”

Teia had heard this story before, though somehow Murder Sharp had forgotten telling her—and she certainly hadn’t heard about it from this perspective.

“He gave me the Biter—you know, that tooth-breaking tool? Oh, right, I showed it to you with the Old Man. Well, he gave me a job to do with it. I was supposed to find this noblewoman, orange drafter, break all her teeth, then kill her. Felia Dariush her name was. I’ll never forget that night. The Old Man told me she’d infuriated some rival who wanted to marry the same man. The Old Man said it was hard to find people who were willing to kill drafters, hard to find people willing to kill women, and hardest to find people who’d take dangerous assignments on short notice. This job had to been done immediately. Course, he didn’t tell me what he meant by ‘immediately,’ but I knew it was my chance—maybe my last chance—to work my way into his good graces.”

“Shit,” Teia said. She didn’t want to, but she felt a kinship for him. The job assassinating the Nuqaba had been like that.

“Yeah. I botched the job. I wonder how different things would be if I hadn’t. Not just for me, either.

“She was staying in a part of Big Jasper I didn’t know well back then. I asked directions from some idiot kopi seller, and he told me the wrong street, gave me directions to Farhad Street instead of Farbod Street. Maybe I misunderstood his accent, or he mine. I broke into the house, and there was no young woman there, but there was a bed and a woman’s clothing in the trunk, so I waited all night for her to come back, thinking I was at the right place. Some tavern girl comes back after dawn, and it’s not her. Description is totally wrong. I ask someone else out in the street and figure out what I did wrong—and I run. I get to Felia’s house and she’s gone. I’m reckless as all hell—knowing this might mean my death if I fail, and I figure out she’d gone to the harbor. I got that feeling in my gut the whole time I’m running there—and I get there in time to see her ship disappear on the horizon. I ask where the boat’s going. I ask for other boats going the same way, though I have no way to pay for passage. It turns out her rich daddy’s boat is one of the fastest around, and no one knows where it’s headed anyway. I ask if there’s a boat heading for her home port, because I know I’m in it deep. I’m willing to gamble going to the wrong port on the bare chance I can fix it. But there isn’t. Not for a week. And I know the Old Man won’t let me live that long if I don’t meet him when I’d said.”

Holy hells, Teia thought.

“No matter how I practiced it in my head, it all sounded like a lame excuse, an unforgivable failure. The Old Man’s not a fool. He doesn’t expect perfection. He tolerates failure from those valuable to him. But this? A rich woman allowed to escape, when the Old Man was already suspicious? I’d look untrustworthy. And
that
he doesn’t tolerate. So it was life-or-death. Do you know I didn’t really have good teeth beforehand? Didn’t even think about my smile. Didn’t take care of myself. I’d probably not choose to keep a single one of those teeth now. Not like you. Very fortunate, you are.”

She did not want to hear him rhapsodize about her teeth, not right now. Not ever. “That’s . . . that’s not the story you told in the Mirror Room,” Teia said.

“Well, all that was a lie. I was trying to scare you into not getting distracted or greedy when you’re on a job. The real problem with taking a bribe is that every delay gives your target more chances to get away or be saved. Don’t do that.”

Please stay utterly un-self-aware, Teia thought. “So, how am I supposed to know that this story is true this time?” she asked, trying to change the subject.

“Does it look like I’m trying to amuse anyone?”

“So that’s why you broke all your own teeth? Because you were afraid the Old Man would think you’d taken a payoff to let that girl go?”

Too late, as he sucked air through his perfect dentures, she realized she shouldn’t have said he was afraid. How could you call a man a coward who had shattered all his own teeth in order to live?

“I’m sorry—”

“Point is,” Murder Sharp cut her off angrily, “
I
never had a choice. Not from the moment I was born with a paryl talent I didn’t ask for. Elijah ben-Kaleb didn’t have a choice who I would kill for the Chromeria, and Murder Sharp didn’t have a choice who to kill for the Order. They’re just the fuckin’ same.

“Maybe that’s what she meant,” he mumbled. “Weird fuckin’ lady. No coward, for sure, but she didn’t even
fight
. Couldn’t figure that out. ‘Son of Separation.’ Maybe this is how I separate myself from them.”

He looked up at Teia with sudden resolve. “That’s why I ain’t killed you yet. Not fondness. Not weakness, for sure. You’re gonna be my proof. I’m better than them. Better than your master, better than mine. Better than Orholam Himself, if He’s up there, who didn’t give me one choice since He cursed me with a talent for paryl. I, Elijah ben-Zoheth, am the god who holds you in his hand. I will give you the choice no one ever gave me. You read this folio, and you make your choice. Join us for real, or fight me, or run.

“You join the Order for real, and I’ll never let ’em know you were a spy from the get-go. Or you can run. As long as you leave a trail so it’s clear that you’re running far away, the Order doesn’t have anyone to spare right now to send after you. Or if they send me, now or later, I won’t find you, on my honor. Or, if you’re just that damned stubborn and stupid, and you want to fight . . .” He paused.

He sucked spit through his teeth a few times.

“Tell you what, I’ll be as, uh, what-you-call-it? fair? sporting? generous? as I wish they would’ve been to me. You choose to fight, I won’t tell them even then, unless you blow your own cover. You aren’t supposed to be on the Jaspers at all. I haven’t reported you—and I won’t. But if you side with the Chromeria, I’ll hunt you down myself, and I’ll kill you. No mercy, no second chances. So I guess you’ll have to try to kill me first. It can be a little hunt. That could be fun. We’ll getta see who’s best. Maybe I’ll have a real challenge for once.

“So you choose. You want to join the Order for real, you show up at the Great Fountain tomorrow at noon. If you want to run, you best be on a boat off the Jaspers by then. If you want to fight me, uh . . . hmm . . . don’t do either of those, I guess? Because if you’re not at the Great Fountain at noon, the next time I see you, you die.”

“I understand,” Teia said.

He loosed her bonds, and she rubbed feeling back into her limbs. “Eyes,” he said.

She made sure he could see her eyes weren’t flared to paryl.

“Now, go,” he said, handing her the folio. “You have some reading to do.”

Teia took it carefully.

“No, wait,” Sharp said suddenly. “Uh, if you run, I can’t risk you using one of your old codes in the note, so just address it to your handler and, you know, ‘I’m sorry’ or something. Nothing else. No secret ink or codes or any of that. I’m ready to give you your life, but I don’t need you endangering mine. So just leave that in your old bunk, under the pillow.”

Where Sharp would look at it, of course.

“That would give you their name. I’d be betraying my handler.” Unless I put someone else’s name on it?

Dammit, I could have put that asshole Grinwoody’s name on the note, and the Order would have killed him. Granted, shoving an innocent into the path of an arrow in flight like that wasn’t exactly how a Blackguard was supposed to protect her ward, but between Karris and Grinwoody? Grinwoody could burn.

Shit. Teia’d thought too slow.

“Besides,” Teia said. “If I leave anything
without
the right codes, my handler will know the Order got to me. Or some random innocent might take it.”

Actually, that last wouldn’t be a problem for Sharp. He didn’t care that the message got through; he only cared to see the name on it.

Again, she wasn’t thinking fast enough.

But he did look confused.

Sharp cursed. “True, true. Uh . . .”

Teia realized then that he really
was
at a loss. It wasn’t a trap, or a devious plot by the Old Man to confirm her handler was Karris—whom he would surely have suspected.

“Just the words ‘I’m sorry’?” Teia asked. “Then if someone does pass it on to my handler, they might be expected to recognize my handwriting, but no one’s going to learn anything else from it, and if you see it, you’ll know that I’m really—”

“No,” he said. “You’d leave that note to try to trick me, even if you planned to fight me. Sorry, nope. That’s the price. Do it my way if you want to run. Name probably won’t be a surprise to the Old Man anyway. Probably will know who you’re working for immediately as soon as that white boat gets back and you’re not on it.”

Shit! Sharp had gotten to the right solution through animal cunning instead of intelligence.

Or at least the wrong solution for Teia. If she put a name on that letter, she had to be willing for that person or anyone else who mistakenly touched the letter to die. If one of her Blackguard friends—Gill Greyling maybe? Essel?—tidied her bunk, they might find the note. Surely the Order would kill them, just in case they were a contact. Or it could be one of the slaves who tidied the floor. Even if she put that snake Andross’s name on it, murdering him might be exactly the wrong thing for the Chromeria and the war.

And she sure as hell wasn’t going to betray Karris. Karris was a betrayer. Teia wasn’t.

Murder Sharp was shitty at this, but shitty in such a way that the choice he thought was giving her was actually no choice at all. He was a stupid man, but Teia wasn’t much smarter, was she? She hadn’t even thought fast enough to outsmart a moron.

Kip would’ve.

“Oh,” Sharp said, like it was an afterthought, but there was a cruel edge to it, and Teia realized that what was coming was a trap. Sharp’s cunning wasn’t the kind that thought of every avenue for every plan; it was the kind that sought out chinks in the armor, like paryl slipping through the skin to your heart. “You’ve deceived us before. So if you choose to join the Order, you’ll need to do something this time to convince me that you’re serious. Because that’s the first thing a spy would lie about, right? You already lied to join us, so you’d just do it again, right? So I’ll need some proof. By your actions.”

Oh God.

Sharp said, “You’re my shitty tin mirror, so let’s give you a test, don’t you think? Just like I had.”

She could tell he loved the dread he’d put on her face.

“It’d have to be something a spy would have a problem with doing, wouldn’t it? Killin’ some slave would be nothing to a tough, hardened little bitch like you, right?” he asked. “Nah, you’re way past that. And we’ll have to have a time pressure, so you don’t get all sneaky smart or something and try to fool me. By tomorrow, then. By noon. Still meeting me at the Great Fountain.”

“
Tomorrow
?!” Teia protested. “Are you forgetting that you tried your best at
your
task—and
failed
? And you’re so much better than me. Always have been. You have to give me more time than—”

“You’re right,” he said, cutting her off. She shut up instantly. She wasn’t out of this place yet; she couldn’t afford to disrespect him. He seemed to actually be thinking about her objection. “It’d have to be something that’s not
hard
to do, just difficult. Or do I mean difficult, but not hard? Hmm.”

He was mocking her now, and she wasn’t sure exactly how, which made her feel stupid.

I’m going to enjoy killing you, aren’t I? You piece of shit.

A glowing crescent of his white teeth seemed to illuminate the shack with Sharp’s cruel glee. He said, “If you want to join the Order for real, prove it by bringing me a sack. Waterproof. With a head in it.”

“What?!”

“I don’t trust you not to just go find some corpse, so I want to see a paryl blood clot in the brain, and dual hemorrhages so the eyes go all blackballed. It’s a bad way to go. But on the other hand, it doesn’t matter who you choose. Choose whoever you like. That makes it easy.”

“I . . .” Always before, Teia had been assigned whom to murder. Someone else had chosen. This would mean choosing some innocent herself. Choosing some stranger and killing them in a horrific way.

How do you choose which innocent dies?

“Wait, wait. With your skills now, that’s not difficult or hard, is it? You’d just kill another slave. You’ve already shown you’re perfectly willing to do that.”

“I don’ t—”

“No, no, I’ve got an idea,” Sharp said. He nodded to himself. “Yeah, yeah, that’ll do it, I think. A kid. Bring me a kid’s head. You know, a little squirt. Say, eight to ten years old.”

“A—a child?” Teia asked. One summer when she was growing up, there’d been someone in the city who snatched kids around her little sister’s age. A few of the girls were found mutilated. More simply disappeared. The snatchings stopped after that horrible summer, but no one who lived through that time could ever hear about a missing child without remembering the horror and fear.