The Burning White (79 page)

There were only two ways Teia could uproot the entire Order of the Broken Eye, and tonight was her last chance to take the option that didn’t involve dozens of loyal Chromeria soldiers dying. Tonight, it seemed, the priests of the various sects were meeting with the Old Man of the Desert himself to pull together the details for the Feast of the Dying Light.

Or, as not-evil fucks called it, Sun Day Eve.

The Braxians didn’t celebrate the summer solstice as the longest day of the year; they celebrated it as the day after which the days would get shorter. That sort of made sense for the desert-dwelling Braxians, who’d suffered under the blistering, debilitating heat of their desert summers, but it still seemed kind of evil to Teia. Doubly so now, because these new Braxians weren’t desert people at all; the new followers of the Order just hated Orholam.

She could be wrong, of course. She’d been shadowing Atevia—Shadowing? she thought.

No, T, stop thinking. Last time you thought too much, you nearly had to explain ‘nocturnal emissions’ to a luxiat.

She’d been, ahem, shadowing Atevia pretty much constantly, and she’d still missed the plant. The barrel-chested wine merchant/pagan priest had reached into a pocket and suddenly flinched in a way that made it obvious he’d found something there that hadn’t been there before. Then he’d made his way hurriedly into a nearby alley, looked around furtively, and opened it. It must have been only a few words, because he closed it before Teia could lean around him to read it.

“Hate it when the old man does that,” Atevia muttered. “What if I hadn’t checked my pockets before tonight?”

Had he meant ‘the old man,’ or ‘the Old Man’?

Teia followed him as he meandered around clearly looking for something, the note still in his hand.

She had to get that note! ‘Before tonight’? That meant there was a meeting tonight, or ‘before tonight,’ didn’t it?

Having failed, up till now, to find the Old Man’s hidden office and a master list of the Order’s members, Teia now only had two ways to destroy the Order of the Broken Eye. First, find out where they were holding their big joint ritual for the Feast of the Dying Light. Through some pretense, Karris could gather a bunch of soldiers at the last moment, not telling any of them or their commanders why, and then have them sprint to the place (so as to give no traitors time to send a messenger on ahead of them).

Then Karris’s soldiers would attack the meeting directly.

There likely wouldn’t be any arrests. The Order knew that if they were captured, Orholam’s Glare awaited them. They would surely rather fight and die than face that. And the Order, fighting? That was a daunting prospect. How many Shadows would be gathered there with them?

Such a clash would likely be the end of the Order, but it would also likely be a bloodbath for both sides. And the Chromeria might still fail to get all its leaders. Teia would be there to help, but the leaders would have exit strategies, and everyone was disguised—how could Teia block every exit? She was only one person.

Maybe if she found the place early enough, she could scout it out and mark all the exits? But the Order would have Shadows and others double-checking that the site was secure beforehand.

That wasn’t a situation she wanted to get into.

She might not have any choice.

The second option was much better: Teia would follow Atevia to this meeting with the Old Man and then track him to his lair, interrogate, and kill him. Somewhere, likely in that very room, he would have code books and a list of members, maybe even her father’s location.

Even if things went wrong (and there were plenty that could), simply having the Old Man’s identity in addition to Atevia’s would be enough for Karris to triangulate the rest.

Once the Old Man and the priests were known to be dead, people like Aglaia who were on the outer circles of membership would start running for the exits—and when captured and facing the Glare, those folks would start giving up their contacts.

And Teia was close now; she could feel it.
Tonight
.

Teia had guessed that today or tonight there would have to be some sort of meeting of the priests to discuss the Feast. When your paranoia keeps you from trusting lower-level members of your cult with even the basic details (like, where a big party is going to be held), that meant the top-level people had to do all the grunt work. ‘Where are we meeting?’ ‘Is it safe?’ ‘Is it clean?’ ‘Where do people change into their disguises?’ ‘Who’s searching the guests for weapons this year?’ ‘Who’s confirming that only people who belong are attending?’

Hell, if she was really lucky, she might get the Old Man’s identity
and
the location of the Feast. Karris could attack the meeting in a safer way—trying to capture as many as possible but not worrying if some escaped—while Teia unraveled the organization from the top down.

Seeming dissatisfied, scowling at—at what? a missed contact?—Atevia sighed.

He threw up his palms, showing Teia that he was still holding that damned scrap of paper. Flash paper, it looked like, maybe? Then Atevia ducked into a tavern.

Orholam’s burning piss but Teia had learned to hate doors.

Atevia seemed paranoid, so Teia didn’t want to tread on his heels to follow him into the tavern. She didn’t know if this door swung shut by itself, or if he’d have to pull it closed behind him—which would trap her between his bulk and a door that he was reaching to close.

If he so much as touched her, everything she’d done was for naught.

She stayed back, cursing to herself.

The door swung slowly shut by itself as Atevia strolled deep into the tavern.
Dammit
, she’d have been fine to follow him right in.

She waited for the next patron.

Who never came.

A minute passed. Had he left through a back door, a secret basement? Was he gone already? Had she missed her only chance?

Shit, shit, shit!

Just as she’d decided she really did have to open the door, invisible or not, the door opened from inside. Atevia stepped out, rubbing his fingers. Rubbing ash from his fingers.

Shit! He’d been looking for a fire for the message; that’s what it was. And he hadn’t found any lanterns outside, because it was so near to Sun Day it was both light outside and still quite warm. Thus, the tavern.

And now the note was gone. Argh! Teia’d failed
again
.

Desperate now not to lose him, she was falling in behind Atevia when she caught something out of the corner of her eye. It struck her as out of place, for some reason.

She stopped. Looked.

Just the tavern door opening. Swinging shut now, actually. Nothing.

She turned back to Atevia, but then stopped. Nothing?

Who’d stepped out of the tavern?

She scanned the busy street, but there was no one close.

A chill shot down her back. Sinking backward, backward, she widened her eyes all the way to paryl.

And saw it: the whisper of the color-filtering edge of a paryl bubble. The Shadow inside was invisible, and if she hadn’t looked in just the right place, she wouldn’t have seen it.

The Shadow—was it Murder Sharp himself?—turned and moved the opposite way down the street.

Teia was frozen between them. It might not be Sharp. There were other Shadows. If she followed this person and it wasn’t Sharp—

But then she saw the shape dip toward an alley and pause. A moment later, the paryl dropped and Murder Sharp appeared, settling his hood around his shoulders as if he were just another pedestrian emerging from the alley. He continued on his way, heading away from Teia and Atevia.

He must have been in charge of delivering the notes to summon the priests and then making sure they destroyed them afterward. Only Murder Sharp would be trusted with the priests’ identities.

Teia’s heart thudded. This was her chance!

But already Atevia was disappearing around a corner, fifty paces away. Sharp might be headed to the next priest, or he might be headed to the Old Man’s secret office, or he might be headed home for a nap or even out to a tavern for all Teia knew. If she ran, she could kill him before he knew she was there and then . . . maybe Atevia would still be easy to find. Maybe he wasn’t on his way to the meeting right now.

Or maybe this was a trap. How close must Teia have come to Murder Sharp when he’d been planting the note? They might have brushed shoulders, only saved by the fact that neither had been actively drawing in more paryl and that they both had to keep their gazes cast down most of the time, only stealing glimpses of the world lest their eyes be seen floating in the air.

If she’d gone into that tavern, she’d have surely bumped into him. Literally.

Holy shit.

But that didn’t matter now. Focus, Teia!

Murder Sharp was the greatest danger to her by far . . . but Atevia was the key to her mission. He might not go to the meeting right this moment, but if he did, she would fail Karris, she’d fail every slave she’d murdered to get here, and she’d fail every person those pagan priests tonight would order killed in the future.

But letting Sharp go was like ignoring the loaded gun pointed at her head.

Am I a shield, or an assassin?

Teia clenched her fists so hard her knuckles popped—then ran after Atevia.

“Clear the hall,” Andross said loudly, before anyone else could react. “This isn’t a matter for open court.”

“Summon the Spectrum,” Karris said to Trainer Fisk—except he wasn’t a trainer any longer; the man who’d once helped cheaters try to keep Kip out of the Blackguard was now wearing a commander’s band on his Blackguard blacks.

Commander
Fisk? The Chromeria really is in trouble.

Already giving hand signs to the Blackguards at the door too fast for Kip to follow, Fisk then said, “Same orders as before, regarding . . .” He looked at Kip. “Ahem. The other young Lord Guile?”

“Yes!” Andross said, though Commander Fisk had been speaking to Karris. “For God’s sake, don’t let him in here, not for any reason.”

Commander Fisk shot a glance at Karris, but obeyed. Clearly, he preferred to get his orders from her, though he was technically under both the promachos and the White.

Kip recognized two of the Blackguards as being from his own cohort, Tana and a light-skinned Abornean named Rivvyn Shmuel, who was as broad as his smile. They looked so, so young. The other two were so old they’d obviously been called out of retirement. Both had pretended not to recognize him, either from a misplaced sense that Blackguards shouldn’t acknowledge anyone—sometimes the young were overzealous—or they’d believed that he and the Mighty had abandoned the Blackguard, and were shunning him.

Tana and one of the old Blackguards went outside the door. That still left Grinwoody here, which irked Kip. He’d never liked the wizened old legalist from the first moments they’d met. And if Andross seemed healthier than ever, Grinwoody had sunk further in on himself, curling up in his age like a dead spider.

“Tell me everything,” Andross ordered.

“ ‘Us,’ ” Karris corrected.

Andross rolled his eyes. “Well, no one’s thrown you out, daughter, so you’re certainly permitted to listen in.”

She smiled pleasantly while her knuckles went white on the arm of her chair. “How have you been, Kip?” she asked. “You do look so well. Married life appears to be agreeing with you.”

“More than ‘agreeing.’ Tisis is an unalloyed blessing. The best thing in my life.”

“Oh, I’m so happy to hear that!” Karris said. And if she started a new conversation to irk Andross, now she seemed truly involved in it. “It is so hard to find the right partner in this life, and seeing that you’ve done so brings me greater joy than you can know.”

“Are you very much done?” Andross asked.

“Indeed!” Kip said as if answering Andross, but then said, “. . . High Lady White. And I’ve felt for some time now, grandfather, that I needed to thank you in person.”

“What?” Andross asked.

“I’d not have married Tisis if not for you. You proved your wisdom and insight are beyond my comprehension. I was . . . quite dismissive of Tisis at first and would never have courted her. I wouldn’t have guessed what an ideal partner and powerful ally she would be for me. You showed your superior insight and wisdom, and truly blessed me by arranging it.”

Andross scowled, as if uncertain if Kip was mocking him or giving him a real compliment—which he actually was. If you wanted to compliment Andross Guile, Kip guessed, you should do it early in a conversation, before he did something to infuriate you—which he surely would. “Why are you talking about this now? Is she pregnant yet?”

“No,” Kip said. And there it was. He was already mad.

“Then lay off the camp followers and get to plowing your own field, boy. You need lessons? A long, fatherly talk?”

Though he’d thought that his time in Blood Forest would have cured him of any shyness, Kip felt himself flushing hot.

Grinwoody spoke to Andross, none too quietly. “Perhaps the young lord suffers from a malady of the intimate sort? Spilling his seed before he reaches the fields? Softness rather than steel in the plow? I could suggest a physicker who might help.”

“I’m sure you’re quite expert in maladies of the intimate sort,
calun
,” Kip said to Grinwoody. “But I’ve been quite satisfied in those matters, as has my wife, thank you.”

“Faking, surely, but it’s good she wishes you to feel competent,” Andross said.

“It’s your fault, you know,” Karris said.

“Excuse me?” Andross asked.

“Gavin told me all about your books of genealogy, how the family looked at marriages like the horse breeders you all once were. He said it was the trade-off your family had made for its huge drafting potential and many other gifts—that your line had never had many children. And Felia had what, one sister? with very happily married and
active
parents, too, Gavin said.”

Andross said, “Oh, I know the Guiles’ lack of fecundity well enough, thank you. It was the reason I was willing to make such deep compromises in the areas of talent, intelligence, strength, and charisma when I decided to marry one of my sons to a White Oak. Along with their stubborn foolishness, your family had a history of breeding like rabbits. Unfortunately, it seems the last trait in you was trumped by all the former ones, as you wasted your childbearing years with your intransigence.”