The Burning White (82 page)

“Those taste positively foul. I can’t bring a wine strong enough to cover the taste! Even with incense and spices,” Atevia said, lapsing out of the Braxian as well.

“We could simply do without,” the other man said. “As the old saying goes, ‘
Erdah be El sada lehad matofrago,
’ right? Or with enough honey . . .”

The Old Man sighed. “I’ll arrange for enough poppy to be accidentally released from the Chromeria’s stores. Which of you will pick it up? Murder Sharp
maak yakhod balo menak
.”

Murder Sharp what? What the hell was that?

“I can get it,” Atevia said glumly. “Directions?”

Those, naturally, were all given in Braxian.

Teia wondered what would happen if she tried to kill these men here and now. Orholam, if she’d been thinking, she could have brought a grenado packed with shrapnel. With her skills and her cloak, though, what were her chances of killing them all if she went into that room now?

If she attacked though, even if she killed them all, she wouldn’t get the list of all the members—and she needed that list. Without it, the Order could start right back up again. And she wouldn’t find out where they had her father.

So she had to follow the Old Man. He was the center of everything. Follow him, identify him, wait until he went to his secret office. Then Teia could kill him and be certain the Order would implode.

She was close now, close to success for the first time. Close to saving her father.

They’d all entered the room from different directions, so it made sense they would leave different ways, too. And all cloaked and hooded, no doubt. She thought she’d gleaned as much as she could from eavesdropping—they were just talking about who was going to bring the drugs and alcohol to the party now, and not even in Braxian. Now she concentrated on getting the positioning of each of the priests within the room to try to give herself the best chance of following the correct one when they all left.

She was going to have to make a guess on which one to tail. The Old Man of the Desert had his paryl spectacles.

Teia would have to be masterful.

She guessed that the men would at least leave the room by the same ways they’d entered, in order to change back into their street clothes. That meant being in this room was useless to her. She already knew where Atevia lived.

It was time for Teia to gamble with her life yet again.

Invisible, she put an ear to the outer door. She couldn’t hear anything. Pricey brothel, give it that—thick walls so you didn’t hear what your neighbors were doing. More importantly, she supposed, they didn’t hear you. She was going to have to risk it.

She eased the door open far enough to peek, saw the hostess leading a woman down the hall. Teia closed the door quietly. She extended paryl below the door and across the hall and waited. When she felt someone break the tendrils, she waited another couple of heartbeats and then eased the door open.

The hall was empty. The hostess was five paces farther down, showing the woman to a room.

The halls were a rabbit’s warren—much larger than she would have guessed from above. Within a minute or so, though, Teia had scoped out several entrances to a larger chamber, where the Order’s high priests were meeting, and a few nooks in which she might hide without using paryl.

None too soon, either. She was standing at an intersection when a door opened on each side. Identical cloaked figures stepped out simultaneously. She was on the opposite side from where Atevia had entered, so neither of these men were him. She had only two choices, and the Old Man of the Desert might not have been either of these men.

It was the flip of a coin.

This is on You, Orholam. If You want me—

The man to her left bobbed his head as he turned his back toward her and raised a finger toward his face as if pushing up a pair of spectacles.

Spectacles? Like the paryl spectacles the Old Man had?

Now the question was how far they worked. Teia could see paryl about thirty or forty paces out in sunlight, maybe twice that far in the dark. Were the spectacles that good? What if they were better?

She followed at a safe distance, thought she lost him when she was overly cautious coming out of the Crossroads, but identified him again by his gait—she hoped. The master cloak gave her a huge advantage, though, even when she didn’t use it for invisibility. She started with it as a worn deep-blue cloak, folded it down on her shoulders and changed it to a green-and-black check pattern, and bound a scarf around her head quickly before she came up the stairs out of the basement, and then went with a muted brown to go with a wide-brimmed petasos she stole from a merchant’s stall before she got to the Lily’s Stem.

She had to hurry when he got to the Chromeria, but she lost him in the great hall. She caught a glimpse of a man who might be him, wearing a slave’s garb and entering the servants’ stairs.

Teia hesitated.

This was where things got even more dangerous. If he were aware of her at all, this would be where he sprang his trap. If she went invisibly, the Old Man might notice her paryl. If she went visibly, any Chromeria slave or servant might stop her coming up their stairs—she wasn’t dressed as a slave, and sightseers and supplicants for the White often tried to jump the lines by doing that.

The last options were for Teia to go as a slave and possibly be rec-ognized, or go as a Blackguard and definitely be recognized.

Would the staff know that a certain Blackguard was missing? What would Teia do if a Blackguard came down the stairs? The Blackguards often used the stairs for convenience or speed. After all, technically, they, too, were slaves.

Cursing inwardly at the stupidity of it all—Teia should be the one secure here, and the Old Man afraid, not the other way around!—Teia wrapped herself in a paryl cloud and darted into the door. She was exhausted from all her drafting, and from the tension, but she couldn’t give up now.

Her boiled-rubber-soled shoes were nearly silent as she jogged up the steps.

Doors opened and doors closed, casting echoes down the great spiraling stairs where Kip and the Mighty had nearly died fighting last year. Too many openings and closings. The stairs were sometimes empty for several minutes, and at other times they were as busy as at the Lily’s Stem. To her horror, now seemed like one of the latter times.

Teia poked her head out the first door she thought she might have heard, knowing it might be met with a sword.

But there was nothing.

She ran up another floor, threw the door open. A young slave woman setting down a clean bucket of water by her mop looked up, and seemed curious that she didn’t see anyone there.

Next floor, nothing . . . nothing . . . nothing.

He was
here
. The Old Man was here in the Prism’s Tower. He was close. But Teia hadn’t found him in time. She’d hesitated too long, been too careful.

This had been her last chance to root out the Order of the Broken Eye without getting her friends killed. It had been her last chance to save her father.

Teia’s last hope fizzled, sputtered, and went out.

She made her way woodenly to the dead drop and left her sign for Karris: Can we stamp out the Order? ‘
No.
’

Teia had failed.

“In two or three days now,” Karris said to her gathered luxiats, “all the work we’ve done will be tested. The King of Wights—the man who once was my brother—is coming. He will attack. And if he has his way, he will not stop until this island is nothing but blackened rubble and blood.”

In the dangers and the heavy labor she’d demanded, her originally picked one hundred had first dwindled down to sixty-five luxiats, and then surged to nearly two hundred. Some were surely spies, but what did she care, so long as they helped her work?

She’d even said so, openly. She’d come to revel in the power of the truth.

“In our time together,” she said, “you’ve served better than I could’ve asked. You’ve brought new purpose to the people of the Jaspers, and lent your muscles and your voices to our empire’s defense and to Orholam’s cause.”

She could see in their faces that they felt uneasy at her praise, and at the timing. Midnight, for one of their meetings? They’d been careful about when they met, before, but not exactly clandestine.

This felt different. There was an urgency here.

“You think this sounds like a farewell,” she said bluntly. “It may be. Too often, this empire has fought senseless wars over who would get to wear the purple. Too often it has fought for whomever or for whatever would put the most coins in its purse. This isn’t one of those wars. This fight is for our survival and the survival of all we love. Looking back, we can have clear hearts about the work we’ve done: the defenses repaired, the stores refilled, the people inspired. Looking ahead, my charge to you is simple.

“Serve where there is need. Carry water to the thirsty. Carry the wounded to help. Comfort the dying. Carry gunpowder and shot. If you feel called, take up arms. But let me now be clear. I am not asking you to live for this people. I’m asking you to die for them. I’m not asking you to die as martyrs—have some humility and leave that for your betters.” She grinned, and they laughed at her inversion: too humble for martyrdom? But then she grew serious. “I’m asking you to die as heroes. A martyr surrenders her life willingly; a hero fights to the end. Fight to the end.”

She paused, and saw in the somber faces not fear but resolve.

“Know that I’m not asking you to go where I’m unwilling to lead. For some time I have had the growing sense that I shall die during this fight myself.” A sense? Well, it had been only that—until she’d seen Teia’s signal. Now it was a full-fledged premonition. The Order couldn’t be stopped. All of Karris’s grand purposes were being stymied.

A quiet chorus of denials went through the assembled young women and men, though, and their faces were writ with dismay.

“I’m not telling you that to elicit your pity or, Orholam forbid, your awe. I tell you because the knowledge of my own mortality has brought a question before me in a way I can’t help but answer. It’s a question I want to present humbly to you as well. Pray on it, and then act on your answer. Look to me to do the same.” She took a moment to look at their faces. So young. So full of light and courage it broke her heart. “You and I have been called to serve. If the next days are our last, how dare we waste them in fear?”

She saw swallowing, and heads nodding. Many of those gathered were the bookish sort, not men or women who were quick to act. “Run the course Orholam lays before you. I know you’ll make me proud.”

There was no cheering at that. The weight of the moment had settled over all of them, her not least of all.

It was as honest as she could be without someone trying to stop her from doing what she knew she had to do. She’d made her peace with it.

When Ironfist demanded her hand as the price for his armies, there was no way to say no and still get those armies. She couldn’t plead that Gavin was still alive without getting Teia killed—and nullifying all the young woman’s sacrifices. The Order hadn’t been stopped in time.

Karris’s own words and actions hemmed her in now, and revealed the path she had to walk. I won’t be without error, she’d promised, but when I do err, I’ll pay the price for it.

In committing bigamy, she would save her people by dishonoring the two men who meant the most in the world to her. In deliberately breaking her oaths, she would dishonor her office and undermine every other oath she’d made. She would undermine everything she’d been trying to accomplish in the Magisterium.

There was no way out of her impending marriage that wouldn’t cost lives and honor. So she would buy the armies with her own dishonor, and then her own life. She would go out and fight Koios, seeking death. And if death eluded her, she would suicide. Not out of despair, but to expiate dishonor. It wasn’t death before dishonor. It would be death in order to make dishonor end.

It wasn’t what she’d hoped for. It wasn’t what she wanted. But she was willing.

No one seemed to want to leave, but finally, one awkward young man came forward. “High Lady,” he said quietly. “This time I’ve spent serving with you has been the best thing in my life. This is why I wanted to be a luxiat. I have a premonition that I’m gonna die in this battle. Will you bless me?”

He knelt in front of her.

And so she blessed him. And then the next young luxiat. And then she blessed each and every one of them in turn, with an encouraging word here and there, but sometimes only a long, weighing look into their eyes, as she hoped she showed them Orholam’s approval reflected in her own.

Last came Quentin in his silks and cumbersome gold chains. He didn’t kneel as the others had; he merely waited, as any other slave would—at least until everyone else had left.

“You’re planning to do something rash, aren’t you?” he asked.

“Not rash, no. I’ve thought about it for quite some time.”

“All this talk of dying . . .” Quentin shook his head. “Would you like to tell me more about that?”

“No,” she said, and tried to soften the rebuff with a smile. But it came out sad.

Quentin cocked his head. “You told me once that you’d had a word from Orholam, through Orea White and the Third Eye? That He would repay you the years the locusts have eaten?”

“Yes,” she said. Her lip twitched ruefully.

“You believed it once. Do you not anymore?”

“No. I believe it,” she said. “But I don’t know that I’ll get to see it.”

“How is that kind of belief different from not believing?” Quentin asked.

“We go to battle, Quentin. People better than me die every day,” she said.

“People who don’t have His promise.”

“I’m a warrior. I don’t shy away at the face of death. This is why I was entrusted with this office. To fight. To fight to the death if necessary.”

“You’re more than a warrior to Orholam, Karris—”

“I am well aware of my roles, thank you: the White, a trainer of drafters, a Blackguard, a warrior, a rather terrible mother—”