The Burning White (93 page)

“Petty,” Andross said.

Still not touching any of the cards, Kip said, “I block the Blue Bane with Cannon Island. Oh, and I block the Red Bane and Dagnu with Ironfist.”

There was no Ironfist on the table. Everyone stopped for a moment, then double-checked to see if there had been some mistake.

“I see he has an interesting Rage mechanic that kicks in when he defends against a superior attack.”

Everyone in the room looked at Kip like he was mad.

Check it yourself, Kip wanted to say. But you don’t tell your prey how good the meat in the trap will taste. You let the bloody scent in the air do the convincing.

“That card’s a Lightguard,” Andross said.

“Oh, but he’s fighting
extra hard
for me,” Kip said archly, and he thought, like Súil did.

If there was one thing Andross Guile couldn’t stand, it was condescension.

The old Red angrily snatched up the card in his hand, and the trap snicked shut. His fingers broke the delicate layers of luxin across the face of the card, shattering the spiderweb-thin portrait of a Lightguard that Kip had copied with paryl and then laid atop Ironfist’s portrait.

“This is—” The old man went wide-eyed as he saw Ironfist staring out of the card. He was uncomprehending for a long, long moment. “This is impossible,” he breathed.

“I believe my Ironfist kills off both of your bane and your Dagnu,” Kip said. “Good round for me. Shall we—”

Andross held up a finger. “Grinwoody?” he hissed without turning.

“My lord,” Grinwoody’s voice trembled. “He hasn’t touched that card since he played it. I swear. He has no sleeves. The number of cards remaining in his deck is correct. I . . .”

But Andross’s eyes tightened. He sniffed. Then he wafted the card toward his nose. The luxin scent, tiny as it was, must not have dissipated fully. “You cheated,” he said. “You’re disqualified. You lose.”

“I did nothing disallowed by the rules.”

“You substituted a card!” Andross said.

“No, I played it legally at noon. Nor did I announce it as anything other than it was,” Kip said. “Some men simply don’t look under the surface to see things as they truly are, grandfather.”

“You little fuck!” Andross jumped to his feet.

“So help me, if you hit me—” Kip started.

“What? What will you do?” Andross demanded.

“The question isn’t what I’ll do,” Kip said.

Andross’s eyes twitched tight. Then he glanced at Corvan.

Corvan hadn’t moved, but he sat with the languid grace of a killer.

“Whose play will he back, grandfather? Corvan practically raised me. How much loyalty have
you
inspired in him? Grinwoody was so intent on the game, did he search the satrap before he came in? Thoroughly?”

Corvan leaned to one side, and a large pocket on his cloak seemed to gape open a bit; it held something heavy.

A vein throbbed in Andross’s neck as he mastered himself. “Then let’s finish the game. I’ve got a chance yet.” He dropped a musket on one of his wights. It left each player with a sliver of life.

Kip drew a Blackguard and dropped it onto the table. With a Blackguard backing him, Ironfist was able to attack twice.

“And that’s game,” Andross said, his voice tight, his eyes unfocused. “You win, and you may have doomed us all.”

“Nice playing you, too. Let’s never do it again,” Kip said.

“Get out of my sight before I do something red,” Andross said, not looking up.

Kip and Corvan left, with Kip expecting a musket ball between his shoulder blades at every step.

Outside the door, Cruxer was nowhere to be seen. Dammit.

The satrap looked at Kip appreciatively. “Slipping an Ironfist in under your opponent’s guard.” Corvan shook his head. “That was subtler work than Gavin would’ve even attempted.”

“My father’s a colossus. I’m a flea in his shadow,” Kip said. He still couldn’t believe what had happened.

“He has no greater supporter, but I recall Gavin Guile building the mammoth Brightwater Wall in five days yet still failing to change the fate of one small city. You, on the other hand, may have changed the whole world by drafting a portrait I could cover with my thumb. That is not the work of a flea, Kip. That’s the work of a
dragon
.”

“Quiet,” Ben-hadad said as they paced out the circle of Wrath/Mercy halfway up the Prism’s Tower.

Walking ahead of Teia, Quentin froze in place. She ran into him, losing her grip of paryl and shimmering back into visibility.

She looked around quickly, but there was no one in the halls. “Sorry,” she whispered.

“What is it?” Quentin whispered to Ben.

Ben looked at them both quizzically. “It’s . . . quiet?” Ben-hadad said. “Oh, you both thought—no, I didn’t mean for you to be quiet.”

“Oh,” Quentin said, straightening. “Yeah, I don’t like to bother anyone, so I memorized when the various lectures and special events are in session so I can encounter the fewest people possible.”

“For all the levels?” Teia asked. “Not just where your room is?”

“Well, I didn’t know when I might need to drop in someplace else, and I already had the scheduling book . . .”

“Of course,” Teia said. “Totally logical.” When your brain is the size of a watermelon.

“I thought we’d like to avoid people as well,” Quentin said. “Though with all the preparations for the defenses and for Sun Day itself tomorrow, there are more people about than usual.”

“They aren’t still having the parade, are they?” Teia asked.

“Of course they are,” Quentin said. “There’s tens of thousands of terrified pilgrims in the city. You want to take away the one thing that will give them hope? Plus, we don’t know for sure if an attack will even come tomorrow. Honoring Orholam first might seem like the worst idea militarily, but there are a lot of us who think it’s the best idea. Naturally, there have been some compromises on the parade route and the disposition of drafters. It will be the least, shall we say, lavish Sun Day celebration in many years.”

“Worst Sun Day ever, you mean,” Ben-hadad said, shooing them forward to walk once more, silently counting out his paces.

“On the contrary,” Quentin said.

“How so?” Ben asked. “Fourteen more paces, I think.”

“A pagan invasion, on Sun Day itself? Where we have scant hope of victory?” Quentin asked.

“Yeah,” Teia said. “We’re agreed on that much.”

“It seems to me such a time is precisely when Orholam must show His power.”

“Or else we’re fucked,” Ben-hadad said.

“Yes! So He
will
show His power.”

Teia and Ben both looked at Quentin like he was out of his mind. Ben shook his head.

“Three more paces.”

Quentin said, “I’m not saying I’m eager for the—”

Ben said, “I don’t know where you found this guy, Teia, but—”

“What do you mean, where
I
found him?!” Teia said, and then stopped at an unfamiliar voice.

“Teia?” a girl repeated, looking straight at Teia. In front of them was a discipula, carrying a mop and bucket. She wore her hair in a bun with flyaways everywhere, was maybe fourteen years old, and looked even younger.

They had never met, Teia was sure of it.

“Teia Darksight?” the girl said.

“Huh?” Teia asked. A flash of fear shocked her like a flash grenade. She’d thought herself quite nondescript.

“You’re Teia Darksight,” the girl said, wide-eyed.

“Oh dear,” Quentin said.

“O’s itchy bung!” Ben-hadad said. He flowed forward just as the girl squeaked and brought her hands up to her cheeks, dropping her bucket.

Ben-hadad snatched the mop bucket out of midair and popped the handle of the mop back up into his hand with a dextrous flick of his cane. Teia had almost forgotten that for all of his technical genius, Ben-hadad had made it through Blackguard training, too.

“It
is
you!” the girl said, paying no attention to Ben-hadad or the impressive feat of dexterity he’d just performed.

Maybe not fourteen yet, then, part of Teia thought. Ben-hadad was annoyingly handsome.

But another part of her was already doing what was necessary. Paryl shot from Teia’s fingertips and into the girl’s chest. In a moment, Teia had the knot ready to slam home to sever the nerves that told the heart to beat.

She’d loused up. She’d let herself feel at home here, in the building that had once been her home. And now she had to kill this girl. This pale, wispy thing, all knees and elbows and big baby eyes and crooked teeth, mopping the halls as punishment for some mild transgression—this girl had to die. An hour ago she’d probably been jabbering complaints about this harsh magister or that reading that was way too hard.

That was just and right; it was as it should be.

Every painful stage of life is dictated by nature to make a woman. But nature’s abortions are frequent and rude. Today, this girl would be one more civilian dead in a centuries-long war that only Teia could end. A necessary corpse. One innocent, who had to be killed because you couldn’t trust an entire war’s outcome to the discretion of a fourteen-year-old. An innocent, murdered because Teia had loused up. Teia had killed innocents before, but those had been innocents she’d been forced to kill. This was forced only by her own error. She’d let down her guard.

A woman like her could never, ever let her guard down.

This girl was innocent, but was her life worth so much more than a slave’s life?

“Teia
Darksight
?” Ben-hadad asked. And Teia realized it had only been an instant that she’d stood paralyzed with the killing threads in her hands.

“Don’t you know?” the girl asked. “She’s the first paryl drafter in centuries!”

“No, she’s not,” Ben-hadad said, puzzled. “There’ve been a doz—”

“But everyone knows her! Mistress Teia, will you show me—”

Flaring her eyes to their fullest spooky black, Teia roared aloud at her. It was a cry of a damned soul. It was every old warrior’s plaint, every penitent’s wail.

But she did what had to be done.

The young girl squeaked and bolted.

“Subtle, T,” Ben-hadad said. “I’m sure she won’t tell any of her friends about meeting you now.”

But Teia barely heard the jibe.

Ben-hadad didn’t know.

He didn’t know how bad this was. They hadn’t had that long together. She hadn’t gone into specifics. He didn’t know the stakes. He thought they were just messing around in areas where maybe someone might realize they shouldn’t be.

“Subtle . . . T,” he continued. “I think you’ve got a new nickname! Subtle T!”

“Is this the door?” she asked. Subtle T was exactly the kind of name that could stick. It sounded laudatory to outsiders, but could either be praise or a quiet mock among comrades.

It made her miss the Mighty. These damn boys. It made her miss her old life.

Patch or no patch, she could never be part of the Mighty now. It was a fantasy to think she could ever pick up where she’d left off.

She’d never stopped to think what would happen after she took down the Order, had she? It had seemed such an impossibility, her mind had simply refused to go further.

There was no further.

But enough of that now. Teia had to be present, had to be sharp. Enough of thinking about that girl—that poor, innocent girl who would tire in a few minutes as her heart was slowly starved of blood, who would go lie down to nap and never rise.

“Yeah, this should be it,” Ben-hadad said.

Silently, Quentin was staring at Teia. She hadn’t told Quentin about everything she could do now, but Quentin knew.

Ben knocked on a door.

“What are you going to do if someone answers?” Teia asked.

“Hadn’t thought that far ahead,” he said. But he flicked down his blue lenses, and his hand filled with a blob of blue luxin.

The dread sat heavier and heavier in Teia’s stomach.

Ben-hadad shrugged, deciding no one was coming, and jammed the blob of open blue luxin he’d drafted into the lock, solidified it, and turned. “I’m not really sure why the Chromeria even bothers to have locks,” he said.

“Hold on,” Teia said, feeling ill. “I’ve just made a terrible mistake.”

She fled down the hall after the girl.

She was lucky. The girl had reached the slaves’ stairs and realized she’d left her mop and bucket. She’d be in big trouble if she lost them. But the girl was still shocked when Teia approached on silent feet. She held her hands up in front of her face defensively, like Teia was going to hurt her.

“What’s your name?” Teia asked quietly. She started working instantly to unravel what she’d done. Orholam have mercy, she’d gotten good at laying death traps, but not so good at removing them.

“Clara.”

“What do they have you mopping for?” Teia asked.

Clara gulped. “Atarah called me a slatte—ahem, a name. So I tried to slap her, but I sort of missed? and I broke her nose instead. Two months I’ve been mopping after lectures every day.”

“Ha,” Teia said. “In the Blackguard, you’d not be mopping for that slap.”

“I know! Why are the magisters so—”

“You’d be mopping for the miss,” Teia said.

The girl’s brow wrinkled and her mouth pursed.

“Look,” Teia said. “I’m sorry for scaring you.”

“I wasn’t scared!”

“Truth is, Clara, you scared
me
.”

Clara looked incredulous.

“I’m not supposed to be here,” Teia said. “Well, I sort of am. It’s complicated.”

Orholam, I can’t kill her. You’re the god who spares the innocent. Can You keep this girl’s mouth shut? Because I can’t do this anymore. I can’t kill the innocent anymore, not to justify a hundred other murders. Not to justify saving a thousand lives someday, maybe.

“I’m working for the White,” Teia said very quietly. “It’s a secret mission. I’m not supposed to be on the Jaspers at all. If you tell anyone you saw me, people will die. Me among them. Can you . . . can you not tell anyone you saw me for one week? I’ll probably be dead by then anyway. It’ll be a juicier story if I turn up dead, and
then
you can tell everyone. But if you tell anyone now—even your friends—Clara, I can’t even tell you how bad it could go. A lot of people will die. Good people.”