The Blinding Knife

  The White lay back. “Well, dear, if you had, Ironfist would have told you that he and I had a discussion about this very matter long ago. And then another much more recently.”

  “You did?” Karris asked.

  “Don’t interrupt, dear. We did. And we agreed that it’s a good rule. Keeps lines clearer. Keeps waters from being muddied.”

  “Yes, Mistress,” Karris said. She straightened her shoulders, took a breath. Her head was still a whirl, but this was the life she’d chosen. She was a Blackguard, through and through. It wasn’t easy, but that was why she’d chosen it, because she’d known it was hard. Rules existed for a reason.

  The White said, “And we also agreed that sometimes the exception proves the rule. And that you are that exception. If you wish to pursue a relationship with that impossible man, you may.”

  A sound that may have had some faint resemblance to a squeal jumped out of Karris’s mouth. She froze, her lips pursed.

  The White opened her eyes and grinned. “May Orholam have pity on us for whom we love, child. Now go find that incorrigible man, and keep him alive. I fear we’re going to have great need of him in the coming days.”

  Karris hugged the old woman tight and ran from the room, pausing only to send the other Blackguards in.

  Chapter 86

  Gavin climbed out of the hell of his own making one foot at a time. The pulley and counterweights made it so he could go much faster, but the pulley made noise. From the depths, he couldn’t know if the noise high above would make any difference, so he had to err on the side of caution.

  Some time later, he got to the top. He climbed through the hole, reset the floor as quietly as possible, dissolved the yellow luxin board, and listened at the door. Nothing.

  After listening for a full minute, he opened the door a crack. Then more.

  There was no one in the room except Marissia, kneeling silently on the floor.

  “Marissia,” Gavin said, warmed by the sight of her. “I told you to go,” he said gently.

  She looked at him then, and he was surprised to see a wash of fresh tears run down her cheeks. “I knew you’d come back. Please, my lord, don’t send me away. This is all I know. I—Please don’t reject me.”

  Reject? “No, no, no,” he told her. “I’m not sending you away. But… Marissia, I’ve given you your freedom. I would be a faithless man if I tried to take it back from you. It’s a gift—”

  “And I don’t despise it, my lord. Not at all. I treasure it. But I can’t accept it and still be your room slave. You would be lost without me, my lord.” She ducked her head. “My apologies. That was very presumptuous.”

  “The truth often is. You’re right. I need you. But you could become my secretary. Orholam knows, your duties have already included everything a secretary does.”

  “And more,” she said quietly.

  “Well, yes, of course. And the more has been accomplished with aplomb,” he said, giving a little smirk. Then the smirk froze.

  He’d just killed his brother, and the rest of life went on, not even pausing to notice.

  “My lord…” she said, as if he was being dense.

  “Yes?” he said.

  “You love Lady White Oak.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “It is one thing for a lady to tolerate the man she loves enjoying the companionship of his room slave. It is quite another for him to cheat on her with a free woman. Especially if you had made your favor obvious by freeing me.”

  Ah. It was so much easier to free a slave when you thought it wasn’t going to cost you anything. Damn.

  Good thing I don’t have anything more pressing to deal with than my loins.

  Gavin rubbed his jaw. Popped his neck right and left. “Marissia, I made you a promise, and I would be a small man to—”

  “I have a solution, my lord!”

  “A solution?”

  “That doesn’t dishonor the gift you’ve given me, but doesn’t make me go.”

  Gavin cocked an eyebrow. “You want to stay? I mean, you really want to stay? Or are you just afraid of things being different? If you need more money…”

  “My lord, I’ve already written up the contract. It’s not manumission, but it’s a promise that I can buy my manumission for one danar, whenever I want. That way, you’ve still given me the generous gift, and when I want, I can take it, without depriving you or making things difficult between you and Lady White Oak.”

  More difficult, anyway.

  “I still don’t… you’re a room slave, Marissia. You don’t even have rights to your own body. If you weren’t a slave, you could be a satrapah, a merchant queen, whatever you wanted. Instead…”

  “What could I do in this life that would have more meaning than serving you, my High Lord Prism?” she asked.

  “How can you say that? You know me. You know what I am.”

  “Yes, my lord, I do. And I—” She closed her mouth, then said instead, “Please don’t make me leave.”

  “I’m not going to make you leave,” Gavin said. She was brilliant. An amazing woman. He walked over to his desk, signed the new contract, and brought it to her. She’d already torn up the old one.

  Strangely, she was weeping. He handed her the new contract and she took it, still kneeling, and hugged his legs.

  He’d slept maybe one hour last night. He’d had interrupted sex with a strange woman whom he’d then killed. He’d lost the love of his life. He’d prepared himself to die. He’d realized everything he’d believed for the last twenty years at least had been a lie. He’d killed his own brother. He was fucking exhausted.

  And yet, with this beautiful woman pressed against his groin, his body reacted. Sometimes he hated being a man.

  After all the trouble you got me into last night, you’re really going to do this to me?

  Marissia noticed immediately, of course. But then, maybe she’d intended it. Usually she was reactive; there would be a question in her initial touches. Not now.

  Gavin stepped back, and she stood smoothly in front of him, shrugging her wrap off her shoulders, leaving her sheathed in a pretty chemise. He said, “Maybe I should—”

  She kissed his lips, pushed him backward, pulling his trousers down. She guided him to a chair and he sat abruptly as it hit his knees. And then she was on him, her eyes on his, holding him down, possessive. Her lovemaking was a whirlwind, hard and aggressive and fast and hot and sweaty and overwhelming. She rode him until he finished, light exploding in front of his eyes, but she didn’t stop like she normally did. If anything, she bore down on him harder until he was worried the chair would break and spill them both on the floor. Her fingers were laced through his hair, holding his head in place, demanding he look into her eyes. Then those stunning green eyes flared and her hips bucked uncontrollably. Her fingers dug into his arm and twisted his hair painfully, and then she collapsed against him.

  Gavin was left breathless and stunned. He stood and carried her to his bed. She burrowed into his arms, and gave him up only with a little mew of protest when he released her. He walked over to his own side of the bed and sat on the edge in the dim lamplight.

  Though he’d reached his satisfaction, his body was still eager for more. Maybe it had just been too long on the trail with Karris. Maybe it had been Marissia’s startling, utterly alluring intensity. He thought of taking her again and numbing his uneasiness. Tomorrow was going to be hell. He just wanted to sleep. For a few hours, he wanted to feel nothing.

  Instead, he felt somehow like he’d done something wrong with Marissia. Try as he might, he couldn’t think of what it was. Maybe he was just feeling guilty about Dazen.

  He lay down, blinking at the ceiling, wondering how the hell he was going to dodge the many flaming arrows coming his way on the morrow. The Spectrum had either already met to discuss the murder or would do so the first thing tomorrow. There was nothing he could do about that now. And since the guards had already searched the room with their usual thoroughness, no
one would think to look for him here.

  Five minutes later—or at least it only felt like five minutes later—he woke. Marissia was gone. Working, no doubt. He lay in the quiet, idly picking up his problems, then setting them down with no particular urgency. He did some of his best work this way. He remembered that Demnos Jorvis didn’t get along with his wife, Arys’s sister Ela. He thought about the rate of growth of a bane. Balancing had been done manually before, drafters of one color being instructed to use more luxin for a year, drafters of the color out of control instructed to use less. The Chromeria had quite a reach. He thought of the High Luxiats, the men who determined doctrine that would be promulgated throughout the satrapies, who would no doubt be itching to meet with him after all the strange reports. They loved and feared him, but could he push through a change to the religion itself? He thought of Karris. He would win her back. It was possible now, he was sure of it.

  And he thought of his dead brother. He sat up, and saw that Marissia had brought in the tray with the hard square loaves of special bread he’d dropped down the chute five thousand times. He didn’t feel guilty. It was like looking into a mirror and realizing you’re not a child anymore. But this day, Gavin could look at himself dispassionately. So this is who I am: Gavin Guile, fratricide. The man who’d had the will to kill his brother to save the Seven Satrapies. He was now the man everyone had thought he was for sixteen years.

  Almost.

  Marissia slipped in the door.

  “My lord,” she said. “Good, you’re up. Your father wants to meet with you immediately. All Little Jasper is buzzing with news of the young lady’s death. The Blackguard is being silent while they investigate—waiting for orders from the White, who’s sleeping, after being up all night. The Spectrum had an emergency session last night and voted on the composition of the forces heading to Ru. They put your father in charge, but defeated his attempt to be named promachos. Grinwoody cornered me, my lord, and commanded me to get you. He refused to believe that I didn’t know where you were.”

  There were tricks to ruling, tricks to winning and maintaining loyalty through even the fiercest fire. Gavin sometimes forgot that those were as effective on those who knew you well as on strangers. Karris was right: Gavin too often let those closest to him get the worst of him. So he drew a black line between himself and his worries and focused all his attention on the woman before him. “Marissia,” he said. “That’s no problem. You’re marvelous. Superlative. If I make it through today without going to prison or the headsman, buy yourself something really, really nice.”

  She grinned. “As my lord commands.”

  Her joy lifted him. He was the Prism. He was Gavin Guile. What could he not accomplish in a year?

  Chapter 87

  “There are rumors you fought off an assassin last night,” Andross Guile said.

  “An assassin?” Gavin asked. He’d barely been able to get down here without being seen. He’d been tempted to use the shimmercloaks again, but he wasn’t bringing those within a hundred paces of his father. Andross would know, somehow.

  His father was sitting in the hellstone-dark room, but Gavin remained standing. He didn’t want to be here any longer than necessary.

  “There’s another that you threw her off the balcony because she wouldn’t indulge your curious perversions. Oh wait, I started that one.” Andross Guile grinned mirthlessly.

  “And who’d you spread that to? The mice? You’re a shut-in.”

  “You think me toothless because I’m old?” Andross Guile asked.

  That is generally when people lose their teeth. “I think you’re opposing me for no good reason other than to show you can. And it infuriates me, as it would you, were you in my shoes.”

  “You are a stupid, stupid boy. How long have I been directing you? When have I done anything for no reason?”

  Gavin was silent.

  “You will marry, Gavin. Within the week. I’ve decided that—”

  “Did you send that girl?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Did you send Ana Jorvis to my room last night?”

  “That fool slattern was either trying to seduce you to salvage her family’s chance at winning the marriage with you—which I’d already told them they’d lost—or…” Andross Guile shrugged. “Or she really was an assassin. I heard a rumor that the Order is recruiting young girls. Or perhaps she just thought you would finally succumb to her girlish lusts, which, as I heard it, you did, didn’t you?”

  “I thought…” No. Gavin wasn’t going to talk to his father about whom he bedded, or wanted to.

  “Ha! All cats are gray in the dark?” When Gavin didn’t respond, the Red said, “Tisis Malargos, you’ll marry her. One week. It’s not ideal, but there’s war coming, and everyone who matters is already here. It will save me a fortune, anyway. And we need allies badly. Why’d you have to throw that girl over the damned rail, anyway?”

  “It was an accident,” Gavin hissed.

  The Red sat back in his chair, a look of triumph spreading over his face. “So you did throw her.”

  He said it like it was new information. Gavin cursed. Cursing was safe.

  “How’d you get to the Blackguards? How’d you get them to lie for you? I tried to buy off those boys myself—did you already own them?” Andross Guile asked.

  They’d lied for him. Gavin and Gill Greyling had lied for him.

  “Pretty good lie, too: You, furious at being duped, shouting. She panics. She jumps. You blame yourself and flee. It doesn’t defuse the enmity the Jorvises will feel, but it saves you from impeachment, and there were too many witnesses for you to have them swear she jumped off some lower balcony. Which brings us back to our need for allies.”

  The weight of grace was a punch to the face. Totally unexpected, totally undeserved. Ana had been a fool, but she didn’t deserve death, and death was what Gavin had given her. Orholam have mercy.

  Gavin took a deep breath. He took those feelings, boxed them up, and put them aside. I’ll mourn you later, Ana, and make recompense to your family, you damned harlot. I’m sorry.

  Today would be a test. If he could make it through five more minutes with his father, he might make it through today. If he could make it through today, he might live another month. If another month, a year was possible.

  “No,” Gavin said.

  “And next time, for Orholam’s sake, how about a little self-control?”

  “Self-control is for those who can’t control others,” Gavin said. Then he realized who’d taught him that: this grimly smiling man. “The answer is no.”

  Andross Guile said, “You appear to be laboring under the mistaken assumption that I’m giving you a choice.”

  “No mistake: No.” Gavin kept his voice level, civil, firm.

  “If you choose not to obey me, you’re choosing for me to disown you.”

  The threat literally took Gavin’s breath away.

  “You think I can’t? You think because you’re my only child that I won’t? I’m not too old to have other children, you know. It was your mother who couldn’t, after Sevastian. If you don’t marry Tisis Malargos, I will. It’s that simple. I don’t know if she’d hate being married more to you or to me. Doesn’t matter. She’s a loyal girl. Loyal to her family. Practical. She’ll do what she has to. An example you would do well to follow.”

  “So you don’t need me?” Gavin said. “I’m the Prism. You think getting money is going to be hard for me? You think I’ll lack for anything? You really want to start a fight with me?”

  “Start it? If you hadn’t been so busy fucking that little girl, I think you’d have noticed we’ve already started.”

  “What have you done?” Gavin asked.

  “I made you, boy. In every way.” Andross Guile sank back into the cushions of his chair. “You want to cross me? Look to what you love.”

  Chapter 88

  “I heard that the wights are using hellhounds,” Ferkudi said. “In Atash.”

&
nbsp; “And I heard the Eternal Flame in Aslal burned bright blue for two months straight!” Yugerten said. He was a gangly boy, and ranked low. No one paid much attention to him.

  “Anyone can make a fire burn blue,” Ferkudi said. “I’m talking hellhounds!”

  The scrubs were walking together as a class to go do another real-world training. They didn’t know any of the details yet, but after oversleeping, Kip had barely caught up with them before they got to the really bad neighborhoods.

  “Burning dogs, made of luxin?” Teia asked dubiously.

  Kip was trying to see who was watching them as they walked through increasingly narrow streets to Overhill.

  “Hellhounds are a myth, Ferk,” Tanner said.

  “The man who told me wouldn’t lie,” Ferkudi said.

  “Think, you moron, you’re a drafter,” Tanner said. “How would you even do such a thing? You could make a statue of a dog out of red luxin, but it wouldn’t do anything, would it?”

  “Well, I don’t know. I guess not,” Ferkudi said.

  “They’re not made of luxin,” a voice interjected quietly. “But they are real.”

  It was Trainer Fisk.

  The boys fell silent, looked at each other.

  “The wights infuse red luxin into the coat and skin of a dog. They do it for practice, before they try it on themselves. It’s a cruel, cruel thing, and worse is to set them on fire. But I’ve seen it happen. I saw Commander Ironfist put one down when we were cleaning up the wights from the False Prism’s War.”

  Their respect for Commander Ironfist jumped up a few more rungs on the ladder to pure worship.

  “But wouldn’t a dog who’d been set on fire be just as likely to kill the men who sent it as that man’s enemies?” Kip asked. “I’d think it would just go crazy.”

  Trainer Fisk spat. “Dammit, Breaker. It would be you, wouldn’t it?”

  “What?” Kip asked. He still wasn’t used to being called Breaker.