Nothing.
She widened her eyes to paryl and saw paryl gas dissipating. Teia jumped to her feet, pulling on her tunic, eyes darting to the master cloak hanging on its hook by the door. She expected that paryl gas to come questing out toward her. It had to be Master Sharp looking to see if she was in the room.
But it did nothing instead.
She moved to the door, and heard only retreating footsteps. She pulled on long trousers and, after one moment of indecision, grabbed her cloak. There was someone disappearing down the hall. Not Master Sharp. But at her feet, there was a wineskin. Its spout had been pushed under the door, and then it had been stomped flat, expelling the paryl gas within. Teia picked it up. In tiny script, but undoubtedly Master Sharp’s hand, there was one word: “Follow.”
Oh hells! Here it was. Finally.
Swallowing hard once, Teia ran on silent feet after the man. She caught sight of him quickly. She’d been right. It wasn’t Murder Sharp. Just a slave. He had a paryl mark floating above him, invisible to anyone’s eyes except Teia’s.
The man walked to the servants’ stairs, and up. Teia followed at a discreet distance. In the entrance hall, his paryl mark abruptly blinked out.
It happened, of course. Paryl was so fragile that the slightest brush would usually shatter it, and that was especially true of the lighter-than-air gel marks appended to targets. Teia kept the man in sight, but within moments the mark bloomed over a slave woman.
What the hell?
Teia followed the woman as she headed outside. Teia put on her dark spectacles so she could continue glancing in paryl intermittently in the bright light without blinding herself. Mercifully, she didn’t look out of place with them on. It was a bright, blustery, cool day. Distant clouds dotted the heavens like harbingers of the autumn coming on.
Just after the Lily’s Stem, the paryl mark passed from the slave woman to a merchant heading down a side street.
This time Teia was ready. Marking someone with paryl required that the paryl drafter be nearby.
But Sharp was either being terribly devious, or he was using his own shimmercloak, because Teia never saw him.
Eventually she ended up in front of a tiny, run-down house in the Tyrean quarter with a paryl “Enter” written on the door.
Drawing a surreptitious dagger to conceal behind a wrist, she knocked.
It opened and Sharp grinned at her through his exquisite white teeth. He beckoned her inside, but made her step close past him. Orholam, how he made her skin crawl. He sniffed as she slipped past him.
He closed the door. “Are we forgetting our mint?” he asked. “Not to mention the parsley.” He took her face in his hands, his manicured fingers on each of her cheeks, angling her chin up, a gesture all too intimate for her taste. He smelled her breath. Grimaced as if she’d farted straight in his face. Slapped her gently.
The gentleness made it almost worse.
“You know what we do, Adrasteia?” he asked. “Stealth. Stealth is what we do. Well, it’s the necessary building block for what we do. You know what’s not stealthy? Haltonsis. Haltonsis isn’t sneaky, Teia. Might as well chew garlic.”
He meant ‘halitosis.’ Moron.
But Teia didn’t say anything. Moron Sharp might be, but he was a dangerous one.
Moron Sharp.
Teia almost grinned at her new mental nickname for him. She couldn’t be afraid of someone she had a stupid nickname for, right?
“What’s that?” he asked.
“I, um, I did it on purpose. I’ve been wondering if you were ever going to check in with me again. So I thought it’d be funny if when you did, I had stinky breath.”
“Cute,” he said. “Don’t be cute.”
“I’m sorry, I—”
He slugged her in the stomach. She dropped, gasping. He grabbed a handful of her short hair and drew back a fist. But then he paused. He pushed her lips around, looking at her teeth.
“Ah, that’s right,” he said. He ran a tongue around his own teeth and let her go. “Sit.”
There was only one small chair and a small bed in this room. There was a coil of rope hanging off the back of the chair. All Teia’s old fears came alive at the sight of it, but she sat. What could she do against Sharp anyway?
He bound her to the chair expertly, quietly whistling to himself. Excellent whistler. After he finished, he looked at himself in a tiny mirror on the wall. He checked his dentures, mostly, moving his jaw this way and that, smiling broadly or just cocking his lip up to reveal a tooth in a faux grin, looking at the teeth from different angles.
“We have a problem,” he said, not turning from the mirror. He touched a dogtooth with his tongue. “You didn’t tag anyone for me to kill.”
Teia had known this was coming. Had been dreading it for a long time now.
“Why? Lose your nerve? Or are you not quite what you represented to the Order? Perhaps a spy?” he asked as if inquiring after the weather.
So Sharp had been intended to be the murderer if she’d tagged someone. That suggested that he was the only other Shadow that the Order had on Big Jasper.
“I did tag someone,” Teia said. “Did the assassin never find him?”
“That’s impossible. Did you tag him poorly? Perhaps you tagged him poorly on purpose?”
Of course, this gambit had meant casting aspersions on the skills of whoever followed her. Now that Murder Sharp had suggested it was he, that got dangerous.
“No, but I did try to be tricky. I wanted to see how good my tail was. I didn’t know it was going to be you.”
Sharp stopped looking at his teeth. He turned around, and for an instant, Teia thought she saw fear in his eyes. He was, Teia realized, terrified of anything that would threaten his value in the Old Man’s eyes. “I’d been up for two days straight, but you were only out of my sight for perhaps an hour—surely not…?”
“The night of my vigil?” Teia asked.
“Anat’s cunt!” Sharp said.
And that gave Teia another peek at one of Sharp’s cards: Sharp himself didn’t have sources among the few Blackguards who’d been around on her vigil. That was good to know. She was always slowly compiling a list of Blackguards she knew she could trust.
Of course, Sharp’s not having a source wasn’t the same as the Order’s not having a source. But every little bit of information helped.
“I wasn’t gone long,” Teia said. “Because I changed my mind.”
“Wait? You took the tag off?” Sharp asked. He sounded angry and yet relieved, too. If he’d missed a tag because she’d removed it, it wasn’t his fault, was it?
On the one hand, it was nice to see him scared; on the other, it was good to see him relieved. On the third, impossible hand, Teia was crossing a person Murder Sharp was terrified of.
Teia said, “The rules made it all pointless, didn’t they?” Bitter girl, hateful, spiteful, right?
“What rules?”
“I couldn’t kill anyone important. I mean, I briefly considered killing someone who’d irritated me who was close to someone important like that asshole slave Grinwoody, but I figured there was a good chance the Old Man would take that as me being impudent if not disobedient, so why risk it? And then I thought that if I wanted anyone who wasn’t that important dead, I can do it myself now. I mean, it would be easiest if I have the shimmercloak—which I’d like to start learning to use better, thanks—but even without it, I could start throwing paryl crystals into someone’s blood until they die. No one can find it except you, so no one can catch me. So if I’ve got a favor coming to me from the Order, I’m going to save it for when it matters.”
“One doesn’t save up favors from the Old Man. You obey or you take the consequences.” Sharp scowled. “He told me how to deal with you if you’d been disobedient or if you’d betrayed us… but this is something different. He’ll be irritated. But I guess he’ll have to deal with it himself.”
“Himself? What’s that mean?”
“
I’m leaving,” Murder Sharp said. By the way he said it, it was clear he meant for a long time.
“Where are you going? I thought you were going to train me!”
“It’s war. Plans change. The Old Man isn’t pleased, but there’s word that there’s a Third Eye.”
“What’s that? What’s that mean?”
“A prophetess. A true prophetess. Apparently for a long time she was safely out of the way on Seers Island where she couldn’t tell anyone anything, but now she’s out in the satrapies, helping the Chromeria with the war. You might be able to guess how important someone who can see the future would be to either side.”
“Pretty damn,” Teia said.
“That’s right. So that’s where I come in.”
“Isn’t it going to be a bit hard to get close to someone who can see the future? I mean, you’d figure she’d protect herself, right?”
Sharp sucked spit through his dentures. “Smart one, aren’t you?”
Shit. Teia was supposed to be playing dumb. “I’m not trying to be wise,” Teia said, placating. He might punch her again, if not do something worse.
“The cloaks,” Sharp said.
“The cloaks?”
“Her powers are all connected to light, turns out. The Order’s known about her kind for centuries. She can’t See the future, past, or present of anyone who wears the cloaks. Course, the Seers know that we know, which is why they usually stay on their island sequestered away from our blades. Gavin Guile brought an end to that. So I guess we can blame this on him. But them Seers gotta know their place.”
Teia felt sick to her stomach. “So what’s the plan? Kidnap her and sell her to the highest bidder? Hold her somewhere and make her work for you?” Maybe Teia shouldn’t give them ideas.
“Too dangerous. How do you outwit someone who can see the future? You can’t. We gotta kill her.”
It shouldn’t have shocked Teia, this blithe talk of assassinating someone. It was what she was here for, after all. To learn, to become part of the plans, and then upend them on the Order’s head. But… he was going to kill this woman. It was just work to him.
“Thanks,” Teia said.
“Thanks?”
“For telling me. Like you trust me.”
“Eh.” He shrugged, and finally started working at the knots to untie her. “It’s lonely work. No one to talk to. No one to appreciate it when you’ve done good, you know? Shadows usually work in twos, maybe for just that. So you know, I asked that you be promoted to be my second.”
“Really?” Teia said. She was oddly flattered.
“The Old Man said you aren’t ready yet. It’s why you won’t get to keep the Fox cloak, at least not unless he’s got a job for you.”
“What? I earned that cloak.” Inside, though, Teia was delighted. As long as they thought she had no cloak at all, they wouldn’t be on the lookout for her doing the things that only a cloak allowed her to do; being known not to have a cloak made her invisible to the Order.
“He wants to hide himself from her, of course. He needs the cloak for that.”
“So does that mean I’m never getting the cloak back? He’s going to wear it all the time?”
“We know she needs direct sunlight to do her… Seeing? Seering? So if you do jobs, you’ll likely go after sunset and have to return the cloak before dawn. If you do well, after she’s dead, you’ll get to keep your own then. Your own fault, though, you shoulda found the other cloak they recovered.”
Teia raised her hands. “It wasn’t there.”
“I know. We believe you about that. We’ve had the White’s room turned inside out, looking for hiding spots. Went through all your shit, too. Best guess is that she hid it somewhere and didn’t tell anyone where before she died. The Old Man thinks she kept the Fox cloak to study it, thinking that no one could use a cloak that short. Or maybe she knew about the cloaks and hoped to teach you how to use it herself, someday. Loved to study things, she did.”
“Whoa,” Teia said. “She never said anything to me about that. Swear.”
“Death does tend to interrupt plans. It’s why we do what we do. Anyway, the Old Man will be handling you directly from now on. I’ll fill you in on your drops and how he’ll signal you, or how you can signal him in an emergency.”
He did, using much of the same tradecraft that Teia already knew from working with Karris. It all left Teia’s mind whirling, though. She’d be meeting directly with the Old Man of the Desert?
After so long of nothing, it was hope. She might actually cut off the Order at the head.
If she was smart, she’d need to do it before the Third Eye was killed. In the meantime, she’d have to pass word about all of this to the Iron White.
“There’s just one more thing,” Murder Sharp said. “You’re still pretty useless with paryl. It’s my fault, I know. I haven’t been able to come around and teach you like I should. But it’s war. Everything is different now. Nothing is as we’d like. In the basement here is the solution to your problem.”
“Solution?” Teia asked. Her chest tightened.
“There’s a slave down there. An old man. Won’t be missed. Practice on him. The paralysis pinches, the lung clots, the seizures. When you’ve learned as much as you can before your next shift, kill him. With paryl if you can. There’ll be a new slave down there every few weeks. Do try to learn fast. Murder practice ain’t like other practice. Every body we have to get rid of puts someone’s life in danger.”
And then he left.
Murder practice. Dear Orholam. Teia looked at the doorway to the basement stairs as if it were the mouth of hell itself.
She reached to squeeze the vial of oil she kept at her neck, but it was no longer there.
Chapter 44
The woods sang a song Kip had never known. The ponderosas swayed and shyly sighed as frogs croaked in chaotic chorus, descants of squirrels soaring high above all like preening sopranos while the wind danced past, her tresses brushing his cheek as she spun, leafy skirts flaring, willowy legs flashing.
The evening chill held him back from the floor, putting a hand upon his thudding heart. Be still, my dear, be still.
The last drop of rain pressed a shushing finger across his lips.
Made pliant by the rain’s caresses, the earth pulled back her leafy covers like a beckoning lover, and the scent of their love filled the house of sky.
“Kip?” Conn Arthur whispered. “My lord, are you well?”
Kip came back to himself. “I’m eccentric, Conn Arthur,” he said, very quietly, “eccentric.” Not crazy.
“Never mistook you for concentric, sir.”
Kip grinned. A wit, in a bear?
On the other hand, he was probably the last person who should judge a person’s mind by the flesh suit it wore.
They were fanning out through the woods here as the late afternoon passed, looking for signs of the spy. They had docked not twenty paces back, and it had taken only that much distance for Kip to be overwhelmed by a sense of homecoming.
Not his own homecoming. Daimhin Web’s. He nodded to Conn Arthur, and, spreading out with twenty others for a distance of three hundred paces, they began ghosting through the woods.
Daimhin Web was from a village long lauded for its skillful hunters. Among the best of them, there was a test, an impossible test, to sneak up on a deer and touch it with your bare hand. Many young men tried for years, learning everything from their elders about scent and silence and silhouettes and the sweet subterfuge of stalking; they meditated on water and wind and all the ways of the wood and weather. They became satraps of silence, conns of camouflage, paragons of patience.
And friends of frustration.
Those were all traits invaluable to the master hunters they became, for on the path that led to that test and that failure, they were molded into the greatest stalkers known to man.
And this time, unlike any other time he’d been in the cards, Kip could remember exactly how Web did what he did. r />
As he moved through the woods, though, it became clear that remembering the mechanics of an action was different from learning it in your own body. Moving silently was itself the culmination of dozens of discrete skills, practiced separately and then together for so long that the stalker could do them without thinking. Scouting was a set of different but parallel skills: paying attention to the wind, to the sounds of the animals, knowing each kind and knowing to what each kind reacted and how: this bird goes silent when it notices animals, this kind takes flight when a predator or outsider is within this distance, these squirrels turn toward those they scold.
To pay attention to all those while tracking and using scent as well was simply beyond Kip.
By living the card and remembering all that was in it, he was instantly twice as adept as he had been before—he could now understand what made the master masterful, but that didn’t make him a master himself. Kip could suddenly identify all the smells in his nostrils, but his nose wasn’t as naturally keen as Web’s, nor his body so light and lean. Web could bend branches with a step that Kip’s big tread would crush.
But what a man! Web’s first hand brush against a deer’s flank had been partly luck. While he’d been stalking the deer, a running javelina had startled it toward him, so he’d not had to close the last ten impossible feet by stealth.
Another man would have taken his bragging rights and never looked back. Web had instead redoubled his efforts. This at fourteen years of age. He’d succeeded twice more by the time he was sixteen, and when a rival called him a liar for his claims—no hunter had ever succeeded three times—Web had left his village with only a knife and gone to stalk the legendary white stag.
It took him a month of living on bugs and berries, but he’d slain it with one stroke of his knife. He’d dragged the body—intact, not gutted—all the leagues back to his village so that none could deny he’d taken the white stag with only a knife.
For anyone else, taking a white stag at all would have been a tale to tell for the rest of his life.