Destroy the Lightguard. Failing that, place spies high within the organization.
Regardless of whether it was Tremblefist or Ironfist dead, how had he died? What had happened?
Interrogate some Lightguards directly.
Consult with Carver Black.
Find locals who saw what happened.
How would she find Ironfist? How could she bring him back?
Tell all the Blackguards to look for Ironfist. Offer a reward. Do everything. Offer him whatever he wants if he’ll come back.
Ironfist was the one person Karris could trust without reservation, because—
Marissia was gone. Hard as it was to admit, for Karris’s new duties this was the worst blow of all. Marissia had been the head of all the White’s spies for years until Karris had recently begun to take those over.
Karris thought they’d become something like friends, so Marissia’s betrayal bit deep. And who knew what she’d taken with her?… Or whom.
Dear Orholam. What if Marissia had taken Gavin? But what could Karris do? It seemed hopeless. There were no hints at all about Marissia’s whereabouts—or Gavin’s. But the woman couldn’t have absconded with him without help. She had no retainers or family, so that meant she had money.
Check in with all spies. Determine if each one is loyal to me or to Marissia still.
Shift all monies to new accounts.
Determine how much Marissia has stolen, if possible. How? By leaning on Turgal Onesto? The young banking scion will have the opportunity to prove his worth now.
The only good news was that regardless of how high she’d climbed, Marissia was still a slave. Her clipped ear meant she would have trouble keeping power if she didn’t have money. Money. Money’s the answer for that snake.
But all this was recovery. All this was merely treading water after a shipwreck. That wasn’t enough. Karris needed to swim for shore.
She was the White now. That meant all the drafters in the Seven Satrapies were her responsibility. It meant the Chromeria and Big and Little Jasper were her responsibility. Taking care of those meant that the physical, brute-force weapons she’d loved for so long were inadequate to the task before her.
She had to win the war.
Win the war.
She made it an item on her list, as if something so immense might be better comprehended if she wrestled it into words.
Winning battles wouldn’t suffice. By sheer numbers killed, the Seven Satrapies had won battles. But their numbers bled away every night while the Color Prince added to his.
Karris’s war wasn’t going to be fought on battlefields. It was up to her to give the people of the Seven Satrapies reasons to fight, to bleed, to die, and to kill. Others would be the sword in this fight. She would be the lash and the pen.
She must unite the Seven Satrapies for this war. Any who opposed that goal, who opposed her, must be brought into line or crushed.
There was a knock on the door, and the now omnipresent Blackguards announced Andross Guile. He was only the first test.
Lovely to be starting out easy.
Andross Guile looked as if he had purloined all the youth Karris had lost in the last few months. It wasn’t only that his little round paunch was shrinking, or that his skin, formerly pallid from being so long covered from the sun’s gaze, was taking on color again. His back was straight, his head high, showing the broad Guile shoulders and strong Guile jaw. He was energized by crisis.
A good man for these times, then.
And that’s the first and last time I’ll ever think of Andross Guile as a good man.
“It’s nice to see you smile in such fraught times, High Lady,” he said.
Karris wasn’t a player of that game that Andross liked so much, Nine Kings, but at this moment, she knew she had only one card: her own attitude.
He knew more than she did, so it made sense to defer to him. If he were Ironfist, she would ask, ‘What must we do to win this war?’ But with Andross Guile, there was no way she could position herself as the subordinate.
“Those men I killed,” she said. “How are you going to deal with the fallout from their families?”
His face jumped off a bridge, tried to flip, and landed on its belly. “Me?”
She looked at him levelly. He’d tried to stack the election of the White against her. During the testing, two of the candidates—secretly his candidates—had tried to push her off the great disks to fall to her death. It hadn’t turned out well for them. “If nothing else,” she said, “we share a last name. That’s a problem… for you.”
Then he laughed. “Oh, that is an interesting play. Ha!” He looked at her for a few moments, and she had a brief fantasy that he was bald because his brain generated so much heat it had burnt off all his hair. “I was rather hoping that you might choose to be known by your maiden name, to use the term ‘maiden’… loosely.”
Karris saw Blackguard Gavin Greyling’s eyes go wide. He couldn’t believe Andross was speaking to her that way.
And in that moment, Karris thanked Orea Pullawr for forbidding her to use red or green luxin. After years of her constantly using angry red and impulsive green, Karris’s tongue had been a flame. But the months of abstaining had given her new patience. Karris let the insult pass beneath her feet with blue disdain.
“Hmm,” Andross said, as if it were merely interesting that she did not take offense. As if he’d played a good card, and the play hadn’t worked the way he’d thought, and thus, because he’d been countered, that was the end of it.
She wanted to be angry about it, but that was a waste, too, wasn’t it? Instead she should take note: Andross will make personal insults impersonally, not because he’s trying to insult you, but because he’s trying to find your weaknesses.
“I’ll never prove it,” she said, “but I know. You tried to have me killed. Or you encouraged those who tried. Same thing, as far as I’m concerned. I merely stopped you, so in my view, you shit the bed. You clean it up.”
A frisson went through the Blackguards assigned to Karris and to Andross. They all knew how fast Karris was. They knew how good she was at unarmed combat. She was well within lethal range of Andross Guile. And the Blackguards were charged with protecting both the White and the promachos. What were they to do if one attacked the other? Pulling apart fighters was vastly more dangerous and complicated than simply putting down a threat.
But Andross Guile merely tugged on his nose, scratching it. He looked at the Blackguards and their weapons and their menacing stances. “Stand down, children. You’re here to make us look good, not to actually do anything.”
“While you’re being an asshole for no good reason to people who can’t fight back,” Karris said, “I want to point out something.”
“Oh, please do.”
“Orea beat you. You stacked the cards against us. I know you did. You owned all six of the other candidates, didn’t you?”
“All six? That would be excessive, wouldn’t it?”
“You think you’re the best at all your games. But Orea beat you. She beat you.”
Andross smiled and shrugged. “Luck,” he said, as if Karris’s selection as the White and the death of two of his cat’s-paws were trifles in the course of a friendly wager between friends.
“Not luck. Orholam turns his face against the proud, Andross Guile.”
“You think the divinity himself selected you?” Andross said, amused.
“It is the point of the entire ritual, isn’t it?” Karris asked.
Andross laughed, as if he couldn’t believe how naïve she was. “You drew one stone in seven. And perhaps there was no luck involved at all, depending on how far Orea stooped to get you where you are. You won. Take your victory, but to mistake that for a divine mandate on your—”
“That’s exactly what it is,” she interrupted.
He paused, and saw she was serious. “Oh, you are surprising, aren’t you? I can’t tell if you’re bluffing or if you actually believe t
hat. No, don’t tell me. I like the uncertainty. You’re not a player, but you are a fascinating card, aren’t you? After all these years, I finally start to see what my son saw in you.”
“Sons,” Karris corrected. Both of them had fallen for her, after all. To the whole world’s sorrow.
“I hadn’t forgotten,” Andross said, his voice suddenly stone.
Oh, so this wasn’t all games and feeling out weaknesses and triggers. There was a personal edge in there. Andross blamed her for all this? For the war, for the loss of his sons? The sheer blind audacious folly.
But Karris wasn’t here to destroy Andross Guile. She was here to make a partner of him. And the truth was, their problems were mutual. Much as they both hated it, they were yoked together not only against external threats, but against internal ones as well. Three Guiles in power went against tradition, if not law. No one was going to be comfortable with one Guile as promachos, another as Prism-elect, and a third as the White.
Karris waved the Blackguards back. “So, how about it?”
“It? You mean me smoothing over your murder of Jason Jorvis and Akensis Azmith? Surely you’re joking.”
“Not murder. Summary judgment of traitors. Which is the direction I’d go in my defense if I were brought to trial.”
“Not self-defense?” Andross asked. “A petite woman like you, against two big men?”
Any trial would be agonizing, of course. People who’ve never been in a fight to the death always seem to think that split-second decisions can be derived rationally, and that a good person will naturally always make the best choice and then carry out what she intends flawlessly.
Self-defense would be the stronger case, as Andross knew. Karris had been targeted for assassination by those two men, each of whom was bigger and stronger than she was.
She’d been scared, she could say. If her reaction had seemed disproportionate, people had to remember that she was a small woman, and they were large, threatening men. She’d merely done as her training taught her: she’d put an end to the threat.
It was all true, but it wasn’t all the truth.
Karris hadn’t been afraid. Combat was scary: you could do everything right and still get killed by a stray bullet or an ally’s error or dumb luck. Fighting two untrained idiots hand to hand? Not that scary.
She might have been able to save them, but she’d had time for only two thoughts as they held on, balanced at the edge of the testing platform: First, that they were the sons of noble families that were needed in the war, and thus they would get away with their treason and blasphemy and murder. Second, that she wasn’t going to let that happen.
Self-defense was a perfectly good legal defense, but telling people their new White had been afraid wasn’t the way she wanted to start her term.
Or she could point out that by the rules of the selection as it had been presented, other than that none of them were to draft, there were no rules, no laws. Whoever came back would be the White, and the White would be immune to prosecution. Another perfectly good and true defense.
But her path, alleging treason? That would tear those families apart. If, during the ensuing investigations, someone folded and admitted they’d tried to manipulate the selection of the White, Karris had no doubt the fingers would end up pointing at Andross Guile. He would have to be executed as a traitor and heretic on Orholam’s Glare, along with who knew how many others.
Andross said, “If you take that path, you’ll fatally weaken our war effort.”
“Even if I succeed,” Karris admitted. Rallying allies wouldn’t be easy after decimating several powerful families and showing that there was corruption at the very heart of the Chromeria. “I’ve not been elected to be the Gray. I am the White. What is white without purity? Bad enough that our promachos is faithless.”
Andross Guile gave her a long, appraising glance. “Are you suddenly so ins—so zealous.”
“Hmm,” Karris said.
After a long moment, Andross said, “I’ll take care of the Jorvises and Azmiths. A trial won’t be necessary.” He nodded and moved as if to leave, then stopped. He smirked. “May I be excused, High Lady Guile?”
She grinned a little back—no harm letting him think his charisma worked even on her—and motioned that he was dismissed.
Only after the door closed behind him did she breathe again.
Survive first meeting with Andross Guile.
Chapter 5
It was Sun Day night when Teia discovered the note on her bed. It was simply folded and dabbed with red wax, no seal impressed on it. Teia flared her eyes to paryl, saw nothing suspicious, and picked up the note: “Report to Cowardice 27. Now.”
No signature.
Cowardice was the nickname of the sixth floor on the dark side of the red tower, not just the apparition strangling Teia.
Here was the problem with serving two masters who demanded total discretion: Teia had no idea whether Karris or Murder Sharp had left this message.
She hoped it was Karris. She had so much to report it was ridiculous.
She also hadn’t slept for two days, and she wasn’t at her best. Sleep deprivation led inexorably to bad decisions. If this note was from the Order, she couldn’t afford any bad decisions.
The more immediate problem was what Teia should do with the master cloak. But what could she do with it now? Leave it in the trunk at the foot of her bunk? A treasure worth empires, hanging quietly on a hook from her bedpost? She could disguise it, sure, but as what? What if the laundresses came through and grabbed it? What if laundering destroyed the magic in it?
Trainer Fisk had once badly translated an Old Parian proverb for his classes: ‘A sword unneeded can be laid, but a sword needed can’t be made.’
Once they deciphered what it actually meant, all the young Blackguards took the message to heart: they carried two pistols or more; they carried backup blades and hidden blades; during the entire fight to get out of the Chromeria, Teia’d kept thinking of her rope spear. She’d left it in the practice room. It was still down there. She’d made do with paryl and swords and her dagger and a blunderbuss.
Orholam have mercy on her soul, that blunderbuss. How many of those Lightguards whom she’d raked with the blunderbuss at the lift had died? She’d killed men. Perhaps more worryingly, she didn’t feel bad about it.
But fuck them. They’d been trying to kill her friends.
She looked at the cloak, still undecided. She really didn’t know much of how it worked. The Blackguard had taught her that you don’t take a weapon you’re unfamiliar with into battle.
She glanced around. No one. She closed her eyes and pictured a flamboyant Abornean musketeer’s cloak. Looked down.
Leagues of brocade and a starry sky’s worth of gold medallions on blue velour, pointed shoulder pads in burnished silver and a starched collar.
She touched it, expecting her fingers to pass through the illusion.
It was all solid. Real.
It couldn’t be. It must be an insanely powerful hex, tricking not just her eyes, but her mind. Teia closed her eyes tight, waited a few breaths, and touched the cloak again, locking in her mind her certainty that the illusion would be gone.
It was solid. Real.
The master cloak didn’t fuck around.
It was too dangerous to take it until she figured out how to control it. She concentrated again, and the cloak went the flat, solid gray of a Blackguard nunk’s cloak, color muted with use, and too short for any of the other nunks to borrow. She hung it on the hook at the end of her bunk with a quick prayer, grabbed her actual nunk’s cloak, and left.
The trip to the red tower was a quick walk across the elevated bridges that hung in the air between the Prism’s Tower and the six other towers without external supports, glimmering like a spiderweb bedecked with dew. Teia jogged up the slaves’ stair to Cowardice and Courage, went to the dark side of the tower, and found room twenty-seven. She knocked.
No one answered. Room twenty-sev
en was on the outer curve of the dark side of the tower; Teia looked down the bending hallways each way, wondering if she’d caught a glimpse of a slave leaving down the shadowy hall. Best not to be seen at all. Unless that was her contact?
He wouldn’t appreciate being accosted in the open if he was, so she tried the latch instead. Unlocked. Took one breath, drew in paryl, and went in.
She was struck in the face by a beam of light, blinding her after the relative darkness of Cowardice. The light was streaming from the lightwell, the communal reserve of pure sunlight shot down the middle of each tower from the many mirrors atop them.
“Lock the door,” a voice said. It sounded slightly off, and Teia knew immediately that it was being altered. Karris had a collar that did that. But Karris wouldn’t be concealing her identity from Teia now.
That meant Teia was meeting one of the Order’s goons.
Oddly, the realization calmed her. At least she knew what she was up against.
She locked the door. “You mind?” she asked, squinting. The room was dark other than that single beam of light, and the door behind her was draped in black cloth so as to absorb the light so it wouldn’t bounce around the room and illuminate it.
“Light blinds,” a figure seated in the depths of the room said.
Teia held up a hand against the beam. “Which is why I tend not to stare straight into it,” she said. “Who are you? I’ve got a lot to do. I’m not in the mood to play children’s games.”
With a clatter, the shutter shut and the room was plunged into blackness.
She drafted a paryl torch immediately, flaring her eyes.
“None of that!”
She froze. “None of what?” It could have been a guess.
There was a reptilian silence. Teia felt the stirrings of Fear, deep in his lair, twisting in her stomach like an old dragon in unquiet slumber.
“Diakoptês was a lens maker, you know,” the voice said.
When the Order spoke, it was as if it had another language. Diakoptês. Teia still had to mentally translate it to Lucidonius. To the Chromeria, he’d been the one who enlightened them when they were imprisoned in the darkness of paganism. To the Order, he was the great betrayer, the one who’d broken them.