And suddenly Kip felt a wind of hope filling his sails with a crack.
“It’s funny, isn’t it?” Antonius said. “How the Lord of Light asks us to step blind into darkness?”
“Orholam always gives us light enough to take the next step,” Tisis said.
“Ha!” Antonius barked. “You know me too well.”
“Orholam uses the simple to confound the wise,” Tisis said, attempting a light tone.
“I’m certainly the former,” Antonius said wryly. But then his open face took on a troubled cast. Finally he said, “You seem… happy.”
“I’m where I’m supposed to be, doing what I was made for,” Tisis said.
“No, cousin, I mean… with him.”
“Oh.” Tisis brightened and took Kip’s hand. “He is not only my lord. He is my love.”
The thought sent a frisson through Kip. Sure, they had some commitment (at least until one of them revealed they’d never consummated their marriage), and they’d had some sweetness and excitement in the privacy of their tent (at least until recently), and he liked Tisis, and he respected her far more than he had ever expected to. But was that love?
Or was she just lying to save their cause?
But even if Kip didn’t quite believe her, Antonius clearly did. A slow grin broke over his broad face. “Then my prayers are answered.”
“Mine, too, cuz,” Tisis said.
Easy, dear, don’t lay it on too thick.
Antonius looked down at his hands as if to find an answer there. “I don’t want to kill Foresters. Or Guiles. Especially not for this White King. Somehow you boxed in Andross Guile, forcing him to do the right thing in agreeing to your marriage.” He looked up and smiled, and Kip felt all the tension whoosh out of Tisis. “It’s only fair if we box in Eirene, too. Right?”
Giving a perfect court bow and then taking one knee in front of Kip, Antonius said, “Lord Guile, I took an oath to Lady Eirene Malargos, but my allegiance to Orholam is higher. By the inner light that is my conscience, I know I must disobey her. So, Lord Guile, if you would take the oath of a man others may justly call Oathbreaker, then until the Blood Robes are destroyed, I pledge my life, my honor, my men, and my fealty to you.”
And… that didn’t go how I expected at all.
Kip decided that in the future, his legend would be that he moved enemies to break their oaths and swear fealty without him even saying a word. He would be the Unmoved Mover. Kip Golden-Tongue the Silent.
In other words, he was really going to have to be nicer to Tisis.
Chapter 52
“That asshole,” Karris said. “Just when I thought Andross and I were really working together. When’d you get this?”
“I came directly,” Teia said. She’d had to lie to Essel to switch guard schedules with her. It wasn’t the preferred way for Teia to arrange a private meeting with the White, but this couldn’t wait.
“And you’re certain Andross ordered this?” Karris asked.
It had been a long summer and autumn for both of them. Karris had been juggling all the logistics and politics of running a distant war and, once it seemed the White King had stopped his advancement completely, gathering reinforcements for next spring. In every spare moment, she’d been scouring for information from every source at her disposal for any hint of Gavin’s whereabouts anywhere in the Seven Satrapies, and sending out teams of Blackguards she could ill afford to spare to investigate any rumor.
Teia had been training constantly, and trying to figure out how to kill slaves and how not to kill them. After she’d killed a few to show that she was willing to do so, she’d left one alive with a note that she’d devised an experiment that would take three weeks. She’d left the man—they were always old men—blindfolded, and prayed. He’d been alive the next week. If she took three weeks to kill a slave rather than killing one every week, that was two lives she saved, wasn’t it?
Or at least two lives she didn’t take, which wasn’t quite the same thing at all, was it?
Sharing the burden with Karris had helped some. The White had agreed that Teia needed to continue the killing and training no matter what. But Teia was still killing innocents. Nothing made that acceptable.
Every honest conversation was a huge risk. If their plans were uncovered, every murder was for naught. So Teia swept her gaze around the roof of the Prism’s Tower again, and then put on her dark lenses and did it again with paryl. The White had taken to soaking up some sun to think on these late-autumn afternoons, and it was impossible for anyone to eavesdrop here, but there was no such thing as too careful where the Order of the Broken Eye was concerned.
“My contact called this ‘a little project for our sometime friend,’” Teia said. “‘Our sometime friend’ was the same phrase he used once when he described who ordered Marissia’s kidnapping. And I was there when Andross ordered that one, though I didn’t know then that they were talking about Marissia.”
It was funny, in a not-funny-at-all sort of way. Teia had been waiting for months to be activated by the Order. She’d needed to be given something to do that would enmesh her more deeply into their hierarchy. Something, at least, that would stop her murdering innocent old men. Now that something had come, and she felt not relief but fear.
Karris sighed. “All of us are become weapons in this war, aren’t we? But Andross Guile is all blade. I know that to not pick up that naked blade is to perish. But he cuts my hand to the bone with every move.” She turned to Teia, eyes resigned. “I will never be able to exact justice for Marissia from him, Teia. You know that, right? He’s too valuable.”
“But you want justice for her, right?” Teia asked. She knew the answer, she thought, but she needed to hear it.
The White held her eye. “I hated her, for a time, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“I didn’t mean to—”
“How do you feel about Tisis?”
“Excuse me?!” Teia said.
“If someone murdered her, how would you feel?” Karris asked.
“Uh, she’s… I mean, I’d be outraged. Of course I’d want—but what’s that got to do with—”
“Are you actually insulted that I know a thing or two about you, Teia? You, who know what we do? How we live? How secrets are our currency?”
“I don’t know what you’ve been told, but they’re clearly mistaken about that,” Teia said.
“It was an illustration, not an attempt to embarrass you,” Karris said. “How you and Kip feel toward each other only becomes my concern if you threaten his marriage to my very tenuous ally in Ruthgar. What I was trying to say—”
“Daelos. It was Daelos, wasn’t it? That little crippled piece of shit. You interviewed him like three times.”
“Peace,” Karris said. “What I meant to say is that I long ago burnt through all my hatred for her. In fact… we were close to becoming friends. She disappeared too soon for that. But enough. Enough of all that. The question now is what to do about this. Whether we can stop it. Whether we should.”
“Whether we should?” Teia asked, at first happy not to be talking about Kip. She shot another paranoid look around. They were still alone. This was the whole reason they’d met. “Andross Guile has hired the Order to kill the Nuqaba! I mean, I know you’re mad at her, but—”
“Mad? Mad?! Because she kidnapped and blinded my husband, the Emperor of the Seven Satrapies himself? You think that makes me merely angry?” Karris asked.
Teia walked a circuit around the rim of the tower, streaming paryl down over the edge to make certain there were no climbers on the outside who might overhear them. Again. Then she said, “I’m not saying she doesn’t deserve death, but you’re the one who was just talking about using dirty weapons when they’re the only weapons you have. The Nuqaba is a bitch, but she’s the bitch who runs Paria. Paria.”
Paria had a satrapah, of course. One of the Azmith family. The damned Azmiths, who included General Caul Azmith, who’d led the Seven Satrapies a
rmy to the disasters at Ox Ford and Raven Rock, and Akensis Azmith, who’d been nominated to be the White before he tried to kill Karris. Shamed on the one hand, aggrieved on the other, they were like a mad dog you didn’t want to get too close to. They might cower, or attack for no reason.
But even Teia knew that Paria’s satrapah was a figurehead. The Nuqaba was in charge, in charge of the satrapy that two out of every three Blackguards and the best soldiers in the world came from.
But Karris knows all that. Right?
Teia realized how foolish it was for her to lecture the White about this, but she couldn’t help saying, “If I fail as I attempt to kill the Nuqaba—hell, even if I succeed but get caught or found out—Paria will turn against you. Even if you and Andross aren’t deposed and executed for sending an assassin, you’d lose Paria.”
There was no hope of winning the war without Paria.
Quietly, Karris said, “We may have already lost them.”
“What?” Teia asked.
“The messenger you’ll be accompanying for this mission is taking an ultimatum to the Nuqaba. Ever since the Battle of Ox Ford, they’ve contributed nothing to the war effort. They lost ten thousand men there, which is grievous, but compares not at all with the thirty-five thousand the Ruthgari lost. But since then, they’ve been saying they’re still mobilizing, and we know they are. But they won’t move. Cowardice or caution or treason, they aren’t coming. Apparently, Andross expects her to say no to our ultimatum, or to stall again. So Andross wants to kill her so someone more amenable can take over.”
“Or maybe he’s upset that she imprisoned and blinded his son?” Teia ventured.
Karris looked at Teia, and thought about it. “More likely someone moving against one of his own offends his ego. Regardless, it’s not a bad move. He probably would even expect me to be pleased if she turned up conveniently dead. I don’t know that he has anyone in place behind her, though. The Nuqaba conducted a purge recently. I think it may have wiped out some of Andross’s spies and agents over there. Now that I could see him being upset about.” Karris pursed her lips. “So that’s why he’d order it. But why would the Order take the job?”
“Anything that destabilizes the major powers is a net positive for the Order,” Teia said. “They want to institute some kind of new world on the ashes of the Seven Satrapies.”
“That might be enough reason,” Karris said. “And I suppose an erratic figure like the Nuqaba is no fun for them, either. Who knows but that they lost people in the purges as well. And perhaps the Old Man of the Desert is more motivated by passions like revenge than our icy promachos.”
Karris looked up toward the fading sun in what might have been prayer. “What if… what if I have you intentionally fail… or what if you frame someone for the deed instead? Who? How? Hmm… Or I could just prevent you from going at all, but that might tip my hand…” She crossed her arms under her breasts and scrunched her shoulders against a sudden cold wind. “What would Orea do? Something gentler, no doubt. Something clever and even kind. Of course, it’s her fault I have all these Azmiths to deal with in the first place. In this world of bloody-minded men, is there not a smarter way? Must the Iron sometimes be a blade?”
She was quiet for a long time. Then, finally, Karris straightened her back and turned to Teia. “It won’t be enough to kill the Nuqaba. You’ll also need to kill her master of spies, Satrapah Tilleli Azmith.”
“Am I to be your official assassin, then?” Teia asked. She couldn’t keep the grief out of her voice.
“You have a problem with that?” Karris asked coolly.
“High Lady… I had a chance to murder… two men I find loathsome, and it would have stopped much trouble. I didn’t because I felt Orholam tell me that I’m not an assassin; I’m a soldier. I’m a Blackguard. Not a knife in a darkness, a shield.”
“You train much with a shield?” Karris asked.
“A little. Trainer Fisk said he’d rather I was in the enemy’s shield wall than his own.” He’d actually said he’d use Teia as a scout instead, even if he had to go one man short.
Trainer Fisk, of course, had hurled insults at all of them while they practiced. But a single day of charging at another line from a mere twenty paces, each side equipped only with shields, had convinced Teia not only that Fisk was right, but that no amount of training could help her overcome her limitations. Many of the men in the lines were twice her weight; some were three times her weight. Charging full speed into them? She got flattened, every time. And holding up a shield for several hours? She couldn’t have done that with both hands, even while not fighting.
Thank Orholam that magic and black powder had rendered shield walls and phalanxes mostly obsolete. Teia preferred a buckler or even a targe, which required more agility and perhaps more luck, but less strength and endurance.
“Then from your training you should know,” Karris said. “Shields also kill.”
Teia remembered the lesson now. She quoted Trainer Fisk: “Those who use a shield only to block are ignoring a weapon in their hands.”
Well, shit. There went her whole metaphor about being a shield.
“Teia, you are my shield. You guard me well, but if I get the chance, I absolutely will bring you down on the neck of my enemies.”
And when I shatter, you will cast me aside. Teia didn’t say it aloud.
But Karris must have seen the look on her face. “Yes. If you break, I will take up another. We are not so different. I too am serving in greater hands, and I too fear that I am inadequate for what I’ve been called to do. I too wanted something different from this life.”
“A slave to your duties, huh?” Teia asked.
Karris shot an iron glare at her. She hadn’t missed the notes of bitterness and scoffing in Teia’s voice. “Yes,” she said. “If I had my way, Teia, I would send you and every drafter after my husband, and then I would add every slave and every tradesman and every soldier in my command, and to hell with it if all the satrapies together burnt. Gavin would be ashamed of me, but I could live with his disappointment if I could but live with his presence as well. No, mine is not actual slavery. No one beats or rapes me, but you’re a fool if you think my cold, empty bed is much more a comfort to me than a slave’s pallet or a soldier’s bunk.”
“I’m sorry,” Teia said. The one person she could trust, the one person who knew her now that Kip was gone, and she was venting her bile on her.
“As am I,” Karris said. “Not least for what I’m doing to you. The good news is that this will give us your first solid scent in your hunt for the Order.”
“How so?”
“Here’s one of the few beauties of war. Sometimes pieces put into place secretly must be used openly if they are to be used at all. In the same way that you had to break our normal protocol so that you could meet quickly with me today, someone will have to work hard to get you—of all the Blackguards—onto that ship. That someone will be in the Order. There are really only two options: it’s one of my watch captains or someone of high rank will ask a watch captain to do it for them. So when that captain comes in and shows me the deployment orders, I’ll say that I’d prefer you to stay here; you’re my favorite. If that captain is himself the Order’s plant, he’ll insist on you for some reason. If it’s just a favor he’s doing for some ambassador, he’ll say who asked him to get you on this detail. The watch captain could lie, of course, but I can check on lies. No matter what they do, it gives us something. Given enough time, I’m sure the Old Man could come up with a better stratagem, but he has to act fast here, and he’s juggling other subordinates and tasks—as I am. He’ll have to opt for a direct approach.”
A lead on the Order. That meant an end to infiltration, and an end maybe to all of them. Teia could hardly wait.
“Wait,” Teia said. “Did you say that my second target was the satrapah? The satrapah of Paria? The satrapah is the Nuqaba’s spymaster? I’m to kill both of the most powerful people in Paria?”
&nb
sp; Chapter 53
The game seemed trivial before Gavin understood it. His daily bread came down the chute. He caught the loaves if he could before they hit the ground, which would damage the crust.
Then he would examine every bit of each loaf’s surface, looking for an injection site. He often couldn’t find it. The loaves dropped down the chute and collided with several locks on its way to him, so finding a small hole was often impossible.
He would tear open a loaf and smell it, sometimes catching a faint whiff of something off. Then, with a carefully cleaned, dry finger, he would touch the soft flesh of the broken bread, feeling for wetness or any temperature variation.
If he didn’t find it, he would close the loaves up as well as possible and wait. The poison, being liquid, would make the affected bread go gummy after a time.
Then sometimes Andross would baste the poison onto the outside of a loaf, as if buttering a pastry as it baked. That tended to affect either the flakiness or the color of the crust, so Gavin took to examining each loaf for those variations.
It was harder to examine the weekly fruit, not least because that sweet treat called to him in a way the boring bread never could. Some weeks, only a single segment of the lime would be contaminated. Other times, it would have seeped through numerous segments, and he would debate with himself about how much of the poison he might be able to ingest without losing consciousness.
Nor was he always perfect. He’d gotten woozy a number of times when he’d eaten some of the narcotic by accident.
He’d fought through his sleepiness and never lost consciousness.
But that wasn’t the game. That was only the beginning of the game.
As the long days passed, until the summer must surely be over, and deep into autumn, Gavin saw that the game was one of endurance, to see if he could keep the same level of boring vigilance day in and day out, as his emotions cycled down and further down and the sands scoured the gilded grandeur of the idol he’d erected to himself, and it was revealed to stand on bare scaffolding and feet of clay.