He waggles his eyebrows at her, and she laughs and puts another pile of scrolls on the desk. But she holds two back. “But I can’t possibly show you these two. If anyone learned, I’d lose my position here and shame my family and the entire Tiru tribe. I’m the youngest under-librarian in Paria.”
“‘If anyone learned,’ huh?” Andross smiles recklessly. “Oh, what could I possibly do to convince you of my discretion?”
She feigns a frown, and that feigned frown hits Kip like a slap in the face. He didn’t recognize the smile. He didn’t recognize those clear eyes. He didn’t recognize the beauty. But he knows that frown.
Kip gasped.
He was weeping, blind, and hands were lifting him, carrying him. “You did it! Kip, you did it! Orholam’s mercy, you saved us,” she said.
It’s not her speaking. No, it’s Tisis. Tisis was the one who’d come to him, caught him. Saved him.
He was weeping, and he was ashamed of his weeping.
“What’s wrong with his eyes? One is—and the other—”
“Cover his eyes! He’s staring at the sun, you fools!” the captain shouted.
And people were shouting orders and suggestions back and forth. Kip heard a door bang open, and he was bustled inside. His knees hit what had to be his own bed, and he sat, gentle hands guiding him.
“We should strip him out of—” a concerned woman said.
“Just let him breathe, Verity,” Tisis said.
Kip looked up, and despite that his eyes were closed and now bound with cloths, he could see three figures in the room. Three? Verity and Tisis moved about, trying to take care of him, their bodies luminous in a color beyond purple, their clothes and hair translucent wisps, any bits of metal—buckles and jewelry and hairpins—glowing bright white. He was seeing in chi.
The third figure was glassine, but in full, natural color. She smiled, her lips full, her hair a great curly halo around her head. Rea Siluz, the warrior, the librarian, the immortal somehow more real than real.
She smiled at him, glowing, literally glowing with pride for him. Kip had no idea how an emotion could have color, but for some reason it seemed natural.
“The enemy steered that storm toward you, so this much healing is allowed me. You won’t be blinded, not today,” she said, and she extended her hand as if making the sign of the three on him, her thumb to one eye, middle finger to the other, and her forefinger touching his forehead where the eye of the mind was. Warmth shot through him, and he fell into blessed sleep.
Chapter 14
Teia had always expected her Blackguard vigil would be one of the most religious experiences of her life. After a night of prayer atop the Prism’s Tower, the chosen initiate would take his or her final Blackguard oaths as the sun rose. Teia had always believed in Orholam, but she was usually too busy to pray or attend more than the mandatory chapels. Orholam was the emperor of the universe, but she paid him scant tribute.
She’d looked forward to her vigil, though, thinking it would finally give her time to pray and focus. Perhaps—it being a vigil that would shape the course of her entire life—Orholam would take special notice of her. Speak to her, even.
Instead she’d barely been able to prop her eyelids open through the night. She’d mumbled some prayers, sung a few traditional songs, and wondered if she’d made a huge mistake by staying on the Jaspers instead of going with Kip.
And from the twinges in her belly, her moon blood was going to start soon. Six months since her last cycle, and it came now? Shit.
Did I really mark Quentin for death?
He’s going to die anyway. It’s war. It’s necessary.
Like Marissia.
How many of my friends do I have to kill before I’m on the wrong side?
I’m a soldier, a Blackguard under orders.
But Quentin? Bumbling, adorable Quentin?
Dammit.
All his nerves, all his twitching, his weird oath to Kip that he would never lie to him. His strange intensity, that he would help the Mighty no matter what.
Quentin had been trying to repent for literally as long as they’d known him. But it wasn’t real repentance. Not when you wouldn’t face justice.
But judging what was real repentance wasn’t up to her, was it? That was Orholam’s job, and the White’s.
I’m a soldier, not an executioner. I can’t kill him. I can’t be his judge. That’s not what I am. I’ve stepped outside my authority.
I can kill when ordered to do so, but I don’t choose it myself. That’s not who I am.
And just like that, she knew she needed to go fix this. Even if it meant failing her mission.
She stood and opened the door. A Blackguard named Presser was guarding her vigil, but he said nothing. A Blackguard’s vigil was her own. If she left, she left.
Taking a deep breath, Teia walked out past the Blackguards at Karris’s door, and to the Blackguard station guarding the steps and the lift. It was the middle of the night, but Commander Fisk was apparently checking in with his people, chatting quietly in the orangey light of their torches—the usual luxin lighting here hadn’t yet been repaired.
“You’re leaving?” Fisk demanded. “You abandon your vigil, you’re out. You know that.” He was taking it unusually personally, she could tell.
Ah, he’d probably taken some criticism for raising her to full Blackguard so early. Her failing reflected poorly on him, and just as he began his tenure as commander, too.
Teia would have usually bulled right at conflict, but the orange gave her an idea. “Not abandoning my vigil, sir. Fulfilling it. Orholam told me there’s something I need to do. I’ve committed a transgression against my brother. I need to make it right before final vows.”
Tleros, a Blackguard Archer as skinny as the spear she carried, said, “You’re supposed to take care of that kind of thing before your vigil.”
“I didn’t know I was going to be keeping my vigil until today. Which is better, delayed obedience or disobedience? Should I honor our traditions and stay all night with a guilty conscience, or should I honor Orholam and obey him now?” It was the best way she could think of not to blame Fisk for not giving her enough time.
But he got the message. Commander Fisk grimaced. “You’re right. Allowances must be made. Back before dawn, nunk, otherwise you’ve broken your vigil.”
“Are you serious?” Tleros asked. She hesitated. “Err, Commander.”
“Yes,” Commander Fisk said, “and why don’t you meditate a bit on what your tone should be when you speak to your commander?”
“Yes, sir,” Tleros said. She hesitated again. “Perhaps a shift in the scullery would help focus my mind?”
Commander Fisk merely glowered at her.
“Two?” Tleros asked.
“Whatever you think is necessary,” Fisk said.
Tleros’s shoulders sagged. “Yessir.”
Teia took the lift down, stopped a story above the main floor, took the stairs down, and down, and found the same men on duty at the mirror prison still. Thank Orholam for that.
A few pleasantries later, while checking in paryl for an assassin, and she was outside Quentin’s cell.
She opened the peephole.
She hadn’t expected him to be sleeping, but his body was too warm to be dead. The last remnants of her paryl marker still clung to his head. She thought about not waking him. She didn’t want to talk to him. She hadn’t killed him, wasn’t that enough?
“Quentin,” she said before she could think too much about it.
He woke easily, but not guiltily as he used to. “Is it time?” he asked before he even turned to the door.
“No, it’s still late. You’ve got six or seven hours yet.”
“Teia.”
“Quentin, I hate what you did, but I don’t hate you. I’ve taken the wrong way out myself before.”
He looked at her for a while, silent and sober. “There’s nothing I can do to make up for what I’ve done,” he said. “I
’ve cooperated with the White, I’ve told all I know, and it’s still not even close to balancing what I did, and what I tried to do. I’ve got nothing more to say.”
“Fuck, Quentin.”
“I assume you have questions for me or you wouldn’t have come back. I’m willing to answer.”
“Who was involved?”
“As I said, High Luxiat Tawleb gave me my orders. I believe one of the other High Luxiats may have been involved, but they told me nothing to give me evidence of that. It’s purely speculation. But I know the High Luxiats fear the Guiles have grown too powerful.”
Their fear would be greater now, Teia realized. But that at least one of them had been willing to kill to keep the balance of power? Luxiats? Killing? Much less High Luxiats. What was the world coming to?
“Do you need anything?” she asked.
His calm composure cracked for an instant. “My shriving wasn’t the best. They couldn’t allow any luxiats to visit me, lest they be spies or assassins. The Prism-elect Zymun came instead. He was, um, not terribly interested in… much.”
“Zymun’s an asshole.”
Quentin suppressed a quick grin, then grew somber. “I suppose I deserve no better. Indeed, worse.”
“Surely there’s something I can do for you.”
He swallowed. “There is… one thing.” He cleared his throat. “My, uh, my mother. I was forbidden writing instruments. For good reason, I suppose. I wonder if you could send her a message. You can put it in your own words. Given that I’m a traitor, the authorities fear I’d be sending code. Tell her the truth, Teia. She lost everything in the False Prism’s War, and she wanted me to stay with her more than anything. We were very close. But I felt Orholam’s call. My mother sacrificed me for—” He cut off, blowing air, puffing his cheeks out to keep from crying. “For Orholam. And I… did this. Became a murderer. Because High Luxiat Tawleb promised that I could be a High Luxiat myself. I told myself that I obeyed him because I wanted her to be proud of me, but it wasn’t for her. It was for me. For my pride.”
“Fuck, Quentin,” Teia said again.
“Goodbye, Teia. Thank you for being a friend to me, though I didn’t deserve it. If you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll spend the rest of the night in prayer.”
“Me, too,” she said. “It’s my vigil night. I’m to become a Blackguard at dawn.”
“Congratulations!” he said, and he seemed to have real joy for her. But then his face darkened once more. “Will you… if you have time… will you pray that I’m brave? I’m not naturally courageous, and I don’t want to shame myself.” There was a hitch in his voice, and his cheeks were wet. “Further.”
“I swear it. I’ll…” She cleared her throat. It was hard to speak. “I’ll be on the White’s detail tomorrow. If you need strength, you just look at me, Quentin. I’ll stand for you.”
Chapter 15
The Emperor of the Seven Satrapies sat upon his luxin throne impassive. Legs folded, hands draped over his knees. He shat and didn’t even move. He stopped eating, and soon he didn’t even need to shit.
He sat at the center of all things, moving only to stretch and lick at the trickle of water that tracked down the wall, around the curve of his cell, and down into the waste chute over which he sat.
His bread fell out of the chute above and tumbled to him. He picked it up with his left hand, and promptly dropped it because of his missing fingers. Carefully he picked up the bread again and put it in the semicircle in front of himself. It was a torture to have the bread always before him, but there was a purpose to this, to being seen to starve.
I am Guile.
Everywhere he looked, he saw only himself reflected in the walls of the cell. Had it not always been thus? Had he ever seen anyone else, ever?
She was dead. He’d killed her. For her good service, he’d rewarded Marissia with death.
He had loved her, he saw now. He’d loved her with a love as small as his own soul. He’d loved her as a man loves the hand he masturbates with. And thought as much about her.
He was not a good man, Gavin Guile.
Dazen Guile. Whichever.
A brief smile creased the arrogance that was his face. He’d fooled the old man with his disguise. He’d fooled Andross Guile once. He would do it again.
No prison can hold me, father.
Another day. Another piece of bread. And he was weakening. His breath was foul, his skin greasy, muscles weak, eyes intermittently blurry.
All normal stages of fasting, though he wasn’t sure how much his body could stand. He hadn’t started healthy.
The pain of hunger was deserved. The torture of having the means to ease it within reach had been more than earned.
But more than simply deserved, the pain was necessary. One doesn’t fool Andross Guile on the cheap.
And when the time came, he dreamed of Marissia, dreamed of throwing her off a balcony when Karris found her in his bed.
He dreamed and he woke, and he found he couldn’t much tell the difference. Fewer leg cramps in the dreams, perhaps. Karris. This was for Karris.
The dreams were redolent of déjà vu. He’d dreamed of this cell when his brother had suffered down here. For sixteen years, he’d dreamed of this soothing blue hell, the facets of the blue luxin crystalline walls shimmering like sun on the sea.
Idly, Gavin wondered how his father had repaired the damage of the real Gavin’s escaping. Andross couldn’t draft blue, so he must have had help. But any help would have had to be taken care of afterward. If Andross had been careful enough to bring Marissia down here alone, it meant he was keeping all knowledge of these cells to himself.
It would have been a lot of murder if he’d had to fix each of the cells that the real Gavin had escaped from.
But of course Andross Guile wasn’t as wasteful as his second son when it came to drafting. There was no way he would bother to maintain numerous functioning cells. He would have only two. One to hold Gavin, the other as a backup. If Gavin broke out of one, Andross would let him stay in the second until he repaired the first and fixed its weakness, and then he would move Gavin back into the first cell again. Efficient and cold.
As Gavin should have been.
He could still hear the muskets echoing in the cramped space as he’d blown his brother’s head apart.
What had Andross thought when he found the corpse?
Karris! Are you looking for me? Surely, surely she must be. She’d rescued him from the Nuqaba herself. She wouldn’t abandon him now. But how could she find him?
Funny. Funny how he’d obsessed over keeping this prison secret for so long, and now his only hope was that someone would find it soon.
Gavin hadn’t buried his brother. Hadn’t done anything for him. Just left him there to rot. Literally to rot.
Who did that?
He remembered Gavin laughing when they were children. Some prank he’d played on one of the White Oak boys. They’d put honey down the sleeping boy’s underclothes. The boy, Tavos, somehow hadn’t noticed until the next day, hours after waking, when he was already out in Sapphire Bay on a fishing trip with his father. The waves had been high that day and Tavos couldn’t swim, so it had brought an abrupt end to the trip and the permanent ire of Tavos White Oak and his father.
How his big brother Gavin had laughed.
That Gavin would never laugh again.
But it was just another murder in the list, wasn’t it? Dazen had to have killed, personally, perhaps more people than anyone in history.
He was not a man, he was an epidemic. He moved across the land snuffing out drafters young and old, broken halos traded for blood. He had spilled a river of blood—and in that river of blood, all he saw was his own reflection.
He was not a good man, Dazen Guile. He didn’t deserve to escape. But he was going to. Not for himself. She deserved to have a husband, and she’d been cursed to love Dazen.
The least he could do was be there.
The bread beckoned hi
m to give up this farce of a suicide attempt, but he didn’t touch it.
One doesn’t fool Andross Guile on the cheap. He scrubbed his face with his crippled hand.
In the gleaming gray wall, he saw a dead man. One eyed, smiling back at him, the dead man winked.
Chapter 16
Kip was blind for three days. He had never been more afraid in his life. What was a drafter without his eyes? How could he let everyone down by leaving the fight before they’d even really begun?
He didn’t put it in words. Who would understand?
Despite the darkness, or perhaps because of it, the Nine Kings cards he’d absorbed kept triggering in his head. He lived as men who’d lost limbs. As a heretic woman who’d had her eyes put out. As a broken warrior lashing out at those who loved him.
It wasn’t exactly a comfort.
Comfort. That was the name of a pistol, wasn’t it? Abaddon, the King of… Locusts?
But that thought, that memory—was it even his own memory?—slipped away from him like all the others.
Tisis shared the bed with him, snuggled up against him, but she didn’t seem to know how to bridge the gap. He held her close, but without his eyes to judge her expressions, he didn’t trust himself not to make a fool of himself or hurt her by doing the wrong thing. They slept only.
On the third day, he sat up in bed and took off his bandages. He could see perfectly. His eyes felt well.
But those who broke the halo usually felt well. Part of the madness was believing that you weren’t mad.
Verity nearly dropped her tray when she came in and found him up.
“My lord,” she said.
“My apologies, caleen.”
“Please, my lord, call me Verity.”
“With pleasure. Verity, will you look at my eyes and tell me what you see?” Best to know how bad it was immediately.
“Is that safe?”
Kip nodded, and she pulled back some heavy drapes they’d put up on the walls. Where had those been when they were trying to make love in here? Verity stared at his eyes for a long moment as he blinked. From the quality of the light, it had to be late morning.