Some kind of palace guards joined them halfway up, and at the doors of the palace grounds, four of the Nuqaba’s personal guard, the drafting Tafok Amagez, fell in around them. Dressed in white and black with blue vests the color of the sky, the Sun Guards claimed their genesis from Lucidonius’s first followers and personal guard, but the only thing relevant about them for Teia was that these were the men who’d helped blind Gavin and tried to kill Karris and Ironfist and Essel and Ben-hadad. They had killed Hezik. He’d been a jovial braggart, and Teia hadn’t known him well—but he was her brother, and she would never forgive his killers.
Karris had sneered about the Tafok Amagez’s magical abilities, calling them blunt drafters who lacked all subtlety. But no one had criticized their fighting abilities, and Teia saw that they held themselves like professionals.
Teia realized that if she hadn’t come as an assassin, her role here would be entirely ornamental. If the Parians decided to kill her, she would be lucky if she took down even one before they got her. So she pulled her cloak back around herself.
It’s a bad idea to poke a lion in a cage.
These lions weren’t caged.
When they entered the grand doors of the palace itself, Teia almost missed a step. Soaring ceilings, white marble, black marble, flying staircases, stained-glass-filled clerestories, jewels and onyx and a giant statue that seemed to be made entirely of obsidian and gold standing on powerful legs, wearing what Teia thought was called a toga, reaching toward the sky—the sun?—with yearning, and with determination in his clenched jaw.
Anjali Gates saw Teia’s astonishment. “At the midwinter feasts, the pyroturges remove the pinnacle cap of the dome and lower an incendiary. All night long, he reaches for a burning sun, and these stained glass windows shine light out for leagues for everyone to see all through the year’s longest night. Inside, there is one hell of an all-night party.” She smiled at a memory. “He is known as ‘handross Orh’olam. The Seeker after the Lord of Light. Or perhaps the Striver after Orholam. Or, less popularly, He Who Strives with Orholam.”
“‘With’ as in ‘with,’ or ‘with’ as in ‘against’?” Teia asked.
“Indeed.”
“I think I lost you there,” Teia said as they ascended a staircase with no railing or visible supports.
“The grammar allows for either interpretation, but these are a pious people. It is best not to note aloud that while their people were the first to fight with Lucidonius, they were also the first to fight with Lucidonius.”
“Ah,” Teia said.
“A subtle tongue, it is, Old Parian. So contextual, and we don’t possess so much of that context anymore. The scholars even say that instead of ‘handross Orh’olam, it may actually be ‘handross h’olam. Which would make it the Seeker after the Hidden.”
“Or He Who Strives with or against the Hidden?” Teia guessed.
“Indeed,” Anjali said.
““handross’? That isn’t the same root name as Andross…”
“It is. The Guile family has deep roots here in Paria.”
By chance or design, they had arrived while Satrapah Azmith was holding court. More palace guards in white and black stopped them at the door.
“Weapons? Any other contraband? Dangerous items?” a young man asked.
Anjali Gates handed over a belt knife and was given a chit with which to reclaim it.
Teia just stared at the man. She threw back her cloak. “I’m a Blackguard, cur. By ancient right and treaties, we go unarmed nowhere. Our right holds in the presence of Colors and satraps and the Prism himself.”
The man gulped and shot a look at the Tafok Amagez. “I’m commanded to let no one…”
“We are here with an emergency message from the promachos and the White and the entire Spectrum,” Anjali said. “Young man, Orholam help you if you detain us. The fate of the satrapies themselves rests upon a speedy response from your people.”
“I, uh…”
One of the Tafok Amagez interrupted. “Oh, quit this! We can handle one little girl, whatever they dress her in.”
One little girl? Teia knew she should feel good they’d said it. She was supposed to be underestimated. So it was working.
But fuck them.
The guard had the Tafok Amagez sign for her, and then let them pass. They opened a small door inset in the great hall doors.
The great hall was a variation on the entry’s theme: several stories tall, stained glass in clerestories, flying buttresses, and here silver and ebony and teak and walnut woods with mirrors that beamed diffuse sunlight to the platform.
The four Tafok Amagez and an equal number of palace guards took them to a line at least a hundred supplicants long and stopped at the back of it. Teia could barely see the Nuqaba and the satrapah from here.
The Nuqaba sat at the satrapah’s right hand—or perhaps the satrapah sat at her left. Their chairs were of almost an equal height, the Nuqaba’s a smidgen lower, but significantly grander.
Anjali Gates held herself at peace. When it took another ten minutes for the Nuqaba and the satrapah to finish with one case, the details of which Teia couldn’t even hear, the diplomat put on her violet-tinged spectacles—it hadn’t even occurred to Teia that the woman was a superviolet drafter. Of course she was.
As soon as a chamberlain brought down his iron-capped staff onto the floor, causing a bang that Teia assumed meant judgment had been rendered, Anjali was out of her place in line like a shot.
Somehow she moved quickly without appearing to hurry, and she was ten paces down the main aisle before even Teia moved. An instant later, the Tafok Amagez woke up and poured out after them.
Anjali pulled a small orb from a pocket and twisted it. She held it above her head as she continued to walk, and in an instant it bloomed, and then burnt an intense yellow.
“Blessed Nuqaba! Exalted Satrapah Azmith! I come from the Chromeria! This is my proof,” Anjali boomed, just as Teia and the Tafok Amagez caught up with her. “I come with an emergency message from the promachos himself and the White’s own pen for the entire Spectrum.”
The spectacle—and Anjali’s confidence—was enough to buy them time to get to the front of the room, but there a rank of Tafok Amagez had deployed, spears leveled, blocking their path to the platform.
Anjali Gates stopped and held out the beacon toward the commander of the Tafok Amagez facing her. “For your inspection.” She promptly ignored him.
Satrapah Azmith conferred with the Nuqaba. She had the dark, dark skin of a mountain Parian, with long, narrow limbs adorned with gold and turquoise bands. She wore a transparent black veil trimmed in gold, and a flowing black burnous with black embroidered squares interlocking. A jug of wine sat on the table at her left hand for her to serve herself. She said, “We’ve not seen the western star beacon in these lands for decades. You’re lucky the Amagez didn’t skewer you.”
“Such a fear didn’t even occur to me. We are all loyal children of Orholam here, and brothers and sisters under the light,” Anjali said. She might have stressed the word ‘loyal’ just a little.
The satrapah and the Nuqaba spoke again, and Teia was stunned by the Nuqaba’s glamour. Where the satrapah was modest and sedate, the Nuqaba looked more like a pagan priestess oozing sensuality and demanding attention than a servant of Orholam humbly directing attention up toward the Lord of Light.
Of course, Gavin Guile had certainly had more than a little smoldering sensuality himself when he wanted to, and Teia had heard women getting themselves worked up just talking about how he’d looked during Sun Day festivities past, where he’d gone more than half-naked.
So maybe it wasn’t any different. But it felt different. For a moment, Teia forgot her training and took in all the jewels, the perfectly tailored dress that emphasized the woman’s enviable curves, and the gold and ochre and kohl face paints highlighting her eyes and the tattoo under each: judgment under the left and mercy under the right.
But then she re
membered herself, and looked not to outer things but as a Blackguard looking at a potential opponent. The hauteur overlaid physical weakness. Her upper arms were flabby. There was a loose puffiness in her face that spoke either of overindulgence last night or of chronic overindulgence. Her eyes were glassy, as if she’d been enjoying ratweed this morning. Her attitude was insolent.
In short, though the Nuqaba had to be in her midthirties, she reminded Teia of a Blackguard nunk who needed a good ass-kicking.
The Nuqaba waved lazily at her Tafok Amagez to withdraw. All of them were eyeing Teia’s many weapons, glancing back only occasionally, so none of them happened to be looking at her as she gave the gesture. A look of sudden rage at being ignored washed over the Nuqaba’s face and she snapped her fingers. Not just once, but twice. As if they were dogs.
All of them looked back at her. All of them. The men weren’t fools or amateurs, so it spoke to Teia of how horribly the Nuqaba must treat them. When the Nuqaba wanted their attention, she demanded all of it. It was stupid. If Teia were an assassin, it would have given her ample time to draw her flintlock pistol and—
Oh shit. She was an assassin.
Just not that kind.
The Nuqaba slashed her hand, and the men pulled back instantly.
Still, their commander gave orders, and as Teia and Anjali took several more steps forward, Teia saw that two Tafok Amagez quietly lit slow matches and affixed them to muskets. The others were already filled with their colors, and Teia realized that the front of the great hall was covered in a pristine white rug that had to be there so that the bespectacled Tafok Amagez could draft as quickly as possible.
One paryl drafter. If there’s just one paryl drafter here, I’m in big trouble.
The Nuqaba was studying them, and apparently it was good manners not to speak until given permission, because Anjali Gates held her tongue as if happy to wait all day.
Teia had slightly more trouble doing so when the Nuqaba looked at her and openly sneered. Apparently she saw only a little girl, too. Again, it should have felt good.
Again, it didn’t.
The Nuqaba turned to Satrapah Azmith, but spoke loudly enough for all to hear. “Do you know, back when my brothers joined the Blackguard, it was a revered body. In fact, to get in, I think you actually had to have reached puberty!”
The satrapah chuckled and the front rows laughed like sycophants.
Teia had to take deep breaths. A Blackguard guards her tongue. This was exactly what she wanted, right? To be overlooked… by these disrespectful pieces of—easy, T, a Blackguard guards her tongue.
The Nuqaba harrumphed and turned to the satrapah again, this time more quietly asking a question about the star beacon. She asked a few other questions, and Teia was able to get enough of a grip on her temper to see how clever it was to have the satrapah be the Nuqaba’s spymaster. Everyone knew that Tilleli Azmith was a figurehead, so they would take the Nuqaba’s speaking with her to be merely keeping up appearances. The satrapah would daily meet with dozens of the most important people in the satrapy and beyond, but would be underestimated if not dismissed. Teia guessed that the big jug of wine was intended to further lower her in people’s estimation. She feigned drunkenness while the Nuqaba concealed her real drunkenness.
The woman hid in plain sight.
And dear Orholam, Teia was supposed to kill her.
“Please,” the satrapah said, “do deliver our dear White’s message.”
“Then please forgive my informality,” Anjali Gates said. “I deliver this message exactly as instructed, in the White’s voice.” She drew herself more erect and imperious, and Teia readied herself. Karris had told her that her time to strike the satrapah might be during the very first paragraphs of her message. She’d said that the satrapah might find them so infuriating that if she went into seizures or had a heart attack, no one would be surprised.
While keeping her arms carefully motionless and down at her sides, Teia readied paryl in her fingertips. She hadn’t had time to scope out every one of the Tafok Amagez. One of them might be a paryl drafter. If so, Teia was about to sign her own death warrant.
Beside her, Anjali’s voice took on the cadence of Karris’s own as she delivered the White’s message:
“Tilleli, you’re useless. If you’d fulfilled your duties as satrapah with a modicum of competence, I’d be addressing this letter to you. You haven’t, so I’ll not keep up the pretense that you matter. Further, in our hope of someday working with a representative who possesses a spine, by unanimous vote, the Spectrum hereby strips you of the rights and privileges of a satrapah. We will eagerly await whichever successor the Nuqaba names for you, and address this letter to her instead.”
Teia had her eyes locked on the satrapah. The woman looked as if she’d been run over by a charging horse. But her face didn’t go to rage.
Teia hesitated.
Anjali Gates continued, unperturbed, in the sudden, utter silence in the great hall. She turned to the Nuqaba. “Haruru, let me be blunt. You wounded my husband and tried to kill me. As a woman, I despise you and hate what you’ve done. No doubt you hate me as well. But I speak to you today not as a wife, but as a woman entrusted to care for the drafters of the Seven Satrapies, even as you have been entrusted to care for the believers of Paria and beyond, and to guard the legacy of the Lucidonius. We are greater than our quarrel, and we would besmirch our offices and indeed our very faith if we were to brawl like tavern wenches who might only upset tables and feelings. So I put our personal quarrel behind us, and trust you will do the same.”
The Nuqaba had slowly been rising from her chair as Anjali spoke. For a moment, Teia thought that the Nuqaba was going to bolt out of her throne and attack the diplomat with fists and fingernails.
If she did, should Teia fight her off?
She was already calculating how to make sure that the Nuqaba was between her and the musketeers if it came to that when Satrapah Azmith grabbed the Nuqaba’s arm and pulled her back to her seat.
The satrapah had a slow temper. Shit. That meant Teia couldn’t take this opportunity to assassinate her.
Anjali continued her message placidly, but Teia could tell that the madwoman was enjoying the hell out of this. “That said, we have not the luxury of time to continue overtures and negotiations and stalling and games. The Seven Satrapies are at war.
“We need you, Haruru. We need Paria wholeheartedly with us. Without your soldiers, the Seven Satrapies will fall. You think you have three choices: one, helping us and losing many of your men; two, joining the Color Prince and possibly being rewarded greatly, at the cost of violating your oaths and inviting civil war with those still loyal to us; or three, waiting as long as possible, hoping that we slaughter each other, and then coming in at the end and ending up in a better position than either, and maybe setting up your own empire.”
To see the cynicism and disloyalty of those calculations laid out so nakedly took the breath of many in the great hall. Even those jaded enough to have read the tea leaves in what the Nuqaba was doing were shocked to have someone actually say it publicly.
Teia saw then that Karris White’s power was in speaking openly what others trusted everyone would hide. This is the game, others thought.
Karris said, I see your game… and no.
Anjali said, “If you thought those were your choices, you were wrong. I’m not giving you those options. The Color Prince will destroy the Chromeria utterly without you. You owe us your loyalty. We ask for nothing that doesn’t already belong to us. So if we are to die, you will die, too. I will leave my back exposed to the Color Prince, knowing it will mean the loss of the Jaspers and the Chromeria, and I will sail all of my soldiers to your home. And all my drafters, who train for war even now. When we arrive, we will kill everyone who joins you in treason. We will enslave the families of all those disloyal to us, and give their lands and houses and titles to those of our friends who remember their oaths.
“Under such circums
tances and with such promised consequences, how many of your men will join you in treason? Even if all of them do, the Chromeria still has power enough to destroy you. We will, utterly. This we swear. And then we will attempt to colonize Paria, and hold our defense against the Color Prince in your—our—mountains. This strategy will likely mean our death. We are willing to risk it. For us, it is a likely death against a certain one.
“Now Blessed under the Light, Guardian of Truth, Arbiter of Mercy, Holy Nuqaba, your choice is simple: fight us or delay us and certainly die, or join us and likely die. Signed, Orholam’s Humble Servants, the Iron White, Promachos Andross Guile, and the Holy Spectrum of the Seven Satrapies.”
Chapter 55
Kip moved expertly through the undergrowth to his vantage, blinking between sub-red and visible light in the darkness, eyes searching for Sibéal Siofra’s body. The forest air between the old giant spruces was cool and soft with thick curtains of fog.
The fog was welcome. It dampened vision and noise both, so it would make Kip’s superviolet signal flares visible only within a small range, thus limiting the dangers his men faced.
They were deep in enemy-held territory, attacking a supply train full of black powder mined and refined in Atash heading to resupply the White King’s Blood Robes besieging Green Haven. Destroying it would be good. Seizing it would be much, much better.
Through all their recent months of raiding, Kip had carefully been building a profile for his Nightbringers. Unless they had an overwhelming force, they attacked during the day, often just before dark so they could melt away into the night, relying on their superior woodscraft. That identified them as a force that relied on drafting, and as raiders, glorified bandits. Where other guerrilla forces traditionally exaggerated their numbers, Kip consistently understated his own, even when procuring food and supplies from merchants and friendly towns. He relied on Eirene Malargos’s quiet largesse to cover the shortfalls.