“This isn’t a debate. You’ll serve or you’ll die. It would be a terrible waste to lose you at this point, but if you’re disobedient now, how would we ever trust you with more power?”
“You’re an asshole,” Teia said. “I’ll wear my underthings.”
A pause. “Good, I’d distrust you if you gave in too easily.” He’d let the alteration on his gruff voice fade a bit there, and it gave Teia some small measure of victory.
She stripped. It was pitch black in here anyway, right?
“Put this on,” he said, voice gruff again.
With some difficulty, she widened her eyes to sub-red and saw that the hooded figure wasn’t extending the bundle exactly to her. She’d taken a step to the side as she’d stripped, and he hadn’t noticed. He wasn’t a sub-red drafter, then. Or paryl. She tucked the information away. Someday she’d need it. Maybe. It made her feel less like a victim to do something, regardless. She took the bundle.
A sack, no, another weasel-bear mask, this one bedecked with patches and straps.
The man said, “The test requires that you not use your eyes at all. Everyone cheats. It’s impossible not to.”
It’s impossible not to? Said like someone who’d taken the test and failed, perhaps?
Teia pulled on the hood. She didn’t have any idea if she’d put it on the right way, where the straps went. Orholam, it was hot and stuffy and she couldn’t breathe right in—
Someone touched her naked shoulder.
She jumped, but it wasn’t the startled little-girl response it would have been even a year ago. She jumped, one foot shifting back, head ducking the blow that must be coming, center of mass dropping until that back foot gave her a base, and one fist snapping forward with the speed and force of all her emotional and muscular tension together.
Her fist sank into a stomach. In Blackguard training, one of the less fun drills involved taking hits in the stomach. You’d stand with a partner and trade blows. There were different strategies depending on how big you were. Clench and move back just as the punch hit you so you didn’t take the full force, or if you were bigger and rock-hard, clench and move into the punch so it hit you before it was in the golden zone. But always, always, you clenched your muscles hard. This stomach wasn’t fat, but it wasn’t clenched either: it was soft, muscles loose, and her fist sank into it easily.
There was a moment of total silence as Teia realized what she’d just done. The scuff of a shoe as the man took a step back, and then the sound of him collapsing on the ground. A moment later, there was a huge gasping breath as he got his wind back.
Teia froze. Chuckles sounded around the room. Five, six people?
“Faces out!” the man snapped. “You’re not to see her!”
Teia heard the man she’d hit—the same man who’d been tormenting her?—stand up.
“No!” a second voice said. Master Sharp? “We wanted a fighter. We got one. Strike her and I’ll strike you.”
The first man stood close to Teia, his breath on her mask. She stood still, very still, not giving him any more excuse than she already had—and noted how tall he was, to tuck away in her head.
“My apologies,” she said, putting real apology into her tone and speaking loudly and clearly so she could be heard through the hood.
“To the test,” he said. “Let’s not take all night.”
“I’ll be adjusting your hood,” the man said. “Do that again, and I’ll…” He barely disguised his voice this time. Nobleman’s voice. Ruthgari accent. Younger. Got you, Teia thought.
He turned the hood so that two thick pads were over her eyes and a hole was over her mouth. Thank Orholam, she could breathe! Then he tightened the straps behind her head and under her chin. There were many layers of cloth and leather between her closed eyes and the outside world. He stepped away from her.
Then something changed; Teia couldn’t even tell what.
The commander spoke: “To split light is to touch the raw stuff of creation and to bend it to your will. To draft light is to participate in the divine, but to manipulate light itself in its pure form is to be divine. Adrasteia, we seek the spark of divinity within you. We begin easily. This test will determine if you can see colors with your skin.”
“Pardon?” It just sort of slipped out. It sounded girly and scared, which was exactly how Teia felt, dammit.
“You’ll hear a chime, and you’ll have a few seconds to say a color. We’ll continue the test long enough to make sure you’re not getting them right by guessing. If you fail, you won’t leave here.”
“Pardon?” Again, but worse.
“If you fail, you’re useless to us, and know too much. So do your best.”
“Red!” she said.
“Easy. We haven’t started the test yet. Calm down.”
“No! I’m color-blind red-green. You must know that! I can’t possibly—”
“Then guess well.”
There was no way. They wanted to kill her. She should take the mask off and take her chances.
But then she had a moment of doubt. At the Threshing in the Chromeria where every discipula was tested to see what colors she could draft, the discipulae were told things to frighten them beforehand—even during. Fear made their pupils dilate. Could this be the same? Were they lying? Surely Teia could still be of use to them even if she weren’t a lightsplitter, right?
But dilating the eyes wouldn’t help her in a test where her eyes were covered, and though she might be of use, there was no telling if they thought she would be of enough use to counterbalance the danger she posed for them. Orholam have mercy.
Orholam, I’m sorry for talking about your gemsack. I’m sorry for my terrible attitude toward—
A chime rang.
Teia’s first thought was that now she was standing in her underthings in full light, with at least two older men staring at her. Not helpful.
Put it out of your head, T. Vengeance later. Store it up, hold it back, buckle down, take care of the now first. Feel first.
She tried to drop all her awareness into her body. The room was cool, and gooseflesh covered her from toes to nose. Her legs were clamped together so tight she could have cracked a walnut between her knees, as much for warmth as for modesty.
Modesty’s a distraction right now, T. Battlefield rules. Feel your skin. You’re a survivor.
The chime rang again.
“Color?” a voice asked. It could only be Murder Sharp.
Those bastards had wanted to see her stripped, right? What better for that than full light? “White,” Teia said with a conviction she didn’t feel.
A silence.
“Correct,” he said. “A good guess, I think. We’ll proceed.”
The chime rang.
Nine hells! Not even a break in between? Fine, let’s go, T. We can do this. Hell, it’s possible I actually am a lightsplitter, after all, right? It must follow logically that I could pass this test legitimately, right?
The chime rang again, before she was even ready to start sinking into her body again.
“Fuck!” she said aloud.
“Not a color,” the man said. “Your answer?”
There were only seven choices, right? Eight if you counted white. “Blue.”
A brief silence. “Very good.”
She got it right? What the hell?
A chime.
Dammit! These assholes! How many times could she get lucky? Of course, if they only tested all the colors once, her chances should get better every time. One in eight, one in seven, one in six, one in five. Right?
Stop thinking and feel, T!
Nothing. She felt nothing.
Ding!
“Yellow?” she said.
“Correct.” Murder Sharp didn’t sound pleased.
Ding.
Oh, come on. How long could her luck hold? They were just going to keep going until they had an excuse to kill her. She was trapped. She needed to get free. She needed to tear this damned hood off and dr
aft paryl and kill them all. She had to—
Ding!
“Green!” she shouted.
He didn’t even answer.
Ding.
She was going to kill every last Orholam-damned son-of-a-bitch out there.
“Red!” she screamed, not even waiting for the chime.
“Correct,” the voice said in her ear. “And this?”
The chime rang.
Something in that chilly voice brought Teia back to herself. What was she doing? Flailing blindly? She had to think about this, put herself outside the situation. There was no reason they had to exhaust all the colors before they repeated new ones, was there? Surely they would understand that it made guessing easier. She didn’t have only three colors left, she had all of them, or none.
Ding.
“Superviolet,” she said.
Ding.
And suddenly, she felt warmth in her skin. This one wasn’t a guess. She nearly burst into tears. Ding.
“Sub-red,” she said.
He didn’t even bother to tell her she was correct. She knew she was.
Ding.
That left her only with orange, but she felt nothing. After the physical, tangible obvious warmth of sub-red, the contrast was even more stark. Orange would feel cold after that warmth, wouldn’t it? The room itself was quite cool. But…
Ding.
“Darkness,” Teia said. “Black, whatever.”
Ding.
“Orange,” Teia said, “but I’m just guessing now, because you’ve hit everything else.” Then she immediately thought, Not very sneaky, T.
Ding.
She wasn’t done. Oh, Orholam have mercy. They’d seen right through her. Luck could only get you so far. Unless… feel it, Teia, feel it.
Ding.
“Paryl.”
A long, long silence. The room felt lighter.
“We don’t have a chi drafter, so you’re finished,” the man said. “You passed. Perfect score. Get dressed and get out. We’ll contact you when it’s time.”
After Teia dressed, someone helped her remove the hood and pushed her out the door. Before it closed behind her, she heard the man say, “Brothers, sisters, we have much to discuss.”
She’d passed? She’d passed?
More than that, she’d done it perfectly? Even with red and green? How was that even possible? Was it luck? The mathematical chances of guessing ten colors right had to be—what was it?—one in ten times one in nine times one in eight times one in seven times one in six, and so forth? Even with the gimme that was sub-red… No, it couldn’t be luck. It hadn’t been luck.
Or maybe, maybe they were trying to fool her. Maybe they were playing some long confidence game because they thought she could be useful to them in some other way.
But Teia didn’t think that was it. There had been something a little different each time. A slight but appreciable difference in how she’d thought, how she’d felt. But if that was true, Teia was a…
Sweet Orholam have mercy. She didn’t know what it meant, or why it was important, but… I’m not a slave. I’m a lightsplitter.
Chapter 50
Even sitting in the library, outwaiting possible tails, Karris was finding that she enjoyed spycraft far more than she had any right to. For all that she’d thought that sixteen years of being a bodyguard and warrior would have no transferable skills, it turned out she was wrong. Eyes honed to razor sharpness looking for the suspicious could still look for the suspicious. Looking for weapons was less important, but differentiating between the people looking with interest at the powerful and those who looked like hunters out for prey, that was the same.
And now she had toys. It turned out that generations of Whites had created or confiscated certain items that they didn’t share with anyone. But she’d never had to use this one.
She fingered the spiky choker in her lap, concealed behind a heavy manuscript on Atashian royalty in the previous century that someone had left in a pile. It was a forbidden magic, but in a very limited way that had been tested for safety by every White for a hundred years at least. You had to wear it tight enough for two little spikes to reach blood, then—if you were a drafter, of course—your own magic empowered the choker to alter your voice lower or higher.
All the best things I learn, I can’t tell anyone.
She twisted the big ruby ring on her finger. Sometimes it felt like the only thing in her life that averred that her marriage was real. But even looking at it was too painful.
Maybe it’s time to come to grips with the possibility that he’s dead.
The hot-cold feeling that shot through her was so strong it took her breath. She blinked, slamming the lid down hard. None of that. None of that. Kip said he was alive.
Kip wants him to be alive. There hasn’t been so much as a whisper. Of the Prism. You think drunk sailors coming in to ports are going to keep such a thing quiet? This quiet?
I’ve work to do.
Karris stood up abruptly and headed to the lift. She took it down two floors, then snapped her fingers as if she’d forgotten something, and went up five floors. Of course, if she were being followed by a rotating team it was a worthless gesture—but one can’t plan for everything.
Don’t overestimate your enemies’ capabilities, the White had told her. Assume they’re as prone to mistakes as our people are. Every time Karris delegated a task, she had fresh appreciation for the second half of that statement. Like when a maid had dropped a cipher out of her basket of laundry onto the floor. It had turned up—with the seal apparently unbroken—in the found items basket on the main floor.
Given the sensitivity of the thing, though, the cipher had to be abandoned, and every spy or spy handler in the network contacted personally to be given the new one. And of course, Karris now had to remember that particular maid was either inept, unlucky, or suborned. The sheer amount of information Karris had to keep in her mind was ludicrous—and it was all far too sensitive to write down.
Two meetings this afternoon, and then one this evening with her most important handler: her hairdresser. His job not only gave him a perfect excuse to meet with Karris for long periods of time; it gave him cover to debrief the often nobly born spies he handled at length and put him directly in the gossip circuit. The sums the man demanded, however, were mind-boggling. All of his tastes were expensive. Sometimes Karris still had trouble with that.
I’m too cheap for this work. My roots do need some touching up, though. Is that more gray hair coming in? Black, this time, I think.
Easy meeting first today. A new contact, who couldn’t be allowed to know that Karris was Karris: the slave turned Blackguard Teia. Karris had trained some with Teia. She liked the girl, and saw her as a younger version of herself—albeit one who was a slave and hadn’t made all the mistakes Karris had made.
Yes, other than that—and the color-blindness and her paryl drafting and that she didn’t start a war that devastated the Seven Satrapies—we could be twins.
Still, she liked the girl. But Teia was sixteen years old. Too young for the burdens they’d already put on her shoulders. Karris knew what that was like. Too young to be trusted with more than they had to trust her with. Teia was working with people who wouldn’t hesitate to torture her to get the identity of her handler out of her. Best she didn’t know, even if Karris longed to mentor the girl.
And what’s that about? Am I feeling maternal?
Or is it lonely?
She ducked into the empty apartment she kept on this floor for this purpose. Locked the door behind herself. The room was divided by heavy curtains so she could question and debrief her spies without being seen. The curtains hid chairs so Karris at least could be comfortable, and slits for her to look through. Precautions, precautions, and all of them for naught if the wrong person came walking down the hall at the wrong time.
Speaking of precautions, as Karris took up her place, she picked up the mail cowl and aventail and pulled it on, draping it over
her head and chest and hooking the cowl shut so only her eyes were exposed. Ridiculous, but Teia was a smart girl, curious. She wouldn’t be able to help but look for her handler’s identity with paryl. It was a little unnerving that the girl could see through cloth.
Not as unnerving as her other abilities, Karris supposed.
A quick triple knock, and then the door opened just as Karris finished putting on the choker.
“Come in, sit, that side. No drafting,” she said, her voice lowered to an odd tenor.
Teia’s body was tight as lute string, ready to attack. The heightened awareness was a good response to fear for a Blackguard, but tightness made your body slow. “I was told to report?” It was actually her code phrase. Good, the girl could follow instructions, even when afraid.
“And report you shall, little flower.” That was the answer phrase. “Now sit.”
“I hate flowers,” Teia said. “Did you know that? My other handler did. And what’s going on, anyway? I mean, I understand that the White can’t meet with me personally, but two handlers in a couple months?”
Karris’s breath caught. There were other handlers?
For a moment, she was glad of the mail cowl covering her face.
“You know, I’m sure you have good reasons for hiding your identity from me,” Teia said, “and I’m doing my best not to look right through this curtain, though I could.” Good, so she hadn’t actually tried. If she had, she’d have seen the mail. “But there are dangers to hiding who you are from me, too. If someone found our code phrases, they could replace you, and I’d never know.”
“You’re infiltrating a group that would happily torture you to find out my identity. Do you want the burden of keeping that secret?”
“I can handle it,” Teia said.
Ah, the bravado of youth. Karris missed it, sometimes. It was a good attribute in a Blackguard, believing nothing was impossible for you. But it was also why Blackguards had officers, and why those officers answered ultimately to those who were not Blackguards.
“In time, perhaps,” Karris said. “You are already carrying so many burdens, and so admirably. Speaking of which, tell me the latest.” Karris had received a brief, coded report of Teia’s assignments—all written on flash paper, with luxin igniters woven in, either to burn when tampered with or when she’d finished reading them. The report, like others, had simply appeared on her desk in her chambers.