The Burning White (108 page)

The hell?

But then she understood. The woman sniffed and then tasted each wine in turn, stirring them first with a big ladle.

Satisfied they weren’t poisoned, she put aside the emetic. Then she went to her workbench and pulled out bundles of wrapped vegetation. She worked with the speed and efficiency of a physicker or an apothecary, inspecting the leaves of several plants Teia didn’t know and numerous poppy bulbs. Then she began counting out the leaves into piles, rejecting those too old or dry, and cracking the poppy bulbs and collecting the brown seeds into cups. Leaves of three different kinds of plant went directly into the wine, each counted out, and then the poppy was ground with a mortar and pestle, added to the barrels, and stirred.

The woman tasted a tiny amount of the resulting drug cocktail. She cocked her head as if it tasted wretched but that that couldn’t be helped. She rinsed her mouth with water and then spat it out.

She looked like she was finished.

Now.

Teia ghosted across the floor and poured Murder Sharp’s lacrimae sanguinis into each of the barrels. She used it all.

She didn’t make a sound. She didn’t stumble. She didn’t scuff the floor. She didn’t pour that liquid death from enough of a height to make a splash. She didn’t even breathe.

But the apothecary paused. Sniffed.

Suddenly, Teia smelled it, too. A tangy-sour stench that would have been buried under the taste of the poppy or even the wine, but now, floating at the top, not stirred in, and with the container still in Teia’s hand, uncorked, it wafted through the room subtly.

Subtly, except to a trained apothecary.

The woman stepped close, sniffing again. “What is—by the old gods, is that lacrimae—”

Teia grabbed her spine in a paryl fist, then grabbed the woman’s head before she could tumble to the ground. Teia cracked the apothecary’s neck with a sharp twist.

She felt the breath sigh out of her.

Sometimes you can’t wait to see if your paryl knots hold.

“Ready?” a voice outside asked.

No time!

With strength she didn’t know she had, Teia heaved the woman up over her shoulder and dumped her into the half-empty barrel of water from which she’d drunk earlier.

Teia tore off the woman’s chainmail-lined cowl and pulled it on herself. She willed the master cloak to ape the woman’s white cloak, went visible, and heard the scuff behind her at the door. Without turning, Teia held up one finger. One minute, please.

She used her body to block the man’s view of the water barrel. Orholam have mercy, it had no lid!

Calmly, hoping the man had turned away or gone away—Teia couldn’t hear if he’d left over the sudden pounding of her own heart—she peeled the gloves off the woman’s hands, tucked her hands down, and put the gloves on. Checking that the cowl was firmly in place, she finally peeked over her shoulder.

The servants were standing there now, and Atevia Zelorn was coming.

Calmly, Teia grabbed the cloths that had been wrapped around the leaves and draped them over the water barrel, and the woman’s protruding shoe.

Then she bent and picked up the vial of poison she’d dropped earlier. She corked it and put it among the other vials and weights and alchemical accoutrements on the workbench.

Teia had never been so glad to be wearing a full-face covering. She was sweating. She didn’t sweat easily, but she was drenched now. She walked to the wine barrels, gave them each a few deep stirs, and then stepped back. She waved the men forward, hoping they knew what to do.

The woman she’d just murdered had seemed the quiet type, right?

The men affixed the lids, pounded them down with mallets, and then rolled them to another cart.

Atevia Zelorn climbed up into his seat. Teia gave a halfhearted little wave goodbye, nodding her head to him, and turning away.

“What the hell?” he asked. “Come on. You know how this goes, Muriel. You’re the cupbearer.”

Cupbearer. He meant poison tester, the one who had to drink the wine publicly first to certify it was safe.

“Makes no damn sense,” Teia muttered, but her stomach was knotting with fear. “Why would I taint the wine?”

Zelorn said, “What makes no sense is that the Old Man demanded I use my best Ambrosia Valley Barbera for the bloodwine. After you put all that shit in it, I might as well have used Bilgewater Red.”

“If I were going to poison the wine, wouldn’t I just prepare an antidote for myself beforehand?” Teia said. An antidote. Yeah, that
would’ve
been a good idea, wouldn’t it?

“It’s tradition. It doesn’t have to make sense. Now, get up here.”

Teia grumbled her assent and climbed up. Her heart was thudding.

How many poisons did Murder Sharp have in his lair? Why’d I have to pick the one with no antidote?

There had to be a way out.

Their little cart clattered over cobbles as darkness fell on Big Jasper. Teia’d always had quick hands. Maybe she could . . . What? How do you taste test poison and not die?

Every dodge she thought of was stupider than the last: Maybe she could swap glasses? Yeah, except you didn’t poison
some
of the wine, T; you poisoned it
all
. Are you really going to pin your hopes on someone showing up with another random glass of wine that you can swap at the last moment?

Maybe she could try to keep her veil on and pour the wine down her neck? But her robes were white; the wine was red. Maybe it could work, though! Her robes were actually the master cloak. Maybe she could keep willing it to stay white. Maybe it would!

But she didn’t have any way to test it.

And if they noticed anything suspicious, they’d kill her. Worse, they would throw out the obviously poisoned wine. Everything she’d done to get here would be for nothing.

No matter how she turned it, there seemed to be only three possible outcomes here: she successfully faked drinking the poisoned wine, she got caught faking drinking it, or she actually did drink it.

Two of those ended with her very dead.

She’d not come this far to end up dead.

They reached the Crossroads, and it was packed with people. There were merchants moving trade goods at the last minute for tomorrow’s festivities—if those went ahead—or doing business before the battle. Some people. Orholam’s chafed nutsack.

There were Lightguards trying to set up a checkpoint—on one of seven intersecting roads, but not the others. Morons. There were people already partying, and all the food and wine vendors to cater to them. Some yellow pyroturges were doing tricks in the evening air, elaborate creations bursting apart with sparks and flashes.

Three carts met them, and three horsemen, nondescript, faces hidden as if cold. One pointed to a barrel, and without a word, Atevia levered off the lid. He handed a ladle to Teia, and she clambered into the back of the wagon.

Suddenly, all eyes were on her. Three barrels of wine, three carts. The poisoned wine wasn’t going to one of the Braxian congregations. Each was getting a barrel. If Teia did this, she would wipe out the entire Order with one stroke.

There were no other ladles. No big ceremony with her confronting two glasses and trying to figure out how to drink from the right one. It was just a dozen eyes on her. One ladle, and the choice of life or death.

Teia dipped the ladle deep into the barrel, drew it forth, and then held it out toward each of the men, so they could see that it was brimming full.

Here’s to you, my dead slave brothers. I accept your judgment. I accept my punishment.

She lifted her veil and drank it all. She presented the empty ladle to them, and whispered, “Good enough?” to show she didn’t still have the wine in her mouth.

“Thank you, Mariel,” one of them said, his voice obviously modulated with one of those collars. But she knew.

The Old Man himself. Grinwoody.

Teia stiffened. Atevia had called her Muriel. Teia threw her hands out, like ‘What the hell?’

“So it is you,” the man said. “Just checking. Never seen you drink so deeply before. Guess it’s not a normal night, is it? Men, load the barrels.” He turned to one. “Oh, and search her.”

The man did, roughly but quickly. Inexpertly, too, in Teia’s opinion.

She could only wish that actually mattered. A vial of an antidote hidden in a body cavity sounded like a really great idea right about now.

“She’s clean,” the man said.

The Old Man pulled out a coin purse.

Teia waited. She had no idea if Muriel usually declined payment, so she didn’t push the act.

But she widened her eyes briefly, only to see paryl leaking from a shell around the nondescript man who’d just searched her. A Shadow.

A lousy one, obviously, from the spectral bleed she could see, and by the fact he hadn’t noticed she was a paryl drafter herself—though if she’d been holding paryl when he touched her, that would have gone very differently. This moron Shadow had just been yanking her around while he ‘searched’ her by shooting paryl through her clothing. He was too inexpert at keeping his spectrum tight enough to search her from any distance.

Well, lucky me, Teia thought. Watching carefully, she caught the flash of super-fine mail around the Old Man’s legs and wrists.

Some subtle paryl attack was not likely to get through that in time. She’d have to go straight through Grinwoody’s eyes for a clot in the brain.

But she’d already poisoned the wine. If she killed him now and thus revealed herself, who in the Order would dare to drink wine an assassin had mixed for them?

If she tried to kill Grinwoody now, she wouldn’t be killing anyone else. Patience, T.

The coin he pulled out was unlike any she had ever seen. Large, silver tarnished, dark except for the relief of a broken eye. The obverse showed nine crowns.

“Barricade your shop tonight, Muriel. The fun begins half an hour after dawn. If anyone attacks you or yours, you show them this.” Half an hour after dawn? That would be once the Sun Day parade was in full swing.

Which was insane. A battle was probably going to happen, and they were going ahead with the parade? She’d heard a dozen speculations for why on the streets—some with a more cynical take than Quentin’ s—that it was to keep the pilgrims from panicking, and that by honoring Orholam, they hoped to twist His arm into helping them. Others guessed that this way the Chromeria’s defenders knew exactly which streets would be free and which blocked by the crowds, or said that even though it was going to be much smaller than usual, the new Prism had demanded it.

Some kind of Order attack during
that
? Perfect. Just perfect.

But Teia nodded. She was already feeling fuzzy. Her stomach was several degrees past the warmth of a swig of brandy. That would be the alcohol and various drugs, she guessed, probably not the lacrimae sanguinis. Not yet.

Watching the wagons rattle away in various directions down the streets, leaving her in a crowd simultaneously tense and joyous, scared and jubilant, facing a holy day and an army intent on their annihilation, Teia couldn’t help but feel empty. In their hopes and fears, they were tonight connected with one another, with the whole city and the whole religion. They were about to face the greatest fight of their lives, but they were doing it together.

Teia’s fight was over. She was abandoned, alone, and not for the first time in the last year, unspeakably lonely.

Just as she’d vowed, she was going to finish her big mission. She was going to make a difference, forever. She was going to succeed; it was just that she’d be dead by the time it happened.

So you win after all, Murder Sharp. Or let’s call it a tie. But points to you for doing it the way the Order always does its best work. They couldn’t corrupt me until I helped them do the job. And you? You couldn’t kill me . . . until I helped.

“Breaker! Sir! You need to wake up!”

Kip couldn’t have been asleep more than an hour. He sat up and started at the looming form of Big Leo standing over the bed. Tisis yelped. Kip might have yelped, too, but she was louder.

Thank you, honey.

“What’s going on?” Kip asked.

“My lord,” Big Leo said. “It’s
Teia
.”

“What?!”

“But she’s . . . not herself.”

“Get her in—” Kip started to say.

“I’m already here!” Teia said. She held her hands up in the air as if presenting herself for applause. Her face was flushed; her skin was glowing. Her lips were dry and her eyes were dilated.

“I couldn’t leave her out there,” Ferkudi said, poking his head in, apologetic. “She was hollering.”

“Wow,” Teia said as Kip got out of bed. Tottering on her feet, she stared at him appreciatively—even brazenly, considering his wife was right there—shoulders to abs to underclothes and back up. “You are looking
good
.” She rubbed her forehead. “Orholam’s balls, I am so high right now. This was not how I wanted to do this.”

He hurriedly pulled on his tunic and trousers.

“Teia, it’s so good to see you again,” Tisis said, coming around to Kip’s side of the bed. “How can we help you?”

“I am
really
sorry for glancing at your husband’s bulge,” Teia said. She winced. “I can’t believe I just said that. You have been so kind to me, and . . .”

For his part, Kip was looking at Tisis, who seemed utterly unperturbed.

“Can we get you some breakfast?” Tisis asked, as if Teia were an expected visitor in the morning. Tisis was wearing Kip’s favorite green silk negligee, the one whose straps had been torn off and mended several times. She calmly pulled a wrap around herself, and Kip felt a jolt of admiration for his bride’s cool calm. “Do you need medical attention?”

He knew how Tisis had felt about Teia in months past, but now she was choosing to see Teia as a young woman who was not in a good way, but also maybe not quite responsible for it. She saw Teia’s suffering, not her behavior.

It made him love her even more.

Teia covered her face with her hands, contorting with such shame and self-loathing it made Kip ache for her. She gestured toward Tisis. “Guess I don’t need to ask what you see in her, huh? All this and kind, too? Her
hair
even looks good. She’s been
sleeping
and her hair looks good. How does she do that? I bet she’s not even a murderer!”