The Burning White (36 page)

But they did.

No proof was offered. No evidence at all. Karris almost couldn’t believe it. Maybe she shouldn’t.

But she did.

And no one else would. She couldn’t even offer Teia’s word that Gavin was alive without betraying Teia’s mission and jeopardizing her very life. Even if Karris made the girl come before Andross Guile and swear it all in person, Andross wouldn’t believe her. Even if he believed her, he wouldn’t care. Andross Guile didn’t know anything about love; he loved only power. He didn’t care about honor; he cared about survival. If the cost to buy Ironfist’s army was Karris committing bigamy, Andross would say that that price—betraying her office and dishonoring her husband and her old friend—was cheap. If Karris tried to tell the truth, she would shame Ironfist, get Teia killed, and doom the empire.

The Blackguards sometimes repeated an old saying that sounded like bluster from those who didn’t live and die by it. It was what they said when a brother or a sister had to take a battlefield Freeing:
Death before dishonor.
Now, to those who counted on her, one way or another, no matter what Karris did, she would bring death and dis-honor both.

She sat on the bench and felt as if the world had slipped out of joint.

Ironfist had been a dear friend. A man she’d admired and appreciated for so long in so many ways that what began as a political marriage could become more in time . . . if it weren’t based on deception. If it didn’t shame and dishonor them both.

But how could she say no to him? Acceptance was so obviously the right thing to do on every conceivable level that her rejection would make him lose face. It would seem a profound personal rejection. It would shame him, and he wasn’t only her former friend. He was a king.

Rejecting him had consequences far beyond her.

But how could she
not
reject him? She was
married
. To a man she loved. To a man she’d waited for without any hope offered, waited and waited . . . until yesterday. And now she was going to give up on him, again?

Her own happiness was the last thing she could think of. She was the White.

Shortly before she’d died, Orea Pullawr had once asked Karris not to hate her. Karris still didn’t know what for, but apparently there were hard truths in that mysterious bundle of papers the Order had stolen. But maybe the papers were irrelevant now. She understood what Orea had meant.

Not so long ago, Karris wouldn’t have believed it was even possible to do the wrong things for the right reasons. Now she knew she would do things for entirely unselfish reasons, knowing she would regret them bitterly afterward.

She was the White now.

The White didn’t wait for a man to come save her.

The White was the one who came to save.

She didn’t seek her heart’s desire instead of doing her duty; she made it her heart’s desire to seek her duty.

So. ‘ Big-girl pants.’ Thank you, Orea. The burden you left me is heavy, but a White Oak stands strong in the storm.

Karris had until Sun Day. She could search for Gavin until then. If she could produce him, she wouldn’t have to remarry. Couldn’t. If she found him, Gavin would forgive Ironfist’s betrayal, and Ironfist would trust Gavin’s word that his absolution would hold. Peace and alliance were still possible. The rift could be mended. Wounds healed.

She would have to destroy the Order before Sun Day, though. Utterly, if she hoped to live in peace. If they ever hoped to be safe again.

If she failed, when Sun Day came, she would do what she must. What the innocent lives she safeguarded demanded of her. She would keep her mouth shut and marry, thus dishonoring two men, herself, and the office that demanded purity.

But then, once her people were saved?

What moral authority had a White who had stained her robes dark with broken vows? How could that which was white hide a stain?

She wouldn’t try. She wouldn’t heap deceit upon deceit. Her people would live, but having proven herself unable to live with honor . . .

Her mind flashed suddenly to her father. In that horrible fire, the White Oak family had lost not only all her brothers and the estate itself, but also goods worth more than the indebted family could ever repay. Despite her attempt to elope with Dazen, Karris’s engagement to Gavin Guile must have looked like the only way to save the family. Gavin had known it, too, mocking him, talking in front of him in the most disgusting terms about what he was going to do with Karris—who drank herself into a stupor that night, hoping to make herself insensate. The eldest Guile son had done all he’d promised, too. Then he told Karris she wasn’t good enough for him, not smart enough, not pretty enough, too boring, sexually dull. He told her he didn’t care about her family’s lost fortune—but that he could never marry a woman so far beneath himself in every other way. She hadn’t fought him then, not even when he threw her out into the cold, clothes torn, hair disheveled, tear-streaked and drunk, only making it home when a street merchant steered her away from a wrong turn into a bad neighborhood and gave her something hot to drink.

She’d known she was pregnant immediately, because she had to be, because it was her worst fear, and she’d confronted her father, turning all her rage on the man who’d gambled her honor and his own and had lost.

He’d not defended himself. He’d quietly put his affairs in order and then he’d blown his head off.

She’d hated him for his weakness, but the young find it too easy to hate the weak.

How can a man live without honor? How can a woman?

Her father had wagered her in order to save his own fortunes; she would wager herself to save the very lives of her people. That made them different, even if she had to take the same exit.

But perhaps she would finally be able to forgive him, if it came to that. But it wouldn’t come to that. She would make sure of it.

So. I have until Sun Day.

Karris felt oddly invigorated. She had a little more than a month to accomplish everything she could in her life, or nothing at all.

She was deep in the muck. It felt like quicksand sucking at her boots, but no matter. She was gonna fight like hell.

As sensation returned to her dull carcass, Teia probably should’ve had some gratitude that she was waking up at all. The ropes strangled that in the crib.

She swallowed hard against hemp. She’d already visibly stirred. There could be no subterfuge now. That game was finished. And maybe every other one, too.

“Master? What the hell, Master?” she said. It was her last card. Not a good one.

“Master? Master.” Behind her, his voice low, Murder Sharp seemed to be chewing on the word. “No, Adrasteia. You needed a master.” He sounded suddenly mournful. “I couldn’t be that for you. You needed me, and I was gone. The war called me away, and you went astray without me.”

She hadn’t been blindfolded. Why not?

It could be a mistake. Sharp was fearsome, but he wasn’t very smart.

As if he could read her mind, Sharp suddenly grabbed her at the ropes at the nape of her neck and breathed into her ear—soft, trembly breaths smelling of mint leaves and darkness.

“What—what are you doing, Master Sharp?” It wasn’t one rope around her neck, it was at least six, and they all bobbed with her fear.

She should be looking at the room, establishing exits, figuring what she might grab as a weapon—but her world had collapsed to a bubble of this man’s breath and all the kinetic potential for violence in him, like a boulder tipping at the edge of a great cliff held back only by her attention on it.

“Anything. I. Want,” he said.

She’d already forgotten her question.

His canine tooth closed gently on her earlobe, his stubble scratching her. Against her very will, gooseflesh raised across her arms. He wasn’t the kind of man to—He was just tormenting her. Maybe if he was so amused, she had some hope.

He bit down hard and she yelled. She pursed her lips and cursed inwardly.

Sharp chuckled, pulling back. He didn’t seem alarmed in the least, which told her that wherever they were, no shouting was going to bring her help.

“Oh, Adrasteia,” he said. “Sweet, stupid child.” He grabbed the ropes again and lifted her. She’d assumed her limbs must be bound to the chair. They weren’t. Instead she was cocooned in ropes on top of the chair, so she stood with his motion, ready to lunge and drive her head into his face, but he kept her high and in front of him.

He stood her to her tiptoes and walked her straight to the wall, still lifting higher, so she had to strain higher simply to breathe. On reaching the wall, he lifted her off her feet and settled the rope over a hook.

Teia gagged. The many ropes around her neck weren’t a noose designed to choke the life out as quickly as possible, but they were holding her entire weight. Her elbows were bound behind her back, and her feet bound together, straining to reach the floor.

Sharp’s frowning face came into view as her body turned. “Thought I estimated that right,” he said. He examined the ropes behind her back in no apparent hurry to save her fucking life, thank you very much. With a finger, he thrummed the ropes here and there, checking the tension.

“What’s this? You gettin’ fat?” he asked.

She choked.

He blew out a breath and stepped behind her, his fingers tugging.

It was her chance. He wasn’t looking at her eyes.

But he was already done. Her toes brushed the floor, and then touched. The first hiss of air slipped into her lungs, and then a slow but adequate breath. The ropes around her diaphragm didn’t allow a full gasp, heightening the sensation of suffocation. But Teia’d learned something of torture, and she knew that sometimes the mere suggestion of suffocation was far better than the reality of it.

Teia breathed, and did nothing but breathe.

He was looking into her eyes again before it occurred to her to draft. She’d missed her chance. He was too strong for her. Too canny.

How do you move too fast for fear to follow when you can’t move at all?

“I told you, Adrasteia. Disobedience isn’t an option with the Order. I told you . . .” With eyes cold as the deep currents under her feet and brittle voice cracking like springtime ice under her, he said, “It’s the
Order
of the Broken Eye, not the
Suggestion
of the Broken Eye.”

She couldn’t bear his disgust, or for him to see her fear.

Looking away in defeat, she saw this wasn’t his lair. He had none of the accoutrements that would suggest it was even a safe house. It was just an empty dump. Except that he’d spread out his gear on the floor and there was a sheaf of parchments lying on his carefully folded shimmercloak.

Next to the parchments, which were bent from having been rolled, she saw a green or red ribbon.

“Recognize those?” he asked.

The White’s papers. They were what had gotten Teia into all this.

She shook her head.

“You naughty, naughty girl,” Murder Sharp said, like she was a dog who’d shat on the rug. “I got suspicious when you insisted on taking them. You were her cat’s paw all along, weren’t you?”

He’d seen her eyes stick to that package. She’d given herself away the day they’d kidnapped Marissia? Damn, damn,
damn
. “Why do you have them?” she asked carefully. Speaking wasn’t fun with this much pressure on her throat. “I thought the Old Man owned you, heart and soul, blood and bone.”

“I never disobey an order the Old Man gives. But sometimes it’s weeks between when we can meet. Months. We can’t be too careful. So I had to open the papers to make sure there were no traps, or plans we needed to know immediately. And then . . . I got curious.”

“And?”

“And what I found . . . troubled me. But you have no idea, do you?”

“About what? I’d love to hear it.” If only to stay alive a bit longer, thanks.

“They murder people. Just like we do—to keep power, you know? Your precious, righteous Spectrum, and I don’t just mean Andross Guile. At first I felt such glee, reading Orea Pullawr’s explanation in her own hand, the last confession of a woman who pretended to be so holy. Perhaps when I came to kill her, I was the hand of justice come to repay her many sins. She struck such a mournful tone. So apologetic. So desperate to explain. I
despised
her. But then I read more.”

He scrubbed his hands through his short, fire-red hair and sat down on a footstool. It was the only furniture in the house, if a house it was.

Sharp lit a candle with a finger and thumb and a bit of sub-red. It hissed and spat oddly. He peered closely at her, and she knew that if she flared her eyes to paryl, he would kill her instantly.

“In the past two years,” Sharp said, “I’ve seen the Chromeria try to do things the old way, balancing the colors by decree. Telling the reds to draft more, the blues to draft less, waiting a year. Seeing how many storms kill people where, and what happens to the crops or the animals or the forests here and there and everywhere. Everyone gets poor, people starve to death, and the storms rage anyway. Only . . . a bit less frequently. But if that’s the only way to save things, even if everything else they say is lies, even if the Chromeria’s being led by hypocrites and monsters . . . what if their way really is better? Better to kill a few here, where they feel it, than to let hundreds or thousands die throughout the satrapies, isn’t it? We Braxians, we say our way’s better: assassinate a few to save many, but how’s that make sense? If the Chromeria is doing it all wrong, I suppose, turning Atash into desert so Tyrea can bloom, that’s bad, right? But the records show we did the same. I mean the opposite. All we did was make sure that the thousands who died weren’t
ours
. Who’s the monster then? Maybe our way was best against the nine kings, but now?”

Sharp was not a good storyteller. Teia couldn’t even tell when he was referring to which side.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Teia said. “Can you start from the beginning?”

He shook his head, paused. Checked a denture as if it had felt loose.

“The Order ruined me,” Sharp said. “Lied to me. Broke me in the worst way—they made me break myself.” He reached into his mouth and took out his bottom set of teeth. He sat on the little stool and squinted at the teeth in order. With a tiny brush, he scraped away some tiny imperfection, wiggled a canine. He clucked his tongue between his jagged natural teeth, displeased, and tended to the rest of the dentures.