The Burning White (51 page)

It would all be so perfect if he were her traitor that Teia was pretty damn certain he wasn’t. Still. She had to start somewhere, and his little trip tonight to see his . . . lover? handler? had seemed not only the most obvious place to start but also the only place to start.

Tomorrow, after this didn’t pan out, she’d have to head to the Chromeria and sneak down to the training yard and start looking for anyone else with a limp.

She hadn’t read the folio Murder Sharp gave her. He wanted her to read it, and that was reason enough not to. He thought it was going to change her mind? What, because it would tell her the Chromeria was terrible? She knew those people. She knew how good and how bad they were.

She was up to her neck in the tar pit of evil herself, but she hadn’t sunk so far as to think everyone was just as bad as everyone else. The Chromeria tried to save lives—and sure, they failed a lot. Their leadership was often venal and weak and self-indulgent, so what? They weren’t malevolent. They didn’t take bright young girls and turn them into remorseless assassins.

Um . . . in your case they kind of did, T.

To infiltrate the Order! Not for fun.

Right, and I’m sure the Order has some really good reasons, too, about why they simply
have to
—

No. Uh-uh. I’m not the smartest girl in the world, but I’m smart enough to figure this out. The bad guys? They’re the ones who smile as they send you to behead a kid.

Teia was a terrible human being, but she wasn’t gonna behead a kid.

Maybe it was an odd place to plant her flag of moral compunctions: she’d killed innocents already. Did the age really matter? She could choose a slave kid who’d been pressed into service at one of the technically illegal brothels that catered to such things, and free him or her from an unbearably shitty life with the point of her blade. No one would raise a complaint. Such kids were disposable.

Just like me.

Maybe that was it. Once you stop telling yourself how much you’re not like your neighbor, suddenly someone murdering your neighbor takes on a different hue.

Teia’d advanced in perfect time on the path to perfect conscience-lessness, hitting every beat, every step required, a compliant partner taking the devil’s hand and following the devil’s lead, and dancing to his tune, whirling round and round, skirts and morals flying as she spun, the dance floor itself a vortex to oblivion.

He had his hands up her skirts already.

All she had to do was to tell herself that one more step didn’t matter, that she’d come this far, and this far was too far to give up now, that she’d be throwing away all her work—all her damnation—for nothing if she didn’t kill this One Last Time. What, really, was the difference between twenty-seven kills and twenty-eight?

But dancing with the devil was damning enough. She wasn’t gonna get in bed with him, take his seed, and watch herself grow into another Murder Sharp.

She flexed and massaged her legs to keep them from cramping.

This waiting thing wasn’t good for her. Gave her too much time to think, and she went all sideways when she thought too much. Got maudlin. Full of regrets and hypothetical questions.

What would life be like if I’d gone with the Mighty?

Yeah, like
that
one.

Oh, poor Teia. Barf.

Besides, I’m not waiting. I’m stalking. I’m not sitting around hoping for a chance to murder someone. I’m
hunting
. I’m fierce. Even a little frightening.

Not a ghost; she was more like a fox, as her old shimmercloak showed. Not that she was particularly keen of hearing nor of smell. But if you dunked her in water, she did look about as small and frightening as a squirrel.

Ergo, practically indistinguishable from a fox.

No, no, that wasn’t it.

No, she was nocturnal
like a fox
.

Mmm, well, not
entirely
nocturnal. Her prey didn’t go about solely in the dark, so obviously she didn’t either, but she was nocturnal-y. That’s when the Order always met. At night, out of the sight of Orholam’s Eye, the sun.

And like a fox she was very focused. Her eyes locked onto her target and she didn’t let anything distract her as she glided toward her prey on silent paws. She let nothing interfere with her missions.

Which . . . makes me very concerned with my nocturnal-y missions.

I’m not a fox, I’m a teenage boy.

She nearly laughed out loud despite the danger and the dark. Hell, maybe because of it. Orholam’s balls, she’d actually slapped her forehead. While on a mission!

But she paid that no heed. Instead, she tried to remember exactly how she’d come to the punch line so she could tell . . .

Kip.

It was a kick in the stones.

Gavin’s wasn’t the only ship that had sailed, was it? Kip was
gone
, and gone in more ways than one. Gone so that even if he came back to the Jaspers, he could never come back to Teia.

Enough! Come on, she wished she could tell any of the Mighty. Ben would laugh. Ferkudi would bray—when he got it in a week or so. Big Leo would grin despite himself, and Cruxer would sternly disapprove, but if she watched him, she’d see a lip twitch. But they were gone, too. Fighting, out there somewhere in the thick of it. Even if they came back, they’d come back different, suspicious, uncertain at first whether she could understand or whether she was one of
them
now—the gawkers, the people who asked you if you’d killed anyone, and how did it feel, or what the worst thing you’d seen was. But they’d warm, those boys of hers. They’d laugh, eventually, and they’d be her friends again, once they saw that she understood, once they saw that she’d waded in shit and hadn’t come out clean, either.

But she had to brace herself that not all of them would come back. Worse, she had to brace herself that one or more of them wouldn’t come back because she hadn’t been there to guard their backs, seeing what they couldn’t see.

Oh, did we reschedule the pity party? And I showed up without my hankie!

Teia huffed. She wondered if she should start chewing khat to help her keep focused.

You know what? Fuck the Mighty and all this crybaby shit, she just wanted a friend to be able to tell a dirty joke to.

She’d settle for having any friend at all.

T! Are you
serious
with this?

She cursed to herself until the long string of images of unlikely transpositions of body parts distracted her. She went through her lists again, checking the corners of the dead-end alley, the roofs, her own packed paryl, the time, the moisture on cobbles. She really wanted to take out her frustration with herself on this asshole. If he would show up, please.

This was the poorest end of a working neighborhood. The house he’d disappeared into was small and dingy. It had been created by slapping up two walls to connect the stronger walls of two large estates where they pinched together. The rich had long ago left this section of Overhill, and the estates on both sides had been diced up into dozens of homes, but they’d incorporated those walls, making this first a blind alley and then a section of street unclaimed by anyone.

It was illegal to block the rays of the Thousand Stars. Set at all the larger intersections, their light was supposed to be able to reach any part of the city, with radial streets like a spiderweb. Only the very rich and the very poor defied the law and got away with it.

The doubly blind alley meant that whoever lived in the house where Halfcock had disappeared had to enter from the opposite side of Northeast Circle Street, under the eyes of whatever guards might be atop the wall. Halfcock had instead used a ladder to climb onto the roofs of the bordering estate, and then down into the alley.

He really didn’t want anyone to know he was here. Teia had no ladder, but since she’d assassinated the Nuqaba, she’d become a fearless climber.

No one else—except a Shadow like Teia—could follow Halfcock without being seen.

He might, of course, leave by the front door, in which case her waiting was for nothing. But if not, he’d isolated himself very, very effectively. There weren’t even windows along the walls here.

He wasn’t married, so he wasn’t here meeting his wife. It was too late now for the woman Teia’d glimpsed through the briefly open door to be Halfcock’s sister—unless he was simply staying the night, in which case Teia was wasting her time. He’d been there too long for it to be a prostitute, though Teia supposed some men might take half the night. All night even?

She wasn’t really sure how all that worked, but somehow she’d assumed it was a business generally more concerned with pumping out a large volume of satisfied customers quickly than . . .

Hmm, there was a dirty joke in there somewhere.

Where was Ben-hadad when you needed him?

Anyway, so that left it being one of two things. Halfcock had a mistress. If so, it had to be someone forbidden. Blackguards were allowed fornication, but could be stripped of their rank for adultery, because that was a breach of faith. If a person couldn’t keep their wedding vows, how could you trust them to keep the more difficult vows of Blackguard duty? Also, it opened them to blackmail. But sexual relationships weren’t banned for single Blackguards—only sexual relations with other Blackguards, or married people, or foreign agents.

Aha, got it! Punchline!

Prostitution was a business generally more concerned with pumping out a large volume of satisfied customers rather than pumping a large volume out of one satisfied customer.

She filed that one away too, for no one. Prostitution wasn’t terribly likely to come up in everyday conversation, unless you’re in a squad for long periods of time with sexually frustrated young men.

Why was her mind going to all these things, anyway? She really needed a boyfriend, didn’t she?

Yeah, T. What you really need is someone close enough to dig into your personal affairs.

I don’t
have
personal affairs. That’s why I need to get some.

We both know that ‘getting some’ isn’t going to happen.

Oh, hells.
That’s
what’s going on. I’m at the new moon of my cycle. Just popped out an egg. That would explain why I’ve been damper than an Abornean pearl diver short of his quota on tax day.

Two regular moons in a row. She’d definitely not been training hard enough.

It also meant that finding a quick lay was out of the question. She would be super fertile right now. She had enough problems without adding any of
that
.

Right, because me and ‘casual sex partner’ usually go so well together.

The mission, T. Think about the mission.

Halfcock was one of the oldest Blackguards, a tall withered whip of a man who was an artist with dual short spears, but not well liked. Apparently, for a long time, he’d loved to regale everyone—regardless of their disinterest—with how he’d gotten that Blackguard name. He also loved to give definitive proof that it was not for the reason most would guess first—especially to women. The Archers were no strangers to seeing their brother Blackguards naked, nor were they moral paragons above gossiping about those whose physiques they found particularly praiseworthy or risible. Prohibitions on having sex with each other mostly held in the Blackguard, but no one could stop young athletic warriors in constant close proximity from
admiring
one another.

What Halfcock did was different. He looked for any excuse to pull it out, either to intimidate or to impress.

Once, Samite had shared a night guard posting with him alone. She said he’d done it again, and that when she made her total lack of admiration clear, he’d prodded her with it.

So Samite broke his jaw.

Unfortunately, then he’d thrashed her, despite the jaw.

He’d always been a hell of a fighter, and still was, despite his age.

No one else had witnessed the fight, and their stories of what had happened seemed to bear no relation to each other’s, so he hadn’t been drummed out of the Blackguard. Instead they’d both been punished for fighting each other while on duty.

That had been before Commander Ironfist’s time, and since then, Halfcock hadn’t given him enough reason to kick him out.

But everyone had believed Samite. Quietly, both the men and the women of the Blackguard made sure Halfcock never shared duty alone with an Archer ever again. The men took turns as his partner, like it was a burden no one should have to bear for too long. He was never promoted from the lowest ranks, and the watch captains gave him all the worst postings.

After Ironfist became the commander, he’d told Halfcock he would be allowed to retire early but with full benefits.

He refused to quit. Early retirement, normal retirement, late retirement—he refused each in turn. He was just a tough, stubborn son of a bitch all the way through.

There was nothing wrong with his skills, though. Sometimes at training, Teia would think he was mentally undressing her, so unrelenting and awkward was his gaze. Then he’d correct the position of her heel and tell her to turn her hips a fraction this way for a kick, and she’d feel the difference in the power instantly.

It had almost made her reappraise her own inherited hatred of him. But then, when she did it right the next time, he’d say, ‘Better. But you’re small and weak. You’ll always be one of the worst Blackguards.’

With shooting muskets and drafting he was similarly skilled. He almost made a great trainer even as his own physical skills declined with age.

If he could have been trusted, he’d be exactly the type of person the Blackguard needed more of. Older warriors gave them continuity, which they desperately lacked. They’d seen it all, and done half of it, and knew how to fix what was wrong. People like that kept young Blackguards alive; they sharpened them and instilled tradition and pride in the whole corps.

Teia had fully absorbed the Archers’ institutional disgust for Half-cock, but she wasn’t
certain
that he deserved to die.

Him being an Order traitor would make sense of why he’d never retired, though. It had to be very difficult for the Order to get a man inside the Blackguard. Once they did, they wouldn’t want him to retire. No, they would demand he draft as little as possible so that he could live and be in place as long as possible.