The Burning White (81 page)

“I’ve more defenders coming,” Kip said, taking the parchments. “They’ll need accommodation and supplies, too. We traveled at greatest possible speed.”

“We’ll take care of your people,” Karris promised. She walked with him to the door as a sweating Carver Black came in. The man must have run.

“Is it true?” he asked. “They come?”

Kip nodded, and handed Black the scouting report he and the Mighty had written up before they’d made landfall. “I’m also leaving Ferkudi with you to answer any questions. He’s got a hell of an eye for detail.”

Carver Black tore into the report, heading over to Andross, but Karris stayed behind.

“Kip, I have much to atone for, so I hope we get a chance to speak soon. One pressing question first, though. If you’ll be on the Prism’s array in some manner during the battle, then there’s a question of the disposition of your forces. You won’t be able to lead them personally. We’ll need to integrate them with our forces.”

“Yeah,” Kip said. “It’s not a problem I’ve got a great solution for yet.” This was not a kind of fighting his people had trained for, nor was an effective defense a simple matter of putting warm bodies into the correct places.

“Then I wonder if you’d be willing to consider my solution,” Karris said. “A general who I’d hoped would lead our invasion of Blood Forest is just arriving. If I get my way, he’ll head up our defenses.”

Yeah, hell no, I’m not handing my people over to anyone, Kip managed to not say aloud.

“Forgive me for speaking bluntly,” he said instead, “but I’m afraid I’ve had my fill of the Chromeria’s idea of effective military leadership.”

She winced, accepting the justice of that, but then asked slyly, “Would it change anything if I told you the general I have in mind is Corvan Danavis?”

With her heart in her throat, Teia shadowed the merchant through the pilgrim-clogged streets.

Unless she misjudged, the leaders of the Order of the Broken Eye would meet tonight, within hours. It would be Teia’s last chance to fulfill her mission.

Through Quentin, Karris had left Teia a single question: ‘If I give you anything and everything at my disposal, can we stamp out the Order of the Broken Eye within the next two days?’ Teia was to leave a marker to get her yes or no to the White immediately.

All of Teia’s hunting and killing had led her to this street, tracking Atevia, and Atevia would lead her to the Old Man. The Old Man would either be carrying his papers or he would have to check them after this meeting, so he would surely head to his secret office.

Teia might be able to kill the Old Man of the Desert
today
, with the entire Order to follow as soon as Karris could mop them up.

When Atevia’s steps took him to the Embassies District, Teia’s chest tightened further. It didn’t seem that a heretic would head
toward
the Chromeria and the attendant higher density of luxiats and spies of all kinds, not for an important meeting.

Then he turned in to the Crossroads, the former Tyrean embassy that had been converted into the city’s finest restaurant and kopi house. Situated near the Lily’s Stem and literally at a crossroads, it had long been a favorite haunt of diplomats, nobles, rich merchants, the idle rich who merely wanted to see and be seen, and everyone who wanted to do business with any of the above. Excellent food and drink, a fine and discreet brothel downstairs, superviolet bubbles for privacy upon request, private meeting rooms for hire, and dozens of egress routes all made it a haven for spies and those needing to meet with or even recruit them. There were so many legitimate reasons to enjoy the Crossroads, the illegitimate ones could hide in plain sight.

But all the things that made it a great place to meet clandestinely (as so many did) seemed to Teia to also make it the worst place to meet clandestinely:
because
so many did. Everyone was watching to see who everyone else was meeting with.

A certain kind of spy might enjoy hiding in plain sight, but Teia couldn’t believe that the leadership of the Order of the Broken Eye would be so brazen. They weren’t a brazen bunch.

She watched from a safe distance as he made the rounds, nodding to people who seemed engrossed in other meetings and dropping a quick word here and there with others, and had a longer, amenable conversation with someone who looked like a floor manager of the Crossroads, then took sips from a number of wineglasses a pretty young slave brought out on a tray, apparently discussing them with the manager.

Of course. Atevia was wine merchant to the nobility. The Crossroads would be a major account, or had the potential to be one, Teia supposed. Atevia was here for his actual business. Maintaining contacts with a huge number of important people was simply part of his job.

As Atevia seemed to be concluding his work with the manager, Teia slid closer.

The manager slipped out from their table and said, “Oh, there are some barrels in the cellar that I’m afraid have gone bad. Could you check on those for me?”

Atevia grinned and said, “Well . . . if you insist.”

“Oh, I do,” the manager said, winking. “There’s a new, ahem, barrel I think you really need to sample.”

Teia actually thought they were still talking about work until Atevia reached a hand down to adjust himself on the stairs.

Oh, gods, she really was naïve. Conspiratorial winks? The new
barrel
Atevia needed to sample . . . in the basement, which happened to be a brothel?

Dammit, T, how naïve can you be?

Teia had given up her chance to kill Murder Sharp—not to do anything productive, not to save anyone, but to wait around while Atevia emptied his coin purse before his big meeting tonight.

Suddenly, a bubbling cauldron of bile in her boiled and spilled over, hissing and spitting as it hit the flames of Teia’s frustration and disappointment.

She wanted to wreck this man. She wanted to ruin him. She was going to follow him to his whore. She’d experiment on him: see if she could make him go limp, then back off, let him get aroused again, then make him go limp again. Hell, maybe she could figure out how to trigger his climax before he even touched the woman. That might be handy, too, not least for Teia to protect herself in the future—assuming she had one. And such practice wasn’t exactly possible on terrified slaves, who don’t tend to spend much time aroused.

As she followed Atevia into the Crossroad’s basement, she knew she was acting out of all proportion.

She barely knew this man. Why did she hate him so particularly? Why did she want to punish this one so much?

Something about him grated her. So he was stupid, lustful, deceitful, small. Murder Sharp was worse—a hundred times worse—and she didn’t hate
him
, not exactly. She feared Sharp. Hated how vulnerable he made her feel, tried to convince herself she could stop him from making her feel that way again, but she didn’t despise him.

A beautiful hostess in a white silk chemise that barely hung past her pudenda greeted Atevia at the base of the stairs. She clearly recognized him.

The hostess’s dark kinked hair was a perfect halo around her head, and when she walked, leading Atevia to a room, she stepped as if walking on a rope, her hips swaying with each deliberate step.

Atevia didn’t look anywhere else.

The woman glanced back over her shoulder, saw his appreciation, and smiled beatifically. She was either a very good mummer or she actually enjoyed her work.

Amazing how we deceive ourselves, and tell ourselves we do good, Teia thought.

And then she was struck with the thought that maybe she wasn’t exempt from that ‘we.’ This woman helped men cheat on their wives; Teia murdered people. She couldn’t really look down on her. The woman was most likely a slave herself, making the best of a bad life she hadn’t asked for.

Teia was the last person who should be judging her, but Teia’s hatred was like a flame right now, lashing about, looking for fuel to feed on wherever it could.

She tried to hold off that fire, push it toward some barren, analytical place.

Why did she hate this man who seemed beguiled by the lowest of sins, lust? A mere sin of the body, of weakness. It was common, trivial.

Yet entangling. Teia’s own mother had—

It hit Teia in the face.

Atevia Zelorn was the very image of Teia’s mother. Blinded by lust, choosing to disregard the suffering of those who loved them, Atevia was selling out his family, while Teia’s mother had literally sold her family. Teia’s father had tried to give mother all the better things in life she said she needed, and had traveled farther and farther abroad to get them for her—which had only given her more opportunity to cheat on him.

Teia was going to destroy Atevia Zelorn for his treachery, but his treason to the Chromeria seemed paltry to her compared to how he’d betrayed his family. As her mother had.

And for what? For orgasms with strangers?

Teia hadn’t had one yet, but to her it looked like the pleasure was something better than a good drunk but less intense than a poppy high. That couldn’t be enough to destroy yourself over, could it?

But that wasn’t all there was to cheating, was there? Her mother had seemed as eager for the sops to her vanity as she was for the lovemaking itself.

What did Atevia Zelorn gain for his treachery? Money? He had money. If he had more, what would he use it for? More visits to brothels? Chasing whores’ feigned care when he had a woman who loved him back home?

Teia was going to wreck him, and when she killed him, she’d do it so the family wasn’t humiliated, so they didn’t have to pay for his sins. But he was going to pay—as her own mother had never had to.

The room had an antechamber, and the hostess held open the door but went no farther.

Teia slipped inside behind Atevia.

He closed the door behind him, locked it, and opened a side bureau. A curtain separated this antechamber from the rest of the room. As Atevia began undressing—no thanks—Teia streamed paryl at the curtain.

It was impenetrable to her gaze, filled with some metal. Huh?

She heard a door far on the other side of the curtain close and then a lock being slid home. What was this?

She turned and saw Atevia pulling on white robes. He draped a chain-mail veil over his face.

Teia’s heart almost stopped. The veil. This wasn’t a visit to a prostitute. This was the meeting.

Everything before this was pretense: the cellar barrel tasting was a pretense for a visit to a prostitute, which was the pretense for this.

Unfortunately, after he was dressed, Atevia stepped through the curtain without holding it open far enough for Teia to come in, too. He closed it carefully behind himself, shutting Teia out.

She could hear the men’s voices clearly enough, but they exchanged greetings in some language Teia didn’t understand, that she didn’t even recognize.

Orholam have mercy, was the Order so good at keeping secrets that the leaders only spoke Braxian?

But apparently not all the men (three men? four?) were equally adept with the tongue. While a tenor gave his report fluently, he had to stop several times to clarify words for one of the others. “Yes, the bane,” the tenor said. “All of them, if he is to be believed.” Then he went back into Braxian. Then later, at a cough from the same man, who was confused again, the tenor said, “C’mon,
bawaba
, you have to know the word. We use it in our own ceremonies!”

“I just didn’t hear you,” the man complained. His voice seemed oddly familiar.

Teia wondered if Quentin knew Braxian. Or could learn it quickly. Well, of course he could learn it quickly. There were two books in Quentin’s world: The Book of Everything Quentin Knows, and The Book of Everything Quentin Will Surely Know Soon.

But what was she going to do? Magic him into the room? Write down everything they said phonetically?

Good luck with that, T.

Then Atevia gave his own report. He was fluent,
damn
him.

When the slow one asked him to translate a word, Atevia did so by using other Braxian vocabulary, which was apparently helpful enough for the other man—though not for Teia.

Yet another man spoke, and Teia heard the rumble of the voice distorter. Given how the others deferred to him, she guessed that could only be the Old Man of the Desert himself. He spoke the longest, with frequent questions for and from all of them, but Teia understood none of it except one instance of the word ‘black powder’ in a sentence otherwise unintelligible.

Apparently old Braxian had no word for that.

Wonderful.

Fragmentary as it was, she’d heard ‘black powder,’ ‘bane,’ and ‘gates.’ That, and the instructions that the faithful prepare themselves and bring their weapons.

When wasn’t clear. To the Feast? After the Feast? Halfcock had said they had a plan, but what was it?

She’d been assuming the entire reason for the meeting was all last-second preparations for the Feast tomorrow night.

The least fluent one began his report. He had a nasal baritone, and he quickly gave up. “I’m sorry, I’m working on it, but by the Diakoptês, having to puzzle out how to actually speak Braxian from old scrolls? And it’s not like I have any chances to practice with anyone. I can’ t—”

“Enough, proceed,” the Old Man said.

Teia could hardly pay attention to him, though. From the lack of tension and the lapsing out of Braxian, it was clear that the more sensitive part of the meeting was finished. From here, she could tail one of the others, and from learning his identity, eventually reveal one additional congregation from that one additional priest. But if she were lucky, she could follow the Old Man of the Desert himself.

“There’s a problem with the, the
abad el shams
. Shit, that’s not right . . . the poppies. We have none.” Oh, that was it! This priest had sounded familiar. He was the one with the haze smoker’s harsh voice who’d ordered Teia to strip when they’d initiated her into the Order.

That bastard.

“
Ezay deh?
” the Old Man demanded.

“The Chromeria’s been buying them up for medical supplies. One of our regular sources admitted that he’d guessed we wouldn’t pay him as much as the Chromeria would, and he was too afraid to try to charge us more, so he sold all he had to them. He is willing to procure toad caps for us, though.”