The Burning White (97 page)

“I’m not here to hurt you,” Teia said.

“Teia, I presume?” Tisis asked.

Teia shimmered into visibility and took down her hood. “ Benhadad’s work?” she asked, pointing a thumb to the death trap.
Thanks for telling me about this, Ben. Jackass.

“His design. An underling did the work. That’s why it’s not armed yet.”

“It’s not armed?”

“I know how bureaucracies work. I figured that if someone ordered an assassination by a real Shadow, getting permission and then setting it up would take at least until this evening, whereas
you
might come immediately. But that was just a guess. I’m glad I was right. Nice to, um, see you.”

“I’m, uh, real glad to see you again, too,” Teia said. Because getting caught in a stupid trap like a moron is
exactly
how I wanted to re introduce myself to Kip’s gorgeous and competent wife. “So I can step off this?”

“Of course,” Tisis said.

Bobbing her head to look down at her feet, Teia stepped off the pressure plate.

A
thwang
and the sound of breaking glass made her head snap up. Shards of glass fell from its frame in front of the weapons to the floor, shattering. One crossbow had discharged.

Teia’d heard too many tales of men being fatally wounded without realizing it to feel relief immediately. Had that been a breeze she’d felt on her neck?

She reached up to the back of her neck. It was dry, mercifully dry. But something tickled her neck. She pulled it into view: a clump of her hair, cut by the crossbow quarrel.

If Teia hadn’t dipped her head to look at her feet . . .

Their gazes locked.

“I am so, so sorry!” Tisis said, horror writ on her features. “I swear to Orholam that wasn’t me trying to . . .”

“Murder me and pretend it was an accident?” Teia asked.

“Orholam’s hairies,” Tisis said, “this is so not how I wanted this to go.”

Teia heard running footsteps summoned by the sound of the breaking glass. She dove and rolled out of the way, shimmering out of visibility and throwing her hood up even as the door banged open.

Three people she didn’t recognize dressed in cloaks of the Mighty burst into the room—along with one person who made her heart leap. Cruxer!

“A malfunction,” Tisis said smoothly. “And a potentially
lethal
one. Commander? Do you have an answer for this?”

If Cruxer were chagrined, he gave no indication. The man had turned into a slender version of Ironfist in his time away. “I’ll look into it at once, milady.”

“Send someone to do it. I wish to speak with you privately.”

Cruxer’s back stiffened. He gave a hand signal to dismiss the other Mighty without even picking up the glass or the bolt embedded in the wall.

After they were gone, Tisis said, “Adrasteia?”

Teia stood and at some distance, and slowly—she knew Cruxer’s reaction speed—she shimmered back into visibility.

His face blossomed open with such intensity of joy at seeing her that she almost started crying. He stepped across the room in two steps with those long legs of his and wrapped her in an embrace.

And then she did weep, with body-shaking, unstoppable sobs. She could only bury her face in his chest. For some reason, she’d thought Cruxer would disapprove of her, would judge her, would despise her for what she’d become.

It took her a while to pull her shit back together.

Orholam’s balls. Crying in front of Kip’s wife. Let me go hop on that pressure plate a few more times.

Finally, after what felt like hours but had probably been less than a minute, Teia cleared her throat and stepped back.

“So . . . I guess Kip’s not around?” Teia asked. “Breaker, I mean.” She was still trying to get used to the idea that she was accepted into the Mighty, so she had the right to use their Mighty names.

“He’s at the Chromeria,” Tisis said. “From the secrecy of your visit, I assume you’re in danger?”

“Why are you in danger?” Cruxer asked.

“He doesn’t know?” Teia asked Tisis, indicating Cruxer. About me infiltrating the Order? About Ironfist becoming King Ironfist?

“Kip said your mission was your secret and your burden—he only shared it with me because I needed to know to help him rule—but he wouldn’t extend that circle further until we got here, where it might affect Cruxer’s work. Commander, I would have told you a few hours ago, but things have been . . .”

He dismissed it with a wave of his hand. “I’m not entitled to all secrets, and I trust my Lord Guile completely.” He frowned momentarily. “Which is not to say I don’t want to know now, although I was just about to head to the Chromeria. I heard Commander Ironfist was seen heading there from the docks, with like a Parian honor guard or something?”

“Ironfist?” Teia asked, her voice strangled. “He’s here?”

“Yeah, I know!” Cruxer said. “I’d heard he’d left the Jaspers, and there were crazy rumors he’d been fired—like how there always is,” Cruxer said. “I wish it hadn’t taken a war to get us all back together, but I can’t tell you how many times as I’ve led the Mighty I’ve asked myself what Ironfist would do in a certain situation. I can’t wait to thank him. And . . . well, even ask his opinion of a few things. I mean, I’ve missed him almost as much as I’ve missed you, Te—what’s wrong, Teia?”

She couldn’t seem to get her voice to work right. Her stomach was in full riot. “You . . . you really don’ t—you don’t know?” She looked over to Tisis, who seemed just as clueless. Which meant Kip didn’t know, either.

Tisis said, “I mean, we know he lost his position here. Kip meant to speak with his grandfather about that, and see if he could be reinstated. He’s been furious about it.”

“It is so much too late for that,” Teia said. “You . . . didn’t hear about Paria?”

“What about it?” Tisis asked.

“Who cares about Paria now?” Cruxer said. “He’s here. He’s all right, isn’t he?”

“We were deep in Blood Forest,” Tisis told Teia, “and the river was blockaded. We had no news, no messages at all for several months, and few before that.”

Teia hadn’t written anything to them about Ironfist being in the Order; she didn’t dare trust any messenger, and they’d had no secret code together anyway. But she’d figured for sure Kip would have heard about Ironfist declaring himself a king! If he hadn’t, or hadn’t had a chance to pass it along, then Teia was about to become the bearer of worse news than she’d even imagined. The Chromeria was so connected to the events of the wider world that she’d forgotten how long it could take for the deeper parts of the satrapies to hear about events elsewhere. In war, picking out the reliable from the rumors made it twice as hard.

“What’s wrong with Ironfist?!” Cruxer demanded.

“He’s in the Order of the Broken Eye,” Teia said.

Tisis went still with shock, but Cruxer laughed. “Ha, Teia, this isn’t the time to make jokes. Orholam’s balls, you scared me! But seriously that’s not funny. What
is
wrong?”

Then he processed the horror on her face.

She said, “What
did
Kip tell you about why I stayed on the Jaspers?”

Cruxer glanced at Tisis, then back to Teia. “He said there was some threat to Karris that only you could help with. You can see threats with paryl no one else can. You thought Orholam was calling you to stay here.”

Who would have thought that a man nicknamed ‘the Lip’ could keep his closed so well? But as much as Teia usually would have thanked Kip for that carefulness, now it just meant she had to march further out of the shadows to tell them the whole truth. “That’s . . . all true. But it’s not all the truth. Cruxer, I’ve been infiltrating the Order of the Broken Eye for Karris, trying to get the information to destroy them from the inside.”

“You?” He grinned, but with a hint of desperation, as if he felt his disbelief crumbling. “Come on. Like some kind of spy?”

“And an assassin.” It felt like a sinkhole had opened in her gut and it was swallowing all the world.

“A what?” He smirked, cocking his head. But his eyebrows were drawing down, and upturned corners of his mouth collapsed down around bared teeth.

“The White ordered me to do everything I had to in order to get in as deep as I could.”

“And?”

“So when the Order sent me to kill the Nuqaba, I did. She was Iron-fist’s sister.”

“Teia, what the hell?”

It all had to come out. Disastrous as she’d always known it would be.

Shame rolled over her at what she’d become, but she stabbed deep, lancing the boil. “Ironfist was there, Crux. As I killed her. That bitch had chained him to the wall. She was delusional, high, totally . . . murderous. She was gonna kill him. Her own brother. But—but he begged me to stop. Begged me not to kill her. Told me how he was in the Order himself, how this had to be a mistake.”

“Well, well, surely—he was lying to save her, right? I mean, that’s his sister, and he, he wouldn’t want you to become an assassin, Teia. He’s a good man. Honorable. He’d only lie to save you and her, you know that! That’s the kind of man he is.”

“He didn’t know the assassin was me, Crux. Not at first. He couldn’t see me, but he knew it was the Order coming for her. He was calling out names of . . . of the other Shadows that he knew personally. He knew way too much for it to be a lie. He said he’d joined them when he was a boy, asking them for vengeance on his mother’s killer. He was appealing to an Order assassin like . . . like we were on the same side. I couldn’t believe it, either. But it’s true.”

“No,” Cruxer said, and his face contorted.

Teia could have stabbed Cruxer in the back herself and not seen such a look of profound betrayal.

“Cruxer,” Tisis said softly. She moved toward him tentatively.

“He was with them all along?” Cruxer asked.

He saw all the confirmation he needed in Teia’s face.

“I have to go see him,” Cruxer said. “This is
horseshit
.”

“Cruxer, you can’t,” Teia said. “If you say
anything
, it’ll get me killed. The Order will find out I’m a mole, and, and—Cruxer, you don’t know what I’ve done to take these bastards down.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“No!” she shouted suddenly. “You don’t tell
me
what doesn’t matter! You listen to me. You shut up and listen.”

His lips curled into a snarl. “Make me, assassin.”

She buckled. “Cruxer, you can’t.”

“I won’t give away your dirty secrets,” Cruxer said. “What do you think I am?”

“Cruxer, you can’t. He’s . . . he’s got the orange bane. Or seed crystal or whatever. At least, his sister did. I’m sure he took it when he became king. I don’t know what it does to people.”

He stared at her for a moment. “Goodbye, Teia. Tisis.”

“Commander, I forbid you to go,” Tisis said. Her voice was reluctant but firm.

He shook his head. “The Order tried to kill your husband once already. You really don’t want me there with him?”

“Cruxer . . .” Tisis said, pleading.

The commander said, “Breaker will seek Ironfist out the moment he hears he’s at the Chromeria. I have to go tell him.”

“Someone else—”

“This is a matter of defense, and that’s my domain. My apologies, Lady Guile.” He bowed sharply and was out the door before either of them could gather any other arguments.

The expression on Tisis’s face reflected the same dread Teia was feeling.

“Can you catch up with him?” Tisis asked.

Teia would have to sneak, while Cruxer could simply ride. “No,” she said. “But I’ll try.” She drew her hood back on.

“One moment,” Tisis said. She walked back toward her desk and opened a drawer. “I know we may not get another chance—well, ever, so . . . For reasons that don’t matter right now, Kip thought he couldn’t give this to you himself. But he made it for you, and I want you to have it.”

She pulled out a length of faintly luminous fine yellow chain with spearheads on either end. A rope-spear of woven yellow luxin?

Teia held it in her hands, baffled. “He
made
this?” The chain was so finely woven it was as supple as rope, but with yellow links. It would be virtually unbreakable.

“He was working on some magic to make it less visible or more visible—even glowing if you wanted it to—but I don’t know how far he got with that. You’ll have to ask him.”

Teia wanted to study it, wanted to test the weight and the magic, but instead she wrapped the weapon expertly around her waist in a quick-releasing knot. “I . . .” What could she say to this woman, for whom she’d only had evil thoughts?

“Should go,” Tisis said. “We’ll speak again.” There was a little drop-off in her voice though, as if she was consciously holding back ‘I hope, if we live.’

Teia turned. She didn’t know how to do this. And there was work summoning her that she
did
know how to do.

As Teia closed her hood around her face, and began to shimmer out of visibility, Tisis said, “One more thing. He gave it a name. He called it ‘Sorry.’ ”

Teia paused. Then she went.

In all her years as a young noblewoman, then as a Blackguard, and then as the White, Karris had never heard the audience chamber so quiet. The courtiers filed out in silence. The Blackguards cleared the room in silence.

Now she and Andross stood in silence.

She stood at the great windows, watching the sun go down. A summer squall, disappointingly small, was blowing in off the horizon.

When she’d been in this room before, there had always been a buzz of voices, chattering and tittering as this or that noble tried to prove himself a wit through his whispered observations. Even as a Blackguard clearing the chamber of threats—or more often, simply collecting forgotten bags or scarves and the like—there had always been the small talk of work. Since she’d become White, moments of silence had become treasures.

But not moments shared with Andross.

The sun set. There was no green flash after the last sliver of sun disappeared, no divine promise that it would all work out.

Andross stood at a window, looking out on the futile drizzle of the late-spring rain, lightning illuminating his figure inconsistently, even the rumble of thunder seeming somehow impotent.