He roared, falling back on the bed, but the motherfucker did not let go of her leg.
Using her trapped foot to brace herself as if she were doing a great sit-up, Teia levered herself upright. She kicked at his kidney, once, twice. He blocked, blocked, trapped her right foot hard against his side, under his arm against his ribs again, and rolled to fling her over him.
But she’d been expecting it.
As he rolled, it freed her foot from the ground, allowing her to spin. She pulled herself down toward him with her trapped left leg, and jump-stomped on his head with her right.
He lost his grip, and she tumbled across the room away from him.
This time she rolled to her feet first.
He shook his head like an enraged bull, snot and sweat and blood and bits of broken teeth streaming from him. He reached one hand out toward the wall, perhaps to steady himself, even as his eyes flared back to sub-red.
Where was all the paryl she’d packed? Had she lost it all?
Then Halfcock plucked Teia’s dagger from where it had been buried in the wall, unseen by her, and his face filled with grim triumph as he saw the warm glow of her small figure against the dark cold.
He crouched to pounce—and dropped like a sack of slops before the pigs as Teia’s last paryl pinched his spine.
She sealed the crystal—important to hold the paryl open while the target dropped, so they don’t break the crystal with their fall. Then she turned her back and limped to the door. She opened it, trying to appear careless, but attuned to any sound in case she’d screwed up anything else.
Fresh, cold, alien paryl filled her lungs. It was power. It was life.
Life was good. Better than the alternative, today. She filled herself full of her monochrome power, then closed the door again. Barred it.
“So, Halfcock,” she said, “let’s talk about the Order.”
Chapter 47
“We’re missing something,” Karris said as Andross approached her at her morning forms, and the sweat dripped from her trembling shoulders. But she kept her voice level. The exercise was making her mind sharp once more. “Something that may cost us the war.”
“It’s so nice to see you taking a break from our labors, daughter,” Andross said, as if the Blackguard training yard were his home, not hers. “Grinwoody was just worrying for your health, wondering if you were pregnant. The weight gain, you understand.”
That shot a bolt of fury through her. She almost lost her balance.
She could hear the smile in his voice. “Naturally, I punished him for such impudence. But I’m so glad to see you returning to the sweat and grime you rose from, like a flame eagle rising from the ashes of its old home—oh dear, pardon, that came out all muddled. I didn’t mean to mention ashes to a White Oak.”
She continued the form. Breath in, foot held above waist height, imagine a smug face for the next strike. She snapped it out, then held the position perfectly.
“I’m beginning to worry about your health, father,” Karris said. Don’t say it, Karris. “I know it’s not age. You’re very sharp for your advanced years. But you seem irritable, pissy . . . are you premenstrual perhaps? I know a good masseuse.”
“Oh, I know you do,” Andross said. His voice was ice. “Rhoda works for me, you know. Has a lovely way of turning your neck just so, doesn’t she? Just shy of where you worry it’ll break. Hmm.”
And now her fury stilled. The threat chilled her.
It was pure Andross Guile to try to drive a wedge between Karris and anyone who brought her joy. But as she thought about it, she had a hard time believing Andross would tolerate Rhoda’s insouciant flamboyance, or Rhoda Andross’s icy disapproval. No, Andross was simply aware that the woman worked for Karris, and was trying to make her paranoid.
Karris stopped the form and walked to a hook where her public-appropriate clothes hung, and patted herself with a towel. There were no servants here to fetch her things. Even Andross had come without a slave, leaving Grinwoody behind in an unusual display of respect: the promachos knew how the man’s presence infuriated the Blackguards.
Karris pulled the loose tunic over her head, then called over to Samite, who was leading the exercise, “I’ll make it up tonight. Twice as hard.”
Samite nodded sharply amid her own forms. Her own face was beaded with sweat, not from the exertion but from the concentration. Oddly, the loss of most of her hand sometimes threw off her balance, and she wouldn’t let herself falter.
Karris loved these people. They’d risked so much for her, in the past and now, too. They were helping her reconnect with herself, find her purpose.
And still Andross didn’t ask about what she thought they were missing that would cost them the war. Didn’t seem to care. Perhaps didn’t respect her enough to even remember, much less to ask.
Fine. Be that as it may, regardless of who he is, I am called to be who I am.
“I’m sorry, Promachos,” Karris said. “I was out of line. What may I do to make it up to you?”
His eyebrows twitched up. He took off his lightly tinted spectacles that he wore in the darker hours, and squinted at her, pulling a darker pair from his pocket as the sunlight dawned over the wall and onto the topside yard—the lower areas having been yielded to the many hundreds of less experienced drafters needing training in the martial arts. But as Andross squinted at her, the light struck his face full, and Karris thought she glimpsed a cornucopia of colors in them. Red and the sparking of sub-red, of course, but also orange, and yellow, a hint of green? But Karris was certain that Andross’s arc of colors only went from sub-red to yellow.
Odd, but maybe it was a reflection or natural coloration she’d never noticed. “It’s your son,” he said, putting on his dark spectacles. “You’re ignoring him. He’s come to me to complain about it.”
“I’m too busy,” Karris said. Zymun. Ugh.
“Yes, I see that.” He said it as if her work here was worthless play.
“I’ve invited him to join me here. And at other occasions. Events. Duties.”
“But never at dinners anymore,” Andross said. “Or to your solar. Or your study. Or anywhere alone. So he says.”
No games, Karris.
She took a deep breath. “He . . . touches me in ways he shouldn’t.”
“Ways he shouldn’t?”
“You wish me to be explicit?” Karris asked.
“I wouldn’t ask for clarification if I didn’t want it.”
“He touches me in ways that are sexual but that might be construed not to be. Kisses my lips, as a son might, maybe, but for too long, too softly. Wants to nuzzle my neck. Grazes my breasts. Wants to put his head in my lap. Trails his hands up and down my thigh, though I ask him to stop. Sniffs while he’s there, as if he expects me to be aroused by it.”
“That’s enough.” The disgust on Andross’s face was stark. Apparently some things were out of bounds even for him. Marvel of marvels.
“Then he begs me not to reject him. Tells me how much it hurts that his own mother would push him away. This, as he strokes the small of my back.”
“Enough. Enough!” He rubbed the bridge of his nose, then said quietly, “Shit.”