“Not really,” Teia said.
“Our trainer said I was so fast that if I were anyone else, he’d be warning them about going off half-cocked. It was a compliment. But they hated me. So they called me Halfcocked around the trainers and Halfcock everywhere else. They told every new season of recruits I had the smallest cock in the Blackguard. They shit on everything good in my life. Samite was the worst of ’em, fucking man-hating tribadist. You tell me, you think she’s fast enough to hit me in the jaw if she didn’t throw that punch out of the blue?”
“I don’t care about any of this,” Teia said. “Are you stalling?” She double-checked her crystals.
“Don’t kill me over an old lie,” Halfcock said.
“I won’t kill you over anyone’s lies but yours,” Teia said. “You say you were just infiltrating the Order? Fine. Give me the names you’ve learned.”
He blanched. “You know it’s not like that—”
“I know it’s not supposed to be like that. Everyone’s supposed to keep things carefully separate. But it just doesn’t work, does it? Is Aliyah in the Order too? You’re not supposed to be dipping your quill in the Order’s ink. That’d be enough to get you both killed. Good reason to keep things secret. Hmm?”
“No, no, no. She’s got nothing to do with them!”
Teia believed him. She’d overheard the woman pressuring Halfcock to make their relationship public. If she were in the Order, she’d never have done that.
“Names!” Teia hissed.
“I’ve been trying for years. You have to believe me. Because I’m a Blackguard my handler made me skip all but the high holy days, so I didn’t have many chances. And then . . . Most people are so careful, even with me.”
“Even with you?” Teia echoed.
“You ever been on a high holy day? The parties afterward tend to get sexual before dawn. We’re supposed to keep our faces and any identifying characteristics covered—but, well, I got popular among a certain set of the women, on account of, you know, my endowments.”
“I bet you stayed late for the orgy just on the hopes of being a better spy, right?”
“That’s right!” he said.
Not keen on picking up sarcasm, old Halfcock.
“So you found someone,” Teia said.
“Not a name, an address. A little love nest she keeps for her affairs. She’s newer, and careless, but I’m certain she’s from the nobility, and nobles tend to climb the Order’s ranks quickly. She wanted me to come meet her—”
And here’s where you lay your trap for me, Teia thought.
“—but I never dared,” Halfcock finished.
“What?” Teia asked.
“I went by the place once. That’s how I know it’s a safe house. No one lives there, but it’s well maintained. But there was no way I was going to go inside and openly disobey the Order. I wouldn’t cheat on Aliyah that way, either.”
But an orgy is fair game?
The hypocrisy of the statement actually made Teia believe him a little more, though.
“You have nothing else?” Teia asked.
“Nothing,” he said.
She wasn’t a skilled interrogator, but by the end of her talk with Halfcock, she learned one more thing: The Order had ‘something big’ planned for Sun Day. That was all he knew. Or maybe not on Sun Day. Maybe before. They would find out the specifics, he guessed, at their own ritual on Sun Day Eve, which the Braxians called the Feast of the Dying Light.
She probed for more a dozen times, a dozen ways, trying to see if he knew something else, maybe without realizing it. She asked about how his handler contacted him, how he knew where the meetings were on the high holy days, and a dozen other things—but he gave her nothing that helped. The Order had morons in its ranks, but only at the bottom. Whoever was directing Halfcock had been very careful and very skillful, and Halfcock had been too stupid or afraid to notice any patterns or slipups.
But still, he’d given Teia the next step up the Order’s ladder. It was just what she needed: a noblewoman who didn’t like to follow the rules that had kept the Order safe. Perfect.
“If you were really going to spy on them, you’d have waited outside that safe house,” Teia said. “You’d have watched and seen who walked in.”
“No, no, please. I thought of that, but only after I’d hurried away. I was afraid of them. Please!”
“Oh, I know. Your fear is real enough. Even Murder Sharp is afraid of them. I’m afraid of them, too. That’s why you have to die, because every time it’s come down to it, you’ve done what they wanted. And that’s what you’d do again.”
“Please, I’m a loyal Blackguard.”
“You’re not even loyal to your wife—if you’re not lying about that, too. But just so you know, I’ll let her live.”
“I was gonna change! Everything was gonna be different!”
“I think you might even believe that,” Teia said. “But I don’t.”
And then she killed him.
But something went wrong. Either there was some idiosyncrasy of his spine or Teia’s control wasn’t as fine as she thought. Instead of paralysis, she hit some bundle of nerves that sent his entire body into racking convulsions, bucking and flailing and screaming at a pitch and intensity she’d never have guessed he would reach, or even that he could. His screams shrieked like claws jagged across the slate of your mind and lodged in some animal part that begged you to run away or huddle in a corner, rocking back and forth, face to knees, ears plugged, whimpering.
It shook Teia’s cold calm a bit, to be honest.
But there was worse to come. That old cliché she’d heard? The one she’d always figured men added to their war stories to make themselves sound tough, like they were better than weaker men or that the situation they’d been through was so, so hard? That thing about grown men crying for their mothers as they die? She’d always thought, Whatever, maybe that happens once in a while, maybe. Maybe with child soldiers or boys who can barely shave, but not with a grown man. Not with a warrior. Certainly, she thought, a man tougher than old saddle leather and more bitter than vinegared wine would never stop fighting. A hardened veteran weeping, tears and snot streaming unheeded down his face, gasping, “Mama help, mama help, mama, mama, mama . . .”?
She’d been so sure that never happened.
Huh.
Chapter 49
The dead savaged in the lagoon behind him didn’t matter. The prophet and his logorrhea had no meaning. The world beyond the mist curtain had ceased to exist. Even the city, this nameless city below the black tower, held nothing to pique his curiosity.
This had been a waystation for pilgrims, once. The whole city had been organized around the physical and spiritual preparation of those who planned to attempt the climb. At its heyday, it must have hosted thousands every day.
But Gavin paid none of it any mind.
On the central boulevard, he found great mosaics of legends and saints ancient even to the ancient peoples who had made them. The boulevard had been lined with shops, once. By the remains of their painted pictographic signs, there had been cobblers and tailors and makers of packs and torches and walking sticks and bandages and dried meats and fruits. Doubtless a street or two back had housed the whorehouses and taverns, for all those pilgrims who wished, one last time, to sample the favorite sins they’d come to leave behind. Now empty buildings stared out at him like skulls stripped of flesh and eyes.