What were her other options? If she set Karris’s people on this, she could get back to hunting for her father, which almost certainly would be where Murder Sharp would have his best traps set. But some traps you have to risk.
It was hopeless. For months and months she’d been hunting the Order, and she had nothing. She was a total failure.
If she could just think. There had to be some way forward.
She closed her eyes.
When she opened them, she couldn’t tell how long they’d been closed. Had she fallen asleep? No, surely not.
The rattle of a key in the lock sent a jolt through her. Shit! She hadn’t even locked the door behind her.
But it bought her an extra couple of moments now, as whoever was on the other side had first locked the door, tried it, and now unlocked it.
She jumped to her feet, pulled the cloak shut, went invisible, and roughly smoothed the blankets from the depression her sitting on them had made.
The door cracked open, and a man poked his head in, a puzzled look on his face. When he saw no one was inside, he stepped in. He was fair-skinned, dressed in slaves’ garb, dark hair oiled back, clean shaven.
He checked the rooms, and straightened out the wrinkles in the bedspread with a disapproving look. Just a slave checking the house for his mistress—of course she wouldn’t clean a safe house herself.
Rich people. So helpless.
The slave busied himself, dusting the already clean surfaces, and Teia had to dodge him a few times, as silently as possible, regulating even her breath, and looking only at his feet. He was soon finished, but when he got to the door, he paused. “It’s madness, Micael. Don’t do it. It’s the whipping post and salt packed in the wounds unto death if she catches you.”
He reached his hand to the door, but instead of opening it, locked it.
He went to the sideboard, opened a drawer, and took out the silver. He laid the silver-polishing kit next to it, but he didn’t polish the utensils, as if still momentarily at war with himself.
Then he held the front of his trousers away from his waist and scratched his pubic area with a fork.
He examined the tines carefully and then put it back away, glancing around guiltily.
Teia’s mouth dropped open. She almost lost hold on her invisibility. But he worked systematically through the silver, until every piece had been down his pants.
“ ‘Thank you, Mistress.’ ‘Your crop, Mistress?’ ‘With pleasure, Mistress.’ ” He repeated the phrases like they were a meditation prayer: he must have had to say them hundreds of times, but now he was reclaiming them. In the future, whenever he said those, he would think of this.
He was grinning like a maniac.
He moved to the bedroom, and he wiped his ass across every single one of the pillows, both sides. “ ‘How did you sleep, Mistress? Oh, a scent? Odd. I’ll have a stern word with the laundress. This old house is a little fusty, despite my best efforts. But I’ll try harder, Mistress.’ ”
Teia had heard rumors of others doing this kind of thing when she’d been a slave, of course. She’d fantasized about it herself when her owner, that cunt Aglaia Crassos, had dreamed up some new humiliation for her or her friends. Watching someone deathly ill be forced to lick up their own vomit, or seeing a boy ten years old beaten to death because he’d peeked in on the mistress noisily having sex with someone.
Later she’d heard the same kinds of stories among slave owners, albeit repeated with more horror than glee: stories of slaves drying the dishes with their poxy undergarments, of men putting their cocks in the cups, or urinating and worse in the soup. They were the kinds of stories that played on the fears of those served and the fantasies of those enslaved, so of course they were popular.
But she hadn’t thought anyone actually did it.
It was hatred to the point of suicide.
If she’d heard someone else tell this story, she’d laugh about it. But here, seeing this man do it, it was desperately unfunny. This Micael was risking torture and death merely to secretly dishonor a woman. He likely wouldn’t even be here to see her use the forks or pillows. He was right: it was madness.
Enough, Micael. Just say her name. I don’t need to see all this.
He finished doing everything he could think of, and went again to the door. “I should clean it all,” he said. “Vengeance defiles the hand that enacts it. Orholam will bring justice in its appointed hour.” He leaned his head on the doorframe, leaving a gap behind him.
He still blocked half the doorway, but Teia realized it was her best chance. She could easily leave after he left—but she had no way to relock the door, at least not in time to follow. Now or never!
She slipped out behind him, not even brushing his tunic.
She’d never been so happy to be petite in her life.
“No,” Micael said. “Fuck her. Fuck her.”
Say her name!
He left, and Teia followed him.
In several blocks he arrived at a small hovel, opened the door. It was apparently his own house. But there he stopped. Looking suddenly skyward, he said, “Orholam, You know she deserves it. If I stay my hand from vengeance, Orholam, You have to promise me . . .”
He stood there for a moment, then shook his head and sighed. Teia could tell he was walking back to his mistress’s safe house to clean it up.
She didn’t follow. She’d hoped that he would take her directly back to his mistress’s estate, but it looked like she wasn’t that lucky. Whoever the noblewoman was, she was too lazy to clean her own safe house, but she wasn’t completely stupid. Her slave had his own hovel.
The Order really did do a good job enforcing all the disciplines of secrecy.
Quickly, Teia ransacked the slave’s belongings. There were several tunics, with old bloodstains on the backs from whippings. Last, there was an overjacket with a family insignia on it.
Teia had been unlucky that it had taken her so long to find a time when she could get Halfcock alone and isolated. She’d been unlucky that the noblewoman hadn’t been at her safe house, and that the slave had never said her name. She’d been unlucky that this slave was new and so Teia didn’t recognize him and therefore his owner right away.
But finally. Finally luck turned its golden face full upon her.
For the first time in weeks, Teia smiled. Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles, it seemed Orholam had as black a sense of humor as any soldier: according to this livery, the slave Micael belonged to Aglaia Crassos. Teia’s very own former owner, that utter abomination, had joined the Order.
As Teia walked the streets home, she actually laughed aloud at a thought: Micael had prayed for vengeance on his owner. Teia was going to be an answer to prayer!
Aglaia was in the Order. Sooner or later, Teia was going to get to kill her.
Sooner, Teia thought. Definitely sooner. Just in case.
Chapter 57
Worried they were stepping into a trap—still—the Mighty didn’t let Kip climb the luxin ladder until second to last, but at that point it didn’t matter. He joined them atop the new wall.
The White King was no Gavin Guile. This wall was no Brightwater Wall; it wasn’t luxin but simple wood, more a frontier fortification than a work of art. It wasn’t high, either, less than three paces in most places. But it was vast, encompassing a half circle nearly a league across.