She waited, then understood. “So you’re not going to tell me.”
“Not when you’re hurting and angry. You’ll reject the answer, and then later you’ll think of it as an answer you already found lacking and perhaps you’ll neglect to consider it again. Having found a door’s handle bristling with needles, you’ll tell yourself it’s probably locked anyway. When you come to the big questions, before you can get a true answer, you need to know whether you’re approaching them rationally or emotionally.”
A Blackguard guards his emotions, Teia thought. “So you’re not going to tell me the rational answer until I can approach the question rationally,” she said.
“It’s not that it’s a big Magisterium secret. You could go ask any luxiat and get the same answer today that I’ll give you when you’re ready—though some will phrase it more or less eloquently. But in my estimation, you’ll profit more from it later. If you disagree, you’re free to ask them.”
“You’re asking me to trust you when I don’t understand something hard for me,” she said. “That’s supposed to parallel something, isn’t it?”
“I didn’t mean it to, but perhaps it does. Thanks for thinking I’m smarter than I am.”
She pursed her lips to keep from smiling, though the hollow in her chest still ached.
“Now,” he said, “you were abrupt last time. Seemed on edge. You killed this slaver, Ravi Satish. Easy kill?”
Sticking a hammer in his head? Easier than I thought. Fooling him? Pathetically easy. The rest? “Won’t trouble my sleep,” she said.
“And you’re going out to hunt your old mistress presently. You’re going to kill her?”
She nodded once, sharp as a falling guillotine.
“This is your first job that isn’t purely professional.”
“It’s necessary,” she said, quick and defensive. “If she contacts Murder Sharp, it brings him to her, and that puts him way too close to me. Plus she intends to contract a hit on a Guile. Not Andross, I’m sure. Sharp probably wouldn’t take the job, but how could I explain that to Karris?”
“Those are all good reasons. Sufficient reasons,” Quentin said. He let it hang there.
“Yeah,” she said, trying to cover it over.
“Yeah?”
Teia felt stricken. He knew she wasn’t being honest, and yet his eyes were filled with compassion. “She’s low-level, Quen. I mean, she’s a noble, so she’d rise quickly in their ranks . . . but she told Ravi she only joined them to try to get revenge on the Guiles for . . . something. Which, come to think of it, she ranted to me about a long time ago. Her brother was the governor of Garriston, and Gavin Guile killed him as a traitor or something? I don’t know exactly. But it means she’s not a true believer. And I know where the Order’s meeting now. She doesn’t need to die, not exactly. I mean, she’s committed capital offenses, and she’s covered under my writ, but if she were anyone else, and she got away? It wouldn’t trouble me. She wouldn’t be forming a new Order ten years from now. But I want to kill her almost as much as I want the Old Man.”
“Then you know.”
“I know what?”
Quentin looked at her, and his eyes were old and gentle. “Teia, this is the most dangerous job you’ve ever done. Not physically. This is where you can come to love what you do. The power of it. The righteous vengeance. This work wounds you, but this job is where you can get dirt in the wound.”
“Like I haven’t already?” she scoffed.
“To this point, you’ve been a shield, doing what you have to do, getting battered and torn protecting those you love. Now you decide what else you are. You can torture her, if you want. You can try to make her pay for all she did to your friends and to you. You can look into her eyes and wring whatever suffering from her you desire. No one can stop you.”
“And no one should,” Teia said coldly.
“Some luxiats say even the Two Hundred may yet repent, but from what you’ve told me of her, I daresay Aglaia’s damnation is assured. What’s in question is yours.”
Chapter 62
With a grunt, Gavin set down the great, cumbersome Lust stone he’d borne for the entire circuit around the black tower on a pedestal. Above the pedestal was a statue, and beyond the statue another locked gate. This statue was of a kneeling man with face upturned, radiant, lambent in his white marble against all the sea of black stone here. All the statues had been the same white. The weight of the stone released a boon stone wider than his hand from the statue’s grip.
“Chastity, I suppose?” Gavin asked, picking up the boon stone.
The prophet didn’t have to answer.
“I’ll be happy to give this one up to Orholam!” Gavin said.
The old man was as stone-faced as the statues, and a good deal less joyful.
“You know,” Gavin said, “to hand over Chastity, because I don’t want it?”
Orholam pursed his lips.
“Not like, give up my chastity to Orholam, like a sexual . . . You know what? Never mind. Just looking for a little levity, after the bludgeoning I just took with that round. You know what I mean?”
“No.”
“So tell me, O, why aren’t you pilgriming with me? Pilgriming. Pilgrimaging? Huh. I’m the head of the faith and I don’t know how people usually say it. I think I like pilgriming. Feels grim, and it’s a bitter pill, right? No? Not working with me at all here, are you? Fine. Why aren’t you pilgriming? No sins to purge? Too holy already?”
As Orholam sighed, Gavin took the Chastity boon stone and tucked it into a pocket in the pilgrim’s tunic. It was heavy, but it fit perfectly.
When Grinwoody had commissioned Gavin for this task, he’d mentioned magical locks at every level that the fleeing guardians had left to keep out drafters of each associated color. That was why Gavin, unable now to draft, was supposedly the perfect candidate to assassinate Orholam—or the magical nexus called Orholam. So far, though, Gavin had only felt a whisper of resistance as he walked through each gate, and that may have been his imagination or his dread at what the next circle would hold.
They moved farther into the landing. There was one between each circle. Here, silently, they ate salt fish and drank water while Gavin recovered. The steep chute that Gavin had seen below had an opening here, and Gavin wondered how many pilgrims failed not on each level but on the spaces between them like this, where they pondered how terrible the next one would be.
How easy was it to give up and simply escape, too afraid to confront what lay next?
“I’m journeying for you,” Orholam said finally, when Gavin had nearly forgotten his question. “If I did my own pilgrimage, I would take much less time on certain circles than you, leaving you alone. It’s even possible I might take more time on certain circles. Dimly. Wrath, for one, would not be easy on me. But I’m here to walk with you, step for step, no matter how long you take. We’re not meant to take the pilgrimage alone.”
“So no pilgrimage for you at all?” Gavin asked.
“When my business with you is finished, I’ll go back down and start my own climb.”