“In the face of life’s black mysteries, answers feel barren. All I know is that I can only choose my attitude. The mysteries aren’t thereby untangled, but when I choose gratitude, I see life flower. When I paint as if my art has meaning, not just for today but also for eternity, it doesn’t make the aches go away, but I’ve come to trust that my master will use my pain for a purpose.”
She saw the beauty in that way of seeing things. But it looked so far away from her vantage. She said, “You’ve got a lot of faith.” But then, that’s why you’re a luxiat, she thought.
“No. I had a profoundly diseased set of beliefs—so diseased they led me to murdering a girl—and now I have a pretty finely attuned sense for what diseased beliefs look like. And the truth is, you don’t need finely attuned senses to see them. You can judge a faith by the fruit it bears. When you see someone bitter with the world, ask yourself what they believe.”
“And does that apply to me?” she asked. She was going for irony, but she was afraid her own words were pure bitterness.
He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.
“Adrasteia, I believe you walk attended by the servants of the Most Holy. This is His work, His war, and He will not abandon you in your need. When you choose to do the task for which the maker made you, when you know yourself free, but you come back to the master’s house to work anyway, you can excel in ways that others could never imagine. And you are excelling, even if you don’t see it.”
“I guess me excelling means nobody sees me, right? Especially the immortals. Well, at least the one.”
She’d told Quentin about her dream about Abaddon. He’d blanched with fear but hadn’t been very helpful in giving her anything solid about the creature. Too many contradictory claims in the texts, he said, many of them probably planted by the evil one himself.
“Be strong and of good courage, Adrasteia. We live in a world of earthquakes and landslides and floods, but we live in a world of eucatastrophes, too.”
“I don’t know what that even means.”
“It means whether brought on by men or malevolent spirits, we live in a world where hell invades earth from time to time, with devastating consequences, far worse than anything we could imagine. But . . . but—almost always, so far as I can tell, at the hand of men and women of goodwill—sometimes heaven invades earth, too.”
“You’re a man of faith after all,” she said.
“Maybe I am,” he said, but sadly, for she saw his recognition that she was using the title to push him away.
“I feel so alone, Quentin.”
“I wish I could be a better bridge for you,” he said.
“These men I’ve been sent to k—”
“Those men are fools.”
“What? They’re the most capable spies I could even imagine. They’ve thrived in the shadow of the Chromeria itself.”
“Fools.”
“Have you not listened to my reports?” she asked.
“Cunning, perhaps, but fools. When we think the darkness hides our deeds from the Lord of Light, we are children who clap our hands over our eyes and shout that we’re invisible. You are seen, Teia. Even in your cloak. You are known.” He grinned, and it was scary to see the fierceness of judgment on his kind face as his voice lowered. “And, in the end, so are they.”
She almost shivered, but she couldn’t let it go. “Quentin, I need to tell you what I’m doing and where I’m going.”
“No, you don’t. Just in case I’m caught. I’m not terribly brave, and I’d soon fold under torture. You’ve said you’re coming to the end. I believe you. I feel it, too. Adrasteia, you serve not just Karris, not just the Chromeria, but the Lord of Light Himself. You will know what must be done, and you will have the unique strength to do it.”
She reached to her neck by old instinct. The vial was gone, long gone. “I hope you’re right,” she said. She grabbed one of Quentin’s sheets of parchment and scribbled a quick note. “Take this to Karris.”
“You know you shouldn’t trust anything about them to writing.”
“It’s not about the Order,” she said. “It’s about you.”
“What?”
“I don’t know that we’ll see each other again, Quentin. Ever. Karris promised me that if I did this, she’d give me anything.”
He looked down at the note. “You’ve . . . you’ve asked that she free me?” His voice wavered, and he glanced up, profoundly humbled. “Why . . . why wouldn’t you ask that they look for your father?”
Teia twisted her lips briefly. “If Karris is who I think she is, she’ll do that anyway. Might as well get two requests for the price of one, eh?”
He snorted, but the sorrow didn’t leave his eyes.
“Fare thee well, Quentin. You’ve been a most excellent friend to me.”
He lifted a hand before she turned away.
“Adrasteia, before you go . . . may I hug you?”
She hesitated. His overture spooled out like a coil of rope over a chasm, thin as spidersilk, but also perhaps as strong. “I think . . . I think I would like that.”
It wasn’t magic. A hug didn’t fix everything. Perhaps it didn’t fix anything at all. But it did feel good.
Really, really good.
She might have cried then, finally. Maybe just a little.
Chapter 69
Kip had approached docking his armada at the Chromeria as if it were a military assault. His little army was his pry bar, and a pry bar is good for nothing if you can’t wedge it into place.
So he hid most of his ships beyond the horizon, low and mastless as they were, and came in with Ben-hadad, Cruxer, and Tisis on skimmers, all of them dressed in blacks nearly identical to Blackguard garb.
The docks had been transformed in the time the Mighty had been gone: expanded to deal with the crush of refugees and the ships necessary to supply them from all over the satrapies, but also with additional fortifications. There were towers, more ballistae, and the walls themselves were taller and likely thicker, too.
They did all seem to be staffed by Andross Guile’s Lightguard, though, making Kip almost hope some small violence was necessary.
He and the first wave broke up, seeking out the harbormaster and her apprentices and besieging them by any means necessary: Cruxer charming the woman with his good looks, Ben-hadad faking a medical emergency, Kip with a thousand questions, and Tisis distracting half a dozen journeymen herself with charm and cleavage, having changed into her finest silks and a giant hat that blocked the view of the men and women disembarking behind her. Meanwhile, other skimmers docked in a steady drip, drip, drip.
A few of the men who’d left Daragh the Coward to join Kip had been thieves (a really long time ago, before they’d totally, completely, utterly changed, sir!). Skilled ones, too, they bragged. He’d directed these to go deep into the crowds immediately, waiting on spotters who looked for any messengers sent toward the Chromeria. It was a slender hope, of course, with so many people jamming the docks.
Kip accepted an interruption by one of his new Mighty with the journeyman he was arguing with and headed for the Chromeria himself. Within two blocks, Ferkudi, Cruxer, and Winsen fell in with him.