“Felia,” I say, “how can you even ask that? While you translate this? If there’s no Lightbringer, we’re doomed. Everything. Everyone. I—”
She brushes it off. “Karris Atiriel or her followers demolished the temple and city and put to the sword those who wouldn’t flee. The wrecked town was settled by refugees from other places, who eventually called it Rekton.
“Andross, if Janus was right about Dazen, and if all these leaps of intuition are somehow correct . . . What if ‘the black fires of hell’ means ‘burning hellstone’? ‘Living hellstone’? ‘A great rock’ could be ‘the Great Rock’ . . . Andy, it could mean, ‘Breaking the Great Rock, black luxin shall unleash the Two Hundred once more upon the earth.’ ” She takes a deep breath. “Gavin is trying to trap Dazen at Anat’s Great Rock.”
“And,” I say, a dread birthed full grown from my heart in an instant, “Dazen can draft black luxin.”
She looks out the ship’s porthole. “What we’ve sacrificed—and what we’ve stolen from that poor librarian—has bought us all we needed to know to avert catastrophe, but too late. Gavin sent this letter a week ago. There’s no way we can get to Rekton in time to stop them.”
Chapter 72
There were only two ways Teia could uproot the entire Order of the Broken Eye, and tonight was her last chance to take the option that didn’t involve dozens of loyal Chromeria soldiers dying. Tonight, it seemed, the priests of the various sects were meeting with the Old Man of the Desert himself to pull together the details for the Feast of the Dying Light.
Or, as not-evil fucks called it, Sun Day Eve.
The Braxians didn’t celebrate the summer solstice as the longest day of the year; they celebrated it as the day after which the days would get shorter. That sort of made sense for the desert-dwelling Braxians, who’d suffered under the blistering, debilitating heat of their desert summers, but it still seemed kind of evil to Teia. Doubly so now, because these new Braxians weren’t desert people at all; the new followers of the Order just hated Orholam.
She could be wrong, of course. She’d been shadowing Atevia—Shadowing? she thought.
No, T, stop thinking. Last time you thought too much, you nearly had to explain ‘nocturnal emissions’ to a luxiat.
She’d been, ahem, shadowing Atevia pretty much constantly, and she’d still missed the plant. The barrel-chested wine merchant/pagan priest had reached into a pocket and suddenly flinched in a way that made it obvious he’d found something there that hadn’t been there before. Then he’d made his way hurriedly into a nearby alley, looked around furtively, and opened it. It must have been only a few words, because he closed it before Teia could lean around him to read it.
“Hate it when the old man does that,” Atevia muttered. “What if I hadn’t checked my pockets before tonight?”
Had he meant ‘the old man,’ or ‘the Old Man’?
Teia followed him as he meandered around clearly looking for something, the note still in his hand.
She had to get that note! ‘Before tonight’? That meant there was a meeting tonight, or ‘before tonight,’ didn’t it?
Having failed, up till now, to find the Old Man’s hidden office and a master list of the Order’s members, Teia now only had two ways to destroy the Order of the Broken Eye. First, find out where they were holding their big joint ritual for the Feast of the Dying Light. Through some pretense, Karris could gather a bunch of soldiers at the last moment, not telling any of them or their commanders why, and then have them sprint to the place (so as to give no traitors time to send a messenger on ahead of them).
Then Karris’s soldiers would attack the meeting directly.
There likely wouldn’t be any arrests. The Order knew that if they were captured, Orholam’s Glare awaited them. They would surely rather fight and die than face that. And the Order, fighting? That was a daunting prospect. How many Shadows would be gathered there with them?
Such a clash would likely be the end of the Order, but it would also likely be a bloodbath for both sides. And the Chromeria might still fail to get all its leaders. Teia would be there to help, but the leaders would have exit strategies, and everyone was disguised—how could Teia block every exit? She was only one person.
Maybe if she found the place early enough, she could scout it out and mark all the exits? But the Order would have Shadows and others double-checking that the site was secure beforehand.
That wasn’t a situation she wanted to get into.
She might not have any choice.
The second option was much better: Teia would follow Atevia to this meeting with the Old Man and then track him to his lair, interrogate, and kill him. Somewhere, likely in that very room, he would have code books and a list of members, maybe even her father’s location.
Even if things went wrong (and there were plenty that could), simply having the Old Man’s identity in addition to Atevia’s would be enough for Karris to triangulate the rest.
Once the Old Man and the priests were known to be dead, people like Aglaia who were on the outer circles of membership would start running for the exits—and when captured and facing the Glare, those folks would start giving up their contacts.
And Teia was close now; she could feel it. Tonight.
Teia had guessed that today or tonight there would have to be some sort of meeting of the priests to discuss the Feast. When your paranoia keeps you from trusting lower-level members of your cult with even the basic details (like, where a big party is going to be held), that meant the top-level people had to do all the grunt work. ‘Where are we meeting?’ ‘Is it safe?’ ‘Is it clean?’ ‘Where do people change into their disguises?’ ‘Who’s searching the guests for weapons this year?’ ‘Who’s confirming that only people who belong are attending?’
Hell, if she was really lucky, she might get the Old Man’s identity and the location of the Feast. Karris could attack the meeting in a safer way—trying to capture as many as possible but not worrying if some escaped—while Teia unraveled the organization from the top down.
Seeming dissatisfied, scowling at—at what? a missed contact?—Atevia sighed.
He threw up his palms, showing Teia that he was still holding that damned scrap of paper. Flash paper, it looked like, maybe? Then Atevia ducked into a tavern.
Orholam’s burning piss but Teia had learned to hate doors.
Atevia seemed paranoid, so Teia didn’t want to tread on his heels to follow him into the tavern. She didn’t know if this door swung shut by itself, or if he’d have to pull it closed behind him—which would trap her between his bulk and a door that he was reaching to close.
If he so much as touched her, everything she’d done was for naught.
She stayed back, cursing to herself.
The door swung slowly shut by itself as Atevia strolled deep into the tavern. Dammit, she’d have been fine to follow him right in.
She waited for the next patron.
Who never came.
A minute passed. Had he left through a back door, a secret basement? Was he gone already? Had she missed her only chance?
Shit, shit, shit!
Just as she’d decided she really did have to open the door, invisible or not, the door opened from inside. Atevia stepped out, rubbing his fingers. Rubbing ash from his fingers.