“Enough, proceed,” the Old Man said.
Teia could hardly pay attention to him, though. From the lack of tension and the lapsing out of Braxian, it was clear that the more sensitive part of the meeting was finished. From here, she could tail one of the others, and from learning his identity, eventually reveal one additional congregation from that one additional priest. But if she were lucky, she could follow the Old Man of the Desert himself.
“There’s a problem with the, the abad el shams. Shit, that’s not right . . . the poppies. We have none.” Oh, that was it! This priest had sounded familiar. He was the one with the haze smoker’s harsh voice who’d ordered Teia to strip when they’d initiated her into the Order.
That bastard.
“Ezay deh?” the Old Man demanded.
“The Chromeria’s been buying them up for medical supplies. One of our regular sources admitted that he’d guessed we wouldn’t pay him as much as the Chromeria would, and he was too afraid to try to charge us more, so he sold all he had to them. He is willing to procure toad caps for us, though.”
“Those taste positively foul. I can’t bring a wine strong enough to cover the taste! Even with incense and spices,” Atevia said, lapsing out of the Braxian as well.
“We could simply do without,” the other man said. “As the old saying goes, ‘Erdah be El sada lehad matofrago,’ right? Or with enough honey . . .”
The Old Man sighed. “I’ll arrange for enough poppy to be accidentally released from the Chromeria’s stores. Which of you will pick it up? Murder Sharp maak yakhod balo menak.”
Murder Sharp what? What the hell was that?
“I can get it,” Atevia said glumly. “Directions?”
Those, naturally, were all given in Braxian.
Teia wondered what would happen if she tried to kill these men here and now. Orholam, if she’d been thinking, she could have brought a grenado packed with shrapnel. With her skills and her cloak, though, what were her chances of killing them all if she went into that room now?
If she attacked though, even if she killed them all, she wouldn’t get the list of all the members—and she needed that list. Without it, the Order could start right back up again. And she wouldn’t find out where they had her father.
So she had to follow the Old Man. He was the center of everything. Follow him, identify him, wait until he went to his secret office. Then Teia could kill him and be certain the Order would implode.
She was close now, close to success for the first time. Close to saving her father.
They’d all entered the room from different directions, so it made sense they would leave different ways, too. And all cloaked and hooded, no doubt. She thought she’d gleaned as much as she could from eavesdropping—they were just talking about who was going to bring the drugs and alcohol to the party now, and not even in Braxian. Now she concentrated on getting the positioning of each of the priests within the room to try to give herself the best chance of following the correct one when they all left.
She was going to have to make a guess on which one to tail. The Old Man of the Desert had his paryl spectacles.
Teia would have to be masterful.
She guessed that the men would at least leave the room by the same ways they’d entered, in order to change back into their street clothes. That meant being in this room was useless to her. She already knew where Atevia lived.
It was time for Teia to gamble with her life yet again.
Invisible, she put an ear to the outer door. She couldn’t hear anything. Pricey brothel, give it that—thick walls so you didn’t hear what your neighbors were doing. More importantly, she supposed, they didn’t hear you. She was going to have to risk it.
She eased the door open far enough to peek, saw the hostess leading a woman down the hall. Teia closed the door quietly. She extended paryl below the door and across the hall and waited. When she felt someone break the tendrils, she waited another couple of heartbeats and then eased the door open.
The hall was empty. The hostess was five paces farther down, showing the woman to a room.
The halls were a rabbit’s warren—much larger than she would have guessed from above. Within a minute or so, though, Teia had scoped out several entrances to a larger chamber, where the Order’s high priests were meeting, and a few nooks in which she might hide without using paryl.
None too soon, either. She was standing at an intersection when a door opened on each side. Identical cloaked figures stepped out simultaneously. She was on the opposite side from where Atevia had entered, so neither of these men were him. She had only two choices, and the Old Man of the Desert might not have been either of these men.
It was the flip of a coin.
This is on You, Orholam. If You want me—
The man to her left bobbed his head as he turned his back toward her and raised a finger toward his face as if pushing up a pair of spectacles.
Spectacles? Like the paryl spectacles the Old Man had?
Now the question was how far they worked. Teia could see paryl about thirty or forty paces out in sunlight, maybe twice that far in the dark. Were the spectacles that good? What if they were better?
She followed at a safe distance, thought she lost him when she was overly cautious coming out of the Crossroads, but identified him again by his gait—she hoped. The master cloak gave her a huge advantage, though, even when she didn’t use it for invisibility. She started with it as a worn deep-blue cloak, folded it down on her shoulders and changed it to a green-and-black check pattern, and bound a scarf around her head quickly before she came up the stairs out of the basement, and then went with a muted brown to go with a wide-brimmed petasos she stole from a merchant’s stall before she got to the Lily’s Stem.
She had to hurry when he got to the Chromeria, but she lost him in the great hall. She caught a glimpse of a man who might be him, wearing a slave’s garb and entering the servants’ stairs.
Teia hesitated.
This was where things got even more dangerous. If he were aware of her at all, this would be where he sprang his trap. If she went invisibly, the Old Man might notice her paryl. If she went visibly, any Chromeria slave or servant might stop her coming up their stairs—she wasn’t dressed as a slave, and sightseers and supplicants for the White often tried to jump the lines by doing that.
The last options were for Teia to go as a slave and possibly be rec-ognized, or go as a Blackguard and definitely be recognized.
Would the staff know that a certain Blackguard was missing? What would Teia do if a Blackguard came down the stairs? The Blackguards often used the stairs for convenience or speed. After all, technically, they, too, were slaves.
Cursing inwardly at the stupidity of it all—Teia should be the one secure here, and the Old Man afraid, not the other way around!—Teia wrapped herself in a paryl cloud and darted into the door. She was exhausted from all her drafting, and from the tension, but she couldn’t give up now.
Her boiled-rubber-soled shoes were nearly silent as she jogged up the steps.
Doors opened and doors closed, casting echoes down the great spiraling stairs where Kip and the Mighty had nearly died fighting last year. Too many openings and closings. The stairs were sometimes empty for several minutes, and at other times they were as busy as at the Lily’s Stem. To her horror, now seemed like one of the latter times.