Teia poked her head out the first door she thought she might have heard, knowing it might be met with a sword.
But there was nothing.
She ran up another floor, threw the door open. A young slave woman setting down a clean bucket of water by her mop looked up, and seemed curious that she didn’t see anyone there.
Next floor, nothing . . . nothing . . . nothing.
He was here. The Old Man was here in the Prism’s Tower. He was close. But Teia hadn’t found him in time. She’d hesitated too long, been too careful.
This had been her last chance to root out the Order of the Broken Eye without getting her friends killed. It had been her last chance to save her father.
Teia’s last hope fizzled, sputtered, and went out.
She made her way woodenly to the dead drop and left her sign for Karris: Can we stamp out the Order? ‘No.’
Teia had failed.
Chapter 75
“In two or three days now,” Karris said to her gathered luxiats, “all the work we’ve done will be tested. The King of Wights—the man who once was my brother—is coming. He will attack. And if he has his way, he will not stop until this island is nothing but blackened rubble and blood.”
In the dangers and the heavy labor she’d demanded, her originally picked one hundred had first dwindled down to sixty-five luxiats, and then surged to nearly two hundred. Some were surely spies, but what did she care, so long as they helped her work?
She’d even said so, openly. She’d come to revel in the power of the truth.
“In our time together,” she said, “you’ve served better than I could’ve asked. You’ve brought new purpose to the people of the Jaspers, and lent your muscles and your voices to our empire’s defense and to Orholam’s cause.”
She could see in their faces that they felt uneasy at her praise, and at the timing. Midnight, for one of their meetings? They’d been careful about when they met, before, but not exactly clandestine.
This felt different. There was an urgency here.
“You think this sounds like a farewell,” she said bluntly. “It may be. Too often, this empire has fought senseless wars over who would get to wear the purple. Too often it has fought for whomever or for whatever would put the most coins in its purse. This isn’t one of those wars. This fight is for our survival and the survival of all we love. Looking back, we can have clear hearts about the work we’ve done: the defenses repaired, the stores refilled, the people inspired. Looking ahead, my charge to you is simple.
“Serve where there is need. Carry water to the thirsty. Carry the wounded to help. Comfort the dying. Carry gunpowder and shot. If you feel called, take up arms. But let me now be clear. I am not asking you to live for this people. I’m asking you to die for them. I’m not asking you to die as martyrs—have some humility and leave that for your betters.” She grinned, and they laughed at her inversion: too humble for martyrdom? But then she grew serious. “I’m asking you to die as heroes. A martyr surrenders her life willingly; a hero fights to the end. Fight to the end.”
She paused, and saw in the somber faces not fear but resolve.
“Know that I’m not asking you to go where I’m unwilling to lead. For some time I have had the growing sense that I shall die during this fight myself.” A sense? Well, it had been only that—until she’d seen Teia’s signal. Now it was a full-fledged premonition. The Order couldn’t be stopped. All of Karris’s grand purposes were being stymied.
A quiet chorus of denials went through the assembled young women and men, though, and their faces were writ with dismay.
“I’m not telling you that to elicit your pity or, Orholam forbid, your awe. I tell you because the knowledge of my own mortality has brought a question before me in a way I can’t help but answer. It’s a question I want to present humbly to you as well. Pray on it, and then act on your answer. Look to me to do the same.” She took a moment to look at their faces. So young. So full of light and courage it broke her heart. “You and I have been called to serve. If the next days are our last, how dare we waste them in fear?”
She saw swallowing, and heads nodding. Many of those gathered were the bookish sort, not men or women who were quick to act. “Run the course Orholam lays before you. I know you’ll make me proud.”
There was no cheering at that. The weight of the moment had settled over all of them, her not least of all.
It was as honest as she could be without someone trying to stop her from doing what she knew she had to do. She’d made her peace with it.
When Ironfist demanded her hand as the price for his armies, there was no way to say no and still get those armies. She couldn’t plead that Gavin was still alive without getting Teia killed—and nullifying all the young woman’s sacrifices. The Order hadn’t been stopped in time.
Karris’s own words and actions hemmed her in now, and revealed the path she had to walk. I won’t be without error, she’d promised, but when I do err, I’ll pay the price for it.
In committing bigamy, she would save her people by dishonoring the two men who meant the most in the world to her. In deliberately breaking her oaths, she would dishonor her office and undermine every other oath she’d made. She would undermine everything she’d been trying to accomplish in the Magisterium.
There was no way out of her impending marriage that wouldn’t cost lives and honor. So she would buy the armies with her own dishonor, and then her own life. She would go out and fight Koios, seeking death. And if death eluded her, she would suicide. Not out of despair, but to expiate dishonor. It wasn’t death before dishonor. It would be death in order to make dishonor end.
It wasn’t what she’d hoped for. It wasn’t what she wanted. But she was willing.
No one seemed to want to leave, but finally, one awkward young man came forward. “High Lady,” he said quietly. “This time I’ve spent serving with you has been the best thing in my life. This is why I wanted to be a luxiat. I have a premonition that I’m gonna die in this battle. Will you bless me?”
He knelt in front of her.
And so she blessed him. And then the next young luxiat. And then she blessed each and every one of them in turn, with an encouraging word here and there, but sometimes only a long, weighing look into their eyes, as she hoped she showed them Orholam’s approval reflected in her own.
Last came Quentin in his silks and cumbersome gold chains. He didn’t kneel as the others had; he merely waited, as any other slave would—at least until everyone else had left.
“You’re planning to do something rash, aren’t you?” he asked.
“Not rash, no. I’ve thought about it for quite some time.”
“All this talk of dying . . .” Quentin shook his head. “Would you like to tell me more about that?”
“No,” she said, and tried to soften the rebuff with a smile. But it came out sad.
Quentin cocked his head. “You told me once that you’d had a word from Orholam, through Orea White and the Third Eye? That He would repay you the years the locusts have eaten?”
“Yes,” she said. Her lip twitched ruefully.
“You believed it once. Do you not anymore?”