“Worst Sun Day ever, you mean,” Ben-hadad said, shooing them forward to walk once more, silently counting out his paces.
“On the contrary,” Quentin said.
“How so?” Ben asked. “Fourteen more paces, I think.”
“A pagan invasion, on Sun Day itself? Where we have scant hope of victory?” Quentin asked.
“Yeah,” Teia said. “We’re agreed on that much.”
“It seems to me such a time is precisely when Orholam must show His power.”
“Or else we’re fucked,” Ben-hadad said.
“Yes! So He will show His power.”
Teia and Ben both looked at Quentin like he was out of his mind. Ben shook his head.
“Three more paces.”
Quentin said, “I’m not saying I’m eager for the—”
Ben said, “I don’t know where you found this guy, Teia, but—”
“What do you mean, where I found him?!” Teia said, and then stopped at an unfamiliar voice.
“Teia?” a girl repeated, looking straight at Teia. In front of them was a discipula, carrying a mop and bucket. She wore her hair in a bun with flyaways everywhere, was maybe fourteen years old, and looked even younger.
They had never met, Teia was sure of it.
“Teia Darksight?” the girl said.
“Huh?” Teia asked. A flash of fear shocked her like a flash grenade. She’d thought herself quite nondescript.
“You’re Teia Darksight,” the girl said, wide-eyed.
“Oh dear,” Quentin said.
“O’s itchy bung!” Ben-hadad said. He flowed forward just as the girl squeaked and brought her hands up to her cheeks, dropping her bucket.
Ben-hadad snatched the mop bucket out of midair and popped the handle of the mop back up into his hand with a dextrous flick of his cane. Teia had almost forgotten that for all of his technical genius, Ben-hadad had made it through Blackguard training, too.
“It is you!” the girl said, paying no attention to Ben-hadad or the impressive feat of dexterity he’d just performed.
Maybe not fourteen yet, then, part of Teia thought. Ben-hadad was annoyingly handsome.
But another part of her was already doing what was necessary. Paryl shot from Teia’s fingertips and into the girl’s chest. In a moment, Teia had the knot ready to slam home to sever the nerves that told the heart to beat.
She’d loused up. She’d let herself feel at home here, in the building that had once been her home. And now she had to kill this girl. This pale, wispy thing, all knees and elbows and big baby eyes and crooked teeth, mopping the halls as punishment for some mild transgression—this girl had to die. An hour ago she’d probably been jabbering complaints about this harsh magister or that reading that was way too hard.
That was just and right; it was as it should be.
Every painful stage of life is dictated by nature to make a woman. But nature’s abortions are frequent and rude. Today, this girl would be one more civilian dead in a centuries-long war that only Teia could end. A necessary corpse. One innocent, who had to be killed because you couldn’t trust an entire war’s outcome to the discretion of a fourteen-year-old. An innocent, murdered because Teia had loused up. Teia had killed innocents before, but those had been innocents she’d been forced to kill. This was forced only by her own error. She’d let down her guard.
A woman like her could never, ever let her guard down.
This girl was innocent, but was her life worth so much more than a slave’s life?
“Teia Darksight?” Ben-hadad asked. And Teia realized it had only been an instant that she’d stood paralyzed with the killing threads in her hands.
“Don’t you know?” the girl asked. “She’s the first paryl drafter in centuries!”
“No, she’s not,” Ben-hadad said, puzzled. “There’ve been a doz—”
“But everyone knows her! Mistress Teia, will you show me—”
Flaring her eyes to their fullest spooky black, Teia roared aloud at her. It was a cry of a damned soul. It was every old warrior’s plaint, every penitent’s wail.
But she did what had to be done.
The young girl squeaked and bolted.
“Subtle, T,” Ben-hadad said. “I’m sure she won’t tell any of her friends about meeting you now.”
But Teia barely heard the jibe.
Ben-hadad didn’t know.
He didn’t know how bad this was. They hadn’t had that long together. She hadn’t gone into specifics. He didn’t know the stakes. He thought they were just messing around in areas where maybe someone might realize they shouldn’t be.
“Subtle . . . T,” he continued. “I think you’ve got a new nickname! Subtle T!”
“Is this the door?” she asked. Subtle T was exactly the kind of name that could stick. It sounded laudatory to outsiders, but could either be praise or a quiet mock among comrades.
It made her miss the Mighty. These damn boys. It made her miss her old life.
Patch or no patch, she could never be part of the Mighty now. It was a fantasy to think she could ever pick up where she’d left off.
She’d never stopped to think what would happen after she took down the Order, had she? It had seemed such an impossibility, her mind had simply refused to go further.
There was no further.
But enough of that now. Teia had to be present, had to be sharp. Enough of thinking about that girl—that poor, innocent girl who would tire in a few minutes as her heart was slowly starved of blood, who would go lie down to nap and never rise.
“Yeah, this should be it,” Ben-hadad said.
Silently, Quentin was staring at Teia. She hadn’t told Quentin about everything she could do now, but Quentin knew.
Ben knocked on a door.
“What are you going to do if someone answers?” Teia asked.
“Hadn’t thought that far ahead,” he said. But he flicked down his blue lenses, and his hand filled with a blob of blue luxin.
The dread sat heavier and heavier in Teia’s stomach.
Ben-hadad shrugged, deciding no one was coming, and jammed the blob of open blue luxin he’d drafted into the lock, solidified it, and turned. “I’m not really sure why the Chromeria even bothers to have locks,” he said.
“Hold on,” Teia said, feeling ill. “I’ve just made a terrible mistake.”
She fled down the hall after the girl.
She was lucky. The girl had reached the slaves’ stairs and realized she’d left her mop and bucket. She’d be in big trouble if she lost them. But the girl was still shocked when Teia approached on silent feet. She held her hands up in front of her face defensively, like Teia was going to hurt her.
“What’s your name?” Teia asked quietly. She started working instantly to unravel what she’d done. Orholam have mercy, she’d gotten good at laying death traps, but not so good at removing them.
“Clara.”
“What do they have you mopping for?” Teia asked.
Clara gulped. “Atarah called me a slatte—ahem, a name. So I tried to slap her, but I sort of missed? and I broke her nose instead. Two months I’ve been mopping after lectures every day.”
“Ha,” Teia said. “In the Blackguard, you’d not be mopping for that slap.”