Then the doors opened.
Through their training, the half-dozen Blackguards in the foyer were all glancing at the opening lift door, and they gawked at the sight of King Ironfist sodden with blood, even his face sticky with the stuff, his many-colored finery soaked with gore. Teia wasn’t looking at the faces, though—she was staring at their hands.
They all moved forward. It was what they were trained to do, to move toward danger, to confront whatever shocked or threatened them in order to give aid or to defend the defenseless behind them. For Teia to find the threat with that much sudden motion all coming toward her, all of them armed to the teeth, was nearly impossible. Left side, left side—
Right side!
A young Blackguard she didn’t know stepped forward, wide-eyed with fear, too fast for a paryl pinch to his nerves. Ironfist was moving to meet the threat himself, but he was way too slow. As the young man lunged, Teia dove beneath Ironfist’s rising arm and slashed up with both knives.
Her first missed the blade she was trying to intercept, but passed cleanly through the young man’s wrist. Hand and blade went spinning. Her other blade sank deep into the young man’s groin.
Then Ironfist’s open hand slapped into the young man’s face, and stopped. The chain wrapped full around the would-be assassin’s head. Then Ironfist tore back in the other direction, snapping the young man’s neck and flinging his body away.
Behind the first ranks of Blackguards, Teia saw Gill Greyling coming running, shouting at his men to stop, stop!
But the problem of training people to react with instant lethality to threats is that they do. One of the veteran Blackguards was reaching for the sleeve of a young man next to her, but four Blackguards were already attacking.
A wall of paryl heat blasted out of Teia as it had once at Ruic Head. Everyone nearby fell back, feeling as if their skin were on fire.
“Naught Naught One! Naught Naught One!” Gill Greyling shouted, “Stop, stop, stop! I saw everything! Stop!” He arrived only a second later, interposing himself between the Blackguards and Ironfist.
Ironfist collapsed into Gill’s arms. “Get me in there,” he gasped.
But Teia was looking down the hall, past all the Blackguards who were rushing this way—even men and women who should have known better, who had been taught to stay at their stations. But she saw one person moving in the opposite direction.
Not a Blackguard.
Any civilian would rush toward the excitement to see what was happening. This one disappeared against the flow of the crowd.
A lookout, Teia guessed. To warn the Old Man.
But two dozen Blackguards and innumerable civilians who hadn’t been allowed into the audience chamber were crowding into the foyer.
Teia pushed through them, ducking and dodging, not caring if anyone saw her. She saw Grinwoody, not twenty paces away, pop out of the door of the audience chamber and then run toward the lift on the opposite side of the tower.
It took her far too long to win her way clear of the crowd and go after him. The Blackguards who were stationed here had abandoned their posts. In the lifts, she felt the lines for vibration. Up. He’d gone up to the Prism’s and White’s level.
She didn’t know of any escapes above her—was he gathering his papers?—no, wait, she didn’t know of any escapes from higher in the tower except from the roof!
But two minutes later, she was on the roof. Alone. He hadn’t triggered the escape lines. He had some other escape.
She’d missed him. The Old Man of the Desert was gone.
Chapter 95
Teia was shaking badly. It was irritating as hell.
But when the battle-juice rush disappears, the body reacts, and she’d never had quite as much of its rush as she had in saving Ironfist (she hoped she’d saved him, anyway) and nearly killing the Old Man of the Desert.
Grinwoody. That devious, slippery little bastard. That toad, sitting at Andross Guile’s elbow for all those years.
In all her hunting, she’d looked past him a hundred times. She hated that everyone overlooked slaves, that everyone considered them beneath notice—and she’d done it herself. She’d been a slave. She was a slave. And she’d looked right past him.
She was so mad at herself, she wanted to kill something. Scratch that. Someone.
In fact, that was just the thing for it. But she had to find him first.
With the commotion she and Ironfist had made downstairs, there were only two Blackguards on the entire floor. But she’d been drafting paryl for hours, and she was tapped out.
Not to mention trembling.
Blackguards were going to be coming back to their stations soon, and she was in no state to fight or evade them with any dexterity. In fact, she was having trouble maintaining invisibility.
Shit.
She needed rest. For a moment, she thought of going to her little closet. But that was where she’d had that dream. Nightmare.
Abaddon.
He was looking for her.
She wasn’t going to sleep there again.
Belatedly, too late maybe, she took up a position outside the Old Man’s secret room in the lift shaft. He’d gone up when he fled, not down, so she knew that he hadn’t come here first. Would he come this way at all?
If he were going to flee permanently, she assumed that he would come to his office first. She assumed this was his office. She assumed that he would have riches and supplies in a go-bag in here, and that he would at least stop for that.
It was a lot of assumptions, but she had to get lucky sometime, right?
Every time a lift went past her, she tensed, and tonight, the lifts were never still. Panicky people at first, then guards and Blackguards and Tafok Amagez, then messengers, then nobles, then more messengers all through the night.
After a few hours, she told herself she had to be patient, that the Old Man was being patient. He needed to get his stuff, but he couldn’t afford to arouse suspicion with the lifts as busy as they were.
Teia assumed that at some point, Ben-hadad and Magister Kadah would finish their work on the code, so they would meet her here. It had been much longer than six hours now, but surely the woman would eventually get it, right?
But the night passed. Teia dozed standing, jerking awake every time a lift passed. None ever paused, even for a moment, and the darkness was a warm embrace.
No one ever came. She’d gambled her hours and lost.
So sometime after dawn, she made her way to Magister Kadah’s room. Maybe the woman had worked out how to open that door. If not, at least she could give Teia a place to sleep.
She knocked on the door with their agreed-upon series of taps.
Shit, Teia thought, she didn’t think she could have missed them. Maybe they’d decided to sleep a few hours to tackle the code afresh.
Anyway, she definitely needed to tell someone else that the Old Man was Grinwoody. She didn’t know if Ironfist had had the clarity to realize how important it was to get that out. To Karris only, if possible. Grinwoody would have other people who were in the audience chamber—they would tell him immediately if Ironfist had blurted out his name.
If that happened, Grinwoody might flee forever. Might have already, actually. Dammit.
But first, she had to tell Ben the Old Man’s identity.
She tested the door. It wasn’t locked.
That didn’t seem wise.
“Hey, you two,” Teia said, “please tell me you’re not—”