“When’s it wear off?” she asked.
“You shamed me,” he said. “I shared with you. I trusted you. And this? This is . . . oohhh.” He fell over and puked noisily.
“How long’s it last?” Teia asked. “Please.”
“Stupid, stupid bitch.” He puked again.
“I’m stupid?” Teia asked. “Who’s the one who had his enemy tied up and didn’t finish the job? Who kidnapped me twice?”
A silly smile painted his puke-strewn face. “Stupid because . . . I never dosed you with the lacrimae sanguinis. Just the poppy. I couldn’t kill you, Teia. I couldn’ t—”
And then the convulsions began. His feet drummed against the stone floor.
It took forever, and he was incapable of speech from then on. His eyes raging at her, then rolling back in his head. His dentures had flown from his mouth and lay in a pool of vomit. He gnawed at the floor with his broken teeth, dug his fingers into it.
It was awful, and it was long, too long in her drugged stupor, before she realized she could draft paryl if she wanted to.
Unless he was lying about that. Tricking her.
He was a cunning one.
Well, she had shit to do in the next day, and she’d need paryl to do it. Might as well find out now.
She took one breath, let her fears gather in the wind in her lungs, and then blew it all out into the world. Then she flared her eyes before she took the next breath.
And didn’t die.
That was nice.
She looked at the tiniest cutting tool on Sharp’s tray and with ridiculous amounts of paryl was just barely able to lift the little thing and float it to her hand. She cut herself free of her bonds.
Then she walked over to Sharp’s desk and took out his favorite diplomatic dentures, the blindingly bright white ones.
Taking a glass of water, she gently rinsed out his mouth. He coughed weakly as some went down the wrong way. But then, in between convulsions, she put his dentures in his mouth, giving him some dignity back. As much dignity as a man dying spasming in pools of vomit can get, anyway.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “For speaking cruelly. Good night, Elijah ben-Zoheth.”
He couldn’t speak now. The light was already dimming from his eyes. She didn’t know if he heard her at all. With paryl, she squeezed his spine to stop the pain and then stopped his heart, too.
It was a mercy too long delayed.
She stood and looked down on him. There was nothing peaceful in the tension-locked corpse.
She found her split tooth and tucked it into his clenched fist.
“I feel bulletproof,” she told the dead man. “And I don’t think that’s such a good thing right now.”
For a while, she looked around the secret office, and realized that she kept forgetting what she was looking for.
“Oh!” she said suddenly, holding it up triumphantly. “The master cloak. Sharp, silly, you never even asked me about it!”
She put it on, and felt a little more herself. Then realized she was still wearing the dress Sharp had put her in. His mother’s dress? Yuck. And he’d undressed her to put it on her? Double yuck.
Eventually, she found her own clothes, feeling a little better when she realized that she was still wearing her own underthings. Sharp had been a sick man, but at least he wasn’t that kind of sick. It took her a while to get dressed. She might have dozed off for a few minutes. Or hours. She’d never used opiates before, so she wasn’t sure how long it was going to take for them to wear off.
But there was no time to wait until she was at her full strength.
She gathered up her things, and everything of Murder Sharp’s that seemed like it might be useful. Before she went, she closed his dead eyes. There was nothing tentative or overly gentle in her motions. He was just meat now.
Giving him this last kindness wasn’t for him, it was for her. He’d become a monster, but she had the seeds of the same monster in her. And there had been something in him that hadn’t been all monster; his goodness was always poking through at the oddest moments.
But she’d killed better.
Next stop, the Order of the Broken Eye’s holiday, the Feast of the Night’s Coming Triumph. Or whatever the hell it was called.
Maybe she’d be sober by then.
Chapter 100
“Thank you for coming,” Andross said. “I know it’s been a terrible day.”
His note had politely mentioned he would withdraw all support from Kip’s martial positions tomorrow if they didn’t come, so here, late at night, the Mighty had gathered in Andross’s stateroom. Their moods ranged from sullen to stoic to jagged. The demands of duty could only block out so much grief.
Suspecting a trap, Tisis hadn’t come.
“Koios will attack at dawn, if he’s able,” Andross said.
“Most of the tacticians think he’ll wait. He’s only just setting up his siege,” Kip said.
“The tacticians have the tactics right, but the strategy wrong,” Andross said.
“It’d be a terrible move,” Kip said.
“No, not terrible. Simply not his strongest. If the White King can shut down our drafters—which he believes he can—then he is already vastly more powerful than we are. He doesn’t need to play it safe, surround us, lay siege, and summon his troops to exactly the right area to focus an attack. He can just attack.”
“He’s been patient elsewhere,” Kip said. “Why on this, the most important battle, would he rush headlong?” And why are you having this conversation with us, rather than with High General Danavis?
“Because he has to attack on Sun Day,” Andross said. “His sea battle with you slowed him. I’m sure he would have preferred to get here earlier and set up at his leisure. Now he has to rush in. There’s no other choice.”
“Wouldn’t he want to not attack on Sun Day?” Kip asked. “He’s a pagan.”
“Maybe usually. Not this time. Thumbing his nose at Orholam is worth a few thousand more dead to him,” Andross said.
“Ah,” Kip said. That made sense. Not only could Koios satisfy his personal animosity against Orholam—probably the most important reason—but he would also show the Seven Satrapies that Orholam was powerless on His holiest day, in the very center of His power.
All remaining resistance would fold after that. The old gods would have shown they were more powerful than Orholam at His greatest. Although it would make this battle more difficult, it would make reigning afterward much easier.
Koios was still playing the long game.
“So let’s win, shall we?” Andross said. “To that end, I have gifts for you.”
Kip and the others looked at one another. Gifts? Andross Guile?
“Commander Leonidas,” Andross said. A slave brought forward a huge rosewood box that he seemed to have difficulty carrying.
“Leonidas?” Kip asked. “Big Leo?”
“I know, I know, it sounds like a girl’s name,” Big Leo said sheepishly.
He opened the box.
“Oh, you shouldn’t have.” On the top was a thick black leather coat with a high collar. Across the chest was the Mighty’s sigil in white leather. He picked it up; it was obviously very heavy, with chain and plate woven in beneath the leather.