It’s never good . . . but this is not bad. And just the once.
“Do you know why you think you’re special?” she asks quietly, and I know we’re not even close to finished.
I should stall, but the words escape before I think of it. “Why, Mistress?”
“Because you’re an arrogant little shit,” she says. She laughs like hell’s own gatekeeper.
She whips me harder than I’ve ever been whipped in my life. My breath leaps from my throat, tears to my eyes. Then again. Forehand and backhand she strikes, as hard as she can.
The mirror slaves are dead silent. Under the fires, I feel my skin slice open. Feel hot liquid pouring down my legs.
“Ow, fuck!” she says. The lashes stop.
I fall to my knees.
When I dare to turn, I see her holding her forearm. She’s been hitting me so hard, she hurt herself.
I can’t even find thoughts, though. Not even to mock her.
“Mistress, please,” Amadis says. “It’s enough. There’s so much blood. He won’t be able to hide it from High Lord Black if you do any more. He’ll miss shifts as it is!”
“No, he won’t!” Overseer Ysabel shouts. She slaps my face and I crash to the ground.
I hear her cursing when I regain my senses. She’s still holding her forearm.
The stupid cow just hit me with the same arm she’s injured.
I stay down, weeping. There’s no pride left in me to hold back tears.
“Get up! Now! Or it’ll be forty more,” she barks at me. “Amadis, you take the ‘cat’! You get to give the rest of the lashes for your attitude.”
He moves slowly, but she knows that game. Every slave knows that game. She kicks him.
I stand as quickly as I can. I hate her. I hate living this life. I’ve only made it all worse for myself. She’ll beat me to death and push me down one of the lightwells. It’s happened before.
“Ten more, now, as hard as you can, or I’ll double it and you’ll get them, too,” the overseer says.
Amadis hits me. Hard. I almost fall down. Though he’s hit me with the side with no glass so he won’t maim me, he’s much stronger than the overseer.
I shouldn’t hate him for it, but I do.
It’s his fault. He stopped me with his warning look. I should’ve pushed her out of the tower when I had a chance. Better to die than to hold out hope.
He hits me again and I fall.
“Mistress!” one of the older women says. “There’s the signal!”
She curses aloud. “Places, everyone, places. On six! And you, Alvaro, get out of here!” she yells at me.
“Five!”
Everyone scatters back to their mirrors, pulling heavy dark spectacles over their eyes. There hasn’t been an execution on Orholam’s Glare in years. Everyone expects perfection, exact synchrony from the mirrors with steady and precise movements. Anything sloppy not only reflects poorly on all the star-keepers, but could actually end up with innocents down below being killed by the intensity and heat of the sunbeams we focus.
“Four.”
I stand, blearily. My underclothes and trousers are still at my ankles. I pull them up. It’s agony. I can’t help but put a hand on my buttocks. My hand comes away bloody.
“Three!” Then she shouts at me, “Out of the way! Get out of my tower or I’ll throw you off!” I’m not really in the way, but I’m near her and her own mirror, which is in pride of place at the east side, and I know I need to get out fast. There’s murder in her voice.
“To Position One,” she shouts. “On my mark!” She reaches up to grab the big frame at the same time everyone else does.
Then she yelps and lets go, the strain hurting her injured arm. She turns her back, cradling her arm, cursing. Everyone stops, wondering if they should continue without the count.
For an instant, I’m between her and her Great Mirror. The great disk is beautiful. Flawlessly gleaming. It’s our holy duty to care for the mirrors. It’s our whole reason for being.
“Back to your posts!” she shouts, furious, and at the whipcrack of her voice, scared to draw her ire themselves, everyone turns away.
And for one moment, every back is turned toward me.
I swipe my hand quickly, leaving a trail of blood across her mirror. Then I duck my head and go to the stairs, not daring to turn until I get to the door.
She’s back at her place behind her mirror, with an apprentice helping her now.
They didn’t see it. They don’t know.
“On a two count!” she barks, as if it’s their fault that they’re starting late.
I hold my breath, certain someone’s going to see, someone’s going to shout out what I’ve done.
“Position One,” she says. “On my mark!”
The smaller mirrors start turning to gather their beams to send to the Great Mirrors.
“Go!” she says.
My heart swelling with terror, but with triumph, too, I go.
Chapter 119
They slapped manacles on Karris’s wrists and hustled her to the lifts. “We don’t want to give anyone a chance to do something stupid,” Commander Fisk explained to the Lightguard captain. “Karris commands a lot of loyalty around here.”
Not everyone could fit on the lift, though, so there was an argument. Fisk was livid. “We’re only going down three damn floors. Are you kidding? Every moment we stay here arguing—fine! Just do it!”
Five of the twenty Blackguards got off the lift, muttering, and six Lightguards pushed their way on.
“It was crazy,” Fisk said as they finally set the weights. “I was watching his eyes. He went from nothing to pressing the halos in every color. He doesn’t have much time left.”
“That’s nice,” Karris said as the lift came to stop on a residential level. “Except that it doesn’t seem I do, either.”
There were a dozen Lightguards waiting here. Obviously killers. “We need to get on,” one of them said. “Prism’s orders. You all get off.”
Karris wasn’t being taken to a cell.
Fisk pushed against the Lightguards in front of him. “Sure. Fine, but can you get the hell out of the way so we can get off?”
As the last to have entered the lift, the Lightguards on the lift had to exit first. Several stepped off before others hesitated.
Fisk clicked his tongue twice, and suddenly Lightguards were flying out of the lift into their murderous compatriots, kicked or thrown out by the Blackguards. Someone threw the counterweights, and the lift dropped like a stone.
Only one of the Lightguards held on to the Blackguard who’d pushed him. He tottered at the edge of the rapidly growing height above the descending lift.
But someone grabbed his arm, and he didn’t fall on them.
They slowed the lift, and Karris looked at Fisk.
“You didn’t think I was going to side with that little shit, did you?” he asked, unlocking her manacles.
“I . . .”
“We’re with you, Iron White. Blood and bone.”
“I know you all loved Gavin, but you don’t have to transfer any oath of—”
“We loved Promachos,” Fisk said, using Gavin’s Blackguard Name. “Still do. But this has got nothing to do with him. We’re yours, blood and bone.”