Where Sharp would look at it, of course.
“That would give you their name. I’d be betraying my handler.” Unless I put someone else’s name on it?
Dammit, I could have put that asshole Grinwoody’s name on the note, and the Order would have killed him. Granted, shoving an innocent into the path of an arrow in flight like that wasn’t exactly how a Blackguard was supposed to protect her ward, but between Karris and Grinwoody? Grinwoody could burn.
Shit. Teia’d thought too slow.
“Besides,” Teia said. “If I leave anything without the right codes, my handler will know the Order got to me. Or some random innocent might take it.”
Actually, that last wouldn’t be a problem for Sharp. He didn’t care that the message got through; he only cared to see the name on it.
Again, she wasn’t thinking fast enough.
But he did look confused.
Sharp cursed. “True, true. Uh . . .”
Teia realized then that he really was at a loss. It wasn’t a trap, or a devious plot by the Old Man to confirm her handler was Karris—whom he would surely have suspected.
“Just the words ‘I’m sorry’?” Teia asked. “Then if someone does pass it on to my handler, they might be expected to recognize my handwriting, but no one’s going to learn anything else from it, and if you see it, you’ll know that I’m really—”
“No,” he said. “You’d leave that note to try to trick me, even if you planned to fight me. Sorry, nope. That’s the price. Do it my way if you want to run. Name probably won’t be a surprise to the Old Man anyway. Probably will know who you’re working for immediately as soon as that white boat gets back and you’re not on it.”
Shit! Sharp had gotten to the right solution through animal cunning instead of intelligence.
Or at least the wrong solution for Teia. If she put a name on that letter, she had to be willing for that person or anyone else who mistakenly touched the letter to die. If one of her Blackguard friends—Gill Greyling maybe? Essel?—tidied her bunk, they might find the note. Surely the Order would kill them, just in case they were a contact. Or it could be one of the slaves who tidied the floor. Even if she put that snake Andross’s name on it, murdering him might be exactly the wrong thing for the Chromeria and the war.
And she sure as hell wasn’t going to betray Karris. Karris was a betrayer. Teia wasn’t.
Murder Sharp was shitty at this, but shitty in such a way that the choice he thought was giving her was actually no choice at all. He was a stupid man, but Teia wasn’t much smarter, was she? She hadn’t even thought fast enough to outsmart a moron.
Kip would’ve.
“Oh,” Sharp said, like it was an afterthought, but there was a cruel edge to it, and Teia realized that what was coming was a trap. Sharp’s cunning wasn’t the kind that thought of every avenue for every plan; it was the kind that sought out chinks in the armor, like paryl slipping through the skin to your heart. “You’ve deceived us before. So if you choose to join the Order, you’ll need to do something this time to convince me that you’re serious. Because that’s the first thing a spy would lie about, right? You already lied to join us, so you’d just do it again, right? So I’ll need some proof. By your actions.”
Oh God.
Sharp said, “You’re my shitty tin mirror, so let’s give you a test, don’t you think? Just like I had.”
She could tell he loved the dread he’d put on her face.
“It’d have to be something a spy would have a problem with doing, wouldn’t it? Killin’ some slave would be nothing to a tough, hardened little bitch like you, right?” he asked. “Nah, you’re way past that. And we’ll have to have a time pressure, so you don’t get all sneaky smart or something and try to fool me. By tomorrow, then. By noon. Still meeting me at the Great Fountain.”
“Tomorrow?!” Teia protested. “Are you forgetting that you tried your best at your task—and failed? And you’re so much better than me. Always have been. You have to give me more time than—”
“You’re right,” he said, cutting her off. She shut up instantly. She wasn’t out of this place yet; she couldn’t afford to disrespect him. He seemed to actually be thinking about her objection. “It’d have to be something that’s not hard to do, just difficult. Or do I mean difficult, but not hard? Hmm.”
He was mocking her now, and she wasn’t sure exactly how, which made her feel stupid.
I’m going to enjoy killing you, aren’t I? You piece of shit.
A glowing crescent of his white teeth seemed to illuminate the shack with Sharp’s cruel glee. He said, “If you want to join the Order for real, prove it by bringing me a sack. Waterproof. With a head in it.”
“What?!”
“I don’t trust you not to just go find some corpse, so I want to see a paryl blood clot in the brain, and dual hemorrhages so the eyes go all blackballed. It’s a bad way to go. But on the other hand, it doesn’t matter who you choose. Choose whoever you like. That makes it easy.”
“I . . .” Always before, Teia had been assigned whom to murder. Someone else had chosen. This would mean choosing some innocent herself. Choosing some stranger and killing them in a horrific way.
How do you choose which innocent dies?
“Wait, wait. With your skills now, that’s not difficult or hard, is it? You’d just kill another slave. You’ve already shown you’re perfectly willing to do that.”
“I don’ t—”
“No, no, I’ve got an idea,” Sharp said. He nodded to himself. “Yeah, yeah, that’ll do it, I think. A kid. Bring me a kid’s head. You know, a little squirt. Say, eight to ten years old.”
“A—a child?” Teia asked. One summer when she was growing up, there’d been someone in the city who snatched kids around her little sister’s age. A few of the girls were found mutilated. More simply disappeared. The snatchings stopped after that horrible summer, but no one who lived through that time could ever hear about a missing child without remembering the horror and fear.
Now Teia was going to be the person who snatched and mutilated a child, like a bloodthirsty ghost in the night.
“Eight to ten years old,” Sharp said. He pushed her out the door. “After you read the folio, you’ll know why.”
Chapter 36
“I suppose it should sound ungrateful to say that I was rather looking forward to being dead,” Orholam said.
“You didn’t look like you were looking forward to it out there,” Gavin said, cracking one eye open. His shade had moved away from him, and it was miserably hot on the beach. He could only imagine he was already on his way to a fierce sunburn. And the damned sand fleas . . .
“Oh, I’m terrified of dying. Being dead, though? That’s the thing.” Orholam was sitting cross-legged on the sand, heedless of the bugs, dirt, and his own nudity.
Gavin stood up slowly, his body afire with aches. He still had the damned gun-sword strapped to him. Neither blade nor straps had made for easy rest. He began brushing off the worst of the dirt and bugs. “You’re right,” he said.