This was greeted with stunned quiet. It had taken her time and many readings to comprehend it all herself, and longer to distill it so, knowing her words would be written down and must convey all she’d learned concisely and clearly.
These luxiats were not, she knew, ones whom anyone else would have chosen to use to pass on such earth-shattering news. But that they were young and idealistic and of humble estate, and holding forbidden and vital knowledge, was exactly what would make them unstoppable.
At least if they hurried and got out of here before the High Magisters arrived to stop them.
“What are we supposed to do?” they asked. “We’re nobodies.”
“That is a damned lie!” she shouted instantly, and the whole room flinched at the suddenness of her hard, hot anger. “You are Orholam’s Thousand Stars. Stretch your hands high, reaching into the last light of the waning sun. Bring light where there is darkness. Those who love the light will flock to it, and those who hate the light will reveal themselves by their fear and hatred of you. Bring unity to these realms. Give new heart to the oppressed, and hope to the despairing. Starting with yourselves. Don’t cower like Magister Galden. Stand tall. You scholars, search your books fearlessly and find if what I’ve said here is true. Or disprove it if you can, I pray you. Learn what I haven’t learned. Find any lost knowledge that may help us. You auditarae, spread word of all this. If you believe what I’ve told you, then join me in the fight. If any can be found who will join this war, who will aid us, bring them here. We need people of courage. We need to reinspire drafters who’ve lost faith and run away. We need fighters. We need white luxin. We need at least one of those lost Knives.
“I will meet with you again,” she said, “if I survive so long. There are those who will wish to silence me. I will, again, answer your questions truly if I can. But I don’t wish you to be caught here with me, in case the worst comes to pass. There is, as yet, no record of your names. Magister Galden will remember some of you, no doubt, but I would rather only have endangered some than let all fall into shadow while I have yet life and light. So now go, by various doors and various ways, and take the light with you. Guard it well.”
They scattered, and none of the High Magisters came, so Karris’s plan had worked. So far.
She was being honest now and blameless, but earlier today each of the High Magisters had found themselves called upon to answer honest needs in far parts of Big Jasper. Being honest and blameless didn’t mean she had to be without cunning.
After all, she was still Karris Guile.
Chapter 44
It’s amazing, the things your mind will do when you have to stay awake for many hours with a slim but distinct possibility of suddenly needing to kill someone.
Certain boredom, with a chance of murder.
Blinking, crouching in this dark corner, shaking her limbs periodically to keep them from cramping, Teia was not, she finally had to admit, a ghost.
She could not pass through walls. For one thing, she had muscles that wanted to cramp—oh, and she had a bladder, albeit a tiny one (thanks for nothing, Orholam). She also wasn’t dead. Yet. (Though it seemed she was trying to change that with alarming frequency.) Really, the only way she was like a ghost was that she was not something any rational adult would fear.
That’s a great pep talk there, T. Your army of one has a shitty commander.
Oh yeah? Well, that’s a much better pep talk.
Bollocks. Good point. Snottily made, but correct.
Good to see I can at least win an argument with myself.
Doesn’t that also mean you just lost an argument with yourself?
Glass half-full. And shut up.
She stared at the slum building’s door impatiently. Orholam’s balls, would you finish up in there already?
Teia had never gotten close enough to identify the Blackguards at the back dock who’d attended the Old Man of the Desert, but she’d thought one of them had a hitch to his step, a slight limp on the left side. He’d also been tall, and most likely (having been brought to the back dock to make sure that Teia didn’t simply head back inside) a sub-red drafter.
How many tall sub-reds had a bit of a limp in the Blackguard?
Unfortunately, the answer was not ‘only one.’ The constantly training warrior-drafters of the Blackguard accumulated injuries like misers hoard gold, and a slight limp didn’t necessarily denote a permanent injury.
But there was a Blackguard who fit the bill so perfectly Teia hoped it was him. Old guy, nearly forty, had a hitch in his step that showed up only when he was tired. Sub-red/red bichrome named Halfcock. Teia didn’t know how he’d gotten the name—an Archer had told her once not to ask, and Teia hadn’t been curious enough to follow the obvious lead. He was infamous for being an asshole, though, especially to Archers.
It would all be so perfect if he were her traitor that Teia was pretty damn certain he wasn’t. Still. She had to start somewhere, and his little trip tonight to see his . . . lover? handler? had seemed not only the most obvious place to start but also the only place to start.
Tomorrow, after this didn’t pan out, she’d have to head to the Chromeria and sneak down to the training yard and start looking for anyone else with a limp.
She hadn’t read the folio Murder Sharp gave her. He wanted her to read it, and that was reason enough not to. He thought it was going to change her mind? What, because it would tell her the Chromeria was terrible? She knew those people. She knew how good and how bad they were.
She was up to her neck in the tar pit of evil herself, but she hadn’t sunk so far as to think everyone was just as bad as everyone else. The Chromeria tried to save lives—and sure, they failed a lot. Their leadership was often venal and weak and self-indulgent, so what? They weren’t malevolent. They didn’t take bright young girls and turn them into remorseless assassins.
Um . . . in your case they kind of did, T.
To infiltrate the Order! Not for fun.
Right, and I’m sure the Order has some really good reasons, too, about why they simply have to—
No. Uh-uh. I’m not the smartest girl in the world, but I’m smart enough to figure this out. The bad guys? They’re the ones who smile as they send you to behead a kid.
Teia was a terrible human being, but she wasn’t gonna behead a kid.
Maybe it was an odd place to plant her flag of moral compunctions: she’d killed innocents already. Did the age really matter? She could choose a slave kid who’d been pressed into service at one of the technically illegal brothels that catered to such things, and free him or her from an unbearably shitty life with the point of her blade. No one would raise a complaint. Such kids were disposable.
Just like me.
Maybe that was it. Once you stop telling yourself how much you’re not like your neighbor, suddenly someone murdering your neighbor takes on a different hue.
Teia’d advanced in perfect time on the path to perfect conscience-lessness, hitting every beat, every step required, a compliant partner taking the devil’s hand and following the devil’s lead, and dancing to his tune, whirling round and round, skirts and morals flying as she spun, the dance floor itself a vortex to oblivion.
He had his hands up her skirts already.
All she had to do was to tell herself that one more step didn’t matter, that she’d come this far, and this far was too far to give up now, that she’d be throwing away all her work—all her damnation—for nothing if she didn’t kill this One Last Time. What, really, was the difference between twenty-seven kills and twenty-eight?