The Blinding Knife(250)

Gray-white light flooded the chamber from a dozen sources. Gavin popped up off the floor, instinctively drawing in light to hurl blue spears at the assassin.

He was all the way up and throwing his body forward to ready itself for the massive recoil of the magic he was about to throw when he realized he hadn’t drafted anything.

The assassin’s counter of another ball of gray light caught Gavin full in the chest. It launched him backward and he slammed into a wall, the impact driving his breath from him.

Green, his brain told him helpfully. He’s not drafting gray, that’s green. I just can’t see it anymore.

The assassin pulled out another pistol and leveled it at Gavin. From this range, with Gavin still trying to suck in his first breath, the man couldn’t miss.

A sunburst of white-gray light lit the man, and Gavin saw the White standing in her bedrobe, a cloud of tiny glowing particles floating in front of her, like motes of dust. Her hands snapped forward, and so did the entire cloud. The sound of the tiny flechettes hitting the assassin was like the sound of Blackguards at archery practice, when an entire volley studded the targets.

The assassin froze, and a moment later, tiny droplets of blood formed on his skin, everywhere. His back had been turned to the White, and the tiny glassine flechettes had gone all the way through him. The assassin blinked bloody eyes, confused, knowing only that something was terribly wrong, and then he collapsed on the floor and began convulsing.

The world didn’t stop. Even as the man was falling, Blackguards were bursting into the room, whistles were shrilling. A sword descended on the assassin’s convulsing wrist, separating his still-loaded gun and gun hand from his body.

The sudden press of bodies was almost a relief. The Blackguards had their priorities. Subdue the threat, secure the area, check the health of the guarded, check the health of the downed guards, notify the chain of command, and so forth. Gavin let it roll over him. He’d taken a good shot, and he’d be lucky if it turned out he hadn’t cracked a rib, but he was alive, and so was the White.

Oddly enough, it seemed that both of the Blackguards who’d been guarding Orea Pullawr were alive, too. One was still unconscious, and the other could only remember being grabbed from behind and having a foul-smelling rag pressed over his face. Apparently whoever had sent the assassin was trying to make some point about the vulnerability of the entire Chromeria by making the assassination as clean as possible. The guns and magic had only come out when the assassination was threatened with failure.

They found the White’s balcony door cracked open, and climbing ropes hanging past it. The ropes were hanging from the roof. The assassin must have tied the rope above and, finding the White’s balcony deadbolted, decided to go to the roof and enter through the door. It was a bold plan that would allow the assassin to escape after the murder by opening the balcony door from the inside and sliding down the rope without alerting anyone. It would have given the assassin valuable minutes to escape alive. This had been no suicide mission. The Blackguard immediately began going down the tower to check every room that had a window or balcony on the north side, looking for accomplices.

Gavin was shaken. A few months ago, he would have killed that assassin by himself. This time, his color-blindness had almost gotten both him and the White killed. He looked at the gray lights burning everywhere in the room. They weren’t gray; they were blue and green. The White had been a blue/green bichrome, so she’d obviously put in colored lux torches so that if something like this happened, she could immediately have light available to draft in a heartbeat. With a lesser assassin, the sudden flood of light itself might have bought her a few seconds. Not this one. But regardless, between Gavin and the Blackguards interrupting, it had worked.

He wondered if the White was well. She hadn’t drafted in years, and she wasn’t in particularly good health to begin with.

Gavin stood with the Blackguards’ help just in time for Karris to come in the door and crash into him. She grabbed him so fiercely, it almost knocked him off his feet. Then he recovered his senses and hugged her back.

“I heard there was an assassination attempt and you were involved and—and you scared me half to death, Gavin Guile!”

“You changed your hair,” he said stupidly. She’d bleached to blonde from its previous dark Tyrean hue. He liked it blonde.

“You like it blonde,” she said.

“He saved my life,” the White said. She walked over. Walked, instead of being wheeled over. Gavin couldn’t see the halo in her gray eyes, but he could see that her eyes were no longer washed out, desaturated. Now they looked like a drafter’s eyes again. And there was fine red color in her cheeks. She looked stronger, younger, and yet her halos were still intact. Mercifully. “They say he spoke before he died. He said, ‘Light cannot be chained.’ Do you know what that means, Gavin?”