The Blinding Knife(61)

And just in time, too.

Glancing up and down the main street of the market, through the swirl of humanity—traders from every satrapy, slaves, luxiats, beggars, and nobles—Teia saw the last thing she wanted to see. Her own target—her target for Lucretia Verangheti—was walking straight toward her. Worse, the direction he was going would take him straight in front of the other paryl drafter. Her target had the familiar paryl beacon woven into his hair. If he walked down the street with that intact, the other paryl drafter couldn’t miss him. And that might set him hunting Teia.

Teia was moving before she was sure what she was going to do. If she had one flaw, it wasn’t passivity.

She shot out a pulse of superfine light herself, making it as brief as possible. A couple of the best things about paryl were that it could be drafted faster than any other color and it was everywhere, even on the cloudiest day, so there was rarely any problem finding a source. It was present weakly even at night, so long as you were outside. Her focused stream cut through her target’s clothes, making them look like shadows shaking in the wind.

From long experience, Teia was able to pick out the fuzzy shapes of all the metal items he carried. Sword, knife, belt buckle, silver worked into belt, narrow chain links to secure his purse to his belt (paranoid about being robbed, then), coins within the purse, tips of the laces on his shirt, necklace, cloak chain and gold thread worked into the cloak’s mantle, an earring, and—finally!—a snuff box in his cloak’s chest pocket.

It was an easy spot to pickpocket from. She crossed the street. At the last moment, to make it convincing that her running into the target was accidental, she glanced back.

Mistake. She saw one of the men by the fountain—slight, plain, a fringe of red hair around a bald spot, tradesman’s clothes—bring his hands together in front of him. A needle of paryl luxin leapt from his hands and stuck into the side of the neck of the woman he was watching, twenty paces away. It was an amazing shot through the press of massed bodies and passing carts. It hung in the air, anchored on one side to his hands and on the other to her neck. He was bent forward in concentration.

A passing pedestrian walked through the spidersilk thread and snapped it, but the man was unperturbed. He released the paryl and walked away without a second glance.

Teia caught a glimpse of the woman, frowning and rubbing her neck for a moment, then going back to looking at a melon in the cart before her.

Then someone collided with Teia. She would have gone sprawling, but a strong hand snatched her arm.

“Watch yourself there, sweetcheeks,” her target said. He cupped her butt and gave it a squeeze as he helped her regain her balance.

“Oh—I—” Teia didn’t have to feign her confusion. It took a little more effort to regain her balance with her tall shoes, and a little more effort than that to regain her mental balance.

“I’ll be at the Red Six Inn later, if you’re looking for some entertainment, gorgeous,” the man said. His hand was still on her butt.

She swatted his hand away. “No, thank you, my lord. Excuse me.”

He laughed and didn’t try again. “Think about it,” he said. “I’ll show you a better night than your husband ever could.”

She ducked her head shyly and walked away, feeling violated. She swore she could still feel his hand on her. She wanted to punch him in his grinning face for groping her.

Instead, she contented herself with dropping the snuff box into her bag. He’d caught her off guard, but Teia had recovered quickly.

She turned as he walked on and, drafting, snatched the beacon off his head. If she was smart, she should get the hell out of here, but she couldn’t help trying to peer deeper into the market to catch sight of the woman.

It wasn’t hard to spot her. She still had her beacon glowing on her head, though it was already dissipating, and her skin was pale enough that it evinced the slight tea green tint of a longtime drafter. She crossed the main street of the market, carrying the melon. One of her arms fell and she dropped the melon. She smiled, as if surprised and confused, but only half of her face moved. She staggered and suddenly fell.

A couple of people grinned and chuckled. But the woman didn’t get up. She started having a seizure. Apoplexy. A stroke.

The smiles disappeared, and people began running toward her.

“Someone, help! Chirurgeons!” a bystander shouted.

Dread shot through Teia. Orholam have mercy, what had she just seen?





Chapter 33




The great hall of the Chromeria was converted every week into a place of worship. Every student, drafter or not, was required to attend. Kip shuffled into his place in the pew between Ben-hadad and Teia. Ben-hadad was flicking down the colored lenses of his odd spectacles, staring from the white marble of the arches to the many-colored stained glass panels of the clerestory.