The Broken Eye(273)

The room was some kind of parlor, with a hallway opposite where Teia had come in, heading toward another wing of the house, and another door vaguely in the right direction.

Teia put her eye to the keyhole. In the room beyond was a staging area for the slaves to bring up the food from the kitchens below and put it in order for presentation in the dining room that must be farther in. It was almost dinnertime. That room was full of slaves, all moving quickly to and fro: the quick pace of a smoothly run household, but almost literally running. Impossible to get through there.

From the hall Teia had escaped, she heard Grinwoody, raising his voice from the top of the stairs, summoning the Lightguards.

She went back into the hall as they disappeared upstairs and made her way—finally—back to the door where the promachos had gone. It was closed.

For one heartbeat, she thought of going back around, through the slaves’ area. She was quick, agile, small, and fucking invisible.

Then she heard Murder Sharp’s voice, and her guts turned to water. “Kidnapping’s a two-man job,” he said.

Kidnapping?

“Use Adrasteia. It will be a good test of her loyalty.”

“I’m not worried about her loyalty. It’s her upper-body strength I’m concerned about. If the mark gets difficult, I have to use the blackjack and carry her.”

Teia couldn’t even take pleasure in the thought that she’d truly fooled Murder Sharp. Instead, her mind was spinning: ‘Her’? Who were they planning to kidnap?

“Is she coming back?” Murder asked. “From wherever you take her?”

“You don’t need to know,” Andross said.

“I need to know whether she can see my face when I grab her. If you’re going to let her go afterward, it makes the job that much harder. People tend to remember me. My good looks and all.”

A hesitation. Then, finally, Andross said, “No, she won’t be coming back. Do whatever you must to bring her to me. I need her uninjured. I’ll give you a few days to ready your plans. Use whom you will. If it’s not Adrasteia, make sure whoever you use is disposable. And dispose of him.”

Teia put her eye to the keyhole and saw a vision out of nightmare. Murder Sharp was wearing his cloak, but hadn’t laced up the mask. With his body invisible, his head seemed to float in the air, his eyes dilated full paryl black, the whites pushed to oblivion. But as disconcerting as Teia still found his eyes, the effect was heightened a hundredfold by his wide grin. Murder Sharp had swapped out his dentures of perfect white teeth for a set made up entirely of human canines. Thirty-two dogteeth, perfectly fit together, in Murder’s deliberately wide grin.

“Gladly,” Murder said. He passed his tongue not so much over his lips as over his teeth, seeming to savor the touch. He shook his head like a dog shaking off water, and let himself shimmer back into visibility, his eyes narrowing to human dimensions.

“Now, about that matter at the Chromeria,” Andross said. His voice was all business, unmoved by the horror in front of him. Not pretending to be unafraid, Teia thought, but actually unafraid. This was his world, and he was master of it and all the beasts within. The pure confidence struck fear into Teia.

Can only kill you once, the logical part of her said, but these people were so far beyond her that the rationality was thin as an eggshell. If Andross Guile caught her, she would be less than a slave. He would turn her into an animal.

“It’s done,” Murder said. “She doesn’t know and never will. Trick I made up myself. Bits of paryl all around her heart. She feels tired, and simply … dies.”

Some words that Teia couldn’t hear, then “—the most delicate of all luxin?”

“Don’t matter. If they break up, she strokes out and dies anyway.”

“But…” Some words Teia couldn’t hear followed. “…by morning? You’re certain?”

“Probably dead already.”

Who are they talking about? Who does Andross Guile want dead?

But her thoughts were interrupted by their footsteps. She glanced through the keyhole, and saw they were walking toward her door.

She retreated to the steps, and then went up them as quickly as she could, pressing hard on the handrail to take her weight. With her eyes stuck to the door, she almost forgot to skip the creaky steps, and stumbled. She rolled onto the hardwood floor at the top of the steps, and quickly threw the cloak over her exposed legs.

She tried to free slack in the cloak so it would drape over all of her, but she was sitting on it, and the hands she put down to lift her butt also landed on the cloak. She shifted, exposing her hands—and realized she was covering herself with a visible cloak. She’d stopped drafting paryl.