For a moment, she was so frightened, she almost yelped. In her panic, she locked up and couldn’t draft at all.
There were doors every direction from the top of the stairs. If anyone came—
Teia rolled to her feet despite the voluminous cloak, and drafted paryl. Her chest heaved. Orholam’s beard, a moment of inattention could mean death. Panic, T? You’re better than that. Knock it off.
She looked down the stairs where Promachos Guile was escorting Murder Sharp to the door.
She was careful to look in quick glances so as to hide her eyes, but then realized that the cloak wouldn’t hide her from paryl vision.
In fact, she wasn’t sure that she could hide from paryl vision ever, even if she mastered the cloak.
Teia ducked out of sight and took a deep, quiet breath.
No wonder the mist walkers had been stingy with teaching others, and with seeking out others with the gift. Everyone you taught became more than a rival. It would mean deliberately creating threats to yourself, in a world where a true mist walker had few.
With the faint tinkling of the bell hung over the lintel, the front door opened and closed without the men saying any farewell. Not the type, Teia supposed. Then Andross Guile came up the steps. Teia guessed which way he was going, and was right for once. He passed by without so much as a glance her way.
What was she doing here? What had started as a lark had a very real chance of getting her killed. And for what? Because she was curious to see Kip’s brother? He would surely be coming to the Chromeria eventually. Why not wait?
Good question to ask myself a while ago, but now I’m here.
I didn’t come to see Kip’s brother; I came to see what Andross Guile is planning, and there’s no way I’m going to leave before I do.
Andross walked down a hallway, up another set of stairs, and into another sitting room. This kind of space within a single house on an island where everyone lived cheek by jowl and rents were ruinous seemed obscene. One old man lived here, one. Actually, he didn’t even live here. He barely visited. And yet he had this staff, in addition to the slaves who maintained his apartments at the Chromeria—and his wife’s empty apartments there. What other dead person got to keep apartments in the Chromeria, where space was perpetually tight?
Teia thought that she was going to have to decide if she was going to follow Andross into a room to eavesdrop again, or if she was content catching bits and pieces in the hallway, but it wasn’t much of a decision. As she rounded the last corner, she saw that the Lightguards from before were stationed at the door, and Grinwoody was scuttling about like a cockroach.
“Grandfather,” a young man said. He was astonishingly handsome, as one might expect of the son of Gavin and Karris Guile. He had Atashian caramel skin, with strong brows and an aquiline nose, and wore a fine gray tunic with slashes of color to match the many colors in his light blue eyes.
She knew him! He was the one who tried to kill her in the fort on Ruic Head. Tripped her, knocked her sprawling, took her pistol, and then ordered his men to kill her. This, this was Kip’s brother?
The young man didn’t simply bow; he prostrated himself on the floor before the promachos.
I’m going to hate myself for this.
But Teia couldn’t bear to miss this conversation. Holding the cloak tight around her legs and looking down, she slipped between the big Lightguards and into the solar.
Andross Guile stood silently staring at his grandson. He didn’t seem impressed. “Up,” he said.
Zymun stood. “I, uh, I lost the coin you sent me, the pirates, you understand. But I can draw it from memory. I’m a deft hand with a pen. Penmanship, art, luxin designs, I excel at them all. And of course I know the phrase you told me to say when we met: ‘Of red cunning, the youngest son, shall cleave father and father and father and son.’”
“You don’t carry much family resemblance,” Andross said.
“And Kip does?” Zymun shot back instantly. “He’s darker than Gavin!”
Teia could see that Andross Guile didn’t much like being addressed as an equal. “How much do you know of Guile family history?” Andross asked.
“I know we rule,” the young man said.
“You know we rule?” Andross said, mocking. “And you presume to correct me?”
“Not a correction, my lord, simply standing up for myself. I thought you would appreciate—”
“I would appreciate the respect I deserve. You grovel in one heartbeat and ‘correct’ me the next?”
Zymun looked aghast. “I’m terribly, terribly sorry, my lord. I know but little of the family history. The—folk—who raised me were not keen on teaching Guile history. I stand to learn.” He bowed his head, and if Teia weren’t already disposed to hate him, she would have believed him chastened.