The Broken Eye(277)

“I thought the White had to acquiesce to any recommendation the Spectrum brought her for that. I was under the impression she wasn’t a friend.”

“She isn’t, but she’s doing me a big favor tonight.”

“She’s signing off on it tonight?”

Andross Guile gave a thin-lipped smile that was all victory. “In a manner of speaking,” he said.

He didn’t explain any more to Zymun, seemingly pleased to deny a morsel of information to the young man, but Teia’s heart dropped. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t put it together before now. A woman that Andross Guile wanted dead, and Murder Sharp being here—after being at the Chromeria earlier.

Sharp wouldn’t go to the Chromeria simply to test Teia; the place was too dangerous for him. He’d come to scout, and he’d used Teia to scout the last part, and used what she reported to help him kill the White. No doubt now Sharp would make himself highly visible somewhere on the other side of Big Jasper for the entire night, just in case a drafter stumbled across some paryl in the old woman’s body.

Murder Sharp would have an alibi.

For a moment, blind rage flooded Teia. Who would hurt that kind old woman? How dare he? Murder Sharp was an animal, but he was merely a tool. It was Andross Guile Teia wanted to kill. How could he stand so close to goodness for so long, and hate it? Such things—for sure they are not men—should not be allowed to be.

She could kill him. She could kill Zymun. She could kill Grinwoody. No, not Grinwoody. Slaves shouldn’t be killed for the sins of their masters, no matter how much they seemed to enjoy facilitating them.

Would it not be a service to the greater good to kill these detestable men? Would it not be a fulfillment of the Blackguard’s oaths? She hadn’t taken the final oaths, but she knew them, and had wanted to take them for as long as she could remember.

I swear upon my life and light and sacred honor to protect the White, the Black, the Prism, and all the members of the Spectrum of the Seven Satrapies, and in the final exigency to protect the Seven Satrapies. I shall live not as a woman free, but as a slave to my duties and after them to my commanders. The final exigency was when a Prism went mad, and refused to lay down his powers, and had to be put down, but Teia supposed it also applied if a Color or even a promachos went mad and did the same.

She began filling herself with paryl, not simply the constant stream she needed to keep the shimmercloak functioning, but enough to make weapons.

‘Protect,’ Teia. The word is ‘protect.’ Not ‘avenge.’ You are not to be a blade in the darkness, you are a shield. You are not a woman alone, you are a soldier under authority.

If I kill now, I’m an assassin, not a Blackguard.

I am a special soldier, with uncommon skills and unique abilities, but I am a soldier under orders. If the White commands me to kill Andross Guile, I will kill with joy in my heart, and a conscience clean of murder, though guilty of rejoicing in it.

The world might be better if I were a law unto myself, if I killed these loathsome men.

She sat on that thought. She’d killed a man in that alley, almost on accident, but he’d been a man who would have killed her or her team if she hadn’t. Aside from the heaviness of killing at all, when she looked at the situation, she couldn’t see a moment when she would have acted differently. More competently, sure. But she’d trained as hard as she could for as long as she could. Her skills at that point in time weren’t something she could change. She would have done what she did again. This …

Dear Orholam, what harm will these men do that I might prevent?

But it wasn’t her place. Orholam had put her here, but he’d put her in the Blackguard, too, and he’d put a longing in her whole heart to be a Blackguard. She couldn’t betray all that. She was called to be a shield, and shield she would be.

And like that, the cobwebs cleared and what she had to do was simple.

The White wasn’t dead. Not yet.

Teia waited only until her chance came, and slipped out of the room. She made her way downstairs, stilled the bell above a servants’ door to the outside, and went out. She slipped past the Blackguards, climbed the roof of the stables in the back, and vaulted over the high fence. After a block, she dropped the invisibility and simply ran.

She was almost all the way back to the Chromeria before she realized that both Andross and Zymun could see in the sub-red. If it had occurred to either man to look in sub-red while she was in the room, she would be in a dungeon or dead right now. The thought made her sweat run cold.

Lucky, T. Now let’s hope that luck holds.





Chapter 83