“—at an emergency meeting of the Spectrum. It’s not a request, Kip. You can come with me and we might straighten this out, or you’ll be seized by the Black’s watchmen and probably beaten, and the Red will get what he wants. What are you doing wasting time with a slave? You should have reported to the White immediately. Pray Orholam your foolishness does not cost us lives.”
“I just got here not ten—”
“Now, Kip.”
For one stupid moment, Teia wanted to go out there and slap Marissia’s face. How dare she talk to her friend like that? Slave? Slave? You’re a slave yourself, you stupid—
Teia leaned close to hear how Kip would respond. The opening door smacked her in the cheek, stunning her, though it didn’t hit hard.
“Don’t think you’ve escaped notice, caleen,” Marissia said quietly through the crack in the door. “Why haven’t you filed your manumission papers? What game are you playing? For whom?”
The door shut, and footsteps receded, and Teia was left alone swimming with an anvil.
One thing at a time, she told her panic. You’re still covered with blood, stupid. That first. She went to her bed and opened her chest and grabbed a clean shift. She went to the lavatory, poured water into a basin, and looked at herself in one of the mirrors.
Checking quickly to see that no one was coming, she stripped off her dress. Seeing the splash of blood across the front of her shift, darker where it had dried, but still livid up at her neck where her warmth and sweat had kept the gore liquid, she had the sudden urge to tear it off, to weep, to vomit. That man, the look in his eyes, that knowledge that he was dying and there was nothing he could do—
She took a deep breath, steadied herself against the basin.
Careful not to smear blood against her face, she pulled the shift off. She stopped her first instinct: to plunge the shift into the water and try to clean it. It was blood. The stains wouldn’t come out, and it would leave the water a bloody mess. Instead, she looked at herself for any evidence of blood on her own body. She dipped the hem into the water and cleaned her neck, between her breasts.
Orholam have mercy, she had blood in her ear. She couldn’t get it off.
Her stomach convulsed, but she held back the vomit. Slowly, meticulously, she dipped another clean portion of cloth into the water and cleaned her ear, behind her ear, her cheek. She checked her hands once more. Cleaned under two fingernails. She folded the ruined shift carefully so that none of the bloodstained parts were visible, toweled off with the hand towel, and pulled on her fresh shift.
She tried to smile at the mirror. Weak.
It was the best she could do.
Now to dispose of the shift—the last direct evidence of a murder that could be tied to her. The shifts were numbered on the back so the laundry slaves could return them to the appropriate girls. Teia tore the shift and ripped out the number, which was harder than she expected. Just a small square of cloth, not even as wide across as her thumb, and thin. She popped it in her mouth and swallowed it.
She stuffed the shift into the bag for menstrual rags and headed to Kip’s room. She opened the door carefully, her eyes wide to paryl, certain she would find that damned man inside again. There was no one, no traps, but there was a folded square of paper on Kip’s dresser. Teia approached it slowly, certain it hadn’t been here when she left.
It read: “T., As promised. —M.S.”
Had this been here when Marissia had checked the room? Teia’s throat tightened again. Orholam, what would she have done if Kip had been with her when she came in and found this? The weight of the secrets was suffocating.
Opening a letter from Murder Sharp was like handling serpents. Teia picked it up carefully, saw that there was only paper inside, and leaned back as she opened it.
It was her papers, the deed to her very body. Signed, everything in order. Ready to be filed.
Teia walked downstairs, waited in a line for a few minutes, and handed her papers to the clerk. He checked and double-checked everything, and then talked with an older clerk, who gave him a key. The man came out with several fat coin sticks. He counted them out for Teia, and had her sign a document stating she intended to join the Blackguard, then handed the coin sticks to her.
“Congratulations,” he said. “You are hereby released from all oaths of loyalty to any other than the Blackguard and the Chromeria.” He smiled at her and patted her hand. “Perk up, why don’t you? You’re free.”
Teia had achieved what she’d yearned for above all else, what she’d sought for years, and she was richer than she’d ever dreamed, but she’d never felt less free in her life.