Murder Sharp growled, bestial behind his fangs, but the Old Man held up a gloved finger to him. “Refusal is failure. Refusal is death, child.”
“Then kill me,” she said. She turned her back and started walking away. It was the longest walk of her life, those steps to the door. They stretched out as if she were trekking across the great deserts of the Broken Lands, hope as distant as water.
But nothing happened. It was a torture in itself. She reached the door and put her hand on the latch.
“Stop,” the Old Man said softly.
She turned. He could have stopped her easily enough with Sharp’s skills. Apparently the Old Man was used to the force of his personality doing more than any magic could.
“There are only two kinds of people who will agree to commit patricide—unless they are victims of horrific abuse, in which case all bets are off. But we know your father was no abuser. Those willing patricides? Spies who have no intention of obeying, and those soulless folk who are willing to betray anyone because they are only capable of feigning loyalty, not feeling it. The Order excises both kinds of cancer without remorse. You see, Adrasteia, the thing that makes the Order great is that we are able to do the monstrous without becoming monsters. A girl who will kill her father for nothing more than her own ambition is a viper, and anyone who takes a viper to his breast deserves the bites he gets.”
“You’re telling me this was another test?” Teia asked. “Are you f—” She wrestled the words down. How many could she pass? What kind of lunatics were these people? How many times could she gamble her life before she lost just once?
“And your tests aren’t finished,” the Old Man said.
“I can’t do this forever,” Teia said.
“One more. One last test. One test that will make you a Sharp. One I would entrust to no one else.”
How many Shadows do you actually have? Teia suddenly wondered.
“So what is it? What do you want me to do?” she asked.
“Perhaps it just got old. Perhaps it simply… gave up.” He stared again at the blackened mirror, and then he put a gentle hand on it. “The backbone of the Order’s rising power is the shimmercloaks, Teia. Our assassins are frightening, where we have them, but the Shadows are terrifying. No one is safe from you. That power has two limits—there are few paryl drafters, though more than you might think—and fewer shimmercloaks. It means I have to think long and hard before sending Shadows on truly risky missions, because while the men and women wearing them can be replaced, the cloaks cannot.
“There’s a man, Teia, who’s going to go do something vitally important for me. You’re to help him in any way you can. Then, after he’s done it, you’re going to recover whatever weapons he’s carrying, and you’re going to kill him. Just in case he fails—or succeeds in a way I’ve not foreseen. You’ll kill him with this dagger, and you’ll do it while he’s awake. Not drugged, not asleep. Only awake will this dagger capture his will. You will stow away in his ship, and you will be given the Fox cloak to help you.
“You’re going to kill a man after he’s served you?” Teia asked.
“A poor thanks indeed, I agree. But this man is far, far too dangerous to be allowed to live. He would, after this service, hunt us all.”
And then she had a stomach-turning intuition. Who had served the Order, and was now too dangerous to be allowed to live? Ironfist.
But Ironfist wasn’t here, was he? She’d heard some rumor that he’d become King Ironfist. Another that he was coming to the Chromeria for some diplomatic discussion.
Could he have come already? By skimmer?
And what? Been kidnapped by the Order, just like that? Sure, they’d done it with Marissia, but Ironfist?
“If you succeed, you will keep the Fox cloak permanently, and I will return your father to you. He will not only be allowed to come or go as he pleases, he will go home with papers of membership in some very important traders’ blocs with some very important monopolies. In short, he will go home a very wealthy man.”
“Or not at all,” Teia said. “If I disobey.”
He brought his fingertips together and nodded. “And as for you, I’ve already prepared how to explain your absence. You will return to the Blackguard seamlessly, with very few questions asked.”
“My absence?” Teia asked.
“Only pain makes a Sharp, Teia. You’ll understand when you see who you’re being asked to kill.”
So it was Ironfist. Please, Orholam, no.
Teia was that damned mirror. This was her great test, and the heat was too much for her. She was deforming, chipping, cracking. Or this demon before her was smashing her with his will. In all the time she’d had, she hadn’t tracked down the Order’s membership, hadn’t retrieved the secrets bound up in ribbon, hadn’t found the Old Man’s office, much less broken into it. She’d murdered all those slaves for nothing.
Her father’s life against the life of someone who was serving the Order? Some traitor?
What if it was Ironfist? But Teia couldn’t save Ironfist if she wanted to. She couldn’t save herself, now.
But she could save her father.
“There’s a ship, The Golden Mean. You get aboard secretly and then hide belowdecks until you’re well under way. The crew all belongs to me, but Captain Gunner is… unpredictable. You come back as Teia Sharp, or don’t come back at all,” the Old Man said. He held forth a slender black knife that looked like writhing smoke in his hand.
She took the black dagger.
Chapter 76
“Ah, good, you live.” Grinwoody came in the room with fresh clothes and a basket of food.
Gavin was quivering on the floor. The vomiting had turned to dry heaves quickly enough, and the stomach cramps from the diarrhetic had passed some time ago. He’d been weakly sponge bathing himself since then. He was mostly clean now, for all the good that did him.
Grinwoody gave him water first. Gavin rinsed his mouth of the residual taste of vomit and spat it out. Then real food and clothes.
Nor did the old man rush him. But finally, when Gavin was feeling warm and full for the first time in a year, and a little tipsy from what could have only amounted to a single cup of wine, the counterfeit slave motioned it was time to go.
They left everything. “I’ll burn it later,” Grinwoody said.
Within a dozen paces out into a dim hall, he pushed against a section of wall, and a secret door opened on unseen hinges, silently.
“What’s this?” Gavin asked.
“I made another gamble, months ago. I bet that you would end up in the black cell eventually, because I know your father.”
The narrow tunnel ascended sharply, barely wide enough for Gavin’s turned shoulders to pass, and so short that he had to stoop to walk. But there was no stopping. He felt as if the darkness were chasing him with eager fingers.
In minutes, they emerged into an empty little hut with curtains drawn. In piles, and hanging from hooks, and standing in towers, were pitch and scrapers and lines and buoys and more lines and lanterns and various other implements for the keeping of ships. Gavin guessed it was one of the boat keepers’ shacks at the Chromeria’s back dock. It was still dark out, but a hint of light trickled around the cracks in the walls and around the curtains, hinting at coming dawn.
Grinwoody picked up a wrapped bundle. “You asked before how you’re to do it.” He grinned. “If one is to kill a god, one must be properly armed.” Then Grinwoody—the hidden Old Man of the Desert, Anazar—unwrapped a sword that was not a sword. Its blade was long, light, thin, with twin black whorls crisscrossing around each of seven shining jewels, one for each color, though to Gavin’s eye they were a uniform brightness and tone. Along its spine was a thin musket barrel, except for the last hand’s breadth, which was only a sweeping blade that served as both sword point and bayonet. The Blinding Knife.
To cover his sudden fear, Gavin said, “You old bastard. You know my father wants this more than anything in the world, right?”