So Teia took it easy on him—and ran as fast as she could. Blackguard Archers always had something to prove, and they treasured the chip on their shoulders as a birthright.
Teia made the pass at the skimmer with no problem. She took a draught of watered wine, didn’t offer any to her escort, who was pretending unsuccessfully to not be winded, and then, on hearing that no one was bothering the reedsmen, she ran back to the palace.
This time she took the long way, going up the winding grand boulevard just to add distance.
When she got to the Tafok Amagez at the palace door, her guard was fifty paces back. Teia dabbed her forehead with a handkerchief as if it had been an easy jog. “Tell your man it’s really sweet that he let me win, but I’m the slowest of the Blackguards, and I know I wouldn’t beat one of you in a real race.” Teia winked at the captain, who scowled, and patted his shoulder as she went past.
After she got inside, she finally took the deep, leaning-over-and-heaving breaths her body demanded.
It had all been the kind of thing she would have done if she were a real Blackguard, here on innocent duties, but to Teia it was something more than reinforcing her cover: it was a farewell. That girl Blackguard who teased other soldiers with her prowess was the girl she could have been. Maybe it was the girl she should have been. Like all soldiers, the Blackguards had hours of boredom to fill, and like all soldiers, they filled them with pranks and the breaking of silly rules.
She didn’t get to be that girl. The candor and winsome integrity of a Commander Ironfist would never be hers. She could play at it, but it sat on the other side of a glass, the reflection of a girl she would never get to be.
Teia reported in to Anjali Gates, who gave her food and told her there was a bath waiting in her room. Teia pretended to be more tired than she was, and said she’d probably retire for the night unless Anjali needed her. The diplomat said she’d not go out to keep from antagonizing anyone—the party had already started, and the Nuqaba insisted everyone drink heavily at her parties. “I know you might be curious to go to the great hall, have some fun, drink too much, maybe kiss a boy, I understand. But anything you do may have repercussions beyond yourself. And after the White’s message, there will be those eager to pick a fight with you. Winning such fights would be as bad as losing them.”
“I understand,” Teia said.
Naturally, she headed out to the great hall immediately.
Chapter 57
There was nothing but time here. Time and the lure of insanity.
The dead man spoke to him whenever he opened his eyes, so he often sat in a torpor to gain a measure of peace. But when torpor yielded to sleep, there was a different kind of torture.
“Go on, sleep,” the dead man said. “I’ll be here when you wake.” And he laughed.
Gavin tore his heart open, and it tore him in turn. His fingers ripped on the thorns, bled. Blood flew in frantic gray splatters to fall to the luminous white marble of the tower’s roof. But he didn’t stop. Couldn’t.
The storm bore down upon him, thunder rolling within the gathering clouds, all streaming toward the judging hands of the colossus who stood over him, towering over the tower, examining him with the intensity of a man stooping over a tantruming child, and at the same time so vast that the whole earth was his footstool.
Gavin threw aside dark thorns and chunks of his own skin and flesh, heedless, but he wasn’t fast enough, couldn’t be fast enough.
The gathered clouds massed around the great figure’s fist, and rose, all together, rose, rose over his head, with a great sucking sound of all the winds twisting together. His fist rose in preparation to strike, to shatter, to smash, to judge, to obliterate the stain that was Gavin Guile.
His heart was full of murder, murder, murder. He broke the thorns off one by one. Wrath. Denial. Manipulation. Pride. And lies. Everywhere lies. Shame and bitterness and cowardice and lies. His oarmate-prophet Orholam had warned him to quit his lying. But he couldn’t quit his lying. His whole heart was dark with it.
Everywhere he tore off thick black veins, glimpsing febrile gray muscle palpitating beneath them—gray because it was starving, dying.
He was a liar, Gavin Guile. He was so inveterate a liar that he didn’t know his own face in the mirror anymore.
He was weeping, weeping from the pain, weeping from memories half-seen, fully shunned.
He saw his brother, standing over him on the egg-shaped hill—the Great Rock before it had become Sundered Rock—and his brother said, ‘Dazen, Dazen, Dazen. You could never beat me. Not in magic, not in muscle. Never. Not in cunning, not in counsel, not in stratagems or seductions. Not once in all our years. How did you think you would beat me now?’
The real Gavin had picked up a spear and limped toward where Dazen lay concussed, delirious, immobile.
‘Brother,’ the eldest said, his voice softening as he approached, steps slow, ‘did you think I would give up this life? Do you even know what I paid to be here?’
And the elder brother, even as he lofted that spear and prepared to kill him, wept. How had Dazen forgotten that? The real Gavin’s tears had fallen on barren, smoking ground.
Crying? Dazen had barely thought his big brother could.
But his tears didn’t stop him from advancing. He didn’t want to kill Dazen, but he was going to.
No, no, no.
It didn’t matter. He broke the heart into its last pieces. From a distance, it looked gray. It wasn’t gray. There were no shades of gray. Life was white and black streaked together so intimately that the two couldn’t be untangled. If he tore out what was corrupted, it tore out everything.
There was nothing wholly untouched, nothing pure, nothing innocent. His heart fell to pieces, putrescent, rotten stinking meat in his hands.
He rolled from his knees onto his back, limp. His arms stretched out as they had so long ago under the rising sun, and he stared at that crackling colossal fist of judgment as it came sweeping down. And he accepted it.
Chapter 58
“This is a terrible idea!” Former Satrapah Tilleli Azmith whispered. “The Chromeria’s messenger is in a room not fifty paces from here! If she steps outside her room at the wrong moment…”
Apparently Teia had come in at a good time.
She dodged another servant in full regalia and white gloves, carrying wine.
“They have no claim on him,” the Nuqaba said. “It doesn’t matter. And how dare you speak to me that way? You’re not even a satrapah anymore.”