The Blood Mirror

She could get money. How could you stop a thief who could make herself invisible?

How she wished she were back in the Prism’s training room. She could bathe in superviolet and blue until there was only the cold logic of necessity.

The nerves! At last. She tweaked a bundle at the slave’s elbow. His arm dropped, paralyzed, until the shackle caught his wrist. He gasped.

The problem was how much sense it all made. It made sense for the Order to train her. It made sense that she be trained on old, useless slaves who would die within a couple of years anyway. On the Chromeria’s side, it made sense that Teia be ordered to comply with whatever the Order demanded. It was the only way they could get her close enough to uproot them.

Karris was an admiral accepting the death of her men on the front lines to protect more at home. Accepting, even, the corruption and breaking of those at the front lines to protect the lives of those at home.

But all that logic couldn’t argue with the fear on the face of this man, who’d done nothing to deserve a death that accomplished something so near to nothing it surely couldn’t measure against his life.

She would use these skills she would learn here with this man’s pain and his death against the Order—but first she would use her skills for it. How did that balance any scales?

She wasn’t killing an innocent on purpose; that was the difference between the good guys and the bad guys. Bad guys killed the innocent on purpose; good guys sometimes killed the innocent, but only by accident while trying to kill the enemy.

But she was killing an innocent deliberately in order to get a chance to kill the guilty. How was she any different from a marksman who shoots a child in the legs so that he can gun down any combatants who came to save the child?

No, the Order was making her do this. It was the Order who would kill her if she refused.

Alone, the Chromeria would never order this. Experimenting on and murdering a slave for practice was the Order’s way of doing things.

Yet here she was.

The Order would keep sending her slaves until she mastered all the skills they demanded of a Shadow. If she mastered them quickly, they would send her sooner to kill targets out in the world. If she mastered them slowly, they would send her more and more slaves to practice on—and then murder.

There was no good choice, if she stayed. Nothing that would let her stay innocent.

If she ran, she wouldn’t be a murderer. But she would never avenge Marissia, either. The spymaster was probably dead, but to run would mean giving up on her. Then Teia would never stop the Order, and they would continue murdering whomever they wanted. They would forever take their tithe of blood.

If she ran, she wouldn’t be guilty of anything except cowardice.

I don’t run.

Fear was a shackle. Fear was a shackle she would never wear again.

Orholam, forgive me for what I am about to do.

Teia pulled off the man’s gag and removed the stone from his mouth. “What’s your name?” she asked quietly.

“Rajiv.”

“Rajiv? You don’t look Atashian. What’s your birth name?”

He looked at first as if he couldn’t remember. Finally, in a tone that said, ‘Must you take also this?’ he said, “Salvador.”

“You’re Tyrean.”

He nodded.

“Any family, Salvador?”

“A son.”

“Slave?”

“No longer. They took him from me. Beat him to death years ago.”

“As they do,” Teia said. Fuck them. “I wanted to tell you, Salvador, that your death today is going to accomplish something. That it’s part of winning this war, once and for all. That it’s a secret, but I swear you’re part of something good.” She looked down at her hands. “I wanted to tell you that, but I’m not sure it’s true.”

I don’t run away.

But I promise this, my innocent Salvador, hollow though my promise may ring: I will avenge you.

Perhaps that’s all that’s left for me.

She rubbed a sore dogtooth absently and then, gathering her will, went to work. And when she was finished, she had by no means mastered paryl.

He would not be the last.

Chapter 48

Of all the improbable situations Kip had found himself in during his short life—killing a king, killing a god, actually having friends, being able to jog more than a few steps without collapsing and dying of equally lethal doses of heart attack and embarrassment—this situation struck him as the most implausible yet.

He was standing at the open flap of his tent with a beautiful woman who wanted him, who seemed to genuinely want him. Tisis practically glowed with pride in Kip and hunger for him. It was so weird it actually gave him pause, and made him think.

Thinking was clearly the enemy here.

The Cwn y Wawr and Ghost camps had joined together on the island, and tonight they were celebrating the end of generations of internecine strife and oppression. It was the wildest party Kip had ever seen. The kind of party where before you slipped into your tent, instead of worrying that you were going to disturb your neighbors, you worried that it might already be occupied.

And Kip. Goddam Kip. He was seriously considering not making love with this beautiful woman. Against every sane consideration, Kip was stuck between his pride and having some good old-fashioned dirty fun with his mind-blowingly amazing wife.

Swallow your pride and take what you’re given, you fat idiot. This is better than you deserve. Why can’t you just enjoy it?

Tisis gave a little wave and a wink to her healer friend Evie Cairn, who’d been teaching her battlefield medicine, and tugged on Kip’s belt again, her other hand holding open the flap of the much-larger tent the Cwn y Wawr had insisted on giving them. “You coming inside, or do you want to get started right here?”

But then her smile faded as she saw the look in his eyes. She dropped Kip’s belt.

“We have to talk,” Kip said. Not words he would have ever imagined speaking.

When bodies should speak, words are the enemy, moron.

“This is about the will-casters, isn’t it?” Tisis said. She swallowed. She looked around guiltily, blonde hair glowing in the light of the rising moon, unwilling to meet his eyes. She ducked into the tent.

It looked like flight, and it triggered a predator instinct. Kip went after her. “You manipulated me.”

Her back to Kip, Tisis said nothing. She lit a lantern.