The Blood Mirror

Ironfist was the one person Karris could trust without reservation, because—

Marissia was gone. Hard as it was to admit, for Karris’s new duties this was the worst blow of all. Marissia had been the head of all the White’s spies for years until Karris had recently begun to take those over.

Karris thought they’d become something like friends, so Marissia’s betrayal bit deep. And who knew what she’d taken with her?… Or whom.

Dear Orholam. What if Marissia had taken Gavin? But what could Karris do? It seemed hopeless. There were no hints at all about Marissia’s whereabouts—or Gavin’s. But the woman couldn’t have absconded with him without help. She had no retainers or family, so that meant she had money.

Check in with all spies. Determine if each one is loyal to me or to Marissia still.

Shift all monies to new accounts.

Determine how much Marissia has stolen, if possible. How? By leaning on Turgal Onesto? The young banking scion will have the opportunity to prove his worth now.

The only good news was that regardless of how high she’d climbed, Marissia was still a slave. Her clipped ear meant she would have trouble keeping power if she didn’t have money. Money. Money’s the answer for that snake.

But all this was recovery. All this was merely treading water after a shipwreck. That wasn’t enough. Karris needed to swim for shore.

She was the White now. That meant all the drafters in the Seven Satrapies were her responsibility. It meant the Chromeria and Big and Little Jasper were her responsibility. Taking care of those meant that the physical, brute-force weapons she’d loved for so long were inadequate to the task before her.

She had to win the war.

Win the war.

She made it an item on her list, as if something so immense might be better comprehended if she wrestled it into words.

Winning battles wouldn’t suffice. By sheer numbers killed, the Seven Satrapies had won battles. But their numbers bled away every night while the Color Prince added to his.

Karris’s war wasn’t going to be fought on battlefields. It was up to her to give the people of the Seven Satrapies reasons to fight, to bleed, to die, and to kill. Others would be the sword in this fight. She would be the lash and the pen.

She must unite the Seven Satrapies for this war. Any who opposed that goal, who opposed her, must be brought into line or crushed.

There was a knock on the door, and the now omnipresent Blackguards announced Andross Guile. He was only the first test.

Lovely to be starting out easy.

Andross Guile looked as if he had purloined all the youth Karris had lost in the last few months. It wasn’t only that his little round paunch was shrinking, or that his skin, formerly pallid from being so long covered from the sun’s gaze, was taking on color again. His back was straight, his head high, showing the broad Guile shoulders and strong Guile jaw. He was energized by crisis.

A good man for these times, then.

And that’s the first and last time I’ll ever think of Andross Guile as a good man.

“It’s nice to see you smile in such fraught times, High Lady,” he said.

Karris wasn’t a player of that game that Andross liked so much, Nine Kings, but at this moment, she knew she had only one card: her own attitude.

He knew more than she did, so it made sense to defer to him. If he were Ironfist, she would ask, ‘What must we do to win this war?’ But with Andross Guile, there was no way she could position herself as the subordinate.

“Those men I killed,” she said. “How are you going to deal with the fallout from their families?”

His face jumped off a bridge, tried to flip, and landed on its belly. “Me?”

She looked at him levelly. He’d tried to stack the election of the White against her. During the testing, two of the candidates—secretly his candidates—had tried to push her off the great disks to fall to her death. It hadn’t turned out well for them. “If nothing else,” she said, “we share a last name. That’s a problem… for you.”

Then he laughed. “Oh, that is an interesting play. Ha!” He looked at her for a few moments, and she had a brief fantasy that he was bald because his brain generated so much heat it had burnt off all his hair. “I was rather hoping that you might choose to be known by your maiden name, to use the term ‘maiden’… loosely.”

Karris saw Blackguard Gavin Greyling’s eyes go wide. He couldn’t believe Andross was speaking to her that way.

And in that moment, Karris thanked Orea Pullawr for forbidding her to use red or green luxin. After years of her constantly using angry red and impulsive green, Karris’s tongue had been a flame. But the months of abstaining had given her new patience. Karris let the insult pass beneath her feet with blue disdain.

“Hmm,” Andross said, as if it were merely interesting that she did not take offense. As if he’d played a good card, and the play hadn’t worked the way he’d thought, and thus, because he’d been countered, that was the end of it.

She wanted to be angry about it, but that was a waste, too, wasn’t it? Instead she should take note: Andross will make personal insults impersonally, not because he’s trying to insult you, but because he’s trying to find your weaknesses.

“I’ll never prove it,” she said, “but I know. You tried to have me killed. Or you encouraged those who tried. Same thing, as far as I’m concerned. I merely stopped you, so in my view, you shit the bed. You clean it up.”

A frisson went through the Blackguards assigned to Karris and to Andross. They all knew how fast Karris was. They knew how good she was at unarmed combat. She was well within lethal range of Andross Guile. And the Blackguards were charged with protecting both the White and the promachos. What were they to do if one attacked the other? Pulling apart fighters was vastly more dangerous and complicated than simply putting down a threat.

But Andross Guile merely tugged on his nose, scratching it. He looked at the Blackguards and their weapons and their menacing stances. “Stand down, children. You’re here to make us look good, not to actually do anything.”

“While you’re being an asshole for no good reason to people who can’t fight back,” Karris said, “I want to point out something.”

“Oh, please do.”

“Orea beat you. You stacked the cards against us. I know you did. You owned all six of the other candidates, didn’t you?”