The Broken Eye (78 page)

But Murder Sharp dropped the answers to her biggest questions like they were nothing.

“The other colors,” she’d ventured, “they have metaphysical effects.”

“Meta-what?”

Oh, right. Murder Sharp hadn’t gotten his education in the Chromeria. Best not to make it look like she was trying to rub it in. “Like red makes you more prone to anger, and superviolet makes you more logical over time. What does paryl do?”

He’d chuckled. “Haven’t noticed, huh? Maybe you’re special, like me. I’m a bit of a curiosity among paryl drafters.”

A curiosity. That was one way to put it. But she painted a carefully neutral but interested look on her face. He’d given in.

“Paryl makes you a feeler. Think about it. It’s way down below sub-red, opposite to superviolet. Superviolet makes you more logical. Paryl makes you empathetic. You get incredibly attuned to the emotions around you, whether mundane or magical. I’m lucky. I’m just aware of them; they don’t affect me. Other paryl drafters—most of the few we got—aren’t so lucky. They themselves feel what others are feeling. For some, to a horrifying degree. ‘Weep with those who are weeping, rejoice with those who are rejoicing.’ It could have been written with a paryl in mind. That refined feeling, though, is our greatest weakness and our greatest strength. It’s why we feel light itself. First, we get good at feeling light’s effects. Then we simply become aware of light itself. Then we can split it.”

“All paryls are lightsplitters?” How could the Chromeria not know such a thing?

“One in ten, maybe. Which is about a thousand times more frequently than other colors.”

It turned out that half of what Marta Martaens had taught her about paryl was worthless. Paryl made a gel, Marta had said. Master Sharp had admitted that could be done, but wondered why you’d want to use it very often. “There’s a resonance point higher up that can be used to make a gel. We only use it to mark targets, because it evaporates quickly. Other than that? Good for paryl torches, I guess, but I just fling the light directly. So maybe if you want to give paryl to someone else for some reason?” And then he’d shown her another resonance point: it was a gas. It was also much, much easier to draft than paryl’s solid or gel forms.

Then he’d given her the assignment she was working on now. She drafted a shell of paryl in a bubble around her.

It was, of course, invisible. It was also so delicate that any touch shattered it. But delicate didn’t mean useless. With the bubble surrounding her, she drafted paryl gas to fill it. This, too, was invisible—which was why she could practice in the library without worrying about being interrupted, so long as she flipped the page of the tome open in her lap every so often and didn’t let them see her eyes.

By drafting paryl, Teia was made more sensitive to the touch of colors. Having paryl gas actually touching her skin seemed to enhance that sensitivity even further. Having it surround her also meant she was breathing it, though it had no taste and only the faintest scent.

The paryl bubble not only acted as a good way to contain the paryl gas, but it was also a lens. Just as a blue lens filtered out all colors except blue, or as a clear glass window still filtered out some superviolet light, so too did paryl have an effect on the light that passed through it. It was like a gentle sieve.

A sieve of light? The idea had seemed impossible, but it was true. Paryl nudged every color closer to its true color—that spectrum at which it could be drafted. Through even this much paryl, each color seemed more vibrant, brighter. Master Sharp said this was evidence that paryl was the master color. Except he said it like it was capitalized. ‘Paryl is the Master Color,’ he’d said, his voice reverent.

But Teia had heard red magisters come up with reasons why red was the best color. Blue magisters told their upper-level discipulae why blue was the true color—Orholam’s favorite shade, the color of sea and sky. Yellows made the case for why yellow was Orholam’s favorite—the strong center of the spectrum, whose solid heart was unbreakable gold. As far as Teia was concerned, much as she would like paryl to be amazing and great—it was her only color, after all—paryl was just another color with some quirks. Like yellow could be liquid or frozen and was useful in each form.

Teia had seen the tenth-year discipulae—those few permanent students who were able to convince their sponsors that they could best serve them by doing research—experiment with polarized lenses. When one lens was placed in a beam of light, nothing appeared to happen. When a second was placed downstream in the same beam, still nothing happened—until either lens was rotated. Then the beam of light went dark.

This seemed to be something similar. Unless, of course, it was something totally different. She was forbidden to ask anyone about it.

She finished her assignments for her other lectures, maintaining the bubble as well as she could while doing so. It was impossible, and even when she did it right, she realized she soon ran out of air. For that matter, she was inhaling an awful lot of paryl gas. Was that healthy?

On the scale of things likely to kill you, T, breathing paryl goes somewhere below murderous heretics, insane assassins, conquering pagans, and plain stupidity.

That was one way to look on it.

She finished her work and headed back to her barracks. She tried to maintain the bubble, drafting in quick gulps, averting her eyes from passersby, then returning them to normal, and glancing once again after traversing only a few paces. But the bubble kept snapping from her uneven support of it—the rolling motion of walking itself broke the bubble at whatever direct support beams she attached to it. Then when she was sure she was supporting the bubble correctly, walking so lightly and fluidly and holding the bubble at so many points it shouldn’t break, she watched as the force of the wind from her walking caved the front of the bubble in. It held form for one second, then cracked and split and dissolved into nothing. Again.

“Tsst.”

The whisper almost didn’t register. Teia walked right past the open door, totally absorbed in her—oh hell!

She froze. Master Sharp! He was dressed in the embroidered linen and wide belt of a rich Ruthgari, with his petasos worn on his back, the ties interwoven with gold threads. A part of her noted the clothing with approval: rich enough to allow free movement around most of the Chromeria, but not so rich as to be memorable.

He beckoned her to step into the room he was in. It was an office of some kind. He’d clearly broken in. She made sure no one was looking, and stepped in.

“This will be quick,” Master Sharp said. He grinned at her, all perfect teeth. He closed the door behind her. “The time has come for you to prove your loyalty. Sun Day is only three days away. The White is attending rehearsals, right now. You will go to a room two floors below her room. Out the window, you’ll find a knotted rope. It will take you up one floor. Then you’re to use these to climb to the next.” He handed her a bag of what felt like rocks.

She took one out. It was a crescent roughly the size of her hand. The mouth of the crescent was almost flat. A tab of blue luxin stuck out from the mouth.

“You wipe the wall as clean as you can get it. You peel the tab off, and you stick it immediately to the wall, hard. It’ll hold five times your weight. When you climb down, you pull this off the bottom.” He flipped out a ring. “It’s attached to a string. The string is coated with a solvent. You use the string to pop the crescent off the wall. This is important. You’re to leave no trace, understood? There may be a little luxin left on the wall. It’ll dissolve in minutes.”

“What am I supposed to do when I get there?”

“There will still be a Blackguard or two posted right outside the door. Her room slave has been dealt with.”

“Killed?” Teia asked. He still hadn’t answered her question.

“Sent on a task. We believe the shimmercloaks are in the bottom drawer of the White’s desk. That or in her slave’s dresser in the attached slave quarters.” So that was the goal. Shimmercloaks. Just like they’d guessed. “We expect you have half an hour. The door to the balcony has been left unlocked.”

“You have a Blackguard in your employ,” Teia said. “Why not have him get it for you?”

Master Sharp looked at her like she was stupid.

Oh. Because they didn’t want to expose him. Or her. The Blackguards would be the first people suspected—even though no one would want to suspect them, who else could steal something from the White’s very chambers?

The further implication was that whichever Blackguard
was
the Order’s man, he would be somewhere with a good alibi during this job. Perhaps it would be someone who was with the White right now. Regardless, it would also have to be someone who could have gotten into the White’s room quite recently in order to unlock the balcony door—which was kept locked at all times since the assassination attempt a few months ago. Between those two bits of information, surely Teia could limit the pool of possible traitors.

Later.

“What do the cloaks look like?” Teia asked.

Murder Sharp bared his too-white teeth at her. Maybe it was a grin. He showed her the inside of his cloak. It was a supple gray cloth, fine-woven. He flipped the cloak over and showed her the pocket at the neckline, gave her a glimpse of the golden choker inside. “One of them is burned at the hem. There should be two. We know the burned one is there. If you bring both, you will find great favor. If you bring only the burned one, they may still not trust you.”

“You’re telling me I could bring you a treasure as great as a shimmercloak and
still
not be trusted?” Teia demanded.

“The room’s Prudence twenty-seven. Get moving,” Master Sharp said. He scowled, as if he wished he hadn’t given away the part about the two cloaks. “Oh, and the trick with the paryl bubble is to support it with the gas itself. No hard points. If the gas is dense enough, you can hold an open connection to it, and without your eyes black orbs of night. My own master said that our ancient forebears could hold the cloud in formation around them without a shell even as they moved, even in wind, or while sprinting or fighting.”

That was impressive, but…”Why would that help?” Teia asked.

“The shimmercloaks help us lightsplitters attain invisibility. The mechanics of the cloaks are different, but the idea was based on something, you know.”

“You mean…?” Teia started. It was impossible.

“The ancient masters were called mist walkers for a reason. They didn’t need cloaks.”

Chapter 72

Think of it this way, T: you hate waiting. For some insane reason, like every soldier, you prefer the moments of terror to the monotony of boredom.

Teia remembered leading the Blackguard up the cliff path to the fort on Ruic Head. She’d led an assault by the best force in the entire world. Surely she could climb a ladder. She’d climbed up the side of the fort with enemies shooting cannons mere feet away. This would be easy.

To distract herself as she walked, she tried to support the paryl bubble with paryl gas alone. It worked, easily. If she left the bubble open at the bottom, a hands’ breadth above the ground, she could float along inside it and still breathe.

She rounded a corner and saw Kip coming out of the lift. She stopped suddenly and ducked backward so he wouldn’t see her. She forgot to push the bubble back as she did so it shattered when she moved back into it—but it shattered silently and invisibly. She waited. If Kip was coming her direction, she’d see him any second.

But he didn’t come. He must have been headed to the library.

She made it to the lift unseen. She went up to the floor named Prudence—the luxiats’ name for one of the upper floors—and made it unseen. There was no one in the hallways. She made it to room twenty-seven unseen.

The door was unlocked.

No one inside.

She checked the window. It was big enough. It opened easily, and the rope was hanging precisely where it was supposed to be. It was even knotted for easier climbing—which Teia appreciated greatly. She could make it up an unknotted rope, but with difficulty. Her upper-body strength wasn’t what she wished.

She checked the door behind her, secured the bag she was carrying with the climbing crescents, and prayed for about ten seconds. Don’t give yourself too much time. Too much thinking will stop you. You take long enough to prep your gear and gather your wits, but don’t take any time to gather your courage. Courage delayed is cowardice. Courage is action.

But I don’t want to die.

Move, T.

She grabbed the rope, tugged on it. It felt solid. Of course, it would. If they were trying to kill her, they—

They wouldn’t do it in the tower.

She was climbing before she knew what she was doing. Much better. She avoided looking down and worked her way up, knot to knot to knot. It was late afternoon, not exactly the time she would have picked. But this was when the White was out of her room, and Teia didn’t have any choice regardless. At least she was climbing in the shadowed side of the Prism’s Tower, so while the sun was descending, anyone looking her direction would be dazzled by the sun beyond her.

Thank Orholam it was a cold spring day with a chilling wind: hardly anyone would be outside.

The tricky part was always making the transitions, from rope to balcony this time. But Teia was a good climber. She hitched up a foot, swung the rope around it, locking the rope against one of its knots, and used that as a step. With that and both hands on the balcony rail, she vaulted into the balcony as if she did this every day.

It made her think about climbing the balconies at the Lucigari estate with the little girl she’d been bought to be a playmate for, Sarai. Easy.

She checked the door, and found it was unlocked, as it was supposed to be. She glanced inside. There was no one inside. It was a small, plain room, but this high in the tower, it must be the room of a favored slave. Or a room reserved for such, but empty now. Teia’s curiosity was hot, but she didn’t have time to poke around. She stepped back outside, closed the door gently, and examined the climb.