The Blinding Knife

by Brent Weeks

  She stood, feeling lighter than she had in sixteen years, and walked to the door. Samite was standing there, waiting for her. She had her hands behind her back, as if hiding something.

  Samite said, “Lady Guile said that after you read that note, you’d have need of some serious firepower, one way or the other.” She brought her hands out from behind her back. In one hand was a large old pistol. In the other was a painfully beautiful lace chemise and a matching corset with short stays that would cost a Blackguard a year’s wages. “So which is it going to be?”

  Karris stared openmouthed. Lady Guile! Scandalous! And Sami was holding that up in the middle of the barracks, for Orholam’s sake! “Who’s on Prism duty tonight?”

  “Think it’s some of the new boys.”

  “Perfect,” Karris said. She grinned.

  “Karris, what are you…” Samite said.

  “Are you just going to stand there, or are you going to help me with my hair?”

  Chapter 78

  Marissia’s brief, whispered report had been terrifying. The old familiar panic tightened Gavin’s chest. First had been news from all over the satrapies: twelve sea demons, swimming together in three precise ranks of four, circling all of Abornea five times before disappearing. A sheet of ice covering all of Crater Lake by Kelfing, though it was too warm. Herds of wild goats a thousand strong, standing all in precise rows. Poets struck dumb. Musicians writing a hundred pages of notation in a day, forgetting to eat or drink or sleep until they fell unconscious. Galley slaves rowing until they died, afraid of falling out of tempo. Captains plotting out constellations instead of piloting, running onto rocks. Mothers engaged in menial tasks abandoning their mewling infants until the tasks were complete.

  There was a certain irony to order going out of control, but it wasn’t one the dead would appreciate. And that wasn’t the worst.

  The alarm on the blue hadn’t gone off. She hadn’t known that Dazen had broken out. When was the last time Gavin had checked that mechanism? A year? A year and a half?

  In the third year of Dazen’s imprisonment, hoping it would alleviate his terrible nightmares, Gavin had built in fail-safes. He thought. If Dazen broke into any prison, that very action was supposed to activate a glowing warning at the top of the chute: the alarm.

  Either Marissia had been turned—no, the shock on her face had been real—or Gavin’s mechanism had failed.

  If the chutes hadn’t switched over, Dazen would have starved to death by now. Gavin had made it so that if Dazen tried to throw luxin up the chute, it would switch it over as well—but if one mechanism had failed, others might have, too. Dammit. He hadn’t made them to last forever. Luxin decayed, even in darkness, and he’d crafted almost every part of the prisons from luxin.

  If he’s dead, I’d have felt it, wouldn’t I? I knew something was wrong when Sevastian died. Surely…

  The lift shuddered to a stop, just a couple floors down. Not many people had the keys to stop the Prism’s lift.

  It was Grinwoody, giving his thin, unpleasant smirk, happy to interrupt. He extended a hand silently. Gavin took the note from the slave. He already knew what it was going to say.

  “Son, come to my chambers. This is not a request.”

  Pretty much as he guessed.

  First, it was Kip and Samite in his room, keeping him from checking the chute’s alarm immediately. Then it was the “emergency meeting.” Now this.

  But there was nothing for it. If Dazen had escaped, he was long gone by now. If he’d been starved, he was dead by now. Orholam have mercy, this put the wights’ talk about Dazen Guile coming to save them in a different light, didn’t it?

  They knew. They’d been working to free him all along.

  Peace, Gavin. Patience. If it’s done, it’s done. If not, don’t tip off the most cunning man in the world by acting strangely. He went with Grinwoody. There was nothing to be gained by putting it off. He wouldn’t be any more ready to face off with the tyrant later, and time wasn’t going to make Andross Guile’s anger cool. Indeed, getting to him now, when he was still fresh in his fury and hadn’t had time to plan his vengeance, might be best.

  Gavin made his way into the dark room. The air was oppressive, hot. He hated it in here. Even illuminated with his superviolet lantern, there was a darkness here that clung to the bones and weakened the will.

  “Gavin,” Andross Guile said. His voice was level, gravelly.

  “Father.” He mustered what respect he could.

  “You stabbed me in the back in there.” Andross Guile’s face was covered, of course, but his tone was almost bemused. He relished this, Gavin realized. There was nothing left to the old man now except proving his mastery, and there was no game that could compare to Gavin challenging him.

  Andross was also certain that he would win, which frightened Gavin.

  “I did what you taught me, father.”

  “Stuck up for some wandering wretches from Tyrea?”

  “Won. I won.”

  That earned some silence.

  “So you get your own satrap. By itself, worthless. This new Tyrea may not even survive. So you get a vote on the Spectrum you can count on for a couple years. No subtlety, though. If you want to own Colors, there are better ways. Why did you defy me?”

  “Funny,” Gavin said. “That was exactly my question for you. Why oppose me, father? What do you care if we fight or not? It’s not like anyone’s going to ask you to take the field. What do you care even if I become promachos again? What could be better for our family?”

  “You forget who asks the questions here,” Andross snapped.

  Gavin sat in one of the old armchairs. Once regal, it was now shabby. “So you’ve been playing Nine Kings with Kip? How good is he?” It was a petty defiance, asking more questions by misdirection when his father had laid down the law. But he thought Andross would find it irresistible. The man had nothing but his games now.

  Andross smiled, a rictus bent upward. “After the war, you lost your focus, Gavin. You could have been as good as me. Now you’re running out of time, and you’ll never be my equal. I’m sorry I misjudged you.”

  Misjudged me? There’s an understatement. You saggy-drawered monster. Mother took one look at me after Sundered Rock and knew me. You’ve talked to me a thousand times since, and still don’t know me. You never knew me, you blind old fool. “You don’t know what it does to me to consider that I might not be like you,” Gavin said, tone flat.

  “It’s time for you to marry,” Andross said.

  Gavin had thought the old man might have forgotten. He himself nearly had. It was a shot in the gut.

  “I’ll only marry one woman,” Gavin said.

  “I’m only asking you to marry one. You’ve got five years. If you can give me four sons, perhaps one of them will have a spine on which I’ll have a chance at rebuilding this family.”

  “I have a son,” Gavin said. Kip, who was actually his brother’s son. What a horrible mess.

  “A bastard.” Andross waved a hand. “He will be pushed aside in due time. Until your true heirs reach majority, Kip will serve in other ways. To serve as a focus for other families’ assassination attempts and so forth. But Kip will never carry this family’s name forward.”

  Gavin tented his fingers, sneering, but of course Andross couldn’t see it. “What’s your master plan, then?”

  Andross Guile’s lips thinned. He sat across from Gavin. “I was going to give you your choice of a wife. There were three strong contenders from families wealthy enough or connected in useful ways, and the girls young enough to give you children quickly. Young enough to be… malleable. Solicitous.”

  “You mean you could control them after I die.”

  “Of course. You bed a strong-willed woman and she might steal your future and disappear.” Andross gave a malicious grin.

  Gavin froze. From the tone and the smile, the sentence was meant to be a knife under his armor—under Gavin’s armor—and he had no idea wha
t his father was talking about.

  Say the wrong thing, and he’ll know.

  So he said nothing, as if stricken. Which he was, if for the wrong reasons.

  The knife. It had something to do with the knife.

  “Are you curious who they were?” Andross asked.

  “Please,” Gavin said lightly. He swallowed.

  “Your little temptress Ana Jorvis, Naftalie Delara, and Eva Golden Briar. I was even going to add Liv Danavis, if you’d managed to save Garriston with her father’s help. Of course, now you’ve bound the Danavis clan to us forever in another way so it’s a moot point. Regardless,” Andross Guile said, “now you’ve destroyed that choice for yourself. I’ll give you this, son, you present me with interesting challenges.”

  Grinwoody brought them tea. Gavin picked up his cup. “Father, speaking of moot, all of this is moot. I’m not going to marry—”

  “Tisis Malargos.”

  The teacup hovered in front of Gavin’s mouth. “Pardon?”

  “She’s nineteen. Not so young she’ll get pregnant if you sneeze at her, but young enough to bear quickly. Pretty, too, or so Grinwoody says. Her older sister Eirene took over the family’s financial affairs after Dervani didn’t come back from the war. Brilliant merchant, Eirene. She’s built the family into a financial juggernaut, and the dowry she’s promised for Tisis, whilst enormous, pales in comparison to the wealth Tisis will inherit when Eirene dies.”

  “What? Why would Tisis inherit from her sister?”

  “Eirene’s a tribadist. And not fond enough of children to get on her back for any man. Smart enough, though, to carry on flirtations with many men in order to secure better business deals for herself, and, she thinks, to keep us in line if her sister does marry you. In this, she’s partly correct: there will be no divorce or flagrant affairs while you are married to Tisis, Gavin.”

  “What?!” Gavin still hadn’t processed the first part. His father wanted him to marry Tisis? She was the woman who’d sabotaged Kip’s testing. She was the woman Gavin had just thrown out of the Spectrum.

  Orholam have mercy. Gavin’s mother had confessed to ordering Dervani murdered—because he knew Dazen’s secret. And now his father wanted him to marry a woman whose father Felia Guile had murdered.

  “You see the beauty of it? Eirene holds her inheritance against us, and we hold Kip against her. If she leaves our family to inherit everything, we disown Kip. It’s not the only card we have to play, but it is always a good idea to make your opponent pay you to sacrifice a card you didn’t want to play anyway.”

  In purely tactical terms, Gavin saw the appeal—not to his family, but to himself. Tisis was a beautiful woman, who might still be turned into a friend rather than the enemy he’d thought he’d just made. And by doing this, he’d keep his father from destroying Kip. At least he would buy Kip time. Gavin’s own time was drawing to a close, and there would be no one to protect Kip when he was gone—and if Gavin died before Andross did, Kip would need that protection. But—

  “Father, why don’t you turn your mind to helping me for once? The only woman I’ll consent to marry is Karris White Oak.”

  Andross Guile snorted. “And she brings what to this family? A few barren estates? Her family alliances allowed to wither while she plays Blackguard? Don’t be ridiculous.”

  Gavin took a sip of his tea. When his nerves steadied, very calmly, very quietly, he said, “It’s her or it’s no one.”

  “You were always my favorite son, Gavin. Thought I saw myself in you. Thought I saw will in you. Perhaps I shouldn’t complain too bitterly that you turn it against me now, though you have good reasons not to. You remember what we did to make you Prism. You owe everything you are to me, son. So now either you do exactly what I tell you or the cost will be more swift and grievous than you can imagine.”

  Gavin got up without saying a word.

  “Son, let me hear you say it. Say you’ll obey me in this.”

  Gavin walked to the door, parted the dark curtains, and stepped through, out of the cloying darkness.

  “Gavin!” his father shouted. He sounded old. He sounded weak. “Gavin!”

  Chapter 79

  “Good evening,” Gavin greeted the Blackguards at the door to his rooms. He didn’t recognize either man. They were young, maybe eighteen. They looked like children—and when eighteen-year-old men look like children to you, it’s a sure sign that you’re getting old.

  What did you do when you were eighteen, Gavin?

  Too much. But that was a distraction. Here were two Blackguards he didn’t know, despite knowing all the Blackguards. Two Blackguards, alone with him. This was how assassination attempts began. He’d been warned.

  The men saluted him. “Lord Prism.”

  “What’re your names?” Gavin asked.

  “Gill and Gavin Greyling, sir,” the elder said.

  Brothers, of course. He should have picked it up. “Gavin?” he asked the younger.

  The boy beamed. “Yes, sir, named after—”

  “After our mother saw that he was a bit ill-favored, my lord,” Gill said dryly.

  “Hey!” Gavin Greyling said.

  Gavin laughed. Of the two, Gavin was definitely the more handsome.

  The younger Greyling looked relieved that the Prism had laughed. “I’m sorry my brother is horrifying, my lord. It is a real honor to serve you. A lifelong dream, my lord.”

  “An honor to have you in my service, Gavin, and even you, Gill. You two just raised?” A Blackguard, named after him. Good Orholam. He was getting old. And going blind to prove it. His chest tightened. He hadn’t had the heart to go straight down to the back entrance to the tunnels after meeting with his father. He’d told himself that this would allow him to check the alarm first from his room. That it would give him warning if he’d been betrayed.

  Really, he just didn’t have the strength to go down there right now and face his brother—alive or dead.

  “Yes, my lord,” Gill said.

  “Doesn’t the commander usually have a veteran accompany the newly raised?” Gavin asked.

  Gill flinched. “Yes, sir. With the personnel we lost at Garriston, it’s been hard to cover all the shifts.”

  Gavin looked at each man in turn, widened his eyes momentarily to see how hot each looked. Both were pretty warm, nervous. Of course, with no baseline, and it being the first time they’d talked to him, that told him little.

  Besides, now that he thought about it, he thought he did remember seeing these boys train. Gill was quite a hand with stabbing spears, if Gavin remembered correctly. And what kind of assassin would risk antagonizing the target by teasing him? Perhaps a very subtle one, but not likely one who was eighteen years old.

  He bade them good night and stepped into his rooms. “Marissia?” he called. It was late, she might have gone to her bed in the little side room—more a closet, really. But she didn’t answer. Which she wouldn’t, if she’d betrayed him.

  Behind him, Gavin Greyling was closing the doors. “Um, she left about half an hour ago, sir.” She often worked late into the night when he returned from trips, giving him the most up-to-date reports the next morning and arranging the most pressing business on his schedule. And if she was loyal, she’d been doing everything she could to investigate her “failure.” Yes, that was Marissia. That was the heart of the woman, dutifully looking to correct any error, even when it meant she’d forget that when he came home, he wanted her here. She didn’t have betrayal in her.

  “Ah.” Shit.

  “Is there anything we can do, my lord?” Gavin Greyling asked.

  Gavin leveled a bemused gaze on the boy and said, “I have been traveling for the past four months with a woman I find incredibly seductive but whom I can never have. So no, I’m afraid that the duty I have for my room slave to perform is not one I would ask of you.”

  Gill started laughing. It took his brother longer.

  “Are you talking about Watch Commander Ka—Ow!” he said a
s Gill slammed the butt of his spear onto his foot.

  Gavin Greyling looked at his brother, peeved, and then blanched. “Oh. Oh. Um. I’m sorry, sir. Would you like one of us to go summon her? Her the room slave, I mean, my lord. Not her the watch commander… Although I suppose… Ahem.”

  Even though they were offering, Gavin knew he wasn’t supposed to treat the Blackguard as his fetch-and-carry boys. It would, quite possibly, get these young men into trouble for having volunteered it. No, he’d spent the time talking with them to gain some rapport and to make sure they weren’t assassins. He wasn’t going to throw away that rapport just for his complaining loins.

  But it was close. He shook his head.

  The doors closed behind him and he shuffled toward the painting. He was exhausted, and there was a ball of despair swelling in his stomach. He looked at the painting closely, examined the hidden hinge, saw no sign of tampering. The frame of the painting needed a new coat of paint, though. The oils on his fingers had worn one edge smooth. He would have to disguise that. He pulled the frame open.

  The panel under which sat the liquid yellow luxin was undisturbed, inert until the alarm injected air into it to make it glow faintly. The alarm hadn’t gone off.

  He drafted superviolet and reached deeper, pushed the superviolet into the hellstone panel, felt the brush of the filaments he’d left there, so thin they’d tear at the slightest touch—so thin they’d tell him if anyone had tampered with this. He felt the mechanism. It was undisturbed.

  For one wild moment, he thought that it was all a mistake. Dazen was still in the blue prison! Nothing had gone wrong! He’d merely panicked because he’d lost blue. Because he’d had a bad dream about Dazen escaping—which he’d been fearing for sixteen years, so that was no wonder, in the aftermath of losing blue.

  Except that the Third Eye had said his brother had broken out of blue, too.