The Blinding Knife l-2

by Brent Weeks

  Eventually, the fever had passed, leaving him passionless, empty, but finally aware again. Somewhat himself. A weaker self.

  Like the blue prison, this green one was shaped like a squashed ball, a narrow chute above, a trickle of water down one wall, and a narrow drain below for the water and his waste.

  His jailer-his brother-apparently hadn’t yet figured out that Dazen had broken out of the blue prison. There must surely be some advantage to that fact, but Dazen couldn’t figure out what it was. All he knew was that since he’d come to this prison, there had been no bread. He hated that thick, lumpy, coarse, dense bread-but now he would have begged, would have licked broken glass for it.

  Perhaps his brother did know. Perhaps this was punishment.

  Nonetheless, Gavin hadn’t had the guts to starve him to death before, and he’d had sixteen years to do that, so Dazen didn’t think Gavin would starve him now. At least not on purpose.

  He felt weak, and that weakness was temptation. He hadn’t drafted green since the fever passed, and green was strength, wildness.

  Green had doubtless saved him, but it was death now. Because it was strength, and strength would be addictive here. Every time he drafted a tiny sip, he would want to draft more. And green was irrationality, wildness. Wildness in a cage meant insanity, suicide.

  I’m close enough to that as is.

  He started building the towers of suppositions again. That was the beauty of years spent drafting blue. It ordered your thoughts, smothered passion.

  Blue still hated the illogic of how he thought of his brother as Gavin and himself as Dazen, but he’d held firm to that decision. Gavin was a loser. Gavin had lost the war, Gavin had let himself be imprisoned. Dazen had stolen Gavin’s identity, so let him have it. “Gavin” was the dead man in the wall now, he the prisoner, he was Dazen now. He was a new man, and as Dazen, he would escape and he would win back all that should be his.

  It was a touch of black madness, he knew. But perhaps a bit of madness is the only way to stay sane alone in a dungeon for sixteen years.

  Recenter, Dazen. Dazed. Dozed. Dozen. Doozie. Double. Doubt. Certainty. T’s. Bifurcations. Intersections. Directions. Direct. Deceased. Dead. Dozing. Dazed. Dazen.

  He expelled a long, slow breath. Glared at the dead man, who glared back, defiant.

  “I’d tell you to go to hell, but-” he told the dead man.

  “I’ve heard that one before,” the dead man replied. “Remember?”

  Dazen grumbled into his beard. He held out his right hand. Either Gavin knows I’m in the next prison, or he doesn’t.

  No, back up.

  Either Gavin had put into place a system that would tell him when I moved from one prison to another, or he hadn’t.

  If he’d gone to the trouble of making more than one prison, he’d have put a system into place to know when I went from one to the other.

  Either his alarm worked, or it didn’t work.

  I’m betting it worked. Nothing Gavin has done has failed so far.

  So if the alarm worked, it showed that I’ve come here.

  If it showed I’ve come here, either Gavin hasn’t seen the notice or he has.

  But I’ve already established that he doesn’t have the guts to starve me.

  So maybe he hasn’t seen that I’m here.

  Which leaves another question: what does Gavin do when he travels? Either he never travels, or he’s set up a system to get me fed when he does. There’s no way he’d let himself be chained as much as I am, so he’s set up a system.

  Either he leaves someone else in charge of feeding me, or he has an automated system. Automated systems can easily break, and Gavin wouldn’t want to kill me accidentally. But people can’t be trusted.

  Tough choice.

  Meh, Gavin believed in people. It was always one of his weaknesses. It was why Gavin had been able to foil his plan to escape with Karris.

  That “Gavin” stuck in his blue brain irritated him. Made it hard to think about the time before the prison. Regardless, his brother’s trust was why his brother’s elopement with Karris had failed. Either the new Gavin had learned not to trust people from that failure or he hadn’t. Hmm. Gavin had been successful in taking Gavin’s place as Prism, which he couldn’t possibly do on his own. So Gavin hadn’t learned not to trust. So Gavin did trust someone.

  So there was someone up there, who had either seen or not seen the warning that Dazen had moved from one prison to another. Either that someone was punctilious in fulfilling their duties or not. Gavin wouldn’t have trusted someone who wasn’t careful. So that someone was careful. Either that someone knew what the warning meant, and what he was supposed to do when he saw it, or he didn’t.

  Or… back up. Either that someone was a woman or a man. Not that it mattered, but somehow the thought of some woman running around panicking because there was a blinking green luxin light and she didn’t know what to do about it pleased the prisoner immensely. He hoped she was a proud woman. How he missed humbling proud women.

  Tangent, Dazen. And a tangent that stirred his lust. He couldn’t afford lust, not here, not now. He had once loved to draft green while bedding a woman, loved the wildness, the intensity. But starvation and blue had blunted his carnal desires, and green was madness. And madness was death. So…

  Gavin wouldn’t have instructed for his brother to be starved to death, so eventually the woman up there would either do the right thing or the wrong. Or many wrong things in a row, looking for the right thing.

  To do the right thing, she would have to either put bread in a different chute or manipulate the original chute so that it aimed toward Dazen’s new cell. First, of course, she’d have to dye the bread green.

  But would she know to dye it green?

  She would only know to dye it green if Gavin had told her to do so. Maybe she was new. Maybe Gavin had kept her in the dark, not wanting to give away any details about the prison below, not wanting to stoke the woman’s curiosity any more than necessary.

  That was it. That was why it had been a week without food.

  Gavin hadn’t left her adequate instructions. She would know that there was food going down to someone. She would get desperate.

  Either Gavin would come back before she did something wrong, or he wouldn’t.

  For the first time in perhaps years, a smile lit Dazen’s features. All he had to do was wait. He would either wait until he died or he would wait until she made a mistake that led to his freedom.

  Waiting was hell, but it was a hell he was comfortable in. He talked with the dead man to pass the hours. The dead man mocked him, and he mocked the dead man. It wasn’t pleasant, but it was diverting. He could hardly wait until he broke out and left the dead man down here to die.

  Days passed. Any of his suppositions could be wrong. Gavin might have trusted a woman to watch the prison who had reason to hate Dazen. She might be willfully murdering him, even though she knew exactly what to do. You never knew with women. Or there could be an alarm, but it had broken. How often would his brother check such things, anyway? Maybe after sixteen years he’d gotten careless. Maybe he inspected it every year, but the year had only recently expired, and he hadn’t come yet. Despair set in. He had to try something.

  Almost without willing it, he drafted green. It was warmth on a cold night. It was food to the starving. It was a shot of straight liquor that instead of warming his belly went from his eyes to every extremity, washing him clean of weakness and paralysis.

  Not too much. Not too much! He cut off the flow before it overwhelmed. But already, looking at the walls made him terribly claustrophobic. His fingers twisted into claws and he found himself clawing at the green luxin wall.

  Stop stop stop! He flung the excess luxin from his fingers. The strength, he knew, was only a veneer of strength. His body was horridly weak. He would pay for anything rash he did. And green was stupidly rash. He wanted to charge the far wall and break through it. If he gave in to that impulse, he�
��d knock himself unconscious, probably die.

  What had he even drafted green for? He wasn’t going to punch a hole in the green luxin wall with green luxin. His brother wasn’t that stupid.

  Orholam, his hunger! He shot a tendril of green luxin up the food chute, farther, farther. He pushed around a corner-this chute was shaped differently than the blue. Of course it was, it had to direct the bread, what, twenty, thirty paces farther away? He tried to hold his patience, but Orholam, there was food there. He needed it! There was freedom somewhere up there.

  He pushed forward, slowly, but not nearly as slowly as the blue would counsel. He didn’t feel the superviolet until it snapped.

  Something swung sharply shut across the green arm he’d pushed so far, snapped it, snapped his will with it. He lost consciousness.

  The next day-if day it was-he heard the grinding of gears in the chute. He sat up, expectant. Was it his brother, come to gloat, or food to save him?

  His assumptions had been wrong. Either his brother did want to kill him, or the alarm had failed, or… he couldn’t reconstruct the tower now. Not without fresh blue. He was stupid. He was an animal. He was wasted, thin. He was broken. If it wasn’t bread, he was going to draft green. So it would be suicide. So what? What was so good about living, anyway?

  Something rattled down the chute.

  He waited, waited.

  A loaf of bread shot out of the chute, and he caught it. He caught it and almost didn’t believe. Though all the light in the cell was green, and blue lit only by green made for incredibly difficult drafting, in his hand was chromatic salvation. In a hell of green, the bread was blue. It was blue enough.

  Chapter 42

  Adrasteia had been summoned. Her mistress herself, Lucretia Verangheti, had ordered her to this dingy home on the far south side of Big Jasper, in the shadow of the walls. Not a pleasant neighborhood.

  A pale, grumbling man opened the door and showed Adrasteia to a nook. He brought tea. Only one cup. Didn’t put it in front of her.

  A woman Adrasteia didn’t recognize came in ten minutes later. She was young and Ruthgari, with the vanishingly rare true blonde hair and blue eyes. It would have made her an exotic beauty if she didn’t also have such a long, horsey face. She was dressed in a casual dress, well cut, and she wore only a few jewels. Her hair was long and gorgeous, but bound up in a practical bun right now. In all things, she looked like an extremely wealthy lady taking her ease in her own home. She sat. Sipped the tea.

  “This isn’t hot, Gaeros,” she said.

  The man apologized profusely and took it away. He returned almost immediately, put a hot cup in front of her. “We’ll need privacy,” the woman said.

  “Yes, Mistress.” He left and shut the door after himself.

  “So,” the woman said.

  “So?” Teia asked.

  “I’m your owner, my name is Lady Aglaia Crassos. You may call me Mistress.”

  “My owner is Lady Lucretia Verangheti.”

  “There is no Lady Verangheti. Or I am Lady Verangheti, depending on how you want to look at it. My family has enemies who would block us from placing slaves in certain households or positions-say, the Blackguard. The fiction of ‘Lady Verangheti’ helps me circumvent such pettiness.”

  “I’m sorry, Mistress, I don’t mean to be rude, but out of loyalty to my mistress…” There had to be some way to say this. “Hrm…”

  “You don’t believe me,” Lady Crassos said. She sounded amused, which Teia hoped was good. “It would be an interesting bluff, would it not? Of course, it would only work on slaves who never meet their mistress-meaning my slaves. Sad.” She pulled out a single piece of vellum and handed it over. It was Teia’s title; she recognized it instantly. Attached to it on a separate sheet was a writ of transfer, signed by Lucretia Verangheti and Aglaia Crassos. The handwriting was the same.

  It took Teia a few moments to understand. If Aglaia wanted to keep her ownership of Teia secret, she couldn’t own Teia’s title under her real name or anyone who bothered to inquire could find out to whom Teia belonged. But she needed to have the writ of transfer already finished in case something came up that required her to prove ownership quickly-so she kept the writ and simply didn’t file it at the Chromeria.

  Teia’s throat tightened. Why would the woman reveal her ownership now?

  “How good of a liar are you, girl?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Simple question. If you’re willful, you will be beaten exquisitely.”

  Exquisitely? “I’m pretty good, when I try. Mistress.”

  Aglaia Crassos’s face lit up. “Good. Good. Exactly what my sources have told me. Continue to answer honestly and your service for me need not be wholly unpleasant.”

  Fear stabbed through Teia. Not wholly?

  Aglaia looked around, as if searching for something. She rang her little bell, and the serving man instantly came in. “My crop,” she said.

  Gaeros knuckled his forehead and disappeared. He was back in moments. He presented her with a riding crop, then turned his back.

  She cracked the riding crop low against his back. He jerked, but said nothing.

  Aglaia dismissed him with a wave. “My slaves must anticipate my needs. I believe in disciplining you personally when you don’t. When a lady hands off discipline to someone else out of some misplaced sense of daintiness, she can’t know if her discipline is being enforced with too much mercy or too much gusto. And slaves-like children or hounds-are best disciplined immediately. I will not always have an enforcer with me, but I carry my strong right arm wherever I go. So when we conclude our interview today, I will beat you. I think it’s important for you to know how firm of a hand your mistress has. It will also let me know how easily you bruise, in case I have to beat you someday before you’re to be seen in public.”

  Teia swallowed. The weight of dread made her knees quiver. “Yes, Mistress.”

  “Kip Guile is your partner in the Blackguard training.”

  “Yes, Mistress. Your pardon, but he was disowned weeks ago. He’s no longer a Guile.”

  “I’m aware of this. But I have reason to believe that Kip may be welcomed back into his family when Gavin Guile returns.”

  Teia ducked her head, made her face show contrition. She was a slave, not a fool.

  “Adrasteia, my brother was the governor of Garriston. He was trying to save that worthless city when Gavin Guile shamed and murdered him and made him look like a traitor. And now my slave is partnered with his bastard. A bastard about whom he apparently cares. These are facts.”

  Teia scowled briefly, not sure what her mistress was implying. She didn’t hold the expression. Some owners didn’t like to see unpleasant expressions on their slaves. She also didn’t smile with the vacuous impression that she was an idiot that so many other slaves had mastered. Aglaia had said she prized intelligence. It might even be true. Best to reinforce her mistress’s feeling of superiority without overplaying it.

  Aglaia rolled her eyes, like Teia was hopelessly stupid. “I want you to keep my ownership of you secret, understood? If it’s found that I own you, because of the history between Gavin’s family and mine, you’d likely be expelled from the Blackguard and made worthless to me. I’ll sell you to a brothel at the silver mines in Laurion after I vent my frustrations on you. Understood?”

  The silver mines were notorious, the first option for slaves who committed serious but not capital crimes, and the last resort for slave owners exasperated with slaves who rebelled or fled repeatedly. The mines were dangerous, the other slaves more so, and the brothels were worse. They were reserved for the use of the depraved gaolers and their favorite slaves: the best of the worst. Teia had a friend, Euterpe, whose owners had lost everything during a drought. Finding the local brothels already full with slaves and even free women who’d sold themselves into slavery so they could eat, Euterpe’s owners had sworn to her that she would return after only three months. She’d been returned five months later
, after her owners finally recovered. She never did. Never smiled. Flinched at the touch of any man, even her father, who’d gone mad and hanged himself.

  Laurion was a curse among slaves. A byword. A threat whose mere existence was enough to keep most slaves in line.

  Aglaia Crassos didn’t mean it as a threat. Her eyes had as much pity as a rattlesnake’s. “You think I wouldn’t do that when you’re worth a fortune if I let the Blackguard buy you?”

  Teia licked her lips, but couldn’t think of any response that mightn’t plunge her further into hell.

  “My brother’s death means I’ll inherit twice as much money now as I thought I would a few months ago. Vengeance is sweeter than gold. Do you know the girls in Laurion service up to fifty men every day? Fifty! I didn’t believe it myself, but I’ve known several people who’ve sworn it’s true. They give the girls a measure of olive oil every day. Can you guess why?”

  Teia blinked stupidly, ice in her guts.

  “Because otherwise they get destroyed inside. Death by cock sounds so romantic, doesn’t it? But I’m sure it’s not. Fifty each day. And a pretty girl like you… you might do even more. Not many pretty young girls there. Do you understand me?”

  Teia’s knees felt weak. She nodded. She had to get away.

  “So now that we understand each other, tell me, have you seen anything worthwhile?”

  Teia gave her report. Kip was fat, had few friends, spent most of his time in the library, apparently spending all his time reading about some game. He’d been summoned several times to speak with the Red, and had seemed distraught afterward. He thought the Red wanted to destroy him. The old man had taken away Kip’s right to go to practicum in order to make Kip seem inept when Gavin got back. Teia had seen Kip draft green and blue. He didn’t sleep well.

  All that was fine. It was information Lady Crassos could learn through other avenues. But that wasn’t good enough, and Teia knew it.