He cut her bonds. She didn’t stand, just lay there, rubbing life back into her limbs, the wood grain beneath her face somehow reassuring.

“So think of that, if you ever are struck by a desire to confess to them. They cannot help but suspect you. All you do, in their eyes, is tainted by the fact that only a beast would hide from Orholam. They will never trust you. Think of what they have done before to drafters of paryl, a mere color invisible to them.”

They hunted them down. More than once. Because they feared them. Because seven colors sounded right to them.

He reached over and turned the knob of the lantern down, extinguishing it. The room was plunged into darkness, but even that wasn’t total. Bits of light leaked in around the shutters.

“Tell me, Adrasteia,” he said quietly. “It’s dark here. Have you disappeared because it’s dark?”

“No,” she said.

“Are you different because it’s dark? Taller? Thinner? Smarter?”

“No,” she answered, uncertain.

“Tell me, have you ever been, say, trapped in a bathtub and a visitor comes, and your clothes are on the opposite side of the room?”

She still didn’t know what he wanted to hear, and she only wanted to give him what he wanted. She sat up. “Uh, I was trapped changing after Blackguard training last year. Someone took my clothes as a prank. Is that what you mean?”

He didn’t answer. “Tell me, were you doing anything wrong?”

“No,” she ventured. Unless you counted letting yourself be vulnerable to having a prank played on you in the first place as wrong.

“No. And yet you would have been ashamed to walk out into the eyes of passersby, wouldn’t you?”

“Of course.”

“But if it had been dark, you wouldn’t have been embarrassed, would you?”

“No.” She was starting to see it now.

“You probably hid, didn’t you? But it wasn’t because you were bad, on the contrary, it was because you were modest. Because you were good, as they would call good. Yes?”

“Yes.”

“So not all shame comes from wrongdoing, and not all hiding is evidence of moral failure, is it?”

“No,” she said.

“And so we stumble together onto the truth: Darkness is freedom. And that is why they hate it. That is why they fear it. Because some abuse freedom, they want none to have freedom. Because light is power, they wish to control light itself. But freedom need not be feared, and light cannot be chained. It is ever more than we see and more than we know, and when we hold it too tightly, it dazzles us and makes us blind. You and I, Adrasteia, we are called to serve in the dark. And look. You’re not blind now, are you?”

Indeed, her eyes had adjusted, even without her using her tricks. It was natural. Her eyes knew what to do in darkness.

“We are the friends of light, but not its chattel. We do not fear its lash. We are equanimous; we know we are both meat and breath, flesh and spirit, animal and angel, and neither more truly one than the other. We are the priests of light and darkness, the arbiters of dusk. Neither day nor night is our master. And do you know what happens when a woman walks without fear?”

Teia shook her head, but there was a sudden longing deep in her that swelled so strong it paralyzed her tongue. Tell me. Tell me.

“She becomes.”

Becomes what? Teia didn’t say the words aloud, but he knew what she was thinking, for he answered:

“She becomes whatever she wills. Minus only one thing.” In the dark, he held up a finger, almost like he was scolding her.

Teia was silent now. The question was obvious, and now she didn’t want to ask it.

Sharp said, “She has one thing she can never be, never again. You know what it is, don’t you?”

The words came unbidden to her lips, from a place so dark no light had ever touched it: “A slave.”

Chapter 70

After Karris made him look like a complete asshole, Kip went to the Prism’s exercise chamber. He hoped Teia would be there. He didn’t want to talk about it, but training with her was better than training alone. She made him feel better, just by being there.

She wasn’t there.

He tried this week’s layout of the obstacle course, sinking into the blessed distraction of taking apart problems—how could you transition from swinging across the ropes to leaping that pit to climbing that wall without stopping? It was a warrior’s meditation. Of course, the calm of it was punctuated when he figured out a perfect combination. He’d need to swing one-handed, left, then right, to build up momentum, and then swing his whole body up parallel: he’d clear pit and wall all in one move. He tried it twice, and had to accept that he wasn’t strong enough to lift his bulk the way he would need to.

Brain better than body. Again.

He ended on the heavy sawdust bag, as usual, trying to break it open. His fists were getting tougher all the time, and he’d been building up scar tissue and calluses on his knuckles slowly, but he still wrapped his hands in luxin in order to protect his wrists. As usual, after doing his drills, he finished up by working on that one loose stitch. It didn’t seem to have budged in six months.

Kip was just finishing pounding on that one side with all his fury when someone cleared his throat. Kip almost wet himself.

Commander Ironfist was setting down a stack of books on a side table. Books? Down here? But Kip was more worried about the dubious look on the commander’s face. Ironfist strode over and wordlessly examined the loose stitch.

“Won’t take but a few minutes to sew that up,” Ironfist said.

Kip moved to speak, then stopped, embarrassed.

“Oh, that’s how it is,” Ironfist said. “You want to destroy someone else’s property.”

“No sir!” Kip said. “I mean … I suppose so, sir.” He scowled. “I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

“Can you think of any good reason why I should let you do that?”

Reasons, yes. Good reasons? No. “Have you ever done it, sir?”

“Makes a hell of a mess. Better to stitch it or patch it.”

“So you have!”

Commander Ironfist grunted.

“How’d it feel?”

A twitch of a smile, quickly smothered. “I’m going to repair that bag, Guile.”

Kip’s face fell. “Yes, sir.”

“In six months.”

Why wait six—oh! “Thank you, sir!”

A grunt. The commander walked over to his side table.

“Sir? Should we talk about…?” He couldn’t quite say Lytos and Buskin’s names.

“Oathbreakers and traitors are worth only whatever it takes to kill them, and nothing more.”

He was taking it personally, Kip could tell. The betrayal stung Ironfist as a leader and as a friend. “Karris told you what Lytos said?” How he changed his mind?

“It changes nothing.” The commander picked up a book, signaling that there would be no more about this.

For some reason, though, Kip had found Lytos’s last words, incomplete as they were, to be comforting. He’d said ‘luxiat,’ of that at least Kip was sure. That suggested the attempt really hadn’t been at Andross’s direction. That some luxiat wanted to kill him was bad, but if Andross had wanted him dead at this point … Honestly, Kip would probably be dead.