She reached for the bell to summon her slaves. “May my curse live on you, Murder Sharp.”

“And my blessing on you, Arys. I will make it painless.”

“Tell Andross Guile to fuck himself,” she said. She rang the bell.

Chapter 32

Is this to be my life now? Meetings and spying and listening and posturing? The backstabbings that Karris had once had to worry about as a Blackguard had been literal ones. Here, you never saw the blood.

Though to be fair, a metaphorical backstabbing here could lead to the actual death of thousands, not just one. Hmm. That thought put a little extra urgency to the verbal fencing, didn’t it? Especially when Karris looked around the Spectrum’s chamber and wasn’t terribly impressed by what she saw.

Colors were supposed to be chosen by their satrap for their excellence and their piety. In truth, as with all positions of great power, it was far more complicated. Family loyalties, outright bribes, and even mistakes by the contending families could have led to a Klytos Blue being selected. And depending on the strength of the satrap or satrapah who appointed the Color, the Color might be a puppet, a representative, a delegate, or a loose cannon.

It hadn’t always been thus. The satraps had once been veritable kings, with the Spectrum having to wait weeks or months to vote on the simplest measures as the Colors waited for their satraps’ commands. Successive Whites and Prisms and Colors had worked together—united in this—to concentrate power here, at the Chromeria, and here, in this very room.

And still it bored Karris. Boredom was dangerous. A Blackguard knew that. Boredom made you sloppy, careless, and dead. You couldn’t get sloppy around Andross Guile. They were waiting for the arrival of a few of the Colors still. Andross had called the meeting. Karris studied the figure across the table.

There was something different about him. Something that had changed over the course of the last weeks. In her time as a Blackguard, Karris’s identification of potential threats had always been intuitive. Her training had taught her to translate those gut feelings—not just seeing a holistic threat, but realizing that the man was sweating, twitchy, not paying attention to what others around him were. Since the Battle of Ru, Karris had felt more and more that Andross Guile was a threat.

She’d dismissed it as hypervigilance, paranoia, hatred. Now that she had married his wayward son, which he had opposed for almost two decades, he had more reason to hate her than ever. There were a thousand reasons to see Andross as a threat. But why did she now see him as the kind of threat that made her Blackguard intuitions tingle?

Andross had always been a threat, always had power close at hand. But that power hadn’t been physical in years. Now … something was different.

He wasn’t slouching anymore. In fact, he’d stopped slouching immediately after Ru, hadn’t he? He seemed stronger, had regained that Guile broadness of shoulders, perhaps simply from holding himself well again, but perhaps it was new musculature—or worse. And he walked faster. Why? He was older. He’d lost his last son. If anything, a normal man would be weakened by such things, would be hastened toward the grave. But not Andross Guile.

Orholam have mercy, he’d gone red wight. Right under their noses. He’d been aggressive and willful for so long that no one had noticed his transition. Red to red wight.

Karris felt short of breath. She knew wights. Had hunted them with Gavin. Some could maintain the mask of sanity for months. They were a walking blasphemy, but they could speak of Orholam. They could hide almost anything—but they couldn’t hide their eyes.

And Andross Guile had been hiding his eyes for years. Blocking the light, blocking temptation, he said. What if, instead, he was blocking everyone else from discovering what he was?

Karris reached to her hip unconsciously, but there was no ataghan there, no bich’hwa on the other side. Her own breath was harsh in her ears as her pulse picked up, as the battle juice began to flow. He would see her, he would take one look at her face, and he would know.

Indeed, these spectacles were different from the black lenses he’d worn before Ru. These were merely dark. He was no longer blind. No longer needed to be, because he wasn’t afraid of the temptations to draft—he’d already given in to them.

And now her rational mind picked up those details she should have seen before—Andross looking straight at people, noticing visual details that he shouldn’t have seen if he’d been blinded by blackened lenses. Mistakes, sloppy mistakes for a man keeping a secret. Perhaps understandable mistakes for a red wight, though. They were not known for their discretion.

Part of Karris was terrified—but part of her rejoiced. If he was a wight, he could be unmasked. Unmasked, he would be Freed immediately, Color or no Color. And then he would be gone. Dear Orholam, she could finally be rid of him.

She knew that a better woman would mourn losing her father-in-law to a violent death, would mourn even more that he had embraced madness and blasphemy rather than taking a dignified exit—but Karris wasn’t that woman. She wanted Andross Guile dead, dead, dead. And if he were shamed and denounced in the process, so much the better.

As Delara Orange came in, reeking of brandy, Karris started scheming how she would unveil Andross, and how she would get a weapon beforehand. Wights who were unmasked were often devastatingly fast in their response, and people facing a wight who’d thought the person was their loved one were often tragically slow. Even Blackguards.

And it was the Blackguards who had the only weapons in this room.

Perhaps, then, magic was the way. She would have to watch Andross’s skin—but the wily old goat was covered from head to toe, even wearing gloves.

Proof, then.

Karris had sworn not to draft, but she wasn’t going to take that obedience—intended to keep her alive for longer—to be an order to die. She wondered if she could fill herself with green luxin without any of these drafters or Blackguards noticing. Out of all the people in the world, these people would be the hardest to hide such a thing from.

And yet there was no other way.

Karris leaned over, putting her elbows on the tabletop, scooting her chair back, in a most unladylike but thoughtful pose. She looked from person to person at the table, but it was all a show. She wasn’t thinking; she was hoping.

The White was wheeled in slowly, and she appeared drawn and defeated. Karris sat up, and as if realizing that her chair was blocking the White’s wheeled chair’s path, she stood, bumping the young Blackguard Gavin Greyling. She scooted her chair in with an apology and moved out of the way, then sat, dropping the dagger she’d lifted into a pocket.

A dagger, against a red wight. Not the odds she’d want, but it was good to have a backup if she weren’t able to draft before he attacked.

“Before we bring this meeting to order,” the White said, “I’m afraid I bear sad tidings. Our friend and colleague Arys Greenveil has passed away in childbirth this afternoon.”

“Orholam have mercy,” Orange said. She put her hand to her mouth.

“No, no, no,” Jia Tolver said. The Sub-red was her cousin.

“What happened?” Andross Guile asked.

The White shook her head. “Her chirurgeons said that she seemed unusually tense, that she knew something was wrong, but she wouldn’t say what. She only cared about her babe, Ben-Oni, she named him, Son of my Agony. After she heard his first cries, she hugged him, looked into the distance, and lost consciousness. She never woke.”