“Ah,” Teia said.

“A subtle tongue, it is, Old Parian. So contextual, and we don’t possess so much of that context anymore. The scholars even say that instead of ‘handross Orh’olam, it may actually be ‘handross h’olam. Which would make it the Seeker after the Hidden.”

“Or He Who Strives with or against the Hidden?” Teia guessed.

“Indeed,” Anjali said.

““handross’? That isn’t the same root name as Andross…”

“It is. The Guile family has deep roots here in Paria.”

By chance or design, they had arrived while Satrapah Azmith was holding court. More palace guards in white and black stopped them at the door.

“Weapons? Any other contraband? Dangerous items?” a young man asked.

Anjali Gates handed over a belt knife and was given a chit with which to reclaim it.

Teia just stared at the man. She threw back her cloak. “I’m a Blackguard, cur. By ancient right and treaties, we go unarmed nowhere. Our right holds in the presence of Colors and satraps and the Prism himself.”

The man gulped and shot a look at the Tafok Amagez. “I’m commanded to let no one…”

“We are here with an emergency message from the promachos and the White and the entire Spectrum,” Anjali said. “Young man, Orholam help you if you detain us. The fate of the satrapies themselves rests upon a speedy response from your people.”

“I, uh…”

One of the Tafok Amagez interrupted. “Oh, quit this! We can handle one little girl, whatever they dress her in.”

One little girl? Teia knew she should feel good they’d said it. She was supposed to be underestimated. So it was working.

But fuck them.

The guard had the Tafok Amagez sign for her, and then let them pass. They opened a small door inset in the great hall doors.

The great hall was a variation on the entry’s theme: several stories tall, stained glass in clerestories, flying buttresses, and here silver and ebony and teak and walnut woods with mirrors that beamed diffuse sunlight to the platform.

The four Tafok Amagez and an equal number of palace guards took them to a line at least a hundred supplicants long and stopped at the back of it. Teia could barely see the Nuqaba and the satrapah from here.

The Nuqaba sat at the satrapah’s right hand—or perhaps the satrapah sat at her left. Their chairs were of almost an equal height, the Nuqaba’s a smidgen lower, but significantly grander.

Anjali Gates held herself at peace. When it took another ten minutes for the Nuqaba and the satrapah to finish with one case, the details of which Teia couldn’t even hear, the diplomat put on her violet-tinged spectacles—it hadn’t even occurred to Teia that the woman was a superviolet drafter. Of course she was.

As soon as a chamberlain brought down his iron-capped staff onto the floor, causing a bang that Teia assumed meant judgment had been rendered, Anjali was out of her place in line like a shot.

Somehow she moved quickly without appearing to hurry, and she was ten paces down the main aisle before even Teia moved. An instant later, the Tafok Amagez woke up and poured out after them.

Anjali pulled a small orb from a pocket and twisted it. She held it above her head as she continued to walk, and in an instant it bloomed, and then burnt an intense yellow.

“Blessed Nuqaba! Exalted Satrapah Azmith! I come from the Chromeria! This is my proof,” Anjali boomed, just as Teia and the Tafok Amagez caught up with her. “I come with an emergency message from the promachos himself and the White’s own pen for the entire Spectrum.”

The spectacle—and Anjali’s confidence—was enough to buy them time to get to the front of the room, but there a rank of Tafok Amagez had deployed, spears leveled, blocking their path to the platform.

Anjali Gates stopped and held out the beacon toward the commander of the Tafok Amagez facing her. “For your inspection.” She promptly ignored him.

Satrapah Azmith conferred with the Nuqaba. She had the dark, dark skin of a mountain Parian, with long, narrow limbs adorned with gold and turquoise bands. She wore a transparent black veil trimmed in gold, and a flowing black burnous with black embroidered squares interlocking. A jug of wine sat on the table at her left hand for her to serve herself. She said, “We’ve not seen the western star beacon in these lands for decades. You’re lucky the Amagez didn’t skewer you.”

“Such a fear didn’t even occur to me. We are all loyal children of Orholam here, and brothers and sisters under the light,” Anjali said. She might have stressed the word ‘loyal’ just a little.

The satrapah and the Nuqaba spoke again, and Teia was stunned by the Nuqaba’s glamour. Where the satrapah was modest and sedate, the Nuqaba looked more like a pagan priestess oozing sensuality and demanding attention than a servant of Orholam humbly directing attention up toward the Lord of Light.

Of course, Gavin Guile had certainly had more than a little smoldering sensuality himself when he wanted to, and Teia had heard women getting themselves worked up just talking about how he’d looked during Sun Day festivities past, where he’d gone more than half-naked.

So maybe it wasn’t any different. But it felt different. For a moment, Teia forgot her training and took in all the jewels, the perfectly tailored dress that emphasized the woman’s enviable curves, and the gold and ochre and kohl face paints highlighting her eyes and the tattoo under each: judgment under the left and mercy under the right.

But then she remembered herself, and looked not to outer things but as a Blackguard looking at a potential opponent. The hauteur overlaid physical weakness. Her upper arms were flabby. There was a loose puffiness in her face that spoke either of overindulgence last night or of chronic overindulgence. Her eyes were glassy, as if she’d been enjoying ratweed this morning. Her attitude was insolent.

In short, though the Nuqaba had to be in her midthirties, she reminded Teia of a Blackguard nunk who needed a good ass-kicking.

The Nuqaba waved lazily at her Tafok Amagez to withdraw. All of them were eyeing Teia’s many weapons, glancing back only occasionally, so none of them happened to be looking at her as she gave the gesture. A look of sudden rage at being ignored washed over the Nuqaba’s face and she snapped her fingers. Not just once, but twice. As if they were dogs.

All of them looked back at her. All of them. The men weren’t fools or amateurs, so it spoke to Teia of how horribly the Nuqaba must treat them. When the Nuqaba wanted their attention, she demanded all of it. It was stupid. If Teia were an assassin, it would have given her ample time to draw her flintlock pistol and—