Oh shit. She was an assassin.

Just not that kind.

The Nuqaba slashed her hand, and the men pulled back instantly.

Still, their commander gave orders, and as Teia and Anjali took several more steps forward, Teia saw that two Tafok Amagez quietly lit slow matches and affixed them to muskets. The others were already filled with their colors, and Teia realized that the front of the great hall was covered in a pristine white rug that had to be there so that the bespectacled Tafok Amagez could draft as quickly as possible.

One paryl drafter. If there’s just one paryl drafter here, I’m in big trouble.

The Nuqaba was studying them, and apparently it was good manners not to speak until given permission, because Anjali Gates held her tongue as if happy to wait all day.

Teia had slightly more trouble doing so when the Nuqaba looked at her and openly sneered. Apparently she saw only a little girl, too. Again, it should have felt good.

Again, it didn’t.

The Nuqaba turned to Satrapah Azmith, but spoke loudly enough for all to hear. “Do you know, back when my brothers joined the Blackguard, it was a revered body. In fact, to get in, I think you actually had to have reached puberty!”

The satrapah chuckled and the front rows laughed like sycophants.

Teia had to take deep breaths. A Blackguard guards her tongue. This was exactly what she wanted, right? To be overlooked… by these disrespectful pieces of—easy, T, a Blackguard guards her tongue.

The Nuqaba harrumphed and turned to the satrapah again, this time more quietly asking a question about the star beacon. She asked a few other questions, and Teia was able to get enough of a grip on her temper to see how clever it was to have the satrapah be the Nuqaba’s spymaster. Everyone knew that Tilleli Azmith was a figurehead, so they would take the Nuqaba’s speaking with her to be merely keeping up appearances. The satrapah would daily meet with dozens of the most important people in the satrapy and beyond, but would be underestimated if not dismissed. Teia guessed that the big jug of wine was intended to further lower her in people’s estimation. She feigned drunkenness while the Nuqaba concealed her real drunkenness.

The woman hid in plain sight.

And dear Orholam, Teia was supposed to kill her.

“Please,” the satrapah said, “do deliver our dear White’s message.”

“Then please forgive my informality,” Anjali Gates said. “I deliver this message exactly as instructed, in the White’s voice.” She drew herself more erect and imperious, and Teia readied herself. Karris had told her that her time to strike the satrapah might be during the very first paragraphs of her message. She’d said that the satrapah might find them so infuriating that if she went into seizures or had a heart attack, no one would be surprised.

While keeping her arms carefully motionless and down at her sides, Teia readied paryl in her fingertips. She hadn’t had time to scope out every one of the Tafok Amagez. One of them might be a paryl drafter. If so, Teia was about to sign her own death warrant.

Beside her, Anjali’s voice took on the cadence of Karris’s own as she delivered the White’s message:

“Tilleli, you’re useless. If you’d fulfilled your duties as satrapah with a modicum of competence, I’d be addressing this letter to you. You haven’t, so I’ll not keep up the pretense that you matter. Further, in our hope of someday working with a representative who possesses a spine, by unanimous vote, the Spectrum hereby strips you of the rights and privileges of a satrapah. We will eagerly await whichever successor the Nuqaba names for you, and address this letter to her instead.”

Teia had her eyes locked on the satrapah. The woman looked as if she’d been run over by a charging horse. But her face didn’t go to rage.

Teia hesitated.

Anjali Gates continued, unperturbed, in the sudden, utter silence in the great hall. She turned to the Nuqaba. “Haruru, let me be blunt. You wounded my husband and tried to kill me. As a woman, I despise you and hate what you’ve done. No doubt you hate me as well. But I speak to you today not as a wife, but as a woman entrusted to care for the drafters of the Seven Satrapies, even as you have been entrusted to care for the believers of Paria and beyond, and to guard the legacy of the Lucidonius. We are greater than our quarrel, and we would besmirch our offices and indeed our very faith if we were to brawl like tavern wenches who might only upset tables and feelings. So I put our personal quarrel behind us, and trust you will do the same.”

The Nuqaba had slowly been rising from her chair as Anjali spoke. For a moment, Teia thought that the Nuqaba was going to bolt out of her throne and attack the diplomat with fists and fingernails.

If she did, should Teia fight her off?

She was already calculating how to make sure that the Nuqaba was between her and the musketeers if it came to that when Satrapah Azmith grabbed the Nuqaba’s arm and pulled her back to her seat.

The satrapah had a slow temper. Shit. That meant Teia couldn’t take this opportunity to assassinate her.

Anjali continued her message placidly, but Teia could tell that the madwoman was enjoying the hell out of this. “That said, we have not the luxury of time to continue overtures and negotiations and stalling and games. The Seven Satrapies are at war.

“We need you, Haruru. We need Paria wholeheartedly with us. Without your soldiers, the Seven Satrapies will fall. You think you have three choices: one, helping us and losing many of your men; two, joining the Color Prince and possibly being rewarded greatly, at the cost of violating your oaths and inviting civil war with those still loyal to us; or three, waiting as long as possible, hoping that we slaughter each other, and then coming in at the end and ending up in a better position than either, and maybe setting up your own empire.”

To see the cynicism and disloyalty of those calculations laid out so nakedly took the breath of many in the great hall. Even those jaded enough to have read the tea leaves in what the Nuqaba was doing were shocked to have someone actually say it publicly.

Teia saw then that Karris White’s power was in speaking openly what others trusted everyone would hide. This is the game, others thought.

Karris said, I see your game… and no.

Anjali said, “If you thought those were your choices, you were wrong. I’m not giving you those options. The Color Prince will destroy the Chromeria utterly without you. You owe us your loyalty. We ask for nothing that doesn’t already belong to us. So if we are to die, you will die, too. I will leave my back exposed to the Color Prince, knowing it will mean the loss of the Jaspers and the Chromeria, and I will sail all of my soldiers to your home. And all my drafters, who train for war even now. When we arrive, we will kill everyone who joins you in treason. We will enslave the families of all those disloyal to us, and give their lands and houses and titles to those of our friends who remember their oaths.