Then a hand extended from his shimmercloak, and as easily as if he were tearing the covers off a bed, he ripped away the entire cloud of paryl and was invisible once more.

She was left aghast at how easily he’d done it; his will had suffused the entire cloud, had touched her own. Having will touch will unexpectedly was like having a stranger walk up to you and caress your face with both hands—not violent, but still violating.

He was invisible again. Heart straining, chest tight, she strained to hear the whisper of cloth on cloth that would be her sole warning of his attack.

But then the figure shimmered into visibility, and Murder Sharp flung back his hood.

“You made one mistake,” he said.

“Mistake?”

“When I was a younger man,” Sharp said, “I fancied myself to be formidable. I flattered myself that I was scary.”

Sharp had changed again in all the months he’d been gone. His hair had grown out and, while still short, had been trimmed neatly in a swept style preferred by some young nobles, and it was dyed to auburn from its previous fiery red. His naturally golden eyes had been colored somehow to brown—lenses that sat on the eye itself? Was such a thing possible? The scleras of his eyes were red from the irritation of wearing them, but no more than a haze smoker’s.

Worse, he wore the white uniform and gold insignia of a Lightguard captain.

“I had to be reined in,” he said. “Violently. I was bitter about it for a time, but now I see that every gem needs to have its rough edges chipped away before the stone can be polished to gleam.”

He reached up to his mouth, fingering his immaculate teeth. And then he pulled out the dentures with a sucking sound and a dribble of spit. He examined the human teeth on his dentures with a craftsman’s eye, scrubbing at some imperceptible imperfection on the dogtooth, then tucked the dentures away in a special box.

From a pocket, he produced another box, but he didn’t open it immediately.

“But you. You, Adrasteia, I don’t think the Old Man will be as gentle with you as he was with me.”

He smiled at her then, revealing his natural, broken teeth. Like an ancient circle littered with toppled stones where once there had been symmetric perfection, half incisors and dogtooth nubs slumped in front of shattered and missing molars.

“Only pain makes us sharp,” Murder Sharp said. “Only pain makes a Sharp.”

He opened the other box he’d taken from his pocket and lifted a new set of dentures from it. They were fixed with a nightmare assortment of fangs. “Weasel-bear for the dogteeth, naturally. Special animal to all Braxians. Hard to see, near impossible to kill. Takes down prey far larger than itself through patience and then sheer ferocity. Called a wolverine some places. Not sure why. Doesn’t share a thing with wolves so far as I can see. Fox fangs here. Quicker than weasel-bears, and can hide in plain sight, despite that ginger coat.” He smiled his ruined smile again. “And all the rest are piranha fangs, from the rivers of Tyrea that flow into the far ocean. Piranha are frightening by themselves. River pugilists. Jaw like a bare-knuckle fighter. But nothing wants to tangle with ’em when they swarm. That’s the Order, Teia. A river full of piranha with weasel-bears on the banks and foxes in the rushes.”

He tested the edges of the weasel-bear fangs.

“There’s this rare fish in those waters. Damn thing feeds on piranhas. Front fangs this long. Gorgeous, gorgeous fangs.” He sighed. “But too long to fit in a human mouth, sadly. I tried. Bloodied my mouth half a dozen times before I learned. So I settled for the piranha fangs instead. Thought it was appropriate, the predator that everyone fears in turn fears one—only one.”

“The Old Man.”

“The Old Man,” he agreed.

“Are you going to break out my teeth like he broke out yours?” she asked, gulping against the bile rising in her throat.

He laughed softly, exposing those weathered plinths and jagged spires of tooth stumps again. “You think he did this to me?”

Murder Sharp took out a handkerchief and bit down on it. Methodically he worked it around his mouth, keeping his lips back, drying his teeth. He pulled back the blue luxin protective strips from an adhesive lining and then carefully fit the fang dentures into his mouth. He moved his jaw back and forth and took a few experimental bites to see how the fangs meshed, careful to keep his lips clear. His eyes clouded over with something like bliss.

“No,” he said several moments later. “He told me he’d found my disobedience. He told me only pain makes us sharp. Then he gave me the tooth breaker and told me to get out.”

You broke out your own teeth? Teia thought, aghast.

“Murder came back the next morning,” an altered voice said from the shadows.

Teia flinched hard. She’d been so focused on Sharp, she hadn’t even dreamed there could be someone else up here. It was he.

“He came back swollen, and bloody. But he came back with the job done. I had never heard of such devotion, such readiness to pay penance,” the Old Man said. “I told him he had earned my trust and a Name, as were given to the mighty of old. He said only pain makes us sharp. You see?”

He chuckled and Murder joined in.

These people are fucking crazy.

As if she hadn’t figured that out already in nearly a year of serving them.

“I don’t get it. I don’t understand,” Teia said.

“That’s good. A tool should never be smarter than its wielder.”

She wanted to tell him where to go.

“Which brings us to our present difficulty,” the Old Man said. He stayed where he was, against one curving outer wall of the tower. He was hooded and cloaked, and a glint of spectacles was visible—the paryl ones, Teia guessed. “Your actions up until now had allayed my suspicions. Or so I thought.”

“You’ve got to be fucking joking,” Teia said. “I’m still proving myself? Fine. Tell me to kill her. I will. I don’t care. You told me to get close. I am. But I’ve never forgotten what I’m there for. And you still haven’t given me my…”—she took a sharp breath through her nose and corrected herself—“a cloak.”

“Allaying my suspicions is one thing; earning my trust is quite another,” the Old Man said. “But even that is in jeopardy now.”

Teia said nothing.

Murder Sharp had faded back, off to the side, far enough that he was out of Teia’s peripheral vision. The serpent fear in her guts wakened and turned. She looked at him with a challenge in her eyes.