Her trainer, Magister Lillyfield, with a body like a young woman’s and her face craggy as the Red Cliffs, had even wanted to take Teia and her master’s daughter to experience a crowd in riot in the Darks, the wretchedly poor Angari ghetto that had persisted for centuries in Odess, but Teia’s master would never let her.

The familiar beauty of the Chromeria’s seven towers gleaming in the sun brought no joy to Teia today. Teia had nowhere to be. Commander Ironfist had said only to his Blackguards, “Take the day. Tomorrow, dawn at the field, as usual.”

A restless energy filled Teia. She needed to wander. It was good practice. The better she knew the city, the easier her Blackguard training would be. But today there was something she needed to do. She felt herself clutching at that damned vial again, using up a precious hand that could help her maneuver through the crowd.

Too much thinking, T.

She was just making it out of the docks area when a man bumped into her. She’d moved enough to merely brush past him. It could only be deliberate.

But he was gone, and there was something in her hand.

Teia turned and, stationary, lost her momentum, lost her rhythm. The crowd spit her out into the bazaar adjacent to the docks. She hadn’t even see the man. Had seen a dark cloak, maybe a grayish tunic … Damn, it was gone. Like she was an amateur. She moved out of the stream of people and looked at what was in her hand. A note.

She knew immediately she wasn’t going to like what was written there.

“Teia, look in paryl. Now.”

Teia’s formal lessons in her special color had been brief, but Magister Marta Martaens had pounded into her that seeing a woman’s pupils grow until the whites of her eyes disappeared was not merely disconcerting for others, it was terrifying. That manipulation of the eyes was what had to be done to see paryl, which sat on the spectrum as far below sub-red as sub-red was below visible red. In the past, she’d dilated then constricted her pupils quickly, but it was tiring. Now Teia put on the darkened spectacles Commander Ironfist had given her and relaxed her eyes, farther, farther.

The first place she saw paryl was written across the chest of a broad-shouldered Chromeria guard. The words, shimmery, floating, lighter than air and delicate, glowed: “Bribed.”

Her chest tightened. What? Why? She was suddenly passive, standing like a mark, agape, like a new arrival to the Jaspers, gawking rather than moving, working, planning.

“Help you, miss?” the guard asked, noticing her gaze.

Teia shook her head and ducked past him. She strode into the market where a herald standing on his small box looked at her. Floating above his head was one word: “Ours.” Had he stared at her?

Who were they? What were they doing? Why were they showing her this? It obviously meant they had a paryl drafter. A skilled one. More skilled than Teia, to make words that persisted. Or one very nearby, who was placing these beacons mere moments before she arrived.

On a wall down an alley, the words: “This way, Teia.”

She froze.

On another wall: “We won’t hurt you.”

On another wall, there was a puff of released light as a man leaned a hand against a wall where the ephemeral words had been placed: “Only we can—” the rest was gone, and even those tore and disappeared as the man shifted his hand, unseeing.

Teia’s heart pounded. Breathe, Teia. This is how people go lunar. Seeing things no one else sees, imagining conspiracies.

But madmen are mad because what they see isn’t there.

Teia had only seen two other paryl drafters in her life. Magister Martaens, who’d given her a handful of lessons at her former owner Aglaia Crassos’s behest, and a man who stabbed paryl into a woman’s neck and left her seizing to death.

The alley was right there: “This way, Teia.”

That man, that assassin, had used solid paryl to kill, like in the stories. Magister Martaens had sworn that solid paryl was impossible. Or at least that she couldn’t do it. If Teia could learn to draft solid paryl, she could defend against it, right? Perhaps these people could teach her.

Paralyzed, indecisive, passive and hating herself for it, Teia looked down the alley. Paryl’s greatest strength was that no one could see it except a handful of people in the world. If someone else could see their murders, those assassins lost their greatest weapon.

Which made Teia a threat to their power. Teia had seen an assassination. Perhaps they feared she’d seen the assassin, too.

So, Teia, do you isolate yourself with a man you know has murdered an innocent before, and who is threatened by your very existence?

Putting the matter that way made what remained of Teia’s curiosity shrivel from a big succulent grape to a nasty little raisin. Teia hated raisins. Loved grapes. They weren’t the same thing at all, no matter what people said.

If the man had wanted to simply murder her, he could have done it already. With his paryl messages, he’d proven that he could move nearby without her noticing him. So he wanted to get her alone first. Why?

It couldn’t be for something good. The man was a murderer. If your enemy wants it, don’t let him have it.

She ran.

Teia got a few startled looks as she bolted, but she didn’t care. As long as no one shouted ‘Thief!’ no one was going to care much about a young girl running. She hit the next busy intersection and slipped through the crowd there as fast as humanly possible. She slid between a yoke of oxen and the cart piled high with hay they were pulling before the man driving the team could even squawk. She ran along the lip of the little fountain at the center of the intersection and dodged through the line gathered for the water. She ran toward the next street, then stopped, backtracked a few paces, and dodged into an alley. She ran down that alley, nearly slipping on the garbage and slops, turned the opposite way down the next street, and turned up the next alley.

It started misting rain. Teia hadn’t even noticed the clouds gathering. She took off the dark spectacles, dropped her pack at her feet, flipped her cloak around so its muted blue side was out, put the pack back on, but in the front, and pulled the cloak on over that. She pulled up the hood and joined the streams of people hurrying in the rain. It was harder to modify your gait when you were rushing. Throwing your hips around to mimic a curvier woman was easy for her at a walk, she could merely bring her steps together as if walking a rope. Doing that while half jogging as if to get out of the rain? She wasn’t that good.

She began rummaging through the pack as she walked. She hadn’t brought much she could use for disguises to wear, but she did have a bright yellow shawl and a scarf. At the next intersection, she ducked into a merchant’s stall as if using it to cut a corner into another alley. She dropped the hood, pulled out a red scarf—or maybe it was green, the squad liked to play its little jokes on each other, and knowing her problem with colors, none of them would tell her straight.

She bound the scarf around her hair, and threw the shawl around her shoulders, tying it quickly. She ducked her chin and then walked back out the way she had come, holding the cloak shut and using the bulk of her pack on her front to make it look like she was pregnant. She put a hand on her belly to complement the disguise.

Teia hated slow disguises. Hated not making a speedy exit. But so did everyone else, and that was why this kind of disguise could be so effective when fleeing. She walked right by a tall man in a gray cloak who cut through the shop and headed into the alley. Maybe it was a coincidence. Maybe he was just a man hurrying home in the rain.