Chapter 62

~Shimmercloak~

The perspective isn’t right. It’s hovering around waist height, swinging back and forth. It’s a hand, swinging as a young woman walks. She has something cupped in her hand so that it will be concealed from anyone in front of her, but it’s longer than her hand, and this perspective is perfect to see as much of the weapon as possible.

This card isn’t a person; it’s a thing, and the perspective is what the artist had chosen to show.

A short, jagged blade, obsidian edges with an ivory core. Not so much shaped like a knife as like a shark’s tooth, a broad triangle with a winking diamond in the center.

The bouncing accelerates as the young woman begins jogging.

Before I can see much more, the perspective swings violently as the blade slams into a woman’s side, is pulled out, bloody, and then poised at her throat.

With the blade at her throat, now I can see her face. Her irises are stained red, halfway to the halo, and wide with fear and pain. The attacker’s arm is threaded through hers, and the drafter is turned toward a red-painted wall.

The drafter regains her wits; she drafts, soaking up red light, the whites of her eyes filling as with smoke—but this is what the assassin is waiting for. The obsidian edge is rammed into the side of her throat, and suddenly, that black shiny stone is somehow alive. Blood gushes out, and I can’t see if the red that blankets the ivory is from the blood spilling from her neck, or if it glows with an internal light.

I see the drafter’s eyes bleach, not only the natural recession of red from the whites as a drafter finishes drafting, but deeper. As if something is sucking the life’s blood from her. Her sclera go pure white, and then the impossible happens. Her crimson-stained irises—red halfway to the halo—dim and then disappear. As the light of life goes out of her eyes, her eyes are left their natural brown.

I’ve seen dead drafters. Even as a warrior’s scars don’t disappear in death, so a drafter’s scars stay with her: her eyes don’t bleach.

The assassin is already moving, carefully dragging the drafter into an alcove, piling rubbish on her body, using her cloak to clean hands and blade. She tucks the blade away, and my perspective is lost in darkness.

In darkness I stay for long and long, jarred and jostled. Is she running? I lose all track of time. I may be here forever.

The blade comes out in a room lit with lanterns, is handed over to a bent-backed old woman. She washes it in a basin. But the blood doesn’t wash from the diamond. It was a diamond, wasn’t it?

Now, despite washing, it’s a ruby.

No, not a plain ruby. The colors undulate, swirling, pulse like the beating of a heart. The old woman chuckles, delighted. She holds up the living stone to a magnifying lens, studies it minutely.

She moves to a work table, puts the ruby in a delicate vise. In a few minutes, she’s bored a tiny, shallow hole into the gem. Satisfied, she prepares the rest of the room. She pushes everything else off her work table and carefully drapes a long muddy-brown cloak across it. She pulls forward a choker concealed in the collar. Multicolored chains connect choker to cloth. With deft hands, she cracks open the choker, exposing the knotted chains themselves.

Adjusting the chains so they sit just so on the bench, she pulls a stool over, and puts on clear, magnifying spectacles. She draws the ruby forth again, and takes the chimney off her lantern. She screws a tiny post of ivory and obsidian shard into the ruby, and blows out the lantern.

The sound of chains and gears, and then a crack of light. The ceiling splits open and full-spectrum sunshine pours in, bounces off mirrors, and is focused directly on the old woman’s hands. She holds the ruby full in the light with the post down, like one would hold a pen.

The post—her nib—goes red, and she begins dabbing living red ink onto the exposed wires where the cloak’s collar connects. The post writhes with luxin, and the collar chains devour it. The cloak’s own color changes, becoming a redder brown in streaks as she moves from chain to chain. She reaches the end finally, and as she stops, I see that the ruby is now as drained of color as the murdered drafter was.

Clicking her tongue, the old woman examines her work. She sets aside the diamond, runs her hand over the cloth, and finally snaps shut the choker over its chains.

“My part is finished,” she says. “But to make this cloak a shimmercloak, you need to find yourself a Prism willing to give you his life and Will.” She barks a laugh. “Unless you’ve got some other splitter of light at hand?”

Chapter 63

Teia was walking through the evening crowds to clear her head after the afternoon Blackguard practice. Kip had skipped again. That was happening more and more often. Despite that, he wasn’t falling behind. Between his private training sessions with Karris Guile and sparring with the squad under Tremblefist’s personal instruction—and they’d all taken Kip under their wings, giving him pointers at every opportunity—Kip was actually worth his spot on Squad Aleph now. And not just for his mind.

Fine, primarily for his mind.

People were bumping into Teia. She didn’t have a purse on her belt, so she wasn’t terribly alert, but it was irritating. For all the good that being small did her sometimes, when she moved through a crowd, if she wanted go faster than a crawl, she had to really move, ducking and dodging in a way that had become second nature to her, but doing that didn’t exactly engender the meditative thoughtfulness she was seeking. No one bumped into Commander Ironfist. Not on accident, anyway.

Teia remembered an instance of a young woman stepping into the commander’s path just in time to be bowled over. The commander’s reflexes were quick enough that he’d practically snatched the woman out of the air. She’d purred, melting into his arms. The Blackguards had laughed.

The commander hadn’t been amused. As always, he was on his way somewhere more important. He lifted the woman in front of him—and it’s not easy to look seductive when a man lifts you by the armpits—stared her hard in the eye until she nearly wet herself, and dropped her off to the side without a word.

It had kept that woman from ever trying it again, but had backfired where others were concerned.

Teia grinned at the memory and finally emerged from the market. She wasn’t even sure where she was now. Not that it was possible to get truly lost on Big Jasper. She put her hands in her pockets—Blackguard trousers had pockets. She loved them.

There was a note there.

She pulled it out, and a hollow formed in her stomach. Fine flash paper, of course. If she tried to simply open it—or anyone else tampered with it—it would burn up in an instant. She wondered if Karris had been good enough to pass her the orders herself, or if she had people to do that now.

She tore into the bottom right corner, edged the tear around the left side like she’d been taught, and finally opened the note: “Kip is going to be assassinated on a raid, today. Most likely by a Blackguard. Several, possibly. They’ll be at the docks before noon. Save him.” It was in Karris’s hand.

Teia’s breath caught. The docks. The squad’s current safe house was on the way. She ran.

In minutes, she arrived at the safe house. She knocked the code rapidly on the wood, and then opened the door. Cruxer was alone inside, seating a new flint in the cockjaw of his pistol. He looked up. He frowned as soon as he saw the expression on her face. “What’s going on, Teia?”