After two agonizing blocks at a slow deliberate place with a hand on her swollen belly but not too much waddle, Teia ran again—but not home. She ran to the brewery where Marta Martaens had said she’d taken a room.

The brewery, the Maiden’s Kiss, was housed in a squat, square building. It was whitewashed like almost all the buildings on Big Jasper, with a domed roof. This one was a shocking pink, the wooden doors were plain except for a stylized maiden in profile, offering a kiss. There was no text. Teia knocked firmly on the door.

An apprentice opened the door, a young girl not past ten years. “Is this where Marta Martaens takes a room?” Teia asked.

The girl’s big brown eyes went bigger. She hesitated. “Can you wait here? Back in two shakes of a lamb’s tail?”

Odd one. And Teia didn’t like people acting odd when her life was on the line. Her throat was still tight. But she moved that tension to her body, readying herself for attack. She knew being aware but loose was faster, but there no way she could find that calm right now.

She looked around in the rain, measuring everyone, but there were few people on the streets now, and the rain was coming down harder. Teia’s last talk with Magister Martaens hadn’t gone well. The older woman thought that even talking about the possibility of the paryl assassination would invite all paryl drafters to be hunted down. And Teia had lost the magister’s tutorship briefly thereafter when Andross Guile had somehow gotten Aglaia Crassos to sign over Teia’s slave papers, and she hadn’t seen Magister Martaens since then.

The door opened again, and a wiry woman in an apron gestured Teia in. “Bel!” the woman barked. “Leaving a visitor out in the rain? Where’s your manners, girl?”

Little Bel’s face fell. She bolted.

“Weeper, she is,” the brewer said. She sighed. She wore a headscarf not unlike a man’s ghotra to hold back an impressively large crown of brown hair while she worked. And she was obviously working: her skin shiny with perspiration, the veins on her thready forearms popping out. “I got wort to watch, so apologies for being abrupt, but what’s your name and what do you want?”

“Teia. Adrasteia. I came to see if my old magister Marta Martaens is here.” Teia had pulled her own wet scarf off her head and shook out her cloak, revealing the pack over her stomach.

“Huh, thought you six months on, and I figgered she’d have told me if that was so,” the brewer said, nodding to Teia’s fake belly. “Marta’s gone. And you’re not the first to come asking for her. I’ll tell you what I told him, because it’s the truth. Good tenant. A bit tetchy, but a good woman. I don’t know where she went. She lost her position at the Chromeria, and that was the only reason she was here, so I din’t see nothing amiss in her leaving.” The brewer walked to a counter and reached underneath it. “But I’ll also tell you this. She left a note that I was only to give to a girl named Teia. Just so you know, the man who came asking after her offered me money if I’d detain you.”

Teia was ready to fight. She shifted her gaze from the woman’s face to her midsection. Motion comes from the core, let your peripheral vision see everything else.

“I didn’t take it. I’m not a savage, and there was something funny about him. Red hair in a fringe, balding, odd necklace. Barely saw it, but my papa used to pull teeth. That necklace was all human teeth. Something nasty about that I’d rather not know. Read your letter quick and go. I wouldn’t put it past him to be watching even now. Oh, and don’t fold the note. Marta was particular about that. You can use the back exit if you want.”

To reach the back exit would require Teia to walk through an unfamiliar building, away from the public, isolated and vulnerable. Maybe the woman was being as helpful as she seemed. After all, she didn’t have to announce that the man had been here. But Teia had been a slave too long. She wouldn’t put herself at anyone’s mercy.

She took the letter carefully and opened it slowly, keeping an eye on the brewer.

“You can burn it in the fire if you like,” the brewer said. “I got wort on. Orholam watch ya, girl.” The brewer turned her back and went back into the shop.

“Teia,” the letter read, “my work with you is done. I’ve learned of my brother falling very ill, so I’m heading back to my family farm in Maelans. My apologies for leaving so abruptly, but I’m sure our mistress will take care of you. Orholam’s blessings on you.” That was all, it was signed with her name and carefully folded. So far as Teia knew, Marta Martaens didn’t even have a brother. She immediately widened her eyes full to paryl.

Fraying apart now that it was exposed, there was something written in paryl. No wonder Marta hadn’t wanted the letter folded. It would have destroyed the secret message. “It’s all true. The killings, everything. The Order of the Broken Eye is real, and now they’re after you. Orholam forgive me for leaving you alone in this, but there’s no fighting these people. Run, Teia. —Marta Martaens.”

Chapter 9

Karris Guile, born Karris White Oak, trudged up the steps from the top floor of the Prism’s Tower to the roof. She had come directly from the docks, and had barely so much as thrown her bags onto the floor of her new room—Gavin’s room—when his room slave Marissia had demurely handed Karris the note. It was odd that the White should summon her to the roof in the rain.

Poking her head out of the door, Karris saw the White tucked in many blankets, seated in her wheeled chair, turned to face the wind and the lashing rain. She was enjoying herself. Flanking her were two large young men, Gill and Gavin Greyling. They, like Karris, were Blackguards, sworn to protect and defend the White and the Prism. The difference was that these men had fulfilled their duty. Each was holding up a waxed fabric parasol—an umbrella—over the White to shield her from the rain. But the old woman seemed to be enjoying the way the wind whipped the rain into her face despite the Blackguards’ best efforts.

“Watch Captain,” the brothers said, nodding to her in place of a salute, given that their hands were occupied.

“You may go,” the White told them. “Please wait for me at the stairs. Inside. Karris will guard me now.”

Gill gave Karris his umbrella, and the men retreated. Karris held it with both hands, protecting the White as much as possible. The old woman had a childlike glee on her face, though. Every drafter’s eyes took on the color they used, but the pattern by which it did so was unique to each. Karris had red stars on a green field. Orea Pullawr’s light gray eyes had filled in two arcs: blue on top, and green below. In recent years, as she’d stopped drafting for so long to extend her own life, those colors had become washed out, desaturated. But in the wake of the assassination attempt on her in her own chambers, the blue arc was vibrant once more, and straining at the very edges of her retinas. That, Karris had expected. But the green was vibrant as well, telling Karris that the White had been drafting green, too. She didn’t have much time left.

“I hoped it would bring the influences back into balance again,” the White said, “as green’s wildness so often balanced the ponderous logic of blue for me for so many years. I found after the attack, I was content to sit and watch and wait. It is no longer the time to sit and watch and wait, is it, child?”