And what was the cost of telling him? You’re a slave Teia, not a fool. What does it mean? Think!

She got in the lift, where there was another discipulus with them, so Teia was spared having to come up with more lies.

The question wasn’t, what am I doing, the question is, what are they doing? There wasn’t one thread here, there were two.

As she and Kip stepped off the lift, her breath caught. So simple. Everything she’d stolen for Lady Verangheti—actually for Lady Aglaia Crassos, though she hadn’t known that then—had been metal so she could see it. But everything had also been easily identifiable. She’d thought it was so she would know what to steal. It wasn’t.

They’d been keeping everything she stole so they could blackmail her later—it was all proof that she was a thief.

Kip grabbed her arm painfully and pulled her around. She was suddenly aware of how big he’d gotten. Muscle was filling in everywhere the fat had been, but so slowly that none of them had noticed, until now, when he must have been starved for weeks to lose so much weight.

“Teia, dammit, tell me the truth!”

It wasn’t fair, she thought, how boys do that. How one second they’re big children, and the next second they can tear your arm off.

Looking up into her friend’s face—no, her master’s face, still, despite everything, still her master until those papers went through—she felt something inside break, but it was sweet; it was honey dripping from a broken honeycomb. He knew. She had to tell him everything and hope for the best. Even if he recoiled, even if he ran away, she wouldn’t be alone with this burden anymore. The very prospect was light and hope.

Kip seemed to realize how hard he was holding her arm, and he dropped it. “You get in a fight or something?” he asked.

Teia’s heart started beating again. He didn’t know. Relief rushed through her in waves.

He scowled, and she saw that he knew he’d botched it.

“I need to change, and we need to have this conversation somewhere where we can’t be overheard,” she said. In control once more, buying time, getting a little space to think.

Surely she wasn’t the only one who would be interested to learn that Kip was back. Surely spies would be reporting to everyone in power that he was here. Surely at least the White and the Red and the commander of the Blackguard would hustle as soon as they learned Kip was here. How long did it take the spies around here, anyway?

Then again, it would be best for Teia if she made it to the lavatories before meeting any of the servants of the most powerful and interested people in the Seven Satrapies.

“This will go better for both of us if I can get cleaned up first, Kip,” she said as she hurried.

She saw Gavin’s room slave Marissia coming from the direction of Kip’s room just as they reached the girls’ barracks. Teia kept her head down. “I’ll be five minutes,” she said as she ducked inside. “Maybe ten.”

There were no girls in the barracks. Thank Orholam for small mercies. Most were out studying or working or at dinner—which reminded Teia that she hadn’t eaten since breakfast. She closed the door behind her, and then waited, listening.

“Kip,” Marissia said, her tone constrained. “I’m delighted to see you alive. You’re needed upstairs, immediately—”

“I’m sorry, but I’m busy—”

“—at an emergency meeting of the Spectrum. It’s not a request, Kip. You can come with me and we might straighten this out, or you’ll be seized by the Black’s watchmen and probably beaten, and the Red will get what he wants. What are you doing wasting time with a slave? You should have reported to the White immediately. Pray Orholam your foolishness does not cost us lives.”

“I just got here not ten—”

“Now, Kip.”

For one stupid moment, Teia wanted to go out there and slap Marissia’s face. How dare she talk to her friend like that? Slave? Slave? You’re a slave yourself, you stupid—

Teia leaned close to hear how Kip would respond. The opening door smacked her in the cheek, stunning her, though it didn’t hit hard.

“Don’t think you’ve escaped notice, caleen,” Marissia said quietly through the crack in the door. “Why haven’t you filed your manumission papers? What game are you playing? For whom?”

The door shut, and footsteps receded, and Teia was left alone swimming with an anvil.

One thing at a time, she told her panic. You’re still covered with blood, stupid. That first. She went to her bed and opened her chest and grabbed a clean shift. She went to the lavatory, poured water into a basin, and looked at herself in one of the mirrors.

Checking quickly to see that no one was coming, she stripped off her dress. Seeing the splash of blood across the front of her shift, darker where it had dried, but still livid up at her neck where her warmth and sweat had kept the gore liquid, she had the sudden urge to tear it off, to weep, to vomit. That man, the look in his eyes, that knowledge that he was dying and there was nothing he could do—

She took a deep breath, steadied herself against the basin.

Careful not to smear blood against her face, she pulled the shift off. She stopped her first instinct: to plunge the shift into the water and try to clean it. It was blood. The stains wouldn’t come out, and it would leave the water a bloody mess. Instead, she looked at herself for any evidence of blood on her own body. She dipped the hem into the water and cleaned her neck, between her breasts.

Orholam have mercy, she had blood in her ear. She couldn’t get it off.

Her stomach convulsed, but she held back the vomit. Slowly, meticulously, she dipped another clean portion of cloth into the water and cleaned her ear, behind her ear, her cheek. She checked her hands once more. Cleaned under two fingernails. She folded the ruined shift carefully so that none of the bloodstained parts were visible, toweled off with the hand towel, and pulled on her fresh shift.

She tried to smile at the mirror. Weak.

It was the best she could do.

Now to dispose of the shift—the last direct evidence of a murder that could be tied to her. The shifts were numbered on the back so the laundry slaves could return them to the appropriate girls. Teia tore the shift and ripped out the number, which was harder than she expected. Just a small square of cloth, not even as wide across as her thumb, and thin. She popped it in her mouth and swallowed it.

She stuffed the shift into the bag for menstrual rags and headed to Kip’s room. She opened the door carefully, her eyes wide to paryl, certain she would find that damned man inside again. There was no one, no traps, but there was a folded square of paper on Kip’s dresser. Teia approached it slowly, certain it hadn’t been here when she left.

It read: “T., As promised. —M.S.”

Had this been here when Marissia had checked the room? Teia’s throat tightened again. Orholam, what would she have done if Kip had been with her when she came in and found this? The weight of the secrets was suffocating.

Opening a letter from Murder Sharp was like handling serpents. Teia picked it up carefully, saw that there was only paper inside, and leaned back as she opened it.

It was her papers, the deed to her very body. Signed, everything in order. Ready to be filed.

Teia walked downstairs, waited in a line for a few minutes, and handed her papers to the clerk. He checked and double-checked everything, and then talked with an older clerk, who gave him a key. The man came out with several fat coin sticks. He counted them out for Teia, and had her sign a document stating she intended to join the Blackguard, then handed the coin sticks to her.