Teia instantly shot a wave of paryl gas in an arc where Murder Sharp had been standing to make sure he was really gone. He was.
“Quickly,” Teia said, “what do you want me to do?”
Marissia got up on her knees. Her voice was breathy with controlled fear. “Did he take the papers from my desk? Package. All tied together in red ribbon.”
“Yes.”
Teia could hear the heavy sigh of despair expelled into the hood over Marissia’s head. The spymistress said, “Teia, you have to get those papers. I was to keep them safe for Karris.”
“What are they?”
“They’re the White’s instructions for her successor. They have everything Karris needs to know how to rule. Secrets. Plans. Names. There are things in there Karris can’t learn any other way.”
Oh hell no. How was Teia to steal papers from Murder Sharp? “We weren’t sent for the papers, Marissia. We were sent for you. I think Sharp’s just grabbing whatever is lying about.”
Marissia sagged. “Any other day. Any other hour, and all those papers would be locked away safe… No matter. No time.” She bent for a moment. “He’ll take it all to the Old Man’s office anyway. That parchment you grabbed from my desk. It’s a code. Crack it. It’s the combination or key word to the Old Man of the Desert’s office. Teia, that office is here, in the Chromeria. Maybe in this very tower. That means he—or she, we don’t even know for sure that the Old Man of the Desert is a man—is here. But if you open the office without using the code, it’ll wash the room in fire. Everything in it will be destroyed. You can’t let that happen. Not least because the White’s papers will be destroyed, too.”
“I’ll find it, I swear. But what—” Teia cut off at the sound of steps outside the room. She tapped Marissia’s shoulder to tell her to be silent, and drafted, disappearing with her own borrowed shimmercloak.
But whoever it was walked past, and Teia heard the banging of the door to the roof. She and the squad had had quite the fight up there, only hours ago, but only a single Blackguard was standing watch now. Master Sharp said the commanders of the Blackguard would isolate the area until they could examine it to try to figure out what had happened.
“What about you?” Teia asked. “How do we save you?”
A pause. Teia wished she could see Marissia’s face, but the bag stayed perfectly still, giving no hint of her fear or her bravery or her hatred or her desperation.
“We don’t,” Marissia said quietly.
“You’ve seen Sharp’s face. They’re going to kill you.”
Marissia’s head bowed. “Just… pray for me,” she said, and there was her fear again.
“At least let me give you a knife.”
“And what happens to you when this assassin finds your knife on me?” Marissia asked.
Before Teia could protest further, the door opened and closed. Master Sharp was speaking before he was even fully visible. “Give me that cloak.”
“My shimmercloak?” Teia asked.
“It’s not yours. It’s the Order’s, and don’t forget it.”
“I’m the one who stole it! I risked everything to—”
“Now!”
Teia unclasped the choker and handed Master Sharp the burnt-hemmed shimmercloak. He lowered his own hood, threw Teia’s cloak on over his cloak, attaching the choker awkwardly. He pulled his hood back up, but couldn’t lace it properly. He swore.
“What are you doing?” Teia asked.
He swore again, and said to Marissia, “You do other than what I say, and you die now, and not easy. Understand?”
Her head bobbed, the sack trembling as she wept. He slashed the rope between her neck and her wrists, and slung her over his shoulder. “Teia, help me with the cloak.”
Teia spread out the second, bunched cloak over Marissia’s body. Given that Marissia was slung over Sharp’s shoulder, it covered her fully, if awkwardly.
“I have to sneak out without a cloak?” Teia asked.
“You go out the way we came in. Outside. Collect the climbing crescents as you go down. Be quick. You won’t have long before people start looking up here.” He poked Marissia. “You, when I tell you, you scream that there’s a fire in the White’s quarters. Because there is.”
Oh, that was why he hadn’t gagged Marissia. The Blackguards would recognize her voice when she called out.
Still holding Marissia over his shoulder, Master Sharp stooped to pick up the bag full of papers he’d stolen.
“You want me to take the bag?” Teia asked.
He almost handed it to her, then paused. Anxiety hammered great blows against her mask of nonchalance. He said, “Better not. Get climbing.”
“I could bring it to—”
“Now,” he said, and there was quiet menace in his voice. Without waiting, he turned his back, and far more slowly than usual, the cloaks began shimmering, the fox emblem on Teia’s burnt cloak showing dark gray against the gray and then fading.
The door opened, and Teia smelled smoke.
“Fire! Fire in the White’s quarters!” Marissia shouted. “Fire!”
And then the door closed behind them.
The obvious course was to hurry up and climb down the wall. Once the smoke started billowing out of the White’s windows, eyes would turn toward the Prism’s Tower. Teia couldn’t be clinging to the walls in full view when that happened.
But Teia had a card to play that Master Sharp didn’t know about.
She had her own cloak, the master cloak that Kip had given her. She pulled it out of her pack, the material thin and weightless as liquid light. She put it on. Drew the choker around her neck. Pulled up the hood, snapped it closed over her face. She could follow Sharp unseen.
But after extinguishing the fire, the Blackguards would search the tower exhaustively. If Teia followed Sharp, the Blackguards would find the climbing crescents stuck to the outside of the tower. The Order had spies in the Blackguard, so they would learn of it, and they would know Teia had disobeyed.
It wouldn’t be proof that Teia was a spy, but the Order didn’t need proof. They would kill her.
But if she didn’t follow Sharp, they would kill Marissia.
Marissia had ordered Teia to let her die. The old Teia, the slave Teia, would have accepted that order and shrugged off responsibility for what happened next. Teia wasn’t that Teia anymore.