Weeks, Brent - Lightbringer 02 - The Blinding Knife by Weeks Brent

Author:Weeks, Brent [Weeks, Brent]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Epic Fantasy
ISBN: 9780316215817
Google: 5dIdAaMF8WcC
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2012-09-10T21:00:00+00:00

Chapter 71

Ironfist was on his way to the White’s quarters on top of the tower when he saw Blackguards standing outside the Prism’s apartments. Since he’d just left Gavin, they could only be hers.

The commander knocked on the door.

“Come in,” the White said.

The White was in her wheeled chair. Before her, Gavin Guile’s room slave Marissia was on her knees, laying her head in the White’s lap. Tears streaked the room slave’s face, and the White was soothing her.

“Gavin Guile’s back. He’s one floor down,” Ironfist said. The sometimes fractious relationship between the White and the Prism didn’t need the additional strain of Gavin finding the White in his room. Gavin liked his private space.

Marissia hopped to her feet, dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief. “Oh! I cry once a year and he invariably—Mother, thank you. I will do as you’ve said.”

“Orholam bless you, child. We’ll leave now so we don’t make your life any more complicated than necessary,” Orea Pullawr said. “Commander?”

He wheeled her out into the hallway. It was much faster for him to do so, but it was also evidence of her growing frailty. Not two months ago, she would have angrily refused to let anyone push her around like she was an invalid.

Nor did she take over when they went down the hall. She seemed tired.

One Blackguard preceded them, and the other took their backs. Even here, they guarded.

“One thing I never considered about getting old,” the White said, as Ironfist rolled her in front of her desk and then released her, to sit opposite her. “It makes spying so much harder.”

“I thought that you had people for such things,” Ironfist said.

“You can never leave such things entirely in other hands. It puts you at the mercy of your own spymaster. Or spymistress, as the case may be.”

Spymistress? What? Did she mean—“Marissia?” Ironfist asked, incredulous. “She’s your—”

The White said nothing for a long moment, and Ironfist’s mind whirled at the implications. Marissia did have unfettered access to this floor at all times, but she could also move freely among the other slaves in the tower. Her position as a slave to the most important man in the world made her exist in a social gray zone: if needed, she could mix socially with the lowest scullery boy, or she could chide the richest merchant on Big Jasper. A smart woman would exploit the advantages of such a situation, and Ironfist knew that Marissia was definitely a smart woman.

“No, she’s not,” the White said finally. “But just now, you were thinking as I must think all the time. As Gavin must think.”

“That’s harder than juggling the odds of a rival pulling a good card,” Ironfist said.

“One gets better with practice. But I prattle.” She tented her hands in her lap, sat quietly. She glanced at his bare head, then back to his eyes. Waited.

Ironfist rubbed his bare head, the stubbly hairs growing in like stubborn weeds of faith he could cut but not uproot. If he couldn’t trust the White, who could he? Even if she was faithless.

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