The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,132

to do it. I was too scared, too certain my nerve would fail me when it came time to kill some innocent. He said to let the blood be on his head, not mine. And then this man who pretended to be such a hard cold bastard, while he secretly fretted and drank himself to death, he told me he wasn’t giving me a choice. He said it was war, and this was an order.”

It was different, a little, but too much of it was eerily familiar.

Karris had given Teia that speech. And Karris had trembled in her chambers like a hypocrite—afterward—but before the crowds, she strutted with her back straight, as if she were Confidence made flesh.

“He told me that no one must know, because anyone could be a spy,” Sharp said. His voice was tinged with bitter amusement. “He would tell no one and I couldn’t, either. He said that if I were caught or even too close to getting caught, I should kill myself before the Order could find out too much, or trace my infiltration to him. He said in that event, he would personally beseech Orholam for forgiveness for my suicide, and for any . . . you know, lingering guilt I might so wrongly feel for all the murders.” He sneered the last line, finally finding his anger’s heat once more.

“What happened?” Teia asked softly.

“His nerves failed, or someone got to him, but the Blackguard imprisoned him quietly, saying he was ill. Everyone used to know what that meant. He was quietly wheeled from his chambers to the top of his tower to do the balancing every month. The Blackguard was a much larger force then, and it was impossible for me to get to him. I didn’t have my own cloak yet, of course. So what happened? I guess nothing happened. He died. No one from the Chromeria ever said a word to me. I had no friends, because how can you have friends when you have a secret like that? How do you keep it secret if anyone’s close enough to you to wonder where you spend so much of your time? Prism Talim had set me to sail in a sea of blood, and I’d lost sight of shore. He was my only anchor, and . . . with that cut loose . . . ? What was I going to do?”

“Join the people you sold your soul to destroy,” Teia said. Obviously.

Murder Sharp scanned her face.

T, you moron! Are you trying to die?

“But I guess,” he said, “the real question is what are you going to do?”

“Huh?” she asked.

“They gave you the same assignment, same lies, didn’t they? Gavin or Andross or Orea or Karris. One of them.”

She gulped. If he asked her now who it was, what did she say?

He really didn’t know?

“No, you don’t need to tell me. I see the horror on your face.”

She couldn’t even understand what he meant for a moment. Oh, the horror that she’d heard the same lies, not horror at one of the names. She hadn’t given Karris away.

Not yet.

“Who knows?” Sharp said. “Maybe you’ll go left where I went right. It’d figure, huh? That’s what mirror images do. Always confused me how that works.”

Teia could say nothing.

“Never mind. The Old Man came to me after Talim died. Bastard didn’t even leave last instructions for me in our dead drop. But no one signaled me, either, so I knew he’d kept my existence secret to the grave. Or forgotten me. What did it matter, then? No one was coming for me. No one saw me. No one had heard about me. No one cared. No one was going to save me. The Old Man didn’t know about my mission, either. I was still safe. As safe as a spy gets when they’re trying to do what we do, anyway, right? He said he wanted to trust me, but he didn’t.”

Teia had heard this story before, though somehow Murder Sharp had forgotten telling her—and she certainly hadn’t heard about it from this perspective.

“He gave me the Biter—you know, that tooth-breaking tool? Oh, right, I showed it to you with the Old Man. Well, he gave me a job to do with it. I was supposed to find this noblewoman, orange drafter, break all her teeth, then kill her. Felia Dariush her name was. I’ll never forget that night. The Old Man told me she’d infuriated some rival who wanted to marry the same