The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,204

have been a good option.

She should’ve been more aware. She should always be thinking about what to do if an option presented itself. Dammit!

He led her to a boardinghouse. It didn’t exactly have an inn on the first floor, more just a single hogshead barrel of wine, an old door propped on sawhorses to make a counter, and one currently occupied stool. Lord Ravi paid the wine pourer, was given a full tankard of wine, and told which room he could sleep in. Then the barman went back to chatting with the two women who were sharing the lone stool.

Teia noted which stairs creaked, then followed Ravi up, her lesser weight silent. She hadn’t been close enough to hear which room he was in. She could only hope that the slaving business had been going well enough for him that he could afford to have the room to himself.

Which was kind of twisted, if she thought about it.

He opened the door, and Teia peeked over his shoulder. Empty. Perfect.

She didn’t follow him in. Instead, she went downstairs and found the boardinghouse’s utility closet. Boardinghouses always had things to fix, even if, like here, they didn’t actually fix them all that often.

Nonetheless, she was able to find a hammer with an iron head. Good enough.

She ghosted back up the stairs. No sense in delaying things.

But she paused at the door.

One breath, T. You get one deep breath to panic. Then you move.

She took her long deep breath, and savored her paralysis like a warm bed on a cold morning. Then she exhaled slowly, shimmering into visibility and removing her hood.

She opened the door and stepped into the room like she owned the place. It was small, nondescript, not very clean, with fresh rushes thrown down on the bed on top of months of dirty ones. Ravi Satish was halfway into pulling his tunic over his head.

At the sound of the door opening and closing, he said, “What the hell? Arun told me I’d have this room to myself to—oh.”

He finished shucking his tunic off and stopped speaking as he saw her.

“Dammit, that’s what he told me,” Teia said. “Did one of us get the wrong room?”

“Uh, second room on the right?” Ravi said.

“That’s what he told me,” Teia said, giving him a bold look.

“Arun’s always been a joker. I’m going to have to thank him for this one, though.”

“No,” Teia said quietly. “No you’re not.” She took off the master cloak and hung it on a hook by the door.

Ravi picked up his tankard, still standing bare-chested. “I’m, uh, not sure I take your meaning.”

“Would you be willing to share?”

“Share? The bed?” he asked.

“The wine. I’m parched.” But she smirked as if the bed might be a possibility, later.

“Oh, the wine. Of course. Of course.”

“Thank you,” she said. She took the tankard and pretended to drink. She coughed. “Oooh,” she said, “that is really bad.”

“Does the trick, though,” he said with a chuckle. He looked her up and down.

She set down the tankard on the lone table. Out of the way.

Then she turned back to him.

His eyes went round as he saw her hellstone stare. She pinched the nerves in his spine hard, and caught him as he fell.

She guided him to his knees, then released the nerves. “I know you’re in the Order. If you believe in repentance,” she whispered in his ear, “now’s the time.”

She would have a few seconds until he regained feeling. Should, anyway. She grabbed the hammer from the master cloak’s pocket, stepped up to him, and swung with all her might.

Teia had never killed a man this way. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected, but hadn’t expected the hammer to stick. It crushed through his temple in a splatter of blood and bone and brain, and stopped.

Ravi crumpled to the ground, his skull clinging to the hammer harder than her fingers did.

He tumbled to the floor, but somehow, he wasn’t dead.

“My teeth. You broke my teeth!” he moaned into the ground.

Teeth? What the hell?! But Teia was already moving, reaching out with paryl to squeeze his spine and grab his heart.

Make it stop. Dear Orholam, would you please just die?

He went limp as she found the right grip, but his heart kept stubbornly pumping on.

Then she saw them, glistening pearly beside his head. He’d broken his teeth against the floor as he fell.

But whinging about his teeth? When there was a hammer in his head?

Gradually, Teia found the nerves she needed, and Lord Ravi Satish