The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,212

Teia said. “No one says, ‘I concur.’ ”

“I know, but it bothers you,” he said with a quick grin.

She forced a smile, but then returned to the task. “It’s not like we can ask Carver Black,” she said. She sighed. Should she break into his rooms? His office? How long would it take her to find a book he’d hidden? Could she spare the time from hunting the Order itself to surveil him? What reason would Carver Black have to check the old tower plans? He might have those documents, not ever check them.

And who was to say Carver Black even knew? Would the Old Man of the Desert hide in a place Carver Black knew? Was Carver Black himself in the Order?

She sighed. It all made her head hurt. She would need years to untangle all this fully. And it wasn’t like she could kill Carver Black without anyone noticing. No, her best bet wasn’t to go after individuals to find if they were in the Order; it was to let the Order come to her. She rubbed her jaw gingerly.

She had to figure out some way to mark every person who attended their Feast of the Dying Light, the night before Sun Day. Maybe in the changing room? Could she mark their clothing?

Then Karris’s soldiers could sweep down on the traitors on Sun Day morning and wipe them out in one fell swoop.

They could celebrate Sun Day by putting the Old Man of the Desert up on Orholam’s Glare.

There was one man Teia would happily watch cook, screaming in agony as he died.

If she could survive so long. She rubbed her jaw again.

“Tooth still hurting?” Quentin asked. “I thought you were going to go see the White’s barber about that before all this even started.”

“I did. Not that I can tell, but he said it’s better now than it would have been if I hadn’t come to see him.”

“A nonfalsifiable statement. Clever.”

“I’m supposed to chew some herbs to help, but I always forget,” she said. “I don’t know what irritates me more: that he may be a charlatan or that this may be my fault because I don’t follow instructions.” She heard the whinging in her voice, and shut up.

Quentin looked at her, and didn’t fill the sudden silence.

“It’s killing me,” she said.

“Your tooth? Not your tooth.”

She sat on Quentin’s bed. “Quentin, you’re on a first-name basis with the guy: how can Orholam allow this?”

“This?” Quentin asked uncertainly.

“I’m a butcher, Quen. I’ve taken to scoring a notch on my knife for each kill.”

He said nothing, but he wasn’t fast enough to hide the brief flash of distaste on his lips.

“Not to brag about the number. To remind myself. Because I was forgetting. They all run together until I dream: Oh, the way that one slave gurgled on his blood because he bit his tongue so hard in his fear of me before I even touched him. How that other girl wept from the moment the door opened and never even got a word out because she was crying so hard. I remember how I despised her, how I wished she would die as bravely as some of the others had. Do you know, they gave me a break? The Order. Said that too many slaves had disappeared, and they needed to hold off until some more refugees came to the island so no one would get suspicious—and I felt disappointed because it would interrupt my studies. Disappointed. For only a moment, yes. But what the hell is that? I don’t want to be this person I’m becoming, Quentin. Why would Orholam allow this?”

“ ‘If Orholam can do something, and if He cares about us, why doesn’t He?’ ”

She nodded. “So what’s the answer?”

“The answer’s simple for the mind, but impossible for the heart. And the question, honestly asked, always comes from a wound.” He said no more.

She waited, then understood. “So you’re not going to tell me.”

“Not when you’re hurting and angry. You’ll reject the answer, and then later you’ll think of it as an answer you already found lacking and perhaps you’ll neglect to consider it again. Having found a door’s handle bristling with needles, you’ll tell yourself it’s probably locked anyway. When you come to the big questions, before you can get a true answer, you need to know whether you’re approaching them rationally or emotionally.”

A Blackguard guards his emotions, Teia thought. “So you’re not going to tell me the rational answer until I can approach