The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,220

what the Guiles did to him, and you make them pay.”

It should have stirred something in Teia. Some human emotion. If not an emotion, a question at least. Paryl was supposed to make you more susceptible to feeling, but even handling paryl didn’t do more than make Teia aware of the spot that was numb, like tapping frostbitten fingers against a stranger’s flesh. There was pressure registering farther up your fingers, and you could see the touch. You remembered what feeling was like, but that spot had been pushed so far past pain it wasn’t capable of anything at all.

But this was no time for thoughts or second thoughts.

This isn’t payback. I am merely predator, you are merely prey. No torture. No final words.

Teia squeezed the nerves in each of Aglaia’s shoulders and watched her arms fall unfeeling to her sides. As the woman looked down, wondering why her arms had dropped, Teia grabbed that sensible bun with one hand and rammed the dagger into the back of Aglaia’s neck. With paryl illuminating the gap between skull and spine, Teia’s blade slid in as easily as if Aglaia had lubed herself up for the unwanted penetration with olive oil, and penetrated to the hilt.

Aglaia’s body went limp instantly, but Teia held her in place by her hair, that beautiful blonde hair that provided such a nice grip, and guided her back into her seat.

Teia wrenched the blade back and forth to ensure she’d fully severed the spine, then left it in Aglaia’s neck as she grabbed a rag from a pocket.

She barely got the rag in place around the blade to blot up the blood before it leaked onto the fine chair’s back.

Teia rolled Aglaia out of the chair and onto the bare floor, face-down, dagger up.

Then Teia left her prey and locked the door.

When she came back, she waited a few more heartbeats, and then used paryl to feel for life. You could punch a hole in a man’s heart and he might yet move as you made a full count to ten. The body could be stubborn. It was faster with the spine, but it never hurt to be sure.

Aglaia Crassos was dead. Easy.

A bit of blood and spinal fluid seeped out around the dagger’s blade and into the rag, but with the wound elevated and the heart stopped, there was no more bleeding than that. Teia had picked a short dagger deliberately so it wouldn’t pierce all the way through the woman’s neck. By design, but also by luck, she’d severed the spine without also slicing the big arteries in the neck.

The dead woman had pissed herself, but only a little, and her petticoats had held most of it. A few dribbles had escaped onto the wood floor and none onto the upholstered seat of the chair. Excellent.

Lest it get stained, Teia removed the master cloak and got to work. She untied the two bags she’d tied tight around her waist. The first held half a sev of rocks. The second was larger and made of waxed canvas.

Unhurried, Teia laid out that bag next to Aglaia’s body and opened it. Then, carefully, she put the body onto the bag: lifting and moving feet, then knees, then hips, shoulders, and arms, keeping the dead woman’s face down and wound up always. She slowly stuffed the body inside the bag, buttoning the buttons as she was able.

Then she left off buttoning the bag and cleaned the floor fastidiously. Last, she slid the dagger out of Aglaia’s spine and cleaned the blade, and tucked the rag into the bag as well.

From here it got dicey.

She tested dragging the body, being carefully to keep the wound elevated.

Easy . . . on stone. Teia’s disposal site was a latrine at the end of a long hallway—a long hallway with one of those runner carpets that’s easier to kick out of the way than to keep in place. And Teia was going to be dragging a body down that. Dammit.

There was no way she could add the weight of all those rocks and do that.

That meant she was going to have to drag the body down the hall, then come back, get the rocks, take them down the hall, open the bag, put the rocks in, then lever the body somehow into the latrine.

If she were caught, would she kill the servant who saw her? How about a slave?

Yes, she thought. She’d already decided that. Why did she keep revisiting the choice? In