The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,260

though, Teia had scoped out several entrances to a larger chamber, where the Order’s high priests were meeting, and a few nooks in which she might hide without using paryl.

None too soon, either. She was standing at an intersection when a door opened on each side. Identical cloaked figures stepped out simultaneously. She was on the opposite side from where Atevia had entered, so neither of these men were him. She had only two choices, and the Old Man of the Desert might not have been either of these men.

It was the flip of a coin.

This is on You, Orholam. If You want me—

The man to her left bobbed his head as he turned his back toward her and raised a finger toward his face as if pushing up a pair of spectacles.

Spectacles? Like the paryl spectacles the Old Man had?

Now the question was how far they worked. Teia could see paryl about thirty or forty paces out in sunlight, maybe twice that far in the dark. Were the spectacles that good? What if they were better?

She followed at a safe distance, thought she lost him when she was overly cautious coming out of the Crossroads, but identified him again by his gait—she hoped. The master cloak gave her a huge advantage, though, even when she didn’t use it for invisibility. She started with it as a worn deep-blue cloak, folded it down on her shoulders and changed it to a green-and-black check pattern, and bound a scarf around her head quickly before she came up the stairs out of the basement, and then went with a muted brown to go with a wide-brimmed petasos she stole from a merchant’s stall before she got to the Lily’s Stem.

She had to hurry when he got to the Chromeria, but she lost him in the great hall. She caught a glimpse of a man who might be him, wearing a slave’s garb and entering the servants’ stairs.

Teia hesitated.

This was where things got even more dangerous. If he were aware of her at all, this would be where he sprang his trap. If she went invisibly, the Old Man might notice her paryl. If she went visibly, any Chromeria slave or servant might stop her coming up their stairs—she wasn’t dressed as a slave, and sightseers and supplicants for the White often tried to jump the lines by doing that.

The last options were for Teia to go as a slave and possibly be rec-ognized, or go as a Blackguard and definitely be recognized.

Would the staff know that a certain Blackguard was missing? What would Teia do if a Blackguard came down the stairs? The Blackguards often used the stairs for convenience or speed. After all, technically, they, too, were slaves.

Cursing inwardly at the stupidity of it all—Teia should be the one secure here, and the Old Man afraid, not the other way around!—Teia wrapped herself in a paryl cloud and darted into the door. She was exhausted from all her drafting, and from the tension, but she couldn’t give up now.

Her boiled-rubber-soled shoes were nearly silent as she jogged up the steps.

Doors opened and doors closed, casting echoes down the great spiraling stairs where Kip and the Mighty had nearly died fighting last year. Too many openings and closings. The stairs were sometimes empty for several minutes, and at other times they were as busy as at the Lily’s Stem. To her horror, now seemed like one of the latter times.

Teia poked her head out the first door she thought she might have heard, knowing it might be met with a sword.

But there was nothing.

She ran up another floor, threw the door open. A young slave woman setting down a clean bucket of water by her mop looked up, and seemed curious that she didn’t see anyone there.

Next floor, nothing . . . nothing . . . nothing.

He was here. The Old Man was here in the Prism’s Tower. He was close. But Teia hadn’t found him in time. She’d hesitated too long, been too careful.

This had been her last chance to root out the Order of the Broken Eye without getting her friends killed. It had been her last chance to save her father.

Teia’s last hope fizzled, sputtered, and went out.

She made her way woodenly to the dead drop and left her sign for Karris: Can we stamp out the Order? ‘No.’

Teia had failed.

Chapter 75

“In two or three days now,” Karris said to her gathered luxiats, “all the work we’ve done will