The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,328

“Easy, nunk. Just resting my eyes a bit before this last part. You lose the count already?”

“What?”

“Almost time,” he said. He opened his eyes and there was something of the old Ironfist mettle in there. “I gotta get to that audience chamber and make sure nothing else goes to shit.”

“Are you—”

“Grinwoody,” he said.

It crashed around her ears like a pagan temple collapsing. Grinwoody? Grinwoody, Andross Guile’s right hand. All the secrets of the world passed through that man’s fingers. Another Order master assassin, this one dressed in the invisibility cloak of slavery.

Teia, a former slave herself, hadn’t seen it. Hadn’t thought to look there first.

She drew herself up. “I’ll get you past the assassin or assassins at the door, but then I gotta hand you off. I’ve got work to do. What’s that count at?” Teia asked.

“One hundred one.”

“I knew you’d know,” she said, making sure she was filled with paryl and clouds of it hissing from her fingers. She threw the brake, and they shot upward.

She glanced over at her old commander. “You look terrible.”

“I’ve felt better, too,” he said as the floors blurred past. With one hand, he took off a necklace and shoved it into a pocket. “Hood back on, kid.”

Oh, shit! Teia scrambled to pull her hood back into place, a process made awkward by the long knives in her hands. “Who was that guy?” Teia asked as if she weren’t flustered.

“Karris’s kopi seller, maybe? She loves that damned stuff.”

“Hey, watch it,” Teia said. “A Blackguard guards his tongue.”

They both chuckled at that, though Ironfist broke off immediately in pain.

“Six in the foyer at an event like this?” Teia asked. She was standing to his left to put herself between him and the threat.

He grunted. “I’d have more, but there’s a war on. Could mean more.” As if it took supreme effort, Ironfist levered himself off the wall to stand with his feet wide. “By the way,” he said, unhooking the heavy chain that ran from the wrist manacle to a hook on his left bicep, “you’re still just the backup plan.”

Then the doors opened.

Through their training, the half-dozen Blackguards in the foyer were all glancing at the opening lift door, and they gawked at the sight of King Ironfist sodden with blood, even his face sticky with the stuff, his many-colored finery soaked with gore. Teia wasn’t looking at the faces, though—she was staring at their hands.

They all moved forward. It was what they were trained to do, to move toward danger, to confront whatever shocked or threatened them in order to give aid or to defend the defenseless behind them. For Teia to find the threat with that much sudden motion all coming toward her, all of them armed to the teeth, was nearly impossible. Left side, left side—

Right side!

A young Blackguard she didn’t know stepped forward, wide-eyed with fear, too fast for a paryl pinch to his nerves. Ironfist was moving to meet the threat himself, but he was way too slow. As the young man lunged, Teia dove beneath Ironfist’s rising arm and slashed up with both knives.

Her first missed the blade she was trying to intercept, but passed cleanly through the young man’s wrist. Hand and blade went spinning. Her other blade sank deep into the young man’s groin.

Then Ironfist’s open hand slapped into the young man’s face, and stopped. The chain wrapped full around the would-be assassin’s head. Then Ironfist tore back in the other direction, snapping the young man’s neck and flinging his body away.

Behind the first ranks of Blackguards, Teia saw Gill Greyling coming running, shouting at his men to stop, stop!

But the problem of training people to react with instant lethality to threats is that they do. One of the veteran Blackguards was reaching for the sleeve of a young man next to her, but four Blackguards were already attacking.

A wall of paryl heat blasted out of Teia as it had once at Ruic Head. Everyone nearby fell back, feeling as if their skin were on fire.

“Naught Naught One! Naught Naught One!” Gill Greyling shouted, “Stop, stop, stop! I saw everything! Stop!” He arrived only a second later, interposing himself between the Blackguards and Ironfist.

Ironfist collapsed into Gill’s arms. “Get me in there,” he gasped.

But Teia was looking down the hall, past all the Blackguards who were rushing this way—even men and women who should have known better, who had been taught to stay at their stations. But she saw one person moving in the opposite direction.

Not