The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,344

out.

Their little cart clattered over cobbles as darkness fell on Big Jasper. Teia’d always had quick hands. Maybe she could . . . What? How do you taste test poison and not die?

Every dodge she thought of was stupider than the last: Maybe she could swap glasses? Yeah, except you didn’t poison some of the wine, T; you poisoned it all. Are you really going to pin your hopes on someone showing up with another random glass of wine that you can swap at the last moment?

Maybe she could try to keep her veil on and pour the wine down her neck? But her robes were white; the wine was red. Maybe it could work, though! Her robes were actually the master cloak. Maybe she could keep willing it to stay white. Maybe it would!

But she didn’t have any way to test it.

And if they noticed anything suspicious, they’d kill her. Worse, they would throw out the obviously poisoned wine. Everything she’d done to get here would be for nothing.

No matter how she turned it, there seemed to be only three possible outcomes here: she successfully faked drinking the poisoned wine, she got caught faking drinking it, or she actually did drink it.

Two of those ended with her very dead.

She’d not come this far to end up dead.

They reached the Crossroads, and it was packed with people. There were merchants moving trade goods at the last minute for tomorrow’s festivities—if those went ahead—or doing business before the battle. Some people. Orholam’s chafed nutsack.

There were Lightguards trying to set up a checkpoint—on one of seven intersecting roads, but not the others. Morons. There were people already partying, and all the food and wine vendors to cater to them. Some yellow pyroturges were doing tricks in the evening air, elaborate creations bursting apart with sparks and flashes.

Three carts met them, and three horsemen, nondescript, faces hidden as if cold. One pointed to a barrel, and without a word, Atevia levered off the lid. He handed a ladle to Teia, and she clambered into the back of the wagon.

Suddenly, all eyes were on her. Three barrels of wine, three carts. The poisoned wine wasn’t going to one of the Braxian congregations. Each was getting a barrel. If Teia did this, she would wipe out the entire Order with one stroke.

There were no other ladles. No big ceremony with her confronting two glasses and trying to figure out how to drink from the right one. It was just a dozen eyes on her. One ladle, and the choice of life or death.

Teia dipped the ladle deep into the barrel, drew it forth, and then held it out toward each of the men, so they could see that it was brimming full.

Here’s to you, my dead slave brothers. I accept your judgment. I accept my punishment.

She lifted her veil and drank it all. She presented the empty ladle to them, and whispered, “Good enough?” to show she didn’t still have the wine in her mouth.

“Thank you, Mariel,” one of them said, his voice obviously modulated with one of those collars. But she knew.

The Old Man himself. Grinwoody.

Teia stiffened. Atevia had called her Muriel. Teia threw her hands out, like ‘What the hell?’

“So it is you,” the man said. “Just checking. Never seen you drink so deeply before. Guess it’s not a normal night, is it? Men, load the barrels.” He turned to one. “Oh, and search her.”

The man did, roughly but quickly. Inexpertly, too, in Teia’s opinion.

She could only wish that actually mattered. A vial of an antidote hidden in a body cavity sounded like a really great idea right about now.

“She’s clean,” the man said.

The Old Man pulled out a coin purse.

Teia waited. She had no idea if Muriel usually declined payment, so she didn’t push the act.

But she widened her eyes briefly, only to see paryl leaking from a shell around the nondescript man who’d just searched her. A Shadow.

A lousy one, obviously, from the spectral bleed she could see, and by the fact he hadn’t noticed she was a paryl drafter herself—though if she’d been holding paryl when he touched her, that would have gone very differently. This moron Shadow had just been yanking her around while he ‘searched’ her by shooting paryl through her clothing. He was too inexpert at keeping his spectrum tight enough to search her from any distance.

Well, lucky me, Teia thought. Watching carefully, she caught the flash of super-fine mail around the Old Man’s legs and wrists.

Some