The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,489

the dark didn’t speak, but he gave a satisfied, arrogant little grunt.

Grinwoody spoke for him. “Aram is sharp and bitter and unquestioningly obedient—and a better fighter than most people would guess, considering. And in a sign that our gods have power beyond the Chromeria’s knowing, I’ve discovered that Aram is a lightsplitter. You, Adrasteia Sharp, my strong right hand, you will train him. You two will be our first team of the new era.”

So there it was: the admission Teia had been hoping for. There were no others. This was the last root of the Order, the last tiny smoldering ember.

“No,” Teia said. “That’s not how it’s gonna be.”

“Excuse me?” Grinwoody said. “Young lady, if I have to teach you lessons in obedience as I did your master, I—”

“It was me,” Teia said. “I never left the Jaspers. I told Guile you planned to betray him. I killed Halfcock and Aglaia Crassos and Ravi Satish. I followed Atevia Zelorn, and I poisoned the bloodwine. All of it was me.”

Full-spectrum light suffused the entire room as Grinwoody hit some hidden switch as Aram snapped into a ready position with his spear. The look of black rage suffusing the Old Man’s face was fearsome to behold.

“Well, now you’ve made a very big mistake. Why would you tell me such lies? Do you think this is a game?” The Old Man slapped a hand down, triggering something that slapped a bar down over the cloaks hanging on the pegs, clicking as it locked them into place. He threw back his hood, released the voice-changing collar. “Aram, kill her if she moves. Child, do you want to die?”

“Oh yes, but not today, I think.”

His eyes narrowed. He didn’t believe her. He didn’t think she was capable of all she’d done.

She said, “You know, Sharp liked to think of the Order as piranhas. But he told me once that there’s a fish that hunts piranhas. Vampire fish, they call it. Fangs longer than my fingers. Said he never could get those fangs to work in his dentures. Too long to fit in his mouth without stabbing himself, he said. He thought that was appropriate, because though he always entertained a fantasy of killing you, he was never willing to bleed to do it.”

“So you killed Elijah, too?” Grinwoody had his hand under the desk, clearly holding a pistol.

“I found this mask in his workshop. With some help from my friends, I finished it. And now I’m going to finish what Elijah started, and what you started, too.” She pulled out the alien, skeletal half mask. With leather loops over the ears to hold it up, it covered only from the forehead to the upper lip. Vampire-fish fangs hooked down from the upper jaw. A black cloth draped below that to conceal the lower half of the face and the neck. The cloth was imbued with orange luxin to make an illusion of a skeletal, monstrous neck and a toothy lower jaw snapping up to meet the hungry upper fangs.

Teia said, “You wanted to make me dangerous. I’ve become ever so much more than that. Do you want to know the biggest secret about my shimmercloak?”

Grinwoody stood, a pistol in each hand, trembling with rage, but he didn’t fire yet. He needed to know. He always had. His eyes shot a glance to her shimmercloak, locked to its peg.

“The secret is . . .” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “I don’t need it anymore.”

Before she settled the mask into place with its illusory teeth, before the Mist Walker disappeared, before the report of the muskets, before the thuds of flesh and the final hopeless begging, before the blood leapt onto the walls, before the last gurgling breaths of evil men drowning in their own blood, she flashed a smile at them, and her eyes were an open grave, and her teeth were very sharp.

Character List

Abaddon: Also known as the god of locusts, the Day Star, the Lord of the Flies. One of the chief immortals of the Two Hundred. Often depicted with crippled ankles, giant insect wings, and pallid features.

Adrasteia (Teia): One of the smaller Blackguards, a skilled paryl drafter, and a luxor for the Iron White. She is a double agent in the Order of the Broken Eye.

Agnelli, Lucia: A Blackguard scrub, she had a forbidden romantic relationship with Cruxer. Murdered by Quentin Naheed during a training exercise.

Aleph, Derwyn: Commander general of the Cwn y Wawr.

Aliyah: Married to Halfcock in secret. She has