The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,80

couldn’t give Gill any comfort. Even if anything she said could make a difference—and it wouldn’t! it wouldn’t!—she had to make everyone think she was just gone.

Everyone. No exceptions.

Though it felt like a betrayal of her Blackguard brothers and sisters to trust them so little, it wasn’t distrust . . . exactly. It was just that anyone could slip up, and any slip-up meant failure of her mission, and her father’s death.

T? That’s pretty much the definition of distrust.

Fine. So I’m the asshole. But there are traitors loyal only to the Order of the Broken Eye who sleep in this very room.

Teia just didn’t know who they were yet.

But she would. She swore it. That was coming. And it would start with whoever had that limp.

She crept invisibly into the women’s section of the barracks, carefully inspected the underside of her bunk, and silently slid open the little box she’d nailed there.

Coin stick, pistol, tailor’s kit.

Though there was no one in here, she stood quietly, carefully. It said something about how thin the Blackguard was stretched, even with all the rapid promotions of barely deserving scrubs into their ranks, that now, half an hour after dawn, the barracks were empty. All those who’d been on night shift should be coming in to sleep now. Instead, with Blackguards training all the Chromeria’s other drafters to fight, double shifts were more common than ever. That work wasn’t as strenuous as the constant vigilance required of a Blackguard when guarding a Color or the promachos, but it wasn’t rest, either.

In the main barracks, she gazed once more upon Gill Greyling, looking haunted on his bunk. There was no one with him. No one at all in the barracks except the two of them.

He was too well liked for this. Maybe he’d demanded to be alone.

Teia didn’t want to think that no one had thought to stay with him, or that Commander Fisk hadn’t given anyone leave to do so.

War doesn’t strip dignity only from the dead.

Red morning sun poured through windows, bloody light limning his solitary, hunched figure. She turned sharply, a sudden urge to weep strangling her. She stepped away.

The wood floor creaked under her shoe, and she froze in place. Heart pounding, she looked over her shoulder.

Gill had tightened.

He sat up straight, looked around the barracks, eyes searching. There was no one here.

Teia was suddenly acutely aware that Gill wasn’t only a bereaved brother. He was a fully trained Blackguard, relentlessly molded to be attuned to hidden threats. And armed. And now alert. If he charged her—even in her general direction—what was she going to do?

Fight him?

Impossible! A single touch would be confirmation that she was here! A single glimpse of her would jeopardize everything she was trying to do against the Order. A single telling sound would reveal the existence of an invisible intruder. He would report it, or at least tell someone, and anyone who heard such a wild thing would tell others, and the Order would hear.

And the Order would know who it had to be.

Could she speak? Tell him? Trust him?

No. She trusted him. She did. She could trust Gill Greyling. But she had no idea how the man would behave in his grief. It might be one shock too many. Talk of shimmercloaks? The Order? Traitors in the Blackguard itself? That was at least three shocks too many.

Besides, she had no idea how long they’d be alone, even if she dared to try to brief him on secrets she’d been commanded to keep secret from everyone. She trusted him, she just couldn’t . . . trust how he’d respond.

Ugh. That felt ugly and false.

She had to get out of here.

She began lifting her soft shoe slowly, heart pounding. She could feel the tension in the wood. There was no question: when she lifted that foot, the floor would creak again.

“Gav?” Gill whispered.

Teia’s heart tumbled to the floor.

“Gavin? Is that you?” Gill asked plaintively.

Oh no. No, no, no.

“I can feel your presence. I know you’re here. It’s you, isn’t it? Little brother . . .” His voice trailed off, and Teia saw him gulping convulsively against the threatening tears, joy and hope taking up arms against a tide of grief.

For a long moment, neither of them moved.

“Can you . . . can you give me another sign?” Gill asked.

She had to lift her foot. Gill was staring straight at her. She couldn’t wait him out. Anyone might come in at any moment. Anyone who came in would