The Blinding Knife

Chapter 48

“Paryl is unique among the colors,” Teia’s tutor said. “And it is uniquely dangerous.”

Teia scowled. She thought that despite being the weakest and the worst color, at least paryl wouldn’t get you killed or drive you mad. Then she scowled again-because they were standing in one of the Blackguards’ training halls. It was dinner time, and there weren’t many scrubs in the hall. Mostly it was inductees from the classes ahead of Teia’s, but Cruxer was nearby, kicking his shins methodically up against a post. He’d told Teia once that it lightly broke the bones in the shin, and that the body responded by building them up ever tougher. He’d showed her his lumpy shins. It was impressive-and kind of gross. She thought it was the greatest thing she’d ever seen. But right now, he’d slowed his training, obviously eavesdropping.

“What’s dangerous about it?” Teia asked. Her private tutor, Marta Martaens, was more than fifty years old. Ancient for a drafter. Wavy dark hair gone platinum, olive skin, top front teeth missing.

“That you go blind or burn to death.”

Teia took a sharp breath. Oh, is that all?

“To see paryl, you have to dilate your pupils much, much more than most people can. You can do this consciously, yes?” Magister Martaens sucked at her thin upper lip.

“Yes, Mistress.”

“Do it. I need to see.”

It took Teia a moment. It was hard to relax your eyes as far as paryl demanded when you were tense. But then it came.

“Good,” Magister Martaens said. “Now, back to normal. I assume you’ve never seen your own eyes in a mirror when you’ve done that? No? Watch.”

The woman stared at Teia, and her eyes dilated unnaturally wide, the iris a tiny band of brown around a huge pupil.

Teia made a moue of appreciation.

“That’s to see sub-red,” the old drafter said. Then her pupils flared again, stretching the sclera itself, her entire eye going an eerie black, pushing the white to nothingness.

Teia flinched and shrank back.

The woman’s eyes went back to normal in a blink. “That’s what your eyes look like when you’re viewing paryl, Adrasteia. Our eyes themselves are different, the lenses far more malleable, blessed by Orholam to see differently. Can you see superviolet?”

“No. And I’m color-blind, red-green.” Best to get it out right away.

“Unfortunate.”

“Are you?”

“Color-blind? No, but it’s more common among us. We can see a vast spectrum of light, far more than other drafters. But that doesn’t necessarily overlap with what others see. My own mistress’s master Shayam Rassad was completely blind in the visible spectrum, but navigated perfectly with sub-red and paryl. But, dangers. First, the physical: if you dilate your eyes so much in bright light too often, you will go blind. Slowly, usually, but you need to take extreme care with mag torches and bright sunlight. Now, enough talk. Let’s see what you can do.”

So they began practicing, Magister Martaens asking Teia what she could see, drafting substances of her own, picking out sources distant and near, asking Teia to draft it herself. The paryl as Magister Martaens explained it was more like a gel than anything, albeit a gel that was lighter than air. It made good markers because the gel floated and frayed apart, constantly emitting paryl light.

“So you made the markers for my mistress,” Teia said. She was stupid not to have realized it earlier. Of course the woman had! There weren’t exactly hundreds of paryl drafters around.

The woman’s face went very still.

“How many of us are there?” Teia asked.

“Only two right now,” Magister Martaens said. She looked to either side as she spoke, glancing nervously over at Cruxer, who was still pretending to be working out, without moving her head. “You and me.”

“But that can’t be right,” Teia said. “I saw a man craft solid paryl and-”

Marta Martaens hissed-actually hissed. Teia froze up.

Magister Martaens smoothed her features and calmly walked toward the exit, beckoning Teia to join her. When they were out into the huge, bright underground cavern beneath the Chromeria, she went around the corner of the building where they couldn’t be seen. When Teia joined her, she saw the woman was livid.

“I don’t know what you thought you saw,” Magister Martaens said, “but you are never to speak of it again. Do you understand?”

“I–I’m sorry, but no,” Teia said.

“You don’t need to understand, you need to be silent. Especially about such things.”

“No!” Teia said. “You’re my tutor. Teach me. I need to know everything if I’m to get into the Blackguard. You can’t hold back on me.”

“I can and I will. You’re my discipula; you will obey me.”

“Then I’ll take my questions to Commander Ironfist.”

The woman went gray. “I want you to think very carefully about what you’re considering, young lady.”

“Going to someone I trust, someone in authority over me, with a simple question, that’s what,” Teia said, getting angry.

“Tell me what you think you saw. Quietly.”

So Teia did.

Magister Martaens was shaking her head even before Teia was finished. “No. No. I’ve tried to make paryl solid a thousand times a thousand. It doesn’t work that way.”

“But what if it did?” Teia said.

“Yes, exactly,” Marta Martaens said.

Teia lifted her palms, more mystified than angry now. Maybe drafting paryl really did make you crazy.

Magister Martaens looked around, again, though there was no one to overhear them. “Think about what you’re suggesting: a color that’s invisible to nearly everyone, even every drafter-a color that could kill, without leaving a mark, without leaving any evidence, that looked like a natural death. Please use your tiny brain to think about how people would react to such magic.”

Teia licked her lips. They would react exactly as she had, with terror.

“Anytime someone dies mysteriously, it becomes the fault of a paryl drafter. Anytime some obese noble keels over from a burst heart, people whisper that it’s the work of his enemies-and every noble has enemies, and most of them are fat. Think first about what that does to nations, when any death could have been an assassination. Then think what that does to paryl drafters. When the Office of Doctrine sent out luxors to stamp out paryl drafters, they weren’t authorized solely or even mainly because the Spectrum thought we were heretics.”

The Office had sent luxors after paryl drafters? “So it does work. You’re admitting it,” Teia said, despite her tight throat.

“I’m admitting nothing. I’ve never seen solid paryl, and I can’t make it. I don’t believe it can be done. There were some of us, hundreds of years ago, who worked for the Order of the Broken Eye. Assassins. I think they probably killed with poisons, but by claiming that they could kill invisibly and without leaving any trace, they got many more contracts. But then, when people did die, it got out of control. That’s why there aren’t any paryl drafters anymore, you fool girl. Not because it doesn’t work, but because everyone fears it might work better than it actually does. That’s why we’re still perilously close to being called heretics, why the libraries have been scrubbed of references to us, and why the present White has had to fight so hard to rein in the Office of Doctrine. She believes all light is Orholam’s gift, but there are the superstitious people in every age. They call it darklight, oralam — hidden light. They say it is a gift from the lord of darkness. A darkness that can only be driven away with fire. Do you understand? A darkness that can only be driven away with fire.”

“Burnings,” Teia said quietly.

Magister Martaens seemed abruptly calm. “I met her once, you know. The White. She apologized. Said that drafters treat paryl drafters like the benighted treat all drafters. Said she was working to overcome it, but that it would be a labor of several generations. A good woman. Don’t you dare overturn all her work with foolish rumors. We may never have such a friend in the Chromeria again. This is bigger than you and me. This is for generations yet to come. Your mistress has already asked me all sorts of questions and I’ve had to lie a thousand ways to convince her you were delusional. When next you meet her, you tell her that just before you came to see her, you saw the paryl again. Describe it as a streak, but that there was no one there. That it originated from thin air. Be confused, and if she asks, tell her you haven’t asked me about this yet, but you will. That you never said anything to me about the dead woman. I’ve told her that paryl drafters tend to see streaks at times, that it’s a side effect of our drafting. You’re to make her believe that what you saw was a coincidence. Because if you don’t, our kind will be purged again.”

“Yes, Magister.”

“Then let’s get to work. I want to see how far away you can place a beacon, and how tight a beam you can use to see through clothing,” Magister Martaens said.

“Magister,” Teia said, “how does it work? I mean, how does it supposedly work? I’ll never speak of it again, I promise, but, please.”

The older woman sucked on her thin lips. She looked around again. “In the stories, if she had the knowledge and tremendous will, a drafter could sharpen paryl not only to a solid, but into a needle so fine a person wouldn’t feel it poke them. The drafter would then make a tiny stone inside their target’s blood and release it. Supposedly, that eventually causes apoplexy-a stroke, the chirurgeons call it now. But there’s no reason paryl should hurt anyone. I’ve cut myself and touched paryl to my blood; it isn’t poisonous.”

“But you’re describing exactly what happened!” Teia said. At the woman’s glower, she lowered her voice. “Sorry.”

“And I’m telling you that you must have read the same story I did and forgotten it. Hallucinations are not uncommon among exhausted drafters. We who work with light sometimes have our eyes do strange things.”

Teia couldn’t believe the woman’s willful blindness. She struggled to maintain a respectful tone. “Magister, does my mistress think it can be done? Does she believe you, or me? Does she want me to do that to someone?”

Magister Martaens looked like she’d swallowed vinegary wine. “I know two things about your mistress. She’s more interested in who she can take to her bed than she is in dusty old tomes in forbidden libraries she’d have to pay a fortune to gain access to. Dangerous knowledge is often hidden under ponderous grammar and obscurantist vocabulary. She hasn’t the patience to sift through mysteries. Everyone’s heard silly stories about dark drafters and night weavers. No one knows anymore that those stories are about us. Which is why it behooves us not to remind them. Which is why I’d like you to wear darkened spectacles whenever you draft paryl publicly, or to always draft quickly so that no one sees your eyes.”

“And the second thing?” Teia asked.

“There are those who can savor a silent victory. Your mistress is not one of them. She’s not looking for quiet ways to kill the Guiles. But when she figures out whether helping the Prism’s bastard or hurting him will hurt the Guiles more, you can expect to be used. No matter what it costs you, or her. She’s insane with hatred. So don’t get too close to that boy Kip. You’ll probably have to betray him.”