THE BLOOD MIRROR: CHAPTER ONE
Teia lowered the silk noose toward her damnation. Rope spooled out from careful fingers toward the anxious woman quietly working at the desk below. The target was perhaps thirty, wearing a slave's dress, her copper-colored hair pulled up in a simple ponytail. As Teia watched, the woman folded a piece of luxin-imbued flash paper that all her spies used. She paused and took a sip of an expensive whisky.

Don't look up! Please don't look up.

The woman was Prism Gavin Guile's room slave. She was the White's hidden spy mistress. She was Teia's former superior and her mentor. Marissia put down her whisky and as she sealed the note, she said, "Orholam, forgive me."

Teia was using the shimmercloak that Murder Sharp had given her, but clinging to the ironwork on the ceiling like this, it hung away from her body, and it didn't hide the dangling noose at all.

But Marissia didn't look up. She put the note aside, and pulled out another sheet of thin paper.

As her mentor leaned forward, Teia dexterously flipped the noose over Marissia's head and then dropped from the ceiling, holding the rope. Draped over a beam above, the noose jerked tight around Marissia's throat and hauled her to her feet. The sharp movement flung her chair backward just as Teia, holding the other end, swung down and forward. The falling chair cracked across Teia's shins a moment before she crashed into Marissia.

Somehow, Teia kept from releasing the rope, and she didn't cry out. Marissia was choking, grabbing at her neck, scrambling to get her feet under her.

Amazing how pain shuts down your thinking. If Teia hadn't just gotten her shins destroyed, there were a dozen things she would have done. Instead, she clung stupidly to the rope, gasping, tears springing from her eyes, face to face with her old superior.

As Marissia regained her feet, Teia saw the problem:  she wasn't as heavy as Marissia. Marissia noticed it too. Though gagging, she grabbed the rope above her head and pulled down with all of her strength.

Something shimmered in the corner of Teia's eye, and Murder Sharp became visible as he took quick steps across the carpet. He buried a fist in Marissia's stomach.

Marissia's strangled cough blew spit across Teia's face. The slave woman went slack. In quick motions, Sharp took the noose from Teia, threw a sack over Marissia's head, and bound Marissia's hands behind her back in such a way that any move she made to escape would tighten the noose around her neck.

Master Sharp was gifted with knots.

He forced Marissia to her knees and checked once more that she could breathe--all the fight had gone out of her.

"Not good," Master Sharp said, turning back to Teia. "Not very good at all." He was a lean man with sharp features, orangey-red hair, and a short beard the color of fire. His most remarkable features, though, were his teeth and his too-big, too-frequent smile, which he flashed now joylessly, by mere habit. Usually, the teeth he revealed with that smile were too-white and too-perfect. On most hunts, he wore dentures made of predators' teeth. But today, perhaps because his mission wasn't to kill anyone, he wore dentures of beaver teeth--a full disconcerting mouth of big, wide, flat incisors. They barely fit in his mouth.

 "But you kept her from destroying any of the papers," he continued, "So I'll accept it."

"You were here the whole time?" Teia asked. She set the chair back upright to give herself a moment of not looking at the monster who was now her master. She massaged her aching shins. Orholam have mercy, those beaver teeth made her skin crawl.

"This is too important for me to let you bungle it. She was some kind of secretary for the Prism. Who knows what she has access to?"

Secretary? So the Order didn't know what Marissia really was. Why then were they kidnapping her?

And why kidnapping? Teia had thought that the Order only killed people.

Not that they wouldn't murder Marissia after whatever they had planned here.

Handing Teia the noose, Murder Sharp strode to the window to look down at the islands. Even from where she was, Teia could see a thick curl of black smoke rising to greet the morning sun.

Earlier this morning, their trainer Tremblefist had blown the black powder stores beneath the cannon tower so Kip and the rest of the Mighty could escape by sea. He'd probably given his life doing it. The squad had gotten away while Teia had chosen to stay here. And now she was doing this. She was a fool.

 "We're lucky," Sharp said. "The few Blackguards who weren't already on the parade route have abandoned their posts to get down to that tower. Still, no time to waste. You watch her. Break her neck if she screams."

He shook his head at that last part. He'd said that for Marissia's benefit. He made a fist and mimed hitting her stomach. Knock the wind out of her if she screams, he meant.

Why he hadn't just gagged her? Teia didn't know, but she didn't ask. She'd learned not to push the mercurial assassin. Sometimes he had deeper plans. Sometimes he didn't think of the obvious. But he never liked being questioned. And there was no up side in Teia appearing too smart.

Sharp scooped all the papers off the table and into a sack. He opened drawers and grabbed every paper with writing on it, and thumbed through all the blank pages to make sure nothing was hidden from him.

Then he was off, searching the rest of the room.

Marissia gave two sharp, little tugs on the rope in Teia's hand.

"Shhh," Teia said.

Marissia waited a few seconds and tugged again. She wanted to say something.

What was Teia going to tell her? She hadn't known Marissia outside of their work, but she'd felt a kinship and deep respect for the woman. They had both been slaves. Both were spies, and Marissia had risen as high as any slave or spy could.

Marissia had once told Teia that the Order would make her do something terrible. "Let it be on my head--but do it," she'd said.

But there was no way she could have guessed that the something terrible would be her own kidnapping and likely murder.

Another tug. Master Sharp had ducked into the slave's closet off the main room, out of sight and earshot. "He's gone. Only for a moment," Teia whispered.

"Third drawer, left side," Marissia whispered. "Halfway back, straight up. Push hard. Quick!"

Master Sharp had left the drawer open, so Teia only had to take one step and stoop. The surface felt flat, but as Teia pushed hard on the surface, she felt something snap with a slight chalky scent of broken blue luxin, and a tiny section of the wood sank in. A folded piece of parchment dropped into her hand.

Teia stepped back into place, stashing the parchment in a pocket. "Got it," she whispered.

"Tug when you need me--"

Master Sharp stepped back in. "What's she saying?"

"Um? What?" Teia said. For one terrifying moment, her mind went blank. "Oh, she's trying to bribe me." Teia said it like she was bored.

Staring at her hard, Master Sharp ran a freakishly long pink tongue over those horrid wide teeth. "I took a bribe..." He smacked his lips. "Once. Had no plan to let the man go of course, and killed him as soon as I got the coin." Sharp tucked a package of documents tied with red or green ribbon into his sack. Teia was colorblind, so she could only tell it was one or the other. "No harm, right? The Old Man... disagreed. Emphatically."

He smiled, too broadly. Something about those teeth twisted Teia's stomach more than when he'd worn a full set of wolves' fangs.

"How much did she offer?" he asked.

Teia froze. There was a hook in that question. Marissia the Prism's room slave might have squirreled away a small fortune. Marissia the spy would have saved a lot more, and with her life on the line, would she not offer a large bribe? But maybe not too large, a spy mistress would be smart enough to start small--

Too long, T, don't take too long!

Teia said, "She hadn't mentioned any figures. And I wasn't listening, anyway. I'm not in this for coin." Change the subject, change the subject.

"Why are you, then?" Master Sharp asked.

"Are we really going to have this conversation in front of her?" Teia asked. "Now? You said we needed to--"

"We don't need to worry about her." His voice lowered dangerously, "And don't question me."

Orholam have mercy. That cemented it. Whoever they were giving Marissia to was going to kill her. "I'm here for revenge."

"Revenge? On who?"

Teia cocked her head as if it were an odd question. "On all of 'em."

He grinned, this time for real. "You'll get plenty of that. And you'll come to the Crimson Path eventually." The true friendliness should have made him less scary, but any comfort she might have felt was ground to paste between those inhumanly wide teeth.

He walked over to Marissia, still on her knees. "How much would you give us?"

Tremulously, she said, "As much as you want, I swear. I can get access to the Prism's account if we act fast. Please, sir, please." She broke off as if terrified. It twisted Teia's guts because she couldn't tell which was true: Marissia's earlier bravery or her current terror. Maybe both.

"I've changed my mind," Master Sharp said. "If she yells, kill her." Had he forgotten he'd already threatened that?

Or did he actually mean it this time?

Marissia collapsed, sobbing quietly.

Master Sharp nodded to Teia. "I need to check the White's room and make a distraction. Be ready to go quick. If I'm not back in five, untie her, throw her off the balcony as if she suicided, and make your way out the same way we got in." He threw his hood over his head and pulled the laces through the grommets quickly, cinching the mask tight over his nose and mouth, leaving only his eyes clear, and those shadowed under the hood. He turned and began shimmering.

On the back of his gray cloak, the image of a tufted gray owl appeared with its wings spread and talons extended to strike. The image shimmered out of phase with the rest of the cloak, and disappeared last.

The door opened, showing a hallway marked with smoke and pools of blood and scratches and divots in the stone walls from arrows and bullets from the Mighty's battle with the Lightguards earlier. That felt like a lifetime ago. Then the door shut quietly.

Teia instantly shot a wave of paryl gas in an arc where Murder Sharp had been standing to make sure he was really gone. He was.

"Quickly," Teia said, "What do you want me to do?"

Marissia got up on her knees. Her voice was breathy with controlled fear. "Did he take the papers from my desk? Package. All tied together in red ribbon."

"Yes."

Teia could hear the heavy sigh expelled into the hood over Marissia's head. The spy mistress said, "Teia, you have to get those papers. I was to deliver them to Karris."

"What are they?"

"They're the White's instructions for her successor. They have everything Karris needs to know how to rule. Secrets. Plans. There are things in there Karris can't learn any other way."

Oh, hell no. How was Teia to steal papers from Murder Sharp? "We weren't sent for the papers, Marissia. We were sent for you. I think Sharp's just grabbing whatever is lying about."

Marissia sagged. "Any other day. Any other hour, and all those papers would be locked away safe... No matter. No time." She bent for a moment. "He'll take it all to the Old Man's office anyway. That parchment you grabbed from my desk. It's a code. Crack it. It's the combination or key word to the Old Man of the Desert's office. Teia, that office is here, in the Chromeria. Maybe in this very tower. That means he--or she, we don't even know for sure that the Old Man of the Desert is a man--is here. But if you open the office without using the code, it'll wash the room in fire. Everything in it will be destroyed. You can't let that happen. Not least because the White's papers will be destroyed too."

"I'll find it, I swear. But what--" Teia cut off at the sound of steps outside the room. She tapped Marissia's shoulder to tell her to be silent, and drafted, disappearing with her own borrowed shimmercloak.

But whoever it was walked past, and Teia heard the banging of the door to the roof. She and the squad had had quite the fight up there, only hours ago, but only a single Blackguard was standing watch now. Master Sharp said the commanders of the Blackguard would isolate the area until they could examine it to try to figure out what had happened.

"What about you?" Teia asked. "How do we save you?"

A pause. Teia wished she could see Marissia's face, but the bag stayed perfectly still, giving no hint of her fear or her bravery or her hatred or her desperation.

"We don't," Marissia said quietly.

"You've seen Sharp's face. They're going to kill you."

Marissia's head bowed. "Just... pray for me," she said, and there was her fear again.

"At least let me give you a knife."

"And what happens to you when this assassin finds your knife on me?" Marissia asked.

Before Teia could protest further, the door opened and closed. Master Sharp was speaking before he was even fully visible. "Give me that cloak."

"My shimmercloak?" Teia asked.

"It's not yours. It's the Order's, and don't forget it."

"I'm the one who stole it! I risked everything to--"

"Now!"

Teia unclasped the choker and handed Master Sharp the burnt-hemmed shimmercloak. He lowered his own hood, threw Teia's cloak on over his own cloak, attaching the choker awkwardly. He pulled his hood back up, but couldn't lace it properly. He swore.

"What are you doing?" Teia asked.

He swore again, and said to Marissia. "You do other than what I say, and you die now, and not easy. Understand?"

Her head bobbed, the sack trembling as she wept. He slashed the rope between her neck and her wrists, and slung her over his shoulder. "Teia, help me with the cloak."

Teia spread out the second, bunched cloaked over Marissia's body. Given that Marissia was slung over his shoulder, it covered her fully, if awkwardly.

"I have to sneak out without a cloak?" Teia asked.

"You go out the way we came in. Outside. Collect the climbing crescents as you go. Be quick. You won't have long before people start looking up here." He poked Marissia. "You, when I tell you, you scream that there's a fire in the White's quarters. Because there is."

Oh, that was why he hadn't gagged Marissia. The Blackguards would recognize her voice.

Still holding Marissia over his shoulder, Master Sharp stooped to pick up the bag full of papers he'd stolen.

"You want me to take the bag?" Teia asked.

He almost handed it to her, then paused. Anxiety hammered great blows against her mask of nonchalance. He said, "Better not. Get climbing."

"I could bring it to--"

"Now," he said, and there was quiet menace in his voice. Without waiting, he turned his back, and far more slowly than usual, the cloaks began shimmering, the fox emblem on Teia's burnt cloak showing dark gray against the gray and then fading.

The door opened, and Teia smelled smoke.

"Fire! Fire in the White's quarters!" Marissia shouted. "Fire!"

And then the door closed behind them.

The obvious course was to hurry up and climb down the wall. Once the smoke started billowing out of the White's windows, eyes would turn toward the Prism's Tower. Teia couldn't be clinging to the walls in full view when that happened.

But Teia had a card to play that Master Sharp didn't know.

She had her own cloak, the master cloak. She pulled it out of her pack, the material thin and weightless as liquid light. She put it on. Drew the choker around her neck. Pulled up the hood, snapped it closed over her face. She could follow Sharp unseen.

But after extinguishing the fire, the Blackguards would search the tower exhaustively. If Teia followed Sharp, the Blackguards would find the climbing crescents stuck to the outside of the tower. The Order had spies in the Blackguard, so they would learn of it, and they would know Teia had disobeyed.

It wouldn't be proof that Teia was a spy, but the Order didn't need proof. They would kill her.

But if she didn't follow Sharp, they would kill Marissia.

Marissia had ordered Teia to let her die. The old Teia, the slave Teia, would have accepted that order and shrugged off responsibility for what happened next. Teia wasn't that Teia anymore.

This was war, and Teia was behind enemy lines, alone. She had to make her own decisions and live with the consequences. Like a warrior. Like an adult. Like a free woman.

In the unholy calculus of war, Teia was somehow suddenly worth more than a woman older, wiser, smarter, and better connected than she was. Teia was starting to suspect that the Order was a greater threat to the Chromeria than even the Color Prince. Saving Marissia--even if Teia could figure out how--would jeopardize the Chromeria's best chance ever to destroy the Order. And only Teia knew now about the Old Man's office. Only she had the code.

It's war, T. Friends die.

Jaw clenched, heart leaden, Teia went out onto the balcony, closed the door behind her, and stepped onto the climbing crescents. She descended, taking away the evidence of Marissia's murder with each step.

It's war, T. The innocent die. And their friends get vengeance. Later.

THE BLOOD MIRROR: CHAPTER TWO
"Oh, my lord, what have they done to you?"

Gavin knew that voice. He opened his eye, tried to turn, but he was bound to a table, arms extended, nothing beneath them, as if on a raft over an ocean that was no longer there. His tongue was thick and parched, and a bandage covered his left eye.

Marissia came hovering into view above him. She put her hand over her mouth in horror.

"Wa... water," Gavin rasped.

But the first thing she did was unbind his arms and legs. Marissia had been his room slave for more than a decade. She knew how he hated to be bound, how even the encumbrance of blankets twisted around his legs in bed made him panic and flail. Marissia, here? But where was here?

He remembered now. He must be at Amalu and Adini's, the chirurgeons on Big Jasper. He must have been panicking, delirious. It had all been nightmares. Marissia was here. Everything was going to be fine.

Karris had pulled him out of the hippodrome where they'd put out his eye, and he must have come down with a fever. He'd only dreamed he was in that blue hell he'd made for his brother. He'd only dreamed that his father knew everything. Fever dreams. Impossible dreams.

Oh, thank Orholam.

Marissia put a wet cloth in his mouth, and he sucked weakly. She wet it again and repeated the process, until he motioned that he'd had enough. She wiped the crusted spit from the corners of his mouth.

Only then did he try to speak. "Marissia, where's Karris?"

"Your lady wife is safe, my lord. She's been made the White." It was oddly formal for Marissia, but Gavin hadn't yet sorted out the blurred boundaries between his room slave and his new wife. Doubtless Marissia was upset that he had married, and who knew how Karris had been treating her? With Gavin's absence, he was lucky Marissia was even still employed in his household. A more jealous wife would have sold off the room slave who'd been so close to her husband.

But Gavin didn't have time to worry about a slave's feelings with all the problems facing him.

"The White?" he asked. "You didn't just say..."

"Orea Pullawr has passed into the light, my lord. My lady Karris Guile has ascended to serve as the new White."

"I thought that old crone was going to live forever," Gavin said. But he felt an intense surge of pride at his wife's accomplishment. The White!

In retrospect, though, maybe Orea had been preparing Karris for that all along.

Orholam's balls, the other families were going to lose their minds. Andross Guile as Promachos, Karris Guile as the White, and Gavin Guile as the Prism?

Well, that brought up a host of other problems. But Gavin was back, and with Karris beside him, there were few things he-- " Marissia, is there something odd about the sound in here?"

"My lord." There was a dread monotone to her voice.

With difficulty, Gavin sat up. His bed was the kind of palanquin on which nobles were carried when injured, with drapes on all sides for privacy, but small and light so that slaves could navigate corners and narrow streets.

A wall was not far behind Marissia. It curved.

"Oh, Marissia, no."

That gray wall curved like a teardrop or a squashed ball. Gavin tore back the palanquin's other curtains. Everywhere, the one curving wall, sparkling quietly with inner light. Gavin couldn't see the blue of it, but he could see all he needed to know from that winking crystalline luxin. He was in the blue hell. His gaoler had somehow brought Marissia here to care for Gavin's wounds. To keep him alive. For punishment.

"How are you here?" he asked.

"I was kidnapped. By Order assassins who were contracted by your father."

"What!"

"My lord, I have secrets I would tell you. I don't know how long I have."

"You expect them to kill you." He could see it in the tight calm of her face, like an improperly tanned hide stretched too far over a drum.

"I was allowed to see my kidnappers' faces. And High Lord Guile's. Your father brought me here himself. Alone."

Gavin's arm shook from the mere effort of holding himself seated. He fell back on the palanquin. "Of course he did," he said. "He couldn't let anyone know about this place. But someone had to care for me. And he guessed that you would know about these cells after so many years with me, so he accomplished numerous tasks at once. That's my father. May Orholam damn him."

It was very much Andross Guile to discard the slave after she'd served her purpose, too.

He wouldn't even guess that Gavin would be put out by it. To Andross, he wasn't murdering Gavin's lover; he was destroying a piece of Gavin's property. Gavin could always buy another room slave, one prettier and younger, even. This one had to be more than thirty years old, after all.

"Marissia, I'm--"

He could see on her face that she knew it too. "I don't know how much time we have, my lord. Please don't. My courage is leaking away by the moment. Please treat me like a scout or a captain in your armies, so I can think of myself as a warrior, because I can't bear..." Her throat clenched as she lost her words to fear, the thief.

Gavin hesitated, and then gathered himself. "Water. The cup this time." He didn't try to sit up. With a trembling hand, she gave him water. He took it, clumsily, with his left hand missing the third and fourth fingers.

"Report," he said when he was done, and though he lay on his back, his voice was all command.

"What I have to say is quite sensitive, my lord. What do we do about eavesdroppers?"

He thought about it. "If my father brought you here, it means he isn't trusting even his closest spies to know about this place. So he would have to be eavesdropping himself. He knows I may sleep for another few days, so I doubt he'd gamble his time that way. Just sitting here, waiting for me to wake, doing nothing else while he doubtless needs to do much? No. Speaking is a risk, but it's a risk I'll take."

She took a deep breath, bracing herself. She looked away from his eye. "I am--that is, I was Orea Pullawr's spy mistress."

Gavin felt like he'd been punched in the gut.

"At first, I just met with a few of her contacts, but I did well. She kept expanding my role until, in the last few years when she was losing mobility, I took over everything."

Gavin couldn't look at her. He stared straight up. Furious, he tore off the palanquin's roof. Marissia fell silent.

The action left him exhausted, aware again of how sick he'd been. He could only stare up--up the anus of the blue hell, from which bread was shat down to the poor souls within. He would be eating Andross Guile's shit for as long as he chose to live. "And how exactly did that fit with our arrangement, Marissia?"

"I did my best to make it fit, my lord."

He half laughed. "You did your best?"

"I never betrayed you."

"What did she have over you? I was here! You're mine!" he spat. "What could she threaten you with that I could not protect you from? I'm nothing now, but I was... I was indomitable. Do you not remember what I did for you? Do you not remember the Seaborns?"

"I remember, my l--"

"People think I killed that young asshole in a rage as a wild overreaction because he'd damaged my property. I did it so no one would ever harass you again. I killed a man and ended up having to kill his entire family--for you. For a slave. And for that--for that!--I get no loyalty? From you who shared my chambers and my bed. From you, whom I trusted more than I trusted even my own mother."

"My lord..." She was weakening, losing whatever courage she'd gathered to tell him this.

"What did you tell the White?" he asked, voice dangerous.

"I told her nothing that we hadn't agreed on. I swear. I swear."

Marissia had been the White's gift to Gavin. A young, pretty, smart virgin to be his room slave, untainted by the politics of Big Jasper or loyalties to any other family, she'd been shipped directly from the Floating City. She was a rich gift indeed, and an unusual one. She had a passing resemblance--more pronounced in those early years--to Karris. The White had obviously thought Gavin had a type.

As a young, single Prism, he could have easily had many room slaves. Wealthy subjects were always giving gifts, looking for favor, and looking to place spies near him.

A procession of room slaves wouldn't have been problem if not for one thing.

The food chute to his brother's prison was in his own room. Regardless of whether a room slave's duties were purely sexual or as more of a chief slave, as Marissia had been, a room slave was in one's room constantly. So rather than trust that a hundred searching eyes would all miss one hidden secret, Gavin had decided to turn one enemy to his own side. He'd been certain that the young Marissia had been ordered by the White to spy on him. But who was the White to command more loyalty than Gavin in his proud prime?

The White had asked him to kindly give the girl a few weeks to adjust to her life. It would be bewildering for a young slave from the reaches of the Seven Satrapies to adjust to life here, she said. Give her time.

With his mother's guidance, Gavin had gone further than that. He had plotted how to take full possession of his newest acquisition as a general might plot a military campaign. He had seduced her as if she were a princess. It was not a hard labor, and not entirely a deceitful one, either. He'd been immediately attracted to Marissia's obvious intelligence, beauty, and--no less important to the young arrogant man he'd been--her desire to please.

In that first year when Karris had left and he'd been so heartbroken and believed he would never see her again, Gavin had even thought that he was in love with Marissia.

As if one could love a slave the way one loves a woman.

Such a thing was the kind of scandal of which there were songs and stories. An entire sequence of comedies was devoted to the dullard Old Giles, the henpecked lord who left his wife for his slave, left all his lands and titles to marry her, and had adventures as he cluelessly attempted the very basic labors of farmers, or millers, or thatchers, or bakers, always failing and always then having to try another occupation in the next story. Usually in another city. Usually because his lady wife had shown up at his place of business.

Other tales of masters and slaves in love were darker and not sung much in front of lords or ladies. Those were tales of the too-pretty room slave whose jealous mistress sold her off to the silver mines, or the brothels, or murdered her outright. Like every good gift, beauty was a blessing for the rich, but sometimes a curse for the poor.

The frisson of danger for a lord, who might be mocked by his friends for being an Old Giles, didn't compare to what a room slave had to feel, fearing on the one hand to please her master too little, and fearing on the other hand to be seen pleasing him too much.

Gavin had decided many times that instead of love-love, he loved Marissia as a master loves a favored hound. You could love a hound. A hound could love you. But loving a hound as one loves a woman? Disgusting. Unnatural. Perverse.

Whatever his few qualms, he had won over Marissia's heart along with his ownership of her body, and eventually, when he was sure she cared for him more than anything in the world, he'd confronted her with evidence of her spying for the White, as if he felt betrayed by what he knew had been the point all along.

It had, of course, been unfair. Really, how could Marissia have said no to the White herself--her owner--when she hadn't yet even met Gavin? But his scheme had worked. After shaming and terrifying her, Gavin had made his accommodation: Marissia would continue to spy for the White, but she would ask Gavin what she could share first. There would be certain secrets the White could never know.

And then, by degrees, Gavin had let her learn secrets and false secrets, always watching the White to see what she knew, always testing Marissia's faithfulness. And faithful she had been, until Gavin had even trusted her with the bread. He hadn't told her it was for his brother below, but she'd understood it was some awful secret, and that Orea had never learned of it.

And now the White, Orea Pullawr, was dead, and she hadn't used whatever Marissia had told her to destroy him. So what kind of betrayal was this?

"Marissia," Gavin said. "Why would you do this? What loyalty did you owe her?"

Marissia straightened her back, and looked him in the eye. "My name is Marissia Pullawr. The White was my grandmother. You were my assignment. I was never a slave."