Chapter 15. Trial of Knives

The first knife didn’t aim for my heart.

It aimed for my mouth.

I saw it too late to be ordinary and just in time to be blessed—a gleam unhooking itself from the ceiling’s filigree, a bead of black-silver poison fattening on its edge like a held breath. The Weighing Hall, all marble gravity and sobered masks, had forgotten it was built with places for shadows to sit.

I didn’t stop speaking.

“In the south chapel,” I said, and drew.

Whispersteel sang as it cleared leather. I brought the blade up in a narrow arc and the knife kissed it, skidded, spun—and split the silver glyph at my feet with a sound like a frozen stream cracking. Poison spat and sizzled where it hit the sigil. The glyph dimmed, stung.

“Ward breach,” Jarun snapped, already moving. He was a blade sheathed in oaths until the first cut; then he was just a blade. Steel flashed in his hand where no steel should have been—contraband in a holy room. The Waning Mask didn’t reprimand him. She