The Burning White

by Brent Weeks

  “Could do worse,” Ben-hadad said.

  “That’s a rousing endorsement! I’ve got one cheek on the throne already!” Kip said.

  “Room’s clear,” Cruxer announced suddenly. “One minute while our people put the luxin seals in place, then we can speak freely.”

  “Finally,” Ben-hadad said. “I’m so glad Winsen will no longer have to hold back how he really feels.”

  “We’re not so good at this being-devious thing, are we?” Big Leo asked.

  He hadn’t meant it as a shot at Kip, but Kip couldn’t help but think it reflected most on him. He should have discovered if there were spies, and whose. He should’ve figured out exactly what lies to funnel to that person to make them do what he wanted.

  Andross Guile would have.

  Cruxer said, “Súil, thank you. Excellent work. You’re getting faster, aren’t you?”

  She beamed through a sheen of sweat.

  Cruxer was good at that, looking out for people. It was one of the reasons Kip loved him.

  They all broke to get their packs and papers. Everyone in the room had responsibilities and reports to deliver.

  As Tisis quickly donned nondescript clothing, then ducked out, Kip looked at his own papers for the strategy session, but he had no heart to go over them again. “You called me ‘Kip’?” he asked Cruxer quietly.

  “Mmm.”

  “That wasn’t an accident or a pretense for the spies, was it?”

  Cruxer looked for a moment like he wanted to deny it, but a lie wouldn’t escape the cage of his teeth. “Our Breaker was a Blackguard scrub. Sure, he’d break some rules, break expectations, a bully’s arm, a chair”—he flashed a grin at that memory—“but I don’t think that boy would break the empire. I guess it slipped out. I guess I’ve been wondering if maybe you’re more their Lord Guile than our Breaker. Maybe it was an ill omen, that name.”

  “You gave it to me,” Kip said.

  “I hadn’t forgotten,” Cruxer said. “Lot of things about that year that I regret.”

  “Ah, come on! ‘King Breaker,’” Winsen said. They hadn’t realized he was still close. “How can you not love that? Say… Bennie?”

  “‘Bennie’?” Ben-hadad asked.

  Winsen said, “Yeah. You think a man destined to kill kings might be called a king-breaker, Bennie?”

  Ben-hadad looked at him flatly. He tested the heft of the cane he still used half the time.

  “You know… Breaker would be King Breaker, the… king-breaker?” Winsen asked. “Because the White King is, you know, a king…”

  “You’re only coming to this now?” Ben-hadad asked. “Ferkudi asked about that a year ago.”

  Coming up to stand beside Ben-hadad, Big Leo rumbled, “Looks like maybe your earlier question’s a little more complicated than you thought.”

  “Question?” Winsen asked. “Which question?”

  “‘Who’s the village idiot of the Mighty?’” Ben-hadad and Big Leo said at the same time. They raised their eyebrows in unison at Winsen.

  Big Leo put out a massive paw for a fist salute. Ben-hadad met it without having to look.

  Winsen answered with a finger salute for each of them.

  “Enough grab-ass,” Cruxer said, the phrase and even the intonation borrowed from old Commander Ironfist. “Everyone to the table.”

  Somehow, Tisis had set up and activated the war map with all the most current updates already. She briefly kissed Kip’s cheek—they were trying to be less irritating with their affections around the Mighty—and left. Moments later, Kip’s drafters sealed the doors.

  Everyone began examining the big map. Kip had been doing a little trick Súil had taught him, using a small amount of paryl, which was highly sensitive to other colors, to make a form of a small portion of the three-dimensional map, then quickly filling in the colors with other luxins to make a fragile copy of Green Haven and its surroundings. He turned it around and tilted it to get a sense of how the changes in elevation might affect sight lines, and the flow of horses and men in a battle.

  But he was really just stalling.

  Cruxer turned to him. “Over to you, milord. How bad is our situation?”

  Kip squeezed his outspread fingers, and the luxin city in his hands snapped and fell into multicolored dust. “Asking it that way really implies that things are bad. And they’re not.”

  “Oh, thank Orholam,” Ben-hadad said, “because with what we heard last night, and then when Tisis first came in this morning, her expression—”

  “They’re appalling,” Kip said. “Awful, bleak, dire…”

  “But surely not—” Ferkudi said.

  “Hopeless?” Kip asked.

  They all fell silent.

  Then Ben-hadad asked, “Was that a question, or an answer?”

  “Yes,” Kip said. “Green Haven is under siege, and they’re led by incompetents and fools. If the capital falls, the satrapy falls. We’re the only ones who can possibly save them. But the Council of the Divines isn’t willing to give us the support they promised they would if we saved this city. Worse, they may not even have it. They also won’t give us access to the palace’s Great Mirror array, which probably won’t even help us much even if I win another pointless fight over it. Our most popular and capable general, Conn Arthur, has snapped and deserted. Sibéal Siofra has disappeared, too. Maybe she went after him, but she’s not only his best friend, she also held my one long-shot hope of getting the pygmies to join us in the war. Let’s see, what’s next? The big one? Sure! In trying to gain the initiative, I’ve blundered horribly instead. Immediately after the battle, when I sent nearly all the Nightbringers’ will-casters and their animal partners on ahead of us to attack the White King’s supply lines to disrupt their siege? Tisis has just discovered that the White King did the same to us first, weeks if not months ago. He’s blocked the Great River behind us. We don’t know where. We can’t get any intel or reinforcements from the rest of the Seven Satrapies. And now, after I’ve sent away our most powerful forces, it appears one of the bandit kings—a lovely fellow named Daragh the Coward—has gained sudden wealth and a huge number of recruits and may lay siege to us here within days. I suspect he’s been bought by the White King. So you tell me: is ‘hopeless’ a question, or the answer?”

  Some of this was news even since last night, and they all took a moment to absorb it.

  What would you do here, father?

  Kip suddenly stood, because the first step at least was obvious.

  Maybe it was time to see if he was the son of Gavin Guile after all. He looked over at Cruxer, and his commander’s throat bobbed as he saw what Kip intended.

  Kip flashed him a grin.

  And maybe it was the grin that did it, the intimation of confidence, for instead of raising an objection, Cruxer nodded. He was in with Kip, categorically.

  Kip strode to the windows, head high, threw back the drapes, and waved to the damned crowd, smiling broadly.

  They cheered. Of course they did.

  Chapter 8

  Teia thought there were two kinds of women most aware of how many people at a party are staring at them: a pretty one who opts for much more daring clothing than usual, and a hideous one who’s dressed the same way and only becomes aware of her mistake as her carriage pulls away, leaving her stranded. She’d never really been the former, but right now she felt a hell of a lot like the latter.

  Please don’t look my way. Please don’t look my way.

  She moved through the Chromeria with her heart in her throat. If the wrong eyes spotted her, she wouldn’t face scorn. She’d face death, and consign her father to it as well.

  A couple hours ago, she’d felt like some kind of avenging nocturnal angel: I’ll be a ghost, haunting their dreams!

  That would make them nightmares, she supposed.

  I’ll haunt their nightmares!… But do you haunt nightmares? Why not a nice empty house? Maybe in the countryside. With cheese, maybe. And wine.

&nbs
p; I am not good at this being-scary business.

  As she ascended the Prism’s Tower invisibly, she felt less like a phantom and more like a mouse in the stables. No one noticed her, but if they did, it was far more likely to be disastrous for her than for them. And that was just on the slaves’ stairs.

  An invisible assassin breaking into the White’s quarters was, after all, exactly the kind of thing that the Blackguard had been formed to stop. She’d done it before, but she’d also rushed across a busy street without looking and lived—that didn’t make it a good idea to do it repeatedly.

  In the first hours after leaving Gavin Guile alive, Teia had retrieved a few of her things from the barracks—again dodging invisibly around her compatriots and friends. Because any of them might be working for the Order of the Broken Eye, she had to appear to have simply vanished. The Old Man of the Desert would check, after all.

  Whoever he or she was, they had certainly not survived this long—like a tapeworm in the guts of the Chromeria itself—without being fanatically careful.

  She’d had to take a few hours to plot, and to rest.

  The truth was, even after training for the last year with the master cloak, the longest Teia could comfortably stay invisible was still only a couple hours.

  Now, with night full upon the Jaspers and the shift change about to begin, it was time to sneak into Karris’s room and tell her that her husband, Gavin, was alive. Further, he’d been here in the Chromeria itself, mere hours ago.

  And Teia hadn’t saved him. Oh, and she hadn’t reported earlier, when there might have been a good chance at rescue.

  It was not a report Teia relished giving.

  She made it into the room on the heels of Watch Captain Blunt and Kerea—neither of whom was a sub-red, thank Orholam. They checked the room’s balcony, the slaves’ closet, and the windows, even though, as Teia saw immediately, Karris wasn’t asleep, nor alone.

  The young White was in her bed, lying on her back, resting. Blackguard Trainer Samite stood at the foot of her bed, at ease. Her face was stone, and she didn’t move, even when Watch Captain Blunt hesitated at the door, his scheduled sweep of the room completed. He motioned to his younger partner to leave.

  After she stepped out, wordlessly, he snapped a salute to Samite, and left.

  Samite didn’t return the salute; she barely dipped her chin.

  She wasn’t usually rude. If anything, oddly, losing her hand had made her less of a hard-ass than before.

  Teia had taken advantage of the Blackguards’ noise in moving about the room to position herself in a dark corner behind Samite’s back—the woman was facing the window and the door, where threats were likely to appear. They’d also dull her night vision.

  Pretty quickly, Teia realized that Samite intended to stand guard all night. Not good.

  Why? What the hell was going on?

  Long minutes passed, and none of them moved. Teia was going to have to think of something to get rid of Samite, or she was going to be here all night.

  And it’s harder to be totally silent for an entire night than one might guess. Teia relaxed her hold on paryl. She didn’t have the strength to stay fully invisible all night, but with the darkness and Samite staring the other way, she shouldn’t have to.

  “You can go,” Karris said from the bed. Finally.

  Please obey, Trainer Samite. Please?

  But Samite merely squared her shoulders. Though not tall, she was built like a draft horse.

  After a long minute, Samite said, “Being this kind of hard? Not good. This kind of hard is brittle. You should weep for him.”

  For him? Huh? For Gavin? That had to be it. But why was this happening now? So far as Karris knew, Gavin had been absent for nearly a year.

  “You’re not weeping,” Karris said. There was nothing of tears in her voice, either.

  Ah, so not Gavin, then? Who would they both weep for?

  “I’m on duty,” Samite said. “This is your break from duty. These hours are when you need to regroup so you can put on your face tomorrow.”

  Karris scoffed.

  “The dumbest scrub learns that if you don’t take off your blacks and give ’em a wash, you’re gonna stink, and you’ll wear through ’em in no time. That applies to your clothes, too, O Iron White.”

  Teia had never heard someone speak so scornfully to Karris, not even when she’d just been Karris White Oak.

  “Do I need to order you to go?” Karris asked coldly.

  “Not the kind of order I’m required to obey,” Samite said. She turned her back and folded her arms.

  “What, you think I’m a danger to myself? I’m not going to kill myself.” The condescension was thick in Karris’s voice. Teia had never heard her talk that way to anyone, either.

  Then she remembered these two had been in the same cohort. They’d known each other for nearly twenty years, and been through everything together.

  You can be a bitch to a heart-friend, when you really have to.

  But Samite merely applied the servant’s veto—she pretended not to hear: what I have just heard is a fool’s order; my mistress is no fool; ergo my mistress obviously didn’t give it.

  Karris sank back into her covers. Speaking to the ceiling, she asked, “Have you ever done it?”

  “It’s not such a horrible thing,” Samite said. “Dying for something you believe in. For someone you believe in. And he did. More than anything.”

  “Have you ever done it? Personally?”

  “You know I haven’t,” Samite said a few moments later, back still turned.

  What the hell? They were talking about a Freeing. Someone must have broken the halo recently. One of the Blackguards?

  Teia’s chest went tight. No.

  A scroll of the names of every Blackguard Teia knew started unfurling before her mind’s eye. Who was close to bursting their halo? She felt a sting of guilt at the realization that losing some of her comrades wouldn’t bother her at all.

  “You want to know a secret?” Karris asked. Her voice was bitter as the black kopi she loved. She sat up. “A secret I barely even dare whisper even here? Here, in my own rooms, to you, my oldest fri…” She trailed off.

  “What?” Samite asked. Teia drafted the paryl she’d been holding loosely and disappeared before Samite turned around.

  The one-handed warrior’s face was forgiving toward this woman who’d been such a bitch moments ago.

  But Karris didn’t give the answer. Instead, she looked suddenly ill.

  “Oh my God,” Karris said. “This is why Prisms go mad. This is why Gavin was always so wretched at Freeings.”

  “What are you talking about?” Samite asked, tense.

  “I knew it was hard, Sami. I thought I knew. But… it’s not hard.”

  Samite’s face was writ with the same confusion Teia felt. Killing their own wasn’t hard? Karris had killed before; surely she knew that the physical act wasn’t so difficult most of the time, so she meant something else.

  “Oh God,” the White blasphemed, though perhaps such a desperate tone made uttering the holy title a prayer rather than a curse. “Oh God.” Her pale skin went death-white. Her fingers grabbed wads of the covers and she gulped convulsively to keep from vomiting.

  “What…?” Samite asked.

  “It’s not hard, Sami,” Karris said. “I killed that boy, and the veil lifted. This. What we’re doing. It’s not hard. Koios is right. What we’re doing is wrong. And if it’s wrong when Gav Greyling offers me his life willingly, how much worse is it when we drag women to the Prism’s knife as they scream and wail and beg us to think of their children?”

  Teia felt as if a horse had kicked her. Seeing the White herself lose faith?

  Oh, that was pretty bad.

  And admit that the Blood Robes were right?

  That was also bad.

  But that wasn’t the part that Teia’s mind couldn’t hold—like cupped, imploring hands as someone emptied a full pitcher of blood into the
m. She couldn’t hold the name.

  Gav Greyling. The young, roguish, cute idiot. The lout. He’d only just stopped his obnoxious fake flirting with her.

  That asshole. He was just now becoming the friend she needed so, so badly.

  He was…

  Karris had Freed him?

  Obviously he’d broken the halo. Probably out on one of the expeditions to find Gavin. And they’d brought him back, knowing what had to be done.

  Karris had knifed his heart. Personally.

  But after all the people Karris had had Teia kill… all the murders of innocent slaves and the kidnapping and murder of Marissia, all the shit she’d ordered Teia to do and to be party to, she, the White herself, was losing faith merely because she’d had to hold the knife? Once?

  Now she flinches?! How dare she.

  Sure, you’re only human. You’re allowed to have your doubts.

  But you can’t doubt this. You’re the White. Any doubts you had should have been dealt with years ago.

  If you doubt, why should anyone believe?

  Among the Blackguard, Gav’s was an honorable death. A combat death. It was counted as succumbing to your wounds from battle. A hero’s death. It was giving your all, and more. It was being willing to give not just your life but even more, your sanity. Most Blackguards, if they felt the halo break, tried to die on the field. Easier that way for everyone. Safer.

  But if you didn’t, what you asked in return for your sacrifice was that your friends would end you before you dishonored yourself by hurting those you loved. If possible, if you lived so long, you were accorded the honor of being Freed by your highest commanders, those you trusted with your body and your soul, the head of the Blackguard, or a High Luxiat, or the Prism himself. Nothing short of the dawn Sun Day ritual itself was too important to be interrupted for a Blackguard’s Freeing.

  The people who’d put you in the place where you needed to die in order to serve them would hold the knife.

  And all you asked for all your suffering and sacrifice was a steady hand on the knife and a steady look in the eye. You asked them to affirm the meaning not just of your death but of your whole life, of the oath of service you’d given and that you were upholding even after breaking the halo, when everything in you screamed to break troth. You asked them to have the basic decency to honor your sacrifice.