The Burning White

by Brent Weeks

  “To save her life, Pa had to cut the hand off and burn the stump dry and sizzly, while she cursed him and screamed and asked to die. I hope you never have to hear yer mama beggin’ ta die, Guile.”

  No, mine didn’t beg. She asked politely, and I killed her politely. Thanks for the reminder of that, asshole.

  “We thought she was gettin’ better, after that. Healin’. I was jus’ ’bout to ship out. Her ‘little man,’ she called me. Made her so proud, she said. Not that it should mean much coming from her, she said. Broken woman, Guile. It ain’t how it s’pos’d ta be. Well, one day she puts on her finest and wanders out to the bog. Lays down and spreads her arms out lick thet. Lick what you done earlier.

  “Someone saw her. Threw her a rope, but the whole area was too treach’rous to get close. She wouldnae take the rope, right at her hand. Help, that near. I s’pose she reckoned she’d take different kinder escape. Thatcher—that’s who threw the rope—ran to get help. But when we all come, she was gone. Sunk.”

  Gavin had entertained the notion at first that maybe Gunner was making sport of him, that he was going to reveal this was all a tale simply to wind him up and pass a few minutes of boredom at sea. Now he didn’t think so.

  Not at all.

  The bouncy, ceaselessly grinning and hollering and spitting pirate who, having been raised amid a cacophony of accents himself, veered wildly between all of them and none, who covered his habitual malapropisms and neologisms by purposely creating as many as possible so that he might become larger than life—that legend was suddenly simply a slender Ilytian man, hitting middle age earlier than he ought, his face drawn, eyes haunted by things forever lost.

  Gunner said, “I held this mammary like a puzzle box.”

  Mammary? Oh no. Memory. Don’t laugh, Gavin. For the sake of all that is holy, do not laugh right now when Gunner’s feeling this vulnerable.

  “Puzzle box?” Gavin said. He cleared his throat. He deliberately looked up at the burning white of a celestial eye as bleached of all color as his own eye was. The pain braced him.

  “Aye. The mam’ry. I squeeze it, palpate it, grab it with both hands, twist it round, pinch at it, trya sink my teeth in t’ it…”

  Don’t. Even. Grin.

  Gunner had to be putting him on. But Gavin looked at the man, and he gave no indication of levity.

  “And here’s thing,” Gunner said. “I kin understand it when a man throws back a few too many drinks on a lonesome night, gets sour inside, and sucks at the teat of a musket for jus’ long enough so that big ole ‘fuck you’ we scream at the world bounces back as ‘fuck me’ and he pulls the trigger. I kin understand when a girl climbs a tree and tries on a noose necklace for size and once she got it on thinkin’, ‘I come this far, why not?’ and takin’ that hop. Prob’ly e’ryone who looks oft a cliff thinks a taking the sharp drop with a sudden stop. E’ery sailor has thought of takin’ that swim what fattens sharks. We all got the black moment when the evil eye of the barrel dares a starin’ contest. And we’re all a hair trigger’s pull from the musket’s dare. It’s the devil’s gift, ain’t it? It’s the heritage o’ man, aye?”

  Gavin’s moment of humor had dried to a desert.

  Though surely some folk lived who’d never known what it was like to only just barely hold on to life by your bloody fingernails, Gavin certainly did.

  “Aye,” he said quietly.

  “But lyin’ in a bog? Lettin’ yourself sink slow? That requires real dedication.” He snorted suddenly. “Heh. What’s a real commitment to dying, Guile?”

  “Huh?”

  “Deadication. Eh? Eh?”

  But the flare of amusement faded faster than a flintlock’s flash. Gunner squatted down close to him and in a low and somber tone, he said, “Tell me, Guile, do you reckon, at the better end, as the bog muck closed slow o’er her face, as she sucked it in and coughed on that first lungful… you reckon she fought to live?”

  It was a question as dangerously loaded as the pistols at the quicksilver pirate’s hips.

  “I hope so,” Gavin said quietly.

  But it seemed Gunner wasn’t even listening. He stood and looked away.

  “Thatcher said afore he run to get help, Mama was muttering about Ceres, calling her goddess of crops, fertility, or some such… He said my mama was begging Ceres for sumpin’. Odd, what? Everyone knows Ceres is the bitch of the sea.” Gunner spat overboard.

  He went on. “Hungry goddess, either way, I s’pose. She who gives so much takes all she wants, too. As if it’s right. But I don’t think ennyun should go out like thet, stretched out like an offering afore god or goddess or man. I reckon I’d ruther go to the roar of the cannon.” He jumped up on the barrel of a huge cannon that dominated the forecastle. He obviously had feelings for it, as other men adore their horse or a sword. “Maybe double or triple load and let rip. If I can’t have it, no one can, eh?”

  “I… suppose,” Gavin said, frowning. It sounded like a damnable waste to him.

  “Just like magic for you, then, eh?” Gunner turned and watched Gavin’s expression sharply, while he still stood on the cannon, nearly over the water, arms not even extended for balance.

  “I… What?”

  “You can’t have it, no one can?” Gunner pressed.

  “Uh…”

  “That’s what you’re doing. Ain’t it? Killin’ magic. All of it. For everyone. I was there. I heard the old man. Be a different world without magic, sure as a sailor on shore leave is on the look for tipples and nipples.”

  By Orholam’s unseeing eye. Gunner was a sly old dog, wasn’t he?

  It was all a setup. Not the cruel kind Gavin suspected to make fun of him, but a vulnerable kind that was far more clever. ‘Look, I’ve opened up with you. Why don’t you open up with me?’

  But Gunner was no Andross Guile. Having committed to telling his story to get Gavin to open up in turn, Gunner had told his own tale fully and truly. Now, feeling overexposed, he’d barely remembered his initial purpose in telling Gavin at all.

  Gunner now only wanted to distract Gavin from the wound he’d unwittingly revealed.

  “Oh, I see,” Gavin said.

  “You hafta!”

  “Uh. Right. And I do.”

  “Half ta. Cuz you only got the one eye,” Gunner said. “Instead a two? Never mind. Not very bright sometimes, are ya, Guile? Go on.”

  There was something about being called stupid by an illiterate that rankled more than it ought to have, but Gavin held back. He said, “You want to know if I’m going to do… his bidding.” Curse you forever, Grinwoody.

  Gavin couldn’t say the name without risking that black jewel shooting through his brain. He didn’t even know if he could talk about his mission to kill Orholam—which Grinwoody thought was simply an impersonal nexus of magic. Grinwoody, at least, thought sticking the Blinding Knife into that nexus would kill all magic in the world.

  “I do,” Gunner said. “Seems ya change every time I lay my orisons on ya. Yer name, your face, number of eyeballs and fingers, sometimes your heart. But you were never a quitter, not even when I had you pull that oar. Never gave up. Till now.”

  Gunner’s point was something else entirely, but Gavin couldn’t get past how he’d put ‘when I had you pull that oar.’ Oh, yes, let’s do pretend my enslavement was nothing personal, you piece of human—

  Then again, maybe it hadn’t been.

  As Prism, Gavin’s own murders had fallen like rain on the heads of the just and the unjust alike.

  Shit. There goes my righteous fury. That was the trouble of a consistency in moral affairs: holding yourself up to the measure you judge others by is three clicks past irritating.

  So Gavin answered Gunner’s question, answered it without even thinking of what the pirate might want to hear: “I don’t know yet what I’m gonna do, but I reckon before the sucking sand closes over my face, you’ll find me fighting,” Gavin said.

  Still standing heedlessly on the cannon, Gunner
crossed his arms and stroked his raggedy black beard, eyeing him.

  “Funny thing, then,” Gunner said. “Fightin’ only makes you sink faster.”

  Chapter 14

  Ambassador Bram Red Leaf looked like a barrel of fat with little arms poking out. Like so many of the nobles of the Seven Satrapies, he didn’t much resemble the people he was supposed to represent. Here in fair Blood Forest, he was dark-skinned, with light eyes and curly hair, and a sheen of sweat on his forehead despite the coolness of the morning.

  Kip couldn’t help but hate him a little. The man was a vision of what Kip would’ve become if he’d never joined the Blackguard.

  He waved the man over to stand beside him while he examined his maps again. From all the refugees who’d come here before the siege, Tisis had gathered a wealth of new intelligence for Kip’s maps. In no small part, she was trying to see how she’d missed Koios’s getting around them to take the river with her scouts never hearing of it. Messengers were coming and going constantly, adding new points to the map even now, chatting in quiet voices. Currently, Tisis was working with four drafters and Sibéal Siofra to add points to the map. The pygmy woman wore a fresh demeanor and new clothes to go with it. There was a new self-respect that joined beautifully with her previous professionalism.

  “Hello, Ambassador,” Kip said. “Welcome to my humble council.” He didn’t say ‘court.’ Not yet.

  “A pleasure to be received so graciously. An excellent day to you, Luíseach.”

  The words stopped even Tisis, who met Kip’s gaze quickly.

  Maybe if they lived long enough to become an old married couple someday, they’d be able to have whole conversations with a glance. Right now, all they said was simply, ‘What?!’

  In a voice that sounded overly casual even to his own ears, Kip said, “I’ve not claimed that title. Why would you claim it for me?”

  The man patted his forehead with a handkerchief, but when he spoke, there was no reticence in his voice. “You’re busy saving this satrapy, so I’ll be as direct as people say you are: you let others claim you to be the Luíseach when it serves your purposes, and back off when it seems dangerous. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I don’t blame you. Problem with claiming a prophecy is that you have to fulfill all the conditions of it, though, huh?”

  “You’ve come to play games,” Kip said. He wondered if this conversation would have been different if they’d held it in the palace’s great hall. As it was, this parlor now held only a few hundred scrolls and tomes, gleaming wood in the natural-unnatural patterns the old joiners here had loved, and only those courtiers closest to him. The Mighty were all here, either on guard, or at the window, or sending or awaiting messages from their other duties—other than Big Leo, who was demonstrating his mastery of the soldier’s art of sleeping anywhere. The big man was sitting at the end of the map table, head back, even as his hands draped protectively over a brace of lamb shanks on a plate in front of him so the servants wouldn’t take them away while he dozed.

  A few other servants and palace slaves were bringing and taking letters and assisting Tisis with the great map, but it was nowhere near the crowd that would have attended an official audience, had Kip given one.

  Come to think of it, a year ago, Kip would have thought this was quite a crowd. He was growing accustomed to a life lived before others. It was changing him.

  “No games,” Ambassador Red Leaf said. “But we’ve work to do, and rapidly, you and me. I simply wanted to show you I’m not a fool.”

  “Many would consider showing your cards immediately to be foolish indeed,” Kip said. My grandfather, for one, the best player of them all.

  “Many would. But not you. You have shown yourself capable of wielding the truth like a scalpel, but you prefer to use it as a hammer. You like to shock people into silence by telling truths they can’t believe you’d actually say.”

  Kip said nothing. This man thought he was clever. Perhaps he was.

  Truth was, Kip was a little unnerved. He’d never been aware of being studied before.

  “Then let us be direct,” Kip said. “What do you want of me?”

  It had been Andross who told him to use the truth like a hammer. Andross, whom Kip could never equal, would have twisted this fat little man before him into knots, and had him thanking him for the pleasure.

  “Satrap Willow Bough wants your army.”

  “Oh, he does?” Kip asked, all doe-eyed innocence.

  “Don’t make me bare my throat for nothing, my lord. I’m trying to avoid wasting your time.”

  Kip nodded his head magnanimously, granting the point as a certain someone did when a stupid person made a surprisingly good point. He’d seen that damned nod enough. “What power do you have to negotiate?”

  “Total.”

  Kip paused for the second time in this brief conversation. He knew to let his arched brows and silence do all the work, but he said, “Meaning…?”

  “Total. Without you Green Haven will fall. We’ve sent a hundred messages begging the Chromeria’s help, Ruthgar’s help, the pirate kings’ help, anyone’s help—appealing to treaties, to honor, to greed. We’ve offered anything and everything. In return, we’ve gotten promises, but no one’s coming.” Ambassador Bram Red Leaf cleared his throat. “My good lord Briun Willow Bough is”—despite the few ears here to hear his words, he lowered his voice—“not the most… naturally gifted of leaders. But he is sincere. He doesn’t want his people to die. To save his satrapy, he would trade his very life, or if he must, his city.”

  “Interesting,” Kip said. “I hadn’t heard he was stupid.”

  Ambassador Red Leaf didn’t so much as blink. He didn’t play along like a sycophant would, nor did he rush to his master’s defense.

  So he was either disloyal or simply a man capable of holding his tongue.

  “Now,” Kip said, “now I’m impressed. Forgive the slander. I didn’t mean it.”

  “That… that was a test?” the man asked.

  Kip gave the nod again.

  “And like a cur, I didn’t defend him…” The fat man’s sweaty upper lip thinned. “Please, please don’t tell him.”

  Ah, but just because I say the test is over, that doesn’t mean it is.

  For one wild, inappropriate moment, Kip missed Andross Guile. With that man, Kip was always sprinting to catch up, was always the pupil at the master’s feet. Every victory against him was hard fought and only half a victory at best. What a man Andross Guile could have been. Where had he gone wrong?

  “What’s Green Haven’s situation?” Kip asked. It had, oddly, been harder to get solid intel on their allies than on their enemies.

  “We have a hundred and ten thousand soldiers, five thousand eight hundred twelve drafters. Of those, honestly, maybe two thousand will be of use in battle. Two hundred pygmies with tygre-wolf mounts from Conn Siofra.”

  “Conn Siofra?” Kip asked, shocked. He looked over at Sibéal. He probably shouldn’t have asked that out loud. Too late now. “Is that your father?”

  “Little brother,” she said. Kip thought he saw real joy in her pygmy smile. Then she said, “Usurper.”

  Well, shit. And now Kip looked ignorant of his own people in front of the ambassador. But it was beside the point. “Other troops?” Kip asked, irritated with himself.

  “Twelve hundred cavalry, and a militia led by the woodsmen of forty thousand.”

  “And how many of your nearly one hundred sixty thousand have been blooded?” Kip asked. “Ten thousand?”

  Bram’s brow wrinkled as if he were trying to figure out some way to pad the total, as Kip’s disgust had made it clear that that was a low number. “If one counts the militias?” the ambassador offered.

  Aha. So the commoners in the militias weren’t worth counting, despite that Kip’s army—the only army to have success against the Blood Robes—was composed of such folk.

  These morons.

  What would Andross do here? Andross would consolidate pow
er into the only hands that knew what to do with it: his own.

  “So rather than giving commissions and better arms to your best fighters, you’ve consigned your only veterans into militias under officers who’ve never lifted a weapon themselves except to impress a lady.”

  Kip scrubbed his face. It took a lot to change a culture. Here the poorer sort of nobles—men whose sole patrimony had been their fathers’ swords and the right to carry them—didn’t want to share ranks with lumberjacks and poachers, and wouldn’t until they saw for themselves that those were exactly the men who would keep them alive.

  Those lumberjacks and poachers were the kind of men their own fathers and grandfathers had been when they earned those swords.

  By the time they learned that truth, though, it would be too late for Blood Forest.

  Maybe the White King was on to something. Just burn it down.

  It was an idle thought, but a monstrous one.

  It was too late to change the Foresters now, with the Blood Robes laying siege to the capital itself.

  “How many Blood Robes?” Kip asked.

  “Forty thousand, give or take. Maybe four thousand of those are drafters. Maybe two or three hundred wights. At least that many will-casters. I know we outnumber them heartily, but…” He patted his forehead again with his handkerchief. It had to be soaked by now. “But you’re the only one who’s been able to stop him anywhere. Everywhere we fight, they roll over us. And all our men know it. You might be the only commander for whom our soldiers would stand.”

  “You’ve seen my crowds,” Kip said, waving toward the window. He didn’t need to approach it.

  The ambassador nodded. “They are yours indeed.”

  Kip said, “What’s to stop me from letting you and the White King smash each other and then marching in, wiping out the remnants of your armies, and declaring myself king?”

  The man pursed his wide mouth. It made him look like a frog. The question had clearly already occurred to him. “Your conscience, this people’s loyalty to their own, and our incompetence.”

  “Incompetence?” Kip asked. The others were clear.