The Burning White

by Brent Weeks

  Teia didn’t want to think that no one had thought to stay with him, or that Commander Fisk hadn’t given anyone leave to do so.

  War doesn’t strip dignity only from the dead.

  Red morning sun poured through windows, bloody light limning his solitary, hunched figure. She turned sharply, a sudden urge to weep strangling her. She stepped away.

  The wood floor creaked under her shoe, and she froze in place. Heart pounding, she looked over her shoulder.

  Gill had tightened.

  He sat up straight, looked around the barracks, eyes searching. There was no one here.

  Teia was suddenly acutely aware that Gill wasn’t only a bereaved brother. He was a fully trained Blackguard, relentlessly molded to be attuned to hidden threats. And armed. And now alert. If he charged her—even in her general direction—what was she going to do?

  Fight him?

  Impossible! A single touch would be confirmation that she was here! A single glimpse of her would jeopardize everything she was trying to do against the Order. A single telling sound would reveal the existence of an invisible intruder. He would report it, or at least tell someone, and anyone who heard such a wild thing would tell others, and the Order would hear.

  And the Order would know who it had to be.

  Could she speak? Tell him? Trust him?

  No. She trusted him. She did. She could trust Gill Greyling. But she had no idea how the man would behave in his grief. It might be one shock too many. Talk of shimmercloaks? The Order? Traitors in the Blackguard itself? That was at least three shocks too many.

  Besides, she had no idea how long they’d be alone, even if she dared to try to brief him on secrets she’d been commanded to keep secret from everyone. She trusted him, she just couldn’t… trust how he’d respond.

  Ugh. That felt ugly and false.

  She had to get out of here.

  She began lifting her soft shoe slowly, heart pounding. She could feel the tension in the wood. There was no question: when she lifted that foot, the floor would creak again.

  “Gav?” Gill whispered.

  Teia’s heart tumbled to the floor.

  “Gavin? Is that you?” Gill asked plaintively.

  Oh no. No, no, no.

  “I can feel your presence. I know you’re here. It’s you, isn’t it? Little brother…” His voice trailed off, and Teia saw him gulping convulsively against the threatening tears, joy and hope taking up arms against a tide of grief.

  For a long moment, neither of them moved.

  “Can you… can you give me another sign?” Gill asked.

  She had to lift her foot. Gill was staring straight at her. She couldn’t wait him out. Anyone might come in at any moment. Anyone who came in would surely go straight to Gill to offer some comfort—and Teia was blocking the aisle, rooted to the floor.

  Teeth gritted, tears swimming in her eyes, she lifted her foot. The floor squeaked a protest. She retreated. From the barracks door, she looked back.

  It was as if a great weight had been lifted from Gill’s shoulders. He was standing, his face radiant. “I knew it!” he said. “I knew you wouldn’t leave me…” His face twisted suddenly, a cavalry charge of tears of grief smashing against the shields of a smile, and his last word was a whisper. “… alone.”

  He wept then, and spoke to his dead little brother, and Teia couldn’t stay, and she couldn’t leave. Like a monster, she eavesdropped, and she knew it was a profound betrayal of those brothers she’d loved.

  She was unforgiveable. Irredeemable.

  She slowly sank into the sticky shadows of the hall. Her home. Human grief and human love and every species of human bonds and heart connections had floated at her fingertips, sometimes pushing in, sometimes waiting for her to reach out her hands and pull them to her once more. She’d been pushing it all away for the last year, and now as if by long practice her muscles of rejection had grown immensely strong, her humanity flown far from her.

  No. No! This wasn’t what she wanted, was it? From the darkness of her shadowy perch in the hall, she only watched as two figures rounded the corner of the tower’s circular hallway into view. Essel and one-handed Trainer Samite fell silent as they approached the double doors of the barracks that they’d each gone through thousands of times.

  With her hand hovering short of the door handle, Samite said, “Done this shit too many times this year.”

  “But not with a kid Gav’s age,” Essel said.

  Through her teeth, Samite addressed only the floor. “I don’t even know Gill that well. It shouldn’t be me.”

  “It shouldn’t be you giving him comfort,” Essel agreed. “But right now it’s nobody at all.” Her tone was as soft and near as Teia felt cold and distant. Essel hesitated one moment more, giving Samite a chance, but then, as the trainer failed to marshal her courage as she had never failed in battle, Essel didn’t reproach her. She only said quietly, “I’ll go in now. You can come when you’re ready.”

  But then Samite cursed quietly and opened the door. The two veterans disappeared inside together.

  It was as if someone had held a long-lens up to each of Teia’s eyes—backward. Every good thing Teia had ever wanted in life suddenly whooshed as far away as Orholam’s Eye was to a woman pulled into the depths of the sea, drowning unseen.

  Teia was exactly what she hated and condemned. She was Karris: offering those who deserved the truth a comforting lie instead, telling herself that her profound deception wasn’t a betrayal.

  In the hall, she passed a mirror and couldn’t help but seek herself in its eyes.

  Framed in a socket of rotting wood, with the tired, tarnished silver eyeshine of an aging nighttime carnivore, the dull, distorted glass revealed nothing where Teia stood—it showed a nullity more profound than darkness. All that was, still was, without her in the frame. Teia’s absence was merely an empty bunk in the barracks, soon filled by another. She wasn’t even a name on the lists of the war dead, a last sound heard a last time as it was read aloud to ears desperate not to hear some other name read out. She wasn’t even one last scribble on a page to be posted publicly and skimmed over by some bereft family wondering if they would never hear any word at all of a lost son. The hole within her that had expanded with every murdered slave now reached beyond every bound of her body.

  She was become absence itself.

  She was more dead than Gav Greyling, who was still loved, who still had one who spoke to him.

  Not so long ago, a fierce and fiery young Blackguard would have filled that mirror. Teia had been—she saw only now—beautifully alive. So, so young. But not less because of it. She’d been vibrant, strong, passionate. Playful.

  An afterimage of her own old white-hot smile stole onto Teia’s lips.

  Then it cooled, darkened.

  Someone had murdered that spirited girl and turned her into a ghost. She could cast the guilt on others for that, but when she examined all the evidence honestly, she could still only see her own hand bloody on the knife.

  * * *

  With her thoughts hanging as heavy about her head as a burial shroud, as she left the Chromeria, Teia missed the low, slow scuff of rubber-soled shoes following her softly as a shadow.

  Chapter 22

  “Beautiful, ain’t it?” a voice said behind Gavin. “And you and I’ll make it through the mist wall. Just wish I wasn’t going to drown before I reach shore.”

  Gavin froze. He knew that voice. The view of distant White Mist Tower that had so riveted him suddenly faded to insignificance.

  “I’m a little too late, aren’t I?” the old man continued. “You’ve already decided what you want, haven’t you, oarmate? Then creation weeps at my failure.”

  “What’s this?” Gunner demanded as Gavin turned.

  “Stowaway, Cap’n,” the first mate said. Pansy’s hard face twisted like old oak gnarling. “Sorry for interruptin’.”

  “Well, I’ll be!” Gunner shouted. He clapped his hands together, not once
but in a weird quick rhythm.

  “The men wanted to toss him overboard right off,” she said. “I thought maybe a keelhaulin’ instead? See if this luxin hull stays as clean as claimed, eh? Good for some entertainment, either way.”

  Bleeding from his mouth and nose, one eye swollen, and with both arms imprisoned by sailors with blood on their fists and grins on their faces, was none other than Gavin’s old holier-than-thou oarmate, Orholam.

  “No, no, no!” Gunner said, laughing. “This here’s one of my old rowers! We go way back! You can’t throw him to the sea! Ceres’d spit out such stringy meat!”

  Orholam released a held breath, relieved. Apparently, he wasn’t quite as certain of his prophecy as he’d claimed.

  Gavin didn’t particularly enjoy the rush of warm feelings that flowed over him at the sight of the old coot, but they had lived and worked and fought together during the worst part of Gavin’s life.

  Correction: the worst of my life up until that point. The cells under the Chromeria had been worse.

  The prophet dared a small smile at his old owner.

  Gunner repaid the smile with interest, but there was an edge to that smile that Gavin didn’t like.

  “Apologies for my tardiness, lord,” Orholam said, head drooping once more. “I didn’t think they’d take to the beating with such gusto.”

  “I ain’t no lord,” Gunner said. “I’m better. I’m a captain. A legend. I am—”

  “I wasn’t talking to you,” Orholam said.

  “Oh, then I forgive you,” Gavin said quickly. The seed of an idea was sprouting in his mind. A prophet was a wild card to be snatched up as quickly as possible. Sailors were a superstitious lot. “But maybe—”

  “Wasn’t talking to you neither,” Orholam said. “You’re lord of shit-all now.”

  Gunner laughed at Gavin’s expression.

  “You’re not makin’ any friends, old man,” Gavin shot back. “And it seems to me right now you need some.”

  Orholam said, “‘Need’ is a strange word for this day. ‘Friend’ is even stranger.”

  “Stranger?” Captain Gunner said, stubbornly holding on to his glee. “What’s stranger is that the fate of a god is given into my hand, Orholam.”

  “Nor for the last time,” Orholam mumbled to the deck.

  Captain Gunner roared, “Pansy!”

  “I’m still right here… Captain,” the woman said, at his elbow, nonplussed.

  For the first time, Gavin’s guile spied a little wedge into which he might force his will. So Pansy didn’t particularly love serving Gunner, huh?

  “Keelhaulin’. Psh,” Gunner said. “Keel’ this old boy? This old boy is Orholam hissown self. Orholam deserves spatial treatment.” He smiled. It wasn’t a kind smile.

  Gavin saw Orholam swallow hard.

  Oh, shit. Gavin’s plan, half-formed as it was, required Orholam. Alive.

  Offhand, Gunner said, “Strap him to the cannon.”

  His confidence vanishing, Orholam slumped, propped up only by the two sailors holding his arms, but he made no attempt at escape, resigned to his fate. Out here, at the center of the Cerulean Sea, where was there to run?

  “Wh-why do this?” Gavin asked Gunner.

  “Better question. Why not?” Gunner said.

  The sailors draped Orholam over the cannon, hugging the barrel with both hands and feet. They stopped when they saw Gunner looking at them like they were complete morons.

  “What’re you thinkin’ I wanna do? Warm his tenders with a few shots? Scald him to death through repeated firing?” Gunner demanded.

  They looked back and forth at each other.

  “Uh… over the muzzle then, Captain?” one asked. “Yessir! Right!”

  Under Gunner’s baleful eye, the sailors stripped Orholam to the waist. It only took them a short time to figure out how to tie the old rower over the mouth of the big cannon: his butt supported by ropes, arms and legs lashed down the barrel, facing toward the breech, torso strapped so as to cover the opening of the muzzle itself. The cannon’s round shot was nearly as wide as the prophet’s skinny chest.

  The sailors began taking lighthearted bets on whether the shot would punch a hole cleanly through him, or if it would tear the prophet in half.

  Gavin suddenly felt the old lens displacement he’d felt when in the space of a single hour he’d gone from a dignified discussion over tea in the palace at Ru during the Prisms’ War to joining his men at their fires, with their jokes about hilarious murders they’d committed that morning.

  In the incongruities of war, sometimes you wonder, Am I even the same person?

  But these men weren’t soldiers. They’d not sacrificed their illusions and parts of their souls in order to pursue some noble ideal. He’d known that these sailors weren’t good people; they were serving the Order of the Broken Eye. But hell, even Gavin himself was sort of serving the Order now. Seeing that they were assholes made him feel a lot better that they were on this suicide mission with him.

  Let ’em die.

  “Why kill Orholam, Gunner?” Gavin asked, louder.

  Gunner looked at him sharply.

  “Captain Gunner, I mean. Sir,” Gavin said, suppressing a cringe.

  But Gunner let it go, turning to Orholam instead. “My, my, my, I thrust out into the sea with all my charms, and what wonderous babes that old gruntin’ labia-clapper slides easy into my harms. Arms.”

  He spat into the sea, then examined the swollen, bloodied face of his old slave: the sailors had been none too gentle when they found him hiding belowdecks.

  Oddly, though, the prophet seemed to have already recovered his good spirits.

  Minus the beating, the last year of not being chained to an oar had been good for Orholam. His cheeks weren’t so hollow, and now he owned the modest tunic and trousers of a Parian tradesman. Any burnous or head covering he might have been wearing earlier had been taken, though, searched for weapons. The Order were big believers in paranoia.

  But there was no mistaking Gavin’s old oarmate, the man whose real name he’d never heard. In all Gavin’s time as a galley slave, this man had spoken so rarely, and so infuriatingly full of religious platitudes, that he’d been dubbed ‘Orholam.’

  Orholam still had the reedy, strong arms of the oarsman he had been, and the bright eyes of the madman he doubtless still was.

  “You got nothing to say, my own li’l ora’lem Or’holam?” Gunner said.

  “You know Old Parian?” Gavin asked. Ora’lem Or’holam. Hidden Orholam?

  “Hidden no more,” Orholam said.

  “Shut up, you,” Gunner said. He addressed Gavin. “Good curses, Old Parian. My mama taught me. She loved to curse. Said it was the mark of a mature mind, cursin’ fluently. Said every man should have fifty ways o’ telling a man to bugger a viper’s nest inside a cactus, and every woman double that many. I ever tell you about my mama?”

  He couldn’t have forgotten. Gavin surely never would.

  Gunner regarded Orholam through bushy brows. “Orholam! You’re a prophet. Prophet-size me what I’mma say next.”

  Orholam sighed. “Something about seeing as how I’m a stowaway, I can pay for my passage by giving you a prophecy for free.”

  “I’ll be damned,” one of the sailors holding Orholam’s arms said.

  “So wait,” Gavin said. “Does that count?”

  The sailors looked confused. The captain kept his face blank.

  “You asked him for one prophecy, and he gave you one. A true one, too, by the look on your face. So… that pays his passage, right?”

  Gunner’s face looked like, while expecting brandy, he’d just quaffed bilge water.

  “If you’re getting one free glimpse into the future, it’s too bad you wasted yours,” Gavin said, “but he did give you what you demanded.”

  “That one didn’t take prophecy to figure out,” Orholam said, sighing. “I’m happy to oblige with another.”

  The crew, at least, seemed excite
d for the show to go on.

  “How’d you do that?” Gunner demanded.

  “After Guile here and young Lord Malargos freed us all from… well, from you, Captain, I took an oath never to lie again. It’s been less pleasant to fulfill than even I’d guessed it would be. When men ask my vocation and I tell them I’m a prophet… let’s just say, I get blindfolded and hit a lot. People ask me to say which one of them hit me. If I don’t tell them, they think I can’t, and thus I’m a fraud—which often gets me a beating. If I do tell them, though, they tend to try it again to see if I simply guessed correctly once, or twice, or three times. Not a fun game for me.”

  “Good news, then,” Gunner said, seeming to have regained his footing. “There’ll be no games.”

  “I wasn’t implying—”

  “When’d you take that oath?” Gunner asked.

  “I said—”

  “You shut up! You’re a liar,” Gunner said.

  “I never lied to—”

  “Not another word!” Gunner said. He thrust out his hand toward one of the sailors. “Linstock!”

  “No, wait!” Orholam shouted. “Please—”

  Gunner punched him in the face so fast the older man didn’t even see it coming. His face snapped back so hard Gavin worried his neck was broken, and blood sprayed into the air, and then down his mouth and chin as his broken nose gushed blood.

  “Prophets are hard to ken, but Gunner is not,” Gunner said.

  That actually was not at all true.

  “Interplat me this, prophet,” Gunner said. “What do you think I said when I meant not another word?”

  Orholam opened his mouth to speak, then stopped, confused.

  The sailors looked the same. One of them held out the linstock with a match cord affixed in it to the captain, but the captain didn’t even seem aware of him now.

  “What do you thean I mink!” Gunner bellowed, drawing back his fist again.

  Gavin darted between them. “He’s respecting you, Captain. Obeying you. If he answers, he’d be disobeying your order to be silent. See?”

  “Ahhh! Stickin’ up for your whoremate. But… that’s true, ain’t it?” Gunner said, stepping back. He twisted a bit of his beard and chewed on it. “My order to him did set the sails against the rowers, eh? ’Tain’t fair, that. And I do believe in a fair taint.”