The Burning White

by Brent Weeks

  “Then it’s no wonder you enjoyed your time with Pansy’s mother so much, Captain,” Gavin said, deadpan.

  Gunner guffawed as the sailors nearby chuckled or laughed aloud, though Pansy did not. Then Gunner stopped abruptly.

  “You’re a crafty little cunt, ain’tcha, Guile?”

  Gavin said, “Once upon a time, I was actually reckoned a big cunt.”

  Gunner was not amused. “Don’t get above your station, wee little man, or we’ll make your lady parts more gapey than you’d wish, like Orh’lam’s are about to be.”

  Orholam mumbled a protest but didn’t speak. Gavin gulped. If every attempt at humor was a risk, attempts at humor with a happily homicidal madman were perhaps a risk not wisely taken.

  “Gapey Guile, they’ll call ya, eh, eh?” the captain asked.

  The sailors chuckled dutifully, and then Gunner dismissed them to their work. They left the forecastle like it was an order. As they went, Gunner waggled his eyebrows at Gavin, grinning, suddenly convivial again.

  Aha, Gavin had been speaking out of turn, so Gunner had merely been showing them who was in charge.

  Gavin had gotten off lightly for such an offense. He wasn’t even bloody.

  My lucky day.

  Now Gunner gazed at the horizon. “No one hates the sea like a sailor,” he said.

  He patted the big cannon that dominated the forecastle. The damned thing—now with bonus prophet adorning the muzzle—was steel. Steel, not brass. Gavin had never seen such a thing, always heard that steel couldn’t be cast reliably this large. Either the Ilytians were making rapid advances in their metallurgy or every shot with this thing was risking a shrapnel-filled death for everyone on the forecastle.

  Gunner hopped up on the cannon, his sentiment passing as quick as a whitecap. “Queer, eh? Boomer this big, out front? Should be too heavy so high up, made o’ steel. Should make the ship squirrely as all hell, foulin’ her center of weight.”

  “But it doesn’t?” Gavin guessed. He had no delusions that Gunner had forgotten about Orholam, and whatever it was he had against the old man.

  “Lighter than possible,” Gunner said.

  Well, obviously not, Gavin thought.

  “Shoots true, too,” Gunner said. “Accurate within your arm’s stretch at a thousand paces. Greatest random is near thrice that.”

  “You name her?” Gavin asked, trying to anchor himself back on Gunner’s good side.

  Gunner had walked down the barrel until he was looming over Orholam. He stood on one foot, and with his opposite big toe lifted Orholam’s chin to look at him. But Gavin’s words distracted him. “Her? Her?! What the—how dumb are ya, Guile? Her! Him. C’mon. Cannons’re always he’s. Even you with your inky fingers gorta know that!” He did hip thrusts out over the empty air. “Boom! Boom!”

  “Ah. Of course,” Gavin said.

  Gunner held on to nothing. He stared at the sky, he stared at the sea, he stared at his crew. He squatted now and patted the side of his cannon as a sane man might pat a horse’s cheek. “Ol’ Phin gave him the cognomenclature The Compelling Argument.”

  Gunner stood, and kicked a lever, then rode the cannon as it slid slowly back on a track. When it stopped, Orholam grunted, jarred against the muzzle pressed into his belly.

  Gavin grinned. “He’s, uh, he’s beautiful. And it’s a very fitting name.”

  “Captain, may I—” Orholam interjected timidly.

  “You a slow learner, boy?” Gunner blazed, spittle flying.

  Orholam swallowed.

  “You’ll get your chance to proffer a defiance.” Gunner’s eyes flicked upward. He tugged his beard. “Defense. ‘Defiance’ is good, though, eh, Gapin’ Guile?”

  Gavin nodded. “It works. It defiantly works.”

  Gunner missed it. That intense focus on one thing at a time that served him so well elsewhere meant the man often missed everything else.

  “Shaped shells, you ever heard a such a thing?” Gunner asked. “Fer a cannon. And old Phin left forms so’s I can make more. They gives me an extra two hunnerd paces, ackerate! BUT! I can use regular old round shot, too. And looksie this.”

  Gunner showed Gavin a set of levers that popped out near the muzzle. Gavin couldn’t even pretend to understand.

  “Puts spin on a ball, if you use a ball. Don’t work for the shaped shells, unmoors the putty,” Gunner said. More’s the pity? “Costs yer some distance, but I can curve a cannonball. Up, down, or t’either side. Not much, mind you, and not sure what good it be—drop a ball tight o’er a wall, maybe? Phin was prollaby havin’ fun. Showin’ off like he do. You wanna see?”

  “Love to!” Gavin said. There wasn’t much entertainment out here, and Gunner treated him nearly like an equal, as long as Gavin played along with his whims. “But… um…”

  Gavin motioned to the old man strapped over the muzzle.

  “Oh, I hadn’t forgot!” Gunner said. “You think I can curve it ’round him?”

  Orholam’s body was entirely blocking the muzzle.

  “If it were possible, you’d be the one to do it,” Gavin said. “But… I’m afraid he’d just foul the spin and mess it all up.”

  Gunner scowled. Orholam was nodding emphatically.

  “Eh, still worth a shot!” Gunner said. He began checking the cannon with the unhurried efficiency of an old minstrel tuning her lute. Then he examined the harness that strapped the old prophet to the muzzle, arms and legs bound down the wide barrel, his belly and chest positioned to be turned into mist.

  “It’s going to make such a mess,” Gavin said.

  “Ol’ Phin knew I love shit like this,” Gunner said as if he hadn’t spoken. “Curving cannonballs. That oughta be my new curse. Quite the gift. Almost makes me wish I hadn’t played Hide the Musket in his old lady’s skirts. Thet’s on him, though. Man worked too much, he did. A woman’s like a cannon herself. Keep her well lubricated, and she’ll not just stand hard use but shine with it. But you cain’t just empty your powder horn in her, then drop her back on the rack to rust! Phin shoulda knowed better. He’s got three daughters.”

  Gunner blinked.

  “I mean, not that he should’ve—been emptying anything… in his daughters. I mean, he shoulda knowed better than to marry a woman with appetites nearly as wide as her vengeful streak. By Ceres’s swingin’ saggies, I think she wanted us to get caught that last time. Had to be quick on the trigger with the old man stomping around downstairs, and her none too quiet. Then I had to climb on the roof and wait till nightfall to get away. Still. She shouldn’ta did that to Ol’ Phin.”

  “It’s all on her, huh?” Gavin asked.

  Gunner looked at him like he was talking crazy. “Can’t blame a sailor on shore leave for havin’ an overcharged musket. I gone gambling, so I had no coin for whores. And I did try his daughters first! But… my luck was no better with them than it had been gambling.”

  You tried to woo his daughters first, and then their mother. Charming.

  “But!” Gunner ejaculated. “I’ll make it up to him by using this cannon as he intended.”

  “Eviscerating a man with his cannon will surely soothe any resentment he might have harbored for you swiving his wife.”

  “Agreed! Now, port or starbeard? I mean, I could go up or down, but it just look like I shot short or long to an ignorant layman like yerself.”

  “I don’t know, Captain. Like you said, I’m ignorant, but if you plug the barrel, there’s a risk of backfire, isn’t there?”

  “Backfire? We’re talking iron and black powder ’gainst something as squishy as Orholam. Nah. Won’t be a problem.”

  “I thought we were going to have some ‘defiance’ first.”

  “Huh?” Gunner asked.

  “Orholam’s defense?” Gavin prompted.

  “The what?”

  “The old man.”

  “Oh! Course, course.” Gunner turned to the bound old man, who was sweating profusely now. Gunner said, “You coulda helped me, a l
ot. With what you kin do.”

  “I did help you. Every day,” Orholam said. “Rowing?” He winced as he said the last, as if he couldn’t help himself.

  “Ahaha!” Gunner said, picking up the linstock and adjusting the match cord. “Funny, funny. I got me a sense of humor, too. Explosive one. Leaves ’em in pieces.”

  He opened the cage of a small lantern and lit the match cord from it. “I need the help o’ yer magic peepers, not yer arms,” Gunner said. “You done me a wrong, prophet. You gotta make right. Right now. What do you see? Say it plain or die.”

  “Please. You can’t kill me.”

  “Now, that is a prophecy we can test real easy.”

  “I mean, if you kill me now, this whole world will be lost.”

  “Don’t care,” Gunner said. “I’ll give you a count a four. And I ain’t good at my number alls. One.”

  “We’ll see White Mist Tower within the hour,” the prophet said quickly.

  “A bit late with that one,” Gavin said, gesturing toward the distant tower.

  “Ah shit,” Orholam said, craning his neck and catching sight of the thing, apparently for the first time. “Did I say the tower? I meant the reef. We’ll see and hear the reef itself within the hour.”

  “Really going out on a limb there, aren’t you?” Gavin asked, though he wasn’t sure why. He needed Orholam alive. What was he doing?

  “Thanks, oarmate,” Orholam said.

  “My quibble’s not with you; it’s with your master,” Gavin said.

  Orholam said, “Love to have that discussion. Maybe we can do that sometime when I’m not strapped to a cannon by an angry madm—er, Master, uh, Master Gentleman?”

  “About me,” Gunner said, grabbing a handful of Orholam’s salted beard. “Proffer-size about me. Or you will see an angry mad master gentleman. And no lies this time!”

  “What’s this about?” Gavin asked.

  “Last time he told me I wouldn’t lose the blade!”

  Orholam said, “I said you’d live to give it willingly to Dazen Guile, not that you’d keep it at all times between when I told you that and when you finally gave it to him. And do you not wear it even now?”

  “I gambled because a what you said! And I lost! Twice!” Gunner said. “You can’t go making porphyries what don’t mean what people think they do.”

  “Actually, I think that’s the main business of prophets,” Gavin said.

  “Not with me. Understand?” Gunner said to Orholam, as if it had been he who talked back to him, not Gavin.

  “You’ll not die on the reef,” Orholam said, fearful. “I swear it.”

  “So we make it! We shoot the gap! I told you I’d be in the books, Gilly!” Gunner expelled a big breath. “Do you see how many cannon I gotta use? Straight approach, or swinging ’round?”

  But Gavin went to another tack. “Wait, wait. Not on the reef? So… does that mean the captain’ll drown before he gets to the reef? He’ll be battered to death by the ship breaking up?”

  What was he doing? He needed the prophet alive.

  “No! No. He’ll live.” But there was a sudden hesitation in the prophet’s countenance.

  “Orholam…” Gunner said, warning. “Tell me the whole truth.”

  The old man sank into himself. “You’ll live, but the ship won’t make it past the reef.”

  “No!” Gunner said, grabbing fistfuls of his hair. “Not my ship! Damn you, no! I gave everything for this ship!”

  “What?” Gavin said. “No you didn’t. You gambled for it. And you didn’t even win. And it was my blade you gambled in the first place!”

  “Mine!” Gunner said.

  “So we’ll never make it past the reef?” Gavin said.

  “That’s… not exactly what I said,” Orholam said.

  “Are we going to break up on the reef or no?” Gunner demanded.

  “We’re going to…” Orholam suddenly looked very, very reluctant. “It’s ill luck to speak… of them.”

  Gunner’s dark visage turned green. “Nay,” he breathed. He spat in the sea. “Tell me.”

  “All eight,” Orholam said. “Within the hour.”

  “All eight what?” Gavin asked. He was afraid that he already knew.

  “Ceres’s sons,” Gunner whispered.

  “Aye,” Orholam said. “Soon now, I think.”

  The captain made the sign of the three and the four. “No. There’s got to be a way.”

  Orholam said,

  “Twenty-two there were, of the needed nine,

  Who swam, immortal, ’gainst the scythe of time.

  Now eight there are, of the needed nine,

  Uluch Assan brings the end this time.”

  Uluch Assan. That was Gunner’s birth name.

  Gunner’s face darkened. “This is not on me! What was I supposed to do? Let her kill us? I was a boy who begged onna the gun crew, not the captain o’ that vessel. It wasn’t my fault we sailed inta these waters!”

  “These waters?” Gavin asked. “You mean you’ve been here before? You have! This was where you killed the—”

  “Don’t name ’em!” Gunner said. “It’s bad luck.”

  “This was where you earned your name?” Gavin asked.

  But neither of them answered him.

  It suddenly made sense. How else would Gunner have known the sea demons were here, or the shape of the reef? Why else would Grinwoody have chosen Gunner to pilot his ship here, rather than one of his own people?

  Orholam said, “The dark ones live on light—”

  “What, like plants?” Gavin asked.

  “No, the imbalances in it,” he said.

  “What are you talking about, ‘the imbalances’?” Gavin said. “Prisms take care of any color imbalances.”

  “You’re the first Prism to do that fully since Vician’s Sin,” Orholam said. “Since that time, the… the dark ones have been tolerated by the Chromeria for what they do. In subtle ways and explicit when necessary, drafters have been forbidden to harm them.”

  “But why? How’s this fit with balancing?”

  “It’s really hard—” Orholam coughed unconvincingly. “It’s hard to take a breath tied like this. I’m not sure if I can answer—”

  Gunner lifted the burning match cord on the linstock close to the old man’s face and then began moving it toward the fuse. “What if I say please?”

  Orholam cleared his throat. “Most of the bane form here, and spin out through the sea. The dark ones devour the bane. Generally when the crystals are small and harmless. The bane only become truly dangerous when wights find them, because the bane can be used to amplify wights’ powers. But when the bane are small, they’re just food for the dark ones, forming constantly—just a consequence of magic in our world. Even a Prism balancing only minimizes how many appear. So in certain ways, this is your fault, too, Guile.”

  “Mine?!”

  “See! I told you this wasn’t on me!” Gunner said.

  Orholam said, “With you balancing in truth, there were fewer bane, so the sea—err, so the dark ones had to go swim far from here to find other food. With them all feeding at the far corners of the seas, their net was spread too thin here to catch the sudden surge of bane that erupted once you so suddenly stopped balancing.”

  “So it’s kind of both of our faults?” Gavin asked. “How do you know all this?”

  “I’m a prophet. Knowing is what we do. It’s not all about the future. In a world like ours, it’s just as often about the past.”

  “Fine, then, no answer is fine,” Gavin said. Maybe Orholam had been some kind of historian before he’d been captured and press-ganged, chained to his oar. Maybe he’d once had access to books Gavin had never known. “What was that about ‘the needed nine’?”

  “Can you cut me loose yet?” Orholam asked. “It would be so much easier—”

  “No!” Gunner growled.

  “Nine of the dark ones survived into our era. Nine were enough to devour all the bane
that formed. On the day Uluch Assan killed the ninth, Dazen Guile’s gift awoke.”

  “My gift? Drafting black, you mean.”

  “I’m not going to be more specific.”

  “But you know.”

  “Oh yes. I kept misunderstanding what I needed to do and say here until Orholam revealed it all to me. But you don’t deserve the same treatment. You haven’t acted with the same obedience I have. You’ve distanced yourself from the truth, so the distance between you and the truth is your fault, not mine. Regardless, one might say, in a way, everything here—the war, the False Prism’s War, all the death and misery and destruction—was one man’s fault.”

  He called it the ‘False Prism’s War’ rather than the Prisms’ War. Fuck you, Orholam. “I’m tired of taking the blame for everything,” Gavin said.

  “He warn’t talking ’bout you,” Gunner said. There was a weariness in his voice.

  “There was a tenuous, oh so tenuous, balance, but one that had stood for four centuries,” Orholam said. “Others kicked out other legs of the stool, but you, Gunner, you kicked out the leg that made it all fall. That’s why you get to be here now. You wanted the ultimate test for your gifts? It’s coming. You want to be a legend? Maybe that, too. But your Name in history depends on what he does.” He waggled a finger, but his arm was tied to the barrel, so it wasn’t clear where he was pointing.

  “Me?” Gavin asked. “Gunner’s legend depends on me?”

  “As does my own life.”

  “Your life?”

  “Yes, but I’ve given up on that. Doesn’t matter. You’re not that man, Gavin Guile. What does matter is that if you don’t succeed, Gunner will die out here.”

  “I thought you said I live!” Gunner protested.

  “Today. But if Gavin—well, this Gavin, since one is supposed to be very careful with words when giving prophecy—if this man here fails, you’ll eventually despair, drink seawater, and try to swim home. I think you drown while fighting sharks. Regardless, they eat you before or after you drown or a little of you before you drown—your left foot?—and then the rest of you after.”