The Burning White

by Brent Weeks

  “Gap in seventy paces, Captain!” Gavin shouted. “Two sea demons at two hundred! Coming full speed in!”

  The damned whale had disappeared.

  Thanks, buddy. Stayed just long enough to get us killed, didn’t ya?

  But the water here wasn’t deep enough for it to dive out of sight, and Gavin found it again quickly, veering out toward open sea.

  Even as he threw one last mental curse to it, it veered back, straight toward the gap in the reef itself.

  No, not at the gap, but on an intercepting course with the two remaining sea demons, who were flying like twin arrows at the Golden Mean—the interception point just happened to be right at the mouth of the gap.

  The gap in the coral between the open sea and the protected lagoon inside was wide enough for the ship to pass through in ordinary circumstances: approached dead-on, with sails stowed, maneuvering by oar and with polemen on the decks. Normally, even in this light midafternoon chop, with care it would be perilous but possible.

  But cutting a right-angle turn, under full sail and full speed? A single wave, a single untimely gust of wind could blow them into the teeth of the coral on either side.

  There was nothing else for Gavin to say. Gunner could see it all for himself now. He was standing again on the barrel of his big cannon, dancing from one bare foot to the other because of the barrel’s heat. But there was nothing comical in the utter concentration on his face, looking at that gap, and the oncoming sea demons, and the whale streaking in from the side. He’d readied the orders.

  Now it was just a matter of timing, and Gunner was the best in the world at that.

  “First mate… mark!”

  “Mark!” she shouted, her hands spinning the wheel and then stopping it precisely.

  The ship began to angle wide—but not wide enough!—and bleeding off speed—too much!

  Gavin tried to calculate. The whale was maybe going to reach the sea demons just before they reached the ship, but where would the collision take them? Would the whale intercept both of the sea demons, or only one? What waves would crash into the boat?

  Out only another hundred paces, the other sea demons had doubled back. Even if the whale took out both of the first two of them, if Gunner didn’t get the ship through the gap in the first attempt, those others were going to demolish them.

  Sailors on deck were praying, muttering, waiting with their hands on lines for their orders. Orholam had now stripped off all his clothes as if preparing for a swim. He saluted Gavin with a flagon of brandy and drank a deep draught. Crazy old bastard.

  On the sterncastle, the first mate’s forehead glistened with sweat, stance wide, knuckles tight on the wheel. She had all the look of a grizzled veteran who was terrified despite being a grizzled veteran.

  Gavin looked up. The gap yawned before them, but there was no way they could make the turn.

  “Reef the main now!” Gunner shouted. “First mate, now! Starboard oars, stop! Port oars, double-time, now, now! Second mate, on my—mark! Mark! Now!”

  In quick succession, the first mate spun the wheel hard in toward the reef; the mainsail went half; and the starboard oars stopped, dragging water, creating a pivot point while the port oars kept pulling. A rattling chain drew Gavin’s eyes to the rear.

  The second mate had dropped the starboard anchor.

  In the shallow water, it hit bottom and caught immediately. It was as if the ship had hit a wall, first jerking almost to a stop, timbers groaning, seams straining, men thrown from their feet, but then with too much forward momentum to stop, it slewed hard to starboard.

  As the deck rolled, spraying a fan of water out, the crow’s nest whipsawed back and forth. Gavin crashed into the railing, his feet actually rising off the wood for one terrifying moment before the motion ceased and then started the other way, with Gavin dropping into the nest and then crouching down as low as he could, bracing the railing against his shoulder to keep from being thrown overboard.

  “Anchor free! Anchor free!” Gunner was shouting. “All oars full! First mate!”

  “Yessir!” she shouted, already making corrections.

  Some mechanism snapped loudly under the forces on the anchor—but the chain spun away and the deck surged up and forward.

  “Sails full!” Gunner shouted, though they weren’t ten paces from the reef—and they weren’t aligned with the gap.

  Unbelievably, they’d actually cut the corner too tightly.

  They were going to hit the reef. But then Gavin saw that the boat was still drifting sideways, its momentum in the waves carrying it toward alignment with the gap.

  They were barely going to clip the near edge of the reef.

  But that’d be enough. It would tear off the prow easily. Even if it didn’t, the crash would stop them dead in the waves as the sea demons arrived.

  “Starboard guns…” Gunner shouted. “Now!”

  The starboard guns all fired simultaneously, the hull shivering from the combined shock of the blasts, nudging the ship half a pace farther to port.

  The sails filled with a snap as the ship rolled back on an even keel. Gunner was shouting to oarsmen, trying to get the starboard oars to lift from the water before they snapped off, trying to get them to push off of the reef as if they were polemen. He was demanding the port oars start pulling, but slowly so as not to drive them starboard. He had to repeat an order to the first mate, because he was already shouting his next at a gun crew and cranking The Compelling Argument himself.

  Orholam’s beard, they were going to make it!

  Then Gavin’s eyes rose to the sea to starboard—which had been behind them before they’d turned. Like a war-blind green recruit distracted by what was happening in front of and to each side of the ship, he’d not looked behind the ship in several minutes.

  “Pull!” Gunner was shouting. “Damn your eyes, pull!”

  Just behind the ship, the twin streaking lines of boiling waters of the sea demons and the black behemoth collided. Hot water sprayed over the decks as the huge beasts breached, and then as they crashed back into the sea, landing partially on the black whale, driving its great head into the coral, but then the sight of them was lost. A great trough from their bodies falling into the waters so near behind them slowed the ship as if it were suddenly going uphill—then sent a huge following wave into the stern, shoving the ship hard, straight toward the gap.

  At first Gunner’s orders couldn’t be heard in the screams and the crash of water—but the ship rolled back on an even keel and the wind gusted and the sails snapped full, and the mast strained but held and it looked like they might pull through the gap safely.

  “Pull!” Gunner shouted again.

  Gavin’s warning was lost in all the other shouts and sounds.

  The oars port and starboard dropped simultaneously and pulled.

  The ship nosed into the gap. Faces lit with hope. A few more moments—

  Only Gavin had seen their doom. He shifted his feet to the very rail of the crow’s nest as he cried out again, but nothing could save them.

  Unseen until now, an eighth sea demon had appeared. Every sea demon was massive, but this one was twice the size of any of the others, so monstrously thick its body couldn’t even fit beneath the waves here, a battering ram shearing through mud and coral and water alike, its body pumping like a bellows. But to Gavin’s eyes it wasn’t red, but burning white-hot, steam boiling from it.

  The convulsing, gulping mouth of this greatest of the sea demons was the long-pursuing mouth of hell itself.

  At the last moment it closed its great cruciform jaw to bring its head like a bony war hammer up and against the stern on the starboard side.

  The collision lifted and crumpled the ship against the reef. Gavin saw the coral punch in the portside hull, tearing forecastle from deck as wanton boys fighting over an old book might tear off a cover.

  The flexing mast, first bent from the shock of the collision with the sea demon and then loosed with the shock of t
he collision with the reef, catapulted Gavin skyward. His three-fingered hand hadn’t a prayer of holding him. He twisted out into the air hopelessly, as sea and sky spun fast beneath him.

  And then darkness opened its maw and swallowed him.

  Chapter 25

  Teia was being paranoid. She was sure of it.

  Pretty sure.

  The best thing about the near-total invisibility that the shimmercloak granted her wasn’t the invisibility, not today. It was the ‘near-total’ part. Total invisibility might allow her to relax. Instead, using the cloak here took everything Teia had: constant drafting to maintain the paryl cloud necessary to defeat any errant sub-red who would otherwise see a warm ghost passing by, will to activate the cloak, skill to follow how the cloak split the light hitting it at each moment, bending it around her form. Most Shadows—the Order’s shimmercloak-using assassins—wouldn’t do that. Couldn’t, maybe.

  Teia had to keep moving, and that meant she had to pay attention to any places where sources of paryl light weren’t available. Those were rare, but given that being stuck with no paryl meant discovery, and discovery meant death, it was still important to look out for. Using the cloak while dodging all the churning humanity that shot through the Lily’s Stem and into the turning flower that was the Chromeria itself took all her vigilance, all her dexterity, all her athleticism at moments that couldn’t be predicted. That was the gift: not thinking.

  In this past year, she’d adjusted to the quick glances necessary to keep her eyes unseen, to the dodging and darting while keeping the cloak tight about her form so her feet wouldn’t show. She knew when to be visible and when to disappear, when to gather luxin and pack it so that she’d never be without if she had to dodge indoors or to some dark area where paryl was scarce.

  But there was something in one’s mind that refused to believe one was truly unseen. It was too unnatural. When eyes crossed one’s face, something in the mind fiercely held that one had been ignored but wasn’t actually invisible.

  Thus, the paranoia that popped up at irregular intervals—a sticky, oily feeling, like a predator’s eyes were on you in your bath.

  And right now the feeling was strong.

  The entrance to the luxin bridge called the Lily’s Stem was a natural choke point. Here half a dozen of Andross Guile’s Lightguards stood watch. They were thugs one and all, armed with muskets and blunderbusses smarter than most of them. Less conspicuously, four Blackguards would be somewhere farther back. Teia took her time finding them, hanging to the edges of the crowd so she wouldn’t be bowled over while she searched. Being terrifically short was terrific when you wanted to disappear in a crowd, and horrific when you wanted to find anyone else.

  She found them all, and knew them all. Not one was a sub-red or superviolet.

  So she should relax a little.

  But she couldn’t. She kept flaring her eyes to paryl, kept circling, kept searching, searching, gnawing on that feeling like she was one of those tiny dogs trained to run in a wheel that turned a spit for cooking, and she’d been thrown an ox bone and couldn’t crack it open with her weak little jaws.

  She couldn’t draft paryl or keep the cloak working forever, though.

  Fine, I’m afraid. Since when has that stopped me?

  She moved, slipping into the stream of humanity passing gushing into and then out of the Lily’s Stem. The waves battered the covered luxin bridge as effectually as her fears. She moved fast, as fast as she could, riding right at the edge of foolhardiness. If her worst nightmare was true, and she was being pursued by some other Shadow, sent to murder her for her disobedience and to reclaim their Fox Cloak, they’d have a hard time matching this pace. Teia was damn good at this now.

  Coming upon the exit of the bridge, she slipped into the back of a narrow wagon transporting empty tun and hogshead barrels from the Chromeria’s larders. She wedged herself into a narrow spot where she could only see the sun, and thus not be seen herself, and let her invisibility go.

  Without the paryl in her, it seemed the rational blue light from the luxin tunnel did much less to ease her. She felt shaken, jittery, a runner wobbly long before the last lap.

  She had leagues to go yet before she was safe.

  She pulled herself together, removed and rolled up the master cloak, and put on the Fox Cloak; loosed her belt, letting out the extra folds of her tunic to make a simple dress, colorful banding already stitched to it; pulled up her trouser legs and bound them at each knee; flipped her belt over to the opposite side, red for black; and rolled her sleeves up and her tall boots down. She donned a large necklace and bound her hair tight and pulled on a wig of wavy brunette.

  Fear is a tortoise; its jaws will snap you clean in half if you let it—but it’ll only catch you if you don’t move, Teia’d learned.

  Teia moved too fast for fear to follow.

  Right now, she was just a lazy serving girl hitching a quick ride so she didn’t have to walk. A little innocent mischief. She emerged from the barrels and slipped from the back of a wagon as it passed through a knot of people near an intersection.

  In moments, she was better than invisible. She was anonymous. Unremarkable. Unseen.

  The bright, rich districts—where the Chromeria’s every be-serifed whim was captured by bespectacled scribes in official green ink and stamped with a reeve’s seal and enforced by women armed with abacuses and bad attitudes and wearing ridiculous plumed hats—soon yielded to neighborhoods ruled by attitudes as foul and condescension as thick, but wielding tools sharper than a quill that writ decrees in a redder ink.

  But Teia couldn’t tell the difference between green and red anyway, and here her heart quieted some of its panicked thunder as of a summer squall passing into the distance.

  She didn’t let down her guard, of course. It was still a dangerous neighborhood, and the slight but perilous possibility of having picked up a tail was still present.

  Her goal now was a series of blind alleys she’d discovered in a slightly nicer neighborhood nearby. The alleys led to… well, to nothing. Situated here on the dark side of Weasel Rock, the neighborhood wasn’t the kind to attract passersby, but not quite a slum, either. The locals would avoid a dead end, but they also wouldn’t allow any gangs to take up residence.

  Teia could hide and wait for an hour or two for any pursuit. If none came, there was a spot where she could climb out of the alley to a rooftop in case her highly hypothetical pursuer followed this far, actually knew that this alley was a dead end, and tried to wait her out.

  You poor bastards, she thought. You have no idea how good I’ve gotten.

  No one’s chasing you. They don’t know there’s anyone to chase. The Order doesn’t even know you’re here, T.

  From little contextual clues, Teia’d guessed out that Murder Sharp was the best of the Order’s Shadows. And further, that he was gone, which could mean he’d be gone for months yet. That meant any Shadow who might possibly come after her was second-rate. She was just being paranoid.

  It was easy to impute legendary status to these people, but Teia had seen a little glimpse behind the façade. Anyone can kill if you give them invisibility. And the Order had to take those who were (1) murderous, (2) loyal, (3) able to split light, and (4) able to draft paryl.

  That couldn’t leave that many candidates.

  Martial prowess, intelligence, flexibility? None of those could even make the list of requirements.

  Being a bit scared made her careful, and that was good when the stakes were so high, but she couldn’t make them out be to gods or something.

  She’d take up a position around the third sharp corner, she thought. Just in case she was a bit slow to take down her opponent and there was a fight. A brief fight. That she would win.

  Stepping around the corner, she saw the briefest hint of distortion like a floater in her eye, so close she couldn’t focus on it—and she ran nose-first into something that wasn’t there. She reeled back, but instead of trying to keep her feet
, she flopped to the side, her body reacting faster than her mind.

  Someone! Not something! her mind shrilled. Paryl! Move or die!

  Rolling, desperate, eyes streaming at the blow to her nose, Teia jumped to her feet, her hand stabbing down into the gun pouch at her hip, slipping over the smooth ball handle of the pistol.

  And then someone unseen cuffed her upside the head, like she was a child, not an assassin. An arm circled around her chest and another around her neck, and as he tightened that arm on the sides of her neck—a dangerous move no Blackguard would use, because though it was meant not to, it could kill—she heard a voice, his voice.

  “All my work, and you throw it away at the first tough job. You’re such a disappointment, Adrasteia,” Murder Sharp said.

  The blackness was rising even faster than her terror, but Teia clawed at the pistol in its pouch. His foot was right next to her own, and there would be no time for aiming carefully before she lost consciousness.

  Her straining fingertips brushed the polished-smooth pistol butt, and fingernails tore as she scrambled to lift the heavy, slick weapon up to her palm. But she did it. She did it faster than cowardice and a heartbeat before unconsciousness could claim the laurel crown. With a hot lead prayer, she pulled the trigger.

  Nothing happened. Like a runner tripping within steps of the finish line, she wondered what might have betrayed her—a faulty flint? a broken cockjaw?

  Blackness triumphing, her hands began pulling at his forearm like she was some moron who’d never trained against such things. Her knees sagged. It was too late to do all the right things. She was too weak for the chin turn, too…

  Her last thought swam through the gathering wet darkness like some unseen loathsome sea creature sliding against her bare toes on a midnight swim: There’d been no mechanical failure. Teia had failed.

  She hadn’t cocked the pistol.

  There was no way to try again. She was out of time and strength. There were no second chances here.