The Burning White

by Brent Weeks

“Prophecies can’t have filler?” Kip asked.

  “That’s… actually a good question.” Big Leo looked troubled. He started to turn away.

  “No, wait. What were you going to say before?”

  Big Leo stopped and seemed to chew his next words. “How I took it was that it could mean he’s unequaled, or it could mean he’s honest, because every reflection imparts loss and distortion from the original, or it could mean he’s different. He’s true… in that he is his own self. Every mirror presents a flattened, pale copy, an image of a real thing. So maybe the Lightbringer is simply not like other people. In every set, he’s the odd one, the exception. You know, like maybe he’s the noble who’s not a noble, the bastard who’s not a bastard, the Tyrean who doesn’t quite fit with the Tyreans, the Blackguard who doesn’t quite fit the Blackguards, the unschooled kid who somehow got educated, the poor kid who got rich, the rich kid who doesn’t act rich, the full-spectrum polychrome who’s sort of Chromeria-trained and sort of not trained at all, the guy who’s entitled to the highest horse but barely knows how to ride, yet always somehow gets where he needs to go, and fast.”

  I’d like to think ‘barely knows how to ride’ has been mostly remedied in this past year, Kip thought. But he didn’t say it.

  His tongue still escaped his control with some regularity, but not as often as it used to.

  “And?” Kip asked. Big Leo obviously wanted to know that he had Kip’s full attention.

  “Brother, we need the Lightbringer. Desperately. This army, this satrapy, all the satrapies, the Chromeria, your friends. We all need you to be the Lightbringer, and those of us who stand with you here? We’re betting our lives that you are. And that’s why you’re pissing me off.”

  “Huh?”

  “You think you were powerful against Daragh the Coward or against Ambassador Red Leaf or with the Divines? You were stronger by far when you saw the Keeper and took pity on her, or when you saw Conn Arthur and showed him even greater pity by showing him none.”

  “Sure pissed off Cruxer,” Kip said. The commander had said, ‘You can forgive a man who breaks under a charge once out of weakness, but a man who lies to you day after day after day? He’s not only a coward, he’s disloyal. You’re making a huge mistake.’

  Big Leo waved it away. “Cruxer’s still a mess over Lucia. He’ll outgrow it. Now, shut up. I’m trying to lecture you.”

  “Please, proceed,” Kip said, grinning.

  Big Leo held his gaze until Kip’s grin collapsed, then said, “Andross and Gavin couldn’t have done what you did—because they’re men invested in their own greatness. It makes them small next to you. Breaker, you didn’t get this far by being like anyone else. So. If the Lightbringer’s a man unmirrored, why the hell do you keep trying to be a mirror?”

  Kip had immediate justifications, defenses, denials—dodges: I didn’t know that stupid prophecy! Who else am I supposed to emulate if not the best and smartest people I know? And last and least true: I’m not trying to be them!

  But instead of giving breath to any of it, he nodded, taking receipt of the words, a silent promise to think on them.

  But Big Leo kept staring at him.

  Big Leo kept staring at him.

  It got awkward.

  “Big Leo, do you want to know what I like about you?”

  The big man pondered, eyes still locked on Kip.

  Then, just as Kip was about to tell him, Big Leo said, “No.”

  He walked away.

  Eventually, Kip turned back to his stars and his fire and his map, but none of them cast the light he needed.

  He went to his room, but he didn’t wake Tisis. He knew he should wake her, to talk, if not to make love. He should share the yoke that had settled heavy on his heart. But there weren’t even two hours until he must wake. He let her lie and told himself it was love.

  In the place of rest, instead he dreamed.

  He dreamed of Andross Guile.

  Chapter 28

  ~The Guile~

  40 years ago. (Age 26.)

  “I hope my art isn’t boring you?”

  Having only recently taken over as the head of my family and thereby made the lord of a house in crisis, my greatest expenditure in coming this deep into the Atashian highlands is in time. And this buffoon—whom I hope to make my father-in-law—is only making things worse. I’ve seen rocks worn down to nubs by the lapping of the sea’s waves more quickly than this man moves us through his art collection.

  “No indeed!” I say, and it’s true. The art isn’t boring me.

  “Just a few more pieces before we return. We simply must get back in time to see the fire dancers begin, young ’Andross. It’s a treasured tradition on these brisk autumn nights!”

  Lord Dariush gives ‘Andross’ the old aspirative at the beginning, so it sounds almost like ‘Handross.’ When I first arrived, Lord Dariush told me he is a casual student of languages, and he loved that my name hearkens back to a rare dialect of Old Parian.

  In the full week since then, I’ve deduced that by ‘casual’ he means he’s fluent in six dead tongues, and has done his own translations of several ancient masterpieces. He derides his own efforts as derivative, an idle pastime not worth the parchment he scrawls them on: ‘Still, it keeps me out of trouble. Some hunt fowls, I hunt vowels.’ He’d laughed. I’d chuckled along dutifully.

  An affable man, if inclined to laugh at his own jokes. By all reports, he is well loved here.

  He is the first obscenely wealthy person I’ve met of whom that is true.

  “You do love your traditions here, I’ve noticed. What is this?” The Dariush family has an art collection of wildly mixed quality, a common affliction among the newly rich: astonishing masterpieces cheek-by-jowl with quirky oddities and total garbage likely painted or drawn by family members.

  This piece is a very nice facsimile of a Gollaïr. I’ve never liked his work myself. He discovered a technique of imbuing pigments with mildly unstable luxin, making them astonishingly bright—and then used the paints everywhere in his art with no sense of proportion and only moderate skill.

  A second-rate natural scientist and a second-rate painter, Gollaïr’s real genius had lain in getting others to believe he was a genius. He had amassed a large entourage, a vast fortune, and a golden reputation.

  Then his pupil, Solarch, had shown what one could actually do with the tools Gollaïr had invented.

  No Solarchs still survive. It emerged years after his death that Gollaïr had dedicated himself to destroying the young artist in every way. Even Solarch’s eventual suicide had been suspicious, with some saying that perennial bogeyman the Order of the Broken Eye had been hired for the job. Before Solarch’s early death, Gollaïr had secretly, through many different agents, bought up every last one of the young man’s paintings. Then he’d burned them all before the young man’s eyes.

  Still, artists being assholes? What else was new?

  Later painters had built on his discoveries, so Gollaïr was still considered important, but mostly only to those who cared about the history of art, not the art itself.

  Later counterfeiters succeeded in making the luxin pigments stable, and actually made better paints than Gollaïr ever had. So, oddly, the counterfeits lasted longer and now looked much better than any of the originals did. This painting still shone—thus, a counterfeit.

  Even if it weren’t a counterfeit, though, I certainly wouldn’t hang his gaudy garbage on my walls.

  “You’ve been staring at this one for quite some time,” Lord Dariush said. “I’m so glad. It’s one of the real prizes of my collection. What do you think?”

  I really should have divided my time between more paintings if I was going to let my mind wander. He called it ‘one of his real prizes’?

  Ugh.

  “Is this a Gollaïr?” I ask. Please say you know it’s a counterfeit and you just like it. Bad taste I can deal with.

  “Oh yes! An original! You know Gollaïr? Not many p
eople do now.”

  Shit. I only wish I could say it aloud. I dream of the day when I have so much power that my sons may say aloud what they actually think.

  I purse my lips. “I’m afraid I don’t like his work at all, actually. My apologies. So much of art is subjective, though.”

  “Is it?” Lord Dariush asks.

  Please don’t try to convince me this trash is objectively good. I hurry on. “I certainly appreciate its importance, and I’m dazzled that someone could make luxins that still shine, what, two hundred and fifteen years later or something?” It’s the closest I can hint at questioning if he’s certain it’s not a fake. I shouldn’t have done it, but I can’t help myself.

  “Sounds about right,” he says.

  So he doesn’t know it’s a fake.

  A counterfeit, as the prize of his collection. It makes him look a fool, and I’ve come so far and invested so much of my precious time that I don’t want to believe it. I can’t marry into a family of fools.

  I won’t do that to my sons or the rest of my line. A man has a duty.

  But it just doesn’t fit. Lord Dariush came from nothing and is now one of the three wealthiest people in the world. A bad judge of art I can believe, but a fool? Has he just been the largest fish in an inbred backwater up here?

  “You really don’t like it?” he presses.

  I flash an awkward acknowledgment. “Maybe my judgment of the work itself is unfairly low because of what they say he did to that young artist—what was his name?” Maybe. And maybe I’d rather not be trapped talking to you out of politeness, old man, and would like to see the woman I had intended to make my bride.

  “You really don’t remember the young artist’s name?” he asks, teasing.

  So he hasn’t forgotten about the Guile memory. So many people do, no matter how they’ve heard it lauded.

  I wince and offer a rueful grin. “Solarch,” I say. “Gollaïr ruined him, right? Drove him to suicide?”

  “Or had him murdered,” Lord Dariush says. He waves dismissively. “Does that change your judgment of his work? Would you praise mediocre art crafted by someone because they are morally good? Or denigrate greatness because its creator was errant?”

  ‘Errant’ isn’t the word for a man who sets out to destroy a pupil who rightly looks to him for protection and friendship. “These are really deep critical waters,” I protest.

  “Or these are real critically deep waters,” he says.

  Not dumb, to shoot that back so quickly.

  Maybe a fool, but not dumb. Dim people ride a mule to their conclusions, bright ones a racehorse—but not always in the right direction.

  He’s still waiting. How did I get backed into having this conversation anyway?

  “Growing up, I had a friend whose mother fancied herself a singer. A strangling cat would make more pleasing noises. She was… wretched. But I liked her very much. So. If I can like a person but hate their art, I can do the opposite as well. Those who can’t do so reveal their own limitations, not Art’s. So no, I don’t think Gollaïr’s villainy makes me judge him more harshly. I think his art deserves harsh judgment. But I understand he was a local here, and thus nets a bit more praise on that account. Just as every parent thinks their child is especially gifted, though at least half must be wrong.”

  Lord Dariush weighs me, curious. “Am I in that half?” he asks. It isn’t clear whether he’s speaking about the painting or about his daughter. A moment later, I see that the ambiguity was intentional.

  Well, shit. Trying to avoid a ditch, I seem to have fallen into a pit instead.

  But you know what? To the seventh hell with him. All these games. Seven days here, and I’ve only seen Felia from afar, while her widowed elder sister, Ninharissi, and her mother and even her little brother have vetted me. These cretins and their traditions.

  “How much honesty do you want?” I ask.

  “More,” he says, his eyes fierce.

  “More? Do you think me dishonest, or guarded?” I ask, dragging that accusation out like a worm to writhe in the hot glare of Orholam’s Eye. Very well, then. I can use the tool that’s fit for the job, even if it’s honesty. But I go on before he has to answer. “Felia is clearly possessed of superior giftings when compared with all the people in the Seven Satrapies, else I’d not have trekked so far. But whether you think she is especially gifted among the circle of other eligible young women of our class, that I do not know, nor to what degree you believe so. Certainly, I should hope a father would see what is laudatory in his daughter.”

  And I expect it here, where there is a traditional bride price to be negotiated.

  He doesn’t blink, nor back down from his accusation of me giving him half truths. “One might do well to remember, then,” he says, “that the feelings that affect our judgments that impact the value we place on what we’re about to lose also affect the price we wish to exact for that loss, depending on our affection or disaffection for our counterpart.”

  “I’m not sure I follow.” Actually, I do. I just don’t like what I’m hearing.

  “If I might inflate the bride price for my beloved daughter because of my love for her—perhaps even while believing my judgment is objective—how else might my other feelings factor into a negotiation?”

  I’m not sure if he’s heading for a subtler point here, because this seems like the obvious dressed up in a philosopher’s garb. “If you don’t like me, you’re going to demand a higher price,” I say.

  Which is why I was trying not to call you stupid or blind or a fool with bad taste, old man.

  “I suppose, then,” he says, “if you are incapable of being a man unmirrored, then perhaps what you ought to have set as your first objective in this visit was figuring out exactly what I do like.”

  “‘A man unmirrored’?” I ask.

  “An old colloquialism. A man who doesn’t practice pulling faces in front of a mirror. A man who is himself. A forthright man,” he says.

  We have an absolute imbalance of power here, the two of us. He can say anything, unless my pride and I want to pack up and leave without even having spent even an hour with Felia.

  And then it dawns on me.

  This is all negotiation!

  The old fox. No wonder he’s rich.

  I see it now. Frustrate me with delays and promises while he knows I need to be elsewhere, and raise the stakes of my own time investment. The longer I’ve spent here, the harder and harder for me to walk away empty-handed. I’ll be more willing to compromise—without him even having to broach the subject.

  The manipulation of my emotions is lovely! Wonderful! Brilliant!

  It’s exactly what I’ve been hoping to add to the Guile line. I might even learn a thing or two from Lord Dariush.

  Well. Unlikely.

  But now I know the game. You want honesty from me, you wily old weasel? No, you want me to open the door to the henhouse so you don’t have to go to all the work of wriggling under the floorboards is all.

  “It really is sadly terrible, isn’t it?” he asks, pensive, staring at the painting.

  “Huh?” I ask.

  “Poor brushwork, uneven tone, what should be complementary colors ever so slightly off.”

  I say nothing, disconcerted. It seems safest.

  “But it’s not a forgery,” Lord Dariush says. “Gollaïr spent years figuring out his luxin pigments. He originally intended simply to sell his paints to artists, not use them himself. He knew he wasn’t a good painter. But he worked up a few demonstration paintings with garish colors, intending them only to show what was possible—and they caused a sensation. People called him a genius, and he quite liked it. He started acting the artist, hoping only to buy time, but the worse he behaved, the more he was hailed. The more he demanded, the more he was given. He very quickly trapped himself. He was a barely competent drafter with poor color differentiation. But he couldn’t get secret tutoring to become better at either drafting or at painting, because he was fa
mous for both. It’s common for successful artists to fear they’re impostors, but some are impostors.

  “And Gollaïr was their king. Finally, he was forced to take on a pupil by a patron whom he couldn’t refuse, and he found that the boy wasn’t just better than he; the boy was a master for the ages.

  “For years Gollaïr had kept his fraud going, and he had almost begun to believe he was as good as he told everyone else said he was. Solarch threatened it all. After destroying the boy, Gollaïr publicly retired, but secretly he planned a triumphant return. He was studying the boy’s technique from the one small painting that he hadn’t destroyed. Not a figure study—Gollaïr knew he could never match Solarch on that—but a landscape using the boy’s sense of color and much better luxin-work. And this painting is what Gollaïr made.” Lord Dariush smiles sadly, then goes on. “This shoddy thing is the last Gollaïr, and the only one whose pigments survive—that at least he learned from Solarch. But it still has all the same fundamental flaws of his other work. It was the best thing he ever did, but he never sold this last painting. He never even showed it. After he finished it, he retired to his estate and watched his reputation wither. He never picked up a brush again. It’s said—but this part I don’t know for certain—that every day he went to see this painting and his last Solarch. He kept them side by side, a reminder of what was and of what could have been.”

  “That’s a… great story,” I say blandly.

  “You don’t believe me?” he asks, offended.

  “How much honesty did you say you wanted again?” I ask.

  His eyes harden. “Don’t insult me.”

  “A secret painting, made years later,” I say in the same monotone. “Thus, it’s no wonder that it is slightly different in style, and features clearly superior drafting than all the others, or that it’s unknown to scholars. Thus it’s not just a very odd Gollaïr; it’s the best Gollaïr! It’s unique, precious, and has such juicy history attached to it. In truth, Lord Dariush, I don’t know whether you’re telling me a tale, or if someone told you one and you believed them. But if someone told me a story that drove up the price and addressed all my concerns about a forgery so conveniently, I’d keep both hands on my coin purse. Especially if this painting was only available for a very limited time before the seller had to leave.”