The Burning White

by Brent Weeks

  “Shit,” Teia said. She didn’t want to, but she felt a kinship for him. The job assassinating the Nuqaba had been like that.

  “Yeah. I botched the job. I wonder how different things would be if I hadn’t. Not just for me, either.

  “She was staying in a part of Big Jasper I didn’t know well back then. I asked directions from some idiot kopi seller, and he told me the wrong street, gave me directions to Farhad Street instead of Farbod Street. Maybe I misunderstood his accent, or he mine. I broke into the house, and there was no young woman there, but there was a bed and a woman’s clothing in the trunk, so I waited all night for her to come back, thinking I was at the right place. Some tavern girl comes back after dawn, and it’s not her. Description is totally wrong. I ask someone else out in the street and figure out what I did wrong—and I run. I get to Felia’s house and she’s gone. I’m reckless as all hell—knowing this might mean my death if I fail, and I figure out she’d gone to the harbor. I got that feeling in my gut the whole time I’m running there—and I get there in time to see her ship disappear on the horizon. I ask where the boat’s going. I ask for other boats going the same way, though I have no way to pay for passage. It turns out her rich daddy’s boat is one of the fastest around, and no one knows where it’s headed anyway. I ask if there’s a boat heading for her home port, because I know I’m in it deep. I’m willing to gamble going to the wrong port on the bare chance I can fix it. But there isn’t. Not for a week. And I know the Old Man won’t let me live that long if I don’t meet him when I’d said.”

  Holy hells, Teia thought.

  “No matter how I practiced it in my head, it all sounded like a lame excuse, an unforgivable failure. The Old Man’s not a fool. He doesn’t expect perfection. He tolerates failure from those valuable to him. But this? A rich woman allowed to escape, when the Old Man was already suspicious? I’d look untrustworthy. And that he doesn’t tolerate. So it was life-or-death. Do you know I didn’t really have good teeth beforehand? Didn’t even think about my smile. Didn’t take care of myself. I’d probably not choose to keep a single one of those teeth now. Not like you. Very fortunate, you are.”

  She did not want to hear him rhapsodize about her teeth, not right now. Not ever. “That’s… that’s not the story you told in the Mirror Room,” Teia said.

  “Well, all that was a lie. I was trying to scare you into not getting distracted or greedy when you’re on a job. The real problem with taking a bribe is that every delay gives your target more chances to get away or be saved. Don’t do that.”

  Please stay utterly un-self-aware, Teia thought. “So, how am I supposed to know that this story is true this time?” she asked, trying to change the subject.

  “Does it look like I’m trying to amuse anyone?”

  “So that’s why you broke all your own teeth? Because you were afraid the Old Man would think you’d taken a payoff to let that girl go?”

  Too late, as he sucked air through his perfect dentures, she realized she shouldn’t have said he was afraid. How could you call a man a coward who had shattered all his own teeth in order to live?

  “I’m sorry—”

  “Point is,” Murder Sharp cut her off angrily, “I never had a choice. Not from the moment I was born with a paryl talent I didn’t ask for. Elijah ben-Kaleb didn’t have a choice who I would kill for the Chromeria, and Murder Sharp didn’t have a choice who to kill for the Order. They’re just the fuckin’ same.

  “Maybe that’s what she meant,” he mumbled. “Weird fuckin’ lady. No coward, for sure, but she didn’t even fight. Couldn’t figure that out. ‘Son of Separation.’ Maybe this is how I separate myself from them.”

  He looked up at Teia with sudden resolve. “That’s why I ain’t killed you yet. Not fondness. Not weakness, for sure. You’re gonna be my proof. I’m better than them. Better than your master, better than mine. Better than Orholam Himself, if He’s up there, who didn’t give me one choice since He cursed me with a talent for paryl. I, Elijah ben-Zoheth, am the god who holds you in his hand. I will give you the choice no one ever gave me. You read this folio, and you make your choice. Join us for real, or fight me, or run.

  “You join the Order for real, and I’ll never let ’em know you were a spy from the get-go. Or you can run. As long as you leave a trail so it’s clear that you’re running far away, the Order doesn’t have anyone to spare right now to send after you. Or if they send me, now or later, I won’t find you, on my honor. Or, if you’re just that damned stubborn and stupid, and you want to fight…” He paused.

  He sucked spit through his teeth a few times.

  “Tell you what, I’ll be as, uh, what-you-call-it? fair? sporting? generous? as I wish they would’ve been to me. You choose to fight, I won’t tell them even then, unless you blow your own cover. You aren’t supposed to be on the Jaspers at all. I haven’t reported you—and I won’t. But if you side with the Chromeria, I’ll hunt you down myself, and I’ll kill you. No mercy, no second chances. So I guess you’ll have to try to kill me first. It can be a little hunt. That could be fun. We’ll getta see who’s best. Maybe I’ll have a real challenge for once.

  “So you choose. You want to join the Order for real, you show up at the Great Fountain tomorrow at noon. If you want to run, you best be on a boat off the Jaspers by then. If you want to fight me, uh… hmm… don’t do either of those, I guess? Because if you’re not at the Great Fountain at noon, the next time I see you, you die.”

  “I understand,” Teia said.

  He loosed her bonds, and she rubbed feeling back into her limbs. “Eyes,” he said.

  She made sure he could see her eyes weren’t flared to paryl.

  “Now, go,” he said, handing her the folio. “You have some reading to do.”

  Teia took it carefully.

  “No, wait,” Sharp said suddenly. “Uh, if you run, I can’t risk you using one of your old codes in the note, so just address it to your handler and, you know, ‘I’m sorry’ or something. Nothing else. No secret ink or codes or any of that. I’m ready to give you your life, but I don’t need you endangering mine. So just leave that in your old bunk, under the pillow.”

  Where Sharp would look at it, of course.

  “That would give you their name. I’d be betraying my handler.” Unless I put someone else’s name on it?

  Dammit, I could have put that asshole Grinwoody’s name on the note, and the Order would have killed him. Granted, shoving an innocent into the path of an arrow in flight like that wasn’t exactly how a Blackguard was supposed to protect her ward, but between Karris and Grinwoody? Grinwoody could burn.

  Shit. Teia’d thought too slow.

  “Besides,” Teia said. “If I leave anything without the right codes, my handler will know the Order got to me. Or some random innocent might take it.”

  Actually, that last wouldn’t be a problem for Sharp. He didn’t care that the message got through; he only cared to see the name on it.

  Again, she wasn’t thinking fast enough.

  But he did look confused.

  Sharp cursed. “True, true. Uh…”

  Teia realized then that he really was at a loss. It wasn’t a trap, or a devious plot by the Old Man to confirm her handler was Karris—whom he would surely have suspected.

  “Just the words ‘I’m sorry’?” Teia asked. “Then if someone does pass it on to my handler, they might be expected to recognize my handwriting, but no one’s going to learn anything else from it, and if you see it, you’ll know that I’m really—”

  “No,” he said. “You’d leave that note to try to trick me, even if you planned to fight me. Sorry, nope. That’s the price. Do it my way if you want to run. Name probably won’t be a surprise to the Old Man anyway. Probably will know who you’re working for immediately as soon as that white boat gets back and you’re not on it.”

  Shit! Sharp had gotten to the right solution through animal cunning instead of intelligence.

  Or at least the wrong sol
ution for Teia. If she put a name on that letter, she had to be willing for that person or anyone else who mistakenly touched the letter to die. If one of her Blackguard friends—Gill Greyling maybe? Essel?—tidied her bunk, they might find the note. Surely the Order would kill them, just in case they were a contact. Or it could be one of the slaves who tidied the floor. Even if she put that snake Andross’s name on it, murdering him might be exactly the wrong thing for the Chromeria and the war.

  And she sure as hell wasn’t going to betray Karris. Karris was a betrayer. Teia wasn’t.

  Murder Sharp was shitty at this, but shitty in such a way that the choice he thought was giving her was actually no choice at all. He was a stupid man, but Teia wasn’t much smarter, was she? She hadn’t even thought fast enough to outsmart a moron.

  Kip would’ve.

  “Oh,” Sharp said, like it was an afterthought, but there was a cruel edge to it, and Teia realized that what was coming was a trap. Sharp’s cunning wasn’t the kind that thought of every avenue for every plan; it was the kind that sought out chinks in the armor, like paryl slipping through the skin to your heart. “You’ve deceived us before. So if you choose to join the Order, you’ll need to do something this time to convince me that you’re serious. Because that’s the first thing a spy would lie about, right? You already lied to join us, so you’d just do it again, right? So I’ll need some proof. By your actions.”

  Oh God.

  Sharp said, “You’re my shitty tin mirror, so let’s give you a test, don’t you think? Just like I had.”

  She could tell he loved the dread he’d put on her face.

  “It’d have to be something a spy would have a problem with doing, wouldn’t it? Killin’ some slave would be nothing to a tough, hardened little bitch like you, right?” he asked. “Nah, you’re way past that. And we’ll have to have a time pressure, so you don’t get all sneaky smart or something and try to fool me. By tomorrow, then. By noon. Still meeting me at the Great Fountain.”

  “Tomorrow?!” Teia protested. “Are you forgetting that you tried your best at your task—and failed? And you’re so much better than me. Always have been. You have to give me more time than—”

  “You’re right,” he said, cutting her off. She shut up instantly. She wasn’t out of this place yet; she couldn’t afford to disrespect him. He seemed to actually be thinking about her objection. “It’d have to be something that’s not hard to do, just difficult. Or do I mean difficult, but not hard? Hmm.”

  He was mocking her now, and she wasn’t sure exactly how, which made her feel stupid.

  I’m going to enjoy killing you, aren’t I? You piece of shit.

  A glowing crescent of his white teeth seemed to illuminate the shack with Sharp’s cruel glee. He said, “If you want to join the Order for real, prove it by bringing me a sack. Waterproof. With a head in it.”

  “What?!”

  “I don’t trust you not to just go find some corpse, so I want to see a paryl blood clot in the brain, and dual hemorrhages so the eyes go all blackballed. It’s a bad way to go. But on the other hand, it doesn’t matter who you choose. Choose whoever you like. That makes it easy.”

  “I…” Always before, Teia had been assigned whom to murder. Someone else had chosen. This would mean choosing some innocent herself. Choosing some stranger and killing them in a horrific way.

  How do you choose which innocent dies?

  “Wait, wait. With your skills now, that’s not difficult or hard, is it? You’d just kill another slave. You’ve already shown you’re perfectly willing to do that.”

  “I don’t—”

  “No, no, I’ve got an idea,” Sharp said. He nodded to himself. “Yeah, yeah, that’ll do it, I think. A kid. Bring me a kid’s head. You know, a little squirt. Say, eight to ten years old.”

  “A—a child?” Teia asked. One summer when she was growing up, there’d been someone in the city who snatched kids around her little sister’s age. A few of the girls were found mutilated. More simply disappeared. The snatchings stopped after that horrible summer, but no one who lived through that time could ever hear about a missing child without remembering the horror and fear.

  Now Teia was going to be the person who snatched and mutilated a child, like a bloodthirsty ghost in the night.

  “Eight to ten years old,” Sharp said. He pushed her out the door. “After you read the folio, you’ll know why.”

  Chapter 36

  “I suppose it should sound ungrateful to say that I was rather looking forward to being dead,” Orholam said.

  “You didn’t look like you were looking forward to it out there,” Gavin said, cracking one eye open. His shade had moved away from him, and it was miserably hot on the beach. He could only imagine he was already on his way to a fierce sunburn. And the damned sand fleas…

  “Oh, I’m terrified of dying. Being dead, though? That’s the thing.” Orholam was sitting cross-legged on the sand, heedless of the bugs, dirt, and his own nudity.

  Gavin stood up slowly, his body afire with aches. He still had the damned gun-sword strapped to him. Neither blade nor straps had made for easy rest. He began brushing off the worst of the dirt and bugs. “You’re right,” he said.

  “I am?” Orholam asked.

  “You do sound ungrateful.”

  “I meant to be the opposite,” Orholam said. “Thank you. I was wrong about you.”

  “Well, I only did it for one reason,” Gavin said. He gestured for them to move off the beach.

  Orholam stood and then started walking. “And what’s that?”

  “Lots of men claim Orholam saved them from drowning,” Gavin said.

  “But what man can say he saved Orholam from drowning?” Orholam said. He chuckled.

  Gavin grunted, irritated the man had taken his punchline.

  “Guess we should both be grateful there’s an island here at all, huh? If the story had been true about the isle sinking when the reef rose, we’d be shark supper.”

  “There’s looking on the bright side!” the old man said.

  Gavin grunted again. “How bad’s my back? It cut me.”

  “Not terrible. Need to wash it, though, if you want to live.”

  Gavin examined the rest of himself for injuries. Arm had rope burn, but not bad. His head ached, tongue was dry, left leg hurt, but that was just a lightly pulled muscle. A few calluses torn off his hands. They’d gotten soft in his prison.

  His left eye pit hurt like hell. The patch had stayed on, but saltwater had gotten into the hole, and sand was all around it. If he got sand into the empty orb of his eyeball, he’d be in such agony he wouldn’t be able to accomplish anything.

  Fantastic. Washing that was going to be just great.

  Assuming, of course, they could find clean water at all.

  “I already searched everything that washed up,” Orholam said. “Only a little luck.” He rapped on a little barrel small enough to fit under his arm.

  “Black powder? That’s enormous luck! With this musket, we can hunt!”

  “Not powder. Salt fish,” Orholam said apologetically. “Keep us for a few days if we can find some water. But nothing else. Maybe more’ll wash in later, but I’d say we head inland and see if we can find the pilgrims’ waystations. Whether they’ll hold anything useful after a few centuries is another question, though.”

  “You couldn’t find anything good?” Gavin asked, looking out to the lagoon. Fish was great, but water was more important, and tools to hunt with would’ve been the best.

  He’d been so concerned about the beach and his own injuries that this was the first time he’d looked around. They were inside the great circular wall of mist that made the White Mist Tower; it was utterly clear here, with blue sky high above. The island was large enough that it would have streams if not a river, but that wall, maybe five hundred paces high, made Gavin claustrophobic. The outside world didn’t exist here.

  Halfway through alien cloud, part of their ship was visible pe
rched on the reef crest. The stern, waist, and sails were completely gone, battered into flotsam, spread throughout the lagoon with the floating dead. Only the forecastle survived, with The Compelling Argument pointed at a jaunty angle into the sky. There appeared to be a figure moving there, but it might have been Gavin’s imagination.

  “Is that…?” he asked.

  “Uluch Assan. Yes,” Orholam said.

  Gunner. “Hard man to kill,” Gavin said.

  “Not the only one,” Orholam said.

  “Don’t suppose there’s much we can do to help him,” Gavin said. Though, come to think of it, he wasn’t sure that he really wanted to help the crazy pirate.

  “He’s fishing,” Orholam said, shielding his eyes against the sun.

  Gavin couldn’t see that well. But he chuckled. If only he could be like that madman, taking the day with equanimity, unperturbed by sea demons and reefs and shipwrecks and brushes with death.

  “Huh!” Orholam said. “It was actually true!”

  “What? What was?”

  “I told him if he didn’t want that cannon to fall into the sea, he’d have to keep his feet close. I thought I meant just nearby.”

  Gavin squinted and shaded his eyes. Gunner was moving, testing the deck, trying to step off it for some insane reason, perhaps thinking he could walk around the reef to some easier point to swim? But as soon as he lifted his foot, the entire deck began to shift, the end lifting, as the weight of The Compelling Argument threatened to tip it into the gap in the reef. The captain had to stay on the deck counterbalancing the big gun or it would tip into the sea.

  Gunner sat back down on the deck railing and picked up his fishing pole again.

  “Man doesn’t know it’s already lost,” Gavin said.

  “What you love isn’t lost while you still have a mind to save it,” Orholam said. “Sometimes.”

  He saw them looking at him, waved, and saluted with the skin of brandy. He seemed entirely unworried.

  Gavin spread his arms helplessly like, ‘We can’t come save you.’