The Burning White

by Brent Weeks

  With shooting muskets and drafting he was similarly skilled. He almost made a great trainer even as his own physical skills declined with age.

  If he could have been trusted, he’d be exactly the type of person the Blackguard needed more of. Older warriors gave them continuity, which they desperately lacked. They’d seen it all, and done half of it, and knew how to fix what was wrong. People like that kept young Blackguards alive; they sharpened them and instilled tradition and pride in the whole corps.

  Teia had fully absorbed the Archers’ institutional disgust for Halfcock, but she wasn’t certain that he deserved to die.

  Him being an Order traitor would make sense of why he’d never retired, though. It had to be very difficult for the Order to get a man inside the Blackguard. Once they did, they wouldn’t want him to retire. No, they would demand he draft as little as possible so that he could live and be in place as long as possible.

  It made sense. It all pointed to Halfcock being in the Order. But a death sentence required a little more than suspicion.

  It doesn’t have to, T. You can kill anyone you want. You can kill anyone you want and get away with it. That’s what makes you scary. Call yourself a ghost or a fox or whatever you want. Your powers are the wet dream of anyone who hates.

  Orholam’s fear-shrunken stonesack, that—now, that was a pep talk.

  The door opened. It was him.

  Chapter 45

  “We’ve new reasons to fear our enemies,” Kip announced to his assembled thousands. His voice was carried with magic, but he still had to shout, and thus, keep it short. “But we’ve also new reasons to hope. I want you to know why we’re doing what we’re doing this morning.”

  The units had been arrayed so that they could be disentangled as quickly as possible without tipping Kip’s hand that he was splitting his army. Word of any vast change would inevitably get out, and Kip wanted his men to have a chance to outrun the rumors of their coming.

  Kip’s goal this morning was simple: he had to tell his people that he was unexpectedly abandoning them, without them feeling like he was abandoning them. This army had come together largely because of him, and now he was leaving them, and he needed to do so without destroying their morale.

  “We’ve had good news and bad,” Kip said. “The bad news? The Wight Who Calls Himself King has collected bane from all over the world. Maybe all of them. The bane immobilize drafters. Whoever faces him will do so without their drafters. The good news? Neither the Wight King nor his best soldiers will be at Green Haven. You won’t be facing them.”

  He could see relief wash over some faces. None of the drafters wanted to face a bane—something that could turn their own magic against them—that made their bowels turn to water. By the same token, none of the soldiers wanted to face wights and Blood Robe drafters without their own drafters.

  “So you might ask, ‘If they aren’t going to be at Green Haven, where will they be?’” Kip said. “What could be more important to them?” Kip let that sink in. He glanced at Ambassador Red Leaf, who shared the stage with him, and was maintaining a pleasantly interested expression, betrayed only by a worried tightness around his eyes: why was Kip going on about this?

  Kip continued, “They’re taking their best troops and all the bane to the Chromeria. The Chromeria only has a few fighters, and many drafters to protect themselves. And they don’t know what’s coming. You have fought against some of the Wight King’s best. Now imagine barely trained tower guards fighting wights and drafters, without any drafters of their own. Imagine what happens on the Jaspers when Koios wins over those he hates most.”

  Many of the men and women here had seen slaughters, had heard of neighboring villages completely wiped out. There were those here who cared little for the empire. It hadn’t done much to defend them, after all. Others felt they’d been let down, but still had great affection for Gavin Guile, who’d ended the Blood Wars and brought two decades of peace. But no one in this passionate people could think of another Blood Robe massacre of innocents as some abstraction.

  Cries went up, angry denials that they couldn’t let this happen. Curses.

  Few had gotten as far as thinking of what it might mean for them.

  “There is hope,” Kip said. “A slender one. I’ve learned that the Chromeria has a weapon that can defeat the bane. But the Chromeria doesn’t know it. It doesn’t know how to use it. And only one man can.”

  There were cries of ‘Luíseach!’ and ‘Lightbringer!’

  Kip bowed his head. They’d hadn’t been slow on that one at all.

  Then he lifted his head. “I don’t know if I’m the Lightbringer, but I know this: if I’m not, many thousands of innocents will die on the Jaspers, and the empire will fall, and the Wight King will come here next. We have one best chance to stop him—and that’s this chance, now. I don’t know if I’m the Lightbringer, but I know Orholam won’t abandon us now. I don’t know that I’m the Lightbringer—but I believe!”

  As they roared, and as the cries went up again, Kip’s entire form was bathed in light. It pulsed, and their awe was redoubled.

  Kip hadn’t done that.

  Dammit, wife, he thought. That was what that lotion she’d insisted on him using this morning was. A Prism-on-Sun-Day trick, Kip knew. He’d heard of it, though he’d never seen it himself. Still, old tricks endure because they work.

  He wondered idly how much that balm had cost, and how many soldiers he could’ve fed or given better armor for that doubtless-princely sum.

  Kip let them roar for a moment, then lowered his hands. He glanced back at her; she was smiling innocently, but she gave a small signal to a superviolet drafter and his shine went down to a low burn.

  “That leaves us with two problems,” Kip said. It still took them a moment to quiet, so he repeated. “Two problems: First, we have little time. Too little. Most of you know how slowly a full army moves versus an elite corps. If we all go, we’ll arrive only in time to pick over the bones of the dead. And the weapon will be destroyed. If we all go, we might as well not go at all. Second, if we all go, we abandon Green Haven. Even without the Wight King’s best men, the city will fall before we could possibly return. That is, if we all go.”

  Kip let it sink in. These were a people of loud emotions. It made them easy to give a speech to.

  “I’m not willing,” Kip said, “to abandon anyone to the Blood Robes’ mercy. But to save Green Haven and Big Jasper—to finally, once and for all stop the Blood Robes—we have to do something we don’t want to do. We have to split our forces. Only I can wield the weapon at the Chromeria. To move fast enough to get there in time, I can only take a small force with me. You say you believe in me”—“We do!” a man shouted; Kip flashed a smile—“and the first thing I’m going to do is test your belief by leaving. You could think I’m abandoning you. I wouldn’t blame you. But we each have a path laid out for us, and we have to serve as best we know. I’m charging you—most of you—with saving your brothers and sisters at Green Haven. It won’t be easy, but I wouldn’t leave you without giving you the best chance I know to be victorious.

  “May I reintroduce you to your old general and your new satrap—Satrap Ruadhán Arthur!”

  Ambassador Bram Red Leaf squeaked.

  Kip hadn’t exactly cleared that with him first.

  The moment stretched, and Kip gestured broadly, almost bowing, directing their attention to the carpet in front of the platform as if they could expect their new leader to walk out onto it at any moment.

  He heard a voice from below—Sibéal Siofra—saying, “You will wear it, damn you!”

  Kip muttered, “Any time now, Arthur. Timing is kind of import—”

  The carpet exploded upward in a mass of muscle and fur and sharp teeth as Conn Arthur’s giant grizzly Tallach leapt out of the hole the carpet had been concealing. Thank Orholam that Tallach didn’t also snarl. Kip had specifically instructed that none of the muskets be charged this morning and that none of the
archers have their quivers or any arrows at hand. Some magically appeared anyway—but no one loosed an arrow in their shock.

  Tallach stood on his hind legs, and from this special harness that allowed him to stand upright with the great bear, Conn Arthur suddenly appeared, standing at the bear’s head. He was dressed as they were accustomed to seeing him—as a warrior, the chief of the will-casters, first of the Night Mares—with only a crown of laurels to denote his new position as Satrap of Blood Forest.

  The acclaim was thunderous. Conn Arthur’s—and Tallach’s—absence had been felt keenly. This people loved him. If Kip was the Lightbringer, he belonged to all the satrapies—but Conn Arthur was theirs alone. He was Blood Forest, magnified, larger than life, from his red-hair-carpeted skin to his massively chiseled muscles to his giant grizzly to his huge emotions, both joy and grief and rage.

  But Ambassador Red Leaf had almost recovered. Kip walked over to stand next to him, yielding the stage.

  “This is not at all what we agreed,” the ambassador began. Kip could tell he was working himself up to real rage. “You were to—”

  “I know who you serve,” Kip said.

  “What are you—”

  “My only question is why,” Kip said quietly so they might not be overheard, “why did you turn traitor?”

  “This is outrageous!” Bram hissed. He didn’t shout it.

  “Your lands are where Koios has been keeping his army, aren’t they?” Kip said. “But it’s not just land to you. It’s people, isn’t it? Your sister hasn’t appeared in the capital in months. Nor your parents. Your son. All of them were last seen in lands that have gone dark. Hostages?”

  “Nonsense. They fled long before there was any threat. They’re in Varris Hollow and Glen Everry.”

  “So you admit there is a threat,” Kip said. “Those lands are reputed to be empty.”

  Bram gawped.

  Tallach had dropped to all fours and walked to the side of the stage, where Conn Arthur swung down easily. Still the applause continued.

  “I think,” Kip said, “that you aren’t a traitor. Not exactly. I think you had to decide between loyalties, and you decided your loyalty to those you love came before your loyalty to a satrap you don’t even respect and a cause you believed was doomed.”

  Bram looked at Kip, and something in him collapsed.

  He nodded.

  “I’m going to tell you what’s going to happen,” Kip said. “You’re going to sign this paper. You’re going to tell my wife everything you know”—Kip forestalled the man’s stuttering objection—“which may be more than you think. You’ll stay with Conn Arthur’s—pardon me—Satrap Arthur’s forces for the next month. Enough time to prove it’s your signature, and to make the terms binding. Then you’ll be allowed to escape if you wish. In the meantime, I will send two elite units of Night Mares at speed to your family’s holdings. They’ll attempt to save everyone they can. I do that not because you’re innocent but because they are. Your family will keep their holdings, but you will withdraw from public life and sign a full confession, which we will keep secret. If you cause more trouble, you’ll be executed as the traitor you are. Deal?”

  Conn Arthur came up front and center, as the ambassador’s throat bobbed and his eyes blinked furiously.

  “Deal,” Bram said.

  Before the word had faded from the air, Tisis had pushed an ink-wet quill in his hand and a parchment before him.

  “What does it say?” he asked, his eyes imploring Kip.

  “Does it matter?” Kip asked.

  He signed it and affixed his seal.

  Conn Arthur—no, High Lord Satrap Ruadhán Arthur, legitimately now—launched into a speech. He hated speeches, and hadn’t known that Kip was about to make him a satrap, either, until the moment Sibéal had forced him to wear the laurel crown, so maybe it was no wonder he’d let the applause go on longer than he would have otherwise.

  “Ten years ago,” Satrap Arthur said, “there was a bump in the silver mines at Laurion—you know the term? It’s a major collapse underground—and whenever it happens, everyone comes running to try to dig out those poor bastards who are trapped inside.”

  Kip’s brow furrowed. He’d just used this little story this morning on Conn Arthur himself as he was convincing him to lead most of the army to Green Haven.

  “To rescue their friends, the miners had to squeeze into areas that were so tight you couldn’t swing a pick. So they cut half the handles off. You ever work with a tool with half the handle? Makes it exhausting, right? But it was all they could do. No choice. They had to take turns of just a few minutes. But each did what he or she could. They pulled together, and they did the job. They saved whoever could be saved. Now, on an ordinary day, you’d call a pickax with half a handle broken. You’d either throw it out or wait until it was repaired before you’d use it for work. But on that day, that broken tool was the only thing that could save lives.

  “This job ain’t what I want. But we got no time. So we don’t get the choice of having the fight on the terms we’d like. We only get to choose if we’re going to go help and save those who can be saved, or if we’re going to give up. There’s some days I feel broken, like I should be thrown out. Maybe you do, too. Guess what? I don’t need you to be whole. I need you to be here. I need you to be willing to do what you can. Because in this fight, in this satrapy, you’re exactly, exactly what I need. So will you serve?”

  They shouted.

  “Will you join me?”

  Now they shouted again, louder. For a guy who said he didn’t know how to give a speech, Satrap Arthur wasn’t mucking it up too badly. He drew his sword.

  “Will you fight?!” Arthur demanded, and he thrust the sword at the sky.

  Weapons raised, they roared together, and Tallach roared with them, and it was a sound that shook the heavens.

  A minute later, General Antonius took the platform, and began splitting the joyful army, the men bragging to one another about how they were going to plant their regimental flags in various unlikely or even anatomically impossible places of the Blood Robes’ anatomy. Attending to all the logistics were Tisis and Ferkudi, feeding General Antonius all the necessary details. The Great River was utterly blocked, so Kip would be heading overland with less than two thousand of his most elite Nightbringer raiders, with two horses for everyone, the fastest of the wagons, and the best gear possible. But they wouldn’t be taking any Night Mares, except for whatever of the Cwn y Wawr they could reach with messages to ask to join them.

  Arthur made his way over to Kip. “So,” he said, “how’d it go on your end with the ambassador?”

  “You did exactly what we needed,” Kip said.

  “That mean I’m…”

  “Legitimate?” Kip asked. The word had always been bladed for him, the bastard, but now it rolled out easily. “Yes, you are. They’ll need to see the treaty, of course, and there is the matter of making sure there’s a satrapy to be satrap of… but, yeah.”

  “This is, um”—Arthur adjusted the laurel crown on his head—“really weird. With where I was just a couple days ago.”

  “Uh-huh,” Kip said.

  “Say, you had me and Tallach jump up out of a pit on purpose, didn’t you? Wait. You made me climb out of a pit—literally! You bastard.”

  “Maybe it was just good staging for the speech,” Kip said. But he smiled.

  “Maybe.”

  “Also, I don’t know how you’re calling me a bastard. You used my story.”

  Arthur grinned back. “Hell, like I know how to write a speech! Anyway, something something, imitation, flattery, something?”

  “I should’ve been way harder on you,” Kip said. “But there’s no worse punishment I could think of than making you a satrap. Every boring meeting you have to sit through in the future, I want you to think if maybe you should’ve been nicer to me.”

  “Yeah, thanks!” Arthur said with a rueful grin.

  Orholam but it was good to
have him back, and have him back with some of his old spirit animating him.

  The big man said, “You know, I just thought of something. The thing about using a pickax with half a handle: it’s exhausting.”

  “Yeah?”

  “So was that your subtle way of telling me it’s exhausting to work with me?” Arthur asked.

  “Dammit,” Kip said, “I was planning to hit you with that some other day when you were being a pain in the ass.”

  Conn Arthur laughed.

  Kip thought it was the first time he’d heard the man laugh, ever. It was a magical sound.

  And for the first time in a long time, Kip thought that maybe, just maybe, they were gonna be all right.

  Chapter 46

  Before Teia could move, Halfcock doubled back suddenly at some sound she hadn’t heard. Teia froze from old instinct, though she was invisible and hadn’t made a sound.

  A woman in her shift came to the door to say goodbye.

  Probably not a prostitute, then.

  Halfcock gave the woman a kiss, on the lips.

  Probably not his sister, then.

  And squeezed her butt.

  Teia really hoped it wasn’t his sister.

  Playfully, the woman tried to pull him back inside.

  Teia looked away. She didn’t want to see anything approaching tenderness. She reminded herself that it was in this woman’s economic interests to feign feelings for Halfcock. A mistress is more a mummer than a lover. This woman was interested in Halfcock’s coin stick, not his meat stick.

  Better?

  Better, that derisive part of her that reminded her too much of Murder Sharp admitted.

  Teia didn’t know what she’d expected, but the woman was neither very pretty nor very young, both of which were things Teia associated with kept women. But then again, maybe if this woman were very pretty or very young, she wouldn’t live in this neighborhood, nor be a mistress to a man like Halfcock, who had a terrible personality and—despite his skills—wasn’t wealthy. The lowest level of Blackguards were expected to be young, and their elders didn’t want them to have too much money on their hands lest they be corrupted by all those vices that the poor avoided.