The Burning White

by Brent Weeks

  The ground heaved upward for one moment and staggered him. Cruxer, looking over his shoulder, already slowing, was thrown headlong.

  The bucking earth demolished Kip’s chance to jump. He felt the ground go soft under his left foot and saw it disappear from where he was going to plant his right.

  He blasted green luxin down as hard as he could, but carrying Tisis, it was too little to compensate; they were too heavy together.

  Left hand under her ribs, he heaved her to safety, and plunged toward the depths.

  He hit the wall of the abyss gracelessly and caught the edge, lost it, and grabbed some roots overhanging the blank wall. He slipped, slid down, and then caught a double handful.

  He didn’t even think to draft. The wind had been knocked from him when he hit the wall, and all he could do was clamp his eyes shut and hold on as tight as a kid fighting his big brother for a sweet.

  The roots were tearing up his hands.

  “Kip, let go!” Tisis shouted from above. She sounded in pain.

  She must have said, ‘Don’t let go,’ and he’d missed it. “I won’t!” he shouted.

  “No, Breaker. Let go,” Cruxer said, suddenly there with her, looking over the edge of the abyss at him.

  Kip looked down. His feet were almost touching the sunken ground.

  Oh.

  He dropped onto the churned grass and sand.

  Kip turned. The first thing he noticed was that there was a platform right where they’d all been standing moments before. It was untouched by the seismic chaos, its grass still undisturbed. Ah, because whoever had hidden the mirror hadn’t meant it to be a death trap for whoever triggered it.

  If he’d listened to his wife and looked a bit longer before messing with the control panel to a massive subterranean structure, he would have certainly seen it.

  He glanced over at her. She was rubbing her ribs as if he’d bruised her when he’d thrown her to safety. Safety. What a hero.

  But finally, his eye was drawn to the most obvious part of the gigantic machinery that had emerged from the soil. Perhaps working on the same principles as the mighty escape lines running from the Prism’s Tower down into the city, massive counterweights must have dropped into hidden caverns in the earth in order to lever a great disk and a frame into the air, thirty paces high, with a huge pitted silver disk barely smaller than that held vertically in the frame.

  But even as he watched, that silver casing cracked open, and a sheet of it slid off, first one side and then the other, revealing a giant lens and a giant mirror. Each cover spun out slowly, balancing on opposite arms.

  There was no sign of the green temple below them, though. When this had all been buried, only the frame and mirror had been rigged to rise.

  “Well, that was invigorating,” Cruxer said, dusting himself off.

  “Been too long since I nearly died,” Big Leo said.

  “Most bracing,” Ben-hadad said, through obvious pain. “Speaking of braces…” He looked down at his leg, where his knee brace had snapped. “Looks like I have some repairs to do.”

  “I said ‘Oops,’” Kip said, his heart still racing.

  “You know, boss,” Winsen said, not even being sarcastic about the ‘boss’ part, “I can protect you from all sorts of threats, but if you’re gonna try to kill yourself, you just let me know that’s what you’re doing and I will get out of the way.”

  “Look at this thing,” Tisis said, ignoring her own dishevelment from her fall, and not saying she’d told him so. “This is amazing. A gigantic weapon, hidden by the ancients. And we found it! It’s actually here!”

  “We don’t know how to use it, so it’s not really a weapon yet,” Ben-hadad said. “Except maybe against impulsive Tyreans who can be hurt by very minor falls.”

  “But he could’ve figured it out,” Tisis said. “Liv thought he could’ve, and so do I. And if he had, we could’ve used this to destroy the White King’s army. I mean, if we’d gotten here before they left.”

  “Shit,” Cruxer said.

  “Shit,” the others agreed.

  “I said ‘Oops,’” Kip said forlornly.

  Chapter 60

  Another day, another twenty meetings and two hundred letters, Karris thought as she ate her supper at her desk.

  The latter was an exaggeration, but not by much. The trouble was that there was no telling which was hiding key information in plain sight: This rumor of sea monsters? This one of new lux storms in the Cracked Lands? This sighting of Gavin Guile smashing the Everdark Gates? This rumor about the pirate queen launching a laughably massive fleet to prey on Sun Day pilgrims? No, it was Pash Vecchio’s fleet! And he was coming to invade Big Jasper!

  Karris sighed, taking another spoonful of a delicious soup that she really wasn’t appreciating as she should. There were fleets coming here—two of them at least, and decked out for war: one under Corvan Danavis and one under King Ironfist. And there were certainly thousands of pilgrims banded together, and there were certainly many pirates, too. But her spies themselves should winnow out the most ridiculous of the rumors—except she’d told them not to, fearing she’d miss something important.

  Pash Vecchio had (possibly? likely?) worked with the White King before, and Gavin had sunk the pirate king’s flagship, but such a blow was more likely to send the cur scurrying back to his islands than to try to take vengeance on a man he and everyone else believed to be dead.

  Meanwhile, here, the Chromeria’s fleet, gathered to conduct its own exercises in preparation for Corvan Danavis’s arrival (and Karris’s hoped-for invasion of Blood Forest—which she still needed to figure out how to pitch to Andross), had heard a rumor of some other pirate fleet and had sailed out immediately, without even telling Karris which direction they were headed.

  It would be a good exercise for them, as long as they didn’t sink any pilgrim vessels on their way. Karris had dispatched Blackguard skimmers to find out which direction they’d gone, and to check into another report she had that somehow that moron Caul Azmith had weaseled his way back into a small command with big sway. The nobleman had been the general who’d gotten tens of thousands of soldiers slaughtered at the Battle of Ox Ford. Those losses had nearly driven the Ruthgaris and the Parians to surrender and ally with the Blood Robes. Caul had resigned in disgrace before he could be fired. But the money to support the new fleet had to come from somewhere, and she’d known that the Azmiths were desperate for Caul to be given a chance to redeem himself. She’d allowed that he could serve with the fleet but had barred him from command.

  She’d meant all command. The Azmiths had agreed. Now it seemed they’d gone around her. They’d apparently put him in a subcommand in control of a quarter of the fleet, under an admiral whom Azmith’s familial connections allowed him to bully.

  She had about a week to decide how to chasten them without losing their monetary support. If all else failed, she was going to have to bring Andross in on this one. He was good at bringing the recalcitrant to heel.

  But still.

  She knew she shouldn’t set hopeless goals, but she couldn’t help herself.

  Avoid asking Andross’s help with the Azmiths.

  Karris pushed her chair back. Her fingers were ink-stained. She rolled her neck.

  Go for a massage.

  There, now that was a good goal.

  “Caleen,” Karris said, to one of her secretary’s slaves, “would you check on Rhoda’s availability to give me a massage tomorrow morning after training?”

  The girl hurried out.

  Moments later, there was a knock at the door.

  Karris looked for her Blackguard to open the door, then realized he’d been called away to do something or other quickly.

  Huh, I have to open my own door. And it feels like an inconvenience! I really am getting soft.

  Karris stood and stretched. Her soreness reminded her of the morning’s training as much as of the day’s sitting. She wasn’t getting literally soft, at least. Not anymo
re.

  She wasn’t quite back to the body she’d had at twenty—but maybe that ship had sailed, too. Dammit.

  She opened the door with a grin on her face. Her son Zymun stood there, smiling thinly. There were no Blackguards at their immediate posts outside the door.

  Her blood went cold.

  “Mother? May I come in?”

  “I’m afraid I’m terribly busy—”

  “Won’t take but a moment.” He glanced down the hall, where a Blackguard was striding back toward her post. Just someone taking an unscheduled break. Overstretched forces.

  Was Karris going to throw him out? Make a scene? She’d avoided him until now, and knew he was furious about it, but throwing him out would shame him and make an enemy of him forever.

  “Come in,” she said reluctantly.

  He looked around the room as he stepped inside, and his eyes lit with a quick, smug smile.

  She turned and walked toward her desk to create space between them. She would not kiss him in greeting.

  He cleared his throat, and she barely heard the scrape of wood under the sound.

  Before she spun on her ankle, he’d barred the door.

  “Open it,” she commanded coldly. Her eyes went wide, but her spectacles were in her pocket, and drafting green from her curtains would take time.

  “Mother?” he said plaintively. His shoulders slumped. “Are you scared of me?! What have I done to deserve this? Who’s turned you against me? How have I offended you? One day we’re talking and laughing over private dinners, and then my grandfather tells me you’ve taken a secret hatred for me into your heart. He forbade me to come see you. Forbade me even to apologize for anything I might have done… I’m so ashamed of myself. Can you just tell me what I did?”

  “Your grandfather said what?!” Karris asked.

  “Mother, I hurt you somehow, and now you’re joining my enemies. I don’t understand!” His eyes filled with tears.

  Andross! That bastard! He’d pretended he was going to take Karris’s side, and instead, this? Sowing more discord?

  Zymun sank to a crouch, ashamed, and covered his eyes with his hands. “He said… he said he’d fought you for me, but you were pushing the Spectrum to get me disavowed as Prism-elect. He said he didn’t know why you hated me, but that once you hated, you never turned away from your wrath, that you never forgave anyone. Not ever in all your life. He forbade me to come speak to you of it. Told me I’d only arouse you further. But he doesn’t know you like I do. You’re not like that… are you?”

  She stepped forward, aghast. Furious. What the hell was Andross playing at?!

  Her only warning was that Zymun didn’t look up as he said the last words—‘are you?’

  He didn’t search her face for any sign of forgiveness.

  Her old Blackguard senses shrieked at her, but too late.

  Zymun pounced, tackling her, and crushing her under his larger body. His eyes were full of color, but as devoid of feeling as a snake’s. He’d hidden them with his hands to hide that he was drafting.

  Now luxin snared her hands, her throat.

  He punched her hard in the stomach, but she took the blow with practiced ease. She immediately began wending a foot up for a wrestling hold—

  —and stopped as he pricked a dagger point under her eyelid.

  The flat, dead look in his eyes gave her no read.

  If he killed her, they’d put him on Orholam’s Glare for sure. But he didn’t even seem to be aware of that. Had no concern for consequences in the least. Not in this. Not in anything.

  She stopped fighting.

  In moments, he’d immobilized her with luxin bonds.

  “You’re scheming against me,” he said. “I know it. No seat on the Spectrum? No place in the councils of war? No honors that are due me? You treat me like a child! And it ends now.”

  Quietly, calmly, despite the hand tight around her throat, Karris said, “May I speak, Zymun?”

  “Son!” he said. “You call me son.”

  “They warned me,” she said, her voice distant. “But I didn’t see you. Not as you are. I let my guilt blind me. For a time, but no more.”

  “You’ll give me what I want,” Zymun said.

  “Astonishing,” she said as if amused, though her guts squirmed. “So close to being given all you want and you can’t help but show your true colors. No. You’re no son of mine, Zymun. I disown you. Disavow you. I admit, you certainly do bear a resemblance to the worst parts of me, and perhaps you have my own father’s weak chin and venial disposition and shallow intellect, but you’re not the small, lame, petty shadow of Gavin Guile that I thought you were; you bear no likeness to him at all. I shall have to ponder that harried month when I conceived you. It seems more and more undeniable that I must have gotten very drunk and fucked a village idiot.”

  “You… you cunt!”

  “Get out,” she said, ignoring her bonds, ignoring that he was on top of her and she was helpless. “And never speak to me again.”

  “I know how to break a woman,” he hissed, spit flying in her face. “I’ve done it before. It’s not so hard.”

  “You’ll break nothing here,” Karris said. “You’ll walk out that door with your tail between your legs like the cur you are.”

  “Oh yeah?” he said. He lifted the hand with the dagger. “You stupid bitch, I’ll—”

  He cut off as two spear blades slid into view. One sharp blade slipped beneath his wrist, so the dagger couldn’t descend without him slicing off his own hand. The other blade pressed along the side of Zymun’s neck.

  Gill Greyling stood behind Zymun, spears trembling in his grip, not with fear but with rage.

  Karris had never been happier to see anyone in her life.

  “Give me the excuse,” Gill said. His voice was raspy. The man had been on edge perpetually since his brother died.

  Zymun eased up, carefully dropping the dagger on the carpet, far out, raising his hands slowly and releasing the luxin to dust. “Could have sworn I barred that door,” he said, good-naturedly, as if it had all been a joke. He rocked back on his heels and stood slowly.

  Derisively, Karris laughed at him as if he were the stupidest man she’d ever met. “As if the Blackguard doesn’t have ways to open the doors here?”

  His face dropped, and the mask slipped to show the depth of the ugliness within him. He couldn’t stand disrespect.

  She only hoped he’d attack.

  Gill would kill him—he wouldn’t try to wound or incapacitate him, she knew. She knew her Blackguards.

  She stood up and brushed the luxin dust off.

  Now she was free, though, and this was all out in the open. She was honestly relieved. No more pretenses.

  “Zymun,” she said. “Until tonight, I didn’t scheme against you. Not ever. But now I will. Thank you for bringing your true nature to light. History will judge me for giving birth to a monster. But at least I have the decency to hate him.”

  But his dead eyes betrayed nothing even of rage now. He walked out the door, then stopped and turned. “Oh, may I have my dagger, please? It was a gift from my grandfather.”

  “Try to take it,” Gill said dangerously. “See what happens.”

  Zymun didn’t move.

  “What’s your name again, Blackguard?” Zymun demanded.

  “You don’t remember?” Gill asked, looking at him contemptuously. “A true Guile would.”

  Chapter 61

  “I have news about our hunt,” Quentin said. He furrowed his thick brows. “Good news, barely good news, and definitely not good news.”

  Teia had managed to pull her shit together, somewhat, and hadn’t asked Quentin for a hug the other day, despite having told him the outlines of how she’d killed Ravi and what she’d learned. She’d fled then to her solitude, only giving him the name ‘Atevia Zelorn.’

  She still wanted that hug, actually, but… Quentin was so damned awkward, and he didn’t like to be touched. It would be selfish. A
nd probably not satisfying. Right? “Go ahead,” she said.

  She’d asked to hear about his project first; it gave her time to gather her wits.

  “Easy one first,” he said. “Zelorn is indeed a wine merchant. Very successful one, too. Well-known among the nobility. Karris didn’t have her people dig too deeply, though, lest it alarm anyone.” He described where to find Zelorn’s house, and his profile: physical description, style of clothing, three kids, six slaves, various servants between home and business, two long-term mistresses, and a pretty young wife who spent a lot of time crying about his many affairs, the pursuit of which seemed to be his main pastime.

  Other than being a pagan priest, Teia thought.

  “That was the shallow digging?” Teia asked.

  “That’s exactly how I reacted,” Quentin said. “High Lady Guile said, ‘Of course. Anyone in the upper nobility would dig that much into anyone they were considering doing even casual business with.’”

  “Sometimes I think the nobles are just like the rest of us, and then other times…” Teia said.

  “Also exactly my reaction,” Quentin said.

  “But that was the good news, though, wasn’t it?” Teia asked. Though that was all helpful, she could’ve learned it herself—though any time she went out in public was a time she was risking Sharp finding her.

  “Afraid so. Now, about the other project,” he said. He opened a folio on his desk. “These are copies of all the final plans for each of the Chromeria’s seven towers. Builders’ notes, allotments of slaves, materials requests, stockpiles, and overages. Everything I could find. No budgets, irritatingly, which is what keyed me in—but I’m getting ahead of myself. If there’s a hidden room in the Chromeria anywhere, it should show up here.”

  One of the jobs Teia had given Quentin was to search the Chromeria for the Old Man of the Desert’s secret room. She knew he had one, if not more. She herself had lost caches of clothing and money and weapons simply to servants or strangers stumbling across them; there was no way the Old Man was going to risk the same happening to his code books; there was no way he’d risk someone interrupting him as he penned or decoded his secret messages. Secrecy required privacy, and the bigger the secret the more privacy required.