The Burning White

by Brent Weeks

  How long can everyone around you tell you that you’re a slave, how long can every mirror show you to be a slave, and you not believe you really are one?

  He had destroyed a great woman. He’d taken the best years of her life, and told himself he was doing right by her.

  And he’d known better.

  Fuck me. Fuck this climb.

  He rubbed his face, inadvertently brushing the eye patch. It didn’t hurt anymore. Now, if anything, that shock of sensation it sent through his whole body was pleasantly numbing.

  After climbing the circles of Pride, and Envy, and Lust so far, the picture of himself that was emerging was as devastating as it was undeniable. But if this journey was supposed to be purgative, Gavin didn’t see how. Purgatives are supposed to make you puke but then feel better.

  Gavin didn’t feel better, nor any more humble, kind, or chaste, only more aware of how much he wasn’t those things.

  Rubbing the eye patch deeper into his eye, oily pain canceling out sharp pain for a brief moment, he stood up and walked to the edge overlooking the sea.

  “What the—? Gunner’s gone!” Gavin said.

  Slowly, troubled, Orholam said, “Yeah.”

  Gunner had been drinking out there.

  He must have gotten drunk and fallen off. There was no way he would have abandoned his big gun to the waters, no way he would have tried to swim when there were still so, so many sharks gathered from leagues around to feed on all the bodies floating in the lagoon.

  When sober, Gunner was a master of timing. If he’d decided he was going to have to abandon the gun and swim, he would have waited until everything calmed in the lagoon. A few days, at the least, while the sharks sated their hunger devouring all the bloating dead.

  “You told him he was going to live,” Gavin said, snarling.

  “I know,” Orholam said apologetically.

  God damn. And Gavin had been starting to believe that Orholam wasn’t a holy-talking charlatan, that—wherever it came from—he really did see the future sometimes, and the past.

  Brushing past the old man, Gavin snarled, “What circle’s next?”

  “Wrath.”

  “Perfect.”

  Chapter 63

  “How many fights do we have left in us?” Kip asked Cruxer. It seemed like a good time to ask; Tisis was on the other side of their little fleet, checking on her reserve scouts, and she didn’t like him dwelling on the death awaiting them.

  The early-morning embarkation had been somber. Now they were crossing the Cerulean Sea at the maximally efficient skimmer speed: slow compared to what the craft were capable of, but preserving the lives of their drafters while still getting them to the Chromeria in two days.

  Every one of the thousand drafters, two hundred Cwn y Wawr will-casters and war dogs, and one thousand elite soldiers knew they were heading for a fight for their own lives, for the future of the empire, and even for the future worship of Orholam Himself. Would the Seven Satrapies even exist, or would there be instead nine kingdoms with a high king? Would there be ten gods in this world, or One?

  “Mentally we’re tough,” Cruxer said under the sound of the rushing wind. The sea was placid, the sun orange on the horizon, and the sky crystalline blue. It was one of those pristine summer mornings that made you feel that Orholam was full of joy when He created the world. “Emotionally, we all feel like we can fight forever.”

  That wasn’t what Kip had meant, and they both knew it. He glanced back at the phalanxes of skimmers and sea chariots behind them. With drafters of various colors of luxin paired at the reeds of the different ships, their colors mixing as they jetted it into the water, the thousands of the Forest’s best were painting Ceres’s skin like artists each wielding a different tone, human colors rising in answer to the divine in the skies.

  “Two or three hard skirmishes, maybe. One protracted battle. After that, we’ll start losing significant numbers to luxin burnout. Too many of them have been making up for their lack of skill by drafting ever greater quantities. We might even lose a few on the passage.”

  “And the Mighty?” Kip asked, throat tightening. He already had his own guesses, of course. But he was trying to be dispassionate. A full year of raiding and the Battle at Dúnbheo had meant many fights to the death—and when your life is in peril today, why be careful with how much you draft so you can live another year fifteen years from now?

  “The nunks are fine, of course,” Cruxer said. “Ferkudi isn’t too bad with blue, but his green is to the halos. Winsen will live forever. His yellow is barely halfway through his irises. Tisis is fine with her green. I’ve got four or five battles left in me. Ben-hadad is fine with yellow, but whenever he’s near a fight, he tries too hard to compensate for his bad leg. His green and blue both are full. It’s Big Leo who’ll probably go first. He’s straining his halos in both red and sub-red.”

  “We’re insane for letting Ben-hadad even get close to a battle,” Kip said. “He’s great in a fight, but ultimately, he’s just another drafter. But outside a fight, doing what he does? The man’s a marvel. A once-in-a-generation genius. He’s the one of us who could change the world the most.”

  Cruxer looked at him, shadows of Ironfist in his gaze. “You’ve pretty much summed up my thoughts exactly—”

  “Glad we’re agreed—”

  “About you.”

  “Oh.”

  Cruxer shrugged. “Granted, you’re a bit better in a fight. Maybe. Having two good legs and all.” But the hint of a smile crept onto his face. He couldn’t deadpan quite like Ironfist, not yet.

  “Trouble is,” Kip said, eyes staring at the morning’s beauty but no longer seeing it, “a man isn’t just the one thing he does best. Even if he’s the best at that one thing that the world has ever seen.”

  Cruxer turned his palms up. “I haven’t tried to keep you from fights, have I?”

  “No,” Kip admitted, coming back to focus.

  “But lay off green. You go golem one more time, and you may break the halo yourself.”

  “Yeah. I’ve got other options.”

  “I know you do. Use them. It’s always green with you.”

  “Yes, mother,” Kip said. But they both knew Cruxer was right.

  The Mighty didn’t want to fight on the seas, but Ben had refused to let them go unarmed, in case a fight was necessary—maybe the White King had discovered how to make skimmers by now. Also, they’d heard wild rumors about will-cast sharks and other beasts. (Kip’s Night Mares didn’t think it could be done, though. Or not for long. Or not without them also attacking one’s own people. Or… )

  So the Nightbringers had muskets, a few swivel guns, and a pile of the sticky bombs they called hullwreckers now. The skimmers wouldn’t be defenseless, but they wouldn’t go looking for a slugfest with a galleon, either—a single cannonball strike anywhere would cause a catastrophic failure of the luxin. Ben-hadad said he already had plans to address that in the next generation of skimmers—if he lived so long.

  He said it as if he’d started saying the sentence aloud intending to wink or grin, but changed his mind halfway through, like there was so much he would never discover in this life if he died, and that death felt more real now than it had in more than a year filled with fighting.

  Cruxer had one of General Derwyn’s drafters taking point a hundred paces out in front of them. A nautical equivalent of outriders protected him on either flank, but the main body traveled in cohorts of twenty craft each, with everything from two- to six-person craft.

  Kip was trying to be patient, though he wanted to get to the Chromeria today—and could have, moving with only the Mighty. Moving even a small army at speed was an impressive feat of logistical acumen and leadership. Moving that army over water made it a feat wherein if you loused up, people drowned.

  Kip supposed that he should be trying to enjoy the little remaining life he had. It was pretty much impossible to get any work done. Despite the wind blocker, he had to lean close to Cruxe
r to have a conversation, and it was just Cruxer, Kip, and two young drafters with fresh halos on reeds. Kip had tried talking to them, but that had put a panicked expression in their eyes. They couldn’t concentrate on two things at once.

  Funny he thought of them as kids. One of them had to be nearly his own age.

  “Lord Commander!” one of them said, laboring to speak and still keep in time with her partner. “Scout returning!”

  No sooner had she said the words than Kip saw the scout streaking toward them on a type of craft they’d come to call a flying pulpit. The scouts’ special skimmers were made to be as light and fast as possible, so they’d dispensed with nearly everything: it consisted of a single chair mounted between two propulsion reeds with wings extending from the sides beneath the water. Each scout-drafter (all were small men with excellent upper-body strength) was strapped to his chair and carried a long-lens to see even farther. The craft were ludicrously fast, but they had to be launched at speed and couldn’t stop moving or they’d sink.

  The tenth scout was Izemrasen, who was approaching now. Forty years old, he was a ghotra-wearing Parian who’d been training to be a Blackguard when he fell during a wall climb and broke his back. His legs had turned useless and numb. A couple of unnoticed sores on them had gotten infected, and they’d had to be amputated. He’d lived through the operation, but his Chromeria sponsor had abandoned him (illegally), despite his strength as a green drafter.

  Izemrasen hadn’t had the coin or connections to bring the matter before a magistrate, and he ended up performing on the streets for food, doing acrobatics for coins. How he’d even made the trek through Blood Forest in the hopes that Kip’s army would have some place for him, Kip didn’t know, but the man was bursting with life and purpose now. Kip had never seen anyone more proud to don the uniform.

  The scout turned in behind Kip’s skimmer and docked in a slot made especially for it. Kip and Cruxer attached the hooks that bound the small skimmer to their larger one while he took a few deep breaths. Izemrasen’s massive shoulders shone with sweat—he’d come back at the greatest possible speed.

  “Two fleets, my lord,” Izemrasen said. “Closing for battle, as far as I can tell. Definitely the Blood Robes on one side and the Chromeria on the other. Maybe a hundred fifty galleons on the Blood Robe side, but a lot of those seem to be trade ships with only a few cannons each. Chromeria’s only got fifty-three galleons, but they’re well-armed. They’re flying banners of all seven satrapies.”

  “How far from here?” Cruxer asked.

  “Three leagues? Four? I could be off.”

  Kip couldn’t blame him. Distances were tricky at sea at the best of times, even with special tools. The scouts had trained to measure distances by their own speed over time, which they were supposed to keep constant—but Izemrasen had come back as quickly as possible.

  “And how far from each other?”

  “A bit more than a league? I’d guess the fight will start within half an hour, an hour? I don’t really—I don’t know anything about naval battles, my lords. My apologies. I’m still learning my work.”

  “As are we all,” Kip said.

  “There was something strange, though,” Izemrasen said. “I mean, I don’t know anything about naval warfare firsthand, but I have seen tapestries and paintings and such, and…” He tugged his ghotra forward from where the wind had pushed it back despite the hairpins. “The Chromeria’s ships were out in big wings left and right, with multiple ranks and such—like the paintings. But the left wing was leading, a lot. Too much, it seemed to me. Unless there’s some strategy…?”

  “That’s…” Kip said. “Who’s on the left wing?”

  Izemrasen said, “Uh… they were too far away for me to pick out their banners for sure, but given the style of ships and the colors, Ruthgar—and…” He scrunched his eyes closed, trying to remember. “A snake below it?”

  “Coiled or striking?”

  “Striking.”

  Kip turned. “Commander, please tell me that moron Caul Azmith isn’t in charge of Ruthgar’s fleet.”

  Cruxer shrugged. “Last we heard he’d been demoted because of his disastrous leadership at Ox Ford.” Azmith had been commander of the armies—but his family was rich and powerful. Kip knew how those families worked now: he bet they’d bought his way onto a small command with the fleet, where they thought he couldn’t do any harm.

  “Orholam’s balls. He broke ranks,” Kip said. “He’s charging, hoping to reclaim his lost glory.”

  “May Orholam save those men from their leader,” Cruxer said, brow darkening, making the sign of the three and the four.

  “But that wasn’t all,” Izemrasen said. “The White King’s ships were all huddled together, real tight, almost in a ball. Not at all like any tapestry I’ve seen. I mean, I know artists exaggerate and try to make things look pretty, but isn’t being encircled as bad in naval battles as it is in land ones?”

  Messengers on small skimmers had pulled in beside Kip’s craft, waiting for orders to relay.

  “No bane visible?” Kip asked.

  “No, sir. Didn’t even feel anything, and I was paying attention like you said to.”

  “Ah, shit,” Kip said. “They’re doing the same damned thing they did at Ru!” Sinking a bane so the drafters don’t feel it, raising it at the last moment—except this time it wasn’t one color; it was all of them. “What kind of idiot falls into the same trap they’ve used on us before?!”

  “Caul Azmith,” Cruxer said with quiet fury.

  “We have to warn them,” Kip said.

  “We’re all drafters,” Cruxer said.

  “But we’re the only ones who can get to them in time.”

  “We can’t go.”

  Kip looked at him. “They’ll all die if we don’t.”

  “Breaker, when a man who can’t swim jumps into the sea to save a drowning friend, you end up with two dead men, not zero.”

  Kip turned to the messengers. “I’ve new orders. Redistribute the supply ships. Take the empties to circle behind the White King’s fleet after the battle and pick up survivors from the waves. Don’t come in too fast or too close or they’ll be sunk, too, but save as many as they can. I don’t think the White King will double back. Izemrasen, you go get rest. You’re gonna be lightsick as it is. You two on the reeds, go with the messengers. Commander Cruxer and I have it from here.”

  The young drafters stepped off the still-moving skimmer onto messengers’ vessels. To another messenger, Kip said, “Tell our fleet to continue on. We’ll catch up by nightfall.”

  Cruxer snorted.

  “Or, you know, not at all,” Kip said.

  “Tisis is going to be pissed,” Cruxer said. She was off checking on something on the other side of the fleet.

  “Yep.”

  “Because this is a bad idea,” Cruxer said.

  “I know,” Kip said.

  Cruxer made the sign of the seven again and then took a reed. “You know, Blackguard training has very specific rules about keeping one’s ward from putting himself in mortal peril unnecessarily.” He looked at Kip’s open, expectant face, and sighed. “So I guess it’s a good thing we quit before we got to that part.”

  Chapter 64

  Turning people into meat sacks was the easy part. The problem was disposing of the bodies. For all that Teia now knew dozens of ways to kill, she wasn’t superhuman. Even in her blacks, holding a spear, and soaking wet, she weighed less than two sevs. She’d done tens of thousands of push-ups and curl ups. She’d run thousands of leagues. She’d swum until her shoulders were small blocks of granite. She’d lifted salt bags until veins bulged from her forearms even at rest, and she’d run relays with the Blackguard trainees until she could run down a gazelle on the open plains.

  She could climb and jump and balance and fight and shoot a bow and fire a musket and draft—dear Orholam, at the insistence of her Archer sisters, she could even dance tolerably well now—but when it came to lifti
ng a corpse that was more than double her weight, she was hopeless.

  The good news was that she wouldn’t need to drag Aglaia’s body far.

  In quick glances, Teia watched the noblewoman have her cosmetics applied by a severe old slave woman who was, despite her age and her own plain features, obviously an artist. It was evening, but Aglaia had come fresh-faced from a steam bath at an unmarked private club in the Embassies District. The old slave applied delicate layers of powders and creams with a sure and speedy hand. Teia used the time to scout the estate again.

  It was a meeting night for the Order of the Broken Eye. That meant Aglaia had taken dinner in her room, as she apparently always did on the nights when she attended the Order’s meetings, and she’d ‘dismissed’ the slaves except for this handmaid.

  Of course, what a woman like Aglaia thought dismissing the slaves meant and what it really meant were very different. She would be angry if she came home and her dishes and food weren’t cleared from her room and her bed wasn’t turned down, a warming plate put between the sheets to prepare them for her.

  As if these things happened by magic. As if she were giving her slaves a break rather than complicating their lives. For them, the dismissal meant, ‘Get all the usual work done without me seeing you, and pretend not to see me leave, and never ask about where I’m going or where I’ve been, and there will be extra laundry in the morning.’

  At long last, the slave finished her duties. As far as Teia could tell, the slave woman had done magic of a sort Gavin Guile himself would envy. Old Horse Face actually looked attractive, though Teia had no idea why Aglaia was putting on cosmetics. The woman would be donning a cloak and mask, which were required to stay on for the rest of the night.

  Well, she thought so, anyway.

  Aglaia looked at herself in her mirrors. She seemed dissatisfied with what she saw—for all the wrong reasons, Teia thought. But after a few exasperated sighs, Aglaia dismissed the slave woman.