The Burning White

by Brent Weeks

  The stricken look on Andross’s face was priceless. And it was confirmation. Kip was so surprised, he laughed aloud and clapped his hands.

  Andross’s face went black. He banged down his teacup and snatched up a pistol and bolted out of his seat, sending his chair crashing. He cocked the jaw and pointed the pistol at Kip’s upturned face. His hand trembled.

  Kip looked at him, serene.

  Andross’s finger lifted from the trigger. He lowered the cockjaw, clearing his throat. Then he put the pistol back down on the table and sat in the chair, which Grinwoody had put back in place.

  Grinwoody mopped up a bit of spilled tea.

  “Yes, I do,” Andross said. “Forty years of preparations, and gathering prophecies, and sacrificing… everything. Everything, that I might save our empire, and our very world. Well done, Kip, you have found me out. I daresay not even Grinwoody had guessed it. Had you, Grinwoody?” he asked, turning to him.

  “No, my lord. I stand in awe, sir, that one could possibly conceal something so profound about one’s identity from the person at your very shoulder.” The slave bowed deeply, respectfully.

  “But… but you’re not even a full-spectrum polychrome,” Kip said. This he hadn’t meant to say aloud.

  “Am I not?” Andross asked.

  “Holy shit,” Kip breathed. “You kept yourself from drafting half your colors for forty years?!”

  “It was the least of my sacrifices, I assure you. But—” He raised a finger suddenly, as if to forestall questions about what the other sacrifices were. “But I’ll admit that it’s not escaped my attention that there are certain ways of reading the prophecies that could indicate you are he, and certain qualifications that you currently lack might, after all, not emerge until you’re older. I’ve thought about this no small amount. So… yes. Yes, should you win, I will begin paving the way immediately; I will protect you; and I will fully champion you the moment you’re ready to announce your identity—in the unlikely event it’s not immediately apparent to the whole world.”

  “Wait…” Kip said. “Just like that?” He’d imagined getting a little more pushback. “I’m asking you to tell everyone I’m the most important person in history, not you. And you’re okay with playing a game for that? A single game. Where I could get lucky.”

  “I think luck shall have very little to do with it,” Andross said.

  “I’m asking you to wager everything you’ve spent forty years pursuing,” Kip said, though he wasn’t sure why he was arguing against his own case. “That’s like twice as long as I’ve even been alive.”

  The irony of Kip taking his side evidently wasn’t lost on him, as Andross suddenly smiled. “There is now nothing in the world that could keep me from this game, and this wager. For you see, I won’t be playing against you, Kip. I’ll be playing against Orholam Himself. For the answer to the question ‘Who is the Lightbringer?’ is not a name; it’s not a man or a woman. The answer to that question answers how Orholam interacts with the world—if He does so at all.

  “I’m asking you to wager the most important thing in your life,” Andross said. “It’s only fair that you demand the same of me. Grinwoody, the decks.”

  Kip sat stunned, silent. There were too many questions—what prophecies did Andross know that Kip didn’t? If he were a full-spectrum polychrome, why had he had Kip View cards for him? What did this all mean?—but the cards were in front of him now, and those questions would have to wait. He had to win first.

  Shaking himself, breathing deeply, Kip began studying the play decks Andross had constructed mostly from Janus Borig’s new cards.

  He looked up. “You didn’t.”

  “Seemed appropriate,” Andross said.

  The old man had constructed decks to reflect the coming fight. There weren’t enough legendary characters who’d earned their own cards to fill two entire decks, but he’d done as well as he could. Plenty of wights on the one side, the White King, drafters aplenty, lots of ships, and seven bane. “Six bane?” Kip suggested.

  “Your people may have only seen six, but I believe superviolet will show up. That Danavis girl has a way of doing her own thing. In the last months, I’ve had reports from Aslal, Smussato, Cravos, Wiwurgh, Garriston, and Ru of a woman matching her description, traveling alone, with no obvious transportation. The ravishing fairy princess in white and gold with amethyst eyes. Not the color of amethyst, but with jewels crusted over her very eyes themselves. And at the joints of her fingers, in some later accounts. Always inspecting old ruins. And the prophecies suggest seven will come.”

  Kip felt sick. He believed it. No matter what she’d told Kip, he’d held on to some small hope that she was going to stay out of the battle, that she hadn’t forgotten herself completely.

  “We could’ve been a good team, you and I,” Kip said, finishing up with the White King’s deck.

  “Pick a deck,” Andross said impatiently. “Ah, one moment.” He grabbed the Chromeria’s deck before Kip could pick it up and snatched out a card, handing it to Grinwoody. “Won’t be needing this.”

  “What was that?”

  “Gavin’s card. Since you established he’s not coming back in time, if he ever does.”

  “I’d like to see that card,” Kip said.

  “Really, right now?” Andross said. “It’s not an original. You can’t View it.”

  “Oh. Right. I… later, then.”

  “If you win,” Andross said.

  “That weakens the deck,” Kip said. Certainly his father’s card would have to have been a powerful one.

  “Then pick the other deck, moron. Hurry it up. I’ve got other things to do today.”

  “So, just to clarify, the stakes are my remarriage against your full support—”

  “No, not your remarriage only. Your full obedience in all things until I die,” Andross said. “Against my full support, until I die. All you want, against all you have,” Andross said. “Isn’t that the wager life always offers?”

  “Agreed,” Kip heard his voice say. “More liquor, calun.”

  As Grinwoody poured for him, Kip turned the next card of the Chromeria deck, and chuckled. “Now, that’s a good one. After all you said about him, you gave the Chromeria Ironfist?”

  “Without Gavin, the Chromeria needs Ironfist, or it loses every time.” Andross rubbed his nose for a moment. “Think of Nine Kings as an aid to thinking, the way an abacus is an aid to arithmetic. At some point one should grow beyond the need for the physical prop, but the cards are actually best for those like you, who have difficulty looking at their friends and seeing them as a list of strengths and weaknesses—you, who would vacillate before spending two lives even if their deaths are necessary to forestall ten thousand more. This is why Nine Kings is more valuable for you, but I am better at it, and better at politics as well.”

  “What you miss,” Kip said, “is that my friends will fight for me in ways they would never fight for you. When led by one they know loves them, they perform better than a number on a card could possibly capture. Everything that is most important about this game can’t be captured by a game.”

  “Then you take the Chromeria deck,” Andross said. “Perhaps the cards will fight extra hard for you.”

  Kip shouldn’t have let him get away with that, shouldn’t have let him get under his skin. The Chromeria was clearly the inferior deck, but his victory would be all the sweeter when he shoved Andross’s nose in it like pressing a dog’s nose to his shit.

  It was a mistake, and Kip knew it, but he couldn’t stop himself. “Fine, I’ll take it.”

  Andross separated the decks and shuffled them under Kip’s watchful eyes.

  Kip reshuffled and let Andross cut both decks.

  The old man smirked. “It takes years to become a proficient cardist.”

  “With your memory?” Kip asked.

  “It’s the dexterity that’s challenging as one ages, and finding the time for the continual practice.”

  It was
as close to an admission as Kip was likely to hear. “How many times have you cheated me that way?” Kip asked.

  “You think I had to cheat, before?”

  “Had to?” Kip said. “No. But you’re the kind of man who likes to guarantee victory, aren’t you?”

  “I’m also a man who likes a challenge.”

  “No doubt the only reason I’m still alive,” Kip said as they dealt out their cards.

  “There are others.”

  “Oh, pray tell,” Kip said lightly.

  Andross waved it away, studying his cards instead.

  “Huh, would you look at that,” Kip said. “Never realized it before, but the Ironfist card actually has a perfect empty place for ‘King’ to be written in. The other cards don’t have that spacing. It can’t be an accident.” Actually, Kip’s hand had a nice collection of earlier attack soldiers and defenders, but it needed a noontime striker like Ironfist.

  Andross gave him a disbelieving look. “You’re trying to get into my head?”

  “Me?” Kip said. “Just making conversation. I think you’ve radically underestimated the power of this deck.”

  Andross played a Pagan Priest, and Kip had to respond with a Lightguard—boy did that stick in his craw, using those bastards. “Odd that those cards don’t come with a betrayal mechanic,” Kip said. “Limitations of the game, I guess.”

  “I’ve found them quite loyal where they should be.”

  “Really? Is Aram still sucking at Zymun’s teat?” Kip asked.

  “Oh, yes,” Andross said. “He much preferred to report to me secretly on what Zymun is doing than be executed for his little indiscretion.”

  ‘His little indiscretion’? Setting the Lightguard on Kip and murdering Goss, rather than letting them escape, was an indiscretion?

  “If I punch you in the face, do I lose automatically?” Kip asked.

  Andross merely considered him with his dead, shark’s eyes.

  “Aram’s men murdered a friend of mine,” Kip said. “One of the Lightguards demanded to see me, and Goss said he was me. They shot him. No other words spoken. So I know all this is a game to you, but you can go fuck yourself.”

  “You want justice for that? Fine. These are small matters for men such as us. Tell you what: as a gesture of goodwill, I’ll execute the man who pulled the trigger, and Aram too. Done and done. The triggerman immediately. Aram’s an officer too difficult to replace on the eve of a battle, but if he lives through the battle, he’ll be hanged next week.”

  Orholam’s balls, but Andross Guile was cold.

  “I don’t know what my problem is,” Kip said. “I’ve spent a lot of time with you now. You’ve hit me, you’ve stolen things from me, you’ve cheated me, you’ve threatened to enslave my friend, your people have tried to murder me several times—”

  “Only once on my orders,” Andross said, “but do go on.”

  “And yet I still keep trying to engage you as if you had a soul. Why is that? I’m not usually a stupid man. When I spent a little time with Zymun, I knew instantly that he was all serpent. He’s one of those people incapable of the higher human emotions. He’s defective. Born crippled, if you will. Soulless. It’s not really his fault, is it? He could never be much better than he is. He sees what he wants, and he can’t help but try to take it. But you… you don’t have that excuse. If you’re a monster, you made yourself monstrous. You had a choice. More than one, I’d bet. And you chose darkness every time. I should hate you to the depths of my soul, and yet I don’t. I actually like you, and I’m stuck here wondering, is that because you still have that preternatural Guile charm that I really wish I’d inherited, or is it because somehow you’re my blind spot, or is it because intuitively, beyond all rationale, I see some spark of life deep in you? You should have been more than a great man; you should have been a good man.”

  “Your turn.”

  They played the next few turns in silence.

  Andross was playing slowly. It wasn’t like him. It was, however, a good strategy when your deck is significantly stronger—

  There was a sharp rap on the wall. Grinwoody announcing someone.

  And then Kip saw that Andross really was running the game as a simulation of the battle to come. The old man wouldn’t attack until noon, when he could play a bane, just as the White King wasn’t attacking until Sun Day.

  Andross really thought he was going to get some insight about the battle from this.

  “High Lord, there’s someone here to see you,” Grinwoody said.

  Andross’s lip curled. “Grinwoody, I didn’t think that you could possibly fail to understand what this game means. Or what ‘I’m not to be disturbed’ means.”

  “It’s Satrap Corvan Danavis, my lord.”

  “What?! How did he get here so fast?”

  “Upon your command that you not be disturbed, I turned away the messenger bringing news his ships had been spotted, and also the messenger who announced Danavis was coming directly here. You’ve been cloistered for quite some time.”

  “Grinwoody.” There was a warning in Andross’s tone.

  “My apologies, my lord,” Grinwoody said. “I’ll show him in immediately.”

  Andross bundled his cards back together, squared the edges, and laid them facedown on the table. He put his teacup on them, and drew on his zigarro while Kip followed his lead, each watching the other closely to make sure neither took advantage of the disruption to cheat. Then they both rose and moved away from the table, each giving it a wide berth, and for the same reason.

  “Kip!” Corvan cried out when he saw him.

  Kip’s heart warmed instantly. Kip knew a lot of people who’d changed monumentally in the last two or three years, but Corvan was almost exactly the same—except he’d grown out his mustache and hung little gold beads into it, as he’d worn it long years ago before he’d moved to Rekton. In a world of friends and foes as shifting as the mists, he was solid. Here was a man who was simply himself, whose idea of hiding his identity had been moving away and shaving off his famed mustache, without even changing his name. His eyes held the same old mix of sternness and contentment, with an undertone of abiding grief, but there were no regrets there. He looked strong.

  They embraced, and Kip felt like a child again for half a moment. Except now he was taller than his old guardian.

  “I hear those books you kept pilfering from my shelves have done you some good,” Corvan said as he released Kip. “Though I’ve not heard a tactician’s account of the Battle of Dúnbheo yet. Everything I hear is all giant bears and last-second traps and magic.”

  “I’ll be happy to fill you in,” Kip said, letting the man turn to the promachos.

  “Satrap Danavis,” Andross said respectfully. “Welcome to the Chromeria. We are so sorry to hear about your bereavement.”

  “I received your funerary gifts. They helped ease my burdens, Promachos. Thank you.”

  Andross gestured that it was nothing.

  “Now I feel like an asshole for not sending anything,” Kip said. “I’m sorry, sir. I only found out you’d even remarried at the same time I heard of your wife’s passing—yesterday. I’m so sorry.”

  “They were the best days of my life,” Corvan said. “And we knew they would be short. She told me all along, though she couldn’t guess the details until recently. An assassin from the Order of the Broken Eye, we both believe.”

  “From the Order?!” Kip demanded, irate.

  “A Seer is most dangerous to the most dangerous people,” Corvan said.

  “Grandfather, you didn’t hire them for that, did you?” Kip asked.

  The air suddenly tingled as if they were all waiting for a bolt to strike and its thunderhead to blow out all the windows.

  “No,” Andross said coolly.

  “Oh, good,” Kip said. “He had to be thinking it, and I thought it would be good for him to see your face when I asked. I thought he might be too polite to ask.”

  “On the matter of my
wife, I wouldn’t let etiquette—or anything—get in the way of my vengeance,” Corvan said.

  “I only ask,” Kip said, “since you’ve had such a good working relationship with the Order in the past.”

  Again, the clouds boiled, but no thunderbolt struck.

  “When one is in power, one must frequently deal with unsavory elements,” Andross said, “worse than assassins, even. Which is why sometimes one must hold one’s nose and deal even with traitors. But that doesn’t make one a traitor oneself, does it, Corvan?”

  Corvan Danavis was quivering with the effort to contain himself. “A traitor? You refer to King Ironfist, I suppose?”

  “He brought you here, didn’t he?”

  “I’ve arrived here with an army, just in time, from what I hear. Without Ironfist’s fleet, we’d not be arriving for another two months.”

  “Has your army disembarked, then?” Andross asked.

  “No. I came on ahead. The White seemed eager that I should see the state of the defenses immediately—”

  “And King Ironfist doubtless told you to go on ahead.”

  “Yes,” Corvan said.

  “Without your soldiers. Who are isolated on their own ships, perhaps? Ships disarmed, ostensibly so they have room for more soldiers?” Andross suggested.

  Corvan froze as the implications dawned on him. “He… he wouldn’t.”

  “You’ve not brought us an army, Satrap,” Andross said. “You’ve brought Ironfist ten thousand hostages. You were right, Grinwoody. All his years serving at the highest level, and Ironfist has no loyalty at all.”

  “It grieves me to be right,” Grinwoody said. “He is of my own tribe, my lord.”

  “Well, we’ll deal with all that presently,” Andross said. “First things first.”

  “He’s disembarking himself to negotiate the surrender,” Corvan said. “Or… at least that’s what he told me.”

  “He meant it. Only, he didn’t mean his surrender,” Andross said icily.

  Corvan cursed under his breath.

  “But he’s disembarking? When? Soon?” Kip asked. “Shit! We’ve got to finish this game quickly, grandfather. I’ve got to make sure my commander doesn’t find out Ironfist’s here.”