The Burning White

by Brent Weeks

  The Blackguard had been infiltrated by the Order. If they were going to make a move, just before or during a battle was exactly when the Order would do it.

  Corvan understood. He held on to Kip’s forearms for a moment. “I don’t know that He cares. I’m not sure that He even exists, but may Orholam guard you, son.”

  “And may He bring you light in your long night, sir,” Kip said.

  Then they parted ways, and Kip wondered if it was the last time he’d ever see the man.

  Chapter 86

  Commander Ironfist had been a legendary figure before he left the Jaspers. Striding victoriously into Karris’s audience chamber, every eye upon him, King Ironfist was utterly terrifying.

  In accord with Parian customs since the time of Lucidonius, the old Commander Ironfist had dressed modestly, wearing long-sleeved tunics and a carefully folded ghotra to cover his hair. That modesty was a centuries-old antidote to the more-ancient-still flamboyance of the pagan Parians who had come before them. In the Paria of old, the kings and queens had preferred to delight the eye and boggle the mind.

  King Ironfist joined the ancient kings now, and he certainly overawed all who saw him. His hair—uncovered—was twisted with gold dust and glue, into a great free crown of jumbled curls around his head. On one eyelid, cribbing from the Nuqaba, was painted the ancient Parian rune for Justice. On the other was Mercy. He wore an eye patch, flipped up now, which could be lowered to cover the one or the other.

  On the patch was stitched a fiery orb, an orange eye aflame. His tunic was as tight as a Blackguard tunic, sleeveless, revealing biceps that looked like they could shake the pillars of heaven. But instead of modest black, this tunic was all bold checks of gold and white, brilliant as the sun itself, belted with white leather around a slim waist that emphasized the enormous breadth of his shoulders.

  On his left wrist, he wore a manacle and a cruel heavy chain. According to the tale, it was the chain he’d literally torn from a rock wall trying to save his sister, the Nuqaba, from being assassinated. He wore a necessarily broad gold bicep band with a hook by his elbow, from which he suspended the end of the chain so that it was held tight along his forearm.

  Ironfist was a king who’d broken chains. Now he used his chains to make war.

  At his heels, sniffing the air like wolves first catching the scent of a sheep pen, were two enormous war hounds, a terrible midnight and a smaller albino.

  But more frightening than the vestments or the hard tattoos or the new scars or the uncharacteristic showiness of his garb or even the damn-near horse-sized dogs was the look of dull rage in his eyes.

  Karris had known angry men. Habitually angry men were always dangerous, but unfocused, undisciplined. You had to keep an eye on them the same way Karris would keep her eye on those hounds, but when such men attacked, it was usually with more ferocity than skill.

  For her entire tenure in the Blackguard, Karris had also known dangerous men. Such men would use force when necessary, coolly, passionlessly, and with great skill.

  But when a dangerous man got angry, you could be in for something else altogether.

  Ironfist’s quiet brother, Tremblefist, had gone into a battle rage once, and thereby earned himself a Name. It had taken the blood of five hundred to quench the Butcher of Aghbalu’s rage. Ironfist was his brother’s equal with a blade, and far more experienced than that young man had been.

  Karris had never wanted to see Ironfist truly angry. She had prayed she never would.

  Today, her prayer had been denied.

  “High Lady!” Ironfist boomed, coming forward on quick steps. Two warriors flanked him, draped in bold colors, a man with a bocote-wood lion helm with lion’s teeth and a woman with claw scars on her face and wearing a baboon helm. Each was as tall and lean as the hellstone-tipped spears they carried. Drafters, and if Ironfist had deemed them fit to accompany him before his old command, they were surely formidable warriors indeed.

  Not one of the twelve Blackguards attending Karris wasn’t sweating.

  Ironfist motioned to his Tafok Amagez to stay back—right at the point where the Blackguard were about to challenge them to stop. He knew. He knew everything about the Blackguard’s defenses, every seam, every weakness. If anyone could take apart the Blackguard, it was Ironfist.

  He said, “How you’ve changed since you came under my tutelage when I was a new trainer, and you that scrawny noble girl hoping to find a purpose in the Blackguard.”

  She said nothing. Let him set the landscape of this discussion. She owed him that much.

  Besides, if she didn’t hear him out, she wouldn’t know where to put pressure and where to yield so fast his weight carried him off his feet.

  “‘The Iron White’ they call you now,” he said, sweeping a quick hand at the gathered nobles and courtiers and Colors and every maid and servant important enough to finagle their way into this meeting. He moved it so sharply, not a few of them flinched. “And that, not so long after you dropped Karris White Oak to become Karris Guile, then Karris the White. It seems you’ve gone through many names in a short time.”

  “And you, many masters,” Karris said. The retort hit like a whipcrack.

  He blinked as if slapped, but he didn’t even slow his walk. Two steps silent, three, before he paused, just outside where the Blackguard would stop a man—but still too close for this man to get.

  Then he said, “Yet now you’ve lost your name altogether, and I my masters.”

  “Have you?” she asked, but she said it gently, quietly. “Have you, my old friend?”

  Something in his mien wavered like a blossom struggling to open on a day of jumbled sunshine and rain.

  Then it closed tight again.

  He put his hands down to his sides and patted the heads of the great war hounds. It was, of course, forbidden to bring war hounds into the audience chamber. A war hound was either a heresy or a target: either an animal that had already been will-cast, or an innocent beast that might be will-cast under your nose by malevolent forces.

  Karris had allowed them in without complaint. What else could she do? She’d allowed Kip to keep his, albeit not in the audience chamber itself.

  At Ironfist’s tap, the smaller white hound with its pink eyes sat. Ironfist reached up and pulled down his eye patch over the Mercy tattoo, leaving only Justice.

  Damn, damn, damn.

  “Perhaps we could move to a more private setting?” she asked now. Ironfist was a reasonable man. Had been, anyway. Perhaps she could find that man again, if only she could get him away from all the eyes that demanded he act like a king instead.

  But there was little or nothing of the old Ironfist here. This man looked indeed like the kings of old: harsh and terrible and primal. He said, “The Chromeria’s secrecy and lies are what have brought us here. You need my fleet. You need Seers Island’s army. The White King’s armada will arrive tomorrow, and attack then or the next day. You have no time.”

  “You need us as much as we need you,” Andross Guile called out from the side entrance of the audience chamber. He walked in quickly, confidently, like a man twenty years younger. “We can win without you. On the other hand, you know that if the heathen destroys us, he’ll come for you next. The King of Wights is not a man to be content with less than all the world. Joining us is your only hope of stopping him.”

  The crowd in the audience chamber was riveted. For some, this was confirmation of the rumors that the White King was coming. Others were hearing it for the first time. All of them knew Ironfist by name at least, and all of them knew he’d declared himself king. Hell, not a few of them probably liked him more than they liked Karris or Andross.

  Karris had a sudden paranoid thought wondering if he’d arranged for a coup. What if he’d packed this chamber with his own loyalists?

  But no, surely Commander Fisk would have guarded against such things. Right?

  But still, her throat was tight. Who knew where else traitors lurked, if Ironfist himsel
f could be one?

  King Ironfist was looking at Andross Guile with open disdain on his face as the old man took his seat next to Karris. “Horseshit. You offer your help for hypothetical troubles while you yourself face extinction now. We’re not equals here, so let’s skip the oily preambles, snake. You need my armies. I’m here to tell you the price for them.”

  Astonishment rippled through the crowd. No one talked to Andross Guile like that. No one.

  And then anyone who remembered that Andross had stripped Ironfist of his command of the Blackguard saw the depths of the antipathy between the men. This was not going to be pretty. This was why Karris hadn’t wanted Andross here.

  Andross didn’t say anything immediately. Didn’t bring his old commander to heel with a word.

  And if he didn’t, everyone saw, it had to be because he couldn’t. Thus, Ironfist was telling the truth when he announced their weakness. The Jaspers really were that vulnerable.

  And suddenly, the people were afraid.

  Perhaps, working with paints mixed from vermilion rage and white-hot anger and black vexation, a painter as talented as Janus Borig might have been able to capture the spirit of Andross Guile now being publicly humiliated by a slave.

  But he mastered himself and merely twitched a hand as one would to a servant: ‘Go on.’

  Karris knew she should intervene, soften the grind of stone on stone between these two men: Ironfist, fed up with the years of injustices, and Andross, unable to believe a slave would step so high out of his proper place.

  But she had no words. Her heart was in her throat.

  King Ironfist tilted his head, thoughtful, almost taunting.

  It was coming now. Ironfist would propose the alliance, the kind that could only be sealed by her marriage. She would have to marry Ironfist tonight. With this attitude, he wasn’t going to let his men off their ships until it was done. And ‘done’ meant signed, sealed, and consummated.

  Though she was a grown woman, somehow she hadn’t let herself think that last part through. She would see it through. She knew that. She wasn’t going to faint this close to the finish line. But how could she bear to take this angry stranger’s weight upon her? Once they were behind closed doors, would he become, somehow, her dear friend again?

  But there would be no reprieve, no hoping he might delay the consummation, no blotting herself out with drink as she’d done with the real Gavin Guile—Ironfist might know that story, and he could give her no excuse to annul the marriage. She would take him to her bed, and she would do it sober, and she would meet his eyes while she did it.

  Would she feign pleasure while she betrayed the only man she’d ever loved?

  Orholam have mercy, what if she felt pleasure?

  Would she hold back some position, some act, hoping to hold on to some piece of her own soul?

  For some reason, until now, Karris had thought of dishonoring her office and dishonoring Ironfist and Gavin as somehow external: those would be acts others would judge unfairly, not understanding why she did them or how much good she was accomplishing. When she’d thought of her betrayals, she’d imagined only before she did what had to be done, and after.

  Now she couldn’t help but imagine the during.

  But she would do it. To save her people, she was going to do it, even if for every moment of it she imagined Gavin somehow walking in on her, she was going to do it.

  Finally, King Ironfist spoke, looking at Andross. “I gave you the best years of my life. My brother, Hanishu, did, too, and then he died for you. And in return, you threw me out like garbage, and then you ordered the murder of my sister.” Now the new king stared at them both, and Karris wasn’t spared the heat of his gaze.

  She suddenly felt things sliding off-kilter, like a wagon too heavily loaded careening down a thin mountain road suddenly jumping out of the safety of the ruts to where the cliffs waited.

  “This is not a negotiation. This is an ultimatum,” King Ironfist said. “You’ve taken my family from me. You want my help? I want a dead Guile. You, old man. Or you, Karris. Or Kip. You decide.”

  “Or Zymun?” Andross asked quickly, as if he were merely gathering information.

  “Ha! How much of a fool do you think I am?” Ironfist barked. “No. I’m not here to solve Guile problems. I’m here to be one. You decide. I’ll be back at midnight to see the deed done. If you don’t, we join the White King.”

  Without another word, without a look back, Ironfist and his retinue strode from the hall, their footsteps echoing loudly in the utter silence of hundreds of noblemen and women who could only stare at one another in wide-eyed fear.

  Andross had thought he was so smart. Andross had been so sure Ironfist would do the rational thing, the thing Andross would do. But Ironfist wasn’t rational; he was grieving; he was furious, and he was hell-bent on revenge.

  Ironfist was sounding a death knell that couldn’t be unrung. The satrapies would die—if not tomorrow, then next year. After this, even if Paria and the Chromeria together defeated the White King, this blood Ironfist demanded would be answered with blood. But Karris couldn’t blame him. Not in the least. Ironfist hated injustice; it was something she’d always admired about him. And she and Andross had murdered his people first.

  And now it was going to bring them all to ruin.

  Chapter 87

  Kip looked around the open top of the Prism’s Tower and tried to enjoy the sunshine, tried to breathe. It was a beautiful day, and the view was peerless, but he couldn’t help but look to the horizon, as if the White King’s armada would appear at any moment. He went to the edge, where the great cables he and the Mighty had once slid down to safety had been repaired and once again concealed.

  It actually might be a good way to get messengers from the Chromeria out to every corner of the Jaspers as quickly as possible. They had signal mirrors for many messages, but he’d have to mention the option to Corvan.

  Kip sighed. He was just trying to take his mind off the tightness in his chest.

  Big Leo was standing watch, impassive, and it reminded Kip of the last time they’d been alone.

  What had Big Leo said to him? That every time he tried to be someone else, he failed, and when he was only himself, he succeeded?

  Kip looked down at his arm. I’m not Gavin Guile. I’m not Andross Guile. I’m the fucking Turtle-Bear.

  He had to figure out the Mirrors himself.

  That would have been a lot more comforting if he’d figured out anything at all, but even finding the mechanism on the roof by which Prisms balanced had taken him an embarrassingly long time. A multifaceted crystal hung there, and one could address it standing, or actually strap into a raised frame.

  Huh, that was strange.

  Kip eventually figured out the leather belts and the locks and strapped himself in. He released the pins, and the huge crystal swung down hard toward his face. He jerked back against the belt with a squawk as it banged to a stop a thumb’s breadth from his forehead.

  “You all right there?” Big Leo asked sardonically.

  Kip cleared his throat. “C’mon, that didn’t make you nervous at all?”

  Big Leo just stared at him.

  “As you were,” Kip said.

  Tentatively, he rested his face against the crystal. He could see through the lowest clear layers as the rest pressed against his skin. He reached his will into it.

  Nothing. No, not quite nothing. It felt like he’d put on a yoke that hadn’t been hitched to a plow. The leads were there, just untethered.

  “Get me out of here,” he told Big Leo.

  “That was quick,” Big Leo said.

  “Well, I am a genius of magic,” Kip said.

  Big Leo looked at him flatly. “But seriously.”

  “We need to go downstairs,” Kip said. At least, that’s where he hoped the answers were. “I’m blaming this all on you if it doesn’t work.”

  “Mmm-hmm,” Big Leo said.

  Wiseass.

  T
hey made their way past checkpoints again. On the way up, they’d been staffed by Blackguards Kip and Big Leo hardly had known. But apparently they’d gone and gotten others.

  Their welcome was warmer than Kip had expected. The Lightguards had had all the time in the world to paint Kip and the Mighty as murderous traitors. At the very least, the Mighty had left the Blackguard at a time when they’d really needed good people.

  Instead, he saw Gill Greyling waiting for them.

  “Gill!” Kip said. “They made you a trainer? Those poor nunks!”

  The man flashed a huge smile. “I get along with the slow and clumsy.” Kip laughed as they embraced.

  “Where’s Gav?” Kip asked.

  He felt it instantly. Every face fell.

  “No!” Kip said. But he saw the truth of it on Gill’s face. “How?”

  “We’d been out looking for your father. Gav had been pushing it for a while, drafting too much. We got ambushed by some wights. He saved two of his brothers in the fighting, but blew his halos.”

  “He make it back here?”

  “Yeah. The White herself took care of him for the end.”

  Kip muttered a curse.

  “You should go see her, Lord Guile,” Gill said. He called him Lord Guile, not Breaker.

  “Yeah, I know,” Kip said. He supposed Gill thought Breaker was his Blackguard name, and though it was forgivable under the circumstances, Kip had still abandoned the Blackguard.

  “Promise me.”

  Kip squirmed. It wasn’t like Gill not to let things go. “Look, we didn’t leave things so—”

  “She’s got one son she can’t abide and one that she loves but drove away. Promise me.”

  “I’m not really her son. She made that very clear—”

  “Gav spent his dying breaths making her see what kind of a cockroach Zymun is. She gets it now. But if you make my brother’s sacrifice moot, you’re turning your back on us. Or have you already done that?”

  Kip swore under his breath. “Come on! Don’t be—fine! I’ll do it. I gotta go handle some trivial life-and-death stuff first. Let’s do this again, though. It was fun.”