The Burning White

by Brent Weeks

  He pushed through them, but stopped before the lift and turned. He cursed again. “Gill. Trainer. I’m sorry. About…”

  “I know,” Gill said.

  Moments later, Kip and Big Leo stepped off the lift at the tall, wide-open level that housed all the tower’s mirrors. Dozens of mirror slaves were hard at work prepping for Sun Day. It was the biggest day of the year for them. Not only were there all the festivities and parades to prepare for, many of which required special lenses and tight coordination, but they went on all day long, on the day of the year with the most intense sunlight.

  Mistakes in coordinating the mirrors not only were deemed harbingers of bad luck, but they could also send errant burning hot rays into the crowds of pilgrims. Small smudges on the mirrors could turn them into a smoking ruin. Untrained or sick staff could fall to their deaths with the rigors of the long, long day. Thus, today was filled with everything from checking the health of the slaves here and on the Thousand Stars throughout the Jaspers, to checking and filling the cleaning solutions for the mirrors themselves, to drilling the star-keepers on hitting their sequences during the parades.

  Kip had served with the mirror slaves before; it was a favorite punishment for nunks, and the slaves had laughed at the nunks’ sweating and bumbling, saying that day was nothing compared to Sun Day.

  There were no nunks here now. Kip figured they’d probably just get in the way. He started looking around for the slaves’ overseer, but couldn’t see one immediately. That was odd. Usually the overseers made a real effort to distinguish themselves above their fellows.

  “I see how, I just don’t understand why, Overseer Amadis,” a boy said.

  Kip homed in on the conversation and wove through the workers to the east side of the tower. The boy who’d spoken was watching as an older man swung a mirror from one position to another. But the mirror he was swinging was blackened, melted.

  “Because we’ve got no backup mirrors. We use what we’ve got,” the old man said.

  “Why not take it out altogether?”

  Overseer Amadis looked up at Kip. “My lord, will you give me one moment to deal with this?”

  “Of course.”

  He turned back to the boy. “Because it’s the counterweight to Valor’s mirror. We’ve got two hundred twenty-seven position changes tomorrow, and without this mirror in place, that bolt in the frame may snap.”

  “But why do I have to clean it? It’s melted!” the boy asked, but then his head dropped. “My pardons, Overseer.”

  A female slave nearby who was scrubbing the floor on hands and knees shook her head. “Little Alvaro doesn’t want to work. Thinks he’s too good for it. Surprise, surprise.”

  “Because if you keep it clean,” the overseer said, “maybe it’ll make it through the day without shattering. It’s brittle as is. And because everyone else needs to clean theirs. Letting your mirror get dirty is the worst thing we keepers can possibly do, isn’t it, Ysabel?” the overseer said, turning to the sneering woman scrubbing the floor.

  She turned back to her labors, muttering.

  Kip looked from her to the blackened mirror. Clearly there was some story there, but it didn’t have anything to do with him.

  “Alvaro,” Amadis said, “son, you’re only just coming out from under the cloud of suspicion she put on you. You serve well tomorrow, and you get moved to a rotation on the real mirrors. If you loaf because it doesn’t seem to matter to you… You’re a smart kid. You want them to look at you like you looked at Ysabel a year ago?”

  The boy shook his head with a fair facsimile of humility, accepting his correction.

  “Sorry about that,” Amadis said. “These two should not be kept together, but we make do, like everyone. How may I help you, my lord?”

  “I’m afraid I’m going to throw a wrench into your plans,” Kip told Overseer Amadis. “But it’s for something more important than Sun Day, I promise.”

  Unsurprisingly, the overseer was less than delighted at what Kip wanted. There were things a slave—even an exalted one—couldn’t promise. Every warden would have to be summoned to sign over control of the mirror towers in their neighborhoods. Orders would have to be cleared with the appropriate authorities. The luxiats in charge of the Sun Day parades would have to confer.

  Kip understood immediately, likely more than Amadis did.

  This man didn’t have the power to say yes. He wasn’t an arrogant ass jealous of his small bubble of authority, but he served those who were. No one wanted to be held responsible for saying yes, so everything would go as slowly as possible. The luxiats in charge of the parades would confer, then decide they couldn’t approve such a thing themselves, and summon a High Luxiat. He’d be briefed at length, then deliberate. Then he’d decide he couldn’t decide himself, and so on until Sun Day of next year had passed.

  “At long last,” Kip said to Big Leo, “it turns out my time getting stonewalled in Dúnbheo was valuable for something after all.”

  Big Leo grunted and stretched against the massive chain he wore draped around his neck. It actually made a few slaves stop what they were doing. He didn’t ask Kip to explain, though. Sometimes, he was at least as difficult in his own laconic way as Winsen.

  Kip said, “Overseer Amadis, you have access to messengers, right? Good. Send urgent messages directly to the High Luxiats and High Lord Black and the luxiats in charge of the parades and the wardens that Lord Kip Guile requires—well, all the things I’ve asked for, you parse them out appropriately to the appropriate ones. Tell them I require those things immediately. Stop all your work with the mirrors, right now, until you’ve done that. In your messages, note that I’ve written down their names specifically, and that those who fail in providing what the Jaspers need for our common defense immediately will face the full wrath of the Guiles. Treason will be suspected of those who work against our common defense, punishment will be meted out swiftly if not overly carefully, and more loyal replacements found.”

  “Well, that oughta do it,” Big Leo rumbled.

  “I can promise you our full cooperation, my lord,” Overseer Amadis said. “Starting immediately. These mirrors will be slaved to the gem before you can reach the roof.” He swallowed.

  “That feel good?” Big Leo asked as they headed to the exit.

  “Nah,” Kip said.

  Big Leo said nothing.

  “Maybe a little.”

  “—know why you think you’re special, Elos?” a boy was saying at the same moment. “Because you’re an arrogant little shit.”

  Kip stopped at the door. Had he heard ‘Elos’? Like that green wight Gaspar Elos way back in Rekton? He could have sworn…

  He looked back, but all the slaves were hard at work, double-time.

  Nah, must have imagined it.

  He headed back to work.

  Chapter 88

  It was no pleasure to cut through the layers of defense Kip had set up at his headquarters. If Teia could do it, so could other Shadows. The best of them anyway.

  Fine, there was some pleasure in it: for the first time, she was able to experience the blend of using her magical and her physical dexterity without having to dread why she was doing it. Before now, an infiltration meant she was going to commit murder.

  Today, she was simply going to… what exactly?

  She wanted to talk to Kip before they died. Maybe she knew something that could help him. Maybe she could do something to help him. Hell, she was an assassin, wasn’t she? She could probably make all sorts of his problems go away.

  And for Kip she’d do it. No questions asked.

  After all, what was one more soul in her ledger?

  There was one paryl drafter in Kip’s entourage. Slow girl, paryl leaking out of her like a sieve, inefficient, unfocused. Teia could have gotten past her without even being invisible.

  Still, she had to be careful. Anyone who glimpsed a heel or the eyes of an otherwise-invisible intruder was going to shoot first and ask questions later
, literally.

  Teia was good now, but enervating a finger before it twitched on a trigger? She wasn’t that good. And paryl certainly wasn’t going to stop a musket ball.

  It took only half an hour of being on the street until she slipped into Kip’s suite, not completely certain that she’d managed to silence the hinges from outside the door, though she had wrapped them in layer after layer of paryl.

  This was not Kip’s suite, she realized as she got inside.

  It was Kip and Tisis’s suite. And Kip was gone. Tisis sat at a large table, quill in hand, scribbling. She looked tense.

  Teia took a step forward. The plush rug under Teia’s foot sank pleasantly, but then—

  Click.

  Oh shiiiiit.

  “I would hold very still, were I you,” Tisis said, laying down the quill and raising her gaze, studying the emptiness in the air as if she might see through Teia’s invisibility. She took a deep breath as she realized she really couldn’t. “Trouble with being a Shadow: your eyes have to be visible to gather light, so you like to only look up in little glimpses, huh? Keeps you from studying ceilings carefully.”

  Gathering the folds of the master cloak between her eyes and Tisis, Teia looked up to one side. Half a dozen muskets and crossbows pointed at various angles toward her and around her, in case she jumped away from the trap she’d just stepped into. All of them were behind a sheet of glass thick enough to defeat paryl from penetrating it, but thin enough that a bolt or musket ball would have no such difficulty. She assumed the other side had another half-dozen as well.

  “I’m not here to hurt you,” Teia said.

  “Teia, I presume?” Tisis asked.

  Teia shimmered into visibility and took down her hood. “Ben-hadad’s work?” she asked, pointing a thumb to the death trap. Thanks for telling me about this, Ben. Jackass.

  “His design. An underling did the work. That’s why it’s not armed yet.”

  “It’s not armed?”

  “I know how bureaucracies work. I figured that if someone ordered an assassination by a real Shadow, getting permission and then setting it up would take at least until this evening, whereas you might come immediately. But that was just a guess. I’m glad I was right. Nice to, um, see you.”

  “I’m, uh, real glad to see you again, too,” Teia said. Because getting caught in a stupid trap like a moron is exactly how I wanted to reintroduce myself to Kip’s gorgeous and competent wife. “So I can step off this?”

  “Of course,” Tisis said.

  Bobbing her head to look down at her feet, Teia stepped off the pressure plate.

  A thwang and the sound of breaking glass made her head snap up. Shards of glass fell from its frame in front of the weapons to the floor, shattering. One crossbow had discharged.

  Teia’d heard too many tales of men being fatally wounded without realizing it to feel relief immediately. Had that been a breeze she’d felt on her neck?

  She reached up to the back of her neck. It was dry, mercifully dry. But something tickled her neck. She pulled it into view: a clump of her hair, cut by the crossbow quarrel.

  If Teia hadn’t dipped her head to look at her feet…

  Their gazes locked.

  “I am so, so sorry!” Tisis said, horror writ on her features. “I swear to Orholam that wasn’t me trying to…”

  “Murder me and pretend it was an accident?” Teia asked.

  “Orholam’s hairies,” Tisis said, “this is so not how I wanted this to go.”

  Teia heard running footsteps summoned by the sound of the breaking glass. She dove and rolled out of the way, shimmering out of visibility and throwing her hood up even as the door banged open.

  Three people she didn’t recognize dressed in cloaks of the Mighty burst into the room—along with one person who made her heart leap. Cruxer!

  “A malfunction,” Tisis said smoothly. “And a potentially lethal one. Commander? Do you have an answer for this?”

  If Cruxer were chagrined, he gave no indication. The man had turned into a slender version of Ironfist in his time away. “I’ll look into it at once, milady.”

  “Send someone to do it. I wish to speak with you privately.”

  Cruxer’s back stiffened. He gave a hand signal to dismiss the other Mighty without even picking up the glass or the bolt embedded in the wall.

  After they were gone, Tisis said, “Adrasteia?”

  Teia stood and at some distance, and slowly—she knew Cruxer’s reaction speed—she shimmered back into visibility.

  His face blossomed open with such intensity of joy at seeing her that she almost started crying. He stepped across the room in two steps with those long legs of his and wrapped her in an embrace.

  And then she did weep, with body-shaking, unstoppable sobs. She could only bury her face in his chest. For some reason, she’d thought Cruxer would disapprove of her, would judge her, would despise her for what she’d become.

  It took her a while to pull her shit back together.

  Orholam’s balls. Crying in front of Kip’s wife. Let me go hop on that pressure plate a few more times.

  Finally, after what felt like hours but had probably been less than a minute, Teia cleared her throat and stepped back.

  “So… I guess Kip’s not around?” Teia asked. “Breaker, I mean.” She was still trying to get used to the idea that she was accepted into the Mighty, so she had the right to use their Mighty names.

  “He’s at the Chromeria,” Tisis said. “From the secrecy of your visit, I assume you’re in danger?”

  “Why are you in danger?” Cruxer asked.

  “He doesn’t know?” Teia asked Tisis, indicating Cruxer. About me infiltrating the Order? About Ironfist becoming King Ironfist?

  “Kip said your mission was your secret and your burden—he only shared it with me because I needed to know to help him rule—but he wouldn’t extend that circle further until we got here, where it might affect Cruxer’s work. Commander, I would have told you a few hours ago, but things have been…”

  He dismissed it with a wave of his hand. “I’m not entitled to all secrets, and I trust my Lord Guile completely.” He frowned momentarily. “Which is not to say I don’t want to know now, although I was just about to head to the Chromeria. I heard Commander Ironfist was seen heading there from the docks, with like a Parian honor guard or something?”

  “Ironfist?” Teia asked, her voice strangled. “He’s here?”

  “Yeah, I know!” Cruxer said. “I’d heard he’d left the Jaspers, and there were crazy rumors he’d been fired—like how there always is,” Cruxer said. “I wish it hadn’t taken a war to get us all back together, but I can’t tell you how many times as I’ve led the Mighty I’ve asked myself what Ironfist would do in a certain situation. I can’t wait to thank him. And… well, even ask his opinion of a few things. I mean, I’ve missed him almost as much as I’ve missed you, Te—what’s wrong, Teia?”

  She couldn’t seem to get her voice to work right. Her stomach was in full riot. “You… you really don’t—you don’t know?” She looked over to Tisis, who seemed just as clueless. Which meant Kip didn’t know, either.

  Tisis said, “I mean, we know he lost his position here. Kip meant to speak with his grandfather about that, and see if he could be reinstated. He’s been furious about it.”

  “It is so much too late for that,” Teia said. “You… didn’t hear about Paria?”

  “What about it?” Tisis asked.

  “Who cares about Paria now?” Cruxer said. “He’s here. He’s all right, isn’t he?”

  “We were deep in Blood Forest,” Tisis told Teia, “and the river was blockaded. We had no news, no messages at all for several months, and few before that.”

  Teia hadn’t written anything to them about Ironfist being in the Order; she didn’t dare trust any messenger, and they’d had no secret code together anyway. But she’d figured for sure Kip would have heard about Ironfist declaring himself a king! If he hadn’t, or
hadn’t had a chance to pass it along, then Teia was about to become the bearer of worse news than she’d even imagined. The Chromeria was so connected to the events of the wider world that she’d forgotten how long it could take for the deeper parts of the satrapies to hear about events elsewhere. In war, picking out the reliable from the rumors made it twice as hard.

  “What’s wrong with Ironfist?!” Cruxer demanded.

  “He’s in the Order of the Broken Eye,” Teia said.

  Tisis went still with shock, but Cruxer laughed. “Ha, Teia, this isn’t the time to make jokes. Orholam’s balls, you scared me! But seriously that’s not funny. What is wrong?”

  Then he processed the horror on her face.

  She said, “What did Kip tell you about why I stayed on the Jaspers?”

  Cruxer glanced at Tisis, then back to Teia. “He said there was some threat to Karris that only you could help with. You can see threats with paryl no one else can. You thought Orholam was calling you to stay here.”

  Who would have thought that a man nicknamed ‘the Lip’ could keep his closed so well? But as much as Teia usually would have thanked Kip for that carefulness, now it just meant she had to march further out of the shadows to tell them the whole truth. “That’s… all true. But it’s not all the truth. Cruxer, I’ve been infiltrating the Order of the Broken Eye for Karris, trying to get the information to destroy them from the inside.”

  “You?” He grinned, but with a hint of desperation, as if he felt his disbelief crumbling. “Come on. Like some kind of spy?”

  “And an assassin.” It felt like a sinkhole had opened in her gut and it was swallowing all the world.

  “A what?” He smirked, cocking his head. But his eyebrows were drawing down, and upturned corners of his mouth collapsed down around bared teeth.

  “The White ordered me to do everything I had to in order to get in as deep as I could.”

  “And?”

  “So when the Order sent me to kill the Nuqaba, I did. She was Ironfist’s sister.”

  “Teia, what the hell?”

  It all had to come out. Disastrous as she’d always known it would be.