The Burning White

by Brent Weeks

  “Yes?” he asked, turning away from studying her bloody, perfect tooth. “I find last words really do only tend to be worth as much as any other words, but if it’ll really make you feel better…”

  Her head lolled. Opium really was a tell of a thing. “I just, mm, wanted to let you know, I’m going to have to kill you for that. But! Good news! You won’t have to save my dad. I’ll do that myself. But thanks. For offering. Quite decent of you. Really feel like… mm… like we could have been friends…”

  “Me too,” Murder Sharp said. He popped her tooth in his mouth and sucked at it to get the blood off.

  “If you weren’t a sick fuck, I mean.”

  “Now, that’s no way to speak to—” His face scrunched. “Why’s your tooth taste like almonds?” He spat the tooth into his hand, suddenly horrified.

  There was a nice, well-defined crack in the tooth, as if it had been engineered to break that way. Teia’s one little twist as it pulled away from her jaw. A last bit of white gel leaked out into his palm from that crack. He’d sucked down the rest.

  “You were always looking at that tooth like a horny teen boy stealing glances of cleavage.” Teia laughed. Not that she had cleavage.

  “You—what did you do?”

  “I’m actually glad you finally took it. It’s been killing me for six months,” Teia said. There was something really important she was supposed to remember. What was it again? “Six months, worrying that damn poison tooth was going to crack and leak death into my mouth.”

  Murder Sharp staggered and sagged against the door. “I can’t… You didn’t.”

  “Oh! That was it!” Teia said. “How long’s that other poison last? The light one, lacrimae sanguinis? Does it wear off?”

  “You ungrateful bitch. I would’ve…” Murder Sharp slid down the door. His stomach cramped, but he didn’t vomit. Not yet. Cyanide was the only poison potent enough for such a job that Karris had had access to, and it gave an ugly death.

  “When’s it wear off?” she asked.

  “You shamed me,” he said. “I shared with you. I trusted you. And this? This is… oohhh.” He fell over and puked noisily.

  “How long’s it last?” Teia asked. “Please.”

  “Stupid, stupid bitch.” He puked again.

  “I’m stupid?” Teia asked. “Who’s the one who had his enemy tied up and didn’t finish the job? Who kidnapped me twice?”

  A silly smile painted his puke-strewn face. “Stupid because… I never dosed you with the lacrimae sanguinis. Just the poppy. I couldn’t kill you, Teia. I couldn’t—”

  And then the convulsions began. His feet drummed against the stone floor.

  It took forever, and he was incapable of speech from then on. His eyes raging at her, then rolling back in his head. His dentures had flown from his mouth and lay in a pool of vomit. He gnawed at the floor with his broken teeth, dug his fingers into it.

  It was awful, and it was long, too long in her drugged stupor, before she realized she could draft paryl if she wanted to.

  Unless he was lying about that. Tricking her.

  He was a cunning one.

  Well, she had shit to do in the next day, and she’d need paryl to do it. Might as well find out now.

  She took one breath, let her fears gather in the wind in her lungs, and then blew it all out into the world. Then she flared her eyes before she took the next breath.

  And didn’t die.

  That was nice.

  She looked at the tiniest cutting tool on Sharp’s tray and with ridiculous amounts of paryl was just barely able to lift the little thing and float it to her hand. She cut herself free of her bonds.

  Then she walked over to Sharp’s desk and took out his favorite diplomatic dentures, the blindingly bright white ones.

  Taking a glass of water, she gently rinsed out his mouth. He coughed weakly as some went down the wrong way. But then, in between convulsions, she put his dentures in his mouth, giving him some dignity back. As much dignity as a man dying spasming in pools of vomit can get, anyway.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “For speaking cruelly. Good night, Elijah ben-Zoheth.”

  He couldn’t speak now. The light was already dimming from his eyes. She didn’t know if he heard her at all. With paryl, she squeezed his spine to stop the pain and then stopped his heart, too.

  It was a mercy too long delayed.

  She stood and looked down on him. There was nothing peaceful in the tension-locked corpse.

  She found her split tooth and tucked it into his clenched fist.

  “I feel bulletproof,” she told the dead man. “And I don’t think that’s such a good thing right now.”

  For a while, she looked around the secret office, and realized that she kept forgetting what she was looking for.

  “Oh!” she said suddenly, holding it up triumphantly. “The master cloak. Sharp, silly, you never even asked me about it!”

  She put it on, and felt a little more herself. Then realized she was still wearing the dress Sharp had put her in. His mother’s dress? Yuck. And he’d undressed her to put it on her? Double yuck.

  Eventually, she found her own clothes, feeling a little better when she realized that she was still wearing her own underthings. Sharp had been a sick man, but at least he wasn’t that kind of sick. It took her a while to get dressed. She might have dozed off for a few minutes. Or hours. She’d never used opiates before, so she wasn’t sure how long it was going to take for them to wear off.

  But there was no time to wait until she was at her full strength.

  She gathered up her things, and everything of Murder Sharp’s that seemed like it might be useful. Before she went, she closed his dead eyes. There was nothing tentative or overly gentle in her motions. He was just meat now.

  Giving him this last kindness wasn’t for him, it was for her. He’d become a monster, but she had the seeds of the same monster in her. And there had been something in him that hadn’t been all monster; his goodness was always poking through at the oddest moments.

  But she’d killed better.

  Next stop, the Order of the Broken Eye’s holiday, the Feast of the Night’s Coming Triumph. Or whatever the hell it was called.

  Maybe she’d be sober by then.

  Chapter 100

  “Thank you for coming,” Andross said. “I know it’s been a terrible day.”

  His note had politely mentioned he would withdraw all support from Kip’s martial positions tomorrow if they didn’t come, so here, late at night, the Mighty had gathered in Andross’s stateroom. Their moods ranged from sullen to stoic to jagged. The demands of duty could only block out so much grief.

  Suspecting a trap, Tisis hadn’t come.

  “Koios will attack at dawn, if he’s able,” Andross said.

  “Most of the tacticians think he’ll wait. He’s only just setting up his siege,” Kip said.

  “The tacticians have the tactics right, but the strategy wrong,” Andross said.

  “It’d be a terrible move,” Kip said.

  “No, not terrible. Simply not his strongest. If the White King can shut down our drafters—which he believes he can—then he is already vastly more powerful than we are. He doesn’t need to play it safe, surround us, lay siege, and summon his troops to exactly the right area to focus an attack. He can just attack.”

  “He’s been patient elsewhere,” Kip said. “Why on this, the most important battle, would he rush headlong?” And why are you having this conversation with us, rather than with High General Danavis?

  “Because he has to attack on Sun Day,” Andross said. “His sea battle with you slowed him. I’m sure he would have preferred to get here earlier and set up at his leisure. Now he has to rush in. There’s no other choice.”

  “Wouldn’t he want to not attack on Sun Day?” Kip asked. “He’s a pagan.”

  “Maybe usually. Not this time. Thumbing his nose at Orholam is worth a few thousand more dead to him,” Andross said.

&n
bsp; “Ah,” Kip said. That made sense. Not only could Koios satisfy his personal animosity against Orholam—probably the most important reason—but he would also show the Seven Satrapies that Orholam was powerless on His holiest day, in the very center of His power.

  All remaining resistance would fold after that. The old gods would have shown they were more powerful than Orholam at His greatest. Although it would make this battle more difficult, it would make reigning afterward much easier.

  Koios was still playing the long game.

  “So let’s win, shall we?” Andross said. “To that end, I have gifts for you.”

  Kip and the others looked at one another. Gifts? Andross Guile?

  “Commander Leonidas,” Andross said. A slave brought forward a huge rosewood box that he seemed to have difficulty carrying.

  “Leonidas?” Kip asked. “Big Leo?”

  “I know, I know, it sounds like a girl’s name,” Big Leo said sheepishly.

  He opened the box.

  “Oh, you shouldn’t have.” On the top was a thick black leather coat with a high collar. Across the chest was the Mighty’s sigil in white leather. He picked it up; it was obviously very heavy, with chain and plate woven in beneath the leather.

  “Oh, you really shouldn’t have,” he said, looking into the rosewood box. Lifting the coat had revealed, on velvet, a hammered, heavy copper chain with links the size of fists. There were two gloves inside as well. Big Leo looked at Andross, who nodded.

  Leo put on the gloves and lifted the heavy chain. Each link had a black stripe around its burnished circumference. Then he looked at the tips of the thumbs of his gloves. “Oh, hell, yes!” he said, and flicked his thumb against the chain.

  Nothing happened.

  “Chain’s copper so you don’t throw a spark accidentally when it’s wrapped around your own body,” Andross said. “Forefinger and thumb.”

  Kip didn’t know what he was talking about. But Big Leo looked down at his gloves. He held the chain out and flicked his thumb against his forefinger, throwing a spark.

  The entire chain caught fire as the atasifusta wood in each link whooshed into flame.

  “Holy shit,” Ferkudi said.

  Big Leo whipped the fiery chain in frippering circles, passing it over his arms, around his back, striking one end out like a spear, whipping it down like a hammer, and then winding it around an arm.

  Then he sort of spoiled the terrifying effect when he giggled like a little kid.

  That actually made it more terrifying.

  “I know I just said this, but holy shit,” Ferkudi said.

  However, the chain on his arm continued to burn. Atasifusta, the ever-burning.

  Ah, thus the leather. Still…

  Andross said, “When you’re done, do this.” He laid a hand on Big Leo’s arm. Red luxin poured from his hand, coating the burning chain. First it flared up into fire, red luxin being flammable, but then the luxin crusted over, blackened in every place, extinguishing itself and the chain.

  When Big Leo moved his arm again, the red luxin broke to dust with the smell of tea leaves and tobacco, his arm and the chain unharmed. He was also given a helm: naturally, it was a lion with a mane like fire.

  Andross motioned for the young man to step back. “Don’t say thanks. Express your thanks by keeping Kip alive.”

  “Yes, my lord,” Big Leo said.

  “Ferkudi del’Angelos,” Andross said. Ferkudi stepped forward. “I hear you’re a grappler.” His armor was the same, albeit without the covering of leather, and thus much lighter. But his, too, was black and adorned with the Mighty’s sigil: the man with head bowed, arms out, radiating power. His weapons were twin double-bladed hand axes, each with one blade of steel and the other blade of a single wavering obsidian edge. Each obsidian stone itself could have purchased a castle. Nothing could cut through luxin like those. He, too, was given gloves, with hellstone points at the knuckles.

  Andross said, “Wights will either flee in terror or seek you out especially. I order you to kill at least one of their petty gods, understood?”

  “With pleasure, High Lord,” Ferkudi said.

  The hand axes were completed with sword-breaking hafts and an ingenious back sheath. Ferkudi took a bear helm.

  For Winsen, there was the lightest armor, befitting the archer’s small size. His helm was a snake. And there was a short bow inside. It was beautifully wrought with horses in some ancient art style, but at first Winsen sneered at it. He did admire the arrows, two quivers full, half of them tipped with obsidian. He looked at them in the light. “Flawless, best fletching I’ve seen, too. But as for the bow, it’s beautiful, but… a short bow? And it’s got a sight? I think I’ll keep my—”

  “It’ll pierce armor at three hundred paces. Test it if you don’t believe me. My man will instruct you on its care.”

  Winsen couldn’t help himself. He lifted the bow and drew the string, his broad back knotting with the effort. It was clearly harder than he’d been expecting. Then he walked away with it, muttering obscenities in appreciation.

  “Ben-hadad,” Andross said.

  Ben was, surprisingly, little the worse for wear. A servant had found him around noon, tied up, and since then he’d been more fixated on Cruxer’s death than on his own narrow escape from it. He’d quietly told Kip of Teia’s kidnapping and the work he’d been doing but that his door code was wrong, and when they’d cut through a wall to get in, it was to the wrong room. Sharp would be holding Teia somewhere else. Maybe nearby, which meant Ben-hadad had to revisit his earlier work searching for hidden rooms: he’d missed something.

  But that work would take him hours if not days. Teia would be dead by then, if she wasn’t already. Ben had told Kip he instead needed to concentrate his efforts on checking the siege defenses and all the various machinae that were going to be used in the Jaspers’ defense.

  With anguish, Kip had agreed. The battle hadn’t even begun, and two of his Mighty were already dead.

  He wanted to make the Order pay dearly for that, but he knew he wasn’t going to. He was going to die before he could do anything about them.

  Andross gave Ben-hadad a coat that was similar to Ferkudi’s.

  Ben felt it and said, “What’s layered underneath this?”

  “Mirrored steel scale, like all of them,” Andross said. “It’s not as strong as plate, but not nearly as heavy, either. Try not to test its effectiveness too much.”

  Beneath the coat there wasn’t a weapon. Instead, there was a pair knee braces.

  “I, uh, am actually almost finished with my backup brace,” Ben-hadad said, gesturing to his current, solid brace. Kip had broken the other when he’d raised the Great Mirror. “Parallel discovery, I guess? But thank you? Definitely will save me some hours tonight.”

  “These are Commander Finer’s own knee braces,” Andross said. “Before he went wight and tried to kill his Prism, he developed these. Instead of using open luxin, he reinforced the joints with sea-demon bone. I think you’ll also find that wearing two of them, you can do much, much more than you did with one.”

  “Two? And sea-demon…?” Ben-hadad’s eyes widened. “Of course! Why didn’t I think of that? This is—thank you! Thank you very, very much!”

  “While you’re at it, you may also take the sharana ru I’d intended for Cruxer,” Andross said.

  “No, I can’t,” Ben said, though the curiosity in his eyes was plain. A tygre striper?

  “It’s not going to do him any good,” Andross said.

  An uneasy silence descended on them.

  “I can’t,” Ben-hadad said finally.

  “Don’t be a damned fool. Cruxer died because he couldn’t adjust to realities shifting under his feet. Don’t follow his example in this.” Andross drew a tygre striper shaped like a white spear from Cruxer’s box and veritably threw it at Ben-hadad. “Kill a god for me.”

  Looking to the rest of the Mighty, who nodded their approval, Ben-hadad kept the thing. The sp
ear was long and thin, with a steel spike at the foot and a graceful steel blade at the top, below which were embedded jagged obsidian teeth in the haft.

  Turning to Kip, Andross said, “We’ll have the appropriate funerals, if we live so long. Now, where is your stubborn bride?”

  Kip said, “I guess she’s not that eager to see you again. Strangely enough.”

  “Strangely enough, I’m tempted not to give her her gift, then. But whatever. Take it.”

  Kip stepped forward and opened Tisis’s chest. Inside was a red dress, high-necked and long-sleeved and heavy and adorned with the Mighty’s sigil as well. “Armored?” Kip asked.

  “As much as possible without being obvious. I figured that her duties wouldn’t be martial, but that she may well not stay away from harm, either. The Guile women seem to hold in common a lack of an aversion to danger.”

  “This is Felia’s dress, isn’t it?” Kip asked. Andross had merely had a tailor add the Mighty’s sigil to it.

  Andross pursed his lips. “I hate how you do that.”

  “So, do I get anything?” Kip said flippantly.

  “Oh yes,” Andross said, his eyes twinkling. “I spent a long time pondering if I should give you armor so fine you couldn’t turn it down but that would make you look like a raging asshole.”

  “Nice,” Kip said. Though I kind of do that on my own.

  “But I figured you already do that on your own.”

  I hate how he does that.

  Andross gestured and a slave brought out another box. In it was armor to match the Mighty, albeit with the colors reversed, the armor entirely white, with the figure of the man in black, head bowed, silhouette suspiciously like Kip’s own these days. “White, huh? That’s a little raging-assholey,” Kip said.

  “I couldn’t give up the idea altogether.”

  “By which I mean, thank you, grandfather.”

  “Stop. I’m getting weepy.”

  “Is there a weapon for me?”

  “I thought you’d enjoy going into battle armed with your wit,” Andross said.

  “But you’d not want me to go into battle defenseless.”

  Andross didn’t smile. He simply held out his hand. In it was a single Nine Kings card.