The Burning White

by Brent Weeks

  “No—”

  “I know who you are, and I’m not here to beg a boon of you, Emperor Lucidonius,” Gavin said. “You ascended to godhood, and I will, too. I’m not here to praise you. I’m here to replace you.”

  Chapter 106

  “Listen, O ye beloved of Orholam!” A voice rose above the crowds thick in the streets, mere minutes before dawn. In a normal year, the call would have been inaudible over the sharp snaps and explosions from the pyroturges and the oohs of the crowd and the din of food sellers and the chatter of conversation. This year, there was an air of quiet dread.

  People had come great distances to join the Sun Day festivities on Big Jasper. When they’d heard of the invasion, a few had left, but most hadn’t believed it would really happen, or perhaps their homes had been lost already to the Wight King’s armies and they had nowhere else to run, or perhaps they believed Orholam would surely protect them here.

  Kip had taken a position at the seawall by East Bay with the majority of his raiders. He was halfway glad to be here: he was happiest being with his people in this fight, but he thought that he really ought to be atop the Prism’s Tower with the mirrors. Andross had let him practice on them to his heart’s content yesterday, but had claimed that today there were prophecies to be fulfilled. One, he claimed, said that the Lightbringer ‘will ascend the heights only at the last, where others have tried and failed.’

  It was one thing to follow a prophecy because it had good advice anyway; it was another to follow one that seemed to be forthrightly bad advice.

  But it actually didn’t matter whether Kip trusted him or if Andross was deliberately sabotaging Kip’s chance to be the Lightbringer. Andross was the promachos. His word was law. Within the Chromeria itself, Kip had to obey him. And Andross had said Kip wasn’t to come back to the Chromeria until the bane rose.

  Kip wasn’t sure why that hadn’t happened yet. Perhaps the Blood Robes planned to wait until the Chromeria committed its drafters to the fight. Perhaps, with the bane spread around the islands rather than grouped as they had been when Kip had encountered them at sea, there were simply technical difficulties. Deploying as quickly as the White King’s army was doing was certain to cause all sorts of problems. After all, an amphibious assault was an incredibly difficult undertaking, and it wasn’t something the Blood Robes had ever practiced; nor had they ever deployed on this scale or at this speed.

  Please let them be running into unforeseen problems.

  Please let us be able to take advantage of those.

  Once the bane did rise, Kip would have to leave the front lines quickly. In theory, it would take a while, so he should have plenty of time to get back to the Chromeria.

  Regardless, he needed to be here for a while, at least. At least until they found out if Teia had been right.

  They believed this was the area most likely to be attacked first. West Bay was covered by the batteries of Cannon Island. Little Jasper itself was so rocky and tall, with sheer walls above the sheer rocks, that it was well-nigh unassailable. One or two ships might land at the back docks, but the only passage into the island from there could be guarded by half a dozen men and held for days. Naturally, they’d put an entire platoon there.

  The only important thing to be done still was to get every drafter to bleed themselves a bit with some hellstone. The orders had already been given, and stressed, and repeated, but telling a war drafter not to draft before going into battle was like telling a swimmer not to hold his breath before diving.

  “I come to you with a word from Orholam Himself!” Quentin shouted. He’d bribed his way to getting atop the gatehouse, and everyone could see him.

  Kip’s men had quietly accompanied Quentin everywhere he’d asked this morning. He’d made four or five stops. This was to be the last before dawn.

  Teia, please tell me you weren’t merely drunk last night. If nothing happens here, you—and I—will have ruined Quentin.

  From where Kip and his men stood, Quentin’s voice wasn’t loud. There was still time left now, in the last few minutes before dawn, where Kip should be making his own big speech.

  In Kip’s experience, men usually fought because they didn’t want to let the man next to them down, then because their commanders would kill them if they didn’t, and finally because they might get loot or revenge.

  What was he supposed to tell his people that wasn’t already obvious? We’re on an island. We’re surrounded. There’s nowhere we can go, nowhere to run away to. We win or we die.

  “My friends!” Quentin said, and he was resplendent in his luxiat-lord’s attire. “Be strong and take courage. You have trembled through the long night, but dawn is coming. We, the Magisterium, have long used our words to sway your hearts. Today Orholam shall reveal whose heart inclines to the light and who wishes to hide in darkness. Let me speak to you one last time, for three minutes only. I take as my text a commentary on the end of mercy by Doni’el Machos.”

  Quentin read the words without drama, without inflection, merely a loud and clear statement of fact: “‘The wrath of Orholam burns against them. Their damnation doesn’t slumber, the pit is prepared, the fire is made ready, the furnace is now hot, ready to receive them, the flames do now rage and glow. The glittering sword is whet, and held over them, and the pit hath opened her mouth under them.’”

  He closed the scroll, although Kip was certain that the action was mostly to signify that he was finished quoting. Quentin had quoted longer selections from memory many times. The young luxiat continued, with no passion in his voice other than pity. “My dear wayward sheep, today is the day of judgment. Orholam’s luxiats have become corrupt. His magisters clad themselves in golden rags, as if rags might save.” He held up the front of his own fine tunic as if it were loathsome to him. “Orholam’s own drafters have grown proud in their strength, so this day, Orholam will deny our drafters His luxin that we may learn to lean upon His strength instead.

  “Among us, men and women of all stations have worshipped other gods, have conspired with Orholam’s enemies, and have betrayed Him and us both. Traitors stand among us, but Orholam knows what is done in darkness, and Orholam will drag their shame into the light. These are words you’ve heard before, words you’ve discounted as mere metaphor. But I tell you that when the dawn comes—literally: this dawn, this day, today, minutes from now—when Orholam’s Eye rises over these walls, some of those standing with us will die. They will be unable to bear the full light of Orholam’s gaze. And they will perish.”

  Oh, shit. Quentin had gone way past what Kip had told him to say. Quentin had been supposed to go out and say, ‘Hey, don’t be afraid if some people get ill. Orholam’s in charge. Those loyal to Him are going to be fine.’ But no, Quentin had thrown it all in, like a first-time gambler with no sense of responsibility.

  If Kip and Teia had led him astray, Quentin wasn’t merely going to be ruined; he was going to get lynched.

  “But when it does happen,” Quentin said, “be not afraid. Orholam sees. Orholam hears. Orholam cares. Orholam saves. He will slay these traitors who are intent on betraying us to the King of Wights. Orholam will slay them, not to cause your hearts to fear but to save your very lives and your souls.

  “This day is not a battle of brother on brother. Nor even between men and those wights who once were men themselves. Today, Orholam Himself fights beside us against the legions of the damned. When you grow faint, His immortals shall uphold you. When you grow weary, they shall bear you up. Though ye fall, O beloved of Orholam, ye shall rise again. And if any part of this doesn’t happen, slay me as a false prophet!”

  Quentin paused. The crowd had fallen utterly silent. They seemed caught between hope and despair, with disbelief overall. When did any luxiat speak so plainly?

  Some knew him or knew of him, and those who did whispered about Quentin to their neighbors, and the sound of the whispers ebbed and flowed.

  The sun, still below the horizon for those here at the waterline, was ca
sting its light on the tallest towers of the Chromeria now, its light descending slowly and surely.

  The people turned and looked. Some looked ill. Was that the lacrimae sanguinis affecting them, or just people scared to death?

  Quentin said, “I close now with a few final words from Doni’el Machos:

  “‘Orholam stands ready to pity you; this is a day not only of judgment but also of mercy; you may cry now with some encouragement of obtaining mercy: but once the time of mercy is past, your most dolorous cries and shrieks will be in vain; weep now in repentance, or weep in the very throes of your damnation.’”

  Atop the gate, limned in the rising light, Quentin fell to his knees and lifted his arms in supplication, or perhaps greeting.

  Kip felt sudden, intense anxiety for his friend.

  What if the poison took too long to take effect?

  The sunlight filled the square, its hand touching all the people who’d been listening so intently to Quentin—and, as far as Kip could tell, word of Quentin’s sermon must have spread like wildfire, because it seemed like the whole island held its breath.

  And now we find out if Karris’s luxiat corps is any good.

  Kip nodded to a standard-bearer, who waved a signal flag.

  In obedience to Karris’s luxiats, mirror slaves and the star-tower slaves around the Jaspers reacted instantly, spinning the towers’ mirrors, sending great beams of sunlight across the crowd. Not only here but also working light over every wall, every gate, every sector of the city: if the lacrimae sanguinis was released by a sharp constriction of the pupils, Kip wanted to make certain that no one had a chance for their eyes to gradually get accustomed to the light of the day.

  But what if even that didn’t make things go fast enough?

  People were blinking against the sudden rays that had just bathed them, wondering if that was Quentin’s miracle. Then many seemed angry.

  What was this? Flashing light over the crowd? Was that supposed to impress them?

  “Lieutenant Commander,” Kip said. The man was General Antonius’s right-hand man, and he stood at Kip’s elbow, ready to take orders, hand nervously on his dagger, no doubt because of the restive crowds. “I think we have about two minutes to rescue Quentin before this crowd turns. Lead your men quietly into place right now, then grab him before they do.”

  “I’ll stay with you, my lord. I’ll send a detachment.”

  Kip turned, irritated. The crowd was starting to buzz. Someone cried out angrily. “False prophet! Kill him!”

  Kip snarled, “Lieutenant, was there something unclear about my orders?”

  The lieutenant commander had drawn his dagger, but Kip barely noticed it. He’d fought alongside this man many times. All Kip could see now was that the whites of the lieutenant commander’s eyes were suddenly flooded with bright crimson, as if the irises had cracked on every side and a dam had broken.

  This man wasn’t a red drafter. That red filling the whites of his eyes wasn’t luxin; it was blood.

  Kip and he seemed to have the realization at same moment. The commander had been poisoned. That meant—

  “Light cannot be chained!” the commander screamed, lunging.

  A heavy chain spun out of nowhere and slapped the attacker down to the ground as easily as a man smacks a mosquito on his arm. One instant the man was leaping at Kip with lethal intent, and the next all his momentum had been redirected into the ground at Kip’s feet.

  Kip cursed as the man convulsed once, fingers and limbs stiffening as if in instant rigor mortis. He looked up at Big Leo. “It somehow actually slipped my mind that the Order might try to assassinate me again.”

  Big Leo wrapped the heavy chain back around his chest. “Didn’t slip ours.”

  In the few seconds Kip had been distracted by the assassin, pandemonium had broken out. In his own ranks, a dozen men and women had dropped dead, and thousands were reacting to the assassination attempt on Kip and to the dead nearby.

  Things were far worse in the square. Nearly a hundred people were dying or lay dead already, hidden weapons spilling from hands that had been tucked away under coats and cloaks, men and women with blood hemorrhaging from their eyes, lurching into the innocent, convulsing to die with limbs crooked tight like spiders’.

  Most of the traitors were congregated directly around the gate—and, as if this death were contagious, the people around them were surging back away from them.

  Kip heard screams reverberate throughout the island as others were dying in droves in the far corners of Big Jasper, just as suddenly.

  Quentin jumped to his feet as the people roared. “Be not afraid!” he shouted. “Orholam fights with us. Orholam fights with us!”

  Only Kip knew the truth. My God, he thought, and he wasn’t sure if it was a curse or a holy invocation of the divine mystery: Teia’s just wiped out the Order of the Broken Eye.

  All of it.

  Today a great warrior like Big Leo might kill twenty of the enemy. Maybe, maybe forty. He would be accounted a hero for such valor.

  If her estimates were right, in one day, of the empire’s most dedicated, most cunning, most dangerous, and most implacable enemies, Teia had just killed four hundred.

  And no one would ever know. Despite all Quentin’s talk of Orholam’s mercy, like a mighty man levering apart the pillars of a pagan temple, Teia had killed the enemies in their hundreds only at the cost of killing herself.

  Kip climbed up on the wall.

  The masses of people were cheering now with new hope, but Kip’s eyes were drawn to the horizon, because among the cacophony of alarms and screams of horror and disgust and shouts of praise and relief, he’d heard the whistle of the lookouts, and he saw the horizon darken with the long shadows of the White King’s approaching armada.

  It seemed much, much bigger than Kip remembered.

  Then his eyes were drawn to the waves—and, illuminated in the angled rays of dawn—what was swimming in undulating ranks beneath them.

  Chapter 107

  Gasping between his words, Gavin said, “You’re… really… fucking strong.”

  “Annoying, huh?” Lucidonius said, hands on his knees.

  They were standing within two steps of each other, not even pretending to be on guard against a sudden move from the other.

  Gavin had tried sudden moves when they’d rested briefly before. His moves were no longer at all sudden.

  Truthfully, they were hardly even moves now.

  And it was getting worse. He’d noticed it immediately, how the ascended man’s eyes mirrored the sun, slowly shrinking in apparent size as the sun rose, but growing in intensity.

  Lucidonius obviously wasn’t as tired as Gavin was, nor as bloodied. He had only a split lip while Gavin’s nose had bled and clotted, bled and clotted. His cheek swollen from a collision with the marble, elbows throbbing, knees abraded.

  Gavin had noticed that Lucidonius’s body, too, seemed to grow stronger as the sun did. Somehow the godling’s magic was tied to the rising of the light. On realizing that, Gavin had made desperate attempts to end the fight quickly.

  Those times had been the times he’d come within a hair’s breadth of losing. Now there was only endurance, not the thought of victory.

  They’d reached the sword not once, but several times. It now lay not far from the Great Mirror itself. Gavin counted that as his only victory. If Lucidonius were smarter, he would attempt to throw the Blinding Knife off the tower. As long as it was so close to the Great Mirror, Gavin had a chance.

  “Shouldn’t you be… you know, on your way elsewhere?” Gavin asked.

  “Where’s that?”

  “It’s Sun Day. Don’t you go visit the poor assholes giving their lives for you over at the Chromeria?”

  “I wish I could go help them in their hour of need. I’m needed here.”

  “Hour of need?” Gavin asked. He wouldn’t call the Freeing that.

  “The Jaspers are under siege. The White King has floated seven b
ane and tens of thousands of soldiers and drafters for the attack. And there are traitors within the walls.”

  “And yet you’re here. While they worship you.”

  “They don’t worship me.”

  “You know what I mean. Whatever you want to call yourself, Lucidonius, it doesn’t change that they’re dying because they believe your words.”

  Lucidonius stood and dusted himself off. “You seem to have recovered your strength, if not your sense of irony. Ready?”

  “How’d you do it?” Gavin said, not least because he most certainly was not ready.

  “Are you hoping I’ll get distracted now, or that I’ll give you instructions?” Lucidonius asked.

  “You give me too much credit. I’m just buying time to rest. But seriously, you ascended to godhood. How?” Not that Gavin wouldn’t take any opening if the creature offered it, but he didn’t expect that. Lucidonius was too sharp for simpler ploys to work.

  “Oh, you’re hoping I’ll wear myself out a little bit, just by me using my breath to talk while you rest?”

  Gavin didn’t deny that had been his thought, but he pressed in. “You’re not nearly as tired as I am. What’s the harm? I’m the only one in the world who could possibly understand you. Even if only partially.”

  “And people think Andross got all the cleverness in the Guile family.”

  “People think wrong. My mother was more clever by half,” Gavin shot back. He was defensive of Felia now, and he wasn’t sure why. Maybe because he’d only recognized her particular genius after she was already gone. Maybe because she’d always championed him, even against his father.

  “Brilliant people, Andross and Felia, each in their own way. Complementary in their gifts, but twins in their arrogance.”