The Burning White

by Brent Weeks

  The Mot was still alive. Crippled and broken, she’d tried to draft luxin wings to glide from the top of her collapsing tower, but she’d been too slow.

  Under the ice-blue skin, shimmering in a million facets so that it could move, Karris recognized the woman: Samila Sayeh, one of the legends from the Prisms’ War. She’d fought for Gavin at Garriston. She and her longtime lover Usef Tep, the Purple Bear, Karris thought. Or had they fought on opposite sides?

  That was right. Opposite sides during the war, then lovers afterward.

  But Samila had fought for Gavin.

  “Samila?” Karris asked. “You’re with them?”

  The woman wore a black luxin collar. She tapped it. “Slave,” she said with difficulty. And Karris understood. Somehow, Samila had been given the choice to serve Koios or die.

  “Red light and blue,” Samila said, wincing. Something was wrong with the woman’s spine, for sure. But Karris wasn’t sure what Samila was talking about. The red and blue stroke from the Prism’s Tower that had doomed her?

  “He died, you know. My Purple Bear,” Samila said. “Usef, left me alone. Not his fault. Irrational to blame him. Irrational to be so angry. But Usef helped me feel passion. Made it acceptable for a lady of my stature and intellect.”

  She grinned, and suddenly there was something young and mischievous and fierce in her old, cold eyes.

  “He loved a big show. Going out with a bang. Iron White, listen!” She suddenly clamped her eyes tightly shut. Then she hissed, “The djinn are real. When they find a powerful drafter who pleases them, like me, like the nine kings of old, they may possess her, trading power for power. Then at the moment of death they take—but she doesn’t want this broken body. She wants to flee! But she’s vulnerable now. You can bar them from this realm forever, maybe from all the Thousand Realms together. But only if you can strike fast, before she escapes my will. Do you have the Blinding Knife? Quickly now, before—”

  Her face contorted as if something had just caused her tremendous pain.

  “Quickly!” Samila grunted. She gritted her teeth. “The Knife!”

  But Karris didn’t have it.

  And then Samila Sayeh died. And Karris had the terrible feeling that somehow she’d focused all her energies the wrong direction.

  Just then a huge young man with a flaming chain in his hands and black armor with the sigil of Kip’s Mighty on it came running up. Karris’s Blackguards nearly panicked until they recognized him; it was their old compatriot, Big Leo. One of Kip’s men now. Behind him came thirty more of Kip’s elite drafters.

  Big Leo’s gear was bloodied, with some of the black lacquer rubbed off his armor from luxin bolts, showing the mirroring beneath it. “Wait,” he said. He looked down at Samila Sayeh. His war chain went out, and drooped. “You’re all done? You did it without me?”

  “Gimme that,” Gill Greyling said off to one side. “C’mon!” He snatched a glowing blue stone that Grinwoody was trying to tuck away.

  Big Leo looked bereft. “But—but do you know what we had to do to get all the way out here?… And—and I came all this way to…”

  “Thanks,” Gill said, throwing the blue seed crystal on the ground. He drew a musket and shot it. The glowing crystal blasted apart as if it were just a globe of glass.

  “I don’t know if you should have done that just—” Grinwoody started to say.

  But Karris cut him off, her eyes locked on the horizon between Big and Little Jasper. “What the hell is that?”

  They all looked. Two fans of flame like wings were jetting into the air at the northern tip of Big Jasper.

  “Forget it!” Karris barked. “This island’s coming apart! Run! Unless you wanna swim, run!”

  Chapter 129

  This can’t be happening.

  There was a veil of surreality over the entire walk. Kip thought he was too smart to get sucked into thinking the same things over and over, swirling ’round and ’round like a ship spinning down Charybdis’ maelstrom until it was devoured whole, helpless. Yet here he spun.

  He can’t get away with this.

  This can’t be happening.

  Someone’s gonna step in to stop this any moment now. They’ve got to.

  How can he think he’ll get away with this? This isn’t happening. This can’t be happening.

  Part of Kip knew that Zymun wouldn’t get away with this. His congenital lack of fear was also a lack of sense; it would get him killed. Maybe tonight. Maybe tomorrow. With the friends Kip had, and the other desperate actors in this city, Zymun certainly wasn’t long for this world.

  But he didn’t need to be alive tomorrow in order to kill Kip today. Zymun had the most willing men with guns in the immediate vicinity. Even as one suicidal fanatic with a musket could prevail against the entire Blackguard itself, Zymun was rendering moot all the long-term, careful plans of those more skilled and better trained than he was.

  The Chromeria’s drafters were locked down now by the bane. Cowed by the shock of being separated from the power that defined them. None of them were going to step forward against the thugs of the Lightguard, not now.

  And thus Kip passed through the gates from the Chromeria.

  Footstep followed footstep, dozens of Lightguards walking beside him, before him, behind him. One of them had even had the wit to throw a red cloak around Kip’s shoulders to hide his bound hands behind his back. Many of those they passed now wouldn’t even know Kip was a prisoner.

  Everywhere around the walls of the city, the battle continued, even as the sun sank low in the sky. The attention of everyone sane in this city was turned to the walls and to the horrors that lay outside them. Every friend Kip had was off fighting, doing vital work to save the islands.

  Zymun, overconfident in victory, wasn’t even manning the mirror array.

  Orholam’s Glare came into view, perched as it was at the base of the Lily’s Stem, just on the Big Jasper side of the bridge. There would be no rescue. Kip knew how far away all the people who would come to his aid were now: too far.

  I knew this would happen, he thought. I knew I was going to die on this island.

  He’d had the temerity to think it would be a heroic death, that he might accomplish something as he died. Hell, he could’ve died on the mirror array ten minutes ago and counted it a good death. A noble death.

  This? A traitor’s death on the Glare?

  How could anyone find meaning in that?

  When the Chromeria used the Glare, they did it at noon. It was a horrible death, burning—but it was done in half a minute. How long would it take Kip to die, with the sun low in the horizon? How much torture would he endure?

  And then they arrived. The simple walk was finished without any theatrics, without any attempts at rescue, without anyone even crying out for them to stop—a brisk walk across the Lily’s Stem like Kip had made hundreds of times before.

  No one even knew.

  The Lightguards had found Tisis somewhere, though she was supposed to be on the far side of the city. Maybe she’d come when she saw him on the array. Kip didn’t think her presence was a mercy.

  He felt pulled away from himself, watching himself walk, watching himself look at his wife.

  He didn’t know what to say to her. She was going to see him die, like this. She was going to watch him burn to death, rave, shriek. It was not the last view anyone should have of someone they loved.

  “You can look away,” he said. “When it gets awful.”

  “You did not just say that to me,” she said, her voice jagged as hellstone.

  “I wanted to see that fire in you. You know, since you’re going to see fire in me soon.”

  She didn’t even smile, her face falling. “Goddammit, Kip.”

  “I always prided myself on being able to do hard things,” he said, forcing a little smile. “But you know, I’m not coming to this fresh…”

  She was right on the verge of tears, and he was afraid he was, too. He looked away. He’d seen
men die by fire. There was no stoicism equal to it. Such a death was never less than ugliness itself.

  He said, “Please don’t judge me for… for how I go.”

  “Judge you?” she asked, her voice cracking, and he dared a single glimpse, seeing her tears of loss and rage and impotence streaming down her face. “Never!”

  His hands were bound behind his back, so he said, “There’s a, uh, card in my pocket. Can you take that out for me?”

  The Lightguards let her. Indeed, a couple of the young men—kids really—among them looked sickened by what they were about to do. If there had only been five or six Lightguards, Kip might’ve been able to turn that to his advantage. But not with forty.

  “Can you press it against my forearm?” he asked. “I owe a favor to someone.”

  She looked at the card. “This asshole? You owe Andross Guile nothing!”

  “I owe him our marriage,” Kip said simply. He didn’t look at her, still. He thought maybe he had enough residual luxin in his body to trigger the card.

  She pressed the card to his skin. It slapped down as of its own volition, tap, tap, tap.

  He grunted at the flood of Andross’s memories. A lifetime passed in a few moments, and then Kip was back. “Hmm. Damn. I was kind of hoping the old man maybe helped construct Orholam’s Glare or something and knew a secret way for me to… well, not die. No such luck. No magic way out.”

  It was really the wrong time to try to comprehend what he’d just seen. But he had duties.

  “You tell Andross I Viewed his card. Tell him… tell him my respect for and loathing of him have both grown immensely. He should laugh… I love you,” he said. He could see the steps to the platform up ahead. They didn’t have any more time. “You have given me one perfect thing. In a life suddenly overfull with blessings, you were the brightest and best gift of all.”

  He took a quick breath and blinked back the tears.

  “Now, go, quickly. I have to maintain this tough-guy façade for a few more minutes.”

  “Kip,” she said quietly, “you will always be a dragon to me.”

  “Oh, that is adorable,” a voice broke in. Zymun. “My little dragon-poo. And what is she? Your little bunny-kins?” He pushed past her. His halos were shattered, and red raged through the whites of his eyes, but either no one noticed or no one dared say anything. “I know I should be up on the array, but I… I just couldn’t miss this,” Zymun said. “Plus, you do have so many friends. I couldn’t bear to have you so far out of my grasp. Good, let’s do this! Places, everyone!”

  Kip was marched straight up the platform. They started strapping him to the frame.

  Facing out, he saw a small crowd gathering. The execution hadn’t been announced, and most of the civilians of Big Jasper had taken to cowering in their homes, anyway, but this sudden gathering of people at one of the most important intersections in the city garnered attention.

  Kip saw a messenger from Corvan Danavis at the Great Fountain heading toward the Chromeria. She pulled up her horse.

  She saw Kip and recognized him, and immediately turned her horse around. She galloped away.

  Too late. Even if she cut past all the other messengers coming and going around the high general at the Great Fountain, even if Corvan Danavis himself heard her immediately, even if he had horses waiting and issued the orders immediately—even if he disregarded the fact that attacking the Prism would be treason—Corvan still wouldn’t arrive in time.

  Kip appreciated that they were trying, though.

  The Lightguards cinched the straps tight on his arms and legs.

  “Hurry up,” Zymun said. “The sun’s not far from the horizon. Is it going to be hot enough to kill him?”

  “Easily, sir. I mean, it’s not gonna turn him to ash, but he’ll burn,” one of the men strapping Kip in said. “He’ll die faster if we remove the colored lenses first, but burn or pop, he’ll go all right! Your choice.”

  Kip felt a sudden reverberation in blue, and Zymun tensed, too. It seemed he and Zymun were the only blue drafters in sight.

  Blue suddenly felt free once more.

  Big Leo had done it! Damn, and he’d done it fast, too! Holy shit, Big Leo.

  Maybe Big Leo could… but no. He was several thousand paces away, and if the bane evaporated in the next minute or three, he was going to be several thousand paces away and swimming. And he didn’t know Kip was here.

  Big Leo wouldn’t be coming in time.

  Funny thing. Zymun had said, ‘You do have so many friends.’

  It was true. Kip had no doubt that his friends would drop everything and run for him when they heard about his need.

  When had that happened?

  Growing up, he’d always been the outsider, the kid scared of being rejected again. And look at this! This life he was leaving? How could the son of a drug-addled prostitute hope for even a day of this life? Kip had tasted honey that few in the history of the world had tasted: he’d had meaningful work, and friendship with titans; a great marriage to a strong, good, beautiful woman; and a father who’d been willing to die for him. Kip had had a couple years of a life that old chubby Kip of Rekton would have happily died to have for a single day.

  How could he face his death with anything but gratitude?

  Yet he was still afraid.

  He’d seen immortals coming with the bane when that strange wave had passed. Maybe…“Rea?” he whispered. “Are you here?”

  “Of course I’m here!” the immortal, all invisible, said in his ear.

  She was weeping.

  That meant she couldn’t stop this.

  “Will you…”—his voice choked—“will you help me be brave? I don’t feel very brave right now.”

  The frame lifted him suddenly into the air.

  The mirrors grated on their gears as they began to turn into place.

  “Look, and see,” Rea said.

  Kip blinked. It wasn’t like looking in paryl or superviolet, but rather more akin to looking through that immense wave that had passed over the Jaspers. It felt like his eyes were only slowly bending into focus, his mortal lenses unaccustomed to seeing this spectrum: what he was seeing was more real than reality.

  First, his eyes fell on the normal people of the crowd gathering around the great intersection. They were weirdly, undeniably themselves but different, as if now he could see the whole self. The outward things, such as their beauty or plainness, their clothing, the shape of this nose or that pallid tone of skin all remained, but faded by comparison: This boy shone with goodness. That nursemaid streamed prayers like incense but more real than drafted luxin as she carried her ward toward his home. Others walked in darkness. A butcher hungered for the spectacle of an execution to fill the dark, empty gnashing of his pain. A fisherman radiated casual cruelty, his hands twisted by violence.

  But then, in the gaps between the mortal gawkers, he saw others, unencumbered by mortal trappings.

  Glassine figures glowed as if lit from above, then slowly resolved into people. People he knew. He saw Luisa Sendina of Rekton, who’d not only fed the addict’s boy: serving up compassion in food, but also speaking to him, listening to him despite the chaos of her own five children. He saw sweet Isabel—Orholam have mercy, she’d been a child!

  What was going on?

  Then he saw Gaspar Elos, the man who’d gone green wight whom Kip had met that night before the burning of Rekton. He was wight no longer. He stood with folded arms and a little smirk on his lips. He moved a finger to his head, as if tipping a hat that he wasn’t wearing.

  Janus Borig appeared decades younger, but still chewing on a long-stemmed pipe, studying him with a portraitist’s intensity. At his gaze meeting hers, she brightened and winked at him. The radiant woman next to her—the Third Eye?—curtsied perfectly in a swirl of golden cloth.

  The hulking mass of a shaggy red-bearded man could only be Rónán Arthur, Conn Ruadhán’s twin. He put his hand to his heart in salute.

  Felia Guile s
tood at the back, his grandmother, her back ramrod straight, an apologetic half smile on her lips and her eyes bright.

  Goss stood next to Gavin Greyling, each in their blacks. They nodded to him: You got this. You can do it, brother. And then they snapped to attention, saluting him.

  Tremblefist appeared—no, not Tremblefist any longer, Hanishu, not in his blacks but in his Old Parian garb, with the frailties and brokenness of life fallen away from his soul. He nodded with fierce approval.

  Next was the young commander beside them: Cruxer. Kip felt a flaring of anger at the same time he felt a surge of love and longing and emptiness. Dammit, Cruxer, dammit.

  But the anger melted. Here was Cruxer purified, his earthly rigidity gone. Lucia—who’d died for Kip, if accidentally—dear Lucia, whom Cruxer had so loved, stood next to him, and they were at peace.

  It had taken Kip until now to understand. These were all the people who’d loved him, who’d already gone on before. They’d gathered, a great cloud of witnesses, to stand for him in his final hour. They’d come so that he wouldn’t die alone.

  And then his eyes fell on one thin woman standing off to one side. Mother.

  Once, long ago—though he carried the words as if it were yesterday—she’d said to him, ‘You’re nothing. You’re not special. And if anyone really knew you, they’d hate you as much as I do.’

  Mother, how much were you hurting when you said those words? How much did you hate yourself afterward for saying them?

  For he knew she had.

  For he remembered her, on a different night, sober two days and shaking in her vomit-stained blankets, not for the first time. But this time she’d come to his side when she thought him asleep; she was weeping. She’d touched his cheek with a trembling hand. ‘I’m so sorry. I am gonna beat this, and I’ll be the mother you deserve. I love you, Kip.’

  She’d failed that time, though, as she had before.

  But they’d all failed, hadn’t they?

  Kip could stare at most of them and name a fault, even a crime, but instead he saw them with love, and that changed everything.

  “Thank you,” he whispered to Rea, to all of them. It was enough.