The Burning White

by Brent Weeks

  You dare?!

  He wanted to scream Sevastian’s name in the old murderer’s face for an hour. And then Gavin’s name for just as long.

  He wanted to shout, ‘I gave you my empire; I gave you my victory; you don’t get to have my family, too!’

  But… it was a step. A tenuous step, beginning a long climb toward wholeness for this broken, quarrelsome, ravaged family. Dazen could sabotage it now—and goddam but Andross deserved to be pushed into the abyss—or he could help. They weren’t going to complete it today or this year. Maybe they never would. Maybe they were too broken. Maybe forgiveness was too hard.

  But he could take one tiny step. Couldn’t he?

  “Well, then—” Andross said, turning away.

  “Thank you,” Dazen said. He couldn’t look back, couldn’t risk meeting the old man’s eyes. That was too much, for today. “Thank you… father.”

  Chapter 150

  After the ceremony, Kip went to the infirmary and spent some time with his old Nightbringers who were wounded, bringing comfort and cheer where he could. Not all the living were well, but they were all being tended to admirably.

  With that realization, he made to where two more wounded awaited him: Teia and Ironfist.

  At the lifts on the way there, Kip was surprised to find Ferkudi, Ben-hadad, Winsen, and Big Leo. They’d been waiting for him.

  “Where’s Tisis?” Big Leo asked.

  “Taking care of the real work so I can goof off with you layabouts,” Kip said. He smiled. “It’s good to have all of us together again. Most of us, I should say. Dammit. Sorry.”

  “No, you’re right. Cruxer should be here,” Ben-hadad said. He swallowed.

  “And Goss,” Ferkudi said. “And Daelos.”

  “And others,” Big Leo said. “Lots of others.”

  In the battle, they’d all proven themselves heroes. But Kip hadn’t needed a battle to show him that.

  They made it to the private room Teia and Ironfist were sharing. It was guarded by an honor guard of Tafok Amagez and the new Mighty and the Blackguards. After knocking, Kip stepped inside the door, then slipped through the black curtains, careful not to let in any light that might kill Teia.

  “You in here?” Kip asked, not really serious.

  “Sadly,” Teia said. “Some old guy keeps telling me stories about the glory days or something.”

  “If I could move, I would so kick your ass for that,” Ironfist’s voice said.

  Kip shifted his vision to the sub-red to be able to see in the utter darkness. At least he still had that.

  “It’s so dark in here,” Ferkudi said. “Why doesn’t someone—”

  “Ferk, no!” Kip said, but he was too late.

  Ferkudi threw open the curtains. The day was blinding bright. Ironfist flinched, and Teia shrank back, throwing her hands over her eyes.

  But then nothing happened.

  “Well, I guess that answers how long that lacrimae sanguinis stays active,” Kip said.

  Then Teia collapsed.

  “Oh, no!” Ferkudi said. “What happened?!”

  “You idiot!” Ben-hadad shouted. “What have you done?!”

  Then Teia suddenly grinned, and Kip noticed that she was wearing black eye caps over her eyes. She reached over to her bedside table, though, and placed two slightly-less-unsettling leather eye patches over them.

  “Orholam’s hairy butt crack, Teia,” Ferkudi said. “You nearly stopped my heart.”

  They all looked at him, incredulous.

  Winsen said, “You do realize that’s the opposite of what just happened, right? The literal opposite.”

  Ferkudi looked back at them for a moment, then, chagrined. “Oh. Oh, I mean… sorry, Teia. I wasn’t thinking.”

  “I really missed you, Ferk.” She sat up and hugged him. “But that hurt like hell, and if I ever get out of here, I’m definitely gonna kick you in the stones for it.”

  He looked uncertain. “Am I supposed to let you do that?”

  “No, you’re supposed to try to stop me. I’m just telling you because I know you can’t.”

  She grinned then, and Kip could see that she was trying things out, trying to see if she could fit back in with her friends’ old banter. ‘Do I have a place here?’

  Ferkudi looked confused. Did this go in the Box? It was obvious that Teia wasn’t going to be out sparring with them anytime soon—if ever—so where was she going to have a chance to make good on her threat?

  C’mon, Ferkudi, please…

  “Challenge accepted!” Ferkudi said, and Teia’s smile exploded light everywhere.

  “So, Winsen,” Ironfist said gruffly. “What’s this I heard about? You killed a bane?”

  “Eh. Wasn’t so hard,” Winsen said. “Sort of embarrassing, actually. Breaker told me I had to shoot the crystal. I missed it ten times. Target this big. Only two hundred paces away. Ten misses. Ten.”

  Of course, he was discounting how he’d sneaked and fought his way across the bane—alone, evading hundreds of wights and drafters and soldiers, and killing so many he’d had to start retrieving his arrows and theirs, not to mention saving lives on other bane from his perch.

  “Better than I did!” Big Leo said. “I didn’t even make it to my bane before Karris and Gill killed it.” Of course, he didn’t mention that he’d been instrumental in leading the final assault on the White King, and saving Karris’s life a half-dozen times.

  “Better than I did!” Ferkudi said. “I never even made it past the wall.” Of course, he’d held the wall. For a long, perilous time, he’d held the wall nearly alone against Dagnu until the astonished locals had rallied to him.

  “Better than I did!” Kip said. “I barely even made it out the front door!”

  They laughed.

  “Better than I did!” Teia said. “I barely made it out of my room.”

  And again.

  Then they looked to Ben-hadad, who painted a disconcerted look on his face. He’d saved Einin’s life (she would recover, but was in the infirmary now) and then killed Belphegor and destroyed the yellow bane. “Wow,” he said, “sounds like you all did terrible. I kicked ass.”

  They laughed and jeered.

  Winsen said, “Yeah, sure. You know I saved your bouncy butt three different times, don’t you, Froggie?”

  “‘Froggie’? Froggie?! Don’t you dare!” Ben-hadad said.

  “It’s the Spring of Doom!”

  “The Leaping Lancer!”

  “It’s the Hopping Death!”

  “Someone save me from the Sprinting Cripple!”

  Ben-hadad shook his head stoically, muttering as he realized he simply needed to take his punishment and hope that they didn’t stumble upon a new Name for him.

  Finally, Ironfist said somberly, “You all were… superlative.” He didn’t say ‘unlike me,’ but they all heard it.

  Their joviality died.

  “Don’t do that,” Kip said. “You were trying to save the Chromeria and destroy the Order before they killed us all. Cruxer fucked up. We know you tried.”

  “Maybe if I’d slowed down, he could’ve heard me. I was trying to be like… like Andross Guile, and I should’ve just been me.” Ironfist winced at his pain.

  “You brought an army, a navy, and the best general in the world,” Kip said. “Without any one of those, we’d all be dead. Truth is, we all failed. Anyone here not able to think of something you could have done differently that wouldn’t have saved lives? Anyone?”

  They shook their heads, one at a time, and some looked away.

  “There’s no shame in it,” Kip said. “Cruxer shouldn’t have gone after Ironfist. He should’ve been guarding me. Maybe he would’ve saved me from Zymun and Aram. He failed us, but without him I wouldn’t be standing here. Most of you wouldn’t, either. He was our heart. Sometimes you do your best, and it’s not good enough. That’s why we have each other.”

  “I know I butted heads with him a lot,” Ben-hadad said, “but I really
loved that asshole.”

  “I love all you assholes,” Winsen said. “Well… like, most of you. Mmm… maybe more like ‘tolerate.’”

  “Gah!” Big Leo said, and he reached his enormous arms around as many of them as he could and swept them into a huge hug.

  “Careful, careful!” Ironfist said from his bed as they tipped over.

  Kip leaned into the entire mass, and they all tripped and went slipping over Ironfist’s bed.

  In a moment, they transformed back into the children they had recently been: laughing, tickling, shoving, flicking one another in the stones, and trying to crawl out from under the pile.

  “I should’ve never have resigned!” Ironfist shouted. “I’d give you all a hundred laps for this!”

  “You didn’t resign!” Ben-hadad said. “You got fired!”

  “Stop reminding me! Ow! Not the chest, off the chest!”

  They soon headed out—the blast of light from the window had Teia sicker than she’d wanted to admit.

  As they went, Kip realized that in the coming days there was going to be a lot of swinging between laughing and crying, teasing and mourning, telling stories and sitting silent, hugging and fighting. It was all right.

  No, it was better than all right; it was good.

  It’s what families do.

  Chapter 151

  With the normal difficulty of a woman getting married the next morning, Karris tried to set her to-do lists aside and enjoy the massage.

  Enjoy massage, dammit.

  “Seems really fast to try to organize a wedding, much less one on this scale,” Rhoda said, working Karris’s wrist high over her head with her magical hands. “How are all the details going?”

  Karris sighed, and Rhoda pulled hard on her wrist, extending all the muscles in her arm and shoulder and into her rib cage. “Aha!” Rhoda said.

  “You tricked me into that,” Karris complained. She grunted. “Not. Ow. That I’m complaining.”

  “Extensions today. You really beat the hell out of yourself, didn’t you?”

  “It was a battle, so mostly it was other people beating the hell out of me.”

  Rhoda tsked. Her hands quickly cataloged the weird places Karris was sore, then tapped her tight sartorius. “So, this got this tight from riding? A horse, I mean?”

  “Rhoda!”

  The loud masseuse laughed. “No, no, good for you two. It is so good to see you happy, High Lady. I’ll be securing your wrists so you can relax your upper body while we do these extensions.” She got to it, covering Karris with warm towels as she rolled onto her back. “There’s a bit of a trick to doing this so it won’t leave any hard-to-explain bruises the next day. If you want me to show you or your husband how it’s done…”

  Karris closed her eyes and shook her head, smiling.

  “I’m sorry, High Lady, I didn’t mean to overstep.” Of course, Rhoda didn’t sound at all sorry. “Try to relax into these.”

  She told herself that she was the reason they were doing a big wedding in the first place. She’d demanded one, way back when. It had seemed like a good idea at the time.

  Having a few months to plan it probably would have been a good idea, too. It did make sense, from a political perspective. Andross was showing the big happy family, and using all the love and adoration the people had built up for Gavin and Karris, and Kip and Tisis, to add a halo effect of love and adoration to his own rule and legitimate himself. Hard to rebel this week when last week everyone saw you smiling with your father.

  “Oh, that’s a little tight,” Karris said.

  “We just have to hold that until I finish this leg,” Rhoda said. But she didn’t work ten or fifteen times down Karris’s left leg as she had on the right. Instead she wrapped it up with the scarf and secured it to the table, as she had done with both wrists and her other leg.

  Eyes still closed, Karris said, “I guess I can see why people who really like the feeling of vulnerability might—”

  “Aha, see this tension in your neck?” Rhoda said, her fingers massaging Karris’s jaw. “Open.”

  Karris opened her mouth. “Rhoda, I think I’m done with this. I’d like—”

  Something was stuffed into her mouth, and when Karris tried to spit it out, her eyes flying open, there was no red for her to draft, no green, and then thick strong fingers jabbed deep into the pressure points behind Karris’s ears.

  Before she could scream, a gag so thick it held her jaw open and tongue down was secured across her face.

  Rhoda scrubbed her hands through her wild hair. Her face was tracked with tears.

  Karris bucked against the bonds, but they only tightened. She tried to scream, but almost no sound emerged, certainly nothing that would alarm the Blackguards outside the door, who were used to being banished from the room and chided for investigating any little moan of pain.

  Visibly summoning her courage, Rhoda put one hand behind Karris’s head and one under her chin, preparing to snap her neck. Then she stopped. “He told me not to talk to you. But you have to know. I don’t want to do this. Everyone spies on the Jaspers. I thought he was just another noble, except he paid more than anyone. And when he saw I could keep my mouth shut, he paid more still. And then I got invited to the parties for the people he trusted… I thought it was all wild parties and free thinkers and free spirits, you know? The Order? I thought they were just people who wouldn’t be held down by stupid rules. It was all way before you became the White. I never meant you any harm. I mean, I never thought they’d really turn any of that stuff into action. They were all talk. I want you to know, I love you, Karris. I didn’t go to their party, and I told him no. Told him I was out. I promised him my silence, and I told him I wouldn’t do it. That I was done.”

  No. Please, Orholam, no!

  Rhoda’s face contorted with grief. “He killed my mother for that! And now he’s holding my brother. The only family I’ve got left. He’ll kill him if I don’t do this. I’m sorry. I’ll die for this. But it’s what I have to do.”

  Rhoda took a deep breath and stepped forward, putting her hand on Karris’s chin. Then there was a sound like someone’s back being slapped, and hot light flashed from within Rhoda’s chest, bright enough it shone through her clothes. It burned in flashes up and down her spine, making her neck glow.

  Flash-boiled from the inside, her eyes went cloudy gray an instant before she collapsed out of sight as if boneless.

  A godawful sound of cooking gases hissing out of the entry wound filled Karris’s ears. Then the smell of horribly burnt meat and viscera filled the room.

  “Too bad,” Andross Guile said, his face appearing over Karris. He settled the towel primly back in place over her nakedness where it had fallen away in her struggles. “I’d really hoped she would talk more.”

  He loosed her feet, then her hands, and then, as she took out the gag for herself, he opened a robe for her, turning his gaze aside.

  It gave her a moment to collect herself. At first she wanted to hit him or throw something, maybe not at him maybe right at his damn head, what did he think he was doing here, did he think she gave two shits about getting dressed when she’d just—Okay, fine, she did care a little about getting dressed, what did she even ask first? What the hell he’d done to her friend? Could he not have stepped in a little tiny bit earlier? She’d almost had her damn fool neck snapped!

  “How long were you there?” Karris asked, despite herself.

  “I had a suspicion she was the last of them, and you were the most likely target for Grinwoody’s wrath.”

  “What?! Why would I be his target?”

  “Because I told him you were responsible for destroying the Order.”

  Her jaw dropped. “You set me as bait?”

  He didn’t bother to answer. “I was hoping she’d say if there were any others left, but you heard her; she’s the kind who kept her mouth shut.”

  The door exploded open so suddenly Karris almost flipped, and Blackguards were suddenly a
ll over the room. They’d smelled the burning and heard a man’s voice.

  The next minutes were filled with the predictable—scouring for other assassins, moving Karris and Andross to a secure room, (eventually) getting Karris fully dressed again (thank you!), and surely taking care of the body. Andross seemed irritated by the whole rigmarole, but he played along.

  Sometime later, they continued. “Are you going to send someone to save Rhoda’s brother?” Karris asked.

  “Of course not. I’ll not do her a good turn in return for her treachery. But I will send my best men to find her brother, so we can kill the Order people holding him. If our people save him as an ancillary cost…” Andross shrugged. “Sometimes one must do good in order to obtain what one desires.”

  Karris shook her head. “Wow. You know, once in a while, I think there’s some things you can’t admit about yourself, High Lord. You like secrets, so I’m gonna tell you this one.”

  “It won’t be a secret if you tell me,” Andross said as if utterly disinterested, but she didn’t believe it; if he really didn’t want to hear what she was about to say, he’d have interrupted her to talk about something else.

  “Oh, I trust you to keep it quiet,” she said. “It’s this: I think there’s a sliver of kindness growing in you. You better watch out for that.”

  He looked at her critically, nonplussed. “Look at you. Full of hope. Naïve despite all evidence and experience to the contrary. Making people feel better about themselves wherever you go. Leaving them eager to be with you, and follow you. You do make an excellent White.”

  Karris held her breath, and when he moved to speak, she interrupted. “And I’m going to choose to believe, right now, that the next words out of your mouth are not going to be a clever put-down that undercuts everything you just said.”

  He grinned wolfishly, eyes glittering. “Of course not,” he said after a moment.

  She wondered if he’d changed his mind about what he was going to say next, but she couldn’t read anything except amusement in his deep eyes.

  “You saved me,” she said.

  “Mmm.”