The Burning White

by Brent Weeks

  “I am doing nothing,” Kip said. “I’m pointing out three paths you each may choose: one, abandon the Forest in her hour of need and choose to be bandits until the day you die; two, serve as auxiliaries and remain on the edges of human society; or three, buy the chance to become honest men again. Daragh calls you his men?” Kip said to the others, pointedly ignoring Daragh. “‘His’? He speaks of ‘buying’? As if you’re slaves? I call you free men. Make your decision and pay the price for it. It’s what free men do.”

  Tisis’s intelligence was good, but she didn’t have people everywhere. She hadn’t been able to tell Kip anything about the men flanking Daragh the Coward. She and Kip had assumed that they were all drafters and formidable warriors—in case Kip broke the truce and tried to capture Daragh.

  What Kip and Tisis didn’t know was if these were also the most loyal men in Daragh’s bandit army. Would Kip’s words even be passed along at all?

  Kip didn’t like making promises that he wasn’t sure he could keep, but he wouldn’t be keeping any promises at all if he didn’t get these bandits to join his army.

  “This is horseshit,” Daragh said. “You need me. You think you can offer us scraps while you feast?”

  “Oh, ‘free men.’ That reminds me,” Kip said as if he hadn’t heard Daragh. Nor did he look at him now. “I know many of you escaped from other satrapies. If you do choose to integrate into my units, you’ll earn not only your pardon for your crimes while a bandit but also papers of manumission upon your retirement or discharge—regardless of where in the Seven Satrapies you were enslaved. On the power of the Guiles and the wealth of the Malargoi, I swear this. Further, if any of you earns a citation for valor in battle, he will also earn having his family redeemed.” Kip raised his hand, as if he were taking an oath, but with his fingers spread. “Up to five family members manumitted, at my expense.

  “But perhaps you will say, ‘What if I fall heroically in battle but no one sees my heroism? Or what if my commander is stingy with recognition?’ I’ll be honest with you. I always will. I can’t see everything, or root out every injustice, so let me add this: whether you earn a ribbon or not, if you die in battle or from wounds sustained in battle, five family members shall be redeemed, at my expense.

  “If you pledge your hands to me,” Kip vowed, looking at each of those stone-faced men, “I will repay you five times over. Honorable service, a pardon for wrongs, and freedom for you and those you love most. This I swear.”

  Freedom? Real freedom?

  What Kip promised wasn’t just an absence of the chains that all fugitive slaves found intolerable by definition—else they’d not have run in the first place. This was freedom from the stalking fear that hunted every fugitive, the fear that everything one had built up for many years might be taken away in an instant. And it was hope of being reunited with those one had thought forever lost.

  Freedom? How could a fugitive slave think of anything else?

  No matter how loyal and hardened the drafter-warriors flanking Daragh were, Kip’s words would be passed along. It didn’t matter what Daragh said as soon as he left this hall; he wouldn’t be able to suppress them.

  Of all the things that die, hope is the most easily resurrected.

  Kip saw Daragh the Coward’s hold on even the men flanking him crumbling. And Daragh saw it too.

  “That is all,” Kip said. “You may go.”

  He turned to Tisis and asked, still letting his voice project, “What’s next? Is it time for breakfast, or do we have to deal with the embargo talks first?”

  “The valor-award citations for the freeing of Dúnbheo, actually,” Tisis said. “We need to decide how best to read those out. You’d wanted to make sure the men were recognized for what they did rather than just being handed a ribbon, but if we take even half a minute for each citation, the army will be standing there all morning.”

  Tisis, I could kiss you. The subtext was perfect: we give out plenty of valor citations.

  Each of Daragh’s men would later think, If they give out so many valor citations, how hard will it be to earn one myself?

  “Very well,” Kip said. “That first, then the embargo, and then breakfast, I suppose.”

  Daragh the Coward had finally gotten Kip’s silent if unsubtle message—I have many other things to do, most of them far more important than you—and was striding, fuming, out of the audience chamber.

  “Darling,” Kip said out of the side of his mouth, but not turning toward her. “Are we giving out valor citations?”

  “Of course we are,” she said quietly. She cleared her throat. “Now.”

  “You just came up with that?” he asked.

  “Yes?” she said.

  “I love the hell out of you,” he said.

  “You better,” she said.

  He glanced over at her. She was still facing forward, regal, but she was beaming.

  His next thought was less joyous: Citations. Great. Something else to add to the list.

  As Daragh the Coward passed through the doors of the audience chamber, he stopped. He turned back, defiant.

  Drawing up, his jaw jutting and his scarified chest puffed out, oiled muscles tensed, he roared from the vestibule, “Guile! You never asked about my name!”

  Kip gave him a puzzled glance. Making a little motion to the soldiers to close the doors, he said, “Why would I give two shits what people call a dead man?”

  Chapter 18

  The rudeness of murder had always bothered him. That was how he knew he wasn’t a monster, yet. It still bothered him.

  Facing the predawn sun, praying alone, her husband having departed after a long night of lovemaking and tears, the Third Eye now sat up straight, her sunburnt arms saluting the rising light.

  She had to be dead before the sun’s disk broke the horizon. Those were his orders. Most likely, that was from the old, empty superstition that Orholam could see the Shadows once His Eye, the sun, rose. Regardless, there was no reason to take the chance of being interrupted by more mundane figures, either, so he moved forward.

  It was always a mystical moment, ushering a soul unwillingly through the Great Gate into death. He already regretted how this job had to go: he wouldn’t face her. He wouldn’t feast on her fear or explore the fathomless mystery of watching a life cross over, hoping even after all these years to catch a glimpse of the soul in flight to… elsewhere.

  He couldn’t afford such consolations, not with a woman of this power. She was a Seer, the greatest Seer of them all, the Third Eye. She would die at her prayers, unafraid. He thought that, at least, was very decent of him.

  But then suddenly she spoke—and not in prayer.

  Clearly, but not loudly, not like someone calling for help, she said, “There is one thing that you cannot do, you who were once—but shall not henceforth be—Elijah ben-Kaleb. There is one thing you cannot do, despite all your awesome power.”

  It was as if he’d been sprinting and the earth dropped into an abyss beneath his feet. His true name. He froze. For the first time in years, he felt the squeeze of fear’s heavy fist around his neck. She couldn’t know his name. The shimmercloaks hid Shadows from mystical as well as mundane sight.

  So was it a guess?

  Ludicrous!

  She knew Elijah Sharp was here, so she knew the Order hunted her and knew that they’d sent their best. That went beyond unnerving. What could a Seer in her position do with such knowledge?

  But she knew more. She knew his father’s name. She knew everything.

  It was a trap, meant to make him flee!

  Or delay! Or…

  She was a Seer. Anything he did now could be playing straight into her schemes.

  But he’d extended paryl webs across every entrance, and none had been tripped. He checked them again.

  They were still alone.

  What was that bit about him not being Elijah ben-Kaleb after today? What did she mean?

  But the sun must surely be touching the horizo
n any moment. There was no time to sort out the muddle in his head.

  “There is one thing you cannot do,” she said. Her voice was quiet, her mien unthreatening, but there was no mistaking the strong steel in her. “You, son of Kaleb, son of a father whose very name means ‘faithfulness,’ you were trusted to live up to that name your father earned and gave to you as a free gift. Elijah ben-Kaleb, you were sent into the shadows as a candle unlit, sent to take the flame at the perfect moment to banish that darkness. But you decided the price was too high. You came to hate the cost of the flame. You didn’t want your life consumed in giving light. But all our lives are wax, and time itself is heat unbearable, and every day we melt—but some of us take flame! I am such a soul, dying to bring light to a dark world.

  “You? You felt your sacrifices were unseen and so your sins would be unseen, too. And so you were reborn to the shadows, and a name of light no longer fits you. No, nor that mockery they gave you. Sharp? Though molded into the shape of a blade and painted black, how sharp is melted wax? I, too, have a great gift, Elijah. And I, too, have been called to pay that selfsame price, to become a sacrifice seemingly unseen, to act with heroism unheralded.”

  He sometimes acted with a bit of delay, struggling to make sense of words spoken to him, and that was all that saved her now. Was she calling him dull?

  He wasn’t stupid!

  But what ‘price’ was she going on about? And the thing she said he couldn’t do? What was that?

  There were only moments left, but he was already waiting, and she speaking. Both knew this was rapidly winding to a finish. His paryl webs were still undisturbed.

  If this was a trap, it was a shitty one.

  Gently, she said, “Elijah, even with the eye of a Seer, I cannot see you, but I see the darkness you cast into every life you touch. And though it slay me, I choose to spend my life bringing light instead. You think you came here of your own will? I think you were brought to me. You were not sent by malice but pulled by mercy. You will kill me, I’ve no doubt, but nothing can hide you from the All-Seeing one. I dub thee Elijah ben-Zoheth, and I tell you this: for all your power, Elijah ben-Zoheth, you cannot steal that which I freely give.”

  Then, in fear and rage, and in shame, exposed in the first light of the rising sun, he murdered her.

  But afterward, for the entire long journey back to the Jaspers, he was troubled. He played that morning over and over in his mind. Had he blundered?

  No. He couldn’t have kidnapped her as he’d kidnapped that slave Marissia for the Andross Guile job. It was too dangerous, the area unfamiliar. More importantly, those weren’t his orders—and the Old Man of the Desert was awfully particular about his orders being followed exactly, alpha to omega.

  The roots of Sharp’s broken teeth throbbed at the very idea of disobeying his master.

  He’d done right. He’d done the only thing he could do. It didn’t matter anyway. None of it meant anything.

  But what had she freely given? He didn’t understand. The Name? That didn’t seem right. And what was that about anyway?

  He knew its literal meaning, of course. He hadn’t walked Abornea’s shores for many years, but some things one doesn’t forget. Why had the Third Eye used her last words to Name him? And what did she mean by dubbing him ben-Zoheth, the Son of Separation?

  Chapter 19

  After her long night, the dawn prayers in the company of the faithful lightened Karris’s burdens; the pleasantly smiling Andross Guile waiting for her slammed them back in place. Then doubled them.

  Andross smiling. Never a good sign.

  It was a cloudless late-spring morning and the High Luxiats had opened the sanctuary’s massive sliding doors that all the congregants could greet the beauty of Orholam’s rising eye together. Karris’s sole consolation for what was doubtless going to be a painful interaction was the vision of Andross squinting against the sun behind her.

  “Orholam shine upon you, Promachos,” Karris said. Orholam loves this man, too, she reminded herself, trying to squeeze some genuine feeling into her smile.

  “May all your prayers be answered half as promptly,” he said, “and twice as kindly.” His smile was amused. He didn’t miss much.

  The only way to baffle Andross was with real kindness. She’d fallen short of that. Again. Dammit.

  “Oh—” Karris stifled the curse. The White really wasn’t supposed to curse. “Our meeting. The Parian situation. I forgot.”

  “Understandable. I should’ve reminded you.”

  Because Andross didn’t forget. Andross never forgot. Anything. It was an infuriating reminder that his inhumanity didn’t only make him less than human; all too often, it seemed to make him more.

  “You really ought to get a secretary, someone who could be an overseer as well, ideally. As I have in Grinwoody, and Gavin had in, uh, what was her name?”

  From a kinder man, the pretense that he’d forgotten might have been interpreted as him trying to bridge the gap between his own perfection and her own… not. She should really try interpreting Andross in the best possible light.

  “Marissia,” she said curtly. Dammit.

  They began walking together toward her chambers. It had a better meeting space than his apartments, and going into his home alone felt like a fly volunteering to scout a spider’s lair.

  “Tragic she ran away,” Andross said. “Slaves.”

  She hadn’t run away. Andross had paid the Order—the Order!—to kidnap her. Not that Karris could admit she knew that, not without endangering Teia. But it did turn her stomach. Had Andross had a grudge against her husband’s room slave, or had taking her been a way to keep Karris from learning all the things Andross feared Marissia might know? He would’ve interrogated her, and like many, he probably believed that slaves had to be interrogated under torture for their testimony to be trusted. And then he would’ve killed her. Just a bit of property destroyed: the price he had to pay to keep his kidnapping of her secret.

  Marissia had been holding a bundle of Orea Pullawr’s papers that the old White had intended for Karris. But Karris still hadn’t figured out any way to learn if Andross had taken them or if the Order had kept them and never even told him about it.

  He said, “You did check with your bankers, didn’t you, to see that she didn’t steal more from you? Terrifying that one might be betrayed by someone who slept in the Prism’s very bedchamber, isn’t it?”

  He had to remind her of where Marissia had slept, didn’t he? Not just in Gavin’s suite, but so often in his bed.

  I knew he’d use this to put me off balance. I’m the White now. Do it like I practiced.

  “Gavin shared so much of his life with her,” Karris said. “I’m sure she was simply afraid of what I might do to her without him here. She loved him very much.”

  She was actually surprised to find real compassion in her voice. And her heart.

  Score one for the new White!

  “Loved him? Slaves, always forgetting their place these days,” Andross scoffed, shaking his head as he took a scroll case from his own man Grinwoody.

  Yes, I’m sure everyone was well behaved back when you were young.

  “It was my failure, not hers,” Karris said instead. “It was no betrayal. I begrudge her nothing, though I admit it hurts that she left without a word. But she took nothing that wasn’t hers.”

  “Other than her body.”

  “No. Gavin manumitted her,” Karris said.

  “Really? When? I wasn’t aware of any papers filed on his behalf.”

  “In his will,” Karris said. It was as good a time as any to admit she’d finally accepted the truth about his death that she’d denied for a year. “I’m filing them today.”

  Other than a quick upward flash of his eyebrows, though, he gave no indication he’d even heard, no vaunting, no I-told-you-so.

  No, that wasn’t true. He said nothing for several minutes. He didn’t point out that the provisions of a will didn’t apply until the decea
sed was pronounced legally dead, and that Marissia had ‘run away’ many months before that.

  Indeed, Karris’s first paranoia had involved suspecting Marissia herself in Gavin’s abduction, but not one of them had panned out. And then Teia had told her what had really happened, and she’d been ashamed.

  Karris and Andross stepped past the Blackguards, who’d finished checking the safety of the lift. One of Karris’s attendants was reduced to the servile role of setting the counterweights, as the woman was considered junior to Grinwoody because Andross (as promachos) held the highest absolute rank. Naturally, one of the Blackguards stood at her elbow watching her—one of Karris’s Blackguards, not Andross’s, because while in the Chromeria the Blackguards considered the White the highest-ranking official, behind only the Prism, though the personnel assigned to guard the White and the promachos (and for that matter the Prism and the promachos, too) were all drawn from the same pool. Several of Andross’s Lightguards also attended him, though they pretended not to be aware of their own place in the hierarchy (below the Blackguards in most matters at the Chromeria, though as free men and women, they were nominally socially above the technically servile Blackguards).

  “I’m afraid your brother’s nonsense really has riled them up,” Andross said. “Freeing all slaves! Can you imagine?” Andross said. “Who would want a free woman to attend him when he’s ill? Does anyone really want a person who works for coin to be the physicker who prods one’s intimate places and knows one’s ills and shameful diseases? Without the fear of the lash, would not one motivated by coin to sell one’s secrets to whomever might bribe her? And what free woman would choose the work of laving lepers or massaging whores’ prolapsed rectums or taking on the death sentence of palliating the plagued? There is work not even the most penurious would choose. Your treasonous brother can’t be ignorant of this, can he? Surely not. Who empties the chamber pots in his camps? Who collects the urine to tan the leather, who mucks the stables, who swives a dozen stinking ugly soldiers every night? Free men and women? Nonsense. There are just things that free people won’t do.”