The Burning White

by Brent Weeks

  He stares hard at me, and I begin to wonder if I’ve gone terribly off course. Not with my guess, of course. With him.

  Then he grins.

  “Aha! Now we’re getting somewhere,” he says. “There’s that carving-knife intellect Felia praises, finally out of the block, its edge glittering in the light. Feels good to let it cut some meat, doesn’t it, boy? Feels good to speak your mind, doesn’t it?”

  I grin ruefully again, like we’ve just had a breakthrough together. “I wanted to make a good impression,” I say.

  Surprisingly, come to think of it, that’s true.

  “What if who you really are was enough to do that?” Lord Dariush asks.

  Who I really am scares people. But I take it humbly, look down at the floor as if in thought.

  “Well, my boy, it’s almost time for us to conclude our tour,” he says.

  “So soon?” I tease.

  “One more, before we head back,” he says, “and I think you’ll find its story even more incredible than the Gollaïr’s.”

  “But shorter?” I ask.

  “Easy, son. A little truth goes a long way.”

  “Aha,” I say. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

  Despite himself, I see Lord Dariush grin.

  Chapter 29

  As soon as the lift departed with its smug burden, Karris sat down hard on the bench outside the checkpoint. She could hardly breathe. Ironfist. King Ironfist, asking if Gavin was really dead. Asking if Karris was still in mourning.

  A marriage.

  Andross was right. It was the only way Ironfist could be safe. It was the only move left open to him.

  But… marriage? He didn’t…

  No, surely not.

  Oh God. Karris hadn’t exactly sent the assassin who’d killed his sister, but she had allowed it, and Teia wouldn’t have been serving the Order at all if Karris hadn’t allowed it. It was a fairly thin line between Karris and that particular blood guilt.

  She took a deep breath. She should put her feelings aside now. She had to make plans. She had to take meetings. A full day awaited her.

  At least, Karris hoped it did. She felt as if the earth had swallowed her, as if all her selfishness and shortsightedness was rearing up to strike her with poison condemnation.

  She’d never done well alone, and now life had stripped away everyone from her. The burdens of her office meant that even amid those she loved, she was alone.

  She took another breath, remembering a lovely day long ago when she’d gotten distracted and double-charged a musket in Blackguard drills. It had blown apart in another nunk’s hands, though luckily it hadn’t wounded him. Karris had gotten dressed down in front of everyone. Then she’d had a bruising quarrel with Samite, who hadn’t stood up for her.

  She’d been hiding in her bunk having a cry when none other than Orea Pullawr had pulled the covers back.

  Karris had wanted to curl up and die already, but then being found like that, by the White herself?

  Orea had said, ‘Karris, isn’t it? Child, do you know what tears and kisses and fine underthings have in common?’

  The question had baffled her so much she’d stopped crying.

  ‘They’re best enjoyed in bed.’

  ‘I was trying to—’ Karris began mumbling. Kisses and fine underclothes? What? Oh! ‘Well, the former, I mean!’

  ‘And doing so with such vigor that I thought you and a friend were enjoying the latter. But—’

  ‘What?!’ Karris asked again.

  ‘But,’ Orea Pullawr repeated, ‘I need a Blackguard, so put on your big-girl pants and save the tears for later. You’re on duty.’

  And so I am.

  Remembering Orea’s kindness helped a wan smile steal onto her face. It had been pure kindness, too. Karris had only realized much later that the ‘duty’ the White needed her for was some invented thing: the woman had obviously overheard Karris crying and came to distract her without shaming her.

  And that had been how she’d begun her service to the older woman.

  So. Duty now. Tears later.

  She felt better.

  But before she stood up, she leaned forward, feigning clearing a pebble from her shoe. She slid a hand along the underside of the bench. Not only was this bench a place she’d sat often when waiting for a Blackguard to get off duty (and these days to wait for the lift to arrive), but it was also outside the checkpoint on the White’s level of the tower. Both she and Teia had easy access to this place. It made an excellent dead drop.

  There was a note there.

  Aha!

  Karris hadn’t seen the girl to get a report in person for a while. Any news had to mean good news in their secret war against the Order; if things went badly for her, Teia would simply disappear.

  In her room a short while later, Karris opened the note and mentally decoded the brief message and the date it referred to.

  Suddenly the air felt too thick to breathe.

  Karris had only just—last night!—done what she’d sworn she would never do.

  She’d finally accepted that Gavin was dead. She’d given up on him.

  Worse, she’d admitted it to that old viper Andross, which committed her. She’d told him she would do anything to save her people. Many thousands of lives. The whole empire. She’d said she’d do anything, and she’d meant it.

  If the terms for peace and an alliance against a mortal threat were so simple, how could she possibly refuse to marry Ironfist?

  This was how.

  The note read: “Gavin kidnapped by Order. In grave danger. But alive. I’m certain.—Teia”

  Such short lines bringing such bright news shouldn’t have the power to tear a woman’s heart in two.

  But they did.

  No proof was offered. No evidence at all. Karris almost couldn’t believe it. Maybe she shouldn’t.

  But she did.

  And no one else would. She couldn’t even offer Teia’s word that Gavin was alive without betraying Teia’s mission and jeopardizing her very life. Even if Karris made the girl come before Andross Guile and swear it all in person, Andross wouldn’t believe her. Even if he believed her, he wouldn’t care. Andross Guile didn’t know anything about love; he loved only power. He didn’t care about honor; he cared about survival. If the cost to buy Ironfist’s army was Karris committing bigamy, Andross would say that that price—betraying her office and dishonoring her husband and her old friend—was cheap. If Karris tried to tell the truth, she would shame Ironfist, get Teia killed, and doom the empire.

  The Blackguards sometimes repeated an old saying that sounded like bluster from those who didn’t live and die by it. It was what they said when a brother or a sister had to take a battlefield Freeing: Death before dishonor. Now, to those who counted on her, one way or another, no matter what Karris did, she would bring death and dishonor both.

  She sat on the bench and felt as if the world had slipped out of joint.

  Ironfist had been a dear friend. A man she’d admired and appreciated for so long in so many ways that what began as a political marriage could become more in time… if it weren’t based on deception. If it didn’t shame and dishonor them both.

  But how could she say no to him? Acceptance was so obviously the right thing to do on every conceivable level that her rejection would make him lose face. It would seem a profound personal rejection. It would shame him, and he wasn’t only her former friend. He was a king.

  Rejecting him had consequences far beyond her.

  But how could she not reject him? She was married. To a man she loved. To a man she’d waited for without any hope offered, waited and waited… until yesterday. And now she was going to give up on him, again?

  Her own happiness was the last thing she could think of. She was the White.

  Shortly before she’d died, Orea Pullawr had once asked Karris not to hate her. Karris still didn’t know what for, but apparently there were hard truths in that mysterious bundle of papers the Order ha
d stolen. But maybe the papers were irrelevant now. She understood what Orea had meant.

  Not so long ago, Karris wouldn’t have believed it was even possible to do the wrong things for the right reasons. Now she knew she would do things for entirely unselfish reasons, knowing she would regret them bitterly afterward.

  She was the White now.

  The White didn’t wait for a man to come save her.

  The White was the one who came to save.

  She didn’t seek her heart’s desire instead of doing her duty; she made it her heart’s desire to seek her duty.

  So. ‘Big-girl pants.’ Thank you, Orea. The burden you left me is heavy, but a White Oak stands strong in the storm.

  Karris had until Sun Day. She could search for Gavin until then. If she could produce him, she wouldn’t have to remarry. Couldn’t. If she found him, Gavin would forgive Ironfist’s betrayal, and Ironfist would trust Gavin’s word that his absolution would hold. Peace and alliance were still possible. The rift could be mended. Wounds healed.

  She would have to destroy the Order before Sun Day, though. Utterly, if she hoped to live in peace. If they ever hoped to be safe again.

  If she failed, when Sun Day came, she would do what she must. What the innocent lives she safeguarded demanded of her. She would keep her mouth shut and marry, thus dishonoring two men, herself, and the office that demanded purity.

  But then, once her people were saved?

  What moral authority had a White who had stained her robes dark with broken vows? How could that which was white hide a stain?

  She wouldn’t try. She wouldn’t heap deceit upon deceit. Her people would live, but having proven herself unable to live with honor…

  Her mind flashed suddenly to her father. In that horrible fire, the White Oak family had lost not only all her brothers and the estate itself, but also goods worth more than the indebted family could ever repay. Despite her attempt to elope with Dazen, Karris’s engagement to Gavin Guile must have looked like the only way to save the family. Gavin had known it, too, mocking him, talking in front of him in the most disgusting terms about what he was going to do with Karris—who drank herself into a stupor that night, hoping to make herself insensate. The eldest Guile son had done all he’d promised, too. Then he told Karris she wasn’t good enough for him, not smart enough, not pretty enough, too boring, sexually dull. He told her he didn’t care about her family’s lost fortune—but that he could never marry a woman so far beneath himself in every other way. She hadn’t fought him then, not even when he threw her out into the cold, clothes torn, hair disheveled, tear-streaked and drunk, only making it home when a street merchant steered her away from a wrong turn into a bad neighborhood and gave her something hot to drink.

  She’d known she was pregnant immediately, because she had to be, because it was her worst fear, and she’d confronted her father, turning all her rage on the man who’d gambled her honor and his own and had lost.

  He’d not defended himself. He’d quietly put his affairs in order and then he’d blown his head off.

  She’d hated him for his weakness, but the young find it too easy to hate the weak.

  How can a man live without honor? How can a woman?

  Her father had wagered her in order to save his own fortunes; she would wager herself to save the very lives of her people. That made them different, even if she had to take the same exit.

  But perhaps she would finally be able to forgive him, if it came to that. But it wouldn’t come to that. She would make sure of it.

  So. I have until Sun Day.

  Karris felt oddly invigorated. She had a little more than a month to accomplish everything she could in her life, or nothing at all.

  She was deep in the muck. It felt like quicksand sucking at her boots, but no matter. She was gonna fight like hell.

  Chapter 30

  As sensation returned to her dull carcass, Teia probably should’ve had some gratitude that she was waking up at all. The ropes strangled that in the crib.

  She swallowed hard against hemp. She’d already visibly stirred. There could be no subterfuge now. That game was finished. And maybe every other one, too.

  “Master? What the hell, Master?” she said. It was her last card. Not a good one.

  “Master? Master.” Behind her, his voice low, Murder Sharp seemed to be chewing on the word. “No, Adrasteia. You needed a master.” He sounded suddenly mournful. “I couldn’t be that for you. You needed me, and I was gone. The war called me away, and you went astray without me.”

  She hadn’t been blindfolded. Why not?

  It could be a mistake. Sharp was fearsome, but he wasn’t very smart.

  As if he could read her mind, Sharp suddenly grabbed her at the ropes at the nape of her neck and breathed into her ear—soft, trembly breaths smelling of mint leaves and darkness.

  “What—what are you doing, Master Sharp?” It wasn’t one rope around her neck, it was at least six, and they all bobbed with her fear.

  She should be looking at the room, establishing exits, figuring what she might grab as a weapon—but her world had collapsed to a bubble of this man’s breath and all the kinetic potential for violence in him, like a boulder tipping at the edge of a great cliff held back only by her attention on it.

  “Anything. I. Want,” he said.

  She’d already forgotten her question.

  His canine tooth closed gently on her earlobe, his stubble scratching her. Against her very will, gooseflesh raised across her arms. He wasn’t the kind of man to—He was just tormenting her. Maybe if he was so amused, she had some hope.

  He bit down hard and she yelled. She pursed her lips and cursed inwardly.

  Sharp chuckled, pulling back. He didn’t seem alarmed in the least, which told her that wherever they were, no shouting was going to bring her help.

  “Oh, Adrasteia,” he said. “Sweet, stupid child.” He grabbed the ropes again and lifted her. She’d assumed her limbs must be bound to the chair. They weren’t. Instead she was cocooned in ropes on top of the chair, so she stood with his motion, ready to lunge and drive her head into his face, but he kept her high and in front of him.

  He stood her to her tiptoes and walked her straight to the wall, still lifting higher, so she had to strain higher simply to breathe. On reaching the wall, he lifted her off her feet and settled the rope over a hook.

  Teia gagged. The many ropes around her neck weren’t a noose designed to choke the life out as quickly as possible, but they were holding her entire weight. Her elbows were bound behind her back, and her feet bound together, straining to reach the floor.

  Sharp’s frowning face came into view as her body turned. “Thought I estimated that right,” he said. He examined the ropes behind her back in no apparent hurry to save her fucking life, thank you very much. With a finger, he thrummed the ropes here and there, checking the tension.

  “What’s this? You gettin’ fat?” he asked.

  She choked.

  He blew out a breath and stepped behind her, his fingers tugging.

  It was her chance. He wasn’t looking at her eyes.

  But he was already done. Her toes brushed the floor, and then touched. The first hiss of air slipped into her lungs, and then a slow but adequate breath. The ropes around her diaphragm didn’t allow a full gasp, heightening the sensation of suffocation. But Teia’d learned something of torture, and she knew that sometimes the mere suggestion of suffocation was far better than the reality of it.

  Teia breathed, and did nothing but breathe.

  He was looking into her eyes again before it occurred to her to draft. She’d missed her chance. He was too strong for her. Too canny.

  How do you move too fast for fear to follow when you can’t move at all?

  “I told you, Adrasteia. Disobedience isn’t an option with the Order. I told you…” With eyes cold as the deep currents under her feet and brittle voice cracking like springtime ice under her, he said, “It’s the Order of the Bro
ken Eye, not the Suggestion of the Broken Eye.”

  She couldn’t bear his disgust, or for him to see her fear.

  Looking away in defeat, she saw this wasn’t his lair. He had none of the accoutrements that would suggest it was even a safe house. It was just an empty dump. Except that he’d spread out his gear on the floor and there was a sheaf of parchments lying on his carefully folded shimmercloak.

  Next to the parchments, which were bent from having been rolled, she saw a green or red ribbon.

  “Recognize those?” he asked.

  The White’s papers. They were what had gotten Teia into all this.

  She shook her head.

  “You naughty, naughty girl,” Murder Sharp said, like she was a dog who’d shat on the rug. “I got suspicious when you insisted on taking them. You were her cat’s paw all along, weren’t you?”

  He’d seen her eyes stick to that package. She’d given herself away the day they’d kidnapped Marissia? Damn, damn, damn. “Why do you have them?” she asked carefully. Speaking wasn’t fun with this much pressure on her throat. “I thought the Old Man owned you, heart and soul, blood and bone.”

  “I never disobey an order the Old Man gives. But sometimes it’s weeks between when we can meet. Months. We can’t be too careful. So I had to open the papers to make sure there were no traps, or plans we needed to know immediately. And then… I got curious.”

  “And?”

  “And what I found… troubled me. But you have no idea, do you?”

  “About what? I’d love to hear it.” If only to stay alive a bit longer, thanks.

  “They murder people. Just like we do—to keep power, you know? Your precious, righteous Spectrum, and I don’t just mean Andross Guile. At first I felt such glee, reading Orea Pullawr’s explanation in her own hand, the last confession of a woman who pretended to be so holy. Perhaps when I came to kill her, I was the hand of justice come to repay her many sins. She struck such a mournful tone. So apologetic. So desperate to explain. I despised her. But then I read more.”