The Burning White

by Brent Weeks

  He scrubbed his hands through his short, fire-red hair and sat down on a footstool. It was the only furniture in the house, if a house it was.

  Sharp lit a candle with a finger and thumb and a bit of sub-red. It hissed and spat oddly. He peered closely at her, and she knew that if she flared her eyes to paryl, he would kill her instantly.

  “In the past two years,” Sharp said, “I’ve seen the Chromeria try to do things the old way, balancing the colors by decree. Telling the reds to draft more, the blues to draft less, waiting a year. Seeing how many storms kill people where, and what happens to the crops or the animals or the forests here and there and everywhere. Everyone gets poor, people starve to death, and the storms rage anyway. Only… a bit less frequently. But if that’s the only way to save things, even if everything else they say is lies, even if the Chromeria’s being led by hypocrites and monsters… what if their way really is better? Better to kill a few here, where they feel it, than to let hundreds or thousands die throughout the satrapies, isn’t it? We Braxians, we say our way’s better: assassinate a few to save many, but how’s that make sense? If the Chromeria is doing it all wrong, I suppose, turning Atash into desert so Tyrea can bloom, that’s bad, right? But the records show we did the same. I mean the opposite. All we did was make sure that the thousands who died weren’t ours. Who’s the monster then? Maybe our way was best against the nine kings, but now?”

  Sharp was not a good storyteller. Teia couldn’t even tell when he was referring to which side.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Teia said. “Can you start from the beginning?”

  He shook his head, paused. Checked a denture as if it had felt loose.

  “The Order ruined me,” Sharp said. “Lied to me. Broke me in the worst way—they made me break myself.” He reached into his mouth and took out his bottom set of teeth. He sat on the little stool and squinted at the teeth in order. With a tiny brush, he scraped away some tiny imperfection, wiggled a canine. He clucked his tongue between his jagged natural teeth, displeased, and tended to the rest of the dentures.

  But he kept glancing up, noting her eyes at unpredictable intervals. She couldn’t draft without getting caught. Dammit. She had to wait until he was more distracted.

  He said, “It’s a funny thing, you know, you and I.”

  “How’s that?” Teia asked.

  He hadn’t looked up in perhaps a count of ten—as if he were daring her to try to draft. That she hadn’t dared—that she might have missed her last chance through her lack of courage was infuriating, sickening, terrifying.

  He dried the dentures and daubed paste from a jar along the length of the teeth channel with a tiny brush. Then he glanced over, quickly.

  “It’s funny that we both kind of want to be the other person—but only kind of,” Sharp said. “You want to be a master of paryl. A killer. You’re a brittle weakling, and you want to be strong. You want to be scary. But only kind of, because you don’t want it badly enough to do what you need to become who you want to be. Me, I’m strong, but… I kind of want to be a traitor like you.”

  It was like a rope thrown toward a drowning woman.

  “It’s never betrayal to do what’s right,” Teia said.

  He barked a laugh. “Think the Old Man would agree?”

  “It’s not too late for you,” Teia said.

  He tamped his gums and broken teeth dry by biting a towel. Then he fit the dentures back into his mouth. He pressed firmly on them and waited a moment. He sighed. “Oh, girl,” he said. “Your naive-it, naïveté? naiveness? is a blindness worse than your shitty color-blind eyes. Do you know how many men I’ve killed?”

  He was looking directly at her now. There was no chance to draft unless he turned away again.

  “I—”

  “Twenty-seven slaves, in my training. If you count those. They started me with worn-out old men. I knew those poor bastards’d soon be on the streets, dying, begging, miserable. Unwanted, uncared for. Not so hard to end a life that was gonna look like that. You’re doing ’em a favor, aren’t you? The Order worked me up from there, breaking me in until I was like an old, dependable pair of work boots.”

  It hit Teia like a punch in the stomach. She’d thought her training method was coincidental, that old slaves were the cheapest.

  It was no coincidence. It was all by design.

  They’d been chipping away at her conscience deliberately, by degrees.

  And she’d helped them. Justifying it at every step. A victim, but a victim partaking in the evil done to her. Breaking herself. Sometimes she’d looked forward to trying out new paryl tricks on her victims, hadn’t she? Experiments.

  They’re gonna die anyway. I might as well learn something from them.

  Someone’s going to kill them. Might as well be me. It’s better that it’s done by me, because…

  Because why, exactly?

  Someone’s gonna do evil, might as well be me.

  And if everyone in the world said that, what kind of world would it be?

  Death had been certain for any one slave who’d stood before her. That man was going to die, regardless of what she did. But if she’d not killed that one, the Order wouldn’t have purchased the next for her to kill.

  Or the next. Or the next.

  What if everyone in the world said, ‘Someone’s gonna do evil—but it won’t be me’?

  But Sharp was still talking. “They gave me reasons at first. You know, this one had done this terrible thing, this next had done something worse. From old slaves to young, young slaves to bad old free men, old free men to young free men to bad old luxiats to… to anyone, without question. Without remorse.

  “Eighty-nine kills now in more years than I want to remember. Not all of them assassinations, either. Jobs go wrong, or sometimes you have to grab someone so you can try out a new technique for the next job. It takes a toll, you know? You’d think it’s hardest at first, that after that you get over it. And you do, until sometimes you look back and think too much. Like I’m doing now, I guess.

  “Last year, I killed Arys Sub-red in her very birthing chamber. We’d made love that morning.” He smiled with real fondness, then shook himself. “Not that she loved me. I’d been very clear that I was willing to be good company and an attentive but temporary bedmate and no more. But she treated me… respectful. Honorably, I guess. You don’t get that so much. We passed some of the sweetest hours of my life in each other’s arms. I was… uh, fond of her, I guess, in a way I’d not thought I could be after… whatever. But that morning I threatened to strangle her newborn’s first scream if she said the wrong thing. I would’ve done it, too.” He shook his head. “What kind of man does that? Not a whole one. Not a man at all.”

  “You can still—”

  “No!” he barked. “There is no redemption for men like me. And if there was, if some god would erase my crimes, I wouldn’t want to serve a god so vile. Some things can’t be forgiven. Shouldn’t be. I’ve sworn the oaths. I’ve lived them. I’ve drunk of the communal bloodwine. So I’ve this much honor left to me, this much at least. At least I obey.”

  He slapped her face, shooting black stars over her vision, and then he pulled a blindfold over her face.

  She heard him pull up the chair within a few feet and sit.

  And as he sat with a great sigh, she could only hope he was dumber than she thought, because if the greatest evidence Murder Sharp held on to of his own goodness or honor was that he obeyed the Old Man, then every moment he let Teia live was an argument against all those things.

  If he realized that her continuing existence undermined the very last thing he valued about himself? That moment would be her last.

  Chapter 31

  “May we have the room, please?” Tisis said. She’d just come in from one of her meetings with her spies, and was wearing attire for the forest, not the palace.

  The windows of the privy council chamber were dark. Even the most ardent art aficionados had
gone home. Kip had only three meetings left before he could call it a day. He’d been seated so long, his butt was going to come out of his chair square-shaped. Ferkudi’s report on provisions was next: boring, but necessary information, doubtless with money requests attached.

  What was after that, another banker to beg for a loan?

  Kip sighed, then realized everyone was waiting on him. Not least his wife. “Please, please,” he said.

  He was not used to this ‘lord’ business.

  “I could use a few more minutes with these numbers anyway,” Ferkudi said as he and some subordinates and scribes and secretaries and the rest cleared out of the room.

  Only Cruxer stayed in the chamber, with some of the Mighty’s nunks outside. The man had to be even more tired than Kip, but he wasn’t ready to leave Kip alone with anyone other than the original Mighty yet.

  “They told me what you did,” Tisis said.

  “They did?” Kip asked stupidly. Which ‘they’? What thing?

  He really probably shouldn’t be making decisions when he was this exhausted. He’d stacked the easy meetings up for the end of the day, but still.

  “They did. Come with me,” Tisis said.

  As Kip stood laboriously, Cruxer paused in his checking the windows. They’d just cleared the room, and now they were leaving it? He made to go with them.

  Tisis waved him off. “Sorry,” she said. “Won’t be long.”

  She took Kip’s hand and pulled him toward the room’s closet. She pulled out her ponytail. “I’ve been thinking about you all day,” she said.

  Kip’s exhaustion was vanishing by the moment.

  As she opened the closet door, she said, “Have you been thinking about me?”

  With one meeting after another, all day long, each demanding total focus? He’d barely thought about her at all. But that didn’t feel like the right thing to say at the moment, so he slid his hand up her cheek into her newly loosed blonde hair and pulled her head back to kiss her as he joined her in the little closet.

  She snaked away from him after a moment to close the door behind them. It plunged them into darkness.

  Kip’s heart suddenly leapt with fear, all desire forgotten.

  Locked in a closet. Helpless. Rats swarming.

  A mag torch snapped, and they were bathed in green light. He saw the look of brazen desire on his wife’s upturned face at the same time that she saw the terror on his.

  Her hand paused from removing her belt, and she cringed. “Oh, shit! How’d I forget? Oh, honey, I’m so sorry. I’ve ruined it, haven’t I?”

  Kip took some deep breaths. He forced a grin. “Well, saying ‘Oh, shit’ that loudly is gonna make Cruxer wonder what I just did to you, but other than that? Nah.”

  She flashed a grin, but then sobered. “You’re okay?”

  “Not yet,” he said honestly. His throat was tight. “Help me forget the where and remember the with-whom?”

  Her smiled broadened, and there was nothing in all the world that could quicken his pulse like a devious, confident grin on his beautiful bride’s face. “Draft a little green?” she asked.

  “Green?!” he said, trying to keep his voice down. “The last time we tried some green in bed, do you remember what you did?”

  “Just a little!” she whispered. The whites of her eyes were already swirling with green. More than a little, and she was shimmying her hips to remove her trousers.

  But he didn’t use green. Green was all wildness—which could be wonderful if one was looking to overcome shyness in the bedchamber—but that which is wild hates being caged, and Kip already felt near panic.

  It actually took Kip several bifurcated minutes to forget the close confines of the closet. Then, as they made love in the tight space, her head bent back, her hair filling his nostrils with her scent, his hands on her hips, then on her still-covered breasts, her body pushing eagerly against him, slowly, slowly, that old grimy rat-infested closet’s echo faded like bad music heading into the distance as blissful tones of a new song began close by.

  And when they’d finished—as quietly as possible, for Cruxer’s sake—he held her still against him and marveled. In the postcoital clarity, he was filled with such love for his wife that fear had been cast out.

  The closet had been transformed: no more a trap, no more an echo of the darkest moments of his childhood—it was just a little room. Hemmed in on three sides, he’d wanted to bolt for the exit, but if he had, he’d have missed out on this.

  He spun Tisis around and kissed her passionately.

  She squeaked, surprised, but then leaned into him, her hand reaching down between them as she made a little moue that asked, ‘Again?’

  He pulled away from her lips. “I’d love to,” he said.

  She’d tilted her hips, but didn’t press onto him now as she heard his hesitation.

  Nor did he push forward. He’d meant to pull away from her hand as well, but didn’t. “Do… you want to?” he asked.

  “I’m more than willing,” she said. “But I’m also certainly satisfied. I was trying to be quiet for Cruxer’s sake.” Her face went through several fast expressions. She said, “You’re confusing me.”

  “You gave me a thought,” he said. “A breakthrough, maybe. But part of me is screaming that I’d be a damned fool to—”

  He cut off as she pushed deep onto him, pushing him off balance until his back hit the wall. Her eyelids fluttered for a moment, and then her eyes cleared and she looked up at him sweetly. “My lord,” she said, “thank you for seeing to my needs. Now I believe you have others to attend to.”

  She pulled away and threw her clothes into place before he could stop her.

  “You are merciless,” he said. “And I adore you.”

  “What was your breakthrough?” she asked, pulling her belt on.

  “Huh? Oh, oh, right,” he said.

  She sighed.

  “What do you think is my greatest weakness?” Kip asked.

  Tisis paused in pulling her hair back into its ponytail. “For real?”

  “Yeah!”

  “You’re really going to ask that, right after we… had a moment?”

  “Fine, fine, what’s my greatest strength?”

  “You have lots of great strengths—”

  “No, I’m not hunting for compliments,” Kip said. “It’s what you’ve said before.”

  “You mean that you see with your heart? That you have compassion—could you put that away now?—that you have compassion that allows you to understand people, even in moments where another man would be sunk into his own needs and plans.”

  “Right! And thank you,” Kip said, getting his own clothes back into place. “So the flip side is my great weakness. I see the small stuff, and I lose the big.”

  “The small stuff is the big stuff,” Tisis said.

  “With people, yeah. But not as a leader. Hey, you mind if I open the door now?”

  “Do I look like I just had amazing sex?” Tisis asked.

  Kip hesitated. “This isn’t a trick question, is it?”

  “Let me rephrase. Do I look like I just had sex in a closet?”

  “Still not tracking.”

  “Do I look rumpled, Kip? Do I smell like—”

  “No—oh, and yes. You and me both, actually.”

  She scowled, then gazed at the green mag torch. She drafted a little. “Okay, fine, now I don’t care.”

  “You know, you really shouldn’t—”

  “Please lecture me about how much I’m drafting,” she said sharply.

  He shut his mouth. “Pot, meet kettle. Objection withdrawn.”

  “Go on, now,” she said, opening the door.

  Out in the fuller-spectrum light of the room, she definitely looked like she’d just had sex. Hair not all tucked into her ponytail, cheeks flushed, clothes a bit askew.

  “Mirror’s right there,” Cruxer said, otherwise stony-faced. “And General Antonius is here to present tomorrow’s training reg
imen and the daily report.”

  Tisis groaned. For all her earlier bluster, she was mortified when it came to her cousin learning anything about her sex life. They’d grown up together.

  The call of a million duties delivered one after another, each somewhat different, and yet always stultifyingly the same, threatened to pull Kip back into their games.

  “Ask him to wait,” Kip said.

  ‘Thank you,’ Tisis mouthed, as Cruxer did so.

  Kip sat silent, though.

  He was being played. In the clamor of a million needs, he’d lost sight of his adversary. Koios had a plan. Nothing here—or at least very little—was by accident.

  The thoughts swirled: an ambassador sweats when he shouldn’t, and then doesn’t when he should. Assassins fail at a job that should have been easy. A drafter wears armor, not to protect herself from her enemies but to protect her friends from herself. A map doesn’t report what it should, and… maybe…

  What if it also did show what it shouldn’t?

  Kip walked over to the map table.

  He blacked out half a dozen of the blooming lights behind them—refugees’ and scouts’ reports that had come from the Great River behind them, reporting about various events, but that altogether told them the river was open when it actually hadn’t been.

  It had only taken six reports to lead them astray, because they didn’t expect more: bandits were enslaving everyone in that area they could grab.

  Now he ran the map backward and forward without those six reports, and saw a dark area in the map, right behind them, a shadow that they might otherwise have feared.

  Koios had done that.

  “These are the bad reports,” Kip said. “These are the refugees who are spies.”

  Tisis was standing at the map table with him. “Yeah, these three for sure, and I’m checking into these ones now.”

  “They are,” Kip said.

  “How do you…?”

  But he barely heard her. This darkness on the map had hid an enormous threat. What if there were another?

  “Something’s missing,” Kip said. “Something… Cruxer, was there ever any emissary from the White King? Someone that the soldiers stopped? Any news of someone being waylaid by angry townspeople?”