The Burning White

by Brent Weeks

  Gunner waved them off, happily. He stood on his right leg and pointed to his left foot, as if to show that the sharks hadn’t gotten it. As if he didn’t have a care in the world.

  “Poor bastard,” Gavin said. “Why do I have the feeling he’ll outlive us all?”

  “Not a risky bet if we don’t find some water,” Orholam said.

  They moved inland. It was hard to tell how large the island was from the beach, with thick jungle obscuring their view. Judging from the gentle curve, maybe a couple leagues across? From the size of the outside of the reef as they’d sailed around it, though, it could have been ten leagues across.

  They followed game trails until they came to a wide area where no trees were growing, though the ground was covered with low vegetation. The wide area continued in a broken line inland, uphill. It didn’t look natural.

  Gavin grabbed a shrub and pulled it up. The roots were only a hand’s breadth deep, and below that were flat stones, interlocking.

  An ancient road, not yet fully claimed by the jungle.

  Gavin’s heart leapt in his breast. Streets meant cities. Cities meant the possibility of shelter and access to clean water, which his thick tongue wanted more than anything.

  They walked, slowly.

  In less than an hour, they passed the first ruins. Nothing spectacular, just a few stone walls with no roof, all of it covered by moss and vines. But nearby, there was running water.

  “Orholam!” Gavin said. “Can you go ahead and prophesy whether I’m going to get sick from this?”

  “I have no idea. But I’m gonna drink.”

  And so they both did. They had nothing to use as a skin, so they drank until they nearly burst. Then Gavin carefully, slowly washed around his eye patch, careful not to let the black jewel lose contact with his eye—that would be his death, if Grinwoody’s threat wasn’t bluster. For one clumsy moment, he bobbled his grip, but luckily the eye patch held in place in his eye socket.

  They headed on.

  Within two hours of heading uphill, they rounded a turn and found more ruins. Lots more.

  Amid the palm trees was an ancient, abandoned temple compound, all ancient stone arches and broad avenues with flagstones and great mosaics rent asunder with scrub grasses, and towering atasifusta trees, now extinct everywhere else in the Seven Satrapies. This was an entire ancient city, empty, if not old Tyrean itself then built in the style of the old Tyrean Empire, with horseshoe arches and stone carved like delicate lattices, once painted to look like climbing roses and ivy but now faded and chipped. The entire city was built around one central avenue, two blocks away from Gavin. He made his way to that street.

  Stepping into the broad, open area—an ancient market?—Gavin had an unobstructed view toward the center of the island for the first time.

  His heart stopped. All day, Gavin had expected to see the famed Tower of Heaven at any moment, but the jungle’s canopy and the body of the rising mountain they’d been climbing had hidden it. Until now.

  “This… this is not what I saw,” Orholam said.

  Overwhelming all the terrestrial wonders of this lost city was a great tower, surely as wide as all seven towers of the Chromeria put together, including all the grounds, and much, much taller.

  Perfectly symmetrical, and bafflingly, blindingly black, the untapering cylinder was stabbed in the heart of the island. A crater ridge rose around it, as if some angry god had impaled the world here and only the black haft of his spear jutted from the wound.

  Nothing relieved the unearthly emptiness of that black except a thin, pearlescent ribbon, a trail, spiraling around the outside of the great megalith.

  And if its base would have covered half of the entire island of Little Jasper, its height was something else entirely. It had to be taller than Ruic Head or any of the Red Cliffs.

  Gavin said, “Orholam’s beard, pilgrims climbed that?”

  Orholam had already recovered, and he just smiled at him like a fool.

  “I have to climb that, don’t I?” Gavin asked.

  “We,” Orholam said cheerily. “We get to climb that.”

  Chapter 37

  Karris twitched in her sleep. She couldn’t breathe.

  She tried to snort. Nothing happened. No air entered her lungs.

  Her eyes flew open. The room was pitch-black. There was nothing over her face, but as her tongue convulsed, no air flowed in.

  She couldn’t swallow.

  Her body was paralyzed from the neck down.

  “Shhh,” a woman said. Soothing. “Shhh.”

  The woman stepped closer. Teia. Karris jerked at the recognition.

  “I’m letting go,” Teia whispered. “Be quiet now. You’ll feel tingling, and then you’ll be able to speak in a moment.”

  Speak?! She couldn’t breathe!

  Then her fingers tingled. Toes tingled. And rapidly, feeling returned to her body.

  She gasped, then sat upright, her chest heaving.

  “I brought you something,” Teia said.

  Karris’s hair fell over her eyes, and she considered punching Teia in the throat. The goddam child, strangling her?! Who did she think she was? Was that paryl?

  Teia pulled out a red leather-bound folio. She flipped the leather back for Karris to read the title page: ‘Being the Secret History of the Chromeria: Written for and by the Whites.’

  By the Whites?

  And then Karris saw that there were dozens of signatures below the title. The last one was Orea Pullawr’s, albeit a more florid hand than she’d had when she was young. The folio had been penned by Karris’s predecessors in office. All of them.

  A note on the next page said, “Entrusted to your care on the understanding that you will add no untrue or deceptive word, nor bring the black to excise any words written herein. We trust you here with the unvarnished history of our empire. For Orholam loves the truth, and will bring all things to light in time, but not all things should be known by all people.”

  A sheaf of loose papers was tucked in the back. Karris flipped to them.

  They weren’t histories, but instead names, contacts, accounts with bankers: all the things Orea Pullawr had wanted Karris to have, and to know.

  “Where did you get this?” Karris asked. Her heart was pounding, and she wasn’t sure now whether it was still from her fright or from excitement.

  “From my master, who killed its previous owner and stole it.” This was one of the ways Teia tried to minimize the dangers of eavesdroppers: no names to prick ears.

  “How did you get this away from him? Did you kill him?”

  “He gave it to me.”

  “Orholam Himself must have blinded him to its value.”

  Teia snorted and shook her head as if Karris were a hopelessly clueless mom and she her teenage daughter.

  “What is your problem?” Karris asked. Even her excitement about the folio couldn’t erase all her pique at the girl paralyzing her.

  “Quiet!” Teia hissed. “My problem? First is that you’re gonna get me killed if you can’t even remember to whisper for five fucking minutes.”

  Karris gritted her teeth. She hadn’t been that loud. Whispering now, she said, “You come and give me a gift like this, and then act like a spoiled child while you do it?”

  Teia scoffed. “A child? A child?!” Now she wasn’t remembering to whisper.

  “I have questions,” Karris said. Teia was a goddam child, but Karris wasn’t. It was on her to forgive and compensate for the shortcomings of those she’d demanded serve in such hard positions. She wasn’t being fair. “Please.” She offered this last genuinely apologetically.

  Teia calmed, but still said, “I don’t have time for questions.”

  Firmly but with all the restraint she could muster, quashing the red rising in her at the fact the girl had used paryl on her spine—on her spine!—Karris said, “You have time.”

  “I am literally being hunted by their best assassin. He saw through me. He said he had a previ
ous Prism pull the same trick with him as you did with me. Same big talk. Same assignment. But then he died, leaving him twisting in the breeze. No one knew who he was. What he’d done for him. He ended up joining them in truth. He captured me. And just let me go so he could have a little hunt. A contest. See who’s really the best between us—as if I’ve got a chance.”

  “Orholam have mercy. How can I help?”

  Teia shook her head like Karris was being a fool. “Help? You can’t. You can only make things worse.”

  “Surely I can—”

  “I need to go. You want to know everything I have on Gavin or not?” Teia said.

  “Of course.”

  And then Teia reported about the ship and their conversation and the impossibility of reporting it all immediately.

  Karris could tell Teia wanted to leave more with every passing minute, but she quizzed her on the Old Man of the Desert, whom she’d seen disguised. “Could it be Andross Guile?” she asked finally.

  Teia shook her head. Andross had hired the Order before, and perhaps he was cunning enough to pretend to be someone else while hiring his own people, but no. “It was a good disguise, but there are things that are really, really hard to fake. This man or woman isn’t as broad as Andross Guile is. You can add padding to affect a silhouette, but moving in the same way a larger person does, that’s hard. So I think this person is probably thin, disguised with some padding, or maybe average with layers of jackets and the fine mail that breaks up paryl, but he or she isn’t broad-chested and wearing all those layers, too. And the man had a presence about him, so I don’t think it was a lieutenant standing in for the real Old Man. I think some secrets are so big, the Old Man attends to them himself. Or herself.”

  “And they threatened me?”

  “To get… your husband to go along with them. A threat that I believe is credible. They do have people here, in the ’guard, I’m sure of it.”

  Karris breathed a heavy sigh. “I didn’t think that… your masters were going to be a bigger threat than the White King.”

  “Not my masters. And not for long,” Teia said. “I hope.” She made to move to the door. “Oh, shit. One more thing. I realized we were so rushed before that I didn’t tell you.” She lowered her voice. “Ironfist. He was in the Order.”

  “What?!” Karris said.

  “I don’t know if he is anymore. Apparently, he joined them when he was a kid so they’d protect his sister from their family’s enemies. And I guess they did. Then with me killing her, he thinks they betrayed him. Even though she was trying to murder him when I did kill her, he was… He was scary as hell. You ever see a man lose everything he’s given his life for, all at once? I hadn’t. And I’ve never known a man like him.”

  Me neither.

  “It took me a while to put it all together, but… you know, he betrayed us in order to save his sister. Then his sister failed and betrayed him, and his brother died for us, and the people he betrayed us to then betrayed him.” She got pensive, seemed to forget her urge to leave so quickly for a moment. “You know, not to do your job, but if he finds out you knew I was going to assassinate his sister, and you let me…? He won’t be too happy.”

  Karris was reeling, but her first thought was horror. Oh, Ironfist, what have we done to you? In every part of your life, we’ve destroyed you.

  What have you done to yourself? Joining the Order?

  In ordering Teia to assassinate his sister, the Nuqaba, the Chromeria had betrayed him, but he’d betrayed them first.

  Well, sort of. He hadn’t known Karris or Gavin or any of the Blackguards when he’d taken his vow to the Order, had he? No wonder he’d held himself aloof, not just from Karris but from any woman. He’d known he was a hypocrite of the greatest degree, that he might be called on to do reprehensible things. He’d lived with that terrible, terrible secret and shame.

  Then her gut sank as she realized what a new and horrible twist this put on them potentially marrying.

  O God, protect us.

  “Yeah,” Teia said. “Sorry I didn’t get you the news earlier.”

  “No, it wouldn’t have changed anything.” Except I would have felt rage first, rather than compassion. So maybe it was for the best.

  “It’s like your best friend dying, isn’t it?” Teia said, her voice softer.

  “I’m sorry for all this, Teia. But…”

  “They’re a blight. I know. It’s gotta be done. And I’m the only one who can do this. Doesn’t seem fair, but there it is. Now, sorry, but I really do have to go. Can you distract your door guards?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Invisible, not incorporeal,” Teia said. “Can’t float through things, and people tend to notice a door opening and closing by itself.”

  “Oh, right, right.” Karris got up and threw on a robe. “You, uh, you haven’t asked for your orders.”

  Teia looked at her quizzically, a shadow of derision returning to her sharp young face. The girl rubbed her cheek over her dogtooth as if it pained her. “Orders? An arrow in flight doesn’t need orders. I’ll return to you bloody or not at all.”

  She threw her hood over her head.

  She was going to leave without another word. Karris grabbed her by the wrist, wishing she could shake some sense into the girl, wishing everything between them had been different.

  “Nonetheless,” she said gently. She rummaged through her desk and grabbed a paper. “Same code as usual.”

  Teia snagged it and tucked it away. Her cloak shimmered—and she was gone.

  Karris went and opened her door to give Teia room to get out past the Blackguards. “Pardon me, Essel, could you check and see if any of my chamber servants are awake and would bring me some kopi? I hate to wake them at such an hour, so if none of them are up, it’s not really necessary…”

  Essel smiled. It had taken her a worryingly long time to recover from being knocked out the day Gavin had been kidnapped, but she was finally her old self again. “They are your chamber servants. That’s what they do, High Lady.”

  “High Lady?” Karris said. “Essel, don’t talk to me like we haven’t danced the gciorcal on tables till past dawn together. One of us without a shift under her skirts.”

  “Yes, High Lady,” Essel said. “I’ll go check. You think you can keep it professional around here for one minute, Amzîn?”

  “Yes, Watch Captain!” the young man said. “I will not stand here and wonder which of you was dancing without her shift, sir.”

  Essel stifled a laugh.

  Karris raised her eyebrows, and young Amzîn blanched.

  “I changed my mind,” Karris said. “Amzîn, there’s a kopi seller named Jalal on the back side of Ebon’s Hill where the two main lightwell streets intersect. Opens early. Go find a Blackguard in the barracks to cover the rest of your shift. Then I want you to run to the kopi seller and bring back as much hot kopi as you can carry. As quick as you can. I hate it lukewarm. Until your brain is faster than your tongue, your feet are going to have to be faster yet.”

  His mouth worked once or twice, but then he was off like a shot. Running so far was easy. Running so far carrying a hot drink? And being expected to bring it back before it cooled?

  Essel came back to her post, “That… might have been my fault. I’ve been telling the boy stories of the old days of all the trouble we got into.”

  “Any of them true?”

  “One or two,” Essel said. “He’s been terrified of you since his last gaffe. And the others have been none too gentle on him. They all feel like he’s trying to take Gav Greyling’s place. He’s not, of course. But you know men at war. Not always fair.”

  “No, they’re not.”

  “Nor women, neither.”

  Karris gave Essel a sharp look. “All right, all right. I hear you. I’ll ease up.”

  “Just a little.”

  “Just a little,” Karris said. “So, uh, which version of that story did you tell him?”

  “The true one,�
� Essel said, “where you were the one half-naked, and I was trying to convince you to go home.”

  “You wicked little liar!”

  Essel just laughed.

  Then she said, “Actually, after all this time, I can’t remember which way is true. Or did it happen more than once?”

  “More than once. For you,” Karris said.

  “Doing some work tonight?” Essel asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Want me stationed inside instead?”

  Karris wanted the company, but said, “No. It’s, um, no… not tonight, friend.” She didn’t know what was in the folio. No one should know it even existed.

  Essel nodded, and Karris could tell her feelings were bruised. But Essel was a professional. She asked immediately, “Want me to send to the kitchens for some kopi? It’ll be at least an hour before the kid gets back. With lukewarm kopi, I’d guess, too.”

  “Sure,” Karris said. “But don’t let Amzîn know, would ya? Just in case. That old man’s kopi really is the best.”

  Essel reached to close the door, then hesitated. “Gav was a great kid. I miss him, too.”

  Karris took a deep breath, letting the sorrow flow through her. “I miss a lot of us,” she said.

  Essel nodded, though there was a flash of sorrow there. Even between them there was a bit of death, a gap of secrets held, old trust between comrades abrogated—not by malice but by duty and war. She went.

  * * *

  In the next hours as Karris read, over perfectly hot kopi—it turned out Amzîn was a sub-red—the worries and tribulations of the night faded away as her attention was seized wholly by the advice and the stories the Whites before her had left to help her. Here were lessons from hundreds of years of women and men who’d led and protected drafters through the reigns of Prisms great and good and wretched and bitter and venial (not just one or two of those having reputations from other sources that differed widely from what the Whites past reported). But then they began referring to things that Karris couldn’t understand. Sections were missing. There were blank lines, perfectly erased. Later Whites had clearly tried to piece together what was missing, obviously as perturbed as Karris was now.