The Burning White

by Brent Weeks

  “That sounds pretty good… can you not read them? Are they in code or something?” Teia asked.

  “No, I can read them. Now. I had to study up on construction techniques and terminology. Took me a while,” the slender young man said.

  “So… the bad news is…?”

  “The plans show no space for any hidden rooms at all,” Quentin said. “Everything is clear and public.”

  “Okay…”

  “But I found an exterminator’s report of a rat’s nest… right here under the young discipuli’s barracks.”

  Teia looked at the plans, but for her they might as well have been written in Old Tyrean. “Explain?”

  “See, in the diagram here, there’s no space at all. This is supposed to be hardwood planking directly over stone. But the rat catcher’s report mentions finding a rat king… Do you know what that is?” He looked ill just speaking about it.

  “No.”

  “You don’t want to. Regardless, he said the rat king was two paces high. According to the plans, that’s impossible. There’s no space for it. So the plans are wrong. So I went outside, and using some trigonometry and an astrolabe, I was able to calculate the heights of the towers.”

  “And the Prism’s Tower was taller than these plans say,” Teia guessed.

  “No. All of the towers are taller than these plans say. Four paces taller! And these are the most recent plans. So that means there isn’t just one secret room, there’s the equivalent of one secret floor. In every tower.”

  “How do you hide an entire secret floor?”

  “Cleverly, I guess. Maybe not all in one place? People look at the towers from the outside all the time, and point out their rooms and the rooms of their friends. I don’t even know how you do it, honestly. I’m no master builder, but whoever did this certainly was. Of course, I am pretty sure that they must have the true plans somewhere. For the inevitable repairs, or to keep later workmen and servants away from them, if nothing else. So I’d guess the Black would have those, or the promachos.”

  “My money’s on Andross Guile. The man’s a maelstrom of secrets.”

  “I concur,” Quentin said.

  “Quen,” Teia said. “No one says, ‘I concur.’”

  “I know, but it bothers you,” he said with a quick grin.

  She forced a smile, but then returned to the task. “It’s not like we can ask Carver Black,” she said. She sighed. Should she break into his rooms? His office? How long would it take her to find a book he’d hidden? Could she spare the time from hunting the Order itself to surveil him? What reason would Carver Black have to check the old tower plans? He might have those documents, not ever check them.

  And who was to say Carver Black even knew? Would the Old Man of the Desert hide in a place Carver Black knew? Was Carver Black himself in the Order?

  She sighed. It all made her head hurt. She would need years to untangle all this fully. And it wasn’t like she could kill Carver Black without anyone noticing. No, her best bet wasn’t to go after individuals to find if they were in the Order; it was to let the Order come to her. She rubbed her jaw gingerly.

  She had to figure out some way to mark every person who attended their Feast of the Dying Light, the night before Sun Day. Maybe in the changing room? Could she mark their clothing?

  Then Karris’s soldiers could sweep down on the traitors on Sun Day morning and wipe them out in one fell swoop.

  They could celebrate Sun Day by putting the Old Man of the Desert up on Orholam’s Glare.

  There was one man Teia would happily watch cook, screaming in agony as he died.

  If she could survive so long. She rubbed her jaw again.

  “Tooth still hurting?” Quentin asked. “I thought you were going to go see the White’s barber about that before all this even started.”

  “I did. Not that I can tell, but he said it’s better now than it would have been if I hadn’t come to see him.”

  “A nonfalsifiable statement. Clever.”

  “I’m supposed to chew some herbs to help, but I always forget,” she said. “I don’t know what irritates me more: that he may be a charlatan or that this may be my fault because I don’t follow instructions.” She heard the whinging in her voice, and shut up.

  Quentin looked at her, and didn’t fill the sudden silence.

  “It’s killing me,” she said.

  “Your tooth? Not your tooth.”

  She sat on Quentin’s bed. “Quentin, you’re on a first-name basis with the guy: how can Orholam allow this?”

  “This?” Quentin asked uncertainly.

  “I’m a butcher, Quen. I’ve taken to scoring a notch on my knife for each kill.”

  He said nothing, but he wasn’t fast enough to hide the brief flash of distaste on his lips.

  “Not to brag about the number. To remind myself. Because I was forgetting. They all run together until I dream: Oh, the way that one slave gurgled on his blood because he bit his tongue so hard in his fear of me before I even touched him. How that other girl wept from the moment the door opened and never even got a word out because she was crying so hard. I remember how I despised her, how I wished she would die as bravely as some of the others had. Do you know, they gave me a break? The Order. Said that too many slaves had disappeared, and they needed to hold off until some more refugees came to the island so no one would get suspicious—and I felt disappointed because it would interrupt my studies. Disappointed. For only a moment, yes. But what the hell is that? I don’t want to be this person I’m becoming, Quentin. Why would Orholam allow this?”

  “‘If Orholam can do something, and if He cares about us, why doesn’t He?’”

  She nodded. “So what’s the answer?”

  “The answer’s simple for the mind, but impossible for the heart. And the question, honestly asked, always comes from a wound.” He said no more.

  She waited, then understood. “So you’re not going to tell me.”

  “Not when you’re hurting and angry. You’ll reject the answer, and then later you’ll think of it as an answer you already found lacking and perhaps you’ll neglect to consider it again. Having found a door’s handle bristling with needles, you’ll tell yourself it’s probably locked anyway. When you come to the big questions, before you can get a true answer, you need to know whether you’re approaching them rationally or emotionally.”

  A Blackguard guards his emotions, Teia thought. “So you’re not going to tell me the rational answer until I can approach the question rationally,” she said.

  “It’s not that it’s a big Magisterium secret. You could go ask any luxiat and get the same answer today that I’ll give you when you’re ready—though some will phrase it more or less eloquently. But in my estimation, you’ll profit more from it later. If you disagree, you’re free to ask them.”

  “You’re asking me to trust you when I don’t understand something hard for me,” she said. “That’s supposed to parallel something, isn’t it?”

  “I didn’t mean it to, but perhaps it does. Thanks for thinking I’m smarter than I am.”

  She pursed her lips to keep from smiling, though the hollow in her chest still ached.

  “Now,” he said, “you were abrupt last time. Seemed on edge. You killed this slaver, Ravi Satish. Easy kill?”

  Sticking a hammer in his head? Easier than I thought. Fooling him? Pathetically easy. The rest? “Won’t trouble my sleep,” she said.

  “And you’re going out to hunt your old mistress presently. You’re going to kill her?”

  She nodded once, sharp as a falling guillotine.

  “This is your first job that isn’t purely professional.”

  “It’s necessary,” she said, quick and defensive. “If she contacts Murder Sharp, it brings him to her, and that puts him way too close to me. Plus she intends to contract a hit on a Guile. Not Andross, I’m sure. Sharp probably wouldn’t take the job, but how could I explain that to Karris?”

  “Those are all good re
asons. Sufficient reasons,” Quentin said. He let it hang there.

  “Yeah,” she said, trying to cover it over.

  “Yeah?”

  Teia felt stricken. He knew she wasn’t being honest, and yet his eyes were filled with compassion. “She’s low-level, Quen. I mean, she’s a noble, so she’d rise quickly in their ranks… but she told Ravi she only joined them to try to get revenge on the Guiles for… something. Which, come to think of it, she ranted to me about a long time ago. Her brother was the governor of Garriston, and Gavin Guile killed him as a traitor or something? I don’t know exactly. But it means she’s not a true believer. And I know where the Order’s meeting now. She doesn’t need to die, not exactly. I mean, she’s committed capital offenses, and she’s covered under my writ, but if she were anyone else, and she got away? It wouldn’t trouble me. She wouldn’t be forming a new Order ten years from now. But I want to kill her almost as much as I want the Old Man.”

  “Then you know.”

  “I know what?”

  Quentin looked at her, and his eyes were old and gentle. “Teia, this is the most dangerous job you’ve ever done. Not physically. This is where you can come to love what you do. The power of it. The righteous vengeance. This work wounds you, but this job is where you can get dirt in the wound.”

  “Like I haven’t already?” she scoffed.

  “To this point, you’ve been a shield, doing what you have to do, getting battered and torn protecting those you love. Now you decide what else you are. You can torture her, if you want. You can try to make her pay for all she did to your friends and to you. You can look into her eyes and wring whatever suffering from her you desire. No one can stop you.”

  “And no one should,” Teia said coldly.

  “Some luxiats say even the Two Hundred may yet repent, but from what you’ve told me of her, I daresay Aglaia’s damnation is assured. What’s in question is yours.”

  Chapter 62

  With a grunt, Gavin set down the great, cumbersome Lust stone he’d borne for the entire circuit around the black tower on a pedestal. Above the pedestal was a statue, and beyond the statue another locked gate. This statue was of a kneeling man with face upturned, radiant, lambent in his white marble against all the sea of black stone here. All the statues had been the same white. The weight of the stone released a boon stone wider than his hand from the statue’s grip.

  “Chastity, I suppose?” Gavin asked, picking up the boon stone.

  The prophet didn’t have to answer.

  “I’ll be happy to give this one up to Orholam!” Gavin said.

  The old man was as stone-faced as the statues, and a good deal less joyful.

  “You know,” Gavin said, “to hand over Chastity, because I don’t want it?”

  Orholam pursed his lips.

  “Not like, give up my chastity to Orholam, like a sexual… You know what? Never mind. Just looking for a little levity, after the bludgeoning I just took with that round. You know what I mean?”

  “No.”

  “So tell me, O, why aren’t you pilgriming with me? Pilgriming. Pilgrimaging? Huh. I’m the head of the faith and I don’t know how people usually say it. I think I like pilgriming. Feels grim, and it’s a bitter pill, right? No? Not working with me at all here, are you? Fine. Why aren’t you pilgriming? No sins to purge? Too holy already?”

  As Orholam sighed, Gavin took the Chastity boon stone and tucked it into a pocket in the pilgrim’s tunic. It was heavy, but it fit perfectly.

  When Grinwoody had commissioned Gavin for this task, he’d mentioned magical locks at every level that the fleeing guardians had left to keep out drafters of each associated color. That was why Gavin, unable now to draft, was supposedly the perfect candidate to assassinate Orholam—or the magical nexus called Orholam. So far, though, Gavin had only felt a whisper of resistance as he walked through each gate, and that may have been his imagination or his dread at what the next circle would hold.

  They moved farther into the landing. There was one between each circle. Here, silently, they ate salt fish and drank water while Gavin recovered. The steep chute that Gavin had seen below had an opening here, and Gavin wondered how many pilgrims failed not on each level but on the spaces between them like this, where they pondered how terrible the next one would be.

  How easy was it to give up and simply escape, too afraid to confront what lay next?

  “I’m journeying for you,” Orholam said finally, when Gavin had nearly forgotten his question. “If I did my own pilgrimage, I would take much less time on certain circles than you, leaving you alone. It’s even possible I might take more time on certain circles. Dimly. Wrath, for one, would not be easy on me. But I’m here to walk with you, step for step, no matter how long you take. We’re not meant to take the pilgrimage alone.”

  “So no pilgrimage for you at all?” Gavin asked.

  “When my business with you is finished, I’ll go back down and start my own climb.”

  “I’m really delighted that you are here for me, but I, uh, won’t be joining you for yours. You know that, right?”

  Orholam scoffed like yeah, he knew. Then he frowned.

  “There’s my old Wrath again, rearing up inside,” Orholam said as if disappointed in himself.

  “I piss you off that much, huh?” Gavin asked. And here he’d been being as respectful as he could manage. Wrath was going to be a tough circle for him, too.

  “This is your chance to decide whether you want to be that old deceiver Gavin Guile or if you want to be a Dazen Guile made new. I know you want that. You’ve made attempts before. This is an opportunity to change, Guile. And you’ve been offered more of those than most get. Take it.”

  The old prophet hunkered down with his own salt fish, turning his back on Gavin. The conversation, clearly, was finished.

  Gavin sighed. Some company for his pilgrimage.

  He’d mostly given up trying to understand the magic of whoever had created this tower. It had to be a highly advanced will-casting-focused magic, from the way it triggered Gavin’s memories. He’d had multiple flashbacks during every circle: the makers of this thing had weaponized his own mind against him.

  This wasn’t a hike up a tower; it was a trek through everything he’d ever done wrong, everything he’d never done right. This was his every failure held up to the light and splintered into its component deadly sins through a black prism.

  It was not a magic to be understood, merely one to be endured. He was gaining no new knowledge of magic, but only of himself.

  How the tower’s Tyrean makers (if this wasn’t older than even their empire) had understood vice and virtue was different than what the Chromeria taught. He’d learned, and as the Highest Luxiat, even taught the seven virtues as being the four worldly virtues (prudence, courage, justice, temperance) and the three heavenly ones (charity, hope, and faith).

  Believers were to meditate on these virtues, and how they might embody them better, as they made the sign of the four and the three touching hand, heart, and lips. If you counted hands as a collective singular, you would count them as number three, whereas if you counted each hand in turn separately, they would count as three and four—thus symbolizing a paradox, and the connection of all the virtues (or all the vices) to one another.

  Here, though ultimately the lists basically covered the same territory as the Chromeria’s, the tower’s builders had divided up the pilgrimage into Seven Contrary Virtues: Patience against Wrath, Abstinence against Gluttony, Liberality against Greed, Diligence against Sloth, Chastity against Lust, Kindness against Envy, and Humility against Pride.

  Gavin hadn’t thought that Lust was going to be a difficult circle for him. After all, he’d been (unwillingly) chaste for quite a while now. Sure, he was as virile as the next two guys, but he hadn’t been promiscuous—especially for a Prism with all the opportunities he’d had! But the memories he’d triggered at every step had focused not on numbers of women he’d taken to his bed but mostly on how
he’d treated Marissia, not only in bed but out of it.

  He’d prided himself on treating Marissia very, very well for a room slave. That she hadn’t been a slave at all but was only masquerading as one was, if anything, a reason for him to be angry with her.

  The tower hadn’t let him off so easily. It hadn’t cared whether she was slave or free. It triggered his own memories of how he’d treated her. They weren’t flattering.

  Marissia had been, in Gavin’s careless estimation, supposed to feel only gratitude or desire toward him. That was pretty much the entire range of emotions he’d expected from her, and it was all he’d allowed her to express.

  He’d seen undeniably over the years that the true range was far, far greater. He’d seen her despair, he’d seen her love for him, and her self-loathing at times, seemingly because she did love him—but he’d written them all off, as if they, and she, weren’t worthy of his attention.

  It must have been torture for her. Gavin would treat her well, showering her with compliments, thanking her for how well she was running his household and managing the servants and slaves. Some days he would ask her opinion on matters of all kinds, confide in her, give her gifts, and take her to his bed and make sure she reached her pleasure rather than merely take his own. Other days he would demand she serve him sexually at a moment’s notice, pretending instant arousal and total desire—though her dryness betrayed the pretense, he’d ignored it or blamed her for it—then he’d banished her from the room as if she were no more than a rag to mop up his semen.

  That’s what room slaves are for, he’d told his protesting conscience. I treat her well!

  And she had endured it, while knowing she could end her torture at any moment by revealing she wasn’t a slave at all. But she had believed in her mission too much to do that. Or she’d loved him so much that she stayed, despite it all.

  Or, his conscience asked, had the abuse so worn her down that she contented herself with taking the emotional scraps that fell from his table, and slowly come to believe it was all she deserved?