The Burning White

by Brent Weeks

  The front ranks broke apart, every other ship slowly, slowly turning broadside. Then flashes of light blinked across the waves, followed by billows of black smoke floating up toward their sails—curiously silent from this far away. Those ships had turned forward again, as ahead of them those ships that had kept going now took their chance to turn broadside.

  It was only then that the sound of the first cannons arrived, a distant thunder from that slow storm now covering most of the horizon.

  No fire was returned from the White King’s ships, and Kip couldn’t see any result from the shelling, though scores must have died in the moments he’d been watching.

  After the speed and chaos and dexterity required for ground combat, this naval positioning seemed graceless, ponderous. Give a man a sword and tell him to chase down another man, and the contest was decided within minutes; one ship chasing another could easily last all day.

  And yet that apparent gracelessness was deceiving, Kip knew. There was a reason why famous admirals were famous. When you had to turn a ship weighing tens of thousands of sevens with only wind, and waves, and muscle, and had to judge exactly the rates at which your enemies could do the same, so that you could arrive at some future position where you could release a broadside at them before they could release one at you, it required a special brilliance to be successful. Add in needing to adjust any of your figures due to your slaves’ exhaustion, injuries to crew, the weight of your ship and of your opponent’s, timing to reload, then with possible damage to sails, rigging, oars, decks, or rudder, and you had to be brilliant to maneuver a single ship. Commanding a fleet must require another order of thinking altogether—especially when also having to deal with the egos of your subcommanders, like the idiot Caul Azmith, who’d broken ranks.

  The single maneuver of interspersed fire, correctly executed, told Kip that whoever was admiral of the Chromeria’s fleet now, he or she was probably a genius.

  A genius who was about to suffer a crushing defeat.

  “Too late to get the Chromeria to pull back,” Kip said. “So we’re looking for the White King’s superviolet drafters, maybe in separate small boats. It seems the superviolets have to do something to trigger the bane to rise—so if we can kill them before they do that, we’ve got a chance.”

  “I don’t see any boats out alone,” Cruxer said.

  “Winsen, you’ve got the best eyes,” Kip said.

  “Nothing. None alone,” the young man said.

  “If they’re trying to get encircled,” Cruxer said, “and they have more than one bane, then maybe they’re planning to raise all the bane, all around them at once.”

  Kip caught where he was going. The bane would rise in a giant ring, matching the encircling Chromeria fleet—and destroying all of it simultaneously. “So the superviolets who are raising the bane have to be in the middle of the formation. The command skimmer’s too big to penetrate between those ships. We’ll have to split. Ben, I know you said you were working on making the Blue Falcon IX submersible, how’s it going?”

  “This is Blue Falcon XIII,” Ben-hadad said quickly.

  “I know how you work. I see the core ideas already here. This honeycomb structure here? You told me once in some other application that that’s super strong.”

  Ben-hadad expelled a breath. “Last resort, understand? And no more than maybe half speed, at most. Slower for you and Big Leo. Even with the wind shield reinforced to be a wave shield, either the water will sweep you off or it’ll disintegrate if you go too fast. But this generation was never meant—”

  As he was speaking, an enormous cloud of ravens burst from the White King’s fleet. But there was nothing random or independent about their flight.

  “Razor wings,” Einin said.

  Winsen cursed aloud. The birds were will-cast to seek out rigging or crewmen and slice through them.

  One of them exploded in midair.

  “And they’ve figured out how to rig them to be bombs,” Winsen said. “Bomb wings. Great.”

  “They can’t carry much explosive,” Kip said. “What are they doing? Ben?”

  “They used pigeons before. But pigeons probably aren’t smart enough to be taught to seek out the powder kegs,” he said. “These are ravens. I’d guess they’ve will-cast them to seek out the gun decks.”

  Damn. A single crazed raven flapping and cawing and threatening to explode at any moment could delay an entire gun deck from firing, and that was if it didn’t make it to the barrels of black powder.

  “What else have they will-cast?” Ferkudi said. “Are those shark fins?”

  Ben-hadad looked over at Cruxer. “Commander,” he said. “You’ve got to stop us. This is suicide.”

  But Cruxer had his eyes closed. And when he opened them, a smile curled his lips and light lit his eyes. “Shh,” he said, and his voice was a whisper under the storm. “Don’t you feel it?”

  “Feel what?”

  “The wind behind us is greater than the wind against us.”

  Ben-hadad looked back and forth at the rest of them, their faces eager and fierce. The rattle of swivel guns and muskets and the taunting shouts of both sides rolled across the waves, and only seemed to inflame the Mighty further. “Why am I the only one bothered by that being demonstrably fucking false?!”

  Kip gave a few more instructions: where they should meet afterward, what their sign would be that they had to retreat, and a quick check that they all had their flares and hullwreckers.

  “Ready to separate on your mark,” Big Leo said to Kip.

  Kip knew he should be afraid. Or he should be worried that he was leading his friends to their deaths.

  They might die. But he had a suspicion that they wouldn’t.

  They were only a few hundred paces out now.

  “Remember,” Kip said. “Nothing matters except stopping them from raising the bane. The Chromeria’s fleet can lose even if the bane stay underwater, but it will definitely lose if the bane rise.”

  Big Leo said, “And we’ll probably die, too.”

  They looked at him.

  “You know, just in case anyone was lacking motivation,” the big man said.

  “Be Mighty and of courage,” Kip told his friends. “Einin, stay with Cruxer. Winsen, you’re with me this time; live or die. Together.”

  Winsen took his meaning, and his trust, and nodded. “Together… my lord.”

  Kip said, “And three, two, one, mark!”

  Chapter 66

  “There’s a man here to see you, High Lord Promachos.” The vice chamberlain cleared his throat as he stepped just inside Andross’s door. “A Parian. He, uh, wouldn’t give his name.”

  Grinwoody was off doing Orholam knew what again. As the slave aged, he was absent more and more often, and he always pretended it was on some business for Andross and not that he was lazy and due for replacement. But in his defense, Grinwoody would never let this happen.

  Andross peered at his vice chamberlain. “Do I look like a village magistrate whom strangers may approach at will on the green?”

  “No, High Excellency.”

  “Then what do you mean he wouldn’t give his name?”

  “He was very convincing, milord,” one of the Blackguards at the door said, seeming intent to rescue the poor man. A new girl, Mina.

  Andross sneered at her. “And this is why they used to only elevate Blackguards who could make it through the night without wetting the bed.”

  She withered.

  But neither moved.

  “He was very compelling, my lord, and he gave proofs enough to satisfy at each station,” the other Blackguard, Presser, said.

  Andross barked, “Not at this one. I’m busy. And you, Presser, you’re old enough to shave by now, aren’t you? You should know better. And keep your pup in line or I’ll kick her down to a scrub.”

  “My lord, many pardons,” the vice chamberlain said. “He said if you put him off, to remind you of what a young woman said of you, forty years a
go now, ‘A man of Parnassian storms and no wonder, for in you is joined a volcanic wit…’”

  It was a crash of thunder heard when the sky is blue.

  “What? He said no more?” Andross demanded.

  “I asked. He knew no more of it, dangling as it is.”

  It took Andross so long he felt embarrassed. His memory—No! It had not failed him. Not yet. He was not so old. The scroll of years was merely so long, so densely packed with incident, and not filed in a library year by year. The man being a Parian had thrown him.

  For she had been Atashian.

  His first love. Ninharissi. He smiled despite himself.

  No one had been on that balcony with them that day. No one else would dare send a messenger with such a ‘proof,’ either, that mixture of a challenge—could Andross remember so far back with such a small prompt?—but also respect, believing that of course Andross would remember back so far with such a small prompt.

  The phrase had not even come at the climax of their relationship, though it had come on the night that had changed the entire course of both their lives, and of history itself.

  “Shall I send him away?” Presser asked, shifting from foot to foot, rubbing circles awkwardly on one of his buttocks.

  It was impossible that she should send him a message. No. Not exactly impossible. And it was impossible that it could have been sent by anyone else.

  “Bring him in.”

  Andross had entertained a hope that he might recognize the old man. He didn’t. Dark skin faded by the years, clothing fine and well maintained but showing wear. Thus, middling nobility or a rich merchant dressing a bit above his station. There were probably a dozen of the former sort that Andross could call to mind, and several hundred of the latter that he hadn’t bothered to memorize.

  “High Excellency,” the man said after the longest possible pause and with the bare minimum tilt of his head.

  A lordling, then. A merchant wouldn’t dare so little respect.

  “Do you know how the rest of that sentence goes?” Andross asked.

  “No.”

  The old man added no honorific. Very odd. There was something familiar about those eyes, as blue as the morning sky, but Andross was certain he’d never met the man before. Perhaps he’d known a relation?

  That didn’t limit the circle much. Andross met thousands of people each year. One of the things that had most pained him about his long confinement had been not meeting people, not seeing others overawed at his presence, or having occasion to prove that their awe was justified.

  It niggled more than a little that this old man seemed… what was it? Not exactly hostile. Disgusted, maybe.

  Contemptuous?

  Oho, now, that tempted Andross toward violence.

  The old man shook his head. “Disappointing. Here I’ve forgiven you a thousand times for all the ruin you brought to my house. No, ten thousand. Every day three times with my prayers for every one of these long years, at least when I could bear it. And yet still my heart longs to hate you.”

  “Excuse me?” Andross asked. Blankly curious.

  “I was told not to tell you my name, and that how long it took for you to guess it would tell us both something.”

  Oh please. “How tiresome,” Andross said. “Do you have something for me, or not? You asked to see me, after all.”

  “No, I didn’t ask for this at all. I was sent to see you. You are to finish the quote. She insisted you could.” He clearly had his doubts.

  Andross sighed. Better to get this over with, he supposed. “Ninharissi called me ‘A man of Parnassian storms and no wonder, for in you are joined a volcanic wit and glacial emotions. When they mix, it is a cataclysm of fire and rain and lightning and molten rock, flames and floods, lava flows and mudslides, laying waste to everything and everyone in a thousand leagues.’”

  His memory hadn’t abandoned him after all. Who else could recall such, so perfectly?

  “She adjudged you well,” the old man said. “No wonder she wanted nothing to do with you.”

  It was a misstep. “Was Ninharissi your lady, then?” Andross asked.

  “No. But I see why the Third Eye gave me those words to say. They were for both of us.”

  Of course. Now it made sense.

  The message wasn’t from Ninharissi herself, but merely from a Seer who had stolen them from the ether. A little magical eavesdropper, spying on a couple’s intimate moments. Disgusting.

  Andross had hoped the message was some word from beyond the grave, a treasure a dead woman had wished delivered to him while he was in these straits.

  It was all very disappointing, but it made sense. Of course, only the Third Eye could see where she had never been, and into the past as well as into the future. She was an ally more dangerous than even Janus Borig, but couldn’t be taken from the game, for she would be a foe far more dangerous still.

  Thus, Andross had made no move against her, but he was glad she’d chosen to stay far away.

  “How is Polyhymnia?” he asked. He wasn’t supposed to know that name. No one was. But swive her for pretending to speak for one he loved. “Has she some guidance for the war?” He felt some hope. After all, Orholam’s Seers might choose not to join sides in any normal war, but in a war against heretics and pagans? Surely this visit meant she was answering Andross’s letters at last.

  “I don’t know who that is,” the old man said, “but the Third Eye told me she’d be dead by the time I reached you. Murdered by the Order of the Broken Eye. She said anything she did to stop her assassination would only forestall it, wouldn’t affect the course of the war, and would have other costs too great for her to countenance.”

  “Worthless to me, then. Figures. You know, I’ve met dozens of prophets and Seers through the years. Charlatans and half-wits, most of them. But at least those could be used against the kind of people who believe them. Yet the real ones were never any use at all.”

  The near-blasphemy spurred no anger from the old Parian. He only stared at Andross calmly.

  “What are you here for, old man?” Andross asked.

  The old man smiled, finally. “I overestimated you. I thought surely you would place me in an instant. The Third Eye said that for a man who’d had the light restored to his eyes, you were remarkably blind, for you hardly ever look at other people, except to see how you might use them.”

  Andross looked now. The age. The vocabulary. The diction. The red-gold buttons on his satchel, such as librarians use to carry their scrolls in Azûlay.

  His heart suddenly clenched.

  But the old man was already speaking: “You seduced my daughter. You convinced her to betray her oaths to her city and tribe and family. You turned her into a thief, and you left her banished, destitute, and pregnant.”

  Aha. He’d arrived at it only a moment too late. “Asafa ar Veyda de Lauria del Luccia verd’Avonte. A pleasure to meet a Keeper of the Word, Chief Librarian.” This was Katalina Delauria’s father; this was Kip’s maternal grandfather.

  Asafa’s eyes were burning embers in a face like coal ready to take the flame. He said, “Before you took her from me, Lina and I were very close. She was my joy, my everything. For a time, she wrote me letters even after she fled in disgrace,” Asafa said. “Long letters, unsparing of herself or others. She told me everything. And I’ve come, Andross Guile, to upend all you know and break your glacial heart.”

  Chapter 67

  As the first cannons began firing at them, the command skimmer broke apart.

  But the enemy had no Gunner directing their fire. The shots—twenty of them at least—all sailed wide, short, or long. Few of them were even close.

  Still, there was the familiar jolt of excitement at being shot at with no effect. That bracing, ‘Holy shit! I’m alive and I could have been dead and someone just wanted me dead and did all they could to make me dead, but I’m alive, hell yeah, you bastards!’

  The Mighty were near enough the wall of galleys and galleons und
er the flying flags of broken chains on a black background that the roar of the guns was nearly simultaneous with the gushers of the smoke and the splash of the cannonballs, jetting water into the air.

  Kip’s eyes were dragged below the line of the cannons, though, in front of the ripples that spread around each as the shock waves left their imprint on the waters beside the ships.

  In a unison not possible for wild animals, dozens—no, hundreds—of sharks rose, dorsal fins in ranks, heading straight for the Mighty.

  A primal fear struck him then, thalassophobia, a dread that man was not made for the depths, that the water was not his home, that this vast sea was itself hostile to him, hateful. If the foils of his skimmer hit a shark, Kip might kill the shark, but the collision would certainly pitch him into the water.

  He would be helpless. Torn apart by those alien, unforgiving teeth.

  The skimmer shivering as a musket ball ricocheted off the deck broke Kip’s brief paralysis. He aimed it down lower into the waves. The increased drag slowed him considerably.

  Then, as he closed in on the sharks, he aimed skyward.

  He shot into the air, and felt a jarring bump from beneath propelling him even higher.

  It turned him off axis, but Ben-hadad—Orholam bless him for being such a damned genius—had built the skimmers well. The foils weren’t edged but round, so when Kip hit the waves again, there was little danger of catching an edge and flipping over. Instead, Kip skipped over the waves a couple of times, then the foils dug into the waves and he was off again.

  Directly toward dozens more sharks.

  But before any of them could attack, on some unseen cue, the majority of them turned away and dove.

  Kip had no time to figure out why they’d turned away, or what that dark immensity was far beneath the waves.

  He also had lost track of what was happening with any of the rest of the Mighty. He could only keep himself alive now, and that took everything in him.