The Burning White

by Brent Weeks

  There were quiet sobs in the room. The Blackguards were all stony-faced sorrow. Karris took a few moments to make eye contact with them one last time. Many in the crowd looked on with abject horror, while others simply seemed titillated.

  This is not happening.

  Karris looked at Kip, and her mouth pursed with regret. She nodded to him in farewell.

  Then she knelt on the pillow.

  “We’re not doing anything yet,” Andross said loudly.

  Usually, that would have been the end of it, but Zymun didn’t move. He’d put his hand on Karris’s forehead, ostensibly in blessing, tilting her head back to expose her throat.

  “Grandfather,” Zymun said, his voice dripping contempt, “this is now a matter between the Prism and his faithful. This is sacrosanct. For the sake of the Seven Satrapies, I’m afraid I can’t allow you to—”

  Kip had been with the Blackguard long enough to recognize the small move with his right hand backward, drawing the knife back to get space to apply more force to ram it home.

  All the tension in Kip’s muscles exploded at once. Sweeping in from Zymun’s left side, he caught the young man’s right hand just as the knife swept forward. Kip pushed the knife wide as his own mass collided with Zymun, driving him away from Karris. Then Kip’s right elbow flashed up, cracking across Zymun’s head as Kip blocked his heel with his own foot.

  Zymun went down, boneless.

  The fight was finished before the gasps were.

  Kip could tell suddenly that a lot of the people here hadn’t seen the telltale twitch that foretold murder. To the untrained eye, his action must have looked like an unprovoked attack.

  “He was moving to kill her,” Commander Fisk announced sharply. “We train constantly to see tells of such a move, and Kip trained with us. He saw it, too. This was defense of life, not an attack. I know what I saw, and I swear this to be true.”

  Twenty Blackguards gave silent affirmation. Kip hadn’t even thought of the Blackguard, but he realized why he was the first to react: they were trapped between their next Prism, a White who’d abdicated her protection by them, and a not-quite order from the promachos. Their loyalties and their oaths of obedience had tangled, slowing them.

  “You dare? You dare lay your hands on me?” Zymun hissed at Kip from the floor, blinking his eyes.

  “Grandfather,” Kip said loudly but without turning from the snake. “May I remind you of your earlier promise?”

  Irritated, Andross announced, “Blackguards, Kip is under my full protection. Act accordingly.”

  Zymun lunged at him, scrambling to draw a pistol, but the Blackguard—happily absolved of contradicting loyalties—restrained him quickly and with more force than strictly necessary.

  “Take Zymun to his apartments. Our Prism-elect has much to pray about this night,” Andross said.

  Zymun was dragged out, spitting and trying to bite the Blackguards, who had no trouble handling him.

  “One minute to midnight,” Carver Black said.

  Karris hadn’t moved from where she knelt on the pillow. “Commander Fisk?” she asked. “Will you do me the honor?”

  “That is your will?” he asked.

  “It is.”

  Quietly Fisk added, “I wish we could lose a different Guile.”

  “I know,” she said. “You’re a loyal friend, Commander. Thank you.”

  Commander Fisk looked at Andross, but the old man made no gesture one way or the other. So then Fisk looked at Kip and extended his hand for his knife.

  Kip hadn’t even realized he was still holding it. “Hell no,” Kip said. “This is insane. You know Ironfist! He would never do this! This isn’t his heart. We wait!”

  “My lord has the luxury of disobeying orders,” Commander Fisk said. “I wish I had the same.” He took a knife from another Blackguard. “Karris, Archer, sister, High Lady Guile, forever our Iron White,” he said, “it has been my honor to serve with you, and to serve you. May Orholam reunite us in gentler lands.”

  “And may He bless you with light and warmth, Commander. Now, stop delaying, old trainer of mine. It’s taking everything in me not to try my hand at fighting you one last time, to see if I could win now, as I couldn’t so very long ago.”

  Taking a deep breath as he came to stand over her where she knelt, she pulled the neckline of her blouse open, looking up toward heaven and pulling the skin tight so that the gaps between the ribs were visible.

  Then there was a cry outside the audience chamber in the hall. Kip couldn’t make out the words, but an instant later he saw Trainer Gill Greyling go sprinting past the open door—not into the audience chamber but past it toward the lifts—shouting, “Stop, stop, stop!” with the urgency of man who knew he was too late.

  Chapter 94

  Teia’d had terrible premonitions all the way here, but the last thing she was expecting when she finally made it invisibly to the Chromeria’s lifts was to be greeted by the lift gate opening to reveal a bloody, badly wounded Commander Ironfist.

  “Get in, quickly. Timing is everything,” a dark, plain-dressed Parian man with him said to her. The lift was otherwise empty.

  For a moment, Teia wondered if she was hallucinating the whole thing. First, she was invisible. Second, Ironfist was the utter opposite of invisible—and yet, no one else seemed to have seen him.

  She stepped in, and the lift shot upward.

  The Parian heaved a sigh of relief. “Haven’t cut it that close since Cwellar—or is that next? Oh, no, that’s next. Actually—that’s right now!” He pulled the brake and turned to Teia. They were only a few floors up. “Give it a hundred and four count from right… now. Then go as fast as possible. Blackguard immediately on the left is an Order agent. Has orders not to let Harrdun make it alive to the audience chamber. Or he’ll be on the right if you run late.”

  He turned to Ironfist, who was slumped against the wall. “You. You’ll have to choose between vengeance and life.”

  “For whom?” Ironfist growled.

  “No time.”

  “Wait,” Teia said. “Who are you?”

  “No time!”

  The little man ducked out of the lift, cups and canteens clanking.

  Teia threw her hands up. How was he—

  She poked her head out into the hall, but he was gone. Not around the corner, the corners were too far away. He was just gone.

  She stepped back into the lift. With Ironfist. Not Commander Ironfist, she remembered now. How had she forgotten? King Ironfist. Who’d last seen her when she was assassinating his sister, as he begged her to stop.

  Shhhhiiitt.

  “You’re not gonna ask?” he said, his voice deep and cloudy with pain. He waved to the blood drenching his once-white-and-either-green-or-red garb—it was certainly red by now.

  “The Order?” she asked hopefully.

  “No.”

  “Orholam have mercy.” Cruxer.

  “Not much, He doesn’t. But I… I can’t blame this on Him.”

  Teia’s heart froze. “Did he…?”

  “He’s dead.”

  No. She wasn’t going to believe it. She wasn’t going to think about it. “The Order,” she said, suddenly finding some fire. “You know things about the Order.”

  “Enough to know they’ll ask your soul and then stab you in the back.” He looked at her with lidded eyes, exhausted from pain and blood loss and whatever ordeal he’d been through, but also hard and bitter. “But then, you know that.”

  “I’m infiltrating the Order for Karris. She’s trying to stop them once and for all.”

  “You can’t stop them.” He tried to laugh. Coughed instead. “Look at me.”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “I’m convinced they’ve half the immortals of hell protecting them. How else does Cruxer find me just then?”

  “Don’t talk about him—don’t! Don’t! We’re running out of time. I have to stop them, or it’s all for nothing!”

  “Ha. T
hat’s what I said, too. The execution. Can’t be more than a few minutes from now. Hope they don’t go ahead without me. Don’t you see? It was all to get him.” He blinked his eyes, swayed.

  Huh? “No, you are not dying now. Who? Him who?”

  “My uncle. He’s the Old Man of the Desert. Kept himself secret all these years, but a secret’s a weakness, see? Only way to get him was… this. He sent you to kill my sister. After everything I did for him. His own niece.”

  Ironfist sagged, and Teia braced him, feeling tiny against his big form. “No, no, no. You stay with me! I can’t do this without you.”

  “You killed her. My sister. I begged you not to. I begged.”

  “Yes, and I’d do it again. She was gonna kill you. But I’m sorry. I’m sorry you lost someone you loved so much, but she needed to die. She was already gone by the time you were in that room with her. She was gonna get everyone killed.”

  Ironfist blew out a little breath, and his eyes softened. “I know,” he whispered. “Oh God. Cruxer. Teia, I—”

  “Don’t. I can’t talk about—Who is he? What’s the Old Man’s name?” Teia pressed.

  Orholam’s balls, how many seconds had passed? They had to go!

  “I gave everything for this. Only I can do it. Can’t trust anyone. That’s not the plan.”

  Teia threw back her hood. “Trust me! Commander, please. Let me be the plan!”

  He looked at her and she felt those eyes that she’d looked up to for so long weighing her, seeing her now, not only as an adult but as someone he approved of.

  “Amalu Anazâr Tlanu,” Ironfist said. “Amalu Anazâr is the Old Man of the Desert.” He breathed a deep sigh as if stepping out from under a weight that had been crushing him for years.

  “Wait, wait, there’s no one named that who’s got access to upper levels of the Prism’s Tower. He’s got some disguise, some other name?”

  But Ironfist’s eyes had drifted shut. He leaned more heavily on Teia.

  “No! Don’t you die on me!”

  Eyes still closed, he said, “Easy, nunk. Just resting my eyes a bit before this last part. You lose the count already?”

  “What?”

  “Almost time,” he said. He opened his eyes and there was something of the old Ironfist mettle in there. “I gotta get to that audience chamber and make sure nothing else goes to shit.”

  “Are you—”

  “Grinwoody,” he said.

  It crashed around her ears like a pagan temple collapsing. Grinwoody? Grinwoody, Andross Guile’s right hand. All the secrets of the world passed through that man’s fingers. Another Order master assassin, this one dressed in the invisibility cloak of slavery.

  Teia, a former slave herself, hadn’t seen it. Hadn’t thought to look there first.

  She drew herself up. “I’ll get you past the assassin or assassins at the door, but then I gotta hand you off. I’ve got work to do. What’s that count at?” Teia asked.

  “One hundred one.”

  “I knew you’d know,” she said, making sure she was filled with paryl and clouds of it hissing from her fingers. She threw the brake, and they shot upward.

  She glanced over at her old commander. “You look terrible.”

  “I’ve felt better, too,” he said as the floors blurred past. With one hand, he took off a necklace and shoved it into a pocket. “Hood back on, kid.”

  Oh, shit! Teia scrambled to pull her hood back into place, a process made awkward by the long knives in her hands. “Who was that guy?” Teia asked as if she weren’t flustered.

  “Karris’s kopi seller, maybe? She loves that damned stuff.”

  “Hey, watch it,” Teia said. “A Blackguard guards his tongue.”

  They both chuckled at that, though Ironfist broke off immediately in pain.

  “Six in the foyer at an event like this?” Teia asked. She was standing to his left to put herself between him and the threat.

  He grunted. “I’d have more, but there’s a war on. Could mean more.” As if it took supreme effort, Ironfist levered himself off the wall to stand with his feet wide. “By the way,” he said, unhooking the heavy chain that ran from the wrist manacle to a hook on his left bicep, “you’re still just the backup plan.”

  Then the doors opened.

  Through their training, the half-dozen Blackguards in the foyer were all glancing at the opening lift door, and they gawked at the sight of King Ironfist sodden with blood, even his face sticky with the stuff, his many-colored finery soaked with gore. Teia wasn’t looking at the faces, though—she was staring at their hands.

  They all moved forward. It was what they were trained to do, to move toward danger, to confront whatever shocked or threatened them in order to give aid or to defend the defenseless behind them. For Teia to find the threat with that much sudden motion all coming toward her, all of them armed to the teeth, was nearly impossible. Left side, left side—

  Right side!

  A young Blackguard she didn’t know stepped forward, wide-eyed with fear, too fast for a paryl pinch to his nerves. Ironfist was moving to meet the threat himself, but he was way too slow. As the young man lunged, Teia dove beneath Ironfist’s rising arm and slashed up with both knives.

  Her first missed the blade she was trying to intercept, but passed cleanly through the young man’s wrist. Hand and blade went spinning. Her other blade sank deep into the young man’s groin.

  Then Ironfist’s open hand slapped into the young man’s face, and stopped. The chain wrapped full around the would-be assassin’s head. Then Ironfist tore back in the other direction, snapping the young man’s neck and flinging his body away.

  Behind the first ranks of Blackguards, Teia saw Gill Greyling coming running, shouting at his men to stop, stop!

  But the problem of training people to react with instant lethality to threats is that they do. One of the veteran Blackguards was reaching for the sleeve of a young man next to her, but four Blackguards were already attacking.

  A wall of paryl heat blasted out of Teia as it had once at Ruic Head. Everyone nearby fell back, feeling as if their skin were on fire.

  “Naught Naught One! Naught Naught One!” Gill Greyling shouted, “Stop, stop, stop! I saw everything! Stop!” He arrived only a second later, interposing himself between the Blackguards and Ironfist.

  Ironfist collapsed into Gill’s arms. “Get me in there,” he gasped.

  But Teia was looking down the hall, past all the Blackguards who were rushing this way—even men and women who should have known better, who had been taught to stay at their stations. But she saw one person moving in the opposite direction.

  Not a Blackguard.

  Any civilian would rush toward the excitement to see what was happening. This one disappeared against the flow of the crowd.

  A lookout, Teia guessed. To warn the Old Man.

  But two dozen Blackguards and innumerable civilians who hadn’t been allowed into the audience chamber were crowding into the foyer.

  Teia pushed through them, ducking and dodging, not caring if anyone saw her. She saw Grinwoody, not twenty paces away, pop out of the door of the audience chamber and then run toward the lift on the opposite side of the tower.

  It took her far too long to win her way clear of the crowd and go after him. The Blackguards who were stationed here had abandoned their posts. In the lifts, she felt the lines for vibration. Up. He’d gone up to the Prism’s and White’s level.

  She didn’t know of any escapes above her—was he gathering his papers?—no, wait, she didn’t know of any escapes from higher in the tower except from the roof!

  But two minutes later, she was on the roof. Alone. He hadn’t triggered the escape lines. He had some other escape.

  She’d missed him. The Old Man of the Desert was gone.

  Chapter 95

  Teia was shaking badly. It was irritating as hell.

  But when the battle-juice rush disappears, the body reacts, and she’d never had quite as much of its r
ush as she had in saving Ironfist (she hoped she’d saved him, anyway) and nearly killing the Old Man of the Desert.

  Grinwoody. That devious, slippery little bastard. That toad, sitting at Andross Guile’s elbow for all those years.

  In all her hunting, she’d looked past him a hundred times. She hated that everyone overlooked slaves, that everyone considered them beneath notice—and she’d done it herself. She’d been a slave. She was a slave. And she’d looked right past him.

  She was so mad at herself, she wanted to kill something. Scratch that. Someone.

  In fact, that was just the thing for it. But she had to find him first.

  With the commotion she and Ironfist had made downstairs, there were only two Blackguards on the entire floor. But she’d been drafting paryl for hours, and she was tapped out.

  Not to mention trembling.

  Blackguards were going to be coming back to their stations soon, and she was in no state to fight or evade them with any dexterity. In fact, she was having trouble maintaining invisibility.

  Shit.

  She needed rest. For a moment, she thought of going to her little closet. But that was where she’d had that dream. Nightmare.

  Abaddon.

  He was looking for her.

  She wasn’t going to sleep there again.

  Belatedly, too late maybe, she took up a position outside the Old Man’s secret room in the lift shaft. He’d gone up when he fled, not down, so she knew that he hadn’t come here first. Would he come this way at all?

  If he were going to flee permanently, she assumed that he would come to his office first. She assumed this was his office. She assumed that he would have riches and supplies in a go-bag in here, and that he would at least stop for that.

  It was a lot of assumptions, but she had to get lucky sometime, right?