The Burning White

by Brent Weeks

  As light returned to their eyes, Karris could feel the wave dissipating. It had been held together this far, but it wouldn’t last even another league. Gavin had…

  “promachos,” Gill whispered, awed. “That was him. That was Gavin, wasn’t it? I could feel—How could he draft so much? What did he do?”

  A snap and hiss popped next to them, illuminating the merely natural dark of the night with glorious green light. Samite grinned in that wild light.

  “The bane,” she said. “Their power’s broken. We can draft!”

  Numerous bane-islands were still out there, so at first no one believed her, but then there were slowly the snaps and hisses of glorious colors coming alive from burning mag torches. First a few, then dozens of them drenched the Blackguards and their allies in heady, potent light.

  The twenty remaining wights turned and fled.

  It was still night. Their position was still precarious. They had only whatever magic they could draft off of their mag torches. But now—now they had a chance!

  Gavin had reached from beyond the grave to give them one chance.

  He had died to bring them light.

  “To the Glare!” Karris shouted.

  She would mourn her husband. Later. She was a warrior.

  Warriors know how to honor a hero’s sacrifice: first you finish the fucking fight.

  Chapter 132

  If there was one thing Corvan Danavis excelled at, it was being able to ignore a little personal danger (say, a battle raging around him) in order to focus on more important things. It was part of what made him an excellent commander, and in truth, he’d never understood how other people couldn’t do it.

  Which was why right now he was cursing in the face of a shaking messenger, spit flying as he bellowed, “How old is this message?! And don’t tell me you don’t fucking know!”

  “Maybe, maybe half an hour, sir? Less?” the messenger said. “I came straight here, but the others—”

  “An hour?” Corvan demanded.

  “Uh, maybe? Maybe, sir. Yes. There was so much fighting, and I wanted to make sure I got through safely so I didn’t—”

  “Get out of my face!”

  Two of Corvan’s bodyguards, one from either side, suddenly threw their shields up in front of him as a fireball the size of a woman’s head arced toward him. It bounced off their shields and rolled into the crowd behind him.

  Nope. Not a fireball the size of a woman’s head. A literal flaming woman’s head. Odd.

  The messenger blanched. A coward. It was the last trait a messenger could afford—but one didn’t find out which messengers could handle the job until they’d been through a battle or two.

  A distraction, Kip said. Kip needed a distraction.

  The city was in a bad way. Corvan had just had news that the wall bordering the poor neighborhood of Overhill nearest the red bane was nearly abandoned, most of its defenders lured to the walls elsewhere in the nobles’ neighborhoods, or even worse, lured to guard their houses against the looters they feared during the battle.

  If the city survived until tomorrow, Corvan was going to find those damned nobles and put them on the walls as rank infantrymen themselves.

  But first came survival.

  Corvan had found any plan with too many working parts tended to fall apart in direct relation to how many parts depended on other parts doing what they should, so his battle plan was simple: defend and delay. As islands, the most obvious weakness of the Jaspers was that they were easy to lay under siege.

  But anyone laying them under siege was, in effect, under siege themselves. Karris had directed the isles’ fishermen to deliberately overfish the nearby waters, not only to stockpile dried fish but to deprive invaders. Fresh water was an even bigger problem for a besieging armada, so where there were springs that drained into the sea, Corvan had massed defenders in greater numbers than any other general would have. If the fight lasted long enough, the availability of potable water might actually be the key to the victory.

  Everywhere, he’d prepared the defenders with how long to hold their walls, and what to do when they lost them, and how to signal everyone else that such loss was imminent.

  The defenders would stagger their losses, hopefully containing those to nonessential areas. A few natural ambush choke points could be used if the local commanders dared.

  Corvan liked to push certain decisions down the chain of command as much as possible. Men paralyzed waiting for orders that might never come through the chaos of battle were dead men, not defenders.

  Today the hope had been to hold the Blood Robes off the walls.

  Unsurprisingly, that hadn’t worked out.

  The next plan had been to make them pay in rivers of blood for every street they took, delaying them until dark, when the Jaspers’ defenders would no longer be at a disadvantage.

  But there were places the Chromeria couldn’t afford to lose, full stop: some of the gun emplacements that could be turned against the city and the Chromeria itself, certain neighborhoods, the Lily’s Stem—and the Great Fountain. Corvan had set up his headquarters here to stress to his people how it was the linchpin to their defense. Not only was it the most abundant source of fresh water in the city with its artesian well, but it sat at one of the five great intersections of the city. That made it hard to defend, but also easy to dispatch reinforcements to anyplace in the city that needed it.

  The battle had come here, in surprising force.

  The razor wings and bomb wings and the crawling vermin will-cast to burrow into the street barricades before bursting into flame had waited until the assaults by tens of thousands of Blood Robe soldiers. Kip had warned Corvan of this: the use of munds as cannon fodder and auxiliaries.

  It had meant a catastrophic loss of life for the attackers, especially as the bane had been so confused, so late in locking down all the Chromeria’s defenders.

  The defenders had lost neighborhood after neighborhood, including some sections of wall with their most powerful guns—all spiked before they were abandoned, luckily.

  But the Blood Robes hadn’t broken off the attack here, even as full dark was gathering.

  Why weren’t they withdrawing?

  After all, at night the Blood Robes were deprived of their greatest advantage—their drafters and wights. Why wouldn’t they wait until tomorrow to attack again? Were they hoping to take the city before full dark, and were giving their attack a few more minutes to succeed? Did they think Corvan’s forces so close to breaking?

  He thought them wrong, though not by much.

  That was when Kip sprang his own gambit: attacking the bane themselves with small squads. Suicidally small squads.

  Kip, repulsing unbelievably strong magical attacks, was trying to wrest victory directly from the enemy while their forces were at Corvan’s throat.

  It was just the kind of move Corvan would have attempted as a young man, though not, he thought, with such small forces.

  His people had fought the Blood Robes to a standstill. Indeed, some of the invading soldiers had even withdrawn to their bane.

  Corvan swore aloud again, suddenly putting the pieces together.

  Those Blood Robes had withdrawn to protect their bane from Kip’s Mighty. Kip’s men had been striking at the heart of the White King’s power and had needed the distraction Kip requested so they wouldn’t be overwhelmed.

  But the messenger was a coward.

  Corvan’s damned messenger might have gotten not just the Mighty but everyone killed.

  Was it too late now?

  Kip’s men might have saved Corvan’s forces here, but could he save them now?

  What could serve as a suitable distraction?

  Was that it? His wife, Polyhymnia, the Third Eye, had called him her Titan of the Great Fountain. He’d set up his defense here partly because of that.

  But that plan couldn’t work because of the bane’s influence locking down red.

  Magic rocked the isles again and again
. Not only the loss of blue—there were reports of white?! Some even claimed to have felt black.

  But even as detached as Corvan liked to think he was in the midst of issuing orders and hearing reports and dodging razor wings, he realized he couldn’t even comprehend everything that was happening elsewhere. There were at least two battles happening here simultaneously, probably three, all overlapping one another.

  And he might be screwing up all of them.

  Now, why weren’t these damned Blood Robes retreating with the coming night? Why?!

  Then, suddenly, the black luxin returned in an enormous wave.

  Dazen!

  The wave scoured the islands, breaking the bane’s control of all the drafters, freeing them to do what they could.

  The defenders and attackers were equally astonished, breaking from fighting for a few moments and then rejoining the fray. But even that didn’t make the Blood Robes flee.

  And then the black wave was gone.

  Corvan immediately deployed his drafters, but the sun was already so far down that they had little source. Some had mag torches, but those were rare and expensive—Corvan left it to the drafters themselves to decide if they needed to use them.

  It allowed some pushback at key places, but there weren’t enough mag torches to fuel the defense.

  Why the hell had Kip stopped sending light from the mirror array?! He hadn’t been answering the messages they’d flashed to him for a while now. And now was when they needed him on the mirror array most. These few minutes could make a real difference!

  “Send messages to Kip again. Tell him if he’s got any more tricks, now would be a good time—”

  “Sir, the superviolets say that the Ferrilux has seized the mirror array,” an attaché said.

  “What?!” he demanded.

  Ferrilux’s bane had been killed, but she had not. And she’d taken the array, which likely meant Kip was dead.

  Dammit, Aliviana.

  But he couldn’t think of her as his daughter. Not right now. And maybe it wasn’t her anymore. Maybe she wasn’t in control anymore. Maybe she was a victim, too.

  So why would Ferrilux seize the mirrors as night came? Why put herself in such peril that she would try to take the mirrors even without her bane or her wights?

  He looked out at the other bane once more. Each had some kind of central spire, a high point. He’d thought them mere lookouts, good areas from which the Blood Robes could see what was happening even behind Big Jasper’s walls.

  And then he got it. The bane had brought lightwells, like great mag torches.

  That was why Ferrilux wanted the mirror array.

  The Blood Robes were bringing sources to the fight. With colors from each of the towers and the mirrors, the wights would be able to attack with magic, all night long, anywhere in the city.

  Aside from the purely strategic disadvantage of fighting all those wights with no magic themselves, Corvan realized that in mere minutes his people were going to be fighting street to street against literal monsters in the dark.

  The terror would be overwhelming.

  “Sir! We’ve got more wights massing to attack. Hundreds at least!” an attaché shouted over the din.

  “What colors? What colors, Lieutenant? And don’t you dare say all of ’em!”

  “Sir…” Her face strained. “All of them.”

  Chapter 133

  Andross Guile crawled across the stateroom floor, drool and vomit dripping down his chin.

  White luxin. Goddam. Kip had drafted white luxin before the end. The little barnacle on Andross’s ass had had the audacity to try to control the mirror array from Orholam’s Glare itself. And that fire! It had confirmed one thing, anyway, Lord Dariush had been right: the Atashians’ Dragon and the other satrapies’ Lightbringer weren’t the same person.

  Or maybe they were, and Kip had failed, and they were all doomed.

  Andross threw up again, retching on an empty belly.

  The slaves were gone. Not a one of his household had stood by him. He had treated them so well, and this is what he got?

  When the spasms passed, he pulled himself to his feet. He was past the worst of it now. Two bites into his garlic-and-almond chicken before he’d stopped. Two distracted bites before he’d recognized the tastes weren’t exactly garlic and almond, and stopped, and forced himself to vomit. Not garlic and almond, but two poisons whose odors most resemble those: arsenic and cyanide.

  He braced himself against the doorframe, and slowly, slowly checked his Ilytian pistol. There was a chance that an assassin might come and make sure the job was finished. Then, reassured, he opened the door.

  No one was outside. All the Blackguards had abandoned their posts, either traitors or men and women who put their loyalty to Karris above their loyalty to anyone else on the Spectrum. Certainly Zymun had had no Blackguards attending him when he’d murdered Kip. Zymun was stupid, but he wasn’t that stupid.

  Andross tottered across the hallway to Felia’s old chambers. Opened the door slowly, in case its occupant had been given a musket.

  “Who’s there?!” a young woman called out.

  “It is I.”

  “Who the hell are you?” Teia demanded from the couch. Good, good. He would have been furious if they’d put the little runt in Felia’s bed.

  “Andross Guile. Your promachos.”

  “Is Grinwoody with you?”

  “I’m alone,” he said, coming into the room.

  Teia relaxed visibly, taking her finger off the trigger, but still resting it along the musket’s guard and still keeping the musket pointed in his general direction. Her head was wrapped in numerous layers of thick cloths, and he could see she was listening closely for any quick movement. “Where is he?” she asked. As if she had the right to ask questions of him—but he was too sick to fight right now.

  “Gone.”

  “How’d you know they brought me here?” she asked.

  “They couldn’t keep you in the infirmary; it would be the first place the Order would look. And they didn’t know of any of the hidden rooms except those the Order obviously knew about already. That left them without many good options.”

  “You just… know all of this?” Teia demanded. “You really do have people everywhere, don’t you?”

  “In truth,” Andross admitted, “I heard them arguing about it outside my door.” He hoped to elicit a smile, but Teia was past charm.

  “Grinwoody is the Old Man of the Desert,” she said.

  “Really? Is he now?” The red in him flared up. “Now, that information would have been very valuable before he poisoned my supper.”

  “He poisoned your—Oh shit! So that’s why you look like that.”

  So she could see through her head wrappings?

  All right, then. Actually, good.

  “You’re a miserable failure, Adrasteia, but I’m going to give you another chance.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You were supposed to kill the Order, right? Grinwoody got away. And you’ve missed all the fighting today. Good people have died. Friends.”

  He could see her swallow. She wanted to ask, but didn’t.

  “I can’t do anything,” she said. “I’m not here because I want to be. I drank lacrimae sanguinis. Had to, to get them all to drink it. I don’t even know if it wears off, but I’m weak as a puppy and—”

  “It does.”

  “What?”

  “Wear off.”

  “How would you know that?”

  “I studied poisons quite a bit when I first got into politics—seemed a prudent defensive measure. Luckily, that was before I took on Grinwoody, else he’d have known about the mithridatism.”

  “The what?”

  “The reason I’m still alive. But never mind. If you make it two days, you’ll live. But your vision’s fucked. Permanently. You have only two options. Open your eyes to widest paryl or tighten them to superviolet, then keep them in whichever position you ch
oose, if you can. That lacrimae sanguinis does something to the muscles regardless. If you tighten your eyes, which is what the scholar I read recommended, your pupils will stay as pinpricks permanently. Your vision will always be dim, and incredibly nearsighted, and you’ll never draft paryl again. But if you widen your eyes to paryl, you’ll only ever see in paryl. You’ll lose all the other colors, and you’ll have to wear the darkest lenses at all times and even wrap your eyes with cloth or you’ll risk even normal light blinding you forever—even in the paryl spectrum.”

  “I already went to paryl,” Teia breathed.

  “Huh. That’s that, then. At least you can draft.”

  “At least I can draft?!” she said, rage bubbling in her voice.

  “You’ll most likely die before the night’s out, so it’s no matter.”

  “You’re a real bastard,” she said. “And I can’t even move, so go to hell.”

  “I’m the promachos. And I’ve got orders for you. Enough chitchat.”

  “You’re not hearing me,” Teia said. “I can barely even breathe. I can’t go do anything for you!”

  “Sure you can. You just need the right motivation. A goddess has just seized the mirror array. I can’t get to her unseen, which means I can’t stop her. But you can. I’m not sure what she’s planning up there. It’ll be ruin for us if she still controls the array tomorrow morning, but I don’t know what she can accomplish with it at night. What I do know is that if the enemy wants something—”

  “You deny it,” Teia interrupted. “I know. Kip is my friend, remember?”

  “Was,” Andross said bluntly. “Kip’s dead. I watched him die from my window. In between bouts of vomiting, that is.”

  The wind went out of Teia’s aching lungs. “You can’t be…”

  “Someone put him up on Orholam’s Glare. He was trying to take control of the Prism’s mirror array from there. I would’ve said such a thing was impossible, but he almost did it. Until the Ferrilux stopped him. She killed him. So you need motivation? How ’bout vengeance?”