The Burning White

by Brent Weeks

  Tisis took a deep breath. She’d hadn’t looked in his eyes since the beginning. But as she looked at him now, she seemed relieved. “They were stark white, right after. All the way through. Now they’re blue. Just your natural blue.”

  “No halos at all?” he asked.

  “No, none.”

  “Well…” he said. “That’s, um, great. I guess.” He wasn’t going to have to be Freed in the next few days, so that was something.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “I can’t draft,” he said quietly. Grief speared through his stomach. That was why the colors felt weak, emotionless. His vision now felt as impoverished and textureless as a drafter’s vision is compared to the immortals’. He was seeing the way munds do.

  “What?” she asked. “No. Maybe you’re just tired? Lightsick?”

  He shook his head, forcing a smile. “My life was spared, but not my powers. I’ve tried every color. They’re gone. They’re all gone.”

  “Oh, honey,” she said, putting her hand to her mouth.

  He could’ve been the Lightbringer; now he couldn’t even draft. He was a mund. Many drafters would have preferred death to that. He would have, a year ago. He looked away. “Do you think—do you think you can love a man with broken eyes?”

  She didn’t get mad at him, which he would have deserved. She only squeezed him tight.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said again.

  “Me, too,” he said, wiping his eyes clear. He took a deep breath. “And now let’s be done with that.” He was almost surprised that the words rang true. “I think… I think I’m kind of finished with self-pity. It probably should’ve taken less than dying to figure out how good I’ve got it, but I do. I’m here. With you. So I’m a mund. So what?”

  “A mund?” she objected, a smile turning her lips at last. “Kip Guile, the last thing you are is mundane.”

  Did you think I would forget you, little Guile?

  “Huh?” Kip asked Tisis. She and Commander Fisk were helping him stand.

  “I didn’t say anything,” she said.

  He was wobbly, but maybe he’d recover quickly if he walked around a bit. “I think I’ve figured something out about myself: I really hate watching a battle.”

  The view from the elevated platform was excellent. Though Ebon’s Hill hid everything in Weasel Rock and Overhill, Kip could see West Bay and East Bay and the still-burning fires at the Great Fountain. The predawn light was just beginning to tell the tale of how much damage the Blood Robes had done to the city. Smoky plumes rose from numerous areas, but Karris had stockpiled water and firefighting supplies, and organized neighborhood teams, and it seemed those fires weren’t spreading. The rattle of muskets was still constant, sometimes in volleys, but more often in crackles around the entire island. Few of the cannons were firing at this hour. Most had either been silenced or were waiting for the dawn to better reveal their targets.

  The superviolet, the blue, the yellow, and the green bane had been destroyed. As far as he could see, the rest were still afloat. He didn’t want to think what that probably meant for Ferkudi and Ben-hadad. He wanted to rejoin the fight, but he knew Commander Fisk and Tisis weren’t going to let him do that. Probably they wouldn’t have let him fight even if he started turning cartwheels. But they were right, he was in no shape for any of that. He was useless.

  It was not a good feeling.

  Now, what was that voice he’d imagined?

  “What was that?” Tisis asked.

  “What?”

  “In the water!”

  But whatever it had been, Kip missed it—and turned his aching head and burning eyes as far as possible while doing so. He immediately regretted the action. All right, definitely not in any state to fight. He might as well volunteer to go fall on an enemy’s spear.

  “It went right past the Lily’s Stem,” Tisis said. “Here I was about to suggest we get back to the Chromeria to be safer, but… if that thing hadn’t turned it could’ve taken out the bridge without even noticing.”

  “A sea demon?” Kip asked.

  Then he heard a throaty boom of some huge cannon and turned. Few other cannons were firing now, and none sounded like that.

  “What was that?” Tisis said. “I think I know that gun. Orholam’s beard, is that The Compelling Argument?”

  “The what?”

  “My sister tried to buy it off a merchant Phineas something maybe? He wouldn’t sell, and said he’d never make its like again. Swore it was destined for someone else, but demonstrated it for her to try to drum up other business.”

  Kip could only see a wisp of smoke in the air in the direction he’d heard the blast. Sometimes cannoneers wrapped burning sackcloth around a shell to be able to watch its trajectory. In a few more moments, he was rewarded with another shot, arcing identically to the first, to thud into the sub-red bane.

  Commander Fisk had a long-lens to his eye. He handed it to Kip with an odd look. “Please tell me I’m not crazy.”

  In the half-light, though, it was hard to find anything.

  “Find the old Tyrean embassy. Couple points right of it, halfway out in the bay,” Fisk said.

  “Where’s his ship?” Kip asked. For in the water, there appeared to be a ship’s square forecastle, moving at speed, undulating, floating without the advantage of a ship. A man danced to an inaudible beat, with hot points of light burning in his beard as he loaded a huge cannon all by himself.

  “Gunner?” Kip said. What was that forecastle resting on?

  Gunner fired again, then jumped up on the barrel of his big cannon and danced from one foot to the other, eyes straining as if waiting for something. He pumped his arm as if successful, though at what, Kip had no idea.

  A moment later, the entire sub-red bane exploded. Light flashed over the islands and a cloud mushroomed in the early morning, smoke rolling in on itself.

  “Did he just—?” Tisis asked.

  “He sure seems to think so. And—is Gunner on top of a sea demon?!”

  “Not sure,” Fisk said.

  But whatever it was, Kip wasn’t going to see it, because Gunner and his floating forecastle disappeared behind the Tyrean embassy.

  “Enough. This one is under my protection!” someone shouted.

  Kip looked around. It was a familiar voice this time. But there was nothing to be seen. A feeling of foreboding came over him. “Rea?” he said. “Rea Siluz?”

  Tisis looked at him. “Who?”

  “Nothing,” Kip said. “Were you going to go wrap that wrist and get some poppy?”

  When Aram had deflected her pistol during her attempt to shoot Zymun, he’d sprained her wrist. It was very swollen now, but she hadn’t wanted to leave Kip, hadn’t left all through long hours of the morning.

  “Yeah.” But she looked at him oddly.

  “Commander Fisk?” Kip said. “I’ll stay right here, promise.”

  As they went, Kip walked to the very edge of the platform and craned his neck. A rain of burning embers was still drifting down from the sub-red bane—luckily for the city, most of it was landing in the water. Kip could just barely see Gunner’s forecastle—now resting on the seawall of East Bay. The pirate was gesticulating furiously, but he didn’t appear hurt, and the forecastle deck was leaning at an angle as if it had been dumped off the sea demon’s back.

  Kip stepped back, and something brushed his shoulder.

  There was no one on the platform with him, but that touch made his whole body tingle. He looked at his shoulder. The sleeve was cut open—and smoking. The barest line of blood welled up as he gripped his arm.

  The premonition he’d felt suddenly resounded again in his gut with all the urgency of a sick man who’d ignored the first belly twinge and now was about to vomit.

  Abaddon.

  He tilted his head back and saw—and he saw in glorious, weighty, more-real-than-real color, because as he was drawn inexplicably, inexorably into that overlapping realm by the great immortal’s pre
sence, he was seeing not only with his physical eyes, but he was seeing as they saw.

  As Kip’s eyes focused on this other world, he saw Abaddon, king of locusts, spinning a tight loop in the air, something like a black blade seething in his hand.

  Rea Siluz staggered near Kip, her arm drooping, and he could only guess that she had just deflected a blow from him.

  And not for the first time.

  But she didn’t pause. She leapt instantly, faster than human thought, bringing up a blazing sword—

  The concussion of their collision blew away Abaddon’s illusory body and face. The black, smoking fragments dazzled Kip’s eyes but not Rea’s. Abaddon beat her back, and with hammer blows of sword on sword and sword on shield, the immortal battered Rea out of the air like a man swatting a moth to the ground.

  She fell to the street below the platform, elegant armor scraping on the cobblestones, baffled, afraid.

  Ten paces out, the two Mighty nunks looked around as if they’d heard something. But they hadn’t been drawn into the bubble; they couldn’t see them.

  The locust thing that was Abaddon drew Comfort, his mother-of-pearl-handled multichambered pistol, and shot rapidly at Rea’s prone form.

  Rea blocked the shots with shield and then sword, getting knocked back and back, finally falling to the cobblestones. She looked more shocked at his power than in fear for her life, though.

  Smoke curling lovingly from his pistols around his body, he paused in firing, not to reload: that pistol never needed reloading. “Concede this world to me, Aurea.” He gestured to his pistol. “This is no Sundering Blade, but if I kill you with it here, you can still never return to this realm. Go. Tell yourself that you’ll be back someday. I’ve won today.”

  Why was he telling her that? There must be some shred of a chance Rea could still win, or he wouldn’t be giving her a chance, right? Or was there some old affection between them that Kip couldn’t even guess at? Aurea?

  Rea looked at Kip, and he could swear he saw an apology in her eyes.

  Then, taking advantage of her distraction, Abaddon fired at Rea, but she’d already winked out of the space where she’d been lying a moment before, fleeing.

  She’d abandoned this world.

  But then it made sense, didn’t it? If there really were a thousand worlds, that left nine hundred and ninety-nine more for her to fight for, didn’t it? One battlefield lost didn’t mean much, on that scale.

  The nunks who were supposed to be protecting Kip seemed to have heard the final shots or the ricocheting of the musket balls off the street, because they charged toward the platform now.

  And died, instantly; their heads obliterated with a single shot each.

  Abaddon holstered his pistol and landed on the platform in front of Kip. He didn’t bother to re-form the illusory mask of a human face, instead staring at Kip out of the same insectoid monstrosity that Kip had last confronted in the Great Library.

  Some part of Kip had really, really hoped that was a hallucination brought on by the cards.

  “You hoped I’d forget you?” Abaddon asked, a rusty voice from a throat not made for human phonemes. “You thought you might triumph here?”

  “Yes?” Kip said.

  Abaddon’s face clacked and chittered. Kip had no idea what emotion that was intended to convey. Then the creature said, “Where is my cloak?”

  “It’s right over there. Can’t you see it?” he asked, pointing to the far side of the platform.

  Abaddon’s fist lashed out and cracked Kip’s ribs. He fell and almost tumbled off the platform. He groaned, holding on to the corner post, staring out to East Bay in the half-light.

  Rea, please tell me I’m not really alone here. Please.

  “The master cloak. Where is it?”

  “You’ve made a big mistake,” Kip said, facedown, woozy. “Huge. Gigantic.”

  Gunner was out there, so far away Kip could barely see him, standing as if he was holding a long-lens up to his eye. With the hand out of Abaddon’s sight, Kip tried to gesture to Gunner: ‘Shoot here, yes, here!’

  “Me?” Abaddon said. “No, no, no. You have no idea, do you? This battle was never about Koios and this little empire. It was about the fate of this entire world. Even now your Wight King calls out for our aid—and will get none. The djinn have been freed from his control. The bane will grow again—in a single day, with my help. We’ll inspire such bloodlust that these barbarians will scour these Jasper Islands. Massacre everyone. Even now, look! Are your worthless mortal eyes keen enough to see the black sails of Pash Vecchio’s fleet on the horizon? The pirate king comes with our reinforcements, and what do you have? No one comes for you. You’ve been abandoned. What’s your last hope? Some sea demons? Do you know how weak those really are against the right magics? It’s been a defense worthy of song. But none will sing of what you did here. None will be left to do so.”

  “It’s funny you mention my eyes,” Kip said. “Because you’re right. I am blind to other realms. I don’t know them, nor understand them when I see them, and when they affect my life, I’m left breathless and dazed. But I’m not the only one blind.”

  “I know. All your ilk are the same, save some few Seers, who catch glimpses and believe they see all and know yet more.”

  “I mean you,” Kip said. “How many humans have you known, over how many ages? How many worlds? And yet you don’t understand us at all. I’m blind to the other worlds, but you’re blind to the workings of love, of self-sacrifice. You look at the space they occupy, but it looks empty to you. You can’t even imagine how they work. You can’t imagine caring about anything other than yourself. It makes you stupid, Abaddon. It makes you predictable. It makes you weak. Do you know what humans can do? We can suffer. If you just give us one solid thing to brace our will against, we will move the world. We will hold on. Past reason. Past belief. Do you know what we know that you don’t?”

  “I should take you to join my menagerie. Perhaps a thousand years of torment will teach you some respect. What are you hoping for, little Guile? Orholam’s hosts have abandoned this realm. I feel not the touch of a single one of them now. Soon we shall free our brothers and…” He trailed off, his head twisting to the side. “I see something about a gunner?”

  “Thanks,” Kip said. “Sometimes it takes a while for a compelling argument to come together.”

  “What?”

  Kip reached out and touched Abaddon’s foot. Abaddon could move way too fast for Kip to mock him out loud, but he thought, You’re in my bubble of causality now, bitch.

  The immortal looked at him, his head tilting. “We seem to have such trouble communicating, you and I.”

  Kip couldn’t help it; he glanced toward the seawall protecting East Bay, where he could just barely see the lonely foredeck of a ship that had been run aground, and the black cloud of smoke that had been belched from its mighty throat. Kip shouldn’t have looked, but perhaps Abaddon was so crafty he would think Kip’s glance itself was a distraction, a misdirection.

  Between the raised platform at Orholam’s Glare and Gunner’s mighty Compelling Argument soared the old Tyrean embassy. There was a space no wider than a man’s forearm is long through which a cannonball might clear the embassy and still hit the platform.

  Indeed, though Kip was visible, the embassy probably blocked Gunner’s view of Abaddon.

  Kip didn’t care. He hoped Gunner put the exploding shell straight in his own lap. His life for Abaddon’s? Yes. Absolutely yes. This is for my nunks, you bastard.

  But even as the first diced heartbeat passed, Kip saw that the shot was simply too far, even for Gunner.

  The cannonball—a smoking, flaming streak—was heading wide. Either Gunner had miscalculated to try to miss the embassy or the cannon itself simply wasn’t accurate enough. The shell was going to miss.

  Then he and the immortal saw the same impossible thing: the flaming missile was curving—curving in midair—

  Curving toward them.

>   Kip scrunched up into a fetal position, turtle-bear once more, one last time, hunching around Abaddon’s ankle—they had to be touching for the immortal to be stuck in Kip’s world and time.

  Over him, Abaddon threw his arms up in defense.

  The concussion rocked the world. Kip’s sight went black with a slap.

  And then he became aware of shrapnel raining down on him. And—ow! shit!—it was really hot!

  Kip scrambled to his knees, flicking burning pieces of metal and wood from his clothes and skin, little burn holes dotting his tunic and trousers. But he was too weak to stand.

  Abaddon stood before him, above him still, knocked back five paces by the cannon shell still raining down around them. His coat and cloak had been ripped away in the blast.

  His burned and blackened wings unfurled in a crack of rage, but whatever wounds had torn his wings, they weren’t new; they’d happened long ago, in millennia beyond counting. Abaddon was unhurt.

  Kip’s deception and Gunner’s excellence and a curving, exploding cannonball had done nothing to this immortal except knock his clothes awry.

  “!” Abaddon bellowed in that voice that reverberated in tones above and below human ken. “You think any mortal weapon could kill me?”

  He leaned over, pained by his long-ago-broken ankles, and picked up his sword, which he’d lost in the blast—now disguised as a cane once more.

  “I don’t need to kill you,” Kip said, though his heart dropped.

  “What? Are you hoping your father will arrive with the sword?” Abaddon asked, derisive. “He’s a league away, killing that idiot Koios. Do you think with the master cloak abroad that I’d actually lose track of the one blade that can hurt me in this world? No. He’ll not come in time for you. Now, where is my cloak?”

  He lifted a foot and casually stomped on Kip’s head.