The Blood Mirror

by Brent Weeks

  “What you’ve suffered doesn’t excuse what you’ve done,” Karris said.

  “I’m not looking for an excuse.”

  And then she saw the terrible logic of it. Koios might be faced with a particular weakness right now that prompted him to a truce; perhaps he was waiting for someone to be bought off, or a critical shipment of black powder to come through. Certainly any pause would undermine support in the satrapies. But those things might not be the point at all.

  Koios wanted both sides to rearm and come back to battle with more terrible weapons because Koios wanted slaughter. He wanted to demolish an entire generation. It wasn’t just that he wanted to kill everyone who stood in his way and war was the most efficient way of lining up your enemies and finding out which of your friends might be too formidable someday. He wanted to prove that the Chromeria’s way of doing everything was utterly broken. He wanted to kill their apologists, and anyone whose very memory would gainsay his new story.

  It’s easier to build a new culture on the graves of the dead than around the homes of the living.

  “This isn’t the kind of trap I was expecting,” she said.

  “Trap my own sister?” he said, but his mouth twisted.

  “If you kill me, I’ll be a martyr for attempting to find peace, and you’ll prove that you’re untrustworthy. Dammit, Koios, how’d you come to this?”

  “Fire burns away illusions,” he said.

  “So now you’ll plunge the satrapies into the fire, hoping it cripples everyone else as well?” she asked bitterly.

  “I’m not a madman,” he said. “It’s beneath you to suggest I am. Too convenient by half. As lazy as I’d expect from some Chromeria witch or Magisterium sycophant. I thought better of you, though.”

  She looked at him sadly. “Your plan isn’t mad, brother; it’s evil.”

  “Evil is what we call what we don’t understand.”

  She took a deep breath. “I’m going to leave here today and wonder why I didn’t try to kill you before you could do more harm, aren’t I?”

  “It’s not in you to break a pledge, sister.”

  Maybe it is, this once.

  “How do you do it?” she asked. “How do you convince them all that you’re a polychrome?”

  “Simple. I became one,” he said. “The same way Dazen Guile did it.”

  He noted her confusion.

  “You’ve either become a better liar than I’d have expected of you, sister, or you’ve stayed exactly, disappointingly the same, and you’re still the wide-eyed naïf who helped start the last war. You do know that the man you married is Dazen Guile?”

  She tried not to react, but his face lit up.

  “You did. So, not a complete naïf. But he kept some things from you. Heartbreaking.”

  “Are you really trying to poison my marriage?”

  “Dazen took all pleasures of the flesh from me. If I can be a fly in his ointment, I will. I wish he were alive so I could kill him with my own hands. But… we must all deal with our little disappointments, mustn’t we?”

  “I think we’ve said everything profitable here,” Karris said. “Goodbye, brother. Nice chariot.”

  She turned her back and started walking away.

  “I did have a trap,” he said as she left. “But I’ll not trigger it. My gift to you, sister, for the love we shared.”

  She turned again. “The next time we meet, O White King, shall be the last. For the love I bear still for that precious boy who died in fire, I will end you. And I’ll weep for him, but for your death I will feel only relief.”

  He said nothing, only watched her go, and when they pushed away from the island, the skimmer was surrounded by a score of will-cast sharks. The fearsome beasts fell into an escort formation around the skimmer.

  But as soon as they reached deeper water, an enormous black shape burst through their ranks and scattered them like chaff. A whale? A black whale?

  “More than just men are concerned with this war,” Karris said. “That should comfort us.”

  Should. But then, she didn’t feel any comfort herself.

  They didn’t wait to see what happened. They pushed the skimmer to full speed and headed for home.

  Chapter 51

  “This could be good news,” Tisis said in a voice that told Kip the sentence was bound to continue in a direction he wasn’t going to like, “but I doubt it.”

  Thought so.

  “You remember I told you about my cousin Antonius?” she said.

  “The one you said got all the family charisma?” Kip said. “This is him?”

  “I might not have mentioned his flaws.”

  The island was like the intertwined fingers of lovers this morning, soft and hard, billows of fog covering and revealing a thousand spears and muskets arrayed on every shore around the island. The beauty of the warm, diffuse light of the rising sun setting off the threatened death. “So what about this could be good news?” Kip asked.

  “Lord Guile,” Derwyn Aleph of the Cwn y Wawr said, coming up to them. “The men are ready.”

  Everyone had formed up neatly with their various constituencies. They weren’t integrated or arrayed exactly the way Kip would have preferred. It would do for now. Kip hadn’t read any books on what to do when you’re outnumbered and surrounded—and on an island. Probably because no competent commander in history had ever put himself in such a position.

  “Good. We wait,” Kip said. He motioned for Tisis to go on.

  “Antonius is amazing. I got to spend a couple of weeks with him every time we’d swap off at the Chromeria.”

  Kip had known the Malargos family had been required to send hostages to the Jaspers to enforce the end of the Blood Wars, and that Tisis had been one such hostage, but he hadn’t thought through the mechanics of alternating the hostages.

  “Everyone loves him, but he’s… he’s a total idealist. Thinks the best of people, but follows authority dogmatically because he trusts that those in command are acting as he would act if he were in their place. I never wanted to tear down my sister by telling him not to trust her that way. I hoped that he would grow out of it on his own. More gently.”

  So we’re fucked.

  Kip considered it a moral victory that he didn’t say that aloud. That was good, because a moral victory was the only kind of victory he was going to get today. He said, “Allies don’t surround you to cut off every escape.”

  “You convinced age-old enemies to join together yesterday,” Tisis said. “This shouldn’t be as hard as all that. Right?”

  Her tone was light, but he could tell she was scared, too. If it came to it, would Kip’s outcasts attack Eirene Malargos’s people?

  Would he?

  If he did, even a win would embark Kip on a terrible course. The marriage with Tisis was supposed to make peace. That had been Andross Guile’s whole reason for arranging for Tisis to think the marriage was her own idea.

  Apparently Eirene had figured out that Kip had more to lose from a clash of arms than she did. Or she simply didn’t believe that he would bring it to that—which might be true. Or perhaps she thought Tisis had been kidnapped and forced into this marriage.

  A rowboat emerged from the mists. A standard-bearer held a green flag with the Malargos Bull mounted on Antonius’s personal sigil, a shield. So the young man saw himself as a shield for his aunt, Eirene Malargos, and his cousin, Tisis. A saver of damsels in distress. Wonderful.

  Antonius Malargos didn’t look as if he’d come with wedding gifts. He did look young, with a lean build. He held a spear, and a pair of red spectacles sat high on his head. He was light-skinned and boyishly handsome, with blond ringlets.

  His men rowed toward where Kip and his leaders stood apart. Cruxer stood behind Kip and to his left, bearing a flag of the Mighty—was that Kip’s personal seal now? It would have to do until they could come up with a flag for the Nightbringers. Tisis was at his right, and at his left stood Conn Arthur and Derwyn Aleph.

 
On seeing Tisis, Antonius’s face lit up. Gap toothed and wide mouthed, he had an infectious smile, and mere streaks of red through his irises.

  “Sissy!” he said. Ignoring a sharp word from one of his men, he used the spear he held to vault off the boat and land ashore without soiling his fine boots. He rushed over and hugged her like a little boy, picking her up and spinning her around in a circle.

  She smiled, too, eyes dancing.

  Kip was suddenly glad that he knew Antonius was her cousin, because being jealous of someone who gave his wife joy would have been pretty shitty.

  He put her down and stepped back, and clouds rolled over his open demeanor. “Or should I say Lady Guile now?” he asked.

  “I am proudly both,” Tisis said. “But… if you’re going to call me Sissy, do you want me to call you… ahem?”

  He winced playfully. “Maybe not in front of my men.”

  Tisis said, “Then let me introduce you: Lord Antonius Malargos, my husband, Kip Guile. Kip, my cousin, Antonius.”

  The Malargos men had come to bracket their commander once more, and in contrast to his open spirit and happy demeanor, they had the air of men ready for violence.

  “Sissy?” Kip asked Tisis under his breath as Antonius introduced his lieutenants.

  It was an artful introduction, though, personal rather than the full introduction with all of Kip’s newly claimed titles. That would have sounded more impressive, but also directed attention to whose title was biggest, and how these powers would interact with each other.

  Kip would need to remember to praise Tisis for that, later. If they had a later.

  How the hell had Eirene Malargos gotten word that they would be here?

  “I’ve had less kind nicknames,” Tisis murmured.

  Introductions of his subordinates concluded, Antonius straightened his shoulders and cleared his throat. He looked pained. “My dearest cousin, Eirene has given me some very strict orders. I feel compelled to—”

  “Where have you been?” Tisis asked. Smart. Never let an idealist frame your problem in black and white. “Things have changed very quickly, and your orders may well have been, um, outpaced by events.”

  “Because you’ve come here on skimmers and I couldn’t possibly have heard something as recently as you?” Antonius asked.

  “Yes. How’d you even know…”

  “Our family has skimmers now, too. Not as big as those you have covered over there, but enough for a drafter and a messenger to travel quickly together. I was upriver, near the Floating City with Satrap Willow Bough. My orders are only a week old.”

  In other words, almost as soon as Kip and his friends had blasted past Rath, Eirene had sent her hounds after them.

  Shit.

  “How did you get designs for the skimmers?” Kip asked.

  “Commander Ironfist showed us how to build one. Former commander, I guess. As you said, events have been moving quickly.”

  “Why would he give you such a secret?” Kip asked.

  It was more thinking aloud than a question he expected answered, but Antonius said, “Eirene promised him all our intelligence on your location.”

  “So he’s coming here?!” Kip asked.

  Having Ironfist come to join them was the best news he could imagine.

  “I… don’t know. Apparently he spoke with his sister the Nuqaba, who was our guest at the time. They had a spectacular fight. He disappeared after that, and she left the next day. I don’t know if they were together, or if they parted ways.”

  Well, that went from good news to bad quickly. If Ironfist had been coming here, he should have made it already. Unless he’d been waylaid.

  Ironfist was intimidating, but he’d also been traveling alone, in these woods, with no law to speak of and many, many talented archers.

  What if he’d been killed by some idiot bandits?

  “But that’s beside the point,” Antonius said. “Tisis, Eirene ordered me to come here and take you home. By force if necessary. Come home, Sissy. Your family needs you. Your sister needs you.”

  “Home,” Tisis said quietly, nostalgic. “I can’t tell you how much I miss the terraced gardens of Jaks Hill…”

  Tisis had a home, and a place. Not just sleeping in the woods, arguing with a boy and in constant danger. An honored place as heir to a vast fortune. Her sister Eirene was the real power in Ruthgar. Surely there would be important, fulfilling work for a woman like Tisis there.

  It made him feel the gulf between them again. He had no home. Twice an orphan. Flames and death had taken everything except the Mighty from him.

  Then Kip was struck by the thought that perhaps last night had not been the perfect time to have his first big fight with his bride. With one more word, she could destroy them all.

  “I miss Eirene. I miss the mansion,” Tisis said. “My old rooms. I miss our people. The smell in the air. The festivals, the races. But I have no home but at my husband’s side.”

  Oh, good. She doesn’t want me and all my friends and allies dead.

  “So you’re here by choice? Truly? The slave Verity said so, but Eirene didn’t trust a slave with such a claim.”

  Why would you name a slave Verity and then not trust her? Mercifully, Kip didn’t say it aloud. But then, his holding his tongue twice in a row meant he was probably due for a blunder anytime.

  Antonius went on. “You can tell me the truth. Kip can’t hurt you now, and, if necessary, we can do this in such a way that Andross Guile never hears about it.”

  There was only one way that could happen.

  Balls! This smiling boy was threatening a massacre. Kip heard something quite like a growl from Conn Arthur.

  Tisis was right about one thing: Antonius was an idealist. If he thought he would simply leave this parley to go order their massacre, he was going to find his head separated from his ass in short order.

  Tisis said, “Cousin, I am not only here by choice, but by design, as my letters should have confirmed. This marriage was my idea, and it may well be the smartest thing I’ve ever come up with. Eirene intends to imprison Kip, when he can serve the Seven Satrapies and our house both instead. When he can help save Blood Forest and Ruthgar.”

  “The Guiles unseated you,” Antonius said. “You were the Green. You’ve simply forgiven them that?”

  Through which Kip heard: Eirene hasn’t.

  Again Kip was struck with a thought: maybe he had all this capacity to be struck with thoughts because he wasn’t speaking. He hadn’t said anything at all. He, Kip Guile, leader of the Mighty, Slayer of Kings and Gods—fine, singular for each, so far—but he, the Breaker, possibly Diakoptês, possibly Luíseach, possibly Lightbringer, was just standing dumb and listening to his (furious-at-him) wife do all the talking. His life was a child’s racing boat, bobbing in the stream, suddenly swallowed by the rapids, utterly out of his reach.

  “Forgive them?! I thank them for it!” Tisis said. “Cousin, can you imagine me outmaneuvering the Golden Spider Andross Guile on the Spectrum? Or, failing that, convincing his lickspittles and lackeys to do something contrary to his will?”

  Antonius paused. He’d obviously never thought about what being on the Spectrum entailed. “Perhaps not.”

  “By marrying Kip, I’ve utterly guaranteed the only thing that Eirene could hope I might gain from any number of years on the Spectrum: timely help from the Guiles—and, through them, all the Seven Satrapies.”

  “He is a good man, a good commander?” Antonius asked as if Kip weren’t there, and as if it were one question.

  “He’s barely arrived here and look,” Tisis said. The fog was clearing, and the extent of Kip’s forces was obvious now.

  Antonius studied the forces for what seemed the first time. “He’s united the Cwn y Wawr and the Ghosts?”

  That was answered with a nearly simultaneous grunts of assent from Conn Arthur and Derwyn Aleph. They mirrored each other’s displeased looks at each other.

  “And won a battle freeing the Cw
n y Wawr from slavery and sinking numerous barges full of supplies for the Blood Robes,” Tisis said, offhand.

  Antonius Malargos was quiet for some time. Kip thought of saying something to sway him, but Tisis motioned subtly to be silent.

  Yes, dear.

  The young man finally said, “Lady Eirene is considering… a treaty of nonaggression with the White King.”

  “What?!” Tisis demanded.

  Derwyn Aleph bristled, but her hand motioned for his silence, and he said nothing.

  Antonius went on. “Eirene said you and this Guile fighting the Blood Robes might—how’d she say it? ‘Preclude the option of peace for us and all of Ruthgar.’”

  Tisis was taken aback. “Does she think we can simply trade with that monster?”

  “I know not what she thinks, nor could I likely understand all the machinations in her mind if she explained them. Your sister has a genius for such things. I don’t like peace with those creatures, either, but my trust in her has never been misplaced. And she has given me orders. She won’t tolerate anything less than total obedience in this. Not with your life in the balance. You are all she loves.”

  “I love her most dearly, too,” Tisis said. “But sometimes we are called to obey higher things. My sister is a merchant queen, not a queen in truth, much less a warrior queen. Eirene’s brilliant, but she thinks others will be rational as well. You remember when you wanted to give your pony to the luxiats to sell to feed the poor?”

  He brightened at the memory. “She told me if I wanted to help, I should have her sell the pony. She’d take a small commission, then invest the profits in one of her businesses. In five years, I could buy a better pony and still give twice the amount of money to the poor—who would surely still be poor.”

  “She thinks the White King is like her. He’s not. He’s like us. There’s no negotiating the best deal with someone who plans to kill you and take everything.”

  Kip moved to speak again, but Tisis gripped his hand: No!

  “She called me a zealot that day, for trying to obey what I understood Orholam to be telling me,” Antonius said, with a woundedness unhealed by the passing years. “She didn’t understand me at all. Despite all her smarts.”