The Blood Mirror

by Brent Weeks

  He wouldn’t have understood, much less attempted, such delicate work if he hadn’t worked on the rope spear.

  Orholam wastes nothing, not even our errors.

  With superviolet fingers, he traced out lovingly where the luxins had been, and simply copied them, listening to their song, simple as refilling the lantern, and cleaning out some soot and the dust of centuries from a few plugged channels.

  His Turtle-Bear tattoo filled with each color in turn as he used it, and glowed.

  Simple. Simple for a fearless nine-color full-spectrum superchromatic polychrome who didn’t stop to consider that if he botched anything, he could set the whole room on fire and destroy an entire culture’s most treasured art.

  You dare to use sub-red, Kip? On centuries-old wood?

  But he knew he could do this, and he couldn’t stop himself, not with beauty so close, not with his gifts so fully engaged.

  In a moment, in an hour, in an eternity, in a wink of Orholam’s eye, Kip finished.

  Tisis gasped, and Kip did, too. It was one thing for Kip to put the luxin paints back onto the palette of a great artist, it was quite another to see what Phaestos and the drafters had done with them.

  The room lit. Sunshine shimmering on ocean waves, a mirror, in this darkest forest, to the stars and then the rising sun. A world beginning. This light was a gift of man and Orholam, once broken apart fused together anew, what had been flawed now rejoined in gold perfection.

  “Oh my God,” Tisis whispered, but in her hushed tone, that holy word wasn’t blasphemy but reverence. “Kip. Heart of my heart. You have brought light.”

  Author’s Note

  Vaginismus, as suffered by Tisis Malargos, is a real gynecological condition that can cause painful intercourse or the inability to experience intercourse at all due to involuntary muscle spasms. It is also little understood and too often surrounded by shame, jokes, or disbelief. One woman I know confessed to her (female!) gynecologist that she had been unable to consummate her marriage. The doctor told her it was her own fault for being a virgin, and it wouldn’t have been a problem if she’d been sexually active earlier, and offered no treatment suggestions other than, “Maybe get really drunk?” (Nope.) Another had her marriage end over this.

  Among my early readers, there was a woman who couldn’t believe that this was a real condition and not some weird plot device. “A woman who can’t have sex? What’s that a metaphor for?” That ignorance, that secret grief, and that disbelief prompted this note, awkward though I feel to write it. If a twenty-first-century doctor specializing in women’s health can be unaware of this condition, I figured a couple of early seventeenth-century teens would be even more baffled—and hurt and angry and ashamed and afraid.

  The great news is that vaginismus is very, very treatable. So if you or someone you love is affected by this, it’s not a joke. It’s not something to be ashamed of. It’s not just your issue, or her problem to fix; it’s a relationship hurdle that you can overcome together. Get help. Start with a web search, and talk to a doctor.

  Acknowledgments

  Much as I’d like to pretend I’m a Gavin Guile of the written word, a solitary genius of word-magic creating entire worlds merely by drafting the electrons pouring through the circuits under my fingers, the truth is that a novel like this takes an entire Chromeria working together.

  Thank you first to you, my readers, who have been light to me. It is an uncommon privilege to be afforded the time and space and finances to pursue a dream. You’ve given me that, plus encouragement and understanding when I say things like, “I know I said it was going to be four books. Um…” You’ll find my best efforts to honor your gift here, and in everything I put my name on.

  Thank you to my superviolet drafters, Gleni Bartels and her colleagues and discipulae in production. Your work is invisible to the untrained eye—unless things go wrong! I have once again given you an unenviable task, with a compressed schedule and a long book and odd demands like quirky fonts, checklists, and handwriting.

  Thank you to my blue drafters. My copy editor, S. B. Kleinman, brought my work into harmony with accepted grammatical and usage norms while honoring my unique voice. Thank you for bringing a sensitive hand to your work: for finding that one sentence with a semicolon and ten commas and instead of asking me to break it up, pointing out that the sentence actually needed eleven commas. After teaching English and with seven books in print now, I really shouldn’t need to be corrected on when to use “like” versus “as if,” but apparently I do. For that and much more, thank you.

  Thank you to my yellow drafters. Translation, like drafting yellow, is bringing logic and emotion into balance; it requires both analysis and creativity, understanding what is happening in one language on several levels, and then artfully bringing that into another language with different syntax and vocabulary available. Noah Dauber, thank you for the quick lesson on ancient Hebrew. I totally understood some of it. Dr. Jacob Klein, it hardly seems fair that your reward for all your Friday nights of refusing to leave our dorm room to do something fun (“Just three more hours of Greek!”) is having me ask you to do my homework now, but I do appreciate it! My new friends Thomas McCarthy and Carla O’Connell, thank you for the Irish translations of sometimes-awkward terms. If you conspired together to do the equivalent of making me shout “eho tria orchidea” (I have three testicles!) à la My Big Fat Greek Wedding, I’m not even changing it.

  Thank you also to all my professional translators adapting my work for other countries. Thank you, Manuel de los Reyes. I hear over and over how great your Spanish translation is. Thank you, Michaela Link, Olivier Debernard, Malgorzata Strzelec. And thank you to the rest of you, whose names (embarrassingly!) I don’t even know. Please always feel free to e-mail me if you need a clarification. Every time I rhyme or make a pun, I wince thinking of how I’m making your job harder—and do it anyway. Thank you to Simon Vance for his rich, warm, and precise audiobook narration. It feels wonderful to work with an artist of your caliber. Thank you to GraphicAudio for your passion and the life your cast and musicians bring to your adaptations.

  Thank you to my green drafters, my beta readers John, Tim, Heather, Keith, Andrew, and Jacob, for the wild life and powerful new growth you brought to my work. When Elisa compiled all your comments into the manuscript, they numbered more than six hundred. After the medics revived me, I delighted in your work and insight. Though you all did all of the below, let me single out Heather Harney for her dissenting views. I’m a dissenter myself, and I love hearing an alternate take. Thank you. Tim, thanks for your theory crafting. The places where you thought “That doesn’t line up with what you said earlier” were all totally on purpose and always part of the grander design. Andrew and Jacob, thanks for your continuity catches and insightful comments. Keith, thank you for wisdom, penetrating questions, and your praise. It’s impossible to rate such things, but you are one of perhaps the three best encouragers I have met in my life.

  Thank you to my orange drafters, working behind the scenes to make sure the gears are oiled, that solutions are reached, and that everyone mysteriously continues to feel good about working together. Donald Maass of DMLA, you’ve been a dream agent, and friend, and mentor. Cameron McClure and Katie Shea Boutillier, thanks for taking us bravely into new waters, investigating unknown depths, and answering many questions! Charlie, have we received even one royalty statement where I didn’t ask you many, many questions? Thank you. To Angie Hesterman and the rest of the crew, thank you.

  Thank you to my red drafters, who bring passion and warmth to what is so often a solitary profession. Thank you to the fan artists who take some seed of what I’ve done and add their own gifts to it. Thank you to the fans who’ve gotten a tattoo of my work or words. I’ll try to keep coming up with cool visuals, and the next time I’m frustrated over some almost-quotable line, I’ll think, “I can’t stop working and say this is good enough! Someone might wear this on their body!” No pressure. Thank you to the f
ans who’ve named their children after my characters (!); I promise only good things will happen to them and the moral of my stories will be to never disobey your parents. (Trust me! I tell lies for a living.) Thank you to the fans who drop me a line simply to say they enjoyed what I’ve done. If I were an accountant, I might have a clear promotion structure, a steady paycheck, and a 401(k), but strangers never come up to an accountant to praise them. You guys rock.

  Thank you to the fans who think all I get is the above kind of positive attention, and who anoint themselves to tell me all the ways I suck so I don’t get too big of an ego.

  No, never mind. Screw those guys.

  Thank you to my sub-red drafters, whose work is rarely noticed by the unlearned and who might burst into flame if you dragged them out onstage, but without whom the whole work could never catch fire with an audience: the sales personnel at Hachette who convey passion for my books to a buyer who hears thousands of such pitches a year. Thank you to Ellen Wright at Orbit, who makes travel such a smooth experience and brings me physically to booksellers and readers. Thank you to Laura Fitzgerald and Alex Lencicki, who do so much online and off-. Thank you to Clockpunk Studios for making the webpage look so good. Thank you to Lauren Panepinto, Silas Manhood, and Shirley Green for the beautiful covers—and then going above and beyond to help me with bookmarks or T-shirt designs or posters. Beyond my awesome professional partners, thank you to you booksellers who—out of all the baffling array of books weighing down the store shelves—pick up mine and tell a prospective reader why they’ll enjoy it. That’s a dream come true for me.

  Thank you to my paryl drafter,

  Most people will never see nor understand what you’ve done, but it’s changed everything.

  Thank you to my chi drafter,

  cancer.

  Then there are the polychromes, those drafters who have helped me in ways that defy singular categorization. John DeBudge, not just rereading and continuity checking and theory-crafting and encouraging, but for catching some of the more subtle stuff—and being wildly wrong on a small number of his guesses! Elisa Roberts, you’ve been my right hand. Lasher when I want to get lazy, organizer of literal reams of lore, Guardian of the Official Timeline, transcriber of the unholy words, website keeper—“Can I get this icon in cornflower blue?”—and general mess cleaner-upper (and often spotter in the first place). You’ve been the one who reads the book one last time, backwards, to try to catch those final typos. I’d say more nice stuff about you, but then you’d ask for another raise.

  Editor Devi Pillai was my White. Or maybe my White King. I’m still not sure. In any large endeavor, someone has to make sure all the skills of her minions are well allocated and whip nurture the laggards project along. When I see the old canard, “Editors don’t edit anymore,” I think of Devi reading this book four times and giving advice all along the way. She has been taskmaster and advocate, and many things in between. Thanks, Devi. Kelly O’Connor, Devi’s right hand, I’d say you’re the Marissia, but that starts to get weird. Thanks for making sure things happened smoothly.

  Tim Holman has been the Black, orchestrating everything else that doesn’t fall under the White’s purview, and his right hand has been Anne Clarke. Thank you for discovering me and assembling this wonderful team and helping them work so well together. Also, the checks. Thanks for signing those. Very handy.

  Last and most, thank you to my wife, Kristina, who’s been more than a Karris to me. Angel investor, first reader, counselor in more ways than most, bookkeeper, lens that brings me into focus, partner, lover, best friend. You’ve had to take up a lot of slack as I’ve worked on this book. I see you. I hold you in my eyes.

  In short—yeah, this counts as short for an epic fantasy author—it’s been a team effort. And I know there’s one of two things you’re thinking after seeing a list this long after a book: 1) Wow, there’s a lot more people who go into making a book than I thought, or 2) Wow, you had that many people helping and this is the best you could do?

  Yes, and yes.

  Gratefully yours,

  Brent Weeks

  July 25, 2016

  Oregon, USA

  P.S. I’d be remiss if I don’t mention the nunks of my Chromeria, my daughters O. and A. Thank you, young ladies, for interrupting my work with tackle-hugs, and 100-watt smiles, and asking Daddy to read you another story. (“Again! Again!” “Gong-gong.”) If it weren’t for you, I’d certainly have finished this book sooner. And I wouldn’t trade you for the world.

  Books by Brent Weeks

  Perfect Shadow (e-only novella)

  THE NIGHT ANGEL TRILOGY

  The Way of Shadows

  Shadow’s Edge

  Beyond the Shadows

  Night Angel (omnibus)

  THE LIGHTBRINGER SERIES

  The Black Prism

  The Blinding Knife

  The Broken Eye

  The Blood Mirror

  Character List

  ‘Annaiah: Darjan’s wife, burnt by orgiasts.

  Abaddon: Also known as the King, the Day Star. One of the chiefs of the Two Hundred. Often depicted with crippled ankles, giant locust’s wings, and pallid features.

  Abirin: A luxiat-scholar who studied the old gods.

  Abraxes, Ambrosius: A saint from ancient times.

  Adrasteia (Teia): A Blackguard, a drafter of paryl, a member of the Order, and the White’s spy.

  Aeshma: One of the Two Hundred, nearly one of the Nine, and Darjan’s jinnyah. A potential Atirat.

  Agnelli, Lucia: A Blackguard scrub, she had a forbidden romantic relationship with Cruxer. Murdered by an assassin during a training exercise.

  Ahhana the Dextrous: Superchromat yellow drafter who was the architect and lead drafter of the Lily’s Stem.

  Ahhanen: A Blackguard. Partners with Djur, known for a somewhat sour demeanor. Killed in the Omnichrome’s War.

  Aklos: A slave of Aglaia Crassos.

  Aleph, Derwyn: Commander of the Cwn y Wawr.

  Alban and Strang: Saints and commentators on holy writ.

  Amalu Anazâr: The Dark Defiant One.

  Amazzal: One of the six High Luxiats, most notable for his commanding presence and rich voice.

  Amestan: A Blackguard at the Battle of Garriston.

  Anamar: Commander of the Blackguard at the close of the False Prism’s War.

  Anir: A librarian at the Chromeria.

  Antaeos: A Blackguard nunk.

  Appleton, Aodán: A nobleman and city leader of the Blood Forest city of Dúnbheo.

  Appleton, Lady: A noblewoman of Blood Forest.

  Appleton, Taira: One of Lady Appleton’s four daughters. A friend of Karris White Oak during childhood.

  Aram: A failed Blackguard scrub with a grudge against Kip Guile and Cruxer.

  Arana: A drafting student, a merchant’s daughter.

  Aras: A student at the Chromeria.

  Arash, Javid: One of the drafters who defended Garriston.

  Aravind: Satrap of Atash until his death. Father of Kata Ham-haldita, the former corregidor of Idoss.

  Arias: One of the Color Prince’s advisers. He is an Atashian in charge of spreading news about the Color Prince.

  Arien: A magister at the Chromeria. She drafts orange and tested Kip Guile on Luxlord Black’s orders.

  Ariss the Navigator: A legendary explorer.

  Arrad: A Lightguard.

  Arthur, Rónán: Twin brother of Ruadhán.

  Arthur, Ruadhán: Leader of Shady Grove will-casters.

  Asif: A young Blackguard.

  Asmun: A Blackguard scrub. Aspasia: Karris Guile’s room slave.

  Assan, Uluch: Gunner’s birth name.

  Atagamo: A magister who teaches the properties of luxin at the Chromeria. He is Ilytian.

  Athanossos: A wealthy jeweler on Big Jasper.

  Atiriel, Karris: A desert princess. She became Karris Shadowblinder before she married Lucidonius.

  Atropos, Leonidas: A Prism.

  A
urellea: A procurer for high-class prostitutes on Big Jasper.

  Auria: Darjan’s superior in the first Blackguard.

  Ayrad: He was a Blackguard scrub years before Kip Guile entered the class. He started at the bottom of his class (forty-ninth) and worked his way up to the top, fighting everyone. It turned out he’d taken a vow. Became a legendary commander of the Blackguard and saved four different Prisms at least once before someone poisoned him. A yellow drafter.

  Azmith, Akensis: A scion of the powerful Azmith family. Killed by Karris White Oak during the choosing of the White.

  Azmith, Caul: A Parian general, the Parian satrapah’s younger brother.

  Azmith, Tilleli: Parian satrapah, older sister of Caul Azmith and spymaster for Paria’s Nuqaba.

  Balder: A Blackguard scrub.

  Baoth: A red wight in the Color Prince’s army.

  Barrel: A Blackguard scrub.

  Barrick: A sailor murdered by Zymun.

  Bas the Simple: A Tyrean polychrome (blue/green/superviolet), handsome but a simpleton, sworn to kill the killer of the White Oak family.

  Bel: An apprentice at a brewery on Big Jasper, the Maiden’s Kiss.

  Ben-hadad: A Ruthgari and a member of the Mighty. A blue/green/yellow drafter who has created his own mechanical spectacles that allow blue and yellow lenses to be used separately or together to create green. He’s highly intelligent and an inventor.

  Beryl: A watch captain in the Blackguard, a skilled horsewoman who is known for taking new recruits under her wing.

  Big Ros: A slave of Aglaia Crassos.

  Bilhah: The White’s elderly room slave and a spy for Andross Guile.