The Burning White (125 page)

“They’ve chosen to be separated from Me forever,” Orholam said. “That’s one of the better descriptions of hell.”

Gavin had been a son of separation himself, where delicacies turned to ash in your mouth. It was the land of madness and murder and a life drained of color. It was a life that was worse than death. “Then for my boon, I ask that You cut their punishment short. Or their penance. Or whatever it is. I ask that You release them from this suffering,” Dazen said, and he knew that his words were a foolishness beyond understanding. What was wrong with him?

“You think they didn’t have a fair chance? That they didn’t know what it meant when they made their choices?”

Dazen knew he was being audacious, presumptuous, but this, too, was how he’d been made. “I know that people make choices about eternity before they understand what eternity means. I know I threw away a thousand second chances before I took the last one. I know they probably won’t take it, but . . . what if they do? So for my boon, my lord, I beg that You offer these undeserving one more chance.”

Orholam studied him. “You stand broken and powerless, stripped of all you loved, with all your world in the balance, your son and your wife fighting for their very lives, and for your boon you ask clemency for strangers?”

“My wife and son are Yours. If You don’t care for them even more than I do, You’re not who You say You are. If You’re not who You say You are, what use is a boon? But I think You are. My wife and son are loved, by me and by You and by thousands of others. The sea demons . . .” He thought of them: feeding on light itself but living in darkness, alone, outliving everyone who’d ever loved them, twisted into something hideous by their own choices.

Dazen’s heart emptied all at once, like a dam bursting and all his hopes rushing out, like he was doing something disastrous—but right. “The sea demons aren’t strangers. They’re me.”

“O Dazen,” Orholam said, and his voice was soft and his eyes were proud. “Here at your end, you are indeed a man after my own heart. So let it be. Come. Your penance awaits.”

Kip flexed his burn-scarred left hand, working the stiffness out of it before taking the intricately engraved golden bar in his grip. It fit like they’d been made for each other.

“Breaker, I don’t mean to minimize the challenge you’re taking on there,” Ferkudi said from the edge of the roof where he was looking out over the Jaspers, “but whatever you’re going to do, could you . . . maybe . . . you know, start?”

With his free right hand, Kip pulled the mirror array’s crystal to rest against his forehead, exactly where the pagans said the third eye resides.

“The bane have all made landfall,” Big Leo said from beside Ferkudi. “Thousands of drafters and wights are swarming from every one of them. We’re surrounded.”

“Not all the bane. Superviolet’s gone,” Kip said.

Liv had found her old loyalties were stronger than she’d expected after all. She’d withdrawn from the fight. Thank you, Liv.

He drafted superviolet and put his right hand on the other grip—and suddenly felt his awareness cast out of his body as if he’d been catapulted from himself, far out into the ocean.

“Whoa, whoa! What was that?!” He yanked his hands away from the grips. It had not done that before. It was as if the presence of the bane had somehow charged it up.

Everyone was staring at him, unnerved.

“Not that I’m surprised or anything,” he said with a weak smile.

“Boss?” Ferkudi asked.

“No worries,” Kip said. “I got this.” He checked himself. This wasn’t what had happened yesterday, but yesterday he’d practiced using only the barest amount of superviolet and no other colors—knowing that the bane would deny him the use of them. He’d already had so much to learn. The superviolet let him focus the mirrors. Today—dammit, when had he drafted a little bit of blue? Probably just spectral bleed from the superviolet, and this bluer-than-blue beautiful day.

He emptied himself of blue on the nub of hellstone he kept at his belt, then tried again with only superviolet. Now he was simply directing the mirrors as he had yesterday.

Andross had told Kip not to draft on the array, told him drafting with so much power at hand would burn him out in seconds or minutes. He was—irritatingly—surely right. But if Kip drafted not through the array but before he touched it, and then it still worked without frying him, then maybe that was worth exploring.

So he lifted his hand, drafted a bit of blue—and now he could cast his vision wherever he wanted.

He blew out an exasperated breath. Why did he always have to figure things out the hard way? Could no one leave a short instruction book chained to these magical devices?

There was no time to waste, though.

He launched himself back to where Zymun had last focused the array, far out in the sea, but saw nothing there.

Why that bit of the sea? No reason?

Zymun must have kicked the mirror array when they’d hauled him off it after he’d blown his halos.

Kip drew his attention back to Big Jasper.

The array snapped into focus instantly, the entire thing lifting him bodily on an articulated arm to point him wherever he willed. This damn thing was one of the wonders of the world. Of course it was: it had been made for the Prisms themselves. Probably it had been made so they could look out for bane.

If he were a Prism, if he could split light and draft as much as he wanted, this battle would be finished in ten minutes.

Did Koios know that? Had the White King attacked
now
because he knew the Chromeria had no Prism to defend the Jaspers, or was he just that lucky?

It didn’t matter.

Kip’s vision had passed over the armada as he’d brought his will back to the Jaspers, but now he went back. They were bombarding Big Jasper’s cannon towers. A gunner stood on deck, linstock in his hand.

A spotlight the size of the gunner’s whole body suddenly lit him up as hundreds of mirrors turned toward him. He turned, shocked at the heat, throwing his arm up in front his eyes at the glare.

Kip sharpened the focus convulsively.

A beam of light no thicker than a thumb shot through the man’s upraised arm and then out the back of his head.

He dropped, and every part of his head that passed through the beam as he fell was burnt through. His open skull smoked on the deck, and a hissing furrow was carved deep into the sea beyond him.

Kip’s self was pulled with it, as tightly focused as the beam itself, plunging into deep waters sizzling and hissing to steam. He pulled back.

Someone was yelling at him, but he realized he’d done the wrong thing.

He didn’t have time to kill men one by one. He widened his focus.

In a broad spotlight that encompassed the entire ship, where men were standing agog, a hundred hands put up in front of eyes in the same way the gunner had, Kip found an open barrel of black powder on the deck behind the cannons.

He tightened the beam once more.

The powder keg exploded in his face.

He threw himself back as the explosion overwhelmed him.

His hands came away from the grips and he found himself in his own body once more.

“The storm, Breaker! The lightstorm! Kip!” Ben-hadad was yelling. “Come on, brother!”

“You’re back?” Kip asked, blinking. “When did you get back? Did you get Zymun?”

“No,” Ben-hadad said. He seemed relieved Kip had finally heard him. “They’re regrouping. We think they’re going to attack us up here—it doesn’t matter. Kip, you gotta do something about the light-storm.”

“Lightstorm? Oh, right!”

Superviolet was so alien, so orderly, and so damned curious that Kip had been working his way from the small-scale applications to the larger ones without even fully realizing it. He’d momentarily lost regular human concern—like for the crackling, seething sapphire tornado streaming upward from the seas around the blue bane.

He turned away from the exploded, burning, sinking ship and moved his will to the skies.

Within the brewing blue lightstorm were tens of thousands of razor-edged crystals of blue luxin. Some smaller, some heavier, different shapes from square caltrops to edged planes to spikes.

It all spoke of a mind that was experimenting. Curious. And new to what it was doing, just as Kip was—but also as sharp as the razor rain itself would be, because this storm was almost ready now. It was ready long before any of the other incipient storms brewing over the other bane.

Kip hadn’t willjacked anyone in a long time. It was counted too dangerous to be taught to nunks like he’d been when he’d left the Jaspers. But it had also been one of the first things he’d ever done.

Will-Breaker, they’d joked about him, long ago. And Andross had repeated it, not joking at all.

We’ll see about that.

Kip charged at the blue lightstorm with all the bristling fur and snarls and momentum of a turtle-bear. He caught the Mot completely unawares, and blasted her off her feet, scattering her powers completely. He knew her then as Samila Sayeh, the instant his will collided into her and snatched away the reins.

She’d been lifting the entire storm to bring it down on the defenders at the walls. Kip snatched it away and brought it down on the sub-red bane floating next to the blue and on the armada’s ships nearby.

Fist-sized blades fell from the sky, cutting the air with a frightful sound, thousands of edged weapons falling unexpectedly from the sky. Bodies were slashed; timbers chipped and exploded under the relentless rain.

The sub-red bane blossomed with fire at each strike. Every sub-red crystal in its surface had to be sealed from the air lest it burn openly. The razor rain cut them open.

Men and drafters and even wights howled at the intensity of the sudden flames. It was too much heat and fire for most of them to redirect away from themselves, so fireworkers though they were, they burned to death.

Their leader, the Anat, lost his concentration. The lightstorm he’d been gathering spun away from his hands; the sealed sub-red crystals he’d been gently wafting upward lest he break them simply escaped.

Kip quickly dropped one hand from the mirror array to suck in a bit of sub-red.

Only then, disengaged from the array, did he hear the clash of arms nearby, the grunts of men fighting, the thud of fists on flesh.

The frame whipped him around in an instant, and he saw that the Lightguards were trying to reclaim the roof. They must have made an unexpected push, because a dozen of them had made it onto the roof.

A Lightguard dove off to one side, where his musket had fallen. All of Kip’s men were already engaged, either fighting or trying to block the door once again. The Lightguard scrambled to his feet, right at the edge of the tower, and lifted the musket toward Kip.

Big Leo’s chain crashed upward, knocking the musket toward the sky as it discharged, and then wrapping up around the Lightguard’s body and head, smashing his arms against his chest.

“Ignore us!” Big Leo shouted as he hauled the man effortlessly into his own waiting elbow with the sound of cracking bones. “Help them!”

And so Kip did.

As fast as his attention shifted, so, too, did Kip’s position. The frame snapped around and pointed him back to the sub-red light-storm.

It hadn’t gotten away yet.

Kip snatched it up and flung the mass of delicate crystals down toward the sea and the armada, not daring to throw it toward the red bane, lest the god there redirect it as easily as Kip had.

Then he caught sight of the Anat himself, hands skyward, confused. Kip hadn’t even crossed wills with him, merely picked up the storm after he’d let it go from his nerveless fingers.

But now, seeing Anat so exposed, Kip brought the mirrors to bear.

Concentrated light stabbed through the god, and he burst into flames.

He staggered about in the flames in agony and his mouth opened. He must surely be shrieking, but Kip heard no sound through the array.

One down. Five to go, and then the Wight King himself.

The next ones were going to be harder. They were going to be aware of him coming now, and of what he could do. The Wight King himself was currently too far away, out on his dragon-ship, for the tower to make a burning beam, or Kip would have gone after him right away. But Kip exulted nonetheless.

For the first time, he dared to think he might make it through this, after all.

He could do this. He was
made
for this.

Next!

“This can’t be happening!” Ben-hadad cried from beside the musket-ball-riddled door. “I lost my knee on this stupid roof last time. I am not—”

He spun in and leveled his crossbow directly at the face of a roaring Lightguard charging the door. He was back to the doorframe’s shelter before Big Leo even heard the twang or the
thunk
of crossbow bolt hitting face.

The door shook from the force of the Lightguard’s falling body.

At the beginning, they’d tried not to use lethal force. They didn’t want war—not even with the Lightguards. Not today.

But protecting Breaker was more important. After several of the Lightguards had spilled onto the roof and one attempted to shoot Breaker, all bets were off.

They were doing this damn thing again. But this time, they knew how to flee. They just couldn’t.

Musket balls rattled into the door once more. Twelve muskets, right now. Either eleven or twelve had fired, and with their reload speed—

He shouted through the door, “You poor bastards. Fighting us? You’re just gonna die! I mean, look at this! Even without us having luxin we outclass you by leagues. You cretins are even terrible shots! My grandmother can shoot better than this.” Ben poked his head in front of the hole he’d just shot through to stare at them spitefully. “You don’t shoot for the
door
, you morons; you shoot for the
holes
in the door. You know, so you could maybe hit someone?”

He jerked his head away half a heartbeat before the hole splintered once, twice, and again. Other shots thudded into the door.

Ferkudi looked askance at him from the other side of the door-frame. “I think you win it again, Ben.”