The Burning White (19 page)

“And how do you have any idea who he is at all? He’s surprised you again and again. He’s destroyed your forces at every turn. You’ve never even met him.”

“You think I underestimate your friend?”

“He is a Guile,” Liv said.

“A Guile made me this!” the king roared, and his skin flared hot and red.

But he calmed suddenly. The fierce heat died down. Liv saw one of the king’s bodyguards gulp.

“Pardon,” Koios said. “I misspoke. I made myself into this regal shape before you, carved of pure will. But a Guile made it necessary. Kip’s uncle Dazen, when he was about Kip’s age. Or had you forgotten?”

“I only knew there was a fire,” Liv said, and her voice came out softer than she’d have liked.

“Dazen planned to elope with my sister Karris. The family needed her to marry Gavin, the elder brother. Love be damned. And we might remarry her after forcing a divorce, of course. But not to her ex-husband’s brother. It would smack of old taboos, and our family honor couldn’t take that. Nor could we give Andross Guile such power over us. So we set a trap for Dazen. Sealed the windows. Chained the doors and gates shut after he got in. He was only a blue/green bichrome, and it was after midnight. We got Karris’s maid to take his lenses under some pretense, to pack with Karris’s things or some such. He was disarmed.” His eyes took on a distant look, red pain outlined with spiky black hatred, or black hatred impregnated with red pain, such that the two had mingled to a hue that stained the soul forever.

“We set upon him. Started beating him. It got out of hand. All the years of White Oaks being humiliated and outmaneuvered. Those smiling, beautiful, adored and entitled and
deified
fucking Guile brothers. There was this moment when Rodin tried to stop us, and my brothers and I looked at each other . . . and without a word, the rest of us decided to kill Dazen. And in that split second where we hesitated? That son of a bitch split light. He was a natural Prism, as the world hadn’t seen since Vician’s Sin. Four hundred years—and we stumble upon a true Prism. I remember the look in his eyes as it happened. I think he was as surprised as we were.

“Rodin threw up a shield—trying to help the
Guile
, against his own brothers. That’s what Guiles do, Aliviana. They turn brother against brother. Rodin went down first in the crossfire.”

You mean you killed him. Or one of your brothers did. Otherwise you’d blame Dazen for that murder, too.

“But it was still one bloodied man against all the rest of us, and we were drafters all. And he had no light! Around corners so he couldn’t draft off them, we popped mag torches, and then we came at him. And you want to know what this lightsplitter does next?”

“What?”

“He
absorbs
everything we throw at him. Luxin missiles and streams of fire. Darts. Spears. Blades and waves. Projectiles and pure heat. Everything.”

“What?! That’s not how lightsplitting works—” Liv started.

“Black luxin. As if he didn’t have enough tricks. He soaked up everything we threw at him, and he threw it all back at us. Killed us all. Only I made it to the courtyard fountain. Others of our household tried to take refuge with me there from the smoke and heat and flames, but I fought them off lest we all die. The water heated, unbearably. I burned, boiling like a crab in a kettle. And only that night’s breeze kept the smoke from killing me as it did so many others. Some mercy. The pain is with me daily, still.”

“I’m sorry,” Liv said. It didn’t seem at all adequate, but what could be?

“It’s no matter. Dazen Guile destroyed the old Koios White Oak that I had been that night, but he showed me the key to what I could become. He showed me that black luxin is possible. And soon, I learned to draft it. I’m no lightsplitter, but with black luxin, I can do everything I need in order to destroy the Guiles. All of them.”

“Even your sister?” Liv asked.

His eyes flashed. “She’s a White Oak in my eyes, unless she chooses to be a Guile. I wouldn’t choose Rodin’s fate for her, but if she chooses to stand with the Guiles . . . ?”

“She’ll deserve it,” Liv said. She guessed then, from the hardness in his eyes, that it had been Koios himself who’d killed his brother that day. Koios had seen the vulnerability Rodin opened. The rest of the White Oak brothers would be reluctant to attack for fear of harming Rodin, and Koios couldn’t let that stand.

He’d killed his own brother, and blamed Dazen.

He was crazy, but only in the implacable I-don’t-care-what-my-victory-costs-you sense. And he’d been that way before the fire.

He said, “So now, tell me, Aliviana Danavis, my new Ferrilux, do you think that I—of all people—will underestimate a Guile?”

“I see that you have very good reasons not to.”

“But you have no faith in me? You really do have the arrogance of Ferrilux, don’t you?”

That didn’t merit a response.

“Kip is easily handled,” he said. “Kip is like his father, not his grandfather. He reacts to the needs in front of him. He sees people, not numbers, not cards to play. To him, no one is disposable. He is brilliant, else I would have destroyed him already—and you’re right, I’ve tried. But the way to beat Kip remains simple: I’ll beat him with present needs and battles and victories far away from where they might matter. In terms of that game his grandfather likes so much, it doesn’t matter what card Kip pulls. He’s playing at the wrong table. And I’ll keep him there until the real game is decided.”

She hesitated, but again, she was getting worse about not speaking her mind. “That . . . eases my mind a great deal, but you’ve only established that if he stays in Dúnbheo a few more days, he can’t get here with his full army.”

“Do you want to know how delicious I find this?” the king said.

“What?” Was he even listening to her?

“We are the old gods reborn, Aliviana. We are the nightmare that has kept luxiats and magisters awake at night for a thousand years. Do you not see the irony? I tried to kill Dazen Guile—and I couldn’t! Orholam sent the Chromeria the only man who could possibly save them from me. And I couldn’t kill him, but
they
did.”

“Your Highness,” Liv said, “what if Kip comes at speed, with only his elite drafters?”

The White King’s eyes lit with the cold blue of crackling luxin. “Oh, I hope he does. Come, my dear—” He stopped, seeming to note her fury at being called his ‘dear.’ “Pardon,” the White King said. “I meant, come with me, my fierce young partner. Let me show you the real reason our temples were known as the ‘bane.’ ”

So that’s where we’re gonna die.

For the entire trip, a vast, swirling bank of clouds on the horizon had cloaked White Mist Reef like an anonymous assassin, but today Gavin’s doom stood stripped of outer garments.

In ages past, it had been said that the heavens were held from falling down onto the earth by one pillar alone, as the Prism alone held up the Chromeria.

In times past, before the swirling storms, before the mist itself, it had been said that the tent of the sky itself was upheld by one tent pole. As they now came to the Chromeria, the faithful from all over the world had once made pilgrimage to climb it. The luxiats said that only after Vician’s Sin had Orholam hidden the tower and the island, raising a reef to bar any entry to such holy ground, and raising the mist itself to hide His own connection to the earth. In grief at their disobedience and rejection of him, He’d covered His face from the world.

So the luxiats said.

Others said an isle of glass lay there, and the reef and the mist had risen after an earthquake had plunged the isle into the sea.

Even as a child, Gavin had wondered how much of either tale was true. He’d longed to come here one day to see for himself.

As a young Prism, he’d wanted to come here to confront Orholam, but he’d always wanted to live more.

He’d always assumed the descriptions he’d read of White Mist Tower must be either fanciful or poetic, describing the feelings evoked by seeing a tragically formerly holy place, rather than literal descriptions of the thing itself. The ancients were an emotional tribe, after all, as much given to hyperbole as were sailors.

White Mist Tower wasn’t literally a tower, but it did look eerily like a tower carved from blocks of white mist. Gavin squinted against the distance. As if imprisoned inside a glass shell, the clouds of the ‘tower’ spiraled in a dense circle, swirling constantly but not in accord with the prevailing wind. The outlines of that ephemeral tower were unmoved by the nautical winds, and sprawled wider than the entire island they obscured. White Mist Tower wasn’t like a tornado or waterspout. Those were diffuse, mutable, and mobile. This tower was of equal thickness from where its foot rested atop the reef itself to where its head was lost in the heavens.

Though it was still at least a day’s travel away, even from here and even on a bright sunlit day like today, the mixture of the natural and unnatural about the form was stomach-twisting. Gavin could only imagine the effect on sailors on more foreboding days, seeing a natural mist suddenly yield to that monstrosity without warning.

“Big lux storm last night,” Gunner said, coming up to Gavin at the railing. “And you, sleeping through all the rough action like my last port-girlie done, trustin’ daddy Gunner to take you safe through the storm.”

Yuck. “Lux storm?” Gavin asked instead.

“Common roun’ here.”

“They are?!” Gavin asked. “I’ve never read anything about that.”

“You Chromeriacs. If it ain’t writ down, it don’t exist for ya,” Gunner said, shaking his head. “Takes a big storm to get this good a view’a the mist tower. Purty, uh? Hope it stays this nice when we trya shoot the gap inna reef.”

But Gavin had suddenly lost interest in the enormous tower of mist far before them, or their navigational choices. “A lux storm? Really?”

“Nornj ’un. Queerest thing ya ever seen. Sheets, orange sheets. You know how folks call lots a rain ‘sheets a rain’?”

“Sure.”

“Not like that. This uz like a ribbon unfurlin’ from the skies to the depths. Gorgeous. Gorgeous, ’cept for the vijuns.”

“Visions?” Gavin asked. Gunner hadn’t woken him for
that
?

“Some says a man sees what’s in his heart out there.”

“That’s not how orange works.”

“Innit?” Gunner asked sharply. “Lots of experience with lorange ux storms, eh?”

Orange lux storms.

“No,” Gavin admitted.

“Pro’lem of rewardin’ men o’ will, like your Chromeria do. You all impose whatcha think oughta be, ignoring what
is
when it ain’t convenient.” Gunner twisted a bit of his beard and poked it between his teeth. Then sucked on it. “One little plop as the sheet first dropped, like a hard turd hittin’ a full chamber pot, then nothing except a rush. Solid connection from the seas to the heavens. Afterward, some the men swore they saw a whale.” He shrugged. “Like I said. Vijuns.”

“A whale?”

“Black whale. Immense. O’ course, I’m not sure what other color a whale would look like at night, and no one ever says, ‘Oh, take a looksie at that relatively small whale.’ ” Gunner twisted his lips. “Heard plenty of sailor stories, even when men weren’t in a hallucino-jammy—halloosina—halluxination storm. But a whale? I near whipped a man this mornin’ what wouldn’t stop goin’ on with his lies, swearin’ a black whale nudged the port quarterdeck, like a little kiss.”

What the hell? There hadn’t been whales in the Cerulean Sea in centuries. Scholars said the closing of the Everdark Gates had choked off some essential migration route, either sealing them out while they were gone or keeping them in to die.

“That’s where you sleep, innit?” Gunner asked. His cunning eyes glittered.

“Eh?” Gavin asked. He could tell the question held some kind of danger, but he had no idea why.

“Port quarterdeck’s where you fold your hands, aye?”

“What’s it matter? It didn’t happen,” Gavin said. “You said so yourself.”

“
I
know it di’n’t happen.
You
know it. But when men who oughta fookin’ hate a Guile start believin’ mythical beasties o’ the deep are paying homage to ’im, I gotta ask who
they
think you are. I esk that, and then I gotta esk myself who
you
think you are. Mebbe you been plyin’ some o’ that Guile grease, pullin the world ’round the tackle o’ yer desires, eh? Liftin’ men with the halyard o’ yer will, all tricksy like ya be. Mebbe I gotta clap ya back in chains to reminder everyone what you is?”

“I’ve said nothing to them,” Gavin said. It was almost literally true. Going on a mission like this, they were all dead men already. No need to bond with his enemies.

“Who is ya, Guile? Yestiddy you’d said you’d fight, afore your end. Whaddaya see when you look in the mirror? A fighter?”

What kind of question was that? Of course Gavin was a fighter.

“You fightin’
me
, Guile? After all what I done for ya?”

Gunner gripped Gavin’s face suddenly, his hands sharp and hard with callus and sinew. He wrenched Gavin’s chin toward himself and bored his eyes into Gavin’s.

Gavin accepted it. Maybe he only
had been
a fighter. Maybe his talk of fighting at the end yesterday wasn’t a wry boast; maybe it was an empty boast.

“O Dazen Guile,” Gunner mocked. His eyes were glittering mirrors as dark and sharp and dangerous as living black luxin. “O Master of Land Ways and Sea Ways, Man of Low Cunning and High Artifice, what are ye now?”

What. Not who.

Gunner released his chin, abruptly dismissive.

He who had flown, literally flown, in the peerless machina he’d dubbed his condor, tasting a freedom no one ever had before; he, a genius whose field of play had encompassed the sky itself—he himself was being dragged where he didn’t want to go, blackmailed, afraid, passive. He couldn’t even blame actual chains now, as he might have when he’d been a slave—

—Enslaved! It’s different!

He was crippled. Half-blind. Enslaved, yes. But enslaved, not
a slave
. His bondage had been a temporary condition, not an identity. Emperor Gavin Guile had setbacks, not losses. He was Gavin Guile, victor. Never Gavin Guile, victim.