The Burning White (25 page)

“He seemed quite intent about . . . about you,” Andross said, watching her carefully.

“You said that. But why?”

“He’s declared himself king. Even if he wanted to, even if he’s discovered that being a king isn’t quite the prize everyone thinks, he
can’t
submit to us now and hope to go back to the way things were before. Or so he must surely believe, with me as promachos. What guarantee could I give him that would make him trust me? He thinks I am a man of such low moral character that I have truck with assassins!”

Of course, Andross
had
—but he wasn’t going to admit to it, not even only in front of slaves. Andross was no fool. (Though perhaps he believed Karris was.)

“Believing me so low,” Andross said, “how could he trust any oath I gave him? If he believes I murdered his sister—who was guilty only of being slow to answer the Chromeria’s call for help—he must doubtless believe I would murder him, an outright traitor.”

Gee, old man, maybe if you didn’t assassinate people,
maybe
people won’t think you assassinate people.

But as soon as Karris had the thought, she realized how hypocritical it was. She was the one who’d made that job vastly more difficult by ordering Teia to assassinate the Parian satrapah as well. She was the one who’d knowingly sent a young woman—hardly more than a child—to do a job that even a master assassin might’ve botched. It was her fault in sending Teia at all that Teia had been unmasked by Ironfist. If the Nuqaba (and no one else) had simply died that night, Ironfist might never have known it was an assassination at all. He might have guessed it was some aggrieved local.

It was Karris, not just Andross, who’d turned Ironfist into an enemy.

“Thus,” Andross said as if it were merely an interesting tidbit, “as far as I can presume, the only way Ironfist thinks he can keep himself safe from me—”

“You’re really gifted at this, aren’t you?” she said.

“What?” he asked, distracted.

“Putting yourself into other people’s minds, figuring out how they think, figuring out what they know, and what they must be planning given what they know, and then using it to destroy them.”

“
Gifted!
Gifted? I’m
skilled
. People call others ‘gifted’ when they don’t want to believe they’re worse at something because they’re not willing to put in the work excellence requires. Regardless—I mean, if I have your permission to finish my thought?”

That. That was gratuitous. “By all means, please do,” she said, nearly politely.

“Actually, let me qualify that. I spoke too soon. The rest stands, but the
destroying them
part? You’re right. That’s my gift.” He flashed his eyebrows, as if it were all interesting, but tangential. “Now, where was I? Oh yes. If I guess correctly, given what he thinks he knows, Ironfist believes that the only way he can be safe from me . . .” Andross smiled, savoring the moment, “. . . is if he marries you.”

“
What?!
” Surely Karris hadn’t heard that right.

“How long has he been in love with you?”

“What, what? Never!”

“Well,” Andross said with a shrug. “Perhaps it’s solely political, then. We’ll hope it doesn’t come to it regardless. We’ll hope he shows up with fewer soldiers and ships and drafters than rumored. These numbers often do get exaggerated. And he’s a political novice, after all. We might yet outmaneuver him.”

But Karris knew Ironfist, and Ironfist knew both her and Andross.

Ironfist wouldn’t come here unless he was certain he could win. And implacable, righteous rage tends to make up for a lot of limitations.

“But if all goes poorly,” Andross said, stepping off the lift. “I guess it’s good news that you’ve accepted that Gavin’s dead. You’re a widow; your time of mourning is finished, and you’re free to remarry.”

Her mouth made an O, but no sound came out.

“After all,” Andross said, “you just told me: you’re willing to do whatever it takes to save your people, aren’t you?”

He’d set her up. Somehow.

She’d never seen it coming.

It was like that time he’d hired those men to ambush and beat her. This time he was doing it with nothing more than his words, and this time, he got to watch her take the beating.

She couldn’t muster any defense. She only looked at him, stricken as if she were down on the paving stones of that street again, taking kicks.

“You know, there’s one good thing about my son dying,” Andross said, timing his words perfectly with the closing of the lift’s doors. “He didn’t live to see you give up on him.”

“So, boss, remind me why we’re going up here?” Winsen said as they ascended a bone-white spiral ramp to the roof of the Palace of the Divines.

“Two reasons,” Kip said. “Ben really wanted to see the mechanism, and the Divines really, really didn’t want him to.”

“Good enough for me,” Big Leo said. “Why so many of us? Are we expecting a hostile reception, or you just giving the nunks a chance to fail?”

Chagrined after the assassination attempt, Cruxer had been screening prospective new members for the Mighty. Fifteen of them followed the Mighty today. Kip shrugged and said quietly, “Every day’s a new chance to fail.”

Cruxer gave him a disapproving glance.

“What I meant is,” Kip said more loudly, “if I had any idea what’s so secret about their big secret, I might have an answer to that question.”

“But you don’t, because it’s secret,” Ferkudi said, nodding.

“It’s just a big mirror, right?” Winsen asked.

“Like the
Blue Falcon
is just a boat,” Ben-hadad said.

“Well . . . it is,” Winsen said flatly.

Ben-hadad said, “You did not just say that my masterpiece, the finest skimmer ever created, is ‘just a boat.’ ”

“No, actually
you
said that,” Winsen said.

Ben-hadad paused in his limping up the stairs. He dropped his head in defeat.

“He’s got you there,” Ferkudi said loudly. “You did actually say that.”

“Helluva view, huh?” Kip said, to forestall more sniping. The Palace of the Divines was topped by its heart tree, a massive white oak whose roots were artfully (and, he assumed, magically) woven through the walls of the palace below it. To the north and south of that great tree was a narrow band of old-growth forest with smaller white oaks descending down the sides of the palace as if it were simply a steep hill. That band of forest looped back into the palace’s rear gardens.

The ramp was a white ribbon that circled the entirety of the palace, at two points of each revolution passing through that band of trees and moss and rocks, but suspended above the ground and never close enough to any of the trees to touch them.

There were interior stairs that would have taken them to the roof faster, but this looping, outside way was the more formal route, and he wanted to give the Foresters as much of his respect as possible. He didn’t know why, but only the Divines, a conn, and the Keeper of the Flame and her people were supposed ‘by ancient tradition’ to approach the heart tree atop the Palace of the Divines.

Kip was breaking that tradition, so there was no need for him to stomp on their feelings any more than necessary.

“Why aren’t you telling them the real reason?” Tisis asked him quietly.

“Those were real reasons,” Kip said, but it came out as defensive.

His wife said nothing.

“Because I’ve got a feeling it won’t work. It can’t be as simple as I think, or they’d have done a better job with their defenses already. And . . .”

“And you don’t want to fail in front of the nunks,” Tisis said.

He pursed his lips and turned to admire the view. It was breathtaking. He’d never imagined a city so filled with trees and flowers and greenery of every shade, and here as they climbed, they were able to see over the great living wood-and-leaf curtain that was Greenwall. Beyond on one side lay many leagues of undulating forest canopy and crops, and on the other was the sparkling sapphire of Loch Lána.

“They’re signing up for a job that might cost them their lives. To protect
me
,” Kip said. “I don’t want their first impression to be that they’ve made a huge mistake. That I’m not worth it.”

He glanced over at her a few moments later. She had that perfectly serene look on her face that told him she was definitely mad at him.

Finally, after one last steep section, the white walkway deposited them before an ornate gatehouse on the roof that blocked their view of most of the giant white oak.

A woman stood before the building, blocking their way.

“Please, stay back,” the brown-veiled woman said. She sounded kind, but Kip’s heart was gripped by sudden fear. Something about the Keeper of the Flame struck him as wrong.

Her voice was more full of gravel than an old haze smoker’s, but her erect carriage and lean figure spoke of a much younger woman. Her veils were bound tight against the contours of her face, with a choker high on her neck.

His own unbounded throat cut off his breath.

Luxurious braids of fire-copper hair woven and shaped with platinum thread and opals reached down her back like tongues of flame reaching down for hell instead of seeking its natural level with the æthereal fires.

Though no one used the title for her, everything about this woman shouted
priestess
to him. The pagan kind.

She raised black-gloved hands in amused surrender. “I’m happy to cooperate, but I’m not
safe
.”

Not being able to see the woman’s face bothered him. A condescending sneer would give those words different meaning than a patient smile.

She sighed, though he’d said nothing. She asked, “Do you trust these people to hold the fate of our satrapy and the entire war in their hands? Do you trust each of them not to loose secrets that might start a future war? If so, follow me.”

Kip looked over at Cruxer. The man understood instantly.

“Nunks,” the Commander said, “ Gemel-six. Forget the hinge like last time, and you’ll be doing froggers till sunset. Mighty, Alepheight. Everyone else, out.”

Some high-level lord who’d somehow tagged along didn’t move.

Cruxer turned a heavy gaze on the man.

“Surely you don’t mean me,” the man said innocently. “As the palace’s—”

“I haven’t killed a man in four days,” Cruxer said without inflection.

The apple of the lord’s throat bobbed. He seemed in sudden need of a chamber pot. He disappeared down the great ramp, nearly running.

The prospective new members Cruxer had selected for the Mighty followed, propping the door ajar at its foot and jamming a wedge into its hinges, lest it be closed and barred against them in an ambush. It left Kip and Tisis and the Mighty alone in what he now could only think of as less a gatehouse and more a temple. This wide building, whitewashed under thick branches of purple-blossoming wisteria, covered and controlled the entire approach to the enormous heart tree. The circuitous path up here now seemed less a gentle climb and more like a pilgrimage route.

The Mighty had already fanned out. Tisis stayed close to Kip, giving him room to take a wide stance himself, but near enough that Big Leo could interpose his considerable bulk between her and Kip and any threat. Ferkudi was the roamer, so no sudden assault might plan for exactly where he’d be. Ben-hadad was diagonally behind the Keeper of the Flame, where he could watch her and keep an eye on the two doors at the rear and side of the chamber. His crossbow was loaded, but pointed at the floor. Alone of the Mighty, Ben-hadad was able to maintain an amiable air despite total vigilance.

With hand signals, Cruxer put the Mighty on high alert.

This time, Kip wasn’t sure why. Was Cruxer just that attuned to Kip’s own tension, or had he noticed something explicitly that Kip was only feeling?

Winsen, who’d been scouting the back of the room, kicked a shim under one of the doors. The other swung out and had no easy way to bar it. Hand on his belt, Win opened that door and poked his head through.

“My appearance will be shocking, but I can see this will be necessary,” the Keeper said.

As had been the tradition with other ancient titles, such as the Third Eye being known only by her title and never her name, the Keeper had also sacrificed her personal name in taking up her position. It was a tradition at least as old as the Tyrean Empire, and it still saw wan reflections in modern governance—Andross was sometimes referred to simply as the Red. The difference was that he was also known as Andross Guile.

“Forgive me if I move slowly,” she said, “but I have no wish to provoke alarm.”

Kip didn’t know why his heart was gripped with fear. She’d banished all her attendants as soon as Kip arrived with his entourage, hot on the heels of Lord Appleton’s message that the Keeper was to assist Kip in every way.

So only Kip could hear what Cruxer whispered: “She’s wearing plate.” Louder, he said, “Win, bookcase.”

Plate? Under her clothes? Why?

Kip looked for it as she moved, though, and even then he could barely tell. Cruxer really was damn good at his work, and the plate was only partial. To make it less obvious that it was there, perhaps? Because surely anyone who knew you were wearing an armored tunic would simply stab you in the neck.

Assassinations weren’t so common here. Or at least, not that outsiders heard.

Maybe trading in your name made it impossible for anyone to know who wore the veil?

For that matter, how sure was Kip that this woman was the real Keeper of the Flame?

Winsen climbed up a bookcase, as if it were something people did, and then stood atop it, strung bow and spare arrows in one hand, nocked arrow and string in the other, though pointed down.

The woman took a deep breath, bracing herself. She loosened the choker that held tight the layers of veils from her brow around her face and head. The outermost veil covered even her eyes, but the inner, tighter veils had small jeweled cutouts for her eyelashes—which told Kip that she wore the veils even while with her inner circle.

Slowly, she removed her veils one at a time, doffing and folding each with careful and identical motions. She’d done this many times. So if she was an impostor, she was one regularly.