The Burning White (39 page)

Gill Greyling’s usually welcome voice intruded. “She’s trying to be polite. She means you’re getting fat.”

“Ahem,” said Commander Fisk. What the hell. When had he come in? “Excuse Gill. He meant soft.”

“Chubby?” asked Essel.

“Chubby?!” Karris said. “My clothes still fit!” A little less comfortably, maybe, but still.

“Flabby?” asked Buskin.

“Tubby,” suggested Vanzer.

What was this? Had
all
of them come? It was mortifying. Karris peeked from beneath her pillow. Orholam’s granite belly, there were a dozen of them.

Karris stared daggers at some new kid she didn’t even know. He swallowed. “I, uh, I hadn’t noticed any change, High Lady.”

“Hasn’t been around long enough to know how tough you used to be,” Vanzer said. “Sad.”

“Long time ago,” Essel said.

“Weren’t they calling her the Iron White? More like the Hungry White,” Gill said.

“You can’ t—you can’t talk to me that way,” Karris said plaintively.

“Bet she can’t even do five pull-ups these days,” Samite said.

“Excuse me!?” Karris sat bolt upright. She’d once matched the women’s record for most pull-ups.

Half an hour later, she’d done those five pull-ups. Barely. And knew she was going to pay for it for days. And pay for everything else, too, training with the Blackguards. It was all coming back fast, though, and she realized how much she needed it. The clarity it brought.

In her time as White, she’d come to think of the hours spent training as hours lost—but now, again, she realized she accomplished more in the hours she still had than if she’d only worked.

Now, in the dawn’s light, she sweated at the rear of a line of Blackguards, doing an advanced form. Standing on her left foot, she snapped out a side kick, sharp and crisp, holding her balance as she then spun and slapped her right elbow into her left hand, exactly at the moment fifty other Blackguards did. Kick, land on the opposite foot, kick again.

She wasn’t a mind, housed in a body; she was body and mind united.

Dammit. How had she forgotten?

Her Blackguards loved her. They saw her. She didn’t know exactly what she needed to do, but she knew she needed to fight for them. She needed to be worthy of these magnificent men and women.

The thought carried her through the rest of the morning’s duties. She’d been elevated not to be honored but in order to serve. So this afternoon, she’d buried her reason for walking down this hallway amid a half dozen other tasks that took her to half of the towers of the Chromeria and even belowground, making numerous stops as if they were spur-of-the-moment decisions to check in on old friends, even to minister to an elderly luxiat who’d broken her wrist in a fall. All of it had been to bring her to this door, flanked by the new, short, and burly Blackguard who’d just been assigned to her detail, a kid named Amzîn.

Because she didn’t know him, she didn’t trust him. It had almost made her abandon her plan. To keep secrets, she had to trust no one, had to make today’s stops seem casual. And she couldn’t do that while checking the guard roster or requesting someone she knew.

Still, it put her alone, with a stranger. The young man who was supposed to be protecting her could well be a spy for the Order of the Broken Eye.

She could just go by this door. Pass it off as nothing. A whim.

In one of the stranger perquisites of her office, this little room was technically hers, albeit low in the bowels of the green tower, and thus much too far away from her apartments for her to use frequently as a second office or library. In her time as a Blackguard, she’d learned that previous Whites had sometimes used this second room as a discreet place for assignations. Karris was using it to tuck her own little secret away from sight.

“Do you want me to open the door, High Mistress?” Amzîn asked.

O sweet Orholam. He was just a kid! Built like a stump and as plain as the day was long, Amzîn had an incongruously high tenor voice. Seemed embarrassed about it, now that Karris had let her surprise at it show.

She owned everything in the room before her, including the person, so she had every right to go straight in.

“Knock, please,” she said instead. It was a weird situation already; she didn’t need to make it weirder.

Amzîn knocked too hard and rattled the door on its hinges. He actually flinched. Apparently didn’t know his own strength.

Karris pretended not to notice.

“Please don’t knock my door down!” a young man shouted from within. “It’s unlocked!”

“Apologies, High Mistress,” Amzîn mumbled.

Karris waved it away.

They stood for a moment longer, then Amzîn suddenly realized that by his training, he was supposed to open the door and go in first to assess the room for threats, and instead he was standing around. He blurted out, “Oh, shit!” and shoved the door open.

It slammed into the slight young man who’d come to open the door, and knocked him head over heels sprawling into the room.

Amzîn froze momentarily, but then checked the room like a professional.

Then he apologized profusely to the young luxiat in golden robes and many chains, who had only risen, wobbly, as far as his knees.

Quentin waved away Amzîn’s proffered hand. “No, no, actually thank you. You’ve saved me all the effort of getting down gracefully in all this regalia.” Facing Karris, Quentin lay himself prostrate, stretching out his hands toward her feet. “High Lady. Gracious One. Beloved Mistress. How may I serve you?”

“Please stand,” Karris said. “I mean, if you can, under the weight of all that.”

The wide Blackguard offered his hand again, but Quentin flinched. “Err, no . . . no, thank you.”

“Amzîn?” Karris asked.

“High Lady?”

“First day solo?”

“Yes, High Lady,” he said, pained. A Blackguard was supposed to be well-nigh invisible to his wards, and he was failing. Horribly.

“Why don’t you take position out in the hallway? I think the threats to my health and well-being are much more likely to be out there . . . if you are.”

He seemed at first relieved, and then at the whipcrack of the last words, stung. His face went from wounded to stoic quickly, though, give him that.

Karris wanted to be forgiving, but she’d been a Blackguard. Second-best wasn’t good enough, and if this kid couldn’t get better fast, she was going to be riding the watch captains for their bad judgment in promoting him.

Besides, she wasn’t going to get close to another Blackguard kid. She’d probably just have to kill him in the end, like she had Gavin Greyling.

He slipped out quietly and professionally.

Orholam damn this war. With all the drafting she was requiring of everyone, Karris was going to be killing a lot of Gavin Greylings before the year was out.

“Seems like a lot more chains than when we last spoke,” Karris said. She had much of the story already from others, which was good, because Quentin’s modesty kept him from giving her the full truth.

“My spiritual director told me I can’t sell them all,” Quentin said. “If I’m to be your scourge of the luxiats, they should see both their wealth and the loss of it. At least until it seems like it’s becoming a contest.”

“How’s that?” Karris asked.

He unfolded the tale succinctly. Ever since Karris had spared his life, recognizing his contrition at what he’d done was real, Quentin had taken on a unique position. She’d made him a slave—her slave—but required him to dress always in gold finery. It was both a personal penance for his own ambition and intended to be a corporate penance for all the luxiats who’d forgotten who they were supposed to be serving.

Quentin was hated and reviled by many of the luxiats, but no one dared physically harm him—as far as Karris knew at least—because he was Karris’s property, and they feared her. As well they should. But even if they hadn’t used fists, Karris was certain many luxiats had used their words to hurt Quentin.

He’d taken every abuse and accepted it.

Soon, guilt-stricken by their own cruelty, some young luxiats had come to beg his forgiveness, and ended up confessing much more. With his intellectual gifts and deep study, the old Quentin had once been on track to becoming High Luxiat. Now he was a slave. As he listened, he condemned no one who came to him, and he seemed to be able to understand everyone, from high to low. He was a convicted murderer, but oddly also the most devout luxiat they knew.

Among the young luxiats at least, he’d become an important figure.

He thought he was merely an oddity, like a good-luck charm to them, but Karris knew he was becoming more than that. The young luxiats gave him alms.

And then, as Quentin’s new reputation spread, so, too, did strangers.

It made him enemies among the older luxiats, who’d hated him already for rubbing their own shortcomings in their faces and now hated him more for being so apparently righteous, and admired (a convicted murderer, admired!) on top of it all.

Which now helped her understand what he meant about the donated jewelry he wore becoming a contest. As luxiats or lords gave to him, and saw their piece soon thereafter being worn, they might feel proud of it, but soon it would be gone—sold for another’s bread. His wearing of it was to be a reminder that they didn’t own it any longer, and if that stung, then good. If they gave without feeling a pinch, how did that help them learn to sacrifice? His no longer wearing it would be a further sign of how Orholam gives gifts, not that they may be hoarded but that they may be used. If that pained them, too, then that was good as well.

If, on the other hand, seeing him wear their jewelry started to give lords bragging rights, he would stop, and that could pain them, too.

He continued his studies—Karris had ordered him to do that, mainly so that he must always be among the luxiats—but he also volunteered in the worst precincts of Big Jasper, where he worked at charity hospitals and fed the poor, often helping in the sculleries himself. He’d been beaten and robbed several times—the gold clothing was the sign of an easy and lucrative mark. Once he’d been hit so hard he’d lost his hearing in one ear.

But he had no fear whatsoever, nor would he countenance stopping his work.

Of all people, white-bearded High Luxiat Amazzal had put a stop to the muggings. Karris’s agents had reported that the old man had gone into Overhill himself, in plain clothing nearly as old as he was. He’d shown some toughs something (her agent couldn’t see what) that made them very nervous. Then old High Luxiat Amazzal was taken to a building where some very powerful people with illegal interests were reputed to spend time gambling together. After half an hour, he left.

She got a note the next day from Amazzal: “Certain wayward sheep from my old flock have contacted me. They’ve noticed young Quentin’s good works and wish them to continue. They tell me that henceforth, as well as they are able, he will be protected.”

It was an odd construction—like it was their idea, not his. Like he hadn’t paid for it with some kind of coin or another. But he hadn’t been summoned by them, Karris was sure of that. She’d deployed a dozen spies on Amazzal, searching his offices, delving into his finances, following him everywhere he went, intercepting his correspondence and looking for codes, and noting every book he touched in case it was being used as a cipher key. Amazzal had been one of her prime candidates for being the Old Man of the Desert, the head of the Order of the Broken Eye.

Instead, his only secrets appeared to be secretly doing good works and depleting his own family fortunes at a rate that suggested he hoped to die without so much as a danar to his name. Though Amazzal looked the part perfectly, with his flowing beard and imposing voice, he wasn’t a great High Luxiat.

But it looked more and more like he was a
good
one.

Nice as it was to find out that some men who appeared to be good actually were good, it also meant that in surveilling him, Karris had wasted time and resources.

She was running out of both.

“I’ve something very hard to ask of you,” she said.

“I’m your slave, by law and by choice. You needn’t
ask
,” Quentin said.

Damn he was a weird kid.

“It’ll be difficult and dangerous. It would put you in the company of a hardened murderer.”

“I’m a murderer myself,” he said.

Not a hardened one. “Any misstep could mean your death, and others’. It may be too hard for you.”

“It won’t be more than I can handle.”

“You trust me too much,” Karris said.

He laughed suddenly. “I don’t trust you at all!”

She stepped back, offended. She was the White. And Quentin’s owner.

“I’ve offended you. I’m sorry,” he said. “But you misunderstand. I mean I don’t place the locus of my trust in you or on your judgment, but in Orholam alone. You needn’t take on His burden. Being the White would be too much for anyone to bear alone!”

She got it then, though he was so intelligent that he forgot that others weren’t as quick as he was. He didn’t need to trust
her
, because he trusted Orholam, who had put her in her position. Her choices mattered . . . but also
didn’t
in some way that somehow made sense to luxiats, but never quite had to Karris.

Holy people can be so exhausting.

Well, she deserved whatever trouble Quentin gave her for what she was going to do to him. She said, “I’m sending you to someone who’s killed a lot of innocent people—I don’t know, twenty, twenty-five? All dead at my behest.”

Quentin blanched. “You’ve ordered twenty murders?”

“I’ve ordered my agent to do what was necessary to accomplish what had to be done.”

“To what end?” His voice, not low to start with, pitched squeaky.

To what end? It was the kind of archaic phrasing you’d hear from a kid who’d grown up with a wide variety of friends: friends writ on papyrus, friends writ on sheepskin, and friends writ on wood pulp—but not many of flesh and blood.

Karris said, “I want you to be her handler.”

“Her—what? A handler? Me?”

“But I want you to do something harder than that. I want you to be her friend. Orholam’s told me that you both need one, desperately.” Almost as much as I do.