The Burning White (106 page)

It had to be Andross here, didn’t it?

Kip squatted down beside the body and pulled back the cloak. He felt the same shock he’d felt before at seeing the dead, somehow never quite dulled, and this time sharper than ever: this face looked like a poor facsimile of Cruxer’s face. Cruxer was so much more handsome. Vibrant. Funny. Kind. His spirit had always suffused his flesh, made it continually more beautiful than . . . this cold visage.

And yet the cold visage was all that was left. He was lying on his side, and that side of his face had purpled from pooled blood.

“Sometime before midnight, I’d guess, from the bodies I’ve seen after battles,” a voice intruded. Winsen.

Kip nodded.

“I went after him,” Winsen said. “Like you told me to. Ran all over these damn islands. He didn’t take the news of Ironfist betraying the Chromeria well. He thought Ironfist was going to kill you.”

“Your young commander’s broken sword is here,” Andross said. “The blade matches Ironfist’s wound and there are grooves cut into Ironfist’s chain that match it, too. Both of their pistols had been fired.”

But Kip didn’t need the explanation. He’d known what was going to happen long before it did.

“Why a sword rather than his spear?” Kip asked. Cruxer was better with a spear.

“Easier to hide?” Winsen guessed. “Blackguards on duty last night never saw either of them. At least that’s what they say. You want to talk to them?”

“If they lied to you . . .” Kip began. They’ll lie to me, too, he meant to say, but the words were too much effort. It was the most he could do to shake his head.

Would a spear have made the difference?

Oh, Cruxer.

“This?” Winsen said. He didn’t sound moved at all. “Dying like this? For your lord? It’s what we do. It’s what we signed up for. And Cruxer loved it. He fought the best warrior in the world to a standstill. Stopped him. Saved your life. This isn’t a bad death.”

“Every death’s a bad death,” Andross said.

Kip didn’t know what to do with it, but he loved his grandfather a little bit for that. Sure, sure, dying to save someone is noble—but you’re still fucking
dead
. But this wasn’t Winsen’s fault, not really. He’d been born with very little feeling himself. When things were fraught, he jumped the wrong way sometimes. This was actually Winsen trying to comfort Kip.

Well, aren’t we all a bunch of fuck-ups?

“Have you told the rest of the Mighty?”

“I sent them messengers at the same time I sent yours,” Andross said.

Funny, Kip thought, Andross hadn’t used this opportunity to be an asshole. Maybe he was just biding his time, though.

But he couldn’t keep his attention away from the thing that had been his friend. He took a tremulous breath. He squatted down beside the man who’d put his life and honor on Kip more than once. He brushed some dirt off Cruxer’s cheek.

The softness of the gesture was a mistake. The corralled horses of his passions burst through the fences, he fell from his squat to his knees, and a single sob racked him before he could silence himself.

He flashed to anger. I need you now! You can’t abandon me here! You have not been relieved of duty, goddammit!

Then he breathed, just thought about his breath. In. Hold. Out slow. Hold.

“Breaker. Lord Guile.
Lord Guile
,” Winsen said. “There are messengers. It’s urgent, they say. Everything’s urgent today.”

Kip caught sight of his forearm. The Turtle-Bear. What could it do? What could Kip do? Suffer. Keep going. That was all that made him special.

You and me, buddy, Kip thought, looking at the tattoo. This is what we’re here to do: fight and die.

I just hoped that I’d be the first of us to go.

He stood. Cleared the tears from his eyes with calm fingers. Brushed off the wet knees of his trousers from his kneeling.

“Who do I make commander of the Mighty?” he asked Winsen, his voice level, professional.

Winsen’s mouth twisted. “They all love Ferk, but he’s too big of a goof. A commander’s gotta work with people all the time, and Ferk gets people wrong near as often as I do. Guess that cuts me out, too. Ben-hadad’s too smart, too distracted, too arrogant. Tisis could do it, but it’s an all-the-time kind of a job, and she’s got too much else to do. Can’t be any of the scrubs. That leaves Big Leo, I guess.”

“You make a good case,” Kip said. “Tell him you chose him.”

Winsen frowned. It was going to make it impossible for him to carp and complain about Big Leo’s orders all the time when the Mighty knew
he
was the one who’d picked him. Which was why Kip had done it. Winsen’s insubordination would be the biggest threat to a new commander . . . well, other than the encircling, overwhelming army.

So maybe it was all moot anyway.

Kip straightened his back. He looked over at Gill Greyling. “Thank you, for this. And convey my thanks to your people. Please take care of him?”

Gill nodded. He understood.

“I got shit to do,” Kip said, and he walked over toward the messengers.

Teia was high as a . . . Teia was high as an eagle? Teia was high—as high! Teia was . . .

Shit. Teia was giggling.

“Mmm, yith hehl funneh,” she said around the jaw cage holding her face immobile, mouth open for Sharp to work. She laughed at her garbled words. “Harf?” Sharp. “Remimd meh to hell you humfing.”

‘Hell you,’ not ‘tell you.’ That was hilarious. She laughed again.

And then the pliers were in her mouth, and she couldn’t talk at all.

And then, as the blood gushed in her mouth, she didn’t want to. She twisted her jaw just as the tooth released and wailed into the rag he hurriedly stuffed over her face. Even laudanum couldn’t make someone tearing out your tooth enjoyable.

He loosed the bolts securing the cage to her jaws. She turned her head and spat blood.

“Sharp,” she said.

Some blood dribbled a wet line down her cheek, down her neck.

“Yes?” he asked, turning away from studying her bloody, perfect tooth. “I find last words really do only tend to be worth as much as any other words, but if it’ll really make you feel better . . .”

Her head lolled. Opium really was a tell of a thing. “I just, mm, wanted to let you know, I’m going to have to kill you for that. But! Good news! You won’t have to save my dad. I’ll do that myself. But thanks. For offering. Quite decent of you. Really feel like . . . mm . . . like we could have been friends . . .”

“Me too,” Murder Sharp said. He popped her tooth in his mouth and sucked at it to get the blood off.

“If you weren’t a sick fuck, I mean.”

“Now, that’s no way to speak to—” His face scrunched. “Why’s your tooth taste like almonds?” He spat the tooth into his hand, suddenly horrified.

There was a nice, well-defined crack in the tooth, as if it had been engineered to break that way. Teia’s one little twist as it pulled away from her jaw. A last bit of white gel leaked out into his palm from that crack. He’d sucked down the rest.

“You were always looking at that tooth like a horny teen boy stealing glances of cleavage.” Teia laughed. Not that
she
had cleavage.

“You—what did you do?”

“I’m actually glad you finally took it. It’s been killing me for six months,” Teia said. There was something really important she was supposed to remember. What was it again? “Six months, worrying that damn poison tooth was going to crack and leak death into my mouth.”

Murder Sharp staggered and sagged against the door. “I can’t . . . You didn’t.”

“Oh! That was it!” Teia said. “How long’s that other poison last? The light one, lacrimae sanguinis? Does it wear off?”

“You ungrateful bitch. I would’ve . . .” Murder Sharp slid down the door. His stomach cramped, but he didn’t vomit. Not yet. Cyanide was the only poison potent enough for such a job that Karris had had access to, and it gave an ugly death.

“When’s it wear off?” she asked.

“You
shamed
me,” he said. “I shared with you. I trusted you. And this? This is . . . oohhh.” He fell over and puked noisily.

“How long’s it last?” Teia asked. “Please.”

“Stupid, stupid bitch.” He puked again.

“I’m stupid?” Teia asked. “Who’s the one who had his enemy tied up and didn’t finish the job? Who kidnapped me
twice
?”

A silly smile painted his puke-strewn face. “Stupid because . . . I never dosed you with the lacrimae sanguinis. Just the poppy. I couldn’t kill you, Teia. I couldn’ t—”

And then the convulsions began. His feet drummed against the stone floor.

It took forever, and he was incapable of speech from then on. His eyes raging at her, then rolling back in his head. His dentures had flown from his mouth and lay in a pool of vomit. He gnawed at the floor with his broken teeth, dug his fingers into it.

It was awful, and it was long, too long in her drugged stupor, before she realized she could draft paryl if she wanted to.

Unless he was lying about that. Tricking her.

He was a cunning one.

Well, she had shit to do in the next day, and she’d need paryl to do it. Might as well find out now.

She took one breath, let her fears gather in the wind in her lungs, and then blew it all out into the world. Then she flared her eyes before she took the next breath.

And didn’t die.

That was nice.

She looked at the tiniest cutting tool on Sharp’s tray and with ridiculous amounts of paryl was just barely able to lift the little thing and float it to her hand. She cut herself free of her bonds.

Then she walked over to Sharp’s desk and took out his favorite diplomatic dentures, the blindingly bright white ones.

Taking a glass of water, she gently rinsed out his mouth. He coughed weakly as some went down the wrong way. But then, in between convulsions, she put his dentures in his mouth, giving him some dignity back. As much dignity as a man dying spasming in pools of vomit can get, anyway.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “For speaking cruelly. Good night, Elijah ben-Zoheth.”

He couldn’t speak now. The light was already dimming from his eyes. She didn’t know if he heard her at all. With paryl, she squeezed his spine to stop the pain and then stopped his heart, too.

It was a mercy too long delayed.

She stood and looked down on him. There was nothing peaceful in the tension-locked corpse.

She found her split tooth and tucked it into his clenched fist.

“I feel bulletproof,” she told the dead man. “And I don’t think that’s such a good thing right now.”

For a while, she looked around the secret office, and realized that she kept forgetting what she was looking for.

“Oh!” she said suddenly, holding it up triumphantly. “The master cloak. Sharp, silly, you never even asked me about it!”

She put it on, and felt a little more herself. Then realized she was still wearing the dress Sharp had put her in. His
mother’s
dress? Yuck. And he’d undressed her to put it on her? Double yuck.

Eventually, she found her own clothes, feeling a little better when she realized that she was still wearing her own underthings. Sharp had been a sick man, but at least he wasn’t
that
kind of sick. It took her a while to get dressed. She might have dozed off for a few minutes. Or hours. She’d never used opiates before, so she wasn’t sure how long it was going to take for them to wear off.

But there was no time to wait until she was at her full strength.

She gathered up her things, and everything of Murder Sharp’s that seemed like it might be useful. Before she went, she closed his dead eyes. There was nothing tentative or overly gentle in her motions. He was just meat now.

Giving him this last kindness wasn’t for him, it was for her. He’d become a monster, but she had the seeds of the same monster in her. And there had been something in him that hadn’t been all monster; his goodness was always poking through at the oddest moments.

But she’d killed better.

Next stop, the Order of the Broken Eye’s holiday, the Feast of the Night’s Coming Triumph. Or whatever the hell it was called.

Maybe she’d be sober by then.

“Thank you for coming,” Andross said. “I know it’s been a terrible day.”

His note had politely mentioned he would withdraw all support from Kip’s martial positions tomorrow if they
didn’t
come, so here, late at night, the Mighty had gathered in Andross’s stateroom. Their moods ranged from sullen to stoic to jagged. The demands of duty could only block out so much grief.

Suspecting a trap, Tisis hadn’t come.

“Koios will attack at dawn, if he’s able,” Andross said.

“Most of the tacticians think he’ll wait. He’s only just setting up his siege,” Kip said.

“The tacticians have the tactics right, but the strategy wrong,” Andross said.

“It’d be a terrible move,” Kip said.

“No, not terrible. Simply not his strongest. If the White King can shut down our drafters—which he believes he can—then he is already vastly more powerful than we are. He doesn’t need to play it safe, surround us, lay siege, and summon his troops to exactly the right area to focus an attack. He can just attack.”

“He’s been patient elsewhere,” Kip said. “Why on this, the most important battle, would he rush headlong?” And why are you having this conversation with us, rather than with High General Danavis?

“Because he has to attack on Sun Day,” Andross said. “His sea battle with you slowed him. I’m sure he would have preferred to get here earlier and set up at his leisure. Now he has to rush in. There’s no other choice.”

“Wouldn’t he want to
not
attack on Sun Day?” Kip asked. “He’s a pagan.”

“Maybe usually. Not this time. Thumbing his nose at Orholam is worth a few thousand more dead to him,” Andross said.

“Ah,” Kip said. That made sense. Not only could Koios satisfy his personal animosity against Orholam—probably the most important reason—but he would also show the Seven Satrapies that Orholam was powerless on His holiest day, in the very center of His power.

All remaining resistance would fold after that. The old gods would have shown they were more powerful than Orholam at His greatest. Although it would make this battle more difficult, it would make reigning afterward much easier.