The Burning White (29 page)

Orholam cleared his throat. “Most of the bane form here, and spin out through the sea. The dark ones devour the bane. Generally when the crystals are small and harmless. The bane only become truly dangerous when wights find them, because the bane can be used to amplify wights’ powers. But when the bane are small, they’re just food for the dark ones, forming constantly—just a consequence of magic in our world. Even a Prism balancing only minimizes how many appear. So in certain ways, this is your fault, too, Guile.”

“Mine?!”

“See! I told you this wasn’t on me!” Gunner said.

Orholam said, “With you balancing in truth, there were fewer bane, so the sea—err, so the dark ones had to go swim far from here to find other food. With them all feeding at the far corners of the seas, their net was spread too thin here to catch the sudden surge of bane that erupted once you so suddenly stopped balancing.”

“So it’s kind of
both
of our faults?” Gavin asked. “How do you know all this?”

“I’m a prophet. Knowing is what we do. It’s not all about the future. In a world like ours, it’s just as often about the past.”

“Fine, then, no answer is fine,” Gavin said. Maybe Orholam had been some kind of historian before he’d been captured and press-ganged, chained to his oar. Maybe he’d once had access to books Gavin had never known. “What was that about ‘the needed nine’?”

“Can you cut me loose yet?” Orholam asked. “It would be so much easier—”

“No!” Gunner growled.

“Nine of the dark ones survived into our era. Nine were enough to devour all the bane that formed. On the day Uluch Assan killed the ninth, Dazen Guile’s gift awoke.”

“My gift? Drafting black, you mean.”

“I’m not going to be more specific.”

“But you know.”

“Oh yes. I kept misunderstanding what I needed to do and say here until Orholam revealed it all to me. But you don’t deserve the same treatment. You haven’t acted with the same obedience I have. You’ve distanced yourself from the truth, so the distance between you and the truth is your fault, not mine. Regardless, one might say, in a way, everything here—the war, the False Prism’s War, all the death and misery and destruction—was one man’s fault.”

He called it the ‘False Prism’s War’ rather than the Prisms’ War. Fuck you, Orholam. “I’m tired of taking the blame for everything,” Gavin said.

“He warn’t talking ’bout you,” Gunner said. There was a weariness in his voice.

“There was a tenuous, oh so tenuous, balance, but one that had stood for four centuries,” Orholam said. “Others kicked out other legs of the stool, but you, Gunner, you kicked out the leg that made it all fall. That’s why you get to be here now. You wanted the ultimate test for your gifts? It’s coming. You want to be a legend? Maybe that, too. But your Name in history depends on what he does.” He waggled a finger, but his arm was tied to the barrel, so it wasn’t clear where he was pointing.

“Me?” Gavin asked. “Gunner’s legend depends on me?”

“As does my own life.”

“Your life?”

“Yes, but I’ve given up on that. Doesn’t matter. You’re not that man, Gavin Guile. What does matter is that if you don’t succeed, Gunner will die out here.”

“I thought you said I live!” Gunner protested.

“
Today
. But if Gavin—well,
this
Gavin, since one is supposed to be very careful with words when giving prophecy—if this man here fails, you’ll eventually despair, drink seawater, and try to swim home. I think you drown while fighting sharks. Regardless, they eat you before or after you drown or a little of you before you drown—your left foot?—and then the rest of you after.”

“Do I put up a good fight?” Gunner asked. He was standing delicately on his right foot as if the deck were covered in broken glass and he didn’t want to put down his left foot. He made little fists with his toes.

Orholam twisted his mouth, a man trapped between his morality and his mortality. “For a man who’s cooked in the sun for days without shelter and drunk seawater . . . you certainly, uh, give it your all.”

“All of ’em are here?” Gunner asked.

“All eight,” Orholam said.

“Do I kill any afore they get me?” Gunner asked.

“You don’t kill any of the dark ones, and they don’t get you,” Orholam said.

Gavin expected Gunner to rage at that, but he got very quiet instead. He removed the match cord from the linstock. Stubbed it out on the great cannon, then buffed out the black smear with his coat sleeve.

“He’s a beaut, ain’t he?” Gunner said. “Makes me almost want to turn pirateer again, just to get the chance to try him in battle. Curved shots? Hell, he’s got two dozen other tricks that are even better. I sailed out a few leagues from the Jaspers and popped off as many shots as I could for weeks, getting my mastery up. I can make a Compelling Argument myself, alone, on a mere count to fifty-seven. Four of that aim time. See that tank over there, Guile? Water. Pump that up afore battle, puts it under pressure. Every ten shots, Compie gets too hot. Spray that water inside and out, then that lever tilts the whole boy up to drain—whole thing! counterweighted so’s I can do it myself—swab, tilt him back, and go on as afore. Adds only a fifteen count to the process. With the right crew and materiel, he can fire all day without getting overhot or cracking.”

“He’s really something,” Gavin said, puzzled.

“Man’d be crazy to lie what you just told me,” Gunner told Orholam. “So I think you’re not just honest, you’re brave. That deserves rewardin’.”

He cut Orholam free.

Perhaps wisely, Orholam kept his mouth shut now, even as he rubbed feeling back into his legs and arms.

“White Mist Reef ain’t like the Everdark Gates,” Gunner said. “Men have shot the Gates afore. There are ways through. You need luck and a chart and a great crew, but it can be done. It’s special, sure, but not legendary. But no one’s made it through White Mist Reef. At least, none who’ve also made it back. No one. I thought if anyone could do it, it’d be you an’ me, Guile.”

“I suppose it would,” Gavin said, uncertain where this was going.

“Magnificent critter, she was. We named her Ceres, said the whole sea must be hers. She followed us half a week while Captain scouted the reef, and seemed well-nigh content to hold back, until we tried to shoot the gap. Then she boiled the seas with her fury. We’d been expectin’ it. Plan was to distract her with the shock and sounds of the rafts blowin’ up in the waters ’round us. The gun captain was a fool, though. Didn’t set the fuses right. Got the timing wrong. Wouldn’t listen when I told him. So when it all went to shit, I pushed him out a gunport and took charge. I walked our shots right in a line to the last raft, heavy-loaded with black powder. Six hundred paces out. My timin’ never been so good. Ceres came up from beneath and just as she lifted that raft up inta the air in her jaws . . . My shot hit the barrels of black powder.

“For half a minute, I felt like a god. Everyone cheered. And then I felt ashamed. I watched that great beauty bubble and bleed and sink with her jaws all blown four directions, and the other dark ones stopped their circlin’ and came fast to their dead sister. They tried to prop her up in the water. I swear, they grieved. And I knew then that what I done was wrong. I knew I was acurst. Been runnin’ from Ceres’s vengeance ever since.”

“Why did you come back?” Gavin asked.

“A man gets tired a runnin’, Guile.”

Gunner disappeared then, and left Gavin and Orholam bewildered on the forecastle. “It’s not a death sentence,” Orholam said. “Well, not necessarily.”

“Shut up,” Gavin said.

Gunner reappeared. He tossed the Blinding Knife to Gavin. Orholam immediately began helping Gavin tie the long blade to his back with the very ropes he’d been bound with moments before. Gavin didn’t even think to ask why.

“Well, look at that,” Gunner said. Inexplicably, his bright mood had returned.

“Land ho!” a voice called from the crow’s nest. The sailor hadn’t even fully climbed the rigging to get in the nest, the clouds had parted so suddenly.

It was a bright spring day.

The sound of the surf rushing through the teeth of the coral came to them.

“Behold,” Orholam said. “White Mist Reef.”

“We go down fighting,” Gunner announced.

“ ‘Old age hath yet his honor and his toil’?” Gavin quoted.

“Old farts always did like them lines,” Gunner said. “ ‘Though much is taken, naught abides.’ ”

“I don’t think that’s how that—”

A shout rang out from the crow’s nest: “Creature, hie!”

“Critter? What critter?!” Pansy called from the wheel.

Gunner and Gavin cursed in concert.

“Reef ho!” the lookout shouted. “And . . . a spout? A spout! It’s a whale! A great black whale!”

“Aha!” Gunner said. He danced in a little circle, then waggled a finger in front of Orholam’s face. “So much for that, eh? Sunk by a sea demon? Everyone knows whales and the dark ones won’t tolerate each other—hair goat, a whale here means there can’t be no—”

“More whales! A full pod, sir!” the lookout cried.

Gunner laughed aloud, delighted. It was an infectious sound. “A pod! That means they’ve driven away the—”

“No. Wait.” The lookout’s voice dropped so low Gavin could barely hear it. “No, that’s not possible.”

“Report!” Gunner shouted. “Damn your poxy orbs! Report!”

“Sea demons! Three—maybe four sea demons. Closing on the whale, fast.”

The news settled on the crew like a burial shroud.

“Permission to go unchain the oar slaves, Captain?” Orholam asked, breaking the silence. He muttered. “They won’t stop rowing, I can promise you that.”

Gunner didn’t answer him, still stunned by the news.

Orholam said quietly, “They all die regardless, but it’ll give ’em hope. It’s no small thing to give a man facing his doom.”

“Permission denied,” Gunner said, snapping back into action. “You!” he shouted at a man. “Get me a pack. Stuffed with rations and water and brandy. Much as you can carry. Get back soonest. Gun crews! Stations! Gunports open!”

The rattle of commands didn’t stop. The reef was beyond the battle unfolding before them, and the wind was suddenly hard in their sails.

Gunner spared Gavin and Orholam a single look, if only to usher them off to one side as his gun crew came onto the foredeck. “Looks like you get to see a Compelling Argument for your own selfs, after all!” He patted the cannon and winked at them, his black mood unaccountably vanished.

“Some of us survive?” Gavin asked Orholam. Of course, it was superstitious nonsense, prophecy. Of course it was.

But when his fate flies from his own hands, a man takes comfort where he can.

“Oh, aye, some of us,” Orholam said. “Gods have always been fond of prophets and madmen.”

“And emperors?” Gavin suggested.

Orholam said, “I don’t see any of those here.”

“You strike me as decent and fundamentally honest,” Kip said, staring not at the Keeper but at the mechanism filling the great white oak tree towering above them.

“Thank you,” the Keeper of the Flame said.

“Fundamentally honest, but you’re not being honest now,” Kip said, as if merely clarifying.

He pretended to ignore her, examining the Great Mirror. He’d never seen such an odd collision of materials. Nested metal frames on three axes were supported by limbs that had obviously been grown for the task, and the foliage itself had been husbanded so as to leave gaps for the light to come in and go out.

Kip had held suspicions that some things in the natural world were shaped by luxin as much as human drafters were. The extinct atasifusta trees were the most obvious candidates, but sea demons were said to be deeply entwined with magic, too, and his Night Mares said there was a special feel to giant elk, giant grizzlies, giant javelinas, and certain other animals. Certainly this tree was larger than any white oak he’d ever heard of.

She spoke up. “Perhaps you misread my discomfort. This entire area is virtually aglow with chi. Unless you and all your friends wish to get the same cancers that are killing me, we must keep this very brief.”

The Keeper was once more ensconced in her golden armor and veils, so Kip was studying her more covertly: heeding her vocal inflections, her stance, where her feet pointed, her crossed arms, her chin tucked as if he’d go for her throat. For all that she’d said she would answer their questions, she had secrets here she was protecting.

“You’ve survived ten years of working with chi constantly. Are we to be fearful of dying after a quarter hour?” Kip asked.

“Chi is as unpredictable as a mad old bull, my lord. It’s wisest to stay out of the corral.”

Around him, the Mighty shuffled uneasily amid the verdant low underbrush of the old-growth forest here so oddly atop a palace, complete with mossy boulders and fallen tree limbs dissolving into the ground to feed mushrooms.

On a sudden hunch, Kip tightened his eyes all the way to chi. “That’s why you wear the armor,” he said. “That’s what you meant when you said you’re not safe.”

The Keeper’s body itself had become so infused with chi that it emanated chi. She had become a living lantern of lethal light. That was the reason for the heavy armor she wore—not to keep attacks
out
but to keep them
in
.

No wonder she didn’t want anyone to stand close. No wonder others feared her so. No wonder the Chromeria feared chi and its drafters. Like paryl drafters, chi drafters could kill invisibly, but unlike their paryl counterparts, they did so unwittingly, unknowably, uncontrollably.

“That’s correct,” she said stiffly.

“You may have given us a cancer already,” Kip said.

“Yes.” Bitterness leaked through her clipped tones. It wasn’t enough that she was dying, disfigured, and in pain, but she must be avoided by even caretakers, worse than a leper.

Kip didn’t fight the sudden wave of fear that pushed through him, but neither did he step farther away. He looked for the seed of compassion he’d felt for her instead. He took a slow breath, choosing to see her as a brave and noble woman while ignoring himself. “You’re a good person, strong and brave,” Kip said, “ so—”