The Burning White (68 page)

“Then you know.”

“I know what?”

Quentin looked at her, and his eyes were old and gentle. “Teia, this is the most dangerous job you’ve ever done. Not physically. This is where you can come to love what you do. The power of it. The righteous vengeance. This work wounds you, but this job is where you can get dirt in the wound.”

“Like I haven’t already?” she scoffed.

“To this point, you’ve been a shield, doing what you have to do, getting battered and torn protecting those you love. Now you decide what else you are. You can torture her, if you want. You can try to make her pay for all she did to your friends and to you. You can look into her eyes and wring whatever suffering from her you desire. No one can stop you.”

“And no one should,” Teia said coldly.

“Some luxiats say even the Two Hundred may yet repent, but from what you’ve told me of her, I daresay Aglaia’s damnation is assured. What’s in question is yours.”

With a grunt, Gavin set down the great, cumbersome Lust stone he’d borne for the entire circuit around the black tower on a pedestal. Above the pedestal was a statue, and beyond the statue another locked gate. This statue was of a kneeling man with face upturned, radiant, lambent in his white marble against all the sea of black stone here. All the statues had been the same white. The weight of the stone released a boon stone wider than his hand from the statue’s grip.

“Chastity, I suppose?” Gavin asked, picking up the boon stone.

The prophet didn’t have to answer.

“I’ll be happy to give this one up to Orholam!” Gavin said.

The old man was as stone-faced as the statues, and a good deal less joyful.

“You know,” Gavin said, “to hand over Chastity, because I don’t want it?”

Orholam pursed his lips.

“Not like, give up my chastity
to
Orholam, like a sexual . . . You know what? Never mind. Just looking for a little levity, after the bludgeoning I just took with that round. You know what I mean?”

“No.”

“So tell me, O, why aren’t you pilgriming with me? Pilgriming. Pilgrimaging? Huh. I’m the head of the faith and I don’t know how people usually say it. I think I like pilgriming. Feels grim, and it’s a bitter pill, right? No? Not working with me at all here, are you? Fine. Why aren’t you pilgriming? No sins to purge? Too holy already?”

As Orholam sighed, Gavin took the Chastity boon stone and tucked it into a pocket in the pilgrim’s tunic. It was heavy, but it fit perfectly.

When Grinwoody had commissioned Gavin for this task, he’d mentioned magical locks at every level that the fleeing guardians had left to keep out drafters of each associated color. That was why Gavin, unable now to draft, was supposedly the perfect candidate to assassinate Orholam—or the magical nexus called Orholam. So far, though, Gavin had only felt a whisper of resistance as he walked through each gate, and that may have been his imagination or his dread at what the next circle would hold.

They moved farther into the landing. There was one between each circle. Here, silently, they ate salt fish and drank water while Gavin recovered. The steep chute that Gavin had seen below had an opening here, and Gavin wondered how many pilgrims failed not on each level but on the spaces between them like this, where they pondered how terrible the next one would be.

How easy was it to give up and simply escape, too afraid to confront what lay next?

“I’m journeying for you,” Orholam said finally, when Gavin had nearly forgotten his question. “If I did my own pilgrimage, I would take much less time on certain circles than you, leaving you alone. It’s even possible I might take more time on certain circles. Dimly. Wrath, for one, would not be easy on me. But I’m here to walk with you, step for step, no matter how long you take. We’re not meant to take the pilgrimage alone.”

“So no pilgrimage for you at all?” Gavin asked.

“When my business with you is finished, I’ll go back down and start my own climb.”

“I’m really delighted that you are here for
me
, but I, uh, won’t be joining you for yours. You know that, right?”

Orholam scoffed like yeah, he knew. Then he frowned.

“There’s my old Wrath again, rearing up inside,” Orholam said as if disappointed in himself.

“I piss you off that much, huh?” Gavin asked. And here he’d been being as respectful as he could manage. Wrath was going to be a tough circle for him, too.

“This is your chance to decide whether you want to be that old deceiver Gavin Guile or if you want to be a Dazen Guile made new. I know you want that. You’ve made attempts before. This is an opportunity to change, Guile. And you’ve been offered more of those than most get. Take it.”

The old prophet hunkered down with his own salt fish, turning his back on Gavin. The conversation, clearly, was finished.

Gavin sighed. Some company for his pilgrimage.

He’d mostly given up trying to understand the magic of whoever had created this tower. It had to be a highly advanced will-casting-focused magic, from the way it triggered Gavin’s memories. He’d had multiple flashbacks during every circle: the makers of this thing had weaponized his own mind against him.

This wasn’t a hike up a tower; it was a trek through everything he’d ever done wrong, everything he’d never done right. This was his every failure held up to the light and splintered into its component deadly sins through a black prism.

It was not a magic to be understood, merely one to be endured. He was gaining no new knowledge of magic, but only of himself.

How the tower’s Tyrean makers (if this wasn’t older than even their empire) had understood vice and virtue was different than what the Chro-meria taught. He’d learned, and as the Highest Luxiat, even
taught
the seven virtues as being the four worldly virtues (prudence, courage, justice, temperance) and the three heavenly ones (charity, hope, and faith).

Believers were to meditate on these virtues, and how they might embody them better, as they made the sign of the four and the three touching hand, heart, and lips. If you counted hands as a collective singular, you would count them as number three, whereas if you counted each hand in turn separately, they would count as three and four—thus symbolizing a paradox, and the connection of all the virtues (or all the vices) to one another.

Here, though ultimately the lists basically covered the same territory as the Chromeria’s, the tower’s builders had divided up the pilgrimage into Seven Contrary Virtues: Patience against Wrath, Abstinence against Gluttony, Liberality against Greed, Diligence against Sloth, Chastity against Lust, Kindness against Envy, and Humility against Pride.

Gavin hadn’t thought that Lust was going to be a difficult circle for him. After all, he’d been (unwillingly) chaste for quite a while now. Sure, he was as virile as the next two guys, but he hadn’t been
promiscuous
—especially for a Prism with all the opportunities he’d had! But the memories he’d triggered at every step had focused not on numbers of women he’d taken to his bed but mostly on how he’d treated Marissia, not only in bed but out of it.

He’d prided himself on treating Marissia very, very well for a room slave. That she hadn’t been a slave at all but was only masquerading as one was, if anything, a reason for
him
to be angry with
her
.

The tower hadn’t let him off so easily. It hadn’t cared whether she was slave or free. It triggered his own memories of how he’d treated her. They weren’t flattering.

Marissia had been, in Gavin’s careless estimation, supposed to feel only gratitude or desire toward him. That was pretty much the entire range of emotions he’d expected from her, and it was all he’d allowed her to express.

He’d seen undeniably over the years that the true range was far, far greater. He’d seen her despair, he’d seen her love for him, and her self-loathing at times, seemingly because she did love him—but he’d written them all off, as if they, and she, weren’t worthy of his attention.

It must have been torture for her. Gavin would treat her well, showering her with compliments, thanking her for how well she was running his household and managing the servants and slaves. Some days he would ask her opinion on matters of all kinds, confide in her, give her gifts, and take her to his bed and make sure she reached her pleasure rather than merely take his own. Other days he would demand she serve him sexually at a moment’s notice, pretending instant arousal and total desire—though her dryness betrayed the pretense, he’d ignored it or blamed her for it—then he’d banished her from the room as if she were no more than a rag to mop up his semen.

That’s what room slaves are for, he’d told his protesting conscience. I treat her well!

And she had endured it, while knowing she could end her torture at any moment by revealing she wasn’t a slave at all. But she had believed in her mission too much to do that. Or she’d loved him so much that she stayed, despite it all.

Or, his conscience asked, had the abuse so worn her down that she contented herself with taking the emotional scraps that fell from his table, and slowly come to believe it was all she deserved?

How long can everyone around you tell you that you’re a slave, how long can every mirror show you to be a slave, and you not believe you really are one?

He had destroyed a great woman. He’d taken the best years of her life, and told himself he was doing right by her.

And he’d known better.

Fuck me. Fuck this climb.

He rubbed his face, inadvertently brushing the eye patch. It didn’t hurt anymore. Now, if anything, that shock of sensation it sent through his whole body was pleasantly numbing.

After climbing the circles of Pride, and Envy, and Lust so far, the picture of himself that was emerging was as devastating as it was undeniable. But if this journey was supposed to be purgative, Gavin didn’t see how. Purgatives are supposed to make you puke but then feel better.

Gavin didn’t feel better, nor any more humble, kind, or chaste, only more aware of how much he wasn’t those things.

Rubbing the eye patch deeper into his eye, oily pain canceling out sharp pain for a brief moment, he stood up and walked to the edge overlooking the sea.

“What the—? Gunner’s gone!” Gavin said.

Slowly, troubled, Orholam said, “Yeah.”

Gunner had been drinking out there.

He must have gotten drunk and fallen off. There was no way he would have abandoned his big gun to the waters, no way he would have tried to swim when there were still so, so many sharks gathered from leagues around to feed on all the bodies floating in the lagoon.

When sober, Gunner was a master of timing. If he’d decided he was going to have to abandon the gun and swim, he would have waited until everything calmed in the lagoon. A few days, at the least, while the sharks sated their hunger devouring all the bloating dead.

“You told him he was going to live,” Gavin said, snarling.

“I know,” Orholam said apologetically.

God damn. And Gavin had been starting to believe that Orholam wasn’t a holy-talking charlatan, that—wherever it came from—he really did see the future sometimes, and the past.

Brushing past the old man, Gavin snarled, “What circle’s next?”

“Wrath.”

“
Perfect.
”

“How many fights do we have left in us?” Kip asked Cruxer. It seemed like a good time to ask; Tisis was on the other side of their little fleet, checking on her reserve scouts, and she didn’t like him dwelling on the death awaiting them.

The early-morning embarkation had been somber. Now they were crossing the Cerulean Sea at the maximally efficient skimmer speed: slow compared to what the craft were capable of, but preserving the lives of their drafters while still getting them to the Chromeria in two days.

Every one of the thousand drafters, two hundred Cwn y Wawr will-casters and war dogs, and one thousand elite soldiers knew they were heading for a fight for their own lives, for the future of the empire, and even for the future worship of Orholam Himself. Would the Seven Satrapies even exist, or would there be instead nine kingdoms with a high king? Would there be ten gods in this world, or One?

“Mentally we’re tough,” Cruxer said under the sound of the rushing wind. The sea was placid, the sun orange on the horizon, and the sky crystalline blue. It was one of those pristine summer mornings that made you feel that Orholam was full of joy when He created the world. “Emotionally, we all feel like we can fight forever.”

That wasn’t what Kip had meant, and they both knew it. He glanced back at the phalanxes of skimmers and sea chariots behind them. With drafters of various colors of luxin paired at the reeds of the different ships, their colors mixing as they jetted it into the water, the thousands of the Forest’s best were painting Ceres’s skin like artists each wielding a different tone, human colors rising in answer to the divine in the skies.

“Two or three hard skirmishes, maybe. One protracted battle. After that, we’ll start losing significant numbers to luxin burnout. Too many of them have been making up for their lack of skill by drafting ever greater quantities. We might even lose a few on the passage.”

“And the Mighty?” Kip asked, throat tightening. He already had his own guesses, of course. But he was trying to be dispassionate. A full year of raiding and the Battle at Dúnbheo had meant many fights to the death—and when your life is in peril today, why be careful with how much you draft so you can live another year fifteen years from now?

“The nunks are fine, of course,” Cruxer said. “Ferkudi isn’t too bad with blue, but his green is to the halos. Winsen will live forever. His yellow is barely halfway through his irises. Tisis is fine with her green. I’ve got four or five battles left in me. Ben-hadad is fine with yellow, but whenever he’s near a fight, he tries too hard to compensate for his bad leg. His green and blue both are full. It’s Big Leo who’ll probably go first. He’s straining his halos in both red and sub-red.”

“We’re insane for letting Ben-hadad even get close to a battle,” Kip said. “He’s great in a fight, but ultimately, he’s just another drafter. But outside a fight, doing what he does? The man’s a marvel. A once-in-a-generation genius. He’s the one of us who could change the world the most.”