The Burning White (87 page)

Here, finally, at its topmost height, the Tower of Heaven poked its head above the wall of white mists that had obscured the rest of it for ages. Only here, at its crown, was Gavin high enough to see out beyond the mantle of cloud cloaking both tower and island.

The rising sun, dimmed for all the timeless days he’d been here, shone brilliant, awakening the horizon with fire. White fire, to Gavin’s color-blind eyes, but the sun was beautiful yet, even stripped of its colors by a cruel god.

The thought brought him back to himself. Brought him back to threats and death and killing. He couldn’t see the sword on the opposite side of the tower’s top, hidden as it was by the rise of the stone hill that was the tower’s center—but he didn’t see anything else, either.

The summit was empty.

The pilgrimage ended in nothing.

I crossed half the world to come to God’s own house, and He’s not at home.

Probably never was.

But maybe this was an illusion, another will-casting, another test.

Gavin covered his color-blind eye and stared through the black jewel. It revealed only bleak nothingness rendered in starker tones than his natural orb saw. Brittle stone, a tower not of heaven but of lies. This temple was all façade. Men had labored for a thousand years to build this tower to the heavens, and when they reached it, they found themselves punished only with the death of their delusions and a loneliness plunging as deep as this tower was tall.

In piling up a tower to heaven, they only burrowed down exactly that deeply into hell. In the light of this open air, they’d found a darkness as great as the black cell under the Chromeria.

On the day they’d finished, there had surely been some festival, some celebration with serious prayers from serious luxiats. Together, those gathered had surely shouted to heaven, ‘We built You a house! Come and live among us, Orholam! Fulfill the promise of the ages!’

What had they done when there had been no answer?

How long had it been before scandalized luxiats, seeing their own power dissolve with other men’s beliefs, concocted some excuse for Orholam’s absence?

They’d lied then as they did now, because all their power rested on it.

It was what Gavin had always suspected, but it was like suspecting your wife had cheated, dread growing in your heart as you became more certain, but the relationship not dying until you heard the admission from your becursed-beloved’s own lips.

Gavin staggered. He fell to one knee. He clamped his eyes closed as his chest tightened and shut off his breath.

He covered the eye patch and opened only his natural eye, praying to no one, but
praying
that his wounded natural orb would see things differently. Perhaps the black stone told him bleaker news than it ought.

The darkness receded slowly from his vision like an oily film slowly sliding earthward, but even here in the beauty of a sunrise as he hadn’t seen in what felt like ages untold, the fundamental truth remained: there was nothing here.

Nothing here
meant everything Gavin had done—everything, for his whole life—was a breath exhaled into the storm. Worse, there being nothing here meant there was no nexus of magic. No nexus meant there was no nexus to kill.

That meant there was no way to save Karris.

What was Gavin to report to Grinwoody? ‘I went but there was nothing there’? Who would believe that? Before the White Mist Reef had closed off the isle, disillusioned pilgrims must have said the same thing a hundred thousand times to those who’d not made the journey, and yet the people of the satrapies had chosen to believe instead the liars who’d returned swearing they’d encountered Orholam here.

Karris would die. Gavin would, too, even if he made it home. How could Grinwoody let him live?

He had no future.

But it was worse than a mission failed, and all Gavin’s happiness stolen. It was worse than losing his life to that worm. Everything Gavin had ever done had been in the service of lies. His own, and others’.

His brother’s death, and everyone he’d murdered for the Freeing, it had all been only men wrestling for power, cloaking themselves in respectability by invoking a god who had nothing to do with any of it, because He didn’t exist.

But though broken and barely able to breathe, Gavin fought his way to his feet.

He’d knelt long enough.

So his suspicion was right, and his long-held intuition was wrong. So his first great goal would go unmet. The world was as it was. Only one thing was left for him to do.

He would pick up the sword, and he would hack at the very peak of the tower until he broke the Blinding Knife. He would carve the word ‘Lies’ into the very rock. And then, one last time, he would fly—as he hurled himself from the tower to a well-deserved death.

Kip considered lying, of course. He was still a Guile.

“My father had hidden a box in a training bag. I was kicking it when I heard something break. I was drafting, maybe all the colors at once, and I opened the bag and the cards flew out onto my skin. I . . . somehow absorbed the cards. Not on purpose. I lost consciousness and nearly died, but Teia was able to revive me. When she pried the cards off my skin, they were blank.”

“But you Viewed them,” Andross said.

“Not in any way that I could make sense of,” Kip said. “I saw them all at once. It killed me. Literally. My heart stopped. It, it felt like . . . It obliterated my mind. I couldn’t tell who I was anymore.”

“But they’re not
lost
,” Andross insisted. “You’ve the Guile memory.”

“In any meaningful sense, yes, they’re lost,” Kip said.

“ ‘In any meaningful sense’? So in some other sense they’re not. Tell me how they’re not lost. Tell me what you experienced.”

Of course it was like this. Kip had inadvertently destroyed the world’s most valuable intelligence. Of course Andross was going to go after the scraps.

So Kip started talking. What did it matter, now, with their doom coming down on their heads? Kip ended up telling him about the Great Library and the immortal or djinn or whatever Abaddon was, with his broken ankles and pistol and that cracked mask of a visage. He skipped the master cloak. That was Teia’s secret now, not Kip’s.

Andross got a funny look as Kip told him about the immortal, but if it was disbelief, clearly he decided not to challenge Kip on it right now.

That was the great joy of speaking with Andross Guile, of course: you knew everything you said would be used against you sooner or later.

“Tell me every card name you remember.”

Kip told him. It didn’t take very long. He ended by saying, “And there was even a card that may have been you. I saw a man, maybe in a ship? The Master. He was writing a letter to the Color Prince, a treasonous letter about becoming Dagnu. He was cowled, though, as you used to be. And his hands were stained crimson like a red drafter who’s gone wight.”

“Ah, that’s why you tried to assassinate me after the Battle of Ru,” Andross said.

“That is . . . not what happened. And we both know it,” Kip said.

“No, it’s not,” Andross admitted. “You remember no more of that card?”

“No. Not then or ever. One glimpse.”

Andross believed him, he could tell.

“Now, I’ve fulfilled the terms of my wager,” Kip said. “More than fulfilled them.”

“Tell me about these flashbacks you ‘sometimes’ get.”

“That wasn’t part of the deal,” Kip said.

“They’re part of the cards you destroyed, and it may be the key to saving us all, and who better to help you disentangle a puzzle than I?” Andross asked.

So Kip told him all about that, too.

Andross ended up shaking his head. “Off saving one satrapy when you could have been uncovering the mysteries of the Thousand Worlds that could save us all.”

“Perhaps,” Kip admitted, “but I’m not a man to sit idle while my people bleed.”

It caught Andross up short. He marveled at it. “An honest statement of your limitations, but without apologies nor posturing that those limits somehow make you superior to other differently gifted men. Hmm. I know men twice your age who are less comfortable with themselves.”

‘Comfortable with myself’? Kip thought that was the first time anyone had ever said
that
about him. But he supposed he had made some progress on that front in the last few years.

“You didn’t get all the new cards,” Andross said.

“Excuse me?” Kip asked.

“Gavin left the bulk of them where he hoped you would find them, but some he considered too sensitive for you.”

A shock passed through Kip, tightening his throat and turning his bowels to water. “How would you even know he did such a thing?”

“It’s what I would do. There are some things I wouldn’t want my own son to know.”

“And?” Kip asked.

“Naturally, I found them.”

“He left them for Karris, didn’t he?” Kip guessed.

Andross Guile only hesitated a moment. “Curious,” he said. “That’s the kind of thing Felia would have done. That much of an intuitive leap, so quickly.”

“Does Karris know about them?” Kip asked.

“Of course not. You don’t show the other players your hole cards, especially not literal ones.”

He flicked his gaze up to Grinwoody, who he suddenly realized was hanging on every word, as if he knew none of this. “More whiskey, calun,” Kip said.

Of course Grinwoody’s service was impeccable, silent, and swift, and emotionless. Maybe Kip should have called him by name to insult him.

“Where’s this going?” Kip asked.

Andross weighed him while Grinwoody served them both. Though he’d chosen a fast-game variant, he now gave no indication of hurry in his manner and seemed not to worry at all about the calamity bearing down upon them.

“The truth?” Andross said.

A smart-ass comment leapt to mind, but Kip the Lip clamped his jaw tight shut. Hectoring Andross wasn’t going to help anything.

Andross waved Grinwoody away. “Go, now, for a bit. Some few things are too secret even for you.”

Grinwoody retreated to stand with his back turned toward them, close enough to hear and return instantly if Andross called. Andross produced a long key, opened a locked drawer in the table, and withdrew a card box. He handed it to Kip.

Nonchalantly, Kip flipped open the box. And his heart stopped.

It was the deck he’d absorbed. The new deck Janus Borig had painted—the deck Kip had destroyed, erased.

“Not originals,” Andross said. “These cards can’t be Viewed. They’re paint and gold and parchment and lacquer only. There is no magic in them.”

“How did you . . . ?”

“Janus had enemies. She kept this deck far from her home in a place she thought was safe. She hoped that if she were killed, some future Mirror would might be able to use these to re-create her work.”

“How’d you get them?”

“Please,” Andross Guile scoffed.

“You killed her? She was too dangerous to you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t destroy what I might better use. And I had many questions for her. Some other player did that, and not necessarily even a major one.”

“Why have me describe them if you already have them all?” Kip asked.

“For one reason above all: it tells me you’re honest, that you’ll make good on a wager, even to me. I had to establish that first. Now, with that done, I believe it’s time for our second game,” Andross said. “If you win, I’ll give you Gavin’s card. The original.”

Kip’s heart seized. His father’s card?! The original? That meant he could View it.

And if it truly wasn’t retrospective, and if he used it properly, he could find where his father was now.

It was everything he’d hoped to do, simply offered by his grandfather.

But that was if he won.

If the reward for victory was so enormous, what would the cost of losing be?

“Wait,” Kip said. “Why wouldn’t you want me to View that card regardless? Don’t you want him back? What did you see when you Viewed it yourself?” Andross wasn’t a full-spectrum polychrome, but surely he would have—

“I’ve not tried.”

“You don’t want to see yourself through his eyes,” Kip said.

Andross’s eyes flashed. “My reasons are my own. Perhaps if you win, you’ll find out what they are. I don’t know. That’s what makes it such very, very good bait. I mean, such a very good wager.”

“What’s the price of defeat?” Kip asked.

A cat who’d stolen your dinner couldn’t have grinned with the mixture of malevolence and self-satisfaction that Andross showed. “You lose, and I’ll show you another card. You’ll View it for me and tell me everything you see.”

“That . . . doesn’t sound that bad,” Kip said.

“Well, then, you win, win or lose.” Andross voice was so blithely pleasant, it could have been honey and melted butter.

Which was all the evidence Kip needed that it was covering the taste of arsenic.

Andross Guile would never offer uneven stakes that were tilted toward his opponent.

Kip wanted to think, How bad can it be?

But he remembered the card The Butcher of Aghbalu. He remembered the months of nightmares he’d had from watching the massacre unfold—no, not just watching but partaking in it, over and over. What if the card was one of
those
cards?

But it was his father against that.

Did it matter now? Kip wasn’t going to be able to save him. But Karris deserved to know. The Blackguard deserved to know. Someone might help him, even if it wasn’t Kip.

“Ah, one further stipulation,” Andross said. “Whichever way the game goes, you have to View whichever card you get, and you have to answer my questions about it.”

“So you win, win or lose, too,” Kip said.

“Yes, isn’t it nice that we can play a game so mutually beneficial?”

“Why do you want me to do this?” Kip asked.

“My son has a knack for showing up at the last moment and wrecking all sorts of plans. Usually the enemy’s, but not always. Either card you View might tell us my son’s location. Should he arrive quite suddenly in the next day or so, I should like very much to make sure that I enact the correct plan for this most important Sun Day.”