The Burning White (96 page)

And now it was going to bring them all to ruin.

Kip looked around the open top of the Prism’s Tower and tried to enjoy the sunshine, tried to breathe. It was a beautiful day, and the view was peerless, but he couldn’t help but look to the horizon, as if the White King’s armada would appear at any moment. He went to the edge, where the great cables he and the Mighty had once slid down to safety had been repaired and once again concealed.

It actually might be a good way to get messengers from the Chromeria out to every corner of the Jaspers as quickly as possible. They had signal mirrors for many messages, but he’d have to mention the option to Corvan.

Kip sighed. He was just trying to take his mind off the tightness in his chest.

Big Leo was standing watch, impassive, and it reminded Kip of the last time they’d been alone.

What had Big Leo said to him? That every time he tried to be someone else, he failed, and when he was only himself, he succeeded?

Kip looked down at his arm. I’m not Gavin Guile. I’m not Andross Guile. I’m the fucking Turtle-Bear.

He had to figure out the Mirrors himself.

That would have been a lot more comforting if he’d figured out anything at all, but even finding the mechanism on the roof by which Prisms balanced had taken him an embarrassingly long time. A multifaceted crystal hung there, and one could address it standing, or actually strap into a raised frame.

Huh, that was strange.

Kip eventually figured out the leather belts and the locks and strapped himself in. He released the pins, and the huge crystal swung down hard toward his face. He jerked back against the belt with a squawk as it banged to a stop a thumb’s breadth from his forehead.

“You all right there?” Big Leo asked sardonically.

Kip cleared his throat. “C’mon, that didn’t make you nervous at all?”

Big Leo just stared at him.

“As you were,” Kip said.

Tentatively, he rested his face against the crystal. He could see through the lowest clear layers as the rest pressed against his skin. He reached his will into it.

Nothing. No, not quite nothing. It felt like he’d put on a yoke that hadn’t been hitched to a plow. The leads were there, just untethered.

“Get me out of here,” he told Big Leo.

“That was quick,” Big Leo said.

“Well, I am a genius of magic,” Kip said.

Big Leo looked at him flatly. “But seriously.”

“We need to go downstairs,” Kip said. At least, that’s where he hoped the answers were. “I’m blaming this all on you if it doesn’t work.”

“Mmm-hmm,” Big Leo said.

Wiseass.

They made their way past checkpoints again. On the way up, they’d been staffed by Blackguards Kip and Big Leo hardly had known. But apparently they’d gone and gotten others.

Their welcome was warmer than Kip had expected. The Lightguards had had all the time in the world to paint Kip and the Mighty as murderous traitors. At the very least, the Mighty had left the Blackguard at a time when they’d really needed good people.

Instead, he saw Gill Greyling waiting for them.

“Gill!” Kip said. “They made you a trainer? Those poor nunks!”

The man flashed a huge smile. “I get along with the slow and clumsy.” Kip laughed as they embraced.

“Where’s Gav?” Kip asked.

He felt it instantly. Every face fell.

“No!” Kip said. But he saw the truth of it on Gill’s face. “How?”

“We’d been out looking for your father. Gav had been pushing it for a while, drafting too much. We got ambushed by some wights. He saved two of his brothers in the fighting, but blew his halos.”

“He make it back here?”

“Yeah. The White herself took care of him for the end.”

Kip muttered a curse.

“You should go see her, Lord Guile,” Gill said. He called him Lord Guile, not Breaker.

“Yeah, I know,” Kip said. He supposed Gill thought Breaker was his Blackguard name, and though it was forgivable under the circumstances, Kip had still abandoned the Blackguard.

“Promise me.”

Kip squirmed. It wasn’t like Gill not to let things go. “Look, we didn’t leave things so—”

“She’s got one son she can’t abide and one that she loves but drove away. Promise me.”

“I’m not really her
son
. She made that very clear—”

“Gav spent his dying breaths making her see what kind of a cockroach Zymun is. She gets it now. But if you make my brother’s sacrifice moot, you’re turning your back on us. Or have you already done that?”

Kip swore under his breath. “Come on! Don’t be—fine! I’ll do it. I gotta go handle some trivial life-and-death stuff first. Let’s do this again, though. It was fun.”

He pushed through them, but stopped before the lift and turned. He cursed again. “Gill. Trainer. I’m sorry. About . . .”

“I know,” Gill said.

Moments later, Kip and Big Leo stepped off the lift at the tall, wide-open level that housed all the tower’s mirrors. Dozens of mirror slaves were hard at work prepping for Sun Day. It was the biggest day of the year for them. Not only were there all the festivities and parades to prepare for, many of which required special lenses and tight coordination, but they went on all day long, on the day of the year with the most intense sunlight.

Mistakes in coordinating the mirrors not only were deemed harbingers of bad luck, but they could also send errant burning hot rays into the crowds of pilgrims. Small smudges on the mirrors could turn them into a smoking ruin. Untrained or sick staff could fall to their deaths with the rigors of the long, long day. Thus, today was filled with everything from checking the health of the slaves here and on the Thousand Stars throughout the Jaspers, to checking and filling the cleaning solutions for the mirrors themselves, to drilling the star-keepers on hitting their sequences during the parades.

Kip had served with the mirror slaves before; it was a favorite punishment for nunks, and the slaves had laughed at the nunks’ sweating and bumbling, saying that day was nothing compared to Sun Day.

There were no nunks here now. Kip figured they’d probably just get in the way. He started looking around for the slaves’ overseer, but couldn’t see one immediately. That was odd. Usually the overseers made a real effort to distinguish themselves above their fellows.

“I see how, I just don’t understand why, Overseer Amadis,” a boy said.

Kip homed in on the conversation and wove through the workers to the east side of the tower. The boy who’d spoken was watching as an older man swung a mirror from one position to another. But the mirror he was swinging was blackened, melted.

“Because we’ve got no backup mirrors. We use what we’ve got,” the old man said.

“Why not take it out altogether?”

Overseer Amadis looked up at Kip. “My lord, will you give me one moment to deal with this?”

“Of course.”

He turned back to the boy. “Because it’s the counterweight to Valor’s mirror. We’ve got two hundred twenty-seven position changes tomorrow, and without this mirror in place, that bolt in the frame may snap.”

“But why do I have to clean it? It’s
melted
!” the boy asked, but then his head dropped. “My pardons, Overseer.”

A female slave nearby who was scrubbing the floor on hands and knees shook her head. “Little Alvaro doesn’t want to work. Thinks he’s too good for it. Surprise, surprise.”

“Because if you keep it clean,” the overseer said, “maybe it’ll make it through the day without shattering. It’s brittle as is. And because everyone else needs to clean theirs. Letting your mirror get dirty is the worst thing we keepers can possibly do, isn’t it, Ysabel?” the overseer said, turning to the sneering woman scrubbing the floor.

She turned back to her labors, muttering.

Kip looked from her to the blackened mirror. Clearly there was some story there, but it didn’t have anything to do with him.

“Alvaro,” Amadis said, “son, you’re only just coming out from under the cloud of suspicion she put on you. You serve well tomorrow, and you get moved to a rotation on the real mirrors. If you loaf because it doesn’t seem to matter to you . . . You’re a smart kid. You want them to look at you like you looked at Ysabel a year ago?”

The boy shook his head with a fair facsimile of humility, accepting his correction.

“Sorry about that,” Amadis said. “These two should not be kept together, but we make do, like everyone. How may I help you, my lord?”

“I’m afraid I’m going to throw a wrench into your plans,” Kip told Overseer Amadis. “But it’s for something more important than Sun Day, I promise.”

Unsurprisingly, the overseer was less than delighted at what Kip wanted. There were things a slave—even an exalted one—couldn’t promise. Every warden would have to be summoned to sign over control of the mirror towers in their neighborhoods. Orders would have to be cleared with the appropriate authorities. The luxiats in charge of the Sun Day parades would have to confer.

Kip understood immediately, likely more than Amadis did.

This man didn’t have the power to say yes. He wasn’t an arrogant ass jealous of his small bubble of authority, but he served those who were. No one wanted to be held responsible for saying yes, so everything would go as slowly as possible. The luxiats in charge of the parades would confer, then decide they couldn’t approve such a thing themselves, and summon a High Luxiat. He’d be briefed at length, then deliberate. Then he’d decide he couldn’t decide himself, and so on until Sun Day of next year had passed.

“At long last,” Kip said to Big Leo, “it turns out my time getting stonewalled in Dúnbheo was valuable for something after all.”

Big Leo grunted and stretched against the massive chain he wore draped around his neck. It actually made a few slaves stop what they were doing. He didn’t ask Kip to explain, though. Sometimes, he was at least as difficult in his own laconic way as Winsen.

Kip said, “Overseer Amadis, you have access to messengers, right? Good. Send urgent messages directly to the High Luxiats and High Lord Black and the luxiats in charge of the parades and the wardens that Lord Kip Guile requires—well, all the things I’ve asked for, you parse them out appropriately to the appropriate ones. Tell them I require those things immediately. Stop all your work with the mirrors, right now, until you’ve done that. In your messages, note that I’ve written down their names specifically, and that those who fail in providing what the Jaspers need for our common defense immediately will face the full wrath of the Guiles. Treason will be suspected of those who work against our common defense, punishment will be meted out swiftly if not overly carefully, and more loyal replacements found.”

“Well, that oughta do it,” Big Leo rumbled.

“I can promise you
our
full cooperation, my lord,” Overseer Amadis said. “Starting immediately. These mirrors will be slaved to the gem before you can reach the roof.” He swallowed.

“That feel good?” Big Leo asked as they headed to the exit.

“Nah,” Kip said.

Big Leo said nothing.

“Maybe a little.”

“—know why you think you’re special, Elos?” a boy was saying at the same moment. “Because you’re an arrogant little shit.”

Kip stopped at the door. Had he heard ‘Elos’? Like that green wight Gaspar Elos way back in Rekton? He could have sworn . . .

He looked back, but all the slaves were hard at work, double-time.

Nah, must have imagined it.

He headed back to work.

It was no pleasure to cut through the layers of defense Kip had set up at his headquarters. If Teia could do it, so could other Shadows. The best of them anyway.

Fine, there was some pleasure in it: for the first time, she was able to experience the blend of using her magical and her physical dexterity without having to dread why she was doing it. Before now, an infiltration meant she was going to commit murder.

Today, she was simply going to . . . what exactly?

She wanted to talk to Kip before they died. Maybe she knew something that could help him. Maybe she could
do
something to help him. Hell, she was an assassin, wasn’t she? She could probably make all sorts of his problems go away.

And for Kip she’d do it. No questions asked.

After all, what was one more soul in her ledger?

There was one paryl drafter in Kip’s entourage. Slow girl, paryl leaking out of her like a sieve, inefficient, unfocused. Teia could have gotten past her without even being invisible.

Still, she had to be careful. Anyone who glimpsed a heel or the eyes of an otherwise-invisible intruder was going to shoot first and ask questions later, literally.

Teia was good now, but enervating a finger before it twitched on a trigger? She wasn’t that good. And paryl certainly wasn’t going to stop a musket ball.

It took only half an hour of being on the street until she slipped into Kip’s suite, not completely certain that she’d managed to silence the hinges from outside the door, though she had wrapped them in layer after layer of paryl.

This was not Kip’s suite, she realized as she got inside.

It was Kip
and Tisis’s
suite. And Kip was gone. Tisis sat at a large table, quill in hand, scribbling. She looked tense.

Teia took a step forward. The plush rug under Teia’s foot sank pleasantly, but then—

Click.

Oh shiiiiit.

“I would hold very still, were I you,” Tisis said, laying down the quill and raising her gaze, studying the emptiness in the air as if she might see through Teia’s invisibility. She took a deep breath as she realized she really couldn’t. “Trouble with being a Shadow: your eyes have to be visible to gather light, so you like to only look up in little glimpses, huh? Keeps you from studying ceilings carefully.”

Gathering the folds of the master cloak between her eyes and Tisis, Teia looked up to one side. Half a dozen muskets and crossbows pointed at various angles toward her and around her, in case she jumped away from the trap she’d just stepped into. All of them were behind a sheet of glass thick enough to defeat paryl from penetrating it, but thin enough that a bolt or musket ball would have no such difficulty. She assumed the other side had another half-dozen as well.