The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,103

to his belly. That was just his dread of the old man, right?

Right.

He expelled a slow breath as nothing happened.

Oh, thank Orholam. Dodged a bullet there. He did not want to live that old dragon’s life.

Not even if it saves you?

He turned that thought around in his hand as if it were a jagged hellstone that might lacerate him if his grip slipped even the slightest.

No, actually, not even then. To hell with him.

Andross had given Kip no help at all in the past year. He demanded reports, which Kip had sent. He’d sent none in return.

So I’m on my own, then. No magic will save me here. Nor a remembered life or borrowed experience. Nor man. Nor Orholam Himself, though we march in His cause.

He stood alone at one of the crenellations of Greenwall, next to some empty iron frame, perhaps for pots of hot oil or maybe for mounting a scorpion with which to shoot bolts as long as a spear into an enemy army.

No, it didn’t look strong enough for either of those. Something else, then. Whatever.

Big Leo loomed behind Kip, so large and immobile that he didn’t blend into the background, he became the background. The young warrior must have sensed Kip wanted to think and had barred the approach of any of the soldiers who otherwise constantly sidled close to the famous Kip Guile.

Famous. How strange.

The isolation was no favor. Kip looked out at all the lights above and below once more, and felt a crushing tightness in his chest as if it were all falling on him. Luíseach? Lightbringer? Kip Almost was supposed to be the axis around which all the satrapies turned? Kip, the louse-up from Rekton? Kip, who’d started this whole cataclysm by killing King Rask Garadul and allowing the White King to take power unopposed?

People believed in Kip.

But maybe they believed because they had to. He’d fooled them, and they clung desperately to him as the drowning do, ’cumbering his arms and legs, pulling him down.

What had his father Gavin said?

‘Kip, you’re not the Lightbringer, because there is no Lightbringer. That figure’s a myth that’s destroyed a thousand boys, and led a hundred thousand men to cynicism and disillusionment. It’s a lie. A lie more tempting the more powerful you are. Like all lies, it destroys those who long entertain it.’

Kip should have listened. He was flotsam, trash washed down the Umber River, heading for the great cataract below Rekton. He was going to fall, and he was going to take all these people he loved with him.

“I believe,” Big Leo said suddenly. His voice was a low rumble in the half-light.

“What?” Kip asked, turning to the big man, as if the words hadn’t cut his darkness in twain.

But Big Leo didn’t meet his eye, instead searching the darkness for nonexistent threats. His voice rumbled lower. “Nothin’ else to say.”

Kip studied the darkness, but saw nothing. They believe, but I don’t. Maybe I need a bit more of the Guile arrogance.

Can a humble man do great things?

“That obvious, huh?” he asked, faking a grin.

Big Leo pursed his lips and finally met Kip’s gaze. He shook his head slightly. Not that obvious.

“You always measure yourself by them,” Big Leo said.

“Them?”

The warrior looked at him as if trying to determine whether he was being obtuse on purpose or simply by default. “Your father. Your grandfather.”

“Oh. Them, them.”

“Breaker?”

“Yeah?”

“Stop talking.”

“Right.”

Big Leo heaved a Big Leo–sized sigh, as if so many words were exhausting him. “Breaker, you got it all backward. I don’t follow you because you’re almost them. I follow you because you’re not them.”

So it was true: even the perfect man, Gavin Guile, had his detractors.

Find me the perfect man, and I will find you someone who dislikes him. Kip tried not to let the thought show on his face. It was a mental dodge, and it would infuriate his friend. He’d seen Big Leo angry—and it wasn’t something he really wanted directed at himself.

“You know what I like about you?” Big Leo asked.

“Well, I hope more than one thing, but I’m always ready to hear anoth—”

“Words with you are never wasted.”

A clear compliment? “Well, thank you!”

“You know what I hate about you?” Big Leo asked.

And here it had seemed like this was going so well. “Actually,” Kip said, “I’m not that curious to—”

“It always seems like they are.”

“Um. Well, thanks?” You dick. “Thanks for that, uh, deeply felt and oblique set of compliments.”

“I wasn’t done.” Deep dissatisfaction had settled into resignation on Big