The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,144

up and eventually down, but the mill’s gears disengaged, its teeth whizzing purposelessly, all our power not even touching the great stationary millstone of history. But I stand at the lever. With one word, one decision, I may grind nations into wheat and chaff, I can be destroyer or savior. Both.

And I want to. If only to show that I can.

She studies me, and she knows. She translates my every blink and half-formed grin and twitched expression effortlessly, perfectly, my puzzling heart pellucid to her perspicacity. I am a text full open to her translation.

And yet she trusts me.

She speaks the question we have hinted at and dodged and joked about and hungered to know, but have never, never said aloud: she says, “After all we’ve seen and all we’ve learned . . . who are you, Andross Guile?”

“I am . . .” and the next words hang gleaming in the air like a glittering sword, a challenge, a taunt to those who had reached for it before me and been crushed by the unsupported weight of their presumption. “I am . . .” I say, and I leap into the teeth of history, and I break open its jaws with the lever of my audacity and power. “I, Andross Guile, am the Lightbringer.”

Chapter 39

Kip and Tisis stood atop Greenwall where Ben-hadad had placed one of the mirrors he’d found in storage. It had fit perfectly in the frame, and with a little grease, it spun easily, just as Ben predicted. Kip had dismissed them all then. There were preparations to make, regardless of what he decided here tonight. Whatever he decided, he was going to get a lot of people killed.

He looked out over his city, his people, and what could be his satrapy.

Partly to avoid what he had to decide, but also partly because he was tired of everything being all about him all the time, he took his wife’s hand and said, “What’d you do today, dear?”

“What do you think?” she asked.

“I sort of figured you were running half the satrapy,” Kip said. He wasn’t really joking. She was far more comfortable with governance than he was.

“Only half?” she asked.

They shared a smile.

Then she said, “Today I was placing and recruiting sources and acquiring a number of diaries from our new recruits’ camp, including Daragh’s, and securing the cooperation of several minstrels who were previously tasked with writing songs about the bandits’ exploits. Then I was arranging interviews with camp girls, washerwomen, and servants from their old haunts. Within the week, we’ll know exactly which of our new recruits is irredeemably villainous. I’ll not only have a very good idea of which men are likely to commit future outrages, but I’ll have sources nearby keeping an eye on them. Your part will be to keep some fluidity in the unit personnel assignments until then. I also took care of all my usual duties.”

Kip cursed under his breath. “Dearest?”

“Yes, my love?”

“What happens when you realize you don’t actually need me?”

“Oh, come now,” she said, but she couldn’t help but beam. “You tell us what we’re going to do. I merely make sure it happens.”

“ ‘Merely,’ ” Kip said, sarcastic, “because that’s the easy part.”

“And your own role is so simple that you’re going to bed early?” she asked.

Which brought him crashing back to the present. And the future.

“You ever think you were destined for something greater?” Kip asked.

“Than what we’re doing?” Tisis asked. “I thought my life would be way less everything than this.” Then she asked, “You?”

“Think? No. I tried not to think, because I was sure I’d become like my mother, that I’d go from stuffing my face with food today to stuffing my nostrils with gutwrack tomorrow.” Or haze, or ratweed, or anything to obliterate a day.

“Really?” she asked.

Her eyes filled with such empathy that he couldn’t bear it.

“Sorry,” he said, with a quick fake grin.

“But . . .” she said. “Why’d you ask?”

“Oh, a man asked me that question once. Green wight I ran into outside my hometown, just before . . . you know, the king’s army came.” It felt like a lifetime ago.

“Gaspar Elos?” she asked. Oh, right, he’d told her the story. He was probably boring her.

He nodded. “Funny,” Kip said. “Back then, Koios’s side imprisoned this wight and I freed him. How’d we switch sides?”

“You didn’t. They’re deceptive, Kip. Corrupted.”

“Orholam’s gift shouldn’t be corruptible, should it? Shouldn’t lead inevitably to death.”

“Standing daily in the sun is a blessing; standing in