The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,146

that to actually happen.

Which was kind of terrifying: Kip. A father.

No, he did not want to think about that right now.

“Sorry,” he said. “Go ahead. You were saying?” He folded his hands and composed himself like an attentive student.

She studied him for a moment until she was certain he wasn’t making light of things.

She spun the mounted mirror over and directed Kip’s image at himself, which he didn’t really appreciate. She said, “A mirror turns quiet voices blaring, and can blind you to the whole you by distracting you with details. It breaks you into imperfect pieces of a body rather than integrate you into a whole person. A mirror pushes its will into you, Kip. So if you think a mirror only reflects, if you think a mirror shows you the way you really are, you won’t realize what it’s doing, and you won’t push back. You are that kid from Rekton, Kip.”

“ ‘Aren’t,’ you mean,” he said. “Sorry, not important. You just misspoke. Go on.”

She shook her head. “I didn’t misspeak.”

Yes, you did. He flashed a quick smile. It really didn’t matter.

She rolled her eyes skyward. “Did you really have to give him a loud silent yes, too?!”

“You know,” Kip said, “I usually feel smarter than this. And I don’t usually feel all that smart.”

She took his hands, and she was the comfort of a lantern in darkness. “You are that wounded, fearful child stuck in the closet with the rats.” Her voice cracked momentarily, and lightning of her righteous wrath at what had been done to him flashed in the distance, but she went on. “And you are this man. And I have seen you . . .” Her eyes filled with tears, but she ignored them. “Kip, when you bring that little boy’s heart and his compassion for brokenness into your rule, I have never seen anyone so powerful.” She wet dry lips, mastering herself. “I think you owe that child abandoned in a locked closet with rats something, Kip. That boy? That boy you’ve poured scorn on, who you called a fat fuck? He survived because he fought. I think you owe him more than your contempt.”

His cheeks were wet, but he whispered, “I stopped fighting.”

The Guile memory was a curse. That memory was so clear when he thought about it that he tried to never think of it at all. Huddled in a ball on the floor, back slick with blood, exhausted, starving—Orholam, he hadn’t even been fat yet then, had he?—the bodies of rats he’d smashed as he’d thrown his body this way and that, crushing some few of them. Those he’d crushed writhed while dying and were devoured first, as easier food. The pure disgust—rats!—had come first, and long since been scoured away. All that mattered in the end was that they not get his fingers, his toes, his groin, his face. All else he lacked the strength to protect.

He’d despised himself for his weakness. For flailing like a madman and having nothing left. For not being able to fight. For not having the courage to tear open one of the rats he’d killed to drink its blood to wet his parched lips.

At least not until it was too late, and the dead ones had already been devoured.

He was powerless, and it was his own fault. He’d known what he needed to do, and he hadn’t done it.

And the rats would be back.

Tisis said, “Every slave stops fighting the chain. But some run every time the chains do come off. And you’re here, Kip. And you have friends. And you trust people. And you love. Are those the hallmarks of the weak and contemptible?”

“Not . . . so much,” he admitted.

“So what I’m looking forward to seeing is you pushing back at that old distorted mirror. I can’t wait to see you repay that hurting boy for his gifts to you by finally bringing your piercing wisdom back to that child. Mirrors break us into pieces because that’s how the eye focuses: one detail at a time, a prism splitting our whole experience, but the heart can be a second prism brought to the first, bringing that which is split back into a whole. So maybe it’s no coincidence that the Seven Satrapies need healing and reintegration as much as you do. Maybe it’s a sign that you’re exactly the one to do it.”

Kip swallowed. “Ah . . . so that’s what you meant when you said you believed in me? Got