The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,208

he watched, that silver casing cracked open, and a sheet of it slid off, first one side and then the other, revealing a giant lens and a giant mirror. Each cover spun out slowly, balancing on opposite arms.

There was no sign of the green temple below them, though. When this had all been buried, only the frame and mirror had been rigged to rise.

“Well, that was invigorating,” Cruxer said, dusting himself off.

“Been too long since I nearly died,” Big Leo said.

“Most bracing,” Ben-hadad said, through obvious pain. “Speaking of braces . . .” He looked down at his leg, where his knee brace had snapped. “Looks like I have some repairs to do.”

“I said ‘Oops,’ ” Kip said, his heart still racing.

“You know, boss,” Winsen said, not even being sarcastic about the ‘boss’ part, “I can protect you from all sorts of threats, but if you’re gonna try to kill yourself, you just let me know that’s what you’re doing and I will get out of the way.”

“Look at this thing,” Tisis said, ignoring her own dishevelment from her fall, and not saying she’d told him so. “This is amazing. A gigantic weapon, hidden by the ancients. And we found it! It’s actually here!”

“We don’t know how to use it, so it’s not really a weapon yet,” Ben-hadad said. “Except maybe against impulsive Tyreans who can be hurt by very minor falls.”

“But he could’ve figured it out,” Tisis said. “Liv thought he could’ve, and so do I. And if he had, we could’ve used this to destroy the White King’s army. I mean, if we’d gotten here before they left.”

“Shit,” Cruxer said.

“Shit,” the others agreed.

“I said ‘Oops,’ ” Kip said forlornly.

Chapter 60

Another day, another twenty meetings and two hundred letters, Karris thought as she ate her supper at her desk.

The latter was an exaggeration, but not by much. The trouble was that there was no telling which was hiding key information in plain sight: This rumor of sea monsters? This one of new lux storms in the Cracked Lands? This sighting of Gavin Guile smashing the Everdark Gates? This rumor about the pirate queen launching a laughably massive fleet to prey on Sun Day pilgrims? No, it was Pash Vecchio’s fleet! And he was coming to invade Big Jasper!

Karris sighed, taking another spoonful of a delicious soup that she really wasn’t appreciating as she should. There were fleets coming here—two of them at least, and decked out for war: one under Corvan Danavis and one under King Ironfist. And there were certainly thousands of pilgrims banded together, and there were certainly many pirates, too. But her spies themselves should winnow out the most ridiculous of the rumors—except she’d told them not to, fearing she’d miss something important.

Pash Vecchio had (possibly? likely?) worked with the White King before, and Gavin had sunk the pirate king’s flagship, but such a blow was more likely to send the cur scurrying back to his islands than to try to take vengeance on a man he and everyone else believed to be dead.

Meanwhile, here, the Chromeria’s fleet, gathered to conduct its own exercises in preparation for Corvan Danavis’s arrival (and Karris’s hoped-for invasion of Blood Forest—which she still needed to figure out how to pitch to Andross), had heard a rumor of some other pirate fleet and had sailed out immediately, without even telling Karris which direction they were headed.

It would be a good exercise for them, as long as they didn’t sink any pilgrim vessels on their way. Karris had dispatched Blackguard skimmers to find out which direction they’d gone, and to check into another report she had that somehow that moron Caul Azmith had weaseled his way back into a small command with big sway. The nobleman had been the general who’d gotten tens of thousands of soldiers slaughtered at the Battle of Ox Ford. Those losses had nearly driven the Ruthgaris and the Parians to surrender and ally with the Blood Robes. Caul had resigned in disgrace before he could be fired. But the money to support the new fleet had to come from somewhere, and she’d known that the Azmiths were desperate for Caul to be given a chance to redeem himself. She’d allowed that he could serve with the fleet but had barred him from command.

She’d meant all command. The Azmiths had agreed. Now it seemed they’d gone around her. They’d apparently put him in a subcommand in control of a quarter of the fleet, under an admiral whom Azmith’s