The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,230

toward them—the White King had skimmers now?—no, they were sea chariots pulled by some kind of sea animals. Sharks? And sharks untethered and great swarms of razor wings clouding the sky.

But Kip said nothing. He jumped toward the rudder and cut so hard that all of them were nearly thrown off their feet and into the water.

Before they could even cry out in protest, the water exploded beside them in a flash of dark skin and immense presence as the black whale breached fully into the air, sharks snapping behind it, some of them launching into the air as well.

It was only the vast discipline ingrained in the Blackguard that kept them on their reeds, kept them moving. Razor wings hit the waves all around them, some exploding, some trying to slash their bodies.

The black whale came down on the stern of the ship Ben-hadad had bombed. Waves and flotsam exploded from the dying ship, a cacophony of screams and water and small explosions from the razor wings and dying men and animals.

Kip slewed the command skimmer back and forth as he nearly lost his feet, not so much in evasive moves as merely trying to regain his own balance, but when he came out of the tight arc, there seemed to be a gap—a trough of clear water.

He aimed the skimmer down into the trough and then up the other side.

The skimmer bottomed out in the trough, sliced into the following wave, then shot into the air, over crushed hull and lumber and dying men.

They didn’t clear it completely, but the garbage they landed on yielded to the skimmer’s foils and weight and speed.

Ahead of them, the black whale breached again, this time with only a single shark after it. Then it dove before it reached the second circle of ships.

It didn’t matter. The outer circle was looser, and the first ship one of them had bombed was half sunk. Kip and the Mighty shot out into the open sea and safety.

He shot flares into the open sky—a retreat, in an old Chromeria code.

The Chromeria’s fleet didn’t heed it. Not that he could see.

There was nothing he could do.

They had tried. But that didn’t make him feel like any less a coward as they fled.

“There were hundreds of drafters on that dragon-ship,” Cruxer said. “We’re good. Maybe we’re each worth ten of them, but . . .”

“Not a hundred of them, each, not at once,” Winsen said.

“I’ve shit myself before,” Big Leo said. “But I’ve never run away.”

“You didn’t run away,” Ferkudi said. “None of us did. I mean, except Breaker. He was steering. He gave the orders. So I guess he ran away, but the rest of us—”

“Ferk. Shut it,” Cruxer said.

“They’re gonna die back there, aren’t they?” Ferkudi asked. “All those Chromeria drafters and sailors and soldiers. I mean, is there any possible way they might—”

“Ferk!” Cruxer said.

They skimmed in silence, and Kip wondered if at last he was the Breaker in truth. He had broken the Mighty’s streak of victories; he had broken their foundational myth that they were invincible. In so doing had he broken the Mighty itself?

They were no longer heroes of lore, legends in the making, indomitable, unstoppable, unflappable, brave and just and right and true and forever.

Maybe they’d always just been boys who’d had some lucky fights.

Several minutes later, when the Mighty were so distant Kip didn’t think they would know the outcome of this battle one way or the other, a sound like the earth shaking reached them, and mist exploded into the distant skies.

Big Leo said, “I feel like I just got in a fight with my big brother and he grabbed my fists and started hitting me in the face with them, chanting, ‘Stop hitting yourself, stop hitting yourself.’ ”

Then a tugging sickness hit all of them, and even this far away they lost half their speed all at once. It was the call of a master to his slaves, certain of obedience.

The bane had surfaced.

Kip couldn’t see it, couldn’t feel it, couldn’t witness it—and yet he knew that hundreds upon hundreds of their allies had just perished. Maybe their friends had been on those ships. He hadn’t stopped the White King. He hadn’t saved his friends.

He’d failed, and he couldn’t think of any way that he could do anything but fail again when the bane reached the Jaspers.

Chapter 68

“I’m coming to the end of things, Quentin, I can feel it,” Teia said.

“With the Order?” he asked, his voice