The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,262

the most in the world to her. In deliberately breaking her oaths, she would dishonor her office and undermine every other oath she’d made. She would undermine everything she’d been trying to accomplish in the Magisterium.

There was no way out of her impending marriage that wouldn’t cost lives and honor. So she would buy the armies with her own dishonor, and then her own life. She would go out and fight Koios, seeking death. And if death eluded her, she would suicide. Not out of despair, but to expiate dishonor. It wasn’t death before dishonor. It would be death in order to make dishonor end.

It wasn’t what she’d hoped for. It wasn’t what she wanted. But she was willing.

No one seemed to want to leave, but finally, one awkward young man came forward. “High Lady,” he said quietly. “This time I’ve spent serving with you has been the best thing in my life. This is why I wanted to be a luxiat. I have a premonition that I’m gonna die in this battle. Will you bless me?”

He knelt in front of her.

And so she blessed him. And then the next young luxiat. And then she blessed each and every one of them in turn, with an encouraging word here and there, but sometimes only a long, weighing look into their eyes, as she hoped she showed them Orholam’s approval reflected in her own.

Last came Quentin in his silks and cumbersome gold chains. He didn’t kneel as the others had; he merely waited, as any other slave would—at least until everyone else had left.

“You’re planning to do something rash, aren’t you?” he asked.

“Not rash, no. I’ve thought about it for quite some time.”

“All this talk of dying . . .” Quentin shook his head. “Would you like to tell me more about that?”

“No,” she said, and tried to soften the rebuff with a smile. But it came out sad.

Quentin cocked his head. “You told me once that you’d had a word from Orholam, through Orea White and the Third Eye? That He would repay you the years the locusts have eaten?”

“Yes,” she said. Her lip twitched ruefully.

“You believed it once. Do you not anymore?”

“No. I believe it,” she said. “But I don’t know that I’ll get to see it.”

“How is that kind of belief different from not believing?” Quentin asked.

“We go to battle, Quentin. People better than me die every day,” she said.

“People who don’t have His promise.”

“I’m a warrior. I don’t shy away at the face of death. This is why I was entrusted with this office. To fight. To fight to the death if necessary.”

“You’re more than a warrior to Orholam, Karris—”

“I am well aware of my roles, thank you: the White, a trainer of drafters, a Blackguard, a warrior, a rather terrible mother—”

“You’re also a daughter.”

“I’m an orphan!” Karris retorted so fast she didn’t know where it had come from. No, that wasn’t true; it had come straight from red and green.

Quentin said, “How may one adopted by Orholam Himself be truly called an orphan?”

I found my father with half his brain dripping from the ceiling, that’s how.

Sure. In some abstract, theological sense, Orholam was her father. But then, He was everyone’s.

“And you’ve been drafting again,” Quentin said. “Are you trying to be a hero, or a martyr?”

But she only said, “Maybe when you’re older, you’ll understand.”

“That’s a bit patronizing,” Quentin said.

“ ‘Patronizing’ is having a child lecture me,” she said.

“Not merely a child, a slave no less,” Quentin said, lowering his gaze. “I stepped out of line, High Lady. I beg your pardon.”

“Of course.” But the red was still hot in her.

He knelt. “High Lady Guile, will you bless me?”

If she had only days left, how did she want to live? How much of a hypocrite was she to inspire the luxiats to live generously, obediently, selflessly—and then hold back now? She took a deep breath, willing down the green and the red.

And, thank Orholam, down they went.

“It would be my privilege,” she said.

Chapter 76

“Well, this I don’t believe,” Tisis said. She stepped back from the door, where she’d just accepted a messenger’s note.

They were staying in a fine house on the northern end of Big Jasper—as far from the Chromeria as possible. Kip wanted warning if Lightguards came to arrest him, and Cruxer didn’t want to make it too easy for assassins from the Order to find him, either, so they were staying in a smaller bedroom in a house with many doors, with sub-red drafters