The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,312

to his rooms early.

His own guards outside his door had been joined by a pair of Blackguards that he didn’t even recognize.

Things had changed a lot in his absence. After the loss of so many Blackguards at Brightwater Wall, he’d sped up the training of replacements himself, but he couldn’t imagine that two nunks who’d been made full Blackguards in a year’s time could possibly be up to the high standards he’d maintained for so many years.

It irked him to think of poorly trained men and women in his beloved ’guard, but that was outrage that belonged to another life. Besides, it had been under his leadership that a single cannon shell had taken out so much of the Blackguard.

One shell, one lucky shot, had obliterated several hundred years’ worth of training and magical excellence and more than a million danars in recruitment and training and contract costs.

Ironfist hated guns. Hated how they could render moot so many thousands of hours of training. But tonight he checked his own carefully. He carried a fine Parian flintlock, as excellent as any Ilytian work, or so the smith had insisted. Ironfist double-checked the black powder and frizzen plate, and twisted the cockjaw screw a bit on the flint so it was held tighter. He put the pistol carefully in its holster bag and drew his ataghan. He checked the forward-curving blade and that its fit in the scabbard wasn’t too sticky.

He’d already instructed his Tafok Amagez not to disturb him until it was time for the execution. They knew to obey. He was dressed in white and gold. He didn’t bother with a disguise. If he were seen, he was too recognizable for any disguise to be of much use.

The passage was too tight to bring everything he wanted to bring. As a big man, he’d always been tempted to carry too much for missions simply because he could. The line between wanting to be prepared and actual paranoia was slippery. Especially when the rumor he’d heard involved actual, literal immortals.

Taking a deep breath, he tucked the bit of lambent white luxin he’d kept for so long into the pistol bag. The orange seed crystal he draped around his neck, and tucked under the tight cloth against his skin. He might hate the thing, but he couldn’t deny it was useful sometimes.

Enough delaying.

He pulled on the bedpost, twisted a brazier, and pushed on the wall. It opened on not-quite-silent hinges. Perfect. That meant no one had been oiling them in the past year.

The secret passage was not so much a passage as a pit. There was a tiny ledge and then a ladder with many broken rungs rising and dropping into darkness. From the top, every prime-numbered rung had a trap built into it, either breaking off or triggering knives or something equally pleasant. The traps and the tightness could easily turn the whole shaft into a slaughterhouse, so Ironfist hadn’t told Kip and his Mighty about this exit on that day they’d needed to escape, the day Hanishu had died.

One of Kip’s friends had been killed and another crippled because of Ironfist’s decision. But that’s what commanders do.

And kings, he supposed.

Closing the panel behind him, he mounted the ladder in the secret passage.

The moist, cold wind licked at his face as he descended in utter darkness. Just beneath him, rung thirty-seven was already broken off. There had once been horizontal doors to shut out the humid breeze, but they’d been left open, and the hinges had rusted open in some time period when no one had known or taken care of this secret. That was what had exposed the secret to a young Watch Captain Ironfist: the sound of that damp wind, circulating air up and down the crooked shaft, and on some few nights whistling. It had driven Ironfist crazy until he found an entrance.

Someone else had known of the passage, and Ironfist had never found out whom. The whistling only happened rarely, and he’d later realized it had been when that other person exited one of the lower levels on a windy day.

Skip forty-one. Whoever had created the ladder had helpfully left Old Parian numbers inscribed in the ladder every twelfth rung, so one could enter at any entrance and not have to memorize which rung a particular one might be. The trouble with skipping rungs, however, was that you had to count with both your feet and your hands—and the numbers started at the top of Prism’s Tower,