The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,358

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That was what he wanted: a magical salvation, a solution from out of nowhere to solve all his problems for him, because he was so goddam special.

A lifetime ago—and only three years ago—Gaspar Elos had asked him, just before Koios White Oak (and Zymun, that asshole) had burned down Rekton, ‘Do you know why you think you’re special?’ And had laughed as Kip’s young heart had welled with hope that he was the prophesied one, the one chosen to do great things—‘Because you’re an arrogant little shit.’

Kip shook his head. Wrong thoughts. Not the time.

Corvan’s books had taught him years ago that a commander should use his quiet hours to obsess over two questions only: what does the enemy know, and what are the enemy’s problems? If you knew those two things, you might guess what he would do. If you knew the enemy himself, you would know.

He felt it more than saw it. A trembling under the waves. Move ment.

Kip squinted against the reflection of the rising sun in its many-colored glory.

“Why has the orange waited so long?” Tisis asked. “Worse leadership? Fewer drafters?” Her spies had said that the orange ‘god’ was considered distinctly inferior to the others, and the orange corps of drafters and wights smaller and poorly trained compared to the others. This last, at least, was one benefit of the Chromeria’s tight strictures on orange—it had made orange drafters less useful. Thus, fewer lords and satraps went to the expense of sponsoring orange drafters, which meant fewer were around to defect to the Wight King.

“This is the first time they’ve done this,” Kip said. “With the bane all separated from each other, not able to share drafters and crews, it’s a lot harder than when they were on the open sea.”

Kip thought about their problems. The sheer complexity of separating your navy—not even just your army!—with many of them out of sight behind the mass of Big Jasper, trying to coordinate any attack, with no way to fix the little problems, meant that little problems could get big. Fearful subordinates waiting to make decisions, commanders unreachable who would have been easily found if they’d been on land—an amphibious mundane and magical assault by an inexperienced navy?

But Koios’s main problem was that he wanted to attack today, and he was so certain that the bane would make all the difference that he didn’t care about the losses he would incur.

“With as heavy as orange is, it may be harder to raise,” Kip said. “And if they want orange to join them in their first assault, they have to wait until it’s ready. And, you know, stuff goes wrong. I think we can take a glimmer of hope at seeing that though the Blood Robes are monstrous, they aren’t diabolically perfect. If they were . . .”

“If they were . . . ?” Tisis asked.

If they were, they’d have hit us right after dawn with a first attack on the bay as the Order attacked. They’d have hit us with a fear hex.

It was still a good plan, but now the main problem for the Blood Robes was all the Chromeria’s gun emplacements, especially on the towers, which due to their height could lob shells and cannonballs farther than any of the Blood Robes’ ships could return them.

He cursed. “Orange isn’t going to join the attack; it’s going to lead it. A fear hex. Something like that. They’re gonna try to sneak it up on us somehow.” He squinted against the blinding orange light of the sun rising in the east.

“The rising sun,” he said. “They’re using . . .”

And then it was nearly upon them.

Thin, mysterious fingerling clouds had been streaking along the tops of the waves, hidden by the dazzling sun and to-and-fro of the sea chariots throwing water high into the air, burning torches that hissed smoke out in a dozen colors to confuse the eye.

A great flock of birds rose suddenly from the Blood Robes’ every ship, black against the rising sun. Another distraction, mostly.

“Blue spectacles, now!” Kip shouted. “Those’ll be razor wings.” He threw a signal flare into the sky to tell the gun crews on every tower to ready the nets they’d prepared to string up on poles above them to catch the deadly bombardment coming.

But Kip’s eyes were again down: those misty fingers hit East Bay’s seawall, and sidled over it, slipping past the ships sheltering in the bay.

Kip turned his back to address his