The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,378

grand atrium. Forty Lightguards stood in ranks before the lifts, and another twenty before the slaves’ stair entrance.

The Lightguards were sweating and pale. Not the best of that august company. Kip’s men couldn’t help but sneer at them, but one of Andross Guile’s secretaries at the mouth of the passage that led out to the back docks spoke up, “My lord! High Lord Guile! The promachos awaits you out back!”

Kip couldn’t attack those Lightguards, even though he’d heard they’d had some kind of skirmish with the Blackguards. The Lightguards were at least nominally Andross Guile’s men. Attacking them would start a civil war.

Now was not the time.

So Kip simply walked past them. He reached the Blackguards at the gate to the passage to the back docks. “The old man back there?” Kip asked.

They nodded jerkily.

Kip left the majority of his men there—he didn’t want to get stuck on the wrong side of a choke point. Then he walked through, only Ferkudi and Big Leo and a dozen of his best following him.

There were Blackguards at the back gate, of course. New people Kip didn’t know. Another two stood on the dock, scanning the water for sea wights who might be swimming below. But Andross Guile wasn’t with them. With four more Blackguards watching over him carefully, he was off to one side, on the small beach, staring out over the Cerulean Sea.

Kip approached him alone, coming to stand where the very beach was wet with little lapping waves.

“Do you want to know what’s bathetic?” Andross Guile said, standing at the waterline.

“What?” Kip said.

“I’m standing here because of a translation my wife was unsure of, in a dead language, on a partial scroll, which may have been dictated to a poor student by a prophet who himself was rejected by the Chromeria’s leading scholars—a prophet of a god I don’t believe particularly cares about us.” He shook his head. “And yet here I stand. It’s a stubborn thing, the faith of one’s youth.”

“Oh,” Kip said. “I was actually wondering what the word ‘bathetic’ means.”

“Haven’t Viewed my card yet, have you?” Andross asked.

“There’s a war on,” Kip said. “Did you not notice?”

“We have so many things in common, you and I,” Andross said.

“Some,” Kip admitted. Not many.

“Both outsiders, both drawn inexorably to the center of all things, both overlooked, both with a tenacity to outlast stones and shatter cities. We approach life with hearts broken but heads unbowed. We both are surrounded by the mighty. We were both great from our youth: I recognized as a young man with a destiny, you . . . well, that other meaning of ‘great.’ Depending on how you parse such things, one might say one or the other of us has brought down gods. Only you have killed a king, but if today goes well, I’ll add kings to my list, too.”

“Both wasting our time on a beach?” Kip offered.

“Odd. Flippancy is a trait of the fearful, not of those who inspire fear.”

“Do I look fearful to you?”

After a moment, Andross said, “No.”

“Then can we move this along? I saw the sign you told me to look for. I have places to be.”

“No, you have one place to be. This place.”

“Sir?” a young Blackguard interrupted. “Pardon me, High Lord Promachos. It’s the Prism, sir. Er, Prism-elect?”

“Yes?” Andross said, irritated.

“Commander Fisk wanted me to tell you . . . He’s, um, the Prismelect that is—He’s sort of gone crazy, sir? Not like battle exhausted or catatonic, sir. He’s using the mirrors to burn people, apparently on purpose. He’s laughing. Our people, sir. The bane are almost to the shore, but he’s mostly ignoring them. Said it’s like ants under a glass.”

Andross sighed heavily. “Well, that’s inconvenient, if not a total surprise. Kip, remind me the next time you louse something up that you aren’t half as bad as your brother.”

“He’s only my half brother, so there you have it,” Kip said. “What were you hoping he’d do?”

“Oh, exactly what he’s doing, but half competently. He was supposed to get angry you’d been favored and get on the mirror array to defend the islands until he burned himself out, broke the halo, and needed to be put down by the Blackguard.”

“What?” Kip asked.

“He was supposed to ‘ascend to the heights and fail’—thus clearing the path for you to . . . be what we said. Young man,” Andross said to the Blackguard, “tell Commander Fisk this falls under the Fourth Oath. You’ll find him stationed with our