The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,385

was a tongue Gavin had never known, nor Dazen, either. It was a word not made for human throats. It was the slip that should have given the whole game away.

Gavin had hunted wights, so he remembered. He’d wanted to eliminate all the blue wights in the world. That much made sense, after Sevastian, but he’d not hunted only blues; he’d hunted every color. Why?

Had it been simple equanimity? A feeling of duty to all of the Seven Satrapies? But after a while, he’d stopped going so often after certain colors, hadn’t he? He’d let local drafters or the Blackguards handle such things, sometimes, unless it was on his way somewhere else. But then he’d still insisted on going alone to others. Totally alone. Sometimes.

They’d always been furious. Orea Pullawr had been furious. Why would he endanger himself like that? Why go alone? Why go alone sometimes but not other times?

Because he had to be alone when he tried to trap an infernal. Because he could protect himself from their malign will, but he couldn’t protect anyone who went with him. Anyone who went with him, he might have to kill himself.

It was true.

“No,” he said. “I killed for power. I’m the bad guy. I’ve always been the bad guy.”

“You’ve lost a lot of yourself. It’s what evil does: it promises an easy way out of one problem at the cost of causing worse ones. But I saw you at the hippodrome.”

“The hippodrome? When they put out my eye? You were there?”

“You didn’t draft black. And you wanted to. You knew you could.”

“Good thing, right? Lucky. It would have killed Karris. And Iron-fist. I mean, fuck all the rest of the tens of thousands of people there. Me, I only care about my friends.” He bared his teeth, but couldn’t make it a smile.

“You did the right thing. And it cost you your eye, but you believed it was going to cost you both your eyes and your life. It did save Karris and Ironfist—but you didn’t know it was going to do that. That wasn’t why you held back. The world may never know or understand, but that was your greatest moment. Dazen, you laid down your life for people jeering at you and enjoying your torture.”

“I was broken. I just couldn’t do it again.”

“And you didn’t use it to kill your father.”

“A mistake.”

“You despised the pilgrimage, and yet you tried to take it honestly.”

“Turns out I’m none too bright,” Gavin said.

“Did you find your answer?”

Gavin spluttered a half laugh. “Ha. That would be no. And it would also be plural. Answers. Not just one. A million questions, and no one even here to listen to me whinging.”

“No. There’s only the one question.”

“Really? And that would be . . . ?” Gavin asked.

“Can I show you something?”

“Uh . . . is that the question? Because I’m pretty sure that wasn’t my question. Nope. Not just ‘pretty sure.’ Sure. Sure, sure.”

“Can I show you something?” Orholam repeated, insistent.

“Only if it looks good in black and white,” Gavin said. “Maybe with some red thrown in for flavor?”

The old man reached out a gnarled hand, still nearly as callused as it had been when they’d pulled an oar together.

Gavin hesitated for a moment, then took it. How was the old guy going to—

Chapter 118

~How the Simple Confound~

(One year ago.)

“You think you’re special, don’t you?” Overseer Ysabel says.

“No, Mistress.”

“Do you know why you think you’re special, Alvaro?”

I’ve only heard you ask this of half the mirror slaves in the tower. “I don’t think I’m special, Mistress. I only wanted to watch the execution. I’ll stay out of the way, I promise.”

Of any of us, the overseer is the only one who thinks she’s special. She claims she was taken into slavery illegally, and maybe it’s true. You have to be smart, dextrous, and lucky to get assigned to the big mirrors in the Chromeria’s towers. Ysabel isn’t smart or dextrous, so we’ve all decided she must be very, very lucky. Some say she was really pretty when she first arrived. I can’t see it. Maybe she’s just a good bluffer: Ysabel pretends to be from the lower nobility. She claims her name’s Ysabel Elos, and her big brother Gaspar is going to come save her from this life. Any day now.

Any day. Right.

She’s been saying that since before my parents sold me into this life after their brewery burned down and they lost everything. It was arson, but good luck convincing a magistrate