The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,388

is beautiful. Flawlessly gleaming. It’s our holy duty to care for the mirrors. It’s our whole reason for being.

“Back to your posts!” she shouts, furious, and at the whipcrack of her voice, scared to draw her ire themselves, everyone turns away.

And for one moment, every back is turned toward me.

I swipe my hand quickly, leaving a trail of blood across her mirror. Then I duck my head and go to the stairs, not daring to turn until I get to the door.

She’s back at her place behind her mirror, with an apprentice helping her now.

They didn’t see it. They don’t know.

“On a two count!” she barks, as if it’s their fault that they’re starting late.

I hold my breath, certain someone’s going to see, someone’s going to shout out what I’ve done.

“Position One,” she says. “On my mark!”

The smaller mirrors start turning to gather their beams to send to the Great Mirrors.

“Go!” she says.

My heart swelling with terror, but with triumph, too, I go.

Chapter 119

They slapped manacles on Karris’s wrists and hustled her to the lifts. “We don’t want to give anyone a chance to do something stupid,” Commander Fisk explained to the Lightguard captain. “Karris commands a lot of loyalty around here.”

Not everyone could fit on the lift, though, so there was an argument. Fisk was livid. “We’re only going down three damn floors. Are you kidding? Every moment we stay here arguing—fine! Just do it!”

Five of the twenty Blackguards got off the lift, muttering, and six Lightguards pushed their way on.

“It was crazy,” Fisk said as they finally set the weights. “I was watching his eyes. He went from nothing to pressing the halos in every color. He doesn’t have much time left.”

“That’s nice,” Karris said as the lift came to stop on a residential level. “Except that it doesn’t seem I do, either.”

There were a dozen Lightguards waiting here. Obviously killers. “We need to get on,” one of them said. “Prism’s orders. You all get off.”

Karris wasn’t being taken to a cell.

Fisk pushed against the Lightguards in front of him. “Sure. Fine, but can you get the hell out of the way so we can get off?”

As the last to have entered the lift, the Lightguards on the lift had to exit first. Several stepped off before others hesitated.

Fisk clicked his tongue twice, and suddenly Lightguards were flying out of the lift into their murderous compatriots, kicked or thrown out by the Blackguards. Someone threw the counterweights, and the lift dropped like a stone.

Only one of the Lightguards held on to the Blackguard who’d pushed him. He tottered at the edge of the rapidly growing height above the descending lift.

But someone grabbed his arm, and he didn’t fall on them.

They slowed the lift, and Karris looked at Fisk.

“You didn’t think I was going to side with that little shit, did you?” he asked, unlocking her manacles.

“I . . .”

“We’re with you, Iron White. Blood and bone.”

“I know you all loved Gavin, but you don’t have to transfer any oath of—”

“We loved Promachos,” Fisk said, using Gavin’s Blackguard Name. “Still do. But this has got nothing to do with him. We’re yours, blood and bone.”

“Blood and bone,” the others swore.

She compressed her lips tightly and nodded, looking quickly at each, eye to eye. “Thank you. Thank you. All right. We’ve gotta get off Little Jasper completely,” Karris said. “We’re not safe as long as—” She cut off as they reached the ground-level grand atrium, and the lift stopped, revealing a semicircle of at least forty Lightguards, all of whom were pointing muskets at the lift.

One of the Blackguards muttered, “That’s unfortunate.”

Say this about Blackguards: facing death, they still guarded their tongues.

Several hundred people who were sheltering in the grand atrium or who had business with the Chromeria on this fraught day stood watching, confused and then aghast that people they’d thought were on the same side were pointing muskets at one another.

Gill Greyling murmured, “We can take ’em.”

Say this about Blackguards, too: facing death, they still never said die.

It made them excellent people not to listen to in certain situations.

A young Lightguard with a brace holding his leg straight and a crutch with a blade along the front edge announced loudly enough for the whole crowd to hear him, “Commander Fisk! I have to say I warned our High Lord Zymun that you would betray him. He wanted to give you a chance. So hard to find loyal commanders for the Blackguard these days. But we do have an