The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,416

side when she thought him asleep; she was weeping. She’d touched his cheek with a trembling hand. ‘I’m so sorry. I am gonna beat this, and I’ll be the mother you deserve. I love you, Kip.’

She’d failed that time, though, as she had before.

But they’d all failed, hadn’t they?

Kip could stare at most of them and name a fault, even a crime, but instead he saw them with love, and that changed everything.

“Thank you,” he whispered to Rea, to all of them. It was enough.

He could do this, because even if he failed to die well, it didn’t matter. Who, out of all the people that mattered, would think less of him?

The moment passed and the vision passed as Kip was ratcheted into place, but the peace clung to him like the smell of smoke after a bonfire.

Zymun didn’t order Kip turned upward to face the sky, as they did with traitors and wights to keep them from lashing out at the audience. No, Zymun didn’t want to miss the agony on Kip’s face, and he obviously wasn’t worried that Kip would kill innocents.

The mirrors were all coming into alignment, covered with their cloths, heating up.

“Oh, Kip. Just in case you get any ideas: you make any move to attack me or my men, I kill Tisis. Even if you stop me, my men’ll do it. You stop the man with a gun, another’s got a knife. Probably went without saying, right? But—”

Suddenly, a fruit seller stepped forward. Kip had never seen the man before in his life. “Lord Guile!” he shouted, interrupting Zymun, who stopped, thinking the man was speaking to him. “No, not you,” the man said. “Kip, I have a word for you. A word from the Lord of Lights Himself! I’ve no idea what it means, but I never do. Orholam says, ‘Remember blubber.’ ”

“What the—? Who is that?” Zymun demanded. “Seize him!”

But the fruit seller ran off, and the Lightguards didn’t try very hard to catch him.

Kip started cry-laughing. An inappropriate word from Orholam? Only the inappropriate could be appropriate for Kip. Andross Guile, the smartest man Kip had ever met, had been unable to conceive of a god who could be both big enough to create all the Thousand Worlds and small enough to care about each living thing on them.

But Andross was wrong. One terrified fruit seller who hadn’t dared to be a prophet had proven the smartest man in the world wrong. Orholam saw. Elrahee. Orholam heard. Elishama. Orholam cared. Eliada.

It was as if He were saying, ‘Kip, I waste nothing. You fear that you’ll scream for mercy? I made you for this yoke. I’ve already made you so that you won’t.’

Blubber can take punishment. Fat kids are tougher than anyone knows, especially themselves.

“Start it now!” Zymun ordered. “Just the colored mirrors. I don’t want to wait anymore. Let’s see him pop!”

Kip had avoided looking at Tisis. Hadn’t thought he could take the sight of softness and care. He should have known better.

Zymun had forced her to her knees, and there was a bright-red handprint across her cheek—he must have slapped her—but though her eyes streamed tears, she stared defiantly, proudly at Kip.

I can’t protect her, Orholam. They’re gonna kill me, and that leaves her alone with that animal. And with an army coming over the walls. Orholam, I can’t do anything for her.

That was the real reason he hadn’t dared look at her. He was leaving so much work undone. He was leaving people who counted on him.

Orholam, You are Eliphalet. Save her, please.

For Kip could not. There was only one thing he could do for her now.

He could die well.

He could do that. He could suffer. That was his one great talent, after all.

He met her gaze, and hoped his eyes said all that his lips wished to.

During normal executions on the Glare, the mirrors were covered with black cloth until all the mirrors were in place, but Zymun afforded Kip no such decency and didn’t wait until the mirrors got killing-hot.

They seared him instantly.

Kip was already exhausted from his ordeal directing the mirrors. But fat kids know how to take punishment.

Zymun didn’t keep Kip covered until all the mirrors were brought into line. He didn’t care how executions on the Glare were usually done, or about minimizing the condemned’s suffering. He wanted the opposite. As soon as the city’s mirrors could be turned, Kip was pummeled with hot light in every color.

Green hit Kip first, tearing his eyes open