The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,454

for the city, most of it was landing in the water. Kip could just barely see Gunner’s forecastle—now resting on the seawall of East Bay. The pirate was gesticulating furiously, but he didn’t appear hurt, and the forecastle deck was leaning at an angle as if it had been dumped off the sea demon’s back.

Kip stepped back, and something brushed his shoulder.

There was no one on the platform with him, but that touch made his whole body tingle. He looked at his shoulder. The sleeve was cut open—and smoking. The barest line of blood welled up as he gripped his arm.

The premonition he’d felt suddenly resounded again in his gut with all the urgency of a sick man who’d ignored the first belly twinge and now was about to vomit.

Abaddon.

He tilted his head back and saw—and he saw in glorious, weighty, more-real-than-real color, because as he was drawn inexplicably, inexorably into that overlapping realm by the great immortal’s presence, he was seeing not only with his physical eyes, but he was seeing as they saw.

As Kip’s eyes focused on this other world, he saw Abaddon, king of locusts, spinning a tight loop in the air, something like a black blade seething in his hand.

Rea Siluz staggered near Kip, her arm drooping, and he could only guess that she had just deflected a blow from him.

And not for the first time.

But she didn’t pause. She leapt instantly, faster than human thought, bringing up a blazing sword—

The concussion of their collision blew away Abaddon’s illusory body and face. The black, smoking fragments dazzled Kip’s eyes but not Rea’s. Abaddon beat her back, and with hammer blows of sword on sword and sword on shield, the immortal battered Rea out of the air like a man swatting a moth to the ground.

She fell to the street below the platform, elegant armor scraping on the cobblestones, baffled, afraid.

Ten paces out, the two Mighty nunks looked around as if they’d heard something. But they hadn’t been drawn into the bubble; they couldn’t see them.

The locust thing that was Abaddon drew Comfort, his mother-of-pearl-handled multichambered pistol, and shot rapidly at Rea’s prone form.

Rea blocked the shots with shield and then sword, getting knocked back and back, finally falling to the cobblestones. She looked more shocked at his power than in fear for her life, though.

Smoke curling lovingly from his pistols around his body, he paused in firing, not to reload: that pistol never needed reloading. “Concede this world to me, Aurea.” He gestured to his pistol. “This is no Sundering Blade, but if I kill you with it here, you can still never return to this realm. Go. Tell yourself that you’ll be back someday. I’ve won today.”

Why was he telling her that? There must be some shred of a chance Rea could still win, or he wouldn’t be giving her a chance, right? Or was there some old affection between them that Kip couldn’t even guess at? Aurea?

Rea looked at Kip, and he could swear he saw an apology in her eyes.

Then, taking advantage of her distraction, Abaddon fired at Rea, but she’d already winked out of the space where she’d been lying a moment before, fleeing.

She’d abandoned this world.

But then it made sense, didn’t it? If there really were a thousand worlds, that left nine hundred and ninety-nine more for her to fight for, didn’t it? One battlefield lost didn’t mean much, on that scale.

The nunks who were supposed to be protecting Kip seemed to have heard the final shots or the ricocheting of the musket balls off the street, because they charged toward the platform now.

And died, instantly; their heads obliterated with a single shot each.

Abaddon holstered his pistol and landed on the platform in front of Kip. He didn’t bother to re-form the illusory mask of a human face, instead staring at Kip out of the same insectoid monstrosity that Kip had last confronted in the Great Library.

Some part of Kip had really, really hoped that was a hallucination brought on by the cards.

“You hoped I’d forget you?” Abaddon asked, a rusty voice from a throat not made for human phonemes. “You thought you might triumph here?”

“Yes?” Kip said.

Abaddon’s face clacked and chittered. Kip had no idea what emotion that was intended to convey. Then the creature said, “Where is my cloak?”

“It’s right over there. Can’t you see it?” he asked, pointing to the far side of the platform.

Abaddon’s fist lashed out and cracked Kip’s ribs. He fell and almost tumbled off