The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,459

himself coming and saving them from a rampaging wight, or bandits, or a rapacious local governor. He never cared what it would cost to make things right. And only Gavin Guile could track down an illegal slave ship, board it alone rather than sink it from afar, and free everyone aboard with no loss of life. He ended the Blood Wars. He saved an entire swath of Atash when the Blue-Eyed Demons decided they wanted their own kingdom to despoil and he put them down.”

“Wait,” Karris said, “that was you? We thought they’d turned on each other.”

Dazen shrugged apologetically.

“You went alone?” she asked, and he wasn’t sure if her outrage was that of a wife or of a Blackguard.

“The way I hear it,” Fiammetta said, “he couldn’t help himself. Traveled the empire and fixed problems wherever he went. Ships saved from storms. Cures brought from afar. The ruthless brought to justice. Practically invisible, yet bringing light wherever he went. People love a man like that. People follow a man like that.”

“They did,” Dazen said. Once. He tried to say it without bitterness. For good and ill, a Guile might never forget what he’d done, but other people certainly did.

“They do still,” a woman’s voice said from the recesses of the captain’s cabin. “I traveled all over the Seven Satrapies, and everywhere I went, they told me tales of their Gavin Guile, who came and stood for them, who fought for them.”

Dazen’s knees almost went out from under him, and he heard Karris gasp as she recognized the voice.

“Everywhere,” Marissia said, “they love him, and when I asked them if they’d fight for Gavin Guile in his hour of need, they ran to answer the call.”

Dazen couldn’t speak. He couldn’t believe it, couldn’t believe his eyes as Marissia strode out of the gloom.

Dazen crushed her in a hug, and Karris—gracious Karris!—joined him immediately.

Fiammetta, who had apparently become a great friend of Marissia’s, couldn’t help herself. She crashed into the hug, too.

He choked out, “I thought you were dead. I thought that was on me, too.”

“But how? How?” Gavin asked.

Marissia said, “Your father’s an asshole, but he doesn’t always murder people when he can avoid it. He exiled me to one of those little islands he owns. I escaped.”

“But how did you—?”

“Escape? Gavin Guile,” Marissia said in a reproving tone, “I am not a woman without resources.”

“ I—”

“Enough!” Marissia said. She was radiant, smiling fiercely despite the tears streaming down her cheeks. “Come see!”

She pulled him out onto the forecastle, where she raised one of his arms, and the pirate queen Fiammetta came to his other side and raised the other. Thousands of voices roared at seeing him, not just those sailors on the great ship but the sailors on all the others around them.

Pash Vecchio’s fleet had to make up more than a third of the White King’s entire armada. And it was shifting into a formation that didn’t make much sense if they were preparing to invade the Jaspers.

Marissia said, “Every one of these thousands you see here: every gunner, soldier, and sailor has told me some variation of the same thing: ‘When I needed help most, Gavin Guile stood for me. How could I not stand for him now?’ ”

Dazen was speechless. Proud as he was, he’d never understood what people meant when they said they were humbled by a gift.

He understood now.

“This isn’t Pash Vecchio’s fleet, Gavin Guile,” Marissia said. “It’s yours.”

Pash Vecchio cleared his throat awkwardly. “I was against all this, but . . . but you should really have a daughter. Then you’ll understand.” He glowered. “Come on, Orholam with the squirts, people, this is the part where we betray the pagans and destroy their armada. Isn’t anyone going to give the order?”

“What order?” Dazen started to ask. Was this why the whole pirate fleet was coming to bear not on Big Jasper but on the White King’s battered armada, into which they’d already driven a wedge?

O my sweet Orho—

“Fia?” Pash Vecchio said, unlimbering a massive curving sword.

He flicked it spinning into the air.

Fiammetta jumped up to a gunwale and snatched it out of the air. She shouted, “Who stands with Gavin Guile?”

Pash Vecchio launched a signal flare even as she brought the blade down with an impressive flourish.

The people roared, and the thunder of many cannons rose like a chorus of a thousand voices, shouting:

“I stand, I stand, I stand with Gavin Guile.”

Chapter 146

The goddess once known as Aliviana Danavis watched the battle play out