The Burning White Read Online Free Page A

powerful.
    And the black powder of history roared in reply.

Chapter 2
    Kip Guile had become a thousand hands holding two thousand cords, each one twisting in his fists, tearing away in every direction, each believing their own petty happiness was more important than the survival of them all. He smiled at mousy Lady Proud Hart, finding a measure of real joy in her excited jabbering about his repairs of the ceiling art
Túsaíonn Domhan
, ‘A World Begins.’ He wondered if what he was doing now was easier or harder than that repair, weaving the myriad magics together into one yoke and then pulling the whole from extinction into new life.
    Except here the two thousand cords were conns and banconns, merchant princes, gentleman pirates, emissaries, slavers, spies, confidence women, and deserters, and exiles and refugees in their tens of thousands—and even one shy and fabulously wealthy art collector. Some cords turned to shape without complaint, adding weight but also more usefulness. Many resisted his pull, rightly distrustful of another war, another Guile. Many tried to twist him to their selfish ends. But behind others, even tonight, Kip could feel an undue tension, pulling against him.
    He wasn’t looking to weave an emperor’s robe for himself, for Orholam’s sake, he was making a simple yoke, that he might heave the Seven Satrapies away from the edge of an abyss.
    It was the White King. Koios was at work here in this very room tonight. Kip could feel it.
    “With your discovery that the old masters used truly full-spectrum magic, Great Lord Guile,” Lady Proud Hart was saying, “nine colors! not seven! who’d have dared believe it?—with that insight, we can bring art back to life that has not graced this earth with its true beauty in centuries. Yes, yes, the Chromeria will be peeved, but surely art is a demi-creation that brings great glory to the Creator Himself, no? The creation of beauty
is
worship! Who can deny it?” She was a tiny woman, the foremost expert on Forester antiquities in the world, or so Tisis had told him. She was also very connected and universally loved here. “With you leading the efforts, Conn Guile—oh dear, did I let that slip? Did you know yet that the Divines are planning to confer the title on you tonight? A little present. Unofficially, of course, until the formal—”
    Across the room, Ferkudi and Big Leo suddenly shouted, “Nine Kill Naught!” and “Nine Kill Seven!” simultaneously.
    For an embarrassingly long moment, Kip didn’t understand why they’d be so rude as to scream during a civilized dinner party.
    In one instant, Kip’s greatest dread was that Lady Proud Hart was warming to asking him to repair dozens of fragile, priceless works of art himself. There was no way he wouldn’t destroy half of them if he tried. He
was
the f’ing Turtle-Bear.
    In the next instant, dual cracking noises woke him from a social fear to a physical one, like a man wakened from a fitful sleep by a thief in his room. Lux torches snapped open, Ben-hadad threw one blue and one green torch onto the banquet table, each flaring and burning and spitting magnesium heat, scorching the priceless walnut.
    Kip suddenly lurched backward as Cruxer heaved on his shoulders, yanking him and his chair to get him out of any possible line of fire as quickly as possible.
    Cruxer suddenly stopped the chair’s skidding feet with his own, pulling the chair hard toward the ground and catapulting Kip into the air.
    Kip flipped over backward, only belatedly tucking his knees.
    When they’d practiced this, he’d landed on his feet. One time.
    Not this time. He crashed onto his hands and knees behind Cruxer.
    By the time Kip stood, Cruxer had slammed an oblivious serving girl out of the way and off her feet with a hard shove and planted himself in front of Kip, whose back was now against the wall. Cruxer, with one side of his blue spectacles knocked askew, was staring at the blue burning lux torch on the table