The Burning White by Brent Weeks Read Free Book Online Page A

drafting that had allowed her to shift the vision of six hundred twenty-seven people and seventy-three wights, the people seemed impressed with their king instead. As if he had commanded her to be visible and she had no choice but to comply. As if it were proof that his magic was greater.
    Her rage needed no help finding its name. It was quite well fixed to the condescending, pompous polychrome wight who now stood before an ivory throne.
    Born Koios White Oak before a fire at his family’s mansion on Big Jasper had robbed him of his good looks and humanity and illusions, the White King was an imposing figure, she could admit. To his burn-scarred flesh, he added luxin and hexes. He’d refined his control of both in the time she’d been gone. He wore gold-edged white silk trousers of some flowing design that reminded her of something from an ancient woodcut, a fashion from the time of the nine kingdoms. He wore a matching tunic laced tight over his thin body with gold cords, with knots at ritual intervals. Rather than looking ruddy or pallid or freckled from his Forester heritage, his skin was now white as the noonday sun. His many and grotesque lumpy burn scars were somehow invisible, whether by the arts of cosmetics or will-crafting. She doubted he’d actually been healed; the White King was all about appearances, not changing underlying realities. His eyelids were kohled black so as to accentuate their many colors, and his ivory skin was studded with glued-on jewels and protruding luxin.
    “You look well, Koios,” Aliviana said. “It seems I’m not the only one who’s changed since you sent me away with an assassin whom you ordered to either murder me or chain me up like your other pet djinn.”
    “Daughter! Our new Ferrilux!” the White King said. “You speak like one who has become the goddess of pride indeed! You have blossomed into all I had hoped you might be, with a little additional cheek thrown in for good measure.”
    He chuckled, and his people seemed to take that as a sign that it was safe to laugh, and they did.
    It was an odd sound, laughter; one she had neither made nor heard for a year, twelve days and twenty hours, seven seconds. Only after it was gone did Aliviana think that she should have been listening to the messages that laughter carried. Was it the laughter of a people afraid of their king, or of people in awe of and in love with him?
    Too late.
    The unfamiliar emotional freight had gone unweighed, and her memory could no more call it back to take its measure than one could call back an insult carelessly offered.
    “May I have a word? In private?” she asked.
    Her jaw strained suddenly against her effort to open it.
Don’t grovel
, Beliol hissed.
    No one else could hear him. Careful not to let her irritation show on her face, she slammed the thought down and even triggered her zygomatic major muscle. From this distance, the White King might take it for a pleasant smile. “Please,” she added.

Chapter 5
    “Another nightmare?” Tisis asked. “You think the assassination attempt . . . ?”
    “No. The other thing again.” Kip scooted to the edge of their bed. He’d left his side sweat-damp.
    “I’d kind of hoped . . .” Tisis’s sigh echoed his own. He could tell she’d been up for a while, meeting with her spies or something. She’d even selected clothes for him. She thought he slept too little, and tried to protect him.
    “How’d I ever find you?” he asked her.
    “The first time, I was sabotaging your initiation. I think the second was when I was jerking off your grandfather.”
    “Honey, I didn’t mean—”
    “Just so you know, in case you ever thought I might make comparisons, you are—”
    “No, let’s not!” Kip said.
    Tisis was not a disinterested party when it came to discussing these particular dreams. Dreams of Andross Guile.
    “Should I summon the attendants?” Tisis already had the small bell in hand, a sign that he was already late.
    He held out a