Brent Weeks - The Blinding Knife

They passed unmolested all the way to the temple district. The Great Pyramid of Ru suddenly towered above them. Liv instantly saw both its kinship and its rivalry with the ziggurats of Idoss. The Idossians had gone for height, and their great ziggurat was taller and steeper than the Great Pyramid, but for sheer mass and grandeur, it couldn’t compare to this: whitewashed limestone laid out precisely on the cardinal points of a compass, with great brass braziers burning day and night up each corner, the great steps up the east face sheathed in burnished copper, shining like red gold in the sun, the pinnacle itself sheathed in electrum, the great mirror like a star held high. Every season, the facings of all four sides were changed-though this year, with the army approaching, they hadn’t gone to the expense to change to the autumn trappings. Every summer, the pyramid was made a garden, a veritable mountain of flowers, the design given over to a new director every year, with a noble family underwriting the costs.

This late in the year, the flowers should have been withered and dying, the full splendor long passed. Instead, every plant was still in bloom, an effect of the green bane, the Color Prince had said. This year, the gardens had been designed to evoke a sun resting on the pinnacle of the Great Pyramid, in the jagged, runic old Atashian art style. Lilies and gardenias and white irises and white hydrangeas yielded to daisies and buttercups and marigolds. In zigzag steps, orange roses and lilies and tulips represented the rays of the sun, stabbing through a sky of hyacinth and bluebells. A forest of vibrant greens took up the middle, and the base was a maze of rhododendrons, camellias, and roses of every color. Streams came down every side, even passing over the great steps in whimsical aqueducts. Fountains spat water from heights to land in pools a dozen paces below. And all of this was temporary, to be switched out next season for something equally lavish. The noble families did this to compete with each other.

The sheer scale of the wealth necessary for such a display simultaneously enthralled and sickened Liv. This city was wealthy, but they’d passed their share of beggars and slatterns and cripples and orphans, even in half an hour.

“Staring,” Phips Navid said gently.

Liv pulled her eyes away. No one seemed to have seen her gawking. Idiot. Gawking was a sure way to break their disguise.

But everyone else seemed busy, concerned with their own business and keeping their heads down. In another two minutes, Liv and her men were at the base of the great steps. One of the commanders of the Blue Bastards was there, a bent-nosed blue-eyed old goat with no front teeth named Paz Cavair, talking with one of the city captains who was guarding the base of the pyramid with six men.

“Liv!” Paz shouted. “Was hoping I might see you. Come here.”

Liv scowled and jogged over with her men. “Sir,” she said, “I was headed over to check how much powder-”

“Never mind that. I got a message I want you to take up to Lord Aravind up top.”

Grimacing, playing dumb, Liv said, “Can I send one of my men?”

“No, it’s important. Him only. Besides, how are you going to keep that little ass of yours so tight if you don’t sweat a bit?”

The captain laughed with Paz, and Liv’s men snickered quietly, as if trying to suppress it.

Liv looked at her men. “I don’t know what you boys are laughing about. If I gotta go up, you’re coming, too.”

That shut them up.

The captain laughed, but then looked uncomfortable. “I’m afraid I can only let two of you up there. We could take the message for you if you want, but I can’t let armed parties up the Great Pyramid.”

“We’re in the middle of a war. You’re joking, right?” Paz Cavair said.

“I hate to be a stickler, but orders and all,” the captain said. He was a young man. Dark-haired, beautiful blue eyes, beaded beard. “You know how it is.”

“I do,” Paz Cavair said. “Jump.”

“Huh?” the captain asked.

It was the code. Paz Cavair’s one guard and all of Liv’s attacked the Atashian soldiers, drawing knives and stabbing them through mail, breaking necks and savagely hacking into the flesh of the captain and all his men. It was over so fast, and the bodies carried away so swiftly, that there was no immediate outcry.

The murder done, Paz Cavair flipped his cloak around. He had the eagle sigil of Ru stitched on the other side and he took up position as if he was a soldier himself. Liv and all her men flipped their cloaks around as well. Paz Cavair’s bodyguards stripped the cloaks off the other guards, and they piled several others on top of each other and hid them as well as they could. “Five minutes to reach the top if you run. You need to get there before the guard’s changed.”

“This was supposed to be the new guards,” Liv said.

“Their relief is late. Nothing we can do about it now. Go!”

So they ran, straight up the steps. It would only be a matter of time before Lord Aravind’s men saw them. If they were lucky, their cloaks would buy them peace until they reached the top-most of the city’s soldiers had little official insignia, but only elite soldiers were supposed to approach Lord Aravind en masse. But it was war, and the old way of doing things always breaks down in war.

Liv ran.

Cannons went off to the south, and she could see part of the Color Prince’s army massing, charging toward the gates. It was mostly a distraction-for her.

“Liv,” the Color Prince had said last night. “I’ve been testing you. To see if I can trust you with something.”

“I know. I’d say, of course you can trust me, but I suppose I would say that regardless.”

He smirked. It was a little gruesome with his burn scars, but she barely even saw those anymore. “Not testing your loyalty, not now.” The sun was setting early, lighting up the Red Cliffs, making the shadows of the trebuchets stretch out forever. “Your competence. It’s a test that I’m forced to give you because I have so few superviolet drafters, and I need a good one for this. The best one. I’d like to keep you safe, but instead, I need to risk you so that we might be victorious. If you succeed, I will reward you more highly than you can imagine.”

“What do I need to do?” Liv asked.

And here she was, sweating, heaving, feeling like she was going to throw up. She stopped for a moment and looked out to sea, feeling something, thinking she’d heard something.

A vast green island had risen from the depths of the sea and now floated in the middle of the neck. Ships, small specks, were crashing and capsizing. Huge waves were rolling out from it. An enormous spire rose out of the center of the island. Her heart soared and she swore she felt suddenly wild and strong. The green bane.

To the south, she could hear the sounds of battle. Cannons and muskets were being fired from the wall, shaking the city. The soldiers at the top of the pyramid hadn’t seen the bane or Liv’s team yet, their vision narrowed to the battle playing out in front of the walls.

But despite feeling wild and strong, sprinting up the steps was exhausting. Liv slowed and the men on either side of her each grabbed one of her arms and helped her up the rest of the way. They didn’t harass her for it. They were fighters and their bodies were trained for this. She wasn’t. It made her feel weak and helpless-and some small part of her felt trapped and wanted to wrench free. But she suppressed the urge.

They slowed as they came close to the top of the pyramid. Almost invisible from below, there was a square patio at the pyramid’s penultimate level, where lords could gather and religious rituals be carried out. It was from here that the men and women of Ru’s royal family had been slaughtered and thrown down the steps. Fuschias hung from baskets and pools of water and fountains kept the nobles cool, slaves brought fruit and wine from within the pyramid itself.