The Blinding Knife

Chapter 110

The first great wave came from behind the skimmer.

Gavin shouted something, but it was lost in the roar of water falling and crushing and sweeping over the back of the skimmer. His body language was unmistakable, though. He threw himself at the reeds and threw luxin down them as hard as he could. The Blackguards followed his example, and the skimmer jumped forward.

But they weren’t as fast as the great swell that swept Kip off his feet. He grabbed on to the rail with both hands, and as it flipped him around, he saw the spire rising out of the sea behind them. Already, it was hundreds of feet high. It was the origin of the great wave and the pounding water falling from the sky both.

Then Kip was crushed down against the deck. He heard the sound of luxin snapping and ripping loose and he saw Gavin flying off the front of the skimmer. He’d shot luxin so hard, he’d torn the reeds off. They were all suddenly airborne. Kip lost the railing-or maybe it disintegrated. He could see nothing except water. Whatever had hurled the sea upward had stopped, and now the seas dropped again with all the chaos of a waterfall. Kip fell and fell and fought for one deep breath. When he landed in the water, it was into a current that blasted him sideways. He hit something, scraped something else. It was no use trying to fight, he was being tumbled head over heels. He had no idea which way was up.

Feeling something beneath him, he grabbed it, missed, slipped. The current was forming swift rivers, and he knew that he needed to avoid the deeper current. He grabbed again, catching what felt like a tree branch, and walked himself hand over hand toward the weaker current. His lungs were burning, and the water was so fouled that he couldn’t see anything but green. He fought down his panic, fought down the wildness. Hand over hand, Kip. He grabbed root after root and kept going, going.

Moments later, he felt the temperature change on his back. Air. Wedging his feet in among the roots, he lifted his head and breathed.

The current almost pulled him into the depths and he staggered, but caught himself. He was standing on a new island, and everywhere, water was sluicing off in great rivers back into the sea. The land, if land it was, wasn’t uniform. In some places the water had no way to seek lower ground, and it stood in ponds and lakes.

Green. Every possible shade from the slate green of lichen to the red-tinged green of a ruby leaf. Radiant emerald greens that glowed from within and the dull, earthen greens of roots; spruce and sage and seaweed and olive and sea foam and mint green. The entire island was an amalgam of living vegetation and green luxin. Kip was standing on roots pulsing with life. He saw an entire galleon, mysteriously unbroken, wedged between the branches of what looked like a fallen tree, fifty feet in the air. But even as Kip stared in wonder, he saw branches climbing up the galleon’s hull like an ivy shoot. They wrapped over the galleon’s waist, thickened, and crushed the decks, spilling sailors everywhere.

The entire island was living vegetation, and it was waking.

Searching for the Blackguards, Kip saw the black-garbed figures rising, spread over five hundred paces. He only saw eight of them, but there were more in the water, swimming, fighting. Gavin stood a hundred paces away, waving, and pointing toward the spire. He looked urgent.

Kip ran toward him.

Coming to a channel of swiftly flowing water that was too wide to jump across, Kip threw green luxin down at his feet, making a plank to run on like he’d seen Commander Ironfist do before. It was easier than any drafting he’d ever done. The green light seemed to press itself physically into his eyes; he barely had to open the tap, and it flowed out just as easily. He felt the wild joy and freedom of green, a joy without terror, a joy without anchor Kip didn’t think it was his own joy he was feeling.

Gavin wasn’t waiting for Kip; he was sprinting for the spire. That he didn’t wait first hurt Kip’s feelings, then terrified him. Gavin would wait, if he could. If there wasn’t some absolutely desperate need, if seconds weren’t absolutely crucial, he would gather up his forces. Not only Kip, but everyone. Gavin would want to have his whole team together for both humane and tactical reasons. That he thought there was no time for either A sound like a thousand sighs swept across the bane-air being released, the hollow echo of bubbles opening. Kip ran straight over a rising cocoon yawning open, its membrane tearing as a jade green hand clawed the air. Commander Ironfist had been right. Green wights had flocked here by the hundreds or thousands to be perfected by the bane itself. And now they were rising. Kip hurdled over the color wight rising from its gooey cocoon and ran faster than he’d run in his entire life.

“Load the cannons,” Commander Ironfist said. He was looking out over the bay at the new island through the mounted long lens that the battery’s gunners had used to sight targets. His face was as hard as Teia had ever seen. “Hezik! You have some experience?”

A Blackguard with shoulders like a buffalo stepped forward. He had only one ear, a thick scar down the left half of his face testimony to a sword stroke. “Yessir, mother commanded a pirate hunter in the Narrows.”

“Recommendations. Time’s short.”

“Don’t load all the guns. Only these two can hit that damn thing at all, and only this one with any sort of accuracy.” He gestured to the big bronze culverin. “Six thousand paces, but from this height, and with this powder, nice big grains rather than fine, wrap the first shot in sacking to help me get the range…”

“Your command, Hezik. Take out the big tower.”

Hezik was silent for a second, thinking, then he began pointing to men. “Inventory. I want to know how much of this grain of powder we have, and what shot. Do we have any shells? You, weigh that ball on the scales over there, then measure out four-fifths of that weight. You, there should be some gunners’ notes somewhere. Find ’em!”

Gavin had set fire to the huge yellow sword he’d drafted and was throwing flames with his left hand and slashing green wights with his right, still running toward the spire. Karris was hard on his heels, her ataghan cutting necks and stomachs as wights’ eyes were drawn by Gavin’s figure in front of her. As always, Kip brought up the rear, short of breath, but able to do anything with green empowering him.

Before they could reach the spire, dozens of wights rose up. They’d been kneeling, worshipping before the spire, but seeing these interlopers, they ran to intercept them. The spire was still growing, twisting higher toward the heavens. The wights themselves were growing, too. The green bane was making all of them stronger. Every one of them used the power differently. Some went green golem, wrapping themselves in green armor that made them three times as wide. Others looked like saplings, stripped of bark, a thin green skin replacing their own skin, green over red, skeletal and all the more alien for being so close to human. Others made themselves hugely tall. Others drafted huge claws or great, springy frogs’ legs. Others, less imaginative, drafted thick shields and cudgels and helms.

Kip felt a thump reverberate dimly through the ground at his feet and a second later heard the sound of a cannon. A dim trail of smoke from a crater more than a hundred paces away pointed back toward the battery up on Ruic Head, where a much larger plume of black smoke was blowing away.

“To me, to me!” Gavin shouted.

After a moment of resistance at being ordered to do something, the green in him rebelling, Kip realized it was what he wanted to do anyway. In seconds, he and five Blackguards joined Gavin.

“They’re making a god. We kill it,” Gavin said. He drafted another yellow sword, handed it to a Blackguard who had lost her weapons. “No matter what. No matter how. Got it?” He made another yellow sword, and another, tossed one to a Blackguard and one to Kip. Then he started running toward the wights. His hands were surrounded with glowing knots of yellows and reds.

As the first green spear came shooting toward Gavin, he dropped under it and rolled on the ground, came up to his knees and threw his hands forward. A fan of yellow missiles blasted out from him, each trailing chains of flame. The missiles stabbed dozens of the wights and the chains whipped around them, wrapping some in flame and scoring the wights behind.

But Gavin barely slowed. He popped back up to his feet and kept running.

A frog wight Kip hadn’t even seen descended, huge claws raking downward. Karris dodged to the side and swept her ataghan under its armpit.

Then, still fifty paces from the base of the spire, they ran into a veritable wall of green wights. Gavin crashed through a few, killing, spinning, killing-and almost got separated from the Blackguards. A Blackguard named Milk had his entire arm and shoulder ripped off by a big claw. A woman named Tisa was knocked aside as she drafted a stream of fire and accidentally shot a gush of pyrejelly down her own stomach and leg. It flamed and she screamed.

But she didn’t forget herself. As a green golem eight feet tall settled between Gavin and the rest of them to cut him off, Tisa hurled herself onto the golem’s back, taking both of them down in a sudden intense wash of fire.

Kip slashed back and forth, trying to keep up with the others. Something twisted his yellow luxin sword and he lost it.

The three remaining Blackguards reunited with Gavin, who fought with the flaming sword in one hand and luxin of alternating colors in the other. They were stuck, surrounded by dozens of wights, stopped.

A shell rocked the ground, exploding with a deafening roar. Kip felt the pressure wave and almost fell. A smoking hole cratered the green island, thirty paces away. The wights around it had been vaporized, those farther out torn to pieces.

The Blackguards and Gavin recovered first. The crater and the hole in the wights’ lines wasn’t directly between the Blackguards and the tower, but it offered movement. Freedom.

Even then, they never would have made if it the greens could tolerate order-if they’d organized their defenses. But with the help of the chaos, Gavin and his people cut through the staggered creatures and ran into the gap created by the shell, stepping on bodies and slipping on released green luxin that was evaporating as the once-men holding it died. Kip almost tripped over a woman’s bare torso-nothing else of her remained. Red and green ran in rivers next to each other, filling the crater with blood soup.

Crashing into the still-recovering lines on the opposite side of the crater with Karris, Gavin, and the remaining three Blackguards, Kip remembered his knife, still strapped to his calf, and pulled it out, stumbling. He lashed out at a big wight who was holding his bleeding eyes, weeping. Kip’s knife cut through the wight’s shell and kidneys with ease.

He felt instantly, stupidly guilty. The man hadn’t been able to defend himself, and Kip had cut him like a “Incoming!” Gavin shouted. He knocked Kip down.

They heard the thump and the explosion, but it was a good seventy paces away this time-no good to them, but no danger either.

By the time they stood, a man with a green bull’s head on his shoulders was charging them. Gavin leapt aside and cut the man’s back as he passed. The wight went down, but his horn caught Karris, who hadn’t jumped far enough. It spun her hard and slammed her into the ground.

Kip jumped on the bull and stabbed in through the top of its head, twisting his dagger in its brain and ripping it out. He grabbed Karris and pulled her to her feet. There was blood on her arm and chest, but instead of skewering her, the horn had passed under her armpit. She was winded, gasping for air, but not wounded. Lucky.

Gavin threw his sword into the chest of a woman who had the form of a harpy and spun, pulling his dagger-pistols from his belt. The guns spun in his hands as he pointed at Kip. Both pistols cracked and Kip ran on, certain that two wights behind him and Karris were dead.

A Blackguard was hamstringing two giants at the base of the stairs when one caught him with a war hammer in the shoulder. He staggered sideways, trying to catch himself, and met the other’s battle axe. It cut all the way through his chest.

Gavin shot yellow spears into their brains, one-two-three, in rapid succession, but it was too late for the Blackguard.

“Up,” Gavin shouted, “up!”

They ran up the stairs as if hell was on their heels. Kip was at the back. The tower was growing even as they mounted the stairs, twisting higher like a growing tree.

“What was that?” Gavin asked.

What? Kip hadn’t seen anything. He was exhausted, and they were only halfway up the tower. He looked down and saw that the wights had decided to follow them. He didn’t slow.

A clash of arms up ahead told Kip that they had encountered defense. It was all that allowed him to catch up. But Gavin had barely slowed. Kip heard screams descending, and when he passed the same spot of the winding stair, he saw wights far below, their bodies broken.

A great beam of green light hit the top of the tower, and the whole thing bucked and shivered. It nearly hurled them off the stairs.

“What the hell is that?” Commander Ironfist asked.

No one answered. No one knew. The green itself felt different suddenly, not affecting all of them so much as being gathered elsewhere. Teia was holding a pair of binocles. Through them, she could see more than most. “It’s coming from the Great Pyramid,” she said. “Or going to it, I can’t tell.”

“Is it a weapon?”

“I don’t know!”

Men were scrambling around the room, the gunners swabbing out the smoking hot bronze barrel, cooling it and making sure no bits of burning powder remained in the breech that would ignite the charge. Others were weighing the powder for the next shot. The Blackguards who were tasked with muscling the great thing back into place were taking a well-deserved rest. Though the carriage was wheeled, the culverin was still massive. Hezik was staring alternately at a list of numbers he’d scribbled on a piece of parchment someone had passed him and down at the green island, lips moving silently, doing mental sums.

Everything was chaos, happening all at once.

“There’s a green man on top of the tower,” the spotter on the long lens called out.

Whatever was happening between the Great Pyramid and the bane was definitely helping the invaders. The tower was getting more massive by the second. “Why would the Atashians be helping the bane?” Teia asked.

“Sir,” the spotter said, “if I didn’t know better-Sir, that thing is Atirat.”

“Because the city has fallen,” Commander Ironfist said grimly. He walked over to the spotter, who moved aside for him.

“What?!” Hezik shouted to a Blackguard reporting to him. Not asking about the city.

“We didn’t see it before. It was at the bottom of the pile.” The Blackguard turned one of the shells over. The side was stove in, spilling all its powder out, and making it as effective in flight as a one-winged bird.

“Commander,” Hezik said. “We’ve only got two shots left. One shell, and one ball. Which do you want us to load?”

They’d been shooting the shells, and Hezik had honed his accuracy through practice. He was now hitting within forty paces of where he aimed, and he had done much better than that twice. But Gavin and the others were almost to the top of the tower. An exploding shell, that close? It would kill all of them.

On the other hand, the balls weighed more and flew differently. They’d shot a few of those earlier to get range before they started shooting the shells into the wights, but they hadn’t had as much practice.

Commander Ironfist said, “Use the ball.”

Hezik hesitated. “Sir, I’m only accurate within maybe twenty paces with the ball. It’s not a matter of skill at this distance, sir. We’d have to get very lucky.”

Teia had seen him shoot. He was being wildly optimistic.

Commander Ironfist’s face didn’t shift. “I trust you. Use the ball. Kill that god.”

By the time Kip reached the top of the tower, wheezing and so exhausted he thought he was going to vomit, the others were already fighting. The top of the green spire was something between a tower and a tree. Twelve smaller towers ringed it, like merlons on a crenellated wall. From each of those merlons, a giant was emerging. Four of them were already out, fighting Gavin, Karris, and the last Blackguard, Baya Niel.

The others were waking. Kip felt a shiver in the merlon next to him. The giants within the merlons were still men, but men who’d descended so deep into green that they’d rebuilt themselves, and the blasting green light from Ru seemed to be helping. Even as Kip looked, he saw green skin covered with tiny scales shimmer over the giant’s naked muscle on his arms. His chest was thickening, legs elongating.

In a paroxysm of revulsion, Kip stabbed his dagger into the creature. The dagger punched through the cocoon like it was wet paper. The giant’s green, green eyes shot open, its mouth opened on the other side of the glass, and then it slumped and its eyes dimmed.

Six of the giants were now out, fighting Gavin and Karris. One died as Kip watched, its head wrapped in flames by Gavin and then taken off by Baya Niel. But the others were still emerging. It seemed that those who were full in the green light from Ru had already awakened, but those who were shaded from it by their merlons were slower.

For one second, Kip considered joining the fight in the middle. Gavin and Karris were doing their best to get to the middle of the tower, where the green light was focused and reflecting so brightly it hurt Kip’s eyes. The other giants were blocking Gavin and Karris from getting there. Gavin and Karris had their hands full. Kip would barely be a help to them-but he could keep them from facing even worse odds.

So he ran around the edge of the tower instead, circling to the great cocoons. He rammed his dagger into another giant’s chest. As before, its eyes opened, bulged, dimmed. Kip ran on. He stabbed a third. This one punched its fist through the cocoon and groped for Kip, but Kip pulled the dagger out and ducked. The giant crumpled, tearing through the cocoon and falling on the ground in a splash of goo.

The next three cocoons were already empty, and as Kip ran toward the next, his eyes lifted to the fort on Ruic Head, where he saw a flash of light and a gout of smoke. One thousand one. One thousand two…

Kip didn’t have time to worry about it. As he ran toward one of the awakening giants, another came from the side to intercept him. More than eight feet tall, this one had drafted a sword for his right arm. Green luxin shouldn’t hold an edge, but either different rules applied to the giants or it wouldn’t matter because getting hit with all the force in the giant’s massive arm would tear Kip to pieces regardless, edge or no edge.

Fumbling with his lenses at his hip, Kip put the red spectacles on his face, intending to wreathe the big bastard in flames-but he’d put the wrong glasses on his face. Orange splattered harmlessly across the giant’s chest and it drew back its huge sword arm and roared, charging at full speed.

Kip threw orange at the ground and leapt hard to the side. He felt something whistle past his ear. The giant stomped right next to him, his foot splattering in the slick orange luxin as he tried to change direction. His nonsword arm wheeled crazily and, slipping, he shot right off the edge of the tower.

Kip watched him spin into space with grim satisfaction. Fat kids know how hard it is to stop once you get up to a sprint.

The nearest merlon was empty.

Without warning, the empty merlon exploded in scraps and shrapnel of green luxin that hit the side of Kip’s face and his left arm like a swarm of hornets as the cannonball struck it.

One thousand six, I guess.

Still standing, stunned, bewildered, and bleeding, Kip heard the delayed, distant roar of the cannon. Those bastards up there really were trying to kill them. If he had been two steps closer, he’d be dead.

But there was no time. Gavin was bleeding from a slash down his chest, and Karris was literally smoking as if she’d recently been on fire. Baya Niel’s nose was streaming blood. Several giants were dead on the ground behind them, and the light at the center of the tower was dimming, revealing a figure. That should be a good thing. Kip didn’t think it was. He ran to the next merlon, stabbed the fully formed giant there, and ran on to the last one.

This giant was awake, pulling herself out of the merlon, getting her bearings.

Kip leapt at her, slashing.

The giantess brought up her forearm and blocked the slash, her arm catching Kip’s forearm. Kip’s momentum carried him forward into his own hands, his doubled fists smacking into his face.

He dropped at her feet, stunned, blood pouring into his eyes. He saw death in the giantess’s twisted visage.

“A miss!” the spotter cried. “Fifteen paces long, twenty paces left. Tore off a tower on the southeast. Nearly killed Breaker.”

Curses went up, but there were no recriminations. Everyone knew that merely hitting the top of the tower from five thousand paces was an incredible feat. There was skill, and there was art, and there was simple luck. They were operating at the uttermost of the first two. The last couldn’t be counted on.

But the crews didn’t slow. Men were already swabbing out the culverin. The powder was already measured.

“We’re certain that there’s no more shot?” Commander Ironfist asked.

“Triple-checked, sir,” Hezik said. “Just the one explosive shell. If by some miracle I hit the tower, it’ll kill all our people, too.”

Commander Ironfist’s face was grim. A second passed. Everyone looked at him.

“Load it.”

A cannonball right about now would be nice, Kip thought, looking up at Death.

But there was no shot. No rescue. Even if they fired a ball right now, it would be six seconds before it saved Kip-and in six seconds, he’d be dead.

He flailed, slashed. His dagger punched into the giantess’s calf muscle.

He thought it was over then. He’d hurt her, but not badly, and now she would kill him. But the giantess didn’t do anything. She stood as if locked in ice. Through the blood in one eye, Kip blinked up at her. She was blanching-literally desaturating from the head down as if he’d poked a straw into her and was sucking out all the color. The green luxin that covered her features was unraveling. Her green hair fell off, the green mask of perfection over her face drooped, sloughing off, dissipated in a smoke redolent of fresh cedar. Her jade eyes sank, her body shrank, deflating. In moments, a woman with the rags of a dress torn by her recent huge size and now draped over emaciated limbs stood over Kip. The broken green spars of her halos shimmered in the whites of her eyes and disappeared. The green in her irises shimmered and disappeared. Her skin was bleached to its natural Ruthgari-pale hue.

Limp, she fell across Kip, her motion tearing the dagger out of her bleeding calf.

He pushed himself up to his knees. She raised her hand as if to draft.

Kip slashed her throat, and she sighed. Her eyes rolled back in her head and she relaxed into death.

She’d raised her hand to draft, to kill Kip. He’d had to do it. Or had she raised her hand in supplication?

The green light from Ru went out.

“Enough,” a voice said. It wasn’t loud, but it seemed to cut through everything. It shook Kip to his bones.

The dead woman forgotten, Kip looked to the center of the tower, where a new god stood.

Atirat, the queen of lasciviousness, the green goddess, the consort of heaven, the lady of moonlight, was supposed to be many things, some of them contradictory. But whatever else this goddess was, it wasn’t a she. Unlike his twelve giants, he was no taller than Gavin. Apparently he thought real power didn’t need to be vulgarly demonstrated in superior size. Though avoiding vulgarity didn’t seem to particularly concern Atirat otherwise.

He had no human flesh left. Everywhere, luxin knit so thin it could be silken cloth formed his skin. Long, intertwined figures were incised atop the vast hempen ropes of his muscles, seeming to copulate with every motion of his arms or legs. His hair, worn long, was a tapestry of vines and serpents. A gold choker around his throat held a single black jewel. As he moved, his muscles split and slid past each other, revealing seams of scarlet that might have been the bark of the red birch, or simply veins unprotected by his luxin skin. He was bare-chested, living vines forming a kilt. Moss curled on his chest as hair, and leaves and grass bloomed and withered spontaneously on every surface.

It was so good, even Gavin couldn’t tell if it was real or illusion.

The god’s eyes were chips of flint, and he seemed lit from within, with power, with light, with magic, with life. Gavin supposed it all would have been far more impressive if he could see green. But something about the way he moved was familiar. Oh, Orholam have mercy. The spies had been right.

“Dervani Malargos,” Gavin said. “Never thought I’d see you wearing a dress. I’d ask what you’ve been up to since the war, but I suppose I can probably hazard a guess.” A cockroach emerged from the god’s armpit and disappeared into his arm. “Nice beetle. Be careful of termites.”

Inside, Gavin’s heart was lead. He’d fought beside Dervani Malargos. He, Dazen, not he Gavin. His mother had confessed to sending an assassin after the man. Apparently the assassin had lied about his success. Dervani was Tisis’s father. Either way, Dervani had no reason to love Gavin-nor, truth be told, Dazen.

Dervani had been worth killing because he had known Dazen. He’d been there, right at the end at Sundered Rock. He might have seen everything. If Felia Guile had been right, he might unmask But then perhaps I should be more worried about him killing me now than ruining my life in some hypothetical future.

Atirat raised his hands and Gavin felt the giants behind him lifted and pushed backward.

“Gavin,” Karris said. “Gavin!” She was reloading her pistol, already fitting the lead ball in wadding and ramming it home. Though he couldn’t see green, Gavin could see the darker thread of luxin from her eyes down to her hands. “Gavin,” she said, “I’m not doing this. Run!”

“You won’t shoot me,” Gavin said.

“Damn you! It’s not me!”

“You’ll stay,” Atirat said in a voice like stones rolling together. Atirat pointed a finger at Gavin and a spidery thread of luxin crawled up from the very ground at his feet. Gavin batted it away. “What’s this?” Atirat laughed. “So that’s how we’ve succeeded. You’ve lost green. You are a broken Prism, and yet you’ve held your office. I suppose I should thank you for your stubborn pride, Guile. Thank you, and goodbye.”

Karris raised her pistol like a marionette and fired at Gavin’s head.

He slapped her hand aside at the last moment. The bullet burned a crease along his neck. Vines shot up his legs and he slashed at them with his sword, freeing himself. A cudgel the size of a tree limb blasted him off his feet. Gavin rolled, stood, and found himself right at the edge of the tower. He whirled his arms in circles.

The tower grew saplings with spear points at the edge. They stabbed at Gavin. He dodged one, took another into the meat of his shoulder, and grabbed another. When it pulled back, it pulled Gavin back, too.

He rolled on the ground, slashed the spears off near the ground, and ran.

Karris was still rooted in her spot, reloading her pistol. The last Blackguard, Baya Niel, was similarly rooted to his spot-he, too, was green, and thereby susceptible to Atirat’s control, though mercifully he’d lost his pistols. The tower was trying to grab Gavin, even anticipating where he was going to run and sprouting thorns. The remaining three giants were all standing sentinel, content to watch until ordered otherwise. Across the tower, Kip was staring wide-eyed by a dead woman. Gavin could only pray that the boy had the sense to play dead. Kip could draft green, too.

Another tree trunk swept toward Gavin’s feet and he leapt over it. He threw streams of fire toward Atirat, but couldn’t see whether they’d had any effect. He landed, jumped as two more thorn-spears tried to impale him. He tried to remember anything useful about Dervani Malargos.

There was no hint that Gavin’s fire had done anything. A throne was rising behind Dervani, and his hands were raised. Gavin slashed at the thorn spears, burned the vines that tried to entangle him. Rolled, dove, staggered left and stutter-stepped right, throwing missiles and fire and blasts of pure heat, trying ever to work his way toward the god.

Then the god cheated. The floor disappeared. The green luxin holding Gavin up simply disappeared at his next step, and then reformed on every side of him. It pulled him back to the surface, locking every limb in an iron embrace.

But Gavin wasn’t helpless. Most drafters grew accustomed to drafting from their hands, the outlets forming at their wrists or fingertips. But you didn’t have to do things the way drafters usually did.

Gavin split the skin all along his shoulders and arms and threw reds and sub-reds into the luxin holding him captive. It hissed and smoked and burned and for one second he pulled free, and then the green reformed. Gavin threw everything into it, screaming and splitting skin along his arms, down the sides of his chest, down his legs, and poured fire into his bonds.

He staggered free and raised his hands toward the god to draft a yellow spike through Atirat’s brain. He threw all the vast power of his will-into nothing.

He stared down at his hands. No luxin. What the hell?

No yellow.

The green shot up his legs and imprisoned him in a moment. Only then did Gavin see his mistake. Atirat had drafted a bubble all the way around the top of the tower. A thin, green, translucent bubble. A lens that blocked out every color Gavin could use.

But no lens was perfect, and Gavin wasn’t about to give up and die. He drew in sub-red, but that only made the green around his hands smoke, and the luxin grew back as fast as he could burn it. Drafting through that lens was like breathing through a reed that was too long, too thin.

Gavin was too weak.

“How does it feel, Gavin Guile? To be mortal, I mean. Surrounded by light, and yet helpless?”

Gavin Guile. Not that it mattered now, but Dervani didn’t recognize him. Felia Guile had tried to murder a man who actually wasn’t a threat-and because she had failed, he now actually was a threat.

Gavin’s wry smirk seemed to irritate the new god. “I thought you died,” Gavin said. He’d seen Kip back there. Maybe the boy could make something happen if Gavin kept Atirat’s attention.

“I very nearly did. There was a small conclave of us. Drafters who survived the war but were so damaged that you would force us to suicide. You’d taken enough from us. We weren’t willing to die on your command. So some of us learned to remake ourselves with light. The burned, the scarred, the amputees. We became new. Because light cannot be chained, Gavin Guile.”

“How did you-” Gavin started to ask. Kip was creeping on his hands and knees directly behind the throne that had blossomed for Atirat.

“There is only one question, Gavin Guile,” Atirat said. “Do you want to be killed by the woman, or the boy?”

Kip froze. “Father,” he said. “I can’t move.”

“Gavin,” Karris said. Her teeth were gritted and there were tears in her eyes as she fought the green luxin that suffused her body. “I can’t-I can’t…”

“I can make the shot,” Hezik said, tense, eager.

“Making the shot means killing them all, you idiot!” Buskin shouted.

Hezik said, “We can’t save them! This is our only chance. It’s a god!”

Commander Ironfist ignored both; words he thought he’d forgotten came unbidden to his lips: “Mighty Orholam, giver of light, see me now, hear my cry. In the hour of my darkness, I approach your throne.” The commander watched himself say the words as if he were a bystander. He’d not prayed the prayer of supplication since he was thirteen years old. His chest felt hollow. He could see his mother bleeding out her life in front of him as the words spilled forth. “Lord of Light, see-” A sudden thought interrupted his prayer.

“One slot up, two slots right,” he told Hezik.

“Sir, I’ve got it right-”

“Now!” he shouted.

Three clicks, instantly, as Hezik moved the cannon to the slots commanded. Ironfist took the smoking linstock and lit the fuse himself.

The roar filled the battery, and Ironfist swore every man counted the seconds.

“I wish you could know what it’s like, Gavin,” the god said. “I can feel every living, growing thing in the world. And my senses are only expanding, second by second.”

Atirat sounded drunk, but regardless, Kip couldn’t move. His muscles flexed and tightened at his command, but his bones themselves were locked in place. He’d almost made it. He’d almost saved them all. Kip Almost.

Gavin said something, but Kip couldn’t hear it. He saw Atirat tense, warned by some sixth sense. He turned, and Kip saw the blast of smoke from the cannon from the fort on Ruic Head.

One thousand one.

Atirat rolled his shoulders. Laughed. “Friends of yours?” he asked. “Don’t they know cannonballs are more likely to kill you than me? I should almost let it land, just to see.” He raised his hands, aiming, as if he could track a ball through the air itself.

One thousand five.

“Almost,” he said. Something shot out of Atirat’s hands and intercepted the ball in midair, not twenty paces above them.

He hadn’t expected a shell.

The shell exploded with a thunderous roar and concussion that shook the tower. The green bubble covering the tower shattered. The giants were thrown off their feet. Kip was bowled over.

Kip scrambled as he landed on his face, reaching for the dagger. Everyone else reacted instantly. Kip heard the snap of Karris’s pistol going off, saw Gavin throw yellow spikes into each of the giants and straight at Atirat. Flames billowed off Gavin’s hands — and were quenched.

Even as his giants died, Atirat batted aside the attacks directed at him as if they were smoke. Hands left, right. Gavin was locked down, the bubble reformed, snapping in place. Gavin overwhelmed, buried in green sludge, Karris falling, Baya Niel fallen.

Kip could feel the steel in his joints re-forming. He leapt toward Atirat’s back, extending the dagger, and felt his bones lock in place in midair.

Fat kids know all about momentum.

Kip’s dagger punched straight into the back of Atirat’s head.

The luxin freezing Kip’s bones blew apart like mist. He tackled Atirat, landed on top of him. He twisted the dagger in the god’s head, hearing bones crunch and squish.

Still on his knees, Kip looked at the dagger in his hand. The green and blue jewels on the blade were glowing hot, bright for one instant. Kip heard bodies falling: the giants, robbed of form and life.

Karris laughed and Kip realized how suddenly quiet it had grown up here. He tucked the dagger away, stood.

“Orholam’s beard, Kip,” Gavin said. “Well done.” At their feet lay a man-or some hideous thing that had been a man. Without the green luxin that he had woven into every part of his body, Dervani Malargos was a skinless, hairless tangle of meat, brains, and blood oozing out of his destroyed skull.

The tower shook and sank five paces suddenly, almost throwing them all into the sea.

“Does that mean that the entire island is about to collapse?” Karris asked.

“Afraid so,” Gavin said.

“I would think that’s really great,” Karris said. “If I weren’t about to fall to my death.”

Gavin laughed. “I can help with that. Get over here.”

And the lovely, lovely sound of Gavin drafting filled Kip’s ears.

“We did it!” Hizek shouted. “We saved them! I told you I could make that shot!”

The Blackguards were cheering, watching the great tower slump into the sea with no fear. Gavin Guile had stopped a god; they had no doubt he would be able to escape a mere collapsing tower.

But Teia couldn’t take her eyes off Commander Ironfist, who stood stock still. And then he dropped to his knees like a ton of bricks.

Teia had never seen a man quite as big and frightening as Commander Ironfist. She’d certainly never seen a man his size weep.

“ Elrahee, elishama, eliada, eliphalet,” he said, over and over, clearly some Parian prayer. He fell on his knees and, seeing Teia’s bewildered look, said, “He sees me. He hears. He hears even me.”

Then, heedless of what his people would think, the huge Parian lay prostrate, weeping, weeping.