“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 hap
pen 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.”