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.”