“What?”
“If you’re gonna kill yourself, why don’t you go out like a man?”
“Huh?”
“Like you said, the front door’s right there.” He motioned to the Great Mirror, still streaming blood. “The Mirror of Waking is open. Why don’t you go inside?”
“It’s a trap,” Gavin said.
“So what do you care if it is? You climbed all this way to confront God Himself, and at His doorstep you’re just going to kill yourself? Really? You’re just going to lie down in the bog and wait for the muck to close over your face? No fighting, huh?” He faked a yawn. “Out of all the things you’ve been called, brother, I never thought at the end you’d opt for ‘boring.’ ”
Gavin narrowed his eyes. “Why are you egging me on?”
“I’m a little brother. It’s what we do.” Sevastian grinned, and if his version of the Guile grin was more innocent than Gavin’s knowing grin, it was equally mischievous, and more winning. Gavin’s grin had always said, ‘Look at me, aren’t I wonderful?’ Sevastian’s said, ‘Look at us, aren’t we wonderful?’
Even here, even now, Gavin couldn’t hold on to all of his anger. “You’re kind of a dick,” Gavin murmured.
“I’m a Guile.”
“That’s what I said.”
“That’s what I meant.”
Ah. Acknowledging the truth, but drawing the parallel so as to shoot the insult back to include Dazen, who was a Guile as well.
Sevastian was joyfully quick.
It made the ache of losing him deepen. Had he lived, Sevastian would have been a peerless friend. A man keen and sharp and strong. The best of the Guiles, surely. If he’d lived, might not his goodness have moored Dazen to some integrity?
They all would’ve been so different: Gavin, father, mother, and Dazen, too.
But Gavin was staring at the mirror now with something like purpose. Sevastian was right: he had climbed all this way. He had to know.
And if it cost his life to find out, so much the better. Right?
But first . . . “I’ll lose you if I do this, won’t I?” he asked.
“For a time,” Sevastian said, his voice low.
“A long time?”
“I hope not, for my sake. I miss you. And I hope so for your sake and the world’s.”
Gavin looked at him, as if one last look would tell him if this were all real or madness, but his vision still bifurcated with his two eyes. “All right, then. Delusion . . . Brother. Whichever. Thank you.” He took a deep breath, but there wasn’t air enough in all the world for him to be ready for what he was going to do next, so he simply said, “Now, enough fuckin’ around.”
Without another word, he charged the cage that held the monster he’d been fleeing for his whole life: he ran at the Great Mirror. His reflected self—bloody, crimson, deformed, raw, haggard, and hard—ran at him. They screamed their defiance of each other and their acceptance of death, and crashed into each other.
Chapter 116
“Would you look at that?” Kip said as the Mighty crested the last hill before heading over the bridge to the Chromeria. All around the Jaspers, the bane were now visible, just under the surface, slowly rising, and coming in closer toward the shore every moment, propelled by magic and the will of their dark gods.
By now all the drafters on the Jaspers had pressed their fingers on hellstone to empty themselves of all the luxin in their bodies, and Kip should have been up on the mirror array, even though the bane weren’t doing anything yet.
“You still with me?” Kip asked. “Even if . . . ?” He didn’t make eye contact with the Mighty. He hadn’t told them about the game, about the Lightbringer stakes. There were lots of reasons for that. He didn’t want to tell them what he’d wagered against it, for one. Tisis wasn’t going to take that well, once he told her—and he would, just not hours before a battle. Andross could well refuse to honor his debt, might find some loophole.
Truth was, he didn’t feel like the most important person in history.
Winsen said, “We’ve placed our bets. We’re yours, asshole.”
That it was Winsen who said it warmed Kip’s heart unexpectedly. He nodded to the enigmatic man, his friend.
“Just wish we coulda done right by Crux before the end,” Big Leo said.
“Bollocks,” Ben-hadad said. “Fighting for what’s good and right? Fighting for what we believe in and for each other? We are doing right by Cruxer and by every other friend we’ve buried in this war. Enough. Let’ s—”
They all stopped talking as above them a sudden beam of light shot from the Great Mirrors atop the Prism’s Tower.
“What the—” Big Leo said.
“Zymun,” Kip said. “Bastard. That’s my signal. The one I can’t miss.”
They rode across the Lily’s Stem and saw several Lightguards go running, doubtless to tell their master. Kip and his Mighty and fifty of the best of the Cwn y Wawr and numerous units fortified by Daragh the Coward’s men made their way to the grand atrium. Forty Lightguards stood in ranks before the lifts, and another twenty before the slaves’ stair entrance.
The Lightguards were sweating and pale. Not the best of that august company. Kip’s men couldn’t help but sneer at them, but one of Andross Guile’s secretaries at the mouth of the passage that led out to the back docks spoke up, “My lord! High Lord Guile! The promachos awaits you out back!”
Kip couldn’t attack those Lightguards, even though he’d heard they’d had some kind of skirmish with the Blackguards. The Lightguards were at least nominally Andross Guile’s men. Attacking them would start a civil war.
Now was not the time.
So Kip simply walked past them. He reached the Blackguards at the gate to the passage to the back docks. “The old man back there?” Kip asked.
They nodded jerkily.
Kip left the majority of his men there—he didn’t want to get stuck on the wrong side of a choke point. Then he walked through, only Ferkudi and Big Leo and a dozen of his best following him.
There were Blackguards at the back gate, of course. New people Kip didn’t know. Another two stood on the dock, scanning the water for sea wights who might be swimming below. But Andross Guile wasn’t with them. With four more Blackguards watching over him carefully, he was off to one side, on the small beach, staring out over the Cerulean Sea.
Kip approached him alone, coming to stand where the very beach was wet with little lapping waves.
“Do you want to know what’s bathetic?” Andross Guile said, standing at the waterline.
“What?” Kip said.
“I’m standing here because of a translation my wife was unsure of, in a dead language, on a partial scroll, which may have been dictated to a poor student by a prophet who himself was rejected by the Chromeria’s leading scholars—a prophet of a god I don’t believe particularly cares about us.” He shook his head. “And yet here I stand. It’s a stubborn thing, the faith of one’s youth.”
“Oh,” Kip said. “I was actually wondering what the word ‘bathetic’ means.”