The commander gave the tempo with one hand. Took a breath.
Three. Two. Boom!
They charged up the stairs onto the roof, fanning out.
In mere seconds, the forty were on the roof, guns pointed every direction.
There were a mere dozen people on the roof: six Lightguards, who raised their muskets to the sky instantly; two trembling courtiers; two messengers; and two scantily clad young slave women.
No Zymun.
“Where is he?” Kip bellowed into the face of one of the courtiers.
“Sir, I—”
“Where?!”
“He had to . . . he had to answer the call of nature, sir.”
“He broke the halo,” one of the women said with a hollow tone. She had the look of one who’d been traumatized by Zymun and was courageously fighting to reclaim herself. “His eyes bled. Sub-red. They took him downstairs.”
The courtier looked at her with rage. Advancing on her and lifting a hand, he said, “We were ordered not to—”
Big Leo pummeled the man across the jaw.
The courtier skidded across the ground, unconscious, maybe dead.
Kip turned to Ben-hadad. “Take twenty men. Arrest him or kill him.”
“And if they look to fight back? It’ll threaten civil war,” Ben said.
“That war would end as soon as he’s dead,” Kip said.
“Got it,” Ben said. And left.
Kip realized that his friend was not even going to try to arrest Zymun.
But it just wasn’t a priority now.
“Quickly, my lord,” someone said.
Kip turned to the enormous crystal that hung suspended between great iron arms, half of its circumference enshrouded in mirrors. Kip grabbed the straps and golden hand grips and beautifully carven sigils of Prisms past and levered himself into place. Others strapped him in.
Just in time.
For roaring over the horizon, already nearing the Jaspers, the first of the lux storms was coming.
Chapter 122
Dazen couldn’t claim that he dropped to his knees out of piety, but he certainly dropped to his knees.
There was no denial. The pieces snapped together all too tightly. There was even a certain whimsy to it: Dazen had deceived the world to hide his identity; Orholam had deceived Dazen by hiding His own—and He’d hidden behind His own real name.
“I brought you a tribute,” Dazen said, motioning to the gun-sword he’d discarded. “I see you found it already. Good handiwork. Shoot an apple clean out of a fool’s mouth at forty paces. Farther if you’re not on a heaving ship. Or if you’re God, I suppose.”
He didn’t know why he was doing this. Maybe no form of address seemed right, coming from him. Certainly not all the high-priestly benedictions he’d parroted, those rote noises from a liar, who’d believed they were lies every time he’d said them before in his life.
“You call this a tribute?” Orholam asked, patting the blade.
“A certain prophet told me bringing an offering was customary.”
“Oh, you’re following what’s customary now?” Orholam asked.
“Worth a shot . . . ?” Gavin asked. He wanted to stand, but he hadn’t the strength for it. Blood swirled around his knees and over the edge. “No pun intended. Gun-sword. Shot. You—” He stopped at Orholam’s look. “Right, you probably know what I intend, huh?”
Orholam didn’t look amused. “You wouldn’t give your garbage to a beggar and expect his gratitude. You threw this away. Should I be grateful for you giving Me your garbage?”
He had him there. “Uh. I dunno. Thought maybe you could use it?”
“You think that to accomplish My will I need an old sword that’s lost its edge?”
Dazen said, “Probably not? Wait, are you calling me an old sword?”
“Haven’t lost your edge, after all.”
“Or at least not all my edge,” Dazen said.
“Lot of edge up here, if you lose it.”
Dazen couldn’t help but crack a smile.
Yep. This was it.
Certain proof.
He’d gone mad.
This wasn’t how this would go, if it were real. If it were real, there would be ‘thee’s and ‘thou’s. There would be ponderous grammar straight out of Doni’el Machos.
Orholam merely studied him in the fading light.
“You know,” Gavin said, “I hadn’t thought of you having . . . well, personality. No offense. You know what I mean, right? I kinda like you. Despite myself. You oughta come down every once in a while. Mix with the locals.”
“That’s a great idea. I’ll have to consider it.” There was a certain flatness to the tone. A little jab at Gavin’s honestly giving suggestions. To God. As if God had never thought of them.
Gavin scowled. “You . . . you already do? Walk around incognito and all?”
Orholam merely lifted his eyebrows.
“Damn! Er, sorry. Well then, you really should come visit the Chro-meria. Sit in on a Spectrum meeting. You’d straighten a few things out real quick, I think.”
“Quick? In a committee meeting?”
Dazen laughed aloud. “No, you’re right. I can just imagine you floating in, all glowy, trumpets blaring, ready to orate, and Klytos Blue suddenly interjecting, ‘Point of order! Has the gentleman in the clouds of glory been granted the floor?’ ”
They laughed together.
Madness was more fun than it had any right to be.
Then Gavin said, “Comedy must really suck for you, huh? I mean, you’ve gotta always see the punchline coming, right?”
“It’s all in the delivery,” Orholam said. He gave a sly grin. “Speaking of which . . .”
Dazen swallowed. “I’m not gonna like what you say next, am I?”
“No.” The joviality was abruptly gone. “You’re supposed to deliver a tribute.”
“So you were really serious about the garbage thing? Like, the gun-sword doesn’t count?” Gavin said. “I mean . . .”
“Oh, I’m not above using others’ garbage. I’ll use a stone the builders reject as a cornerstone, but you can’t give Me as tribute what’s garbage to you. That’s no sacrifice. I’m a healer to healers and a servant to servants, but to kings I’m a king—not a slave.”
The last layer of denial fell away as Dazen saw finally the sense of it.
He wasn’t mad.
Orholam wasn’t one simplistic personality. He was vast. One person could only behold so much of Him. Encountering Him was like trying to see a gem the size of the earth itself, made of every color inside and outside the visible spectrum: the human eye and a mortal’s mind’s eye could only behold so much and so truly. Gavin himself was a wit, funny and kind, but at the end of the day, he was definitely the emperor, and he wouldn’t allow anyone to forget it. So Orholam appeared to him thus, a divine mirror, so that Gavin might have some hope of understanding a part of the truth, a corporeal synecdoche: a part standing in for the whole.
“I’ve got nothing that’s a fitting tribute for You,” Dazen said. “I’m broken-down trash myself.”
“I accept.”
“What?”