First, his eyes fell on the normal people of the crowd gathering around the great intersection. They were weirdly, undeniably themselves but different, as if now he could see the whole self. The outward things, such as their beauty or plainness, their clothing, the shape of this nose or that pallid tone of skin all remained, but faded by comparison: This boy shone with goodness. That nursemaid streamed prayers like incense but more real than drafted luxin as she carried her ward toward his home. Others walked in darkness. A butcher hungered for the spectacle of an execution to fill the dark, empty gnashing of his pain. A fisherman radiated casual cruelty, his hands twisted by violence.
But then, in the gaps between the mortal gawkers, he saw others, unencumbered by mortal trappings.
Glassine figures glowed as if lit from above, then slowly resolved into people. People he knew. He saw Luisa Sendina of Rekton, who’d not only fed the addict’s boy: serving up compassion in food, but also speaking to him, listening to him despite the chaos of her own five children. He saw sweet Isabel—Orholam have mercy, she’d been a child!
What was going on?
Then he saw Gaspar Elos, the man who’d gone green wight whom Kip had met that night before the burning of Rekton. He was wight no longer. He stood with folded arms and a little smirk on his lips. He moved a finger to his head, as if tipping a hat that he wasn’t wearing.
Janus Borig appeared decades younger, but still chewing on a long-stemmed pipe, studying him with a portraitist’s intensity. At his gaze meeting hers, she brightened and winked at him. The radiant woman next to her—the Third Eye?—curtsied perfectly in a swirl of golden cloth.
The hulking mass of a shaggy red-bearded man could only be Rónán Arthur, Conn Ruadhán’s twin. He put his hand to his heart in salute.
Felia Guile stood at the back, his grandmother, her back ramrod straight, an apologetic half smile on her lips and her eyes bright.
Goss stood next to Gavin Greyling, each in their blacks. They nodded to him: You got this. You can do it, brother. And then they snapped to attention, saluting him.
Tremblefist appeared—no, not Tremblefist any longer, Hanishu, not in his blacks but in his Old Parian garb, with the frailties and brokenness of life fallen away from his soul. He nodded with fierce approval.
Next was the young commander beside them: Cruxer. Kip felt a flaring of anger at the same time he felt a surge of love and longing and emptiness. Dammit, Cruxer, dammit.
But the anger melted. Here was Cruxer purified, his earthly rigidity gone. Lucia—who’d died for Kip, if accidentally—dear Lucia, whom Cruxer had so loved, stood next to him, and they were at peace.
It had taken Kip until now to understand. These were all the people who’d loved him, who’d already gone on before. They’d gathered, a great cloud of witnesses, to stand for him in his final hour. They’d come so that he wouldn’t die alone.
And then his eyes fell on one thin woman standing off to one side. Mother.
Once, long ago—though he carried the words as if it were yesterday—she’d said to him, ‘You’re nothing. You’re not special. And if anyone really knew you, they’d hate you as much as I do.’
Mother, how much were you hurting when you said those words? How much did you hate yourself afterward for saying them?
For he knew she had.
For he remembered her, on a different night, sober two days and shaking in her vomit-stained blankets, not for the first time. But this time she’d come to his side when she thought him asleep; she was weeping. She’d touched his cheek with a trembling hand. ‘I’m so sorry. I am gonna beat this, and I’ll be the mother you deserve. I love you, Kip.’
She’d failed that time, though, as she had before.
But they’d all failed, hadn’t they?
Kip could stare at most of them and name a fault, even a crime, but instead he saw them with love, and that changed everything.
“Thank you,” he whispered to Rea, to all of them. It was enough.
He could do this, because even if he failed to die well, it didn’t matter. Who, out of all the people that mattered, would think less of him?
The moment passed and the vision passed as Kip was ratcheted into place, but the peace clung to him like the smell of smoke after a bonfire.
Zymun didn’t order Kip turned upward to face the sky, as they did with traitors and wights to keep them from lashing out at the audience. No, Zymun didn’t want to miss the agony on Kip’s face, and he obviously wasn’t worried that Kip would kill innocents.
The mirrors were all coming into alignment, covered with their cloths, heating up.
“Oh, Kip. Just in case you get any ideas: you make any move to attack me or my men, I kill Tisis. Even if you stop me, my men’ll do it. You stop the man with a gun, another’s got a knife. Probably went without saying, right? But—”
Suddenly, a fruit seller stepped forward. Kip had never seen the man before in his life. “Lord Guile!” he shouted, interrupting Zymun, who stopped, thinking the man was speaking to him. “No, not you,” the man said. “Kip, I have a word for you. A word from the Lord of Lights Himself! I’ve no idea what it means, but I never do. Orholam says, ‘Remember blubber.’ ”
“What the—? Who is that?” Zymun demanded. “Seize him!”
But the fruit seller ran off, and the Lightguards didn’t try very hard to catch him.
Kip started cry-laughing. An inappropriate word from Orholam? Only the inappropriate could be appropriate for Kip. Andross Guile, the smartest man Kip had ever met, had been unable to conceive of a god who could be both big enough to create all the Thousand Worlds and small enough to care about each living thing on them.
But Andross was wrong. One terrified fruit seller who hadn’t dared to be a prophet had proven the smartest man in the world wrong. Orholam saw. Elrahee. Orholam heard. Elishama. Orholam cared. Eliada.
It was as if He were saying, ‘Kip, I waste nothing. You fear that you’ll scream for mercy? I made you for this yoke. I’ve already made you so that you won’t.’
Blubber can take punishment. Fat kids are tougher than anyone knows, especially themselves.
“Start it now!” Zymun ordered. “Just the colored mirrors. I don’t want to wait anymore. Let’s see him pop!”
Kip had avoided looking at Tisis. Hadn’t thought he could take the sight of softness and care. He should have known better.
Zymun had forced her to her knees, and there was a bright-red handprint across her cheek—he must have slapped her—but though her eyes streamed tears, she stared defiantly, proudly at Kip.
I can’t protect her, Orholam. They’re gonna kill me, and that leaves her alone with that animal. And with an army coming over the walls. Orholam, I can’t do anything for her.
That was the real reason he hadn’t dared look at her. He was leaving so much work undone. He was leaving people who counted on him.
Orholam, You are Eliphalet. Save her, please.
For Kip could not. There was only one thing he could do for her now.
He could die well.
He could do that. He could suffer. That was his one great talent, after all.
He met her gaze, and hoped his eyes said all that his lips wished to.
During normal executions on the Glare, the mirrors were covered with black cloth until all the mirrors were in place, but Zymun afforded Kip no such decency and didn’t wait until the mirrors got killing-hot.