Around them stood a vast multitude: the fathers who’d never dreamed their sons would die before them; the husbands so devastated at losing their wives they couldn’t even care for their children; those children, who’d lost their mothers; the orphans who’d had only one parent to begin with; the bereaved spouses hastily and unhappily remarried; the families who held together but always kept an empty seat at every dinner, every feast, and tried to tell themselves that it was all for the best, that this was Orholam’s will, though they could never fully believe it. Because it wasn’t.
They were his victims all. Dazen’s murders had rippled out into the world in a swamping wave greater than he’d even imagined. Not one corner was untouched.
He wept.
He couldn’t look anymore, didn’t dare to keep on seeing the truth of what he’d done—but in tearing his gaze away, he was arrested by another image, this one in Orholam’s right eye. Andross cradling a dying Sevastian, the long blade yet in his hand, blood still leaking from Sevastian’s chest. ‘Did I do well, father? Did I make you proud?’ Sevastian asked.
He died before the weeping Andross could find the will to speak.
Then, a mercy: Orholam’s eyes were merely eyes once more. But there was only truth reflected in both His eyes, and none of it was soft.
Orholam said, “I’ve forgiven your many, many murders. Will you forgive him one?”
Chapter 138
Though Gill was one of perhaps half a dozen people who understood what he was seeing, he felt no less awestruck than everyone else he saw turning to the north, their eyes widening, jaws slack.
In the distance, rising into view from the Great Market, though the market itself was hidden by Ebon’s Hill, was a creature from legend. Outlined in fire, a titan emerged as from the earth itself, stretching skyward. It seemed to pluck a barrel from the ether, took it in its fist, and then hurled the thing, flaming, into the ground somewhere in the Blood Robes’ ranks. The flash of light was followed a moment later by the sound of the explosion.
When Corvan Danavis had told them what he planned, he’d said, ‘Should be a last stand to remember.’
And no one watching seemed to notice that the flash also showed the red titan had no body. The outline of fire was all it had—all it was—an outline of burning red luxin stretching high into the darkness of the night, grabbing barrels shot or lofted into the air. The titan moved with astonishing fluidity, and it really did throw the barrels of black powder, but with the benefit of forewarning and distance, Gill could see it for what it was—amazing drafting.
To everyone else, it was as if a great djinn had risen from the earth to intervene in the battle.
But then, just as they emerged into the great avenue running from the Chromeria to the Great Market, getting their clearest view yet, Gill heard the sound of a pistol shot.
His and Big Leo’s were two of the only faces that turned toward the sound. Near the base of Orholam’s Glare, a body fell dead, practically headless.
High Lady Karris’s luxiat slave, Quentin, held two smoking pistols over the body, a surprising, powerful gravitas in the usually tremulous young man’s face.
The Lightguards nearby were flinching back from the pistol shot, some cowering, others lifting their weapons instinctively, as if to block.
They were holding Tisis Guile as if she were their prisoner.
Now the Lightguards, shaken, were recovering. Some were pulling their own muskets toward Quentin, who’d dropped the pistols and had thrown his hands up in surrender.
Someone was going to shoot him.
“Stop!” Karris shouted beside Gill, and she ran toward the Lightguards. Gill ran beside her with Big Leo only one step behind, and the people crowding the square melted back for her and Gill and the rest of the Blackguards cutting through.
Deprived of their leader, caught out in the open with everything going wrong for them, the Lightguards panicked. They dropped Lady Tisis. Some dropped their muskets. Half a dozen, including—Gill saw through the gaps in the crowds—that crippled bastard Aram, ran back toward the Chromeria, moving with surprising speed despite his crutch.
And then they were there. Gill had expected to find some poor bastard dead, but instead he found two.
The man Quentin had shot was bleeding still, blood somehow still pouring from his shattered braincase onto the paving stones, but slowing, slowing, even as they arrived. Lady Tisis had been punched several times at least, and looked in terrible condition emotionally—but not seriously wounded. Gill didn’t concern himself with her further for now.
No one else appeared armed.
Though many looked afraid of the Blackguards, of Karris, of glowering Big Leo with his great chain, no one in the crowd appeared threatening, or guilty, or shifty.
A flash from behind him made Gill whip his head around. A last flash of red light from the Great Market, the following sound of a distant explosion, and now the titan was gone.
High General Danavis had said he had a better than even chance of dying if he tried whatever he was planning—and almost no chance of not breaking the halo, which was really the same thing. Gill could only hope that he’d accomplished what he hoped, that he’d made those pagan bastards pay.
Part of Gill wanted to urge Karris to take them all to the general, to help them in whatever desperate straits they were in. But that wasn’t his role. He was a trainer of the Blackguard, not a general.
As he turned back to things nearer at hand, Gill realized that the young man whose wreck of a head was still pumping blood on the ground could only be Zymun Guile.
He sought his ward’s reaction, but the White’s face was a cipher. She was already looking to Tisis, who was moving, pushing people out of her way.
“Zymun was about to hang Tisis,” Quentin told Karris. “I was too late for . . . High Lady, I’m so sorry.”
Tisis reached where she was going, kneeling, pulling a body into her lap, and the crowd melted back to let Karris see.
To let Karris see Kip.
Dead.
Beside Gill, Big Leo dropped to his knees, dropped his big chain with a clatter to the stones.
But Gill didn’t even look at him. Big Leo wasn’t his ward; Karris was. And if he lived a hundred years, Gill would never forget the expression on her face now.
It wasn’t denial, for in her face there wasn’t rejection, but instead the note of confirmation of something suspected. He saw in her face her last hope for happiness die. It was as if she’d thought, At least I’ll have one good thing, and though it was less than I wanted, I shall make myself be content with this.
And now she’d had that last good thing snatched away and smashed before her eyes.
Gill turned away, telling himself his job was to scan for threats, telling himself that he should give her the dignity of mourning in private, telling himself he was the wrong person to comfort her in this. She should be comforted by a mother, a father, a husband—but she had none of these: they’d all been stolen from her.
Well, then, surely she needed a friend her own age, not him, not a man who worshipped her, who was ten years younger. It would seem presumptuous to even step forward to try to be a comforter. He wasn’t the one who could be that for her—
Suddenly, she keened, and her scream was so incoherent that everyone who heard it understood perfectly.