Faces turned heavenward, seeing hope brought to their despair and light brought into their darkness. Cheers broke out throughout the square and throughout Big and Little Jasper.
But Gill, after checking for any immediate threat from the outpouring of magic and seeing none, saw little more of it. He saw only his mistress’s face, and she saw only Kip—and her son suddenly took a deep breath, and sat up, eyes opening.
Only as Kip breathed out, smiling as if waking from a pleasant dream, did Gill realize that the old kopi seller had disappeared.
Chapter 139
“This here is the point where you make a decision,” Orholam said.
“You’ve got to be joking,” Dazen said. “I thought that’s what I just did.” He was an old cloak drenched in the rain and now wrung out, and there was nothing he wanted so much as to hang up in the air to dry a bit. He’d just given father everything the old cancer had wanted for more than forty years. Worst, he’d given father vindication. It made Dazen’s heart hurt. Could he not just curl up in a corner for the next decade or two?
Orholam said, “You came all this way for one reason. Did you forget it already?”
To kill You? Oh, not that. “To save Karris?” Dazen asked.
“You still want to?”
“What are you talking about? She’s on the other side of the world. Me drafting anything is impossible at this point. Like, I thought it was impossible before, but now? It’s really, really not happening.”
“A man is more than his magic, Promachos.”
Wow, that sounded like a deep lesson, but c’mon . . . “What can I do? You got another ship and crew tucked away inside the reef somewhere I didn’t notice? What’s the rush now? It’ll take me weeks or even months to get back. Everything will be over by then. There’s no way I can get back in time to help.”
“Time. Psh,” Orholam said.
“Easy for You to say.”
“What about your glider? What’d you call it, ‘the condor’?”
“That would be handy. You know, if I hadn’t destroyed it in Tyrea, hundreds of leagues from here. You gonna make me a new one?”
“Right now I prefer making things new to making new things.”
“You are really hard to understand sometimes,” Dazen said. “It’s lost. Broken. I destroyed it so no one could learn its secrets. And I couldn’t fix it anyway, now.”
“Like I said, fixing is My specialty,” Orholam said. “You want to fly with Me?”
Dazen said nothing for a moment. “You’re serious.”
“I seem to recall you rather enjoy it.”
“Flying? What?!” Dazen’s exasperation was as unbounded as the night sky.
“That vexation you’re feeling?” Orholam said. “Been feeling that for you. For years.”
This did not make Dazen feel less vexed.
“But, you know,” Orholam went on, “it’d be hazardous. It is pretty dark out, and some people say Orholam can’t see at night.”
Dazen glowered.
It turned out that the reckless, winsome Guile grin had nothing on God’s.
“So what is this?” Dazen demanded. “You’ve actually got a condor up your sleeve? No, You’d have to do me one better, wouldn’t you? An eagle or something?”
“A machina, up My sleeve? That’d be cheating. Now, hurry. It’s a long fall if you miss the timing.”
“Timing? What timing?”
“For the jump! You do remember where the gap is on the level below this, right? Go through that gap—or it’ll be a short fall.”
Dazen said, “You want me to jump? Off this tower? In the dark?”
“Admit it, your last leap of faith was terrible,” Orholam said.
“Huh?”
“I’m giving you a do-over. A second chance,” Orholam said. He bent his knees, readying himself to run. “It’s what I do. Any moment now. Three . . . Two . . . Oh, don’t forget the blade!”
“Right!” Dazen turned back. The gun-sword was still sticking out of the now-white tower.
He yanked it free. Behind his back, he heard Orholam yell, “Now!”
He turned.
Orholam was gone.
Oh no. No, no, no!
Fear grabbed at his legs to hold him in place. It was probably already too late. If the timing was so tight, then he’d surely already—
Dazen kicked Fear in the face.
As he sprinted toward the edge, he shouted, “I can’t believe You’re making me do this!”
And he leapt.
Chapter 140
“Can you fight?” Karris asked. Baffled, the crowd was torn between gasping at the dazzling spectacle of lights above them or at the young man silently healing at their feet. Healthy skin was surfacing from beneath his burns, and where he’d been burned bald, hair was growing in speedily—but as if it were natural, as if this were something that happened every day.
But none of them mattered.
“Yes,” Kip said tentatively, then, gaining strength, “Yes! Let’s go kick some ass!”
Big Leo hauled Kip to his feet as easily as Karris might lift a quill.
Kip immediately collapsed again.
“Well, that’s awkward,” Kip said, looking at his limbs like they were purposely embarrassing him.
“ Son—can I call you son?—I’m so glad you’re alive,” Karris said, “but other people are dying. My people. Right now. If we live, we’ ll—”
“We’ll do all sorts of things,” Kip said. “Got it. But you need to go. So go.”
“You showed me how to win,” Karris said, and she felt like the Iron White again as she said it. “We have to kill the White King. And that’s on me. It doesn’t matter that it looks impossible. And our best chance is tonight, right now. Who knows how long this will last,” she said, pointing to the spectacle of many lights dancing above them. “Right now is the only time we’re going to have the advantage. We win now or we lose. Kip, I love you. Can I take Big Leo and the Mighty?”
She knew she sounded scattered, but there were too many things to do all at once.
“Yes,” Kip said at the same time Big Leo said, “Uh-uh. I’m not leaving you again.”
“Leonidas,” Kip said.
“Don’t call me that.”
“Big Leo, you can’t think I’m in danger now,” Kip said. “Orholam Himself saved me. I’m gonna be fine. You think He did all that to let me get killed two minutes later?”
“I’ll stay,” Tisis said.
“Me, too,” one of the nunks of the Mighty said.
“See?” Karris said.
“Besides, you didn’t help at all with the blue bane,” Karris said. “Think of this as a second chance.”
“Leo didn’t help with the blue?” Kip asked. “I thought—Holy shit, man, the rest of ’em are never gonna let you live that down.”
“Fine. I see how it is,” Big Leo said. He looked at the nunk volunteer. “But not you. Anyone who volunteers might be Order. I’m not sure they’re all dead.” He pointed to two of the other nunks at random. “You and you, but keep ten paces out.”