Why was he telling her that? There must be some shred of a chance Rea could still win, or he wouldn’t be giving her a chance, right? Or was there some old affection between them that Kip couldn’t even guess at? Aurea?
Rea looked at Kip, and he could swear he saw an apology in her eyes.
Then, taking advantage of her distraction, Abaddon fired at Rea, but she’d already winked out of the space where she’d been lying a moment before, fleeing.
She’d abandoned this world.
But then it made sense, didn’t it? If there really were a thousand worlds, that left nine hundred and ninety-nine more for her to fight for, didn’t it? One battlefield lost didn’t mean much, on that scale.
The nunks who were supposed to be protecting Kip seemed to have heard the final shots or the ricocheting of the musket balls off the street, because they charged toward the platform now.
And died, instantly; their heads obliterated with a single shot each.
Abaddon holstered his pistol and landed on the platform in front of Kip. He didn’t bother to re-form the illusory mask of a human face, instead staring at Kip out of the same insectoid monstrosity that Kip had last confronted in the Great Library.
Some part of Kip had really, really hoped that was a hallucination brought on by the cards.
“You hoped I’d forget you?” Abaddon asked, a rusty voice from a throat not made for human phonemes. “You thought you might triumph here?”
“Yes?” Kip said.
Abaddon’s face clacked and chittered. Kip had no idea what emotion that was intended to convey. Then the creature said, “Where is my cloak?”
“It’s right over there. Can’t you see it?” he asked, pointing to the far side of the platform.
Abaddon’s fist lashed out and cracked Kip’s ribs. He fell and almost tumbled off the platform. He groaned, holding on to the corner post, staring out to East Bay in the half-light.
Rea, please tell me I’m not really alone here. Please.
“The master cloak. Where is it?”
“You’ve made a big mistake,” Kip said, facedown, woozy. “Huge. Gigantic.”
Gunner was out there, so far away Kip could barely see him, standing as if he was holding a long-lens up to his eye. With the hand out of Abaddon’s sight, Kip tried to gesture to Gunner: ‘Shoot here, yes, here!’
“Me?” Abaddon said. “No, no, no. You have no idea, do you? This battle was never about Koios and this little empire. It was about the fate of this entire world. Even now your Wight King calls out for our aid—and will get none. The djinn have been freed from his control. The bane will grow again—in a single day, with my help. We’ll inspire such bloodlust that these barbarians will scour these Jasper Islands. Massacre everyone. Even now, look! Are your worthless mortal eyes keen enough to see the black sails of Pash Vecchio’s fleet on the horizon? The pirate king comes with our reinforcements, and what do you have? No one comes for you. You’ve been abandoned. What’s your last hope? Some sea demons? Do you know how weak those really are against the right magics? It’s been a defense worthy of song. But none will sing of what you did here. None will be left to do so.”
“It’s funny you mention my eyes,” Kip said. “Because you’re right. I am blind to other realms. I don’t know them, nor understand them when I see them, and when they affect my life, I’m left breathless and dazed. But I’m not the only one blind.”
“I know. All your ilk are the same, save some few Seers, who catch glimpses and believe they see all and know yet more.”
“I mean you,” Kip said. “How many humans have you known, over how many ages? How many worlds? And yet you don’t understand us at all. I’m blind to the other worlds, but you’re blind to the workings of love, of self-sacrifice. You look at the space they occupy, but it looks empty to you. You can’t even imagine how they work. You can’t imagine caring about anything other than yourself. It makes you stupid, Abaddon. It makes you predictable. It makes you weak. Do you know what humans can do? We can suffer. If you just give us one solid thing to brace our will against, we will move the world. We will hold on. Past reason. Past belief. Do you know what we know that you don’t?”
“I should take you to join my menagerie. Perhaps a thousand years of torment will teach you some respect. What are you hoping for, little Guile? Orholam’s hosts have abandoned this realm. I feel not the touch of a single one of them now. Soon we shall free our brothers and . . .” He trailed off, his head twisting to the side. “I see something about a gunner?”
“Thanks,” Kip said. “Sometimes it takes a while for a compelling argument to come together.”
“What?”
Kip reached out and touched Abaddon’s foot. Abaddon could move way too fast for Kip to mock him out loud, but he thought, You’re in my bubble of causality now, bitch.
The immortal looked at him, his head tilting. “We seem to have such trouble communicating, you and I.”
Kip couldn’t help it; he glanced toward the seawall protecting East Bay, where he could just barely see the lonely foredeck of a ship that had been run aground, and the black cloud of smoke that had been belched from its mighty throat. Kip shouldn’t have looked, but perhaps Abaddon was so crafty he would think Kip’s glance itself was a distraction, a misdirection.
Between the raised platform at Orholam’s Glare and Gunner’s mighty Compelling Argument soared the old Tyrean embassy. There was a space no wider than a man’s forearm is long through which a cannonball might clear the embassy and still hit the platform.
Indeed, though Kip was visible, the embassy probably blocked Gunner’s view of Abaddon.
Kip didn’t care. He hoped Gunner put the exploding shell straight in his own lap. His life for Abaddon’s? Yes. Absolutely yes. This is for my nunks, you bastard.
But even as the first diced heartbeat passed, Kip saw that the shot was simply too far, even for Gunner.
The cannonball—a smoking, flaming streak—was heading wide. Either Gunner had miscalculated to try to miss the embassy or the cannon itself simply wasn’t accurate enough. The shell was going to miss.
Then he and the immortal saw the same impossible thing: the flaming missile was curving—curving in midair—
Curving toward them.
Kip scrunched up into a fetal position, turtle-bear once more, one last time, hunching around Abaddon’s ankle—they had to be touching for the immortal to be stuck in Kip’s world and time.
Over him, Abaddon threw his arms up in defense.
The concussion rocked the world. Kip’s sight went black with a slap.
And then he became aware of shrapnel raining down on him. And—ow! shit!—it was really hot!
Kip scrambled to his knees, flicking burning pieces of metal and wood from his clothes and skin, little burn holes dotting his tunic and trousers. But he was too weak to stand.
Abaddon stood before him, above him still, knocked back five paces by the cannon shell still raining down around them. His coat and cloak had been ripped away in the blast.
His burned and blackened wings unfurled in a crack of rage, but whatever wounds had torn his wings, they weren’t new; they’d happened long ago, in millennia beyond counting. Abaddon was unhurt.