There was no contest, of course. Gavin was trembling. "I think such a sacrifice would honor Orholam. I will give each of you a… special blessing as you take up this burden. I am… deeply humbled by this act of devotion. Deeply grateful."
That much was no lie.
After making the decision to let the Freeing class fight to the death instead of be Freed on his knife, Gavin still met with each of them. He shrived them, listened to their concerns about dying, and blessed them. It was exactly the same as he would have done otherwise-minus the killing. But to Gavin, it was entirely different. Usually, he was so sickened by what he had to do that he couldn't give their words his full attention. He tried. He pretended. He knew they deserved his best.
But today, he did it. They weren't really talking to him as they spoke; they were talking to Orholam. Gavin was simply an instrument to make their confessions easier than addressing an empty room. What they were doing was an act of devotion. It was an act of sacrifice.
To others, it wouldn't seem that different than what some did every year at the Freeing. It would end with a dead drafter who'd gone to death bravely. But without the burden of shedding their blood, Gavin was able to see it clearly for the first time. These people were heroes.
If Gavin hadn't pulled one over on the whole world and on Orholam himself by masquerading as his own brother, perhaps the Freeing would have seemed this holy every year. It was supposed to be something to celebrate, but Gavin had dreaded it. Always.
Now, as he prayed with each drafter, he could almost believe Orholam listened.
Samila Sayeh was the last. She was, Gavin was reminded, a woman whose beauty withstood scrutiny. Her skin, even in her forties, was nearly flawless. A few smile lines, but clear and glowing. Slim. Stunning blue eyes against Atashian olive skin. Impeccably dressed.
"I had an affair with your brother, you know," she said.
Gavin froze. He knew that he, Dazen, had not had an affair with Samila Sayeh-which could only mean one thing: she knew. "Sometimes a man likes to pretend that nothing has happened between him and an old lover," Gavin said quickly. "Especially when it was a great mistake."
She laughed. "I've wondered often over the years, are you just so good that you've never been discovered, or does everyone who could expose you have an ulterior motive for not doing so?" She stared at him, but he said nothing. "You know, Evi was looking at your wall. She said, 'I don't remember Gavin being a superchromat. He shouldn't be able to craft a yellow this perfect.' And do you know what she said after that? She said that Orholam must have blessed your effort. That it was proof you were doing his will. And everyone nodded their heads. Can you believe it?"
Gavin felt a chill.
"Gavin would have made a wall that would last a month and bragged it would last forever. You made a wall that will last forever, and said it might last a few years. You just couldn't stand to make an inferior product, could you, Dazen?" Someone who'd been drafting blue for twenty-five years would be pleased to see the order in this: Dazen was a perfectionist, so even though he could make his mask better with imperfection, it didn't match his personality to do so.
"No," he said quietly.
"I fought for your brother. I killed for him," Samila said.
"We all did an awful lot of that," Gavin said.
"I felt so betrayed by you, that you wouldn't even acknowledge me after what we'd had. I felt a glimmer of hope when you broke your betrothal with Karris. When I finally figured it all out, I still wasn't sure of myself. Gavin told us things about you, about what you would do if you won. And you weren't doing them. Was your brother a liar all along, or did you change? You were supposed to be a monster, Dazen."
"I am a monster."
"Glib, still. The snot-nosed younger brother with a quick tongue. I mean it." She looked at him long and hard. Looked at the Freeing knife that he hadn't drawn. "How well do you know yourself?"
He thought about the years, the goals he'd achieved, and the ultimate goal it was serving. "The Philosopher said that a man alone is either a god or a monster," Gavin said. "I'm no god."
She stared at him for one moment more, those intense blue eyes unreadable. She smiled. "Well then. Maybe the times call for a monster." She knelt at his feet, and he blessed her.
Chapter 82
Kip had always pictured a charge as being somehow glorious. Whatever he'd pictured, it wasn't this. He held his pants up with his wounded left hand and the musket in his right. And the musket was heavy! His heart was heaving and everyone else was running faster than he was.
He had little sense of what was happening anywhere else. A man who roared that the soldiers could call him either god or Master Sergeant Galan Delelo ran at the front, urging his men on. The backs of the other soldiers filled the rest of Kip's vision, and the pain of running distracted him from all else except for the intermittent whistling, which he couldn't place at first-until he realized it was the sound of musket balls flying past, and then he could hardly think of anything else.
For a moment he saw the city walls as the men in front of him disappeared in a ditch before scrambling up the other side. He remembered dismissing these walls not even a week ago. Now they looked pretty impressive. The side of the wall was encrusted with slums like barnacles, and King Garadul's men were already swarming there, trying to use the low buildings and rough shelters as a ladder. But even in the brief glimpse Kip had, one of the slum buildings on which the men were climbing teetered and then collapsed, crushing men and sending up a cloud of dust.
Something wet and chunky splattered across Kip's face as he ran. He turned, vaguely saw a man dropping beside him-and then the ground suddenly wasn't where it was supposed to be.
He went down hard in the dry irrigation ditch. He skidded on his face, flipped over, rolled, the wind knocked cleanly out of him. As he moaned, struggling to regain his breath, he realized he wasn't alone. The irrigation ditch was full of men cowering inside its marginal cover.
Master Sergeant Galan Delelo appeared back on the lip of the ditch. "Get up, you pathetic rats! They've got an angle right into this ditch from the wall, you damn fools. Get up! If you're anything less than dead, get up or I'll shoot you myself!"
For a second, no one moved.
"You wouldn't," a man said.
The master sergeant drew a pistol and shot him in the belly. "Who's next?" he yelled. He pointed his other pistol at a man carrying a large robin's egg blue sack.
"I'm a messenger!" the man screamed.
"You're a soldier now," Master Sergeant Delelo shouted. He was either unaware or just didn't care about the musket fire raining around him, sending up little puffs of earth. "Now, move!"
The man dropped his messenger sack, grabbed Kip's musket, and ran forward, along with everyone else.
Lying on the ground, Kip was left with the other corpses. When he had his breath back, he touched the side of his face. Gore, gray-red chunks of… He didn't want to think about it. What mattered was that he was free. At least until the next officer commandeered the cowards who filled up this ditch again.
There wasn't much time. If Kip thought too much or waited too long, he wouldn't move, and he needed to move now. The master sergeant was right, this ditch wasn't out of the line of fire. If Kip waited, he was going to get killed.
He wanted to see more of the battle, make a good plan. He didn't know what kind of a judge he would be of whatever he saw, and he didn't even know which way to run.
He grabbed the messenger's sack and slung it over his shoulder. He saw the wreck of a wagon farther back away from the wall.
Did we run right past that? Kip hadn't even noticed. Regardless, the oxen who'd been pulling the wagon were dead or mewling, screaming in pain, bloodied. Kip ran for it.