Chapter 23: Sixty Feet of Sister Kaia

The floor exploded, tearing in half directly under the table in the middle of the room, as the stone heaved upwards and a hand pushed its way through the hole.

Every finger was as wide as a tree trunk, and a white sleeve hung from the wrist. It landed on top of the table and knocked it over, and the silver carafe went flying and drenched Lord Draven’s shoes in wine.

Her head came up through the floor next, with a white veil, long black hair, and a nice smile, and her face filled the whole hole. Her giant eye looked at the black knights, then at Lord Draven, and then at Kai, and the giant nun smiled at all of them.

"Is that a nun?" Draven asked, after a long moment in which nobody moved.

"That’s Sister Kaia," Kai said. "She’s very devout."

[You have eleven minutes of glamour remaining]

The doors burst open, and Captain Brekk ran in with his sword out and his hair a mess, then stopped dead at the sight of the giant face smiling up at him from the floor.

"Sister," Brekk said. "You came back to me."

"She came back to me," Kai said.

"Let me have this one," Brekk said.

[Faith update. Hallard Brekk: 24%. Status: Loyal (In Love) (Again).]

The black knights remembered they had swords and attacked together, exactly the way Brekk said they always did. Two of them went after Kai, and two went after the giant nun.

Elowen blocked the two coming for Kai without even having to face them.

"They have very little light," Elowen said as she deflected another swing. "Almost none at all. It is like fighting a dead candle."

"Is that a bad thing?" Kai asked.

"They are pathetic," Elowen said.

The other two knights stabbed at the giant hand resting on the broken table, and Sister Kaia pulled it back and slapped them both into the wall, and they landed with a loud clang and slid to the floor.

Mira swung the silver carafe into the back of the closest knight’s helmet with a loud ding, and the knight slowly turned around to look at her.

"Oops," Mira said, and hit him again.

Lord Draven hadn’t moved an inch, and he was studying the giant nun like a horse he wanted to buy.

"Fascinating," Draven said. "You glamoured her. You glamoured my broodmother to look like a woman."

"No, I didn’t," Kai lied.

Elowen’s sword lit up brightly behind him.

"Thanks, Elowen," Kai said.

"I was not trying to," Elowen said.

Draven chuckled and rubbed his ringed hands together.

"You see?" Draven said. "This is why we should work together. A god who can disguise monsters as nuns.." He pointed one ringed finger at the door. "Bring the rest in."

More black knights came running through the door, ten, then fifteen, then twenty, until they lined the walls.

[There are twenty-four black knights in this room. That is not including the four on the floor]

"I can count," Kai whispered.

[Can you?]

Brekk walked over to stand beside Kai, and two of his own soldiers came in behind him, both of them shaking.

"Lord Draven," Brekk said. "I have served you for eleven years."

"And you have been a good servant," Draven said.

"I’m done being a good servant," Brekk said.

Kai looked up at the nun. She was gazing at Draven with her soft eyes, like she was waiting for someone to throw her a stick, and Kai remembered that she followed light, and she always followed light.

He looked down at Draven’s shoes, which were covered in wine, but they still had a polished shine to them, and Kai smiled.

[Oh no]

"That’s my con face," Kai whispered.

[What are you going to do?]

"I’m going to shoot it at myself," Kai whispered.

[Why would you do that?]

"Because it always shoots away from me," Kai whispered.

He pointed straight at his own chest and took a deep breath.

"Minor Light," Kai said.

A small ball of light appeared in front of his finger and hovered there for a second, like it was thinking about what to do. Then it shot backwards away from Kai and landed on Lord Draven’s shoes, and both of them lit up like little torches.

Draven looked down at his shoes, and so did the giant nun.

"Oh no," Draven said.

"Yup," Kai said.

Sister Kaia’s smile grew bigger than any smile should have been able to, and for a second Kai thought he saw teeth spinning somewhere behind it. Then she attacked, and Draven turned out to be much faster than he looked.

He kicked off his shoes and jumped backwards just as the giant hand slammed into the floor where he had been standing, and rocks flew everywhere. When the dust cleared, the nun was holding Draven’s shoes between her fingers and sniffing them, and Lord Castor Draven was standing in the corner of the room in his socks.

[You missed, but you hit something better]

"I hit his shoes," Kai whispered.

[Yes. Better]

"KILL IT!" Draven screamed, and he wasn’t smiling anymore. "Kill the beast!"

The knights charged the nun, and one of them managed to drive his sword into her hand, and the glamour shattered like glass. Her white sleeve, her veil, her hair, and her smile all broke apart into golden light, and underneath was pale, slimy skin and a ring of teeth big enough to swallow the knight who had stabbed her.

She swallowed him whole, and the room went silent.

Brekk whimpered, and it was the saddest sound Kai had ever heard a grown man make.

"Sister..." Brekk whispered.

"I’m sorry, man," Kai said.

[Faith update. Hallard Brekk: 24%. Status: Loyal (Heartbroken) (Again) (Again).]

[If she is hit, the glamour will break. I told you that]

"You told me it would last eleven minutes," Kai whispered.

[It would have lasted eleven minutes. I did not tell you that no one would stab her]

The broodmother pulled the rest of her body up through the floor, smashing more tables and chairs as she came, and the black knights backed towards the door, and one of them dropped his sword as she let out a roar that shook dust from the ceiling, and then she turned and laid her head on the floor next to Kai, very carefully, as if she were afraid she might break him, and purred.

"Good girl," Kai said, patting the side of her slimy face.

[Faith update. Follower: Unknown (Broodmother). Faith: 9%. Status: Full.]

Twenty-three black knights looked at Kai and then at their lord, who was standing in the corner in his socks. Draven straightened his gray coat, brushed his silver hair back, and smiled, and while it wasn’t as big a smile as before, it was still a smile.

"Nice job, Mr. Mercer," Draven said.

"I didn’t do anything nice," Kai said. "Everything I did failed."

"That’s why you’re so dangerous," Draven said.

He started towards the door, and his knights stepped aside to make way for him. No one stopped him, not Brekk, not Elowen, and not the broodmother, who was busy chewing on his shoe. At the door, Draven paused and turned around.

"You have my contract," Draven said. "Feel free to frame it and show it to anyone you like. It’s just a piece of paper with my name on it, and I sign a lot of things."

"It has your V on it," Mira said.

"So it does," Draven said after looking at her for a long time, and turned back to Kai. "Since you have been so honest with me, Mr. Mercer, I will be honest with you. The cages you saw in the Black Seam were not the only brood she had. She has been breeding for three years, and my barges left the lower docks this morning with forty young maws on board, one for every village between here and the ocean." He smiled at Kai one last time. "You wanted to be the bucket. Let’s see how many fires you can put out."

With that, he was gone, and his knights followed him out, and they heard horses in the courtyard and the gates grinding open, and then there was silence.

A few seconds later, Garrick and Dagna ran in and stopped dead at the sight of the hole in the floor.

"The barges," Mira said. "Kai, Millbrook is downriver."

"I know," Kai said.

"Millbrook is the first village downriver," Mira said.

"I know," Kai said.

[Barges travel faster than you can walk, especially downstream. If they left at sunrise, they will reach Millbrook in two days. It took you three days to get here]

Kai thought about Tobin, Wren, and Pell, and about how thirty-one people in Millbrook believed in him and were sitting in the path of forty young maws without even knowing it.

"Brekk, do you have any horses?" Kai asked.

"Draven’s knights took all of them," Brekk said. "We have a mule. He bites."

"Boats?" Kai asked.

"Draven took the barges," Brekk said. "We have a rowboat with a hole in it."

[A rowboat with a hole in it will not catch eight barges]

"I know," Kai whispered.

He looked down at the broodmother, still chewing on Draven’s very expensive shoe. She could climb three hundred feet of rock in minutes, she followed light, and his pants loved to glow. And she had spent her whole life at the bottom of a mine, right next to an underground river.

"Garrick, where does the water in the Black Seam go?" Kai asked.

Garrick thought about it for a moment, and then his eyes went wide.

"To the river," Garrick said. "All of it drains into the river."

Mira knew what Kai was about to say before he said it, because she always did.

"No," Mira said.

"I haven’t said anything yet," Kai said.

"You were about to," Mira said.

Kai crouched down next to the broodmother’s eyeless face and gave her a pat.

"Hey, girl," Kai said. "How fast can you swim?"