Chapter 39: Two Hundred and Fourteen

Kai woke up to the sound of singing the next morning, and for a split second, he thought he had died, though if this was heaven, it was nowhere near his idea of it.

He walked over to the window in his borrowed nightshirt and looked down at the gate to Hale’s property, where at least two hundred people were crowded into the road. Some of them were holding candles in broad daylight, others were holding signs they had painted themselves, and a large group near the front was singing what Kai was fairly sure was a drinking song with the words "God of Failure" shoved into it.

One of the signs read MISS FOR US, and another one just had a meat pie drawn on it.

[Good morning. You have 214 new followers, and I believe most of them are outside your window]

"What do they want?" Kai whispered.

[I do not know if they know. Most of them are at 1% or 2%. One man is at 4%, and I think that is because you hit his meat pie]

"Why would that make him believe in me?" Kai whispered.

[He said it was a bad meat pie]

There was a knock on Kai’s door, and Justiciar Hale came in without waiting to be invited, leaning heavily on his cane and looking like he hadn’t slept at all.

"Mr. Mercer," Hale said. "I have two hundred people outside my house, and they have trampled my wife’s rose garden. One of them asked my cook if your bathwater was available for purchase."

"Is it?" Kai asked.

"No," Hale said. "Go and speak to them before they try to climb my walls."

Kai pulled on his vest and boots and went downstairs, where he found Princess Seris standing at the front gate with her notebook, writing down the name of every person outside. She had lined them up halfway down the road, and she was asking each one of them the same three questions in a very serious voice.

"Name, district, and why you believe in him," Princess Seris said to an old woman at the front of the line.

"I don’t believe in him," the old woman said. "But I believe in anything that makes the Radiant Church angry."

Princess Seris wrote that down without even blinking, and then she moved on to the next person in line, a young fisherman who said he had come because his mother made him.

"You’re writing them all down?" Kai asked.

"You need one hundred true believers," Princess Seris said, without looking up from her notebook. "You cannot count what you do not write down. My father taught me that."

Kai just stared at her, because he had never told her about the hundred, and Princess Seris looked up at him with her green eyes, not fazed in the slightest.

"Mira told me last night," Princess Seris said. "She also told me that if I ever told anyone else, she would push me off a roof."

"That sounds exactly like Mira," Kai said, and he couldn’t help smiling a little.

The moment Kai climbed up onto the short wall next to the gate, the whole crowd fell silent, and two hundred faces turned to stare up at him. All of a sudden, his brain took over the way it always had on Earth, because he knew exactly what to say to a crowd like this. He had said it all a hundred times, and he knew every single word, and not one of them had ever been true.

Then he spotted Elowen standing at the back of the crowd with her sword resting on her shoulder, and he swallowed every last one of those words.

"Hey, I’m Kai," Kai said. "I guess I’m your God of Failure, and I have something to tell you before you decide to believe in me."

The crowd leaned in, and near the front, a small boy climbed up onto his father’s shoulders to get a better look.

"I can’t aim," Kai said. "I’ve never once hit anything I was aiming at with a spell. I have no gold and no temple, and the last time I tried to bless something, I opened up a secret room under a desk. If you follow me, expect failure to happen over and over again."

No one spoke for a long while, and Kai was positive he had just lost every one of them. Then the man with the meat pie sign placed his hand over his heart.

"Finally," the man said. "A god who’s honest."

The crowd erupted into cheers, and somewhere in the back, they started singing all over again.

[Faith update. 214 followers: +1%. Status: They enjoy your honesty.]

"Unbelievable," Kai whispered.

[Elowen’s sword never lit up once. I think that is why]

By noon, Seris had gotten everyone’s names, and most of the crowd had finally gone home. Kai was sitting on the front steps eating a piece of bread when Brannoch came walking up the road with six other blacksmiths behind him, all of them carrying something wrapped in canvas.

"God of Failure," Brannoch said. "The blacksmiths voted last night and removed Elder Voss from power. The hammer will be melted down and repaired, and they have asked me to lead them until a new elder is chosen."

"Congrats," Kai said. "That’s good, right?"

"I do not know yet," Brannoch said. "But they wanted me to bring you this."

The blacksmiths unwrapped the canvas, and Kai was stunned to see a brand-new pair of leather boots, stitched with iron thread, in exactly his size.

"We noticed your boots did not fit," Brannoch said. "It seemed wrong for a god."

Kai pulled off Tam’s old boots and put the new ones on, and he almost started crying over a pair of shoes.

[Faith gained. Brannoch: +4%. Status: Likes the Boots.]

"Thanks," Kai said, and he really meant it, more than almost anything he had said in a very long time.

Elowen came back from the prison that afternoon, after sitting across a table from Elder Voss for three hours with her sword laid flat between them. She found Kai sitting on the edge of the well in the courtyard and sat down next to him without being asked.

"He did not want to speak to me," Elowen said. "But he also did not want to lie to me, so in the end, he simply answered."

"What did he say?" Kai asked.

"The High Priestess has sent letters to every church in Veyrath," Elowen said. "All six of them. She is calling for a Conclave, which has not happened in a hundred years, and all seven churches will come together to decide whether you are a god or not."

"And if they decide I’m not?" Kai asked.

"Then they will not allow you inside their temples," Elowen said. "Or anyone who believes in you."

Kai looked down at his new boots for a long time without saying anything at all, thinking about two hundred and fourteen people who might wake up one morning and forget they had ever sung a terrible drinking song outside his window.

A few minutes after midnight, Kai felt warmth spread out of his chest, and Syraphim appeared sitting on the edge of his bed. She didn’t fall into anything or say anything strange, and she just sat there with her hands in her lap and her halo rings floating slowly above her head.

"You have been upset with me all day," Syraphim said. "Your heart rate increases every time I talk."

"I’m not upset," Kai said.

"Kai," Syraphim said.

Kai sighed and rubbed his face with both hands, because there was no point lying to someone who could hear his heartbeat.

"Okay, I’m a little upset," Kai said. "You should have told me that if I failed, you would die too."

Syraphim was silent for a long moment, and when she finally spoke, her voice was very small.

"The High Priestess told you the truth about my gift," Syraphim said. "But she lied about one thing. If you gave me to the Champion, I would live, but I would be his. I would grow to know his heartbeat and his habits, and slowly, he would become my favorite person to remember instead of you."

Kai turned to look at her, at her white eyes with the gold rings inside them, shining in the candlelight.

"I would rather die with you than become someone else’s favorite," Syraphim said.

Kai didn’t know what to say to that, so he reached over and held her hand, and it felt warm, just like it had in the bathtub.

"We aren’t dying," Kai said.

"Then you need ninety-nine more," Syraphim said. "And you need them soon."

She leaned against Kai for the rest of her ten minutes, and when her time was up, she melted back into him like snowflakes drifting down to the ground.