Chapter 52: The Bucket Brigade

It was a bad idea, and Kai knew it was a bad idea, because it was basically the same idea Lord Draven had pitched him over dinner, just turned around backwards.

"You make the problem, and then you sell the solution," Kai muttered, looking down at the gray canal, which was still bubbling a little. "Draven told me that. And that’s exactly what the Radiant Church did to you. They poisoned your water, and now they want to sell you grain."

"And?" Hollis asked, with his pitchfork still in his hand.

"Well, I’m not going to sell you anything," Kai said. "I’m going to give it to you. All of my followers are going to come out here and help you dig, for free."

Hollis looked at him like he was crazy.

"Your followers?" Hollis asked.

"To be fair, I’m not really sure who all of my followers are," Kai admitted.

[Kai, you have Minor Voice]

"Yeah, I know," Kai whispered. "That’s how I’m going to find them."

[The last time you used Minor Voice, an old man three days away fell out of his bed]

"He’ll be fine," Kai whispered.

He closed his eyes and thought about every single person who had ever shown even a little bit of faith in him. He thought about the fishermen in the harbor and the Sisters of the Silver Moon, the smiths in the Forge District and the two hundred and fourteen people who had sung outside Hale’s gate, and the widows in the soup line and the fish woman.

"Minor Voice," Kai whispered.

(Hello, everyone. This is Kai, the God of Failure. If I woke you up, I’m sorry)

All across the city, people stopped what they were doing at the same moment. A fisherman in the harbor dropped a whole bucket of fish back into the ocean, and up in the white tower on the eastern hill, the Sisters of the Silver Moon stopped singing in the middle of a hymn. In the Forge District, Brannoch froze in the middle of a swing with his hammer raised over his anvil, and in the soup line, the fish woman yelled "SWEETHEART!" so loudly that a man three tables away knocked over his soup.

Three days down the river, old Tobin fell out of bed again.

(There are farmers outside the eastern gate who need help) Kai thought, as hard as he could. (The Radiant Church poisoned their water, and their wheat is dying, and a lot of children will go hungry this winter if we don’t do something about it. I don’t know if I can fix it, and if I try by myself, I’ll probably miss. But if you have a bucket or a shovel, and you can take a day off, please come help)

When he opened his eyes, thirty-one farmers and one goose were staring at him.

"Did you just pray out loud?" Hollis asked.

"Kind of," Kai said. "Now we just wait."

They didn’t have to wait very long. The first cart came rolling down the eastern road from the city less than an hour later, full of fishermen from the harbor district, with Nerine sitting up front beside the driver and buckets, nets and fishing rods piled high in the back. Next came a cart full of smiths, with Brannoch sitting in the middle of them like a boulder, holding a shovel as big as a canoe paddle. After that, people started arriving on foot and in carts and on mules, widows in faded black dresses and little kids carrying cups because they didn’t own buckets, and the fish woman leading her crew from the soup line, every one of them carrying anything that could hold water.

The Sisters of the Silver Moon were the last to arrive, walking down the road in a long gray line with their veils pulled back from their faces, singing as they came.

Hollis stood beside the canal and watched the road fill up with people from the city, and his pitchfork slowly lowered until its prongs were resting on the ground.

"Who are these people?" Hollis asked.

"My followers," Kai said, and he realized it was the first time he had ever said those words without them feeling like a lie. "Most of them don’t really know what’s going on, but they showed up."

[There are 312 of them, Kai. They all came because you asked]

Brannoch was the first one to walk up to Kai, and he stuck his huge shovel in the dirt and looked out over the gray fields.

"God of Failure," Brannoch said. "Tell me what to dig."

It took Hollis explaining it to them, but Hollis knew exactly what needed to be dug. First, they had to build a dam across the top of each poisoned canal and drain it, so that no more of the Radiant blessing could reach the crops. Then they needed to dig a brand-new channel from the river on the far eastern side of the farms, where nobody had blessed the water. It was almost a mile long, and Hollis said it would have taken his farmers two weeks to do it on their own.

With Brannoch, the smiths and three hundred and twelve people, it took one afternoon.

The smiths used their pickaxes to break up the hard ground, and the fishermen followed behind them with shovels, while Garrick and Brannoch hauled stones bigger than a man’s head to dam off the poisoned canals. The widows and children formed a line from the river to the nearest field and passed buckets of clean water hand over hand all the way down the rows, and the fish woman stood at the front of the line yelling at anyone who spilled. Sunny took off his coat and dug alongside the smiths, while Mira passed buckets next to a little girl who was maybe seven years old, and Elowen walked the length of the dams, telling Garrick exactly where the poisoned water was still leaking through and where to place more stones.

The Sisters of the Silver Moon sang the entire time, and somehow, everyone worked faster because of it.

Kai dug as well, and he did it terribly, hitting rocks with his shovel over and over until Mira finally came over, took it right out of his hands, and showed him how to stand so that he would stop hitting his own feet. She didn’t make a single smart comment about it, which was somehow even more embarrassing, and she went back to the bucket line afterwards with a little smile on her face. Every so often, as he dug, Kai heard a soft ding in the back of his mind.

[Faith gained. New follower: Hollis. Faith: 4%. Status: Observing.]

[Faith gained. Farmers of the Harvest Lord: +3%. Status: Astonished.]

[Faith gained. Hollis: +6%. Status: Hopeful.]

[You have 11 divinity points]

By the time the sun began to set, they were finished. Brannoch broke through the last few feet of dirt at the riverbank with a single swing of his shovel, and clean blue water came pouring down the new channel and spilling out into the ditches between the gray rows of wheat. Everyone in the field cheered so loudly that the goose took off running.

[Faith gained. Farmers of the Harvest Lord: +9%. Status: Faithful.]

[Faith gained. Hollis: +11%. Status: Grateful.]

[You have 21 divinity points]

"Twenty-one," Kai whispered, panting as he leaned on his shovel. "Buy it."

[Skill learned: Lesser Bounty. Divinity points remaining: 1.]

Kai walked out to the edge of the nearest field with every person in the crowd watching him, and he pointed at the wheat right in front of him, as close as he could possibly get to it, only an arm’s length away. There was no way he could miss something that close, and he knew it.

"Lesser Bounty," Kai said.

A burst of golden light shot out of his finger, missed the wheat completely, flew sideways across the yard, and hit the giant wooden statue of the Harvest Lord standing beside the barn doors.

[Of course]

For a moment, nobody said anything at all. Then the chipped gold paint on the statue’s bundle of wheat started to crack and flake away, and underneath it, the wood was a bright, living green. The green spread down the statue’s arm and through its body, and then down into the ground beneath it, and from there it shot out through the dirt in every direction like a ripple in a pond.

Wherever it touched, the gray wheat turned gold. It spread out from the barn doors and across the fields row by row, moving faster than a horse could run, until every stalk of wheat from the temple all the way to the river was standing tall and golden in the evening light.

[Kai, the paint on the statue was a Radiant blessing too. You hit the thing that was silencing him]

Kai didn’t get a chance to respond, because a voice rose up through the ground beneath his feet, deep and warm, like thunder rolling across a summer field, and only Kai could hear it.

"About time, boy," the Harvest Lord said, and then he laughed so loudly that the wheat shook with it.

Hollis walked through the golden wheat towards Kai, and the old man was crying and didn’t care who saw him.

"The Harvest Lord will vote for you at the Conclave," Hollis said, grabbing Kai’s hand with both of his. "The Radiant Church can keep their grain."

"Four," Princess Seris whispered to herself, clutching her notebook to her chest. "Kai, you have four."

Kai was still smiling when a messenger from Hale came galloping down the road from the city, and the smile dropped right off his face the moment he saw the young man’s expression.

"Mr. Mercer," the messenger said, so out of breath that he could barely get the words out. "The Justiciar sent me. Liora’s soldiers came to the house an hour ago. They took the old woman."