Chapter 59: A Pair of Shoes

Kai didn’t remember passing out at the bottom of Hale’s stairs, but he woke up in his own bed with his boots still on, his vest folded over the back of the chair, and a blanket tucked around him so carefully that it could only have been Mira.

The setting sun was casting an orange glow through the window, which meant that he must have slept through the entire day, and for one confused second, he couldn’t remember why his stomach was in knots. Then he remembered everything at once, and he jolted straight up in bed.

[Good evening. You have been asleep for nine hours, and you were snoring for most of them]

"I don’t snore," Kai whispered.

[You snore like Garrick. I kept count. Draven and Voss are still missing, Celestine is awake and drinking her tea, and Mira has come to check on you eleven times]

"Eleven?" Kai whispered.

[If you include the time she stood in the doorway and did not come in, it is twelve. I am counting it]

Kai laid his head back down on the pillow, and in spite of everything that was going on, he found himself smiling.

[You are smiling about that kiss]

"Maybe," Kai whispered.

[I was there as well, you know. I am always there. Please remember that the next time you kiss someone on the steps of my mother’s Cathedral]

Kai wasn’t sure whether she was joking or not, and he decided that it was best not to ask. He stayed in bed a little while longer, listening to the sounds of the house below him, the clatter of dishes in the kitchen and the murmur of people talking in the dining room, and it was nice, for once, that nobody was screaming and nothing was on fire.

By the time Kai made it downstairs, there were a lot more people in the house than there had been when he fell asleep. Brannoch was sitting at the dining table, taking up most of it with his enormous body, and six smiths in leather aprons were standing along the wall behind him. Nerine was there as well, sitting next to Princess Seris, and Elder Hollis was standing near the fire with his hat in his hands, looking very uncomfortable in such a nice house.

"I said first light," Kai said to Brannoch.

"We arrived at first light," Brannoch said. "But you were asleep, and the princess said that if we woke you, she would push us off a roof."

Kai looked over at Princess Seris, who shrugged and kept writing in her notebook.

"It worked on Mira," Princess Seris said.

Mira was sitting at the end of the table, and the moment she saw Kai walk into the room, she looked up and then immediately looked back down at her soup, and her face turned red all the way to her ears. Garrick looked at her, then at Kai, then back at her, and a slow smirk spread across his face.

"Don’t," Kai said.

"I didn’t say anything," Garrick said.

"Your face is talking," Kai said.

Justiciar Hale cleared his throat from the other end of the table, and everyone went silent.

"The King’s men have searched the city all day," Hale said. "We have found no trace of Lord Draven or Elder Voss. Draven’s townhouse near the palace was empty, and his strongbox had already been cleaned out before they arrived."

"Which means he has money," Kai said. "That’s never a good thing."

"He always has money," Mira said coldly. "That’s the one thing you can always say about Draven."

Kai sat down at the table and pulled a bowl of soup in front of him, and he thought about Lord Castor Draven, with his silver hair and his rings and his polished black shoes, sitting across the table from him at Ironwatch.

"Gods are a business," Kai said slowly. "That’s what Draven told me the first time I met him. People have faith, and the Church takes their money." He looked around the table at everyone, one by one. "He isn’t going to run. He’s a businessman, and he just lost the biggest business in Veyrath. He’s going to want it back."

"How?" Nerine asked.

"The Conclave," Kai said. "If I’m declared a fraud, then everything we’ve done goes with me. The bells, the moon hymn, the wheat, all of it gets called a trick. The Radiant Church will say that the Mother’s statue is crying because of a heretic, and one day, someone else will be selling blessings out of that Cathedral." He set his spoon down beside his bowl. "And that someone will be Draven."

Kai pushed his soup away, because he had lost his appetite, and nobody said anything for a long moment, because it sounded exactly like something Draven would do.

"Then he will come for the votes," Princess Seris said, opening her notebook to the page with seven circles drawn on it. "You have four churches who have promised to vote for you, Kai. The Iron Father, the Silver Moon, the Ashen Twins and the Harvest Lord. If even one of them is frightened, or bribed, or hurt before the Conclave, you are back to three and a half."

"What about the Radiant Church?" Garrick asked. "Who votes for them now? Liora’s sitting in a cell."

"The rules of the Conclave are very old," Hale said. "If a church has no High Priestess, its vote is cast by whoever holds its highest sacred office." He turned his head to look at Sunny, who was standing in the doorway with his arms crossed. "For the Radiant Church, that is the Holy Champion."

Sunny went very still, and nobody in the room said a word.

"Then the Radiant Church will vote for the God of Failure," Sunny said quietly. "And I will tell them why."

[Faith gained. Follower: Holy Champion. Faith: +9%. Status: Decided.]

Princess Seris drew another circle on the page and filled it in slowly, and her hand trembled slightly as she did it.

"Five," Princess Seris whispered. "If all of them make it through the next three days."

Kai looked around the room at Brannoch and Nerine and Hollis and the smiths lined up along the wall, and an idea began to grow in the back of his mind, the way it always did, half terrible and half genius.

"Then we protect them," Kai said. "I’ve got three hundred and twelve people who showed up with buckets because I asked. I’m betting a lot of them would show up for this too."

"You want to use Minor Voice again," Mira said.

"I want to ask," Kai said. "There’s a difference."

That night, after everyone else had gone to bed, Kai sat on the edge of the well in Hale’s courtyard and used Minor Voice to tell everyone who believed in him what was happening, and then he asked them to keep their eyes open. He asked the fishermen to keep watch over the docks and the smiths to watch over the Forge District, and he asked the widows from the soup line to watch the lower district, because nobody in the world pays closer attention than a widow in a soup line. He asked the Sisters of the Silver Moon to keep singing, so that he would know they were safe, and he asked the fish woman to scream if she ever saw a man with silver hair and very nice shoes.

[Three days down the river, Tobin fell out of bed again. I thought you would want to know]

"Tell him I’m sorry," Kai whispered.

[I cannot do that. But I believe he has started sleeping on the floor to save time]

Kai laughed so hard that he almost fell into the well, and when he finally caught his breath, he noticed that he could hear something through Divine Echo, very faintly, underneath the sounds of the city settling down for the night. It was several voices talking to one another, and he couldn’t understand a single word they were saying.

He could make out the Tide Mother’s deep, rolling voice, and the Lady of the Silver Moon’s soft one, and the Harvest Lord’s rumbling laugh, and the Ashen Twins whispering together in perfect unison. Underneath all of them, very faint but definitely there, was another voice that he would have known anywhere.

[The gods are talking to one another, Kai. For the first time in forty years, they are talking to one another]

Kai sat there and listened to them for a long time, with his chin resting on his knees, and he thought about how strange it was that the loneliest-sounding voices he had ever heard were finally talking to someone. He was still listening when someone knocked on the front gate of Hale’s house.

By the time Kai reached the gate, whoever had knocked was already gone, and the street outside was empty and dark. But sitting on the front step was a brand-new pair of black leather shoes, polished to such a shine that they reflected the moonlight, with a folded note tucked inside one of them.

Kai looked up and down the street, but there was no one there, and the only sound was the Sisters of the Silver Moon still singing from their tower on the eastern hill. He unfolded the note, and his hands were shaking slightly as he read it under the lantern by the gate.

Dear Mr. Mercer,

I believe I owe you a pair of shoes, and I always pay my debts. I will see you at the Conclave.

There was no signature, but Kai didn’t need one to know exactly who it was from.

[It is midnight. 344 days. 3 days until the Conclave]