Dragging their exhausted selves back to the bounds of Holia seemed a bit much to Hawk, but that’s what Shadow did. And if he could do it, climb back down flights of stairs towards the unseen, unknown horror, so could Hawk. A stupid, stubborn way of thought, but she’d burned up all her decent logic keeping Shadow from injecting himself with stupid. Not that his past self was stupid. God, she was so tired.

  Their arrival in the Holian Rift coincided with a report to Mulligan; Hawk and Shadow both listened shamelessly. Apparently, things were at something of a standstill. Illyris had surrounded Argon’s forces so they could not retreat—a usual tactic, Shadow mentioned, when the gods choose to fight over the Temple of Light—and had kept his armies of burned out husks from their invasion by simply dousing them in water.

  “How long’s it been down here?” Shadow asked, and winced at his answer; a long time. Nearly a week’s worth of time had passed between their exit and their return. Better: Shadow was still damaged. But his expression had a source a bit deeper than time. “He’s starved out. He’ll have burned through the supplies he had for an easy victory. Now he has to turn away from the Temple and engage with Illyris, or else surrender his flanks to her entirely.”

  “You think he’d make a break for it?” Hawk said.

  He shook his head. “No. This is an old dance; its steps are plain. Any attempt to break the siege from within will end with the retreat being permitted only after the besieger has had their fill of blood. This works in our favor one way: this is Illyris. She’s thirsted only after her own vengeance, that thirst is easily quenched. Which is a good thing; it means when I challenge Argon to single combat—”

  And the protests that brought out of them silenced any further discussion of that road for several minutes. Finally, he said, “Why is this any surprise at all? It was going to devolve into champions verses champions as soon as the siege began. I promise you Argon and Illyris already have theirs all kitted out for slaughter, with arms and jewels and favors and all the rest traditionally laid out. And I don’t have my mail. I’ll have to find some, or manifest it, or—”

  “You are not,” Hawk said, through clenched teeth, “going to fight a fucking god in single combat.”

  “Why would I not?” But he was smiling now. Thin as tinned milk, but he was smiling. “Do you have an idea that won’t end in bloodshed? Because mine will at least minimize that blood shed to me.”

  “That’s not a solution. That’s lighting yourself on fire to keep the rest of us warm, and you’re not doing that anymore.” Hawk said. “No more stupid heroism.”

  “Does that rank up there with no more con artistry?” He arched a brow. There was also a sadness to his tone, though, that told her this question bothered him more than his flippant tone allowed.

  “I’d never go that far. That’d be like ripping out a heart, or a limb.” Or your past, she thought, but did not say. That would be traversing raw wounds too early, when they’d only just gotten the infection out. And she tried to inject as much levity into her expression as the circumstances allowed. Which wasn’t much.

  “Yes. Well, this will end in one of two ways,” Shadow said, redirecting the conversation. “Either Illyris will ally once more with Argon, after wresting some concessions from him, or he will overpower her. If we are to win, then it must be now. Argon is focused on Illyris. She is reasonable and rational compared to her siblings. She will also fill the power vacuum left by her brothers’ deaths…and give us a barrier to Nasheth, whose wrath will be undeniable.” He chuckled at this, as if it were obviously funny. No one else laughed.

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  “We don’t have the military presence to pull that off,” Spectre said. “We’re still moving troops into place and making phone calls. It hasn’t even been a week on this side of the Rift, and getting your average American politician to understand what Holia is…well, that’s a lot harder than it should be.”

  “You’ve got refugees here, don’t you?” Mattias’s soft and gentle voice interrupted their strident debate. The old man in his sunshine-faced medical gown drew every eye with a dignity and poise that belied his years.

  Neither Hawk nor Shadow had helped him down here.

  “My friend, what are you doing? You should be upstairs, safe in your bed.”

  “My bed is uncomfortable and rest is unthinkable. Not when my Temple and my freedom hang by the finest of threads. Or am I in error, thinking you lot are discussing the gods’ invasion? You look for soldiers; look to those who call these places ‘home’. You’ll find more than your fair share.”

  “That is unthinkable,” Shadow said. “They are innocent in all this.”

  “All the more reason for them to rise up. Ah, You military men in your finery. Aye, friend, I’m throwing you in there. You forget a soldier is little more than a man, and these men have lost their everything. Their homes, their hopes for a future in that home. The Gods have come at last, haven’t they? And they’re doing what they do best, ravenous things: eating us all down to rind and core. You propose leaving them on the sidelines because they are not noble, as you think you are, or strong. The Gods do not think this way. They see more fodder for their appetite. These refugees, They’re stronger than you; they’ve survived their battle. You have yet to be blooded in yours.”

  A second, soft voice interrupted them. A holian refugee. They spoke, not in English, Holia’s sacred language (Hawk, as ever, gagged a bit at this reminder) but in the common tongue. After a moment, Shadow began to translate. “He asks if this is the Light Archon. Mattias has confessed, both to being Archon in the past and to abandoning the position. The stranger is asking why.”

  Mattias drew himself up and asked, in the Holian tongue, if the stranger spoke the sacred. At the affirmative, Mattias said, “Then I will use a tongue all should understand. Yes. I am no longer Archon. I have abandoned the robes, the vows and the mask. As to why…why should I not? I have followed the gods faithfully and been made fugitive in my own land, not because I did anything that offended them, but because I asked to live. To be myself, a quiet old man in a quiet garden. I asked to be gentle. To be compassionate. To enjoy the last of my years in comfort, alone. What God worth following would listen to these requests and call them dross?

  “I will not follow those without compassion. I will not follow those who war for profit and amusement. I will not bow to those who treat my life, the lives of those around me, as pawns in a game I cannot afford to play. I would rather enter this new world shriven of belongings, sapped of wealth and strength, than I would carry even one mote of the old life and old gods with me. They are an offense to the universe. They should be an offense to themselves.”

  His words carried throughout the whole ward. People leaned forward breathless to listen…and not only the wounded. He had seen what they had not; that this ward of injured people was slowly filling with the able bodied. They surrounded the beds, tended to the injured, wept over their own misfortunes. They were here, and they were listening now with bated breath.

  “You want a force worth using? They are here. They will fight. Not well, perhaps, but we are past the point where, I think, that will matter. One man can lead them. And, I think, there are two such here that they will follow. Myself, and you, my Shadow.”

  Shadow was already shaking his head. “I will not be king or God or warlord again.”

  “I ask for a figurehead, not a king. I ask for you to stand up and let them know you fight for them, and that a loyalty to you might be wasted, but only by defeat. You do not betray those who trust you, my friend.”

  “I would rather sacrifice the whole of myself to the gods, grant them a second feast.” But he was unmoving as he thought. She knew when he’d made a choice. His shoulders slumped, his head bowed a bit, as if in shame. “But then perhaps you are right. Perhaps those able should have the right to stand for their own home. Call them. Let those who would come, come. And within an hour, we shall do the unthinkable.

  “We shall all of us face down the gods.”