In smaller ways he had kept himself intact and in power buying and dividing. He could do it again-and win.
The Nistam sat impassively behind glass and steel and watched the not developing around him.
Miowee drew the crystal knife from the sheath in the boot, but her hands were clumsy because she couldn't see them and she didn't fully understand the danger of the blade; as she pulled it out, it sliced through ropes and cloth and pared away skin and muscle from Shadith's leg.
Until she felt the warm gush on her hands and twisted around to see what was happening, Miowee wasn't aware of what she'd done. She sucked in a breath as she saw the red flood. "Shadow…"
"Yeh, I know." Shadith managed a creaky laugh. "Told you."
"Death to the Pliciks! Death to the Godkillers!"
Dencipim came out of the crowd, leaped the rope, and buried the pistol in the belly of the nearest Royal Guard. As he pulled the trigger, he snatched off the Guard's gilded helmet, threw it to the men following him over the rope. "Death to the Pliciks. Death to the Godkillers!"
Darkness flowed across the crater; the shadows at the back of the. Bubble thickened. Shadith froze, but the rite went droning on and the sun came out again. Cloud or what?,
Maka and Tana began throwing themselves at the Guards and the portable Palace, coming at it in waves, individual men dying and dying and dying, the waves never dying. "Death to the Pliciks! Death to the God-killers!"
Miowee shifted cautiously, located the tether that bound Kayataki to the pole. "Kaya."
"Mmmmphmm." It was a small sound, but as much noise as the girl could make around the gag. It was just audible above the chanting of the choir, the groan of the Longhorns, the doomdoom of the Drums.
"Child of mine, you know how to fall, soon as you're loose, go over the edge, then scoot for the back, find a hole and crawl in, you hear me?"
"Mmmooohminm!" The sound rose in protest. The child shook her head.
"Do it. I'm coming soon as I'm loose, but I swear, baby, I won't move till you're out of sight."
"Mmnimm." It was a falling sound this time, acquiescence. Shivering and icy pale, Kayataki hunched forward, pushed her head against her mother's side, then pulled back, stretching the tether taut so it'd be easier to cut.
Miowee handled the knife more awkwardly than she intended, applying too much force despite her care. The blade went through both ropes, hers and Kaya's, without noticing them and kept on going, missing her buttock by a hair and sinking into one of the oily sticks. She let go of the hilt as if she'd closed her hand about a snake.
A redheaded woman came riding through the Cicipi Gate, sitting in an arslibre howda mounted on the arching back of an immense and ugly warbot like the worst possible cross between a spider and a lobster. Two more paced alongside and a third followed behind. They shot gouts of steam through spiracles along their sides, opening a path for themselves through the surging throng of Kiskaids, walking with ominous, sinuous inevitability through the self-created clouds of steam.
The pilgrims scrambled to get away from the things, frantic with terror, seeing them as demons from hell's cellar.
Maka and Tanak were swarming over the glass palace, stomping on it, kicking at it, shooting at it with guns they'd brought with them or taken from dead guards; the glass was chipped and webbed with cracks but would not break, the cage groaned from the weight it was carrying but refused to collapse.
Men died, their bodies piling up against the glass. Inside the portable Palace, the Nistam stared grimly at grotesque dead faces staring sightlessly back at him.
Loyal Guards fired into the mob, killing hundreds, but a half a million men were coming at them, they couldn't kill them all. There wasn't enough room for aiming or even for using their rifles effectively. One by one they were falling.
About half the Guardforce deserted and slid into the crowd the moment they got a chance to tear off their uniforms.
By will and the force of the discipline he'd imposed on Aspirants all the long years he'd been Gospah, Ayawit was holding the rite together despite the chaos out on the floor of the crater.
Though he was gradually losing some of his priests, the core held. The Longhorners played their bassnotes, the choir sang, the god-Mimes danced-and the Na-priests crouched in the guardline between the Gospah and the people.
One by one the weaker souls slipped away, throwing off their robes and cassocks, stealing clothing off the dead, melting into the mob outside. But the core held.
As Miowee went over the edge and landed with a thump on the planks behind the Pyres, Shadith sagged against the ropes.
They gave a little. She could move her hands, her arms.
After a moment, she understood why.
Getting the knife out, Miowee had cut through several loops of the coil that bound her to the pole and that coil was beginning to unwind.
Her leg burned a little, but she still wasn't feeling much pain, the crystal cut too clean.
She flexed her knee, gasped at the sudden agony, felt sick when her foot sloshed in the blood that was filling the boot; the knife hadn't touched an artery, but she was leaking like a holey pot.
I'm going to bleed to death, she thought. No!
She rocked her body. The rope unwound faster and faster.
Fire. She was fire.
The Gospah was coming toward her, his eyes glazed with the intensity of his concentration.
He didn't see the loosened rope.
She had the feeling he saw nothing but whatever it was inside his head.
His arms were outstretched and empty, but three Kam priests behind him held torches.
He stopped in front of her. He chanted something. A Kam priest gave him a torch. His voice rising to a shriek, Ayawit looped it onto her Pyre.
It landed by her feet; the sticks caught, exploded into a sheet of flame.
Shadith closed her eyes, stopped breathing. She shut down everything but that rough pressure against her body and the slow, agonizing dance that kept the rope uncoiling until she tore the last loops off her neck and shoulders.
She dropped to her knees, reached through fire and grabbed the knife, ignoring the pain as the hot hilt burned into her palm, then she flung herself off the back of the Pyre, her bleeding leg giving way as she landed on the planks beside Miowee.
"Your wrists, push them away from you."
Not daring to cut all the way through (she didn't have time to take care not to slice into Miowee's arms), she nicked the rope round her wrists deeply enough (she hoped) to let the singer break free, then started crawling toward Kikun's Pyre which was burning now as the Gospah marched away with the last torch, crossing to Rohant.
She heard shouts, shooting, ignored them as she stabbed the knife into a stick near the top, then concentrated on pulling herself up the back of the Pyre.
The choir's chant faltered, stopped, the Kam priests shouted and began pushing and jumping, trying to get away from something that was more terrifying than the Gospah's anger.
The Longhorns went silent, the Drums stopped sounding. There was a rattle of high-pitched pings so close together they produced an almost continuous whine that improbably filled the whole of the broken Bubble.
Shadith levered herself over the edge of the pile, retrieved the knife and cut cautiously at the coil of rope binding Kikun to the center pole.
He woke from his trance and began helping her peel the rope away. His face was blistered from the heat of the flames, he was coughing as a few tendrils of oily smoke blew into his nostrils.
The Fire quit.
One minute it was there, the next gone, leaving behind a foul stench and a sudden chill as if whatever had snuffed it had not only killed the flames but sucked the heat out of the fuel that fed them, out of the air itself.
Steadying herself as her leg threatened to give way again, Shadith grabbed at the center post and gaped at the devastation in the Bubble, bodies sprawled everywhere, piled on top of each other, stunned not dead (they were still breathing), the new arrival sitting calmly in the middle of all this on a huge warbot of worldclass ugliness, three smaller clones of the thing standing guard behind it.