Chapter 70: Bite Them

Kai spent the rest of that day sitting at the table in Hale’s dining room, staring at the small gray rock and flipping it over and over in his fingers while everyone else argued around him.

Garrick wanted to go down to the market and knock the five men off their crates one at a time. Princess Seris calmly informed him that knocking down five men who were handing out free gold would make the God of Failure the most hated person in Veyrath by the end of the day. Hale wanted to send in the city watch, but when Bors asked what they were supposed to charge the men with, no one could think of anything. There was no crime in handing out money, not as long as nobody knew that the money was rocks yet.

"He hasn’t cheated anyone yet," Kai said. "He won’t cheat anyone until tomorrow, when the coins turn. And by then, the only name anybody will remember is mine."

"So we have until tomorrow," Mira said.

"We have until tomorrow," Kai said. "And I can’t outbid him, because I don’t have any gold. I can’t out-talk him either, because he isn’t saying anything. All he’s doing is handing out coins and letting people believe whatever they want to believe."

[That is what you used to do]

"I know," Kai whispered. "Which is exactly why I don’t know how to beat it."

Mira had been silent for most of the day, sitting across the table from him with her chin resting in her hand, and now she finally reached over and took the rock from him. She studied it for a moment, and then she looked up at Kai with a sharp gleam in her eye.

"When I paid that salesman, the first thing I told him was to bite the coins," Mira said. "Do you know why? Because that is how he found out your gold was fake in the first place. He bit it."

"Right," Kai said slowly.

"So we don’t wait for the coins to turn tomorrow," Mira said. "We make them turn today, in front of everyone, while Draven’s men are still standing there with their sacks. Tell them to bite them." She set the rock back down on the table in front of him.

Kai looked at her for a long moment, and then he began to smile, the same slow smile he always got when he thought of something that was both horrible and brilliant at the same time.

"You’re scary sometimes," Kai said.

"I learned from you," Mira said.

They spent the rest of the night getting ready. Bors went down to the watch house and came back with eleven members of the city watch who had been in the crowd during the Conclave, and Hale told each of them exactly where to stand. Princess Seris sent word to Elder Hollis, who sent back a reply that only said, How many wagons? Celestine sent a message to the widows of the soup line, and by midnight, there were pots boiling all over the lower district.

Kai sat on the edge of the well in the dark and used Minor Voice one last time. He didn’t ask anyone to pray, and he didn’t ask anyone to kneel. He simply asked his believers to meet him in the market square at noon, and to bring their coins with them if they had any.

[It is midnight. 339 days]

By noon the next day, the market square was even more crowded than it had been the day before. The five men in brown coats were back on their crates with full sacks of coins at their feet, the lines now stretched around the fountain three times, and the sign still hung across the front of the auction stage in large red letters.

Kai climbed up the wooden steps of the auction stage, the very same stage where Mira had once stood in chains, and he grabbed the bottom of the sign and ripped it down with both hands.

The entire square turned to look at him.

"Hi," Kai said, loudly enough for the whole square to hear. "I’m sure some of you know me. I’m the God of Failure. The guy on the coins."

The lines erupted into cheers, and someone yelled, "Bless you, God!" while several people laughed and lifted their coins up into the air. On the closest crate, the young man in the fancy shoes stopped smiling and slowly lowered his sack.

"On my very first day in this city, I stood right about here," Kai said. "I was wearing a stolen robe and a pair of boxers with tacos on them, and I bought a girl off this stage from the man who used to sell people here. I paid him two hundred gold." He held up his hand, and the small gray rock sat in the center of his palm. "Except it wasn’t gold. It was rocks. I glamoured them to look like gold, and he didn’t find out until he bit one."

The square had gone dead silent, and no one was cheering anymore.

"I’m not going to do that again," Kai said. "I don’t have any gold, and I’m not giving any of you money. Those men aren’t mine." He pointed at each of the five crates, one by one. "So if you have one of those coins in your pocket, I have a request. Bite it."

For a moment, no one moved at all.

Then, down by the fountain, the fish woman pulled a coin out of her apron and put it in her mouth. She bit down so hard that Kai could hear the crack all the way up on the stage, and when she spat it out into her hand, she stared down at the gray pebble in disbelief.

"ROCKS!" the fish woman screamed. "IT’S ROCKS, SWEETHEART! HE’S TELLING THE TRUTH!"

From there, it spread like wildfire. All over the square, people were pulling coins out of their pockets and purses and biting down on them, and little flashes of gold appeared and vanished again as gray stones dropped into their palms. The baker from the soup line street bit down on three coins in a row, and all three of them turned to stone. A couple of fishermen dumped an entire purse out onto the cobblestones and stood there staring at a pile of rocks.

The noise of the crowd began to change, and it grew angrier by the second.

The five men in brown coats started to climb down from their crates, but every one of them was met at the bottom by a member of the city watch, standing exactly where Hale had told them to be. The young man in the nice shoes tried to run, but Bors grabbed him by the collar with one big hand and lifted him clean off the ground. His sack broke open when it hit the cobblestones, and coins flew everywhere, sparkling gold in the sunlight, until the first fisherman stamped on them and they cracked open to reveal the stones underneath.

"Who paid you?" Bors asked, holding the young man up in the air so that the whole square could see him.

The young man looked out at the hundreds of angry faces staring up at him, and he decided that it would be best to tell the truth.

"Lord Draven," the young man squeaked. "Lord Castor Draven. He gave us the sacks and the shoes. He said we could keep the shoes."

The square erupted, and for a moment, Kai was terrified that it was going to turn into a riot. He saw one man pick up a loose cobblestone and another grab one of the empty crates, and then he heard a sound that cut right through all the noise.

It was the creak and rumble of wagon wheels rolling across cobblestones.

Elder Hollis drove into the square from the north road at the head of a whole line of farm wagons, and every one of them was piled high with fresh bread from the Harvest Lord’s farms. The widows from the soup line came up from the lower district two at a time, carrying pots of hot stew between them on long wooden poles. At the very front of them walked Celestine, leaning on Liora’s arm, with her black veil pulled back from her face.

As the smell of warm bread filled the square, the angry crowd slowly began to calm down.

"There’s no line," Kai called out from the stage. "You don’t have to kneel, and you don’t have to pray. You don’t have to say my name or anyone else’s. It’s just food. Go eat."

Kai spotted the woman from the day before, standing near the fountain with a gray rock in her hand and tears running down her face, the rock that was supposed to buy her son meat for dinner. One of the widows walked over and pressed a whole loaf of bread into her arms without saying a single word, and the woman sat down on the edge of the fountain and cried even harder.

[Kai]

"Yeah?" Kai whispered.

[That one tasted like bread]

[Faith gained. New follower: Hessa. Faith: 7%. Status: Fed.]

[Faith gained. New follower: Tam. Faith: 11%. Status: Full.]

[Faith gained. The fish woman: +9%. Status: Vindicated.]

Kai slumped down on the edge of the auction stage and let out a breath he felt like he had been holding since the day before. Mira climbed up the steps and sat down next to him, and she bumped her shoulder against his, and neither of them said anything for a while.

[Kai, there is something else]

"What?" Kai whispered.

[When all of those coins broke, I felt the light that was holding them together. I have been trying to work out what it was, and I believe I know now]

Kai turned his head to the left, even though there was nothing there for him to look at.

[That glamour was not cast by a priest, Kai. It was cast by a god. And it is not one of my mother’s children. I have never felt that god before in my life]