In the history of Marialis, there have been four major civil uprisings of the merchant guilds against administrative authority. The pattern is consistent: a period of increasing restriction, a triggering incident, a day of violence, negotiation, temporary concession, and the gradual return of the conditions that caused the uprising.
The guilds know this pattern. They have lived through it. They continue anyway. What looks like repetition is, from inside the cycle, the only form of pressure available to people who cannot afford an army.
— The Annals of Marialis, Volume V: Civic Unrest and Resolution.
The noise had been growing for the past hour and now felt as though it were almost ready to take shape. It was not yet a full rebellion, because the crowd was still swelling, still multiplying as it moved toward the place where it meant to deliver its message. But you didn’t need to see the real action yet to know something was about to change. It was enough just to smell it in the air. A woman on the upper floor of a tailor’s shop pulling shut the shutters. A few dockworkers moving in the opposite direction—with their tools still hanging from their belts—toward the square. A well-dressed man running back out from the square through the middle of them. Two children climbing onto the roof of their house so they could see the square…
This street, which had been calm only a few hours earlier, was now filled with people rushing back and forth and was growing emptier by the minute. At the far end stood the main Warden headquarters, its high watchtower rising as though it could see everything. The large three-story building was made of dark stone, its facade blackened even further by years of salt air blowing in from the harbor. The front of the building did not face the street but the harbor, opening into a wide courtyard. The side of that courtyard facing the street consisted of high walls and an entrance set between two wide sliding gates that looked as though they could be shut at any moment. The courtyard itself was more crowded than it had ever been, and the noise of all the men talking among themselves was drowning out everything else. But the moment a man appeared in the great doorway that opened into the courtyard, the noise diminished quickly and then, all at once, died away completely.
Captain Rhoren waited with an expression so intimidating that very few people could have looked at him without flinching. Since there was not a single Warden officer who did not fear him, the crowd had fallen into order with astonishing speed. “You’ll split into four groups and head to the square by different routes,” he began immediately. He didn’t need to shout; his voice was already loud enough and echoed through the courtyard. “You do not intervene with the crowd unless you’re forced to. Your priority is to secure the Ledger building. After that, your officers will tell you what to do.” He finished by saluting several higher-ranking men watching him, then turned and headed back inside.
Just past the doorway, Tarr’en was standing there, watching everything.
“You think it’s the right move to leave this place with so few men, Captain?”
“The Ledger wanted every unit we had, didn’t they?” Rhoren replied, glaring at him with obvious irritation.
Ordinarily that would have meant little to Tarr’en, since he didn’t care about this place anyway. But at the moment there was an important prisoner inside, and even if he didn’t show it, the possible connections around her were troubling him.
“So then you’ll be going after your men too.”
“Not immediately. I still need to send word to the other units in the district. At this rate, it looks like we may have to pull the extra men away from the city gates too. We know at least five guilds are already in the square, but we’ve also received reports that more are gathering in their own districts.” He let out a deep breath and rubbed the back of his neck. “Even so, I don’t think it will be enough.”
“They’ll shout, stir up chaos, a fair amount of blood will be spilled, but in the end they’ll settle for some small concession and back down.”
“I hope so. But you weren’t here the last time a disturbance of this scale broke out. When the anger reaches its peak, they’ll try to burn the Ledger building—but it won’t stop there.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“Their next target will be this place. And from here they’ll move on to the palace.”
“The king isn’t here, and this isn’t the capital. It’s only a port city with a symbolic palace.”
“That’s not the point. I’m telling you they’ll come all the way to the palace gates and leave the heads of a few important men there.”
“What’s the point then?”
“To send a message. The Ledger may be strong here, and you may have a great deal under control. But I know this city better than any of you.”
“What message?”
“That we do not recognize the puppets here, and we do not care about anyone below the king. That’s the message they’ll be sending. They’ll take the heads of the hierarchy below the king and bypass the bureaucracy that way.”
Tarr’en gave no answer to that. Rhoren, unaccustomed to seeing him offer no reply, was briefly surprised. But the fact that he understood the seriousness of it mattered far more. After a few seconds of silence, Rhoren said, “I need to make the other arrangements,” and started walking away. But after only two steps he stopped. “If I were you, I’d look down on the square from the tower. Just to be prepared.” Then he kept walking.
Tarr’en, meanwhile, was irritated that he had been so focused on his own matter that he hadn’t properly seen what was right in front of him. But more than that, he was furious at having to deal with the city’s idiotic political upheavals at all. He was chasing something far greater, but no one else had the knowledge—or the intelligence—to see it. “Pack of idiots,” he muttered to himself, then started toward the stairs leading upward.
◈◈◈
The rear entrance of the building opened directly onto the street and was utterly plain. In fact, calling it an entrance at all would have been an insult to the broad front courtyard. This was the public entrance, used by ordinary citizens, and nearly every daily matter went through here. At a glance it looked more like an office—or a post house—than a military station. Two stone steps, then a pair of large wooden doors opening outward. High windows that revealed nothing of the interior and clearly had something placed behind them. A lantern bracket fixed above the door. For someone who did not live here, there was no real way to tell this was a Warden station. Still, there was one detail that gave it away almost all the time. There were always two officers standing guard at either side of the door, and today was no different.
Even this narrow back street was steeped in chaos. People were running in different directions, shopkeepers were trying to close their stores in haste, small unorganized groups who were clearly heading toward the square kept passing through… and in the middle of all of it, the two officers remained at their post as though it were an entirely ordinary day. They looked young, which meant they were probably not very experienced.
“So far everything is exactly as we thought,” Veylith whispered as she leaned from the corner where she had a diagonal view of the mouth of the street.
“What about the other side?” Tivver asked. He was standing right behind her.
Veylith looked toward Ravah, who was stationed at another corner farther along, where she could see both the street facing the courtyard and the main route out. Ravah, at almost exactly the same distance from the entrance as Veylith, gave a small confirming motion with her head.
“They’re pulling out,” Veylith said over her shoulder. “There can’t be that many men left inside the building. And the ones at the door aren’t exactly difficult targets. But that’s not the real problem.”
“Getting close enough without drawing attention, dropping two Warden officers right in front of everyone, and then getting inside,” Tivver summarized for her.
Veylith kept watching the door and the street, searching for an opening. “Maybe we can use the crowd to get close,” Tivver continued, leaning out beneath her arm to look down the street, “but if they see us there’s a good chance they’ll recognize us.”
“We can’t move as a group either,” Veylith added, glancing toward where Ravah was positioned. “We’d stand out too much. Ravah can’t get close to them unnoticed, even if she goes alone.”
“So yes, it has to be us who takes them down,” Tivver said, frowning as he looked in the same direction. “You could shoot them from here, probably.”
As the two of them worked over possible ways through it, Darian and Kaelin stood behind them, watching the chaos all around them. Both of them looked as though they were waiting desperately for some way to be useful. Darian was much calmer, but the excitement and fear were written plainly across Kaelin’s face.
“They’d hit the ground before anyone could blink,” Veylith replied, “but the whole street would explode into panic, and the entire building would know we were here.”
“What if we used one of those smoke bombs?” Tivver asked, only to continue before she could answer. “But that’d make enough noise to bring the whole place down on us too. Damn it.”
When a commotion suddenly broke out close to them, they both turned toward it at once. The window of the neighboring shop had been smashed, and a few of the protesters moving toward the square had apparently decided to start damaging things as they went. Veylith quickly swept an arm backward, pushing the others out of sight before anyone could catch a glimpse of them. When she looked back at the rear entrance from the corner of her eye, she saw that the officers guarding it had not moved at all.
“So they’ve been ordered not to abandon their post,” she whispered. “If they’re not even reacting to a potential crime in the street…”
“That tells us we won’t be luring them out,” Tivver added, leaning back against the wall. Their ideas were almost exhausted.
“I might be able to get close to them without being noticed,” Darian cut in suddenly, “but I don’t think I could take both of them down.”
“I can hide in the crowd too,” Tivver said quickly, “but being small doesn’t help if getting close still isn’t enough.”
After killing off his own idea almost immediately, he looked at Veylith and said, “Hey, boss—if we can’t attack them directly, can’t get near them unseen, and can’t draw them out… what exactly do we have left?”
“Knocking them out quietly and getting inside would be the best way, but I can’t see any path to that. We’re going to have to choose the least bad option now, because we don’t have much time left.”
Ravah waited like someone trapped on the far side of the street, while the others were preparing to risk everything and attack. But Kaelin, standing at the very back, had gone still at that last sentence. A way had occurred to her, actually—but it was so completely insane that she was arguing with herself over it.
Veylith had braced her back against the wall and reached for the small daggers in her boots; she knew she had to make no sound, so the guns would be the last resort. The others were preparing to move just as she was. But just as Veylith had wrapped her fingers tightly around the daggers, Kaelin caught her hand. Lowering the hand that held the blade, she stopped her with a quiet, “Wait.” They all turned to her at once in surprise.
“We can’t wait any longer. We don’t have another choice,” Veylith replied.
“Just give me a few minutes. If it doesn’t work, then you move,” Kaelin said, and with a strange calmness she began tearing at her own clothes. None of them could make sense of either what she was saying or what she was doing.
“What are you doing?” Tivver blurted, but Kaelin seemed not to hear him. She had loosened her hair and torn her clothes in places as if she had been attacked. Even the expression on her face had changed, as though she had become someone else. Then she looked at Veylith, who for once had no words ready, and said, “You’ll know when it’s time to move,” before slipping out into the street.
“Hey, wait—” Veylith lunged after her, but Kaelin was already moving away before she could catch her. “Damn it!” she hissed, driving an elbow into the wall she’d been leaning against. “One Vaelra was already hard enough to deal with, and now there’s another!”
Kaelin had fixed her attention on the guards and was already walking toward them, keeping herself half-hidden among the people. A voice inside her told her this was suicide, but somehow she had already moved, and it was too late now to stop. Ravah, who had seen her, couldn’t make sense of it any more than the others could. Now all of them were watching her, wavering between moving and staying still. “Do we have any choice except to trust her?” Darian asked, but no one answered. Veylith and Tivver remained poised to run, yet they knew they had to give her a chance.
Kaelin was almost at the front of the building now, and it was only a matter of moments before she was seen. The instant she made eye contact with one of the guards, fear flooded her face and she threw herself toward them. She had already begun to cry.
“Help me!” she called.
The two officers, who had been ordered not to leave their post, hesitated and glanced at one another. A beautiful woman stood only a few steps away, asking for help. One of them took a step forward, but the other stopped him.
“No.”
“She’s only a few steps away. I’m not leaving my post,” the first man answered, and walked toward her anyway. The other cursed under his breath and took a step after him, but he did not move away from the door.
“Are you alright, miss?” one of the men asked as he approached and bent toward her, but Kaelin reached for him and clutched his shoulder.
“Two men… in the side alley…” she began, breathless all at once. “They attacked me… started tearing at my clothes. I… almost…” Before she could finish, she broke into tears and threw her arms around him. The man held her as though he’d been caught completely unprepared, while the other remained at the door watching them.
“You’re safe now,” he managed at first, then pointed toward the step in front of the entrance. “Would you like to sit here for a moment and catch your breath? If you tell us what happened, maybe we can help.”
“Thank you so much,” Kaelin answered. She acted as though she were trying to stand and then staggered, clinging to him so he would have to catch her. The man put an arm around her waist and guided her toward the door, his face now completely red. The other had stepped down from the stairs and come closer to them. By the time the first man eased Kaelin down onto the curb, his back was to the street, and the other was bent slightly toward her at his side. Neither of them was paying attention to the street anymore.
“It was like a battlefield everywhere… I didn’t know what to do. If you hadn’t been here…” she went on, eyes wet with tears. “I got away from them in the crowd, but they wouldn’t stop following me.”
While the two men crouched there listening to her, the others watched everything from a distance. None of them said a word. Even Ravah had locked onto her completely. “I really didn’t expect this,” Tivver whispered, making no attempt to hide the amazement on his face. The most important description they had been given should have been Kaelin’s, and yet somehow neither of the two men had recognized who she was. It was as if they weren’t really seeing her at all—only a young woman in trouble. It gave Veylith a strange feeling too, because she had seen something like it before, and she was sure the others were feeling the same thing.
“She’s just like—” she began.
“—her,” Tivver finished, knowing perfectly well who she meant. As the two of them stared at Kaelin as though spellbound, a brief but proud smile appeared on Darian’s face behind them.
While Kaelin told them what had happened—or rather, invented it—she drew more and more of the guards’ attention onto herself. Every so often she made a point of adjusting her clothes as though she were trying to gather herself, making sure their eyes caught on the tears and rips. She knew she had them fixed on her now, but she also needed the man standing beside her to turn his back fully to the street so that the others could approach.
“I’ve already troubled you far too much. I should go,” she said, making it as if to rise. Then she let herself sway toward the man beside her and collapsed again just enough to make him catch her. She was taking risk after risk, but somehow the plan was unfolding exactly the way she needed it to. Grabbing the man’s arm, she apologized and said, “I think… I need to sit a little longer,” and lowered herself back down without letting go. When she sat again, the man had crouched to help her and his back was now fully turned toward the street. Now all she had to do was keep them occupied until the others reached her.
When she lifted her hands to her hair and reached for the cord, their attention shifted for a brief instant to her body. She took the opportunity to dart a glance at Veylith. She could not give any real signal, but she was certain Veylith would understand. Taking the cord into her hand, she shook her loosened hair free and then raised her hands to gather it again. She said nothing while doing it, but since the men were watching her so closely, she didn’t need to.
The reflexes shaped by years of serving men had brought her this far, and they seemed ready to carry her even further. Yet there was an important difference now. Kaelin had served men almost every night. Most of the time all it took was her gift, but now and then—like in most brothels—she had served them in other ways as well. She did not feel ashamed of what she did, nor did she see it as something dirty. In her eyes, even prostitutes had more pride and dignity than the politicians they slept with. At least they were doing real work.
The problem had never been the difficulty of the work or its place in the world. It was what it did to her. It had always felt as though some corner of her spirit wore away a little more each night, crumbling and scattering. That feeling of being diminished had slowly begun to swallow her, and lately she had been unable to find anything that could fill the emptiness it left behind. But what she had done in the last two days was different. Even now she felt stronger—almost freer. It was a strange feeling, something that couldn’t be explained simply by being part of something. And she was beginning to get used to it. It was as if something inside her were waking up.
By the time she saw Veylith and the others drawing nearer through the crowd, she had already tied her hair back and lowered her arms. The men, who had nearly fallen into a daze over her, were only just gathering themselves and trying to straighten their posture again. But the others were still a little too far away, and there wasn’t much left for her to say. The guards looked as though at any second they might turn back and glance into the street. She needed one final move.
Stretching her hands toward the men in front of her, she asked sweetly, “Would you help me up, gentlemen?” She was no longer crying; there was even the hint of a smile at the end of the sentence. The men caught her hands at once and pulled her to her feet. The instant she rose, she saw Veylith and Ravah closing in on them with daggers in hand.
The street was still in turmoil, but she had also noticed that there were people watching from nearby. However quiet it was done, killing two officers in the middle of the street would draw attention. And in that moment she remembered all those nights, all those men she had served with her gift, and almost by instinct she did not let go of the guards’ hands. Instead she tightened her grip. Before the men could understand what was happening, she pulled them toward herself, closed her eyes, and whispered, “Sleep.”
Veylith and Ravah were almost upon them when both men suddenly collapsed where they stood. Just before they could hit the ground, Veylith caught one and Ravah the other, managing to hold them upright. Both of them looked at Kaelin in astonishment as they dragged the unconscious men toward the building’s door. Veylith knew they could not have asked for anything better. But she said nothing. Ravah, dragging the man in her grasp, said only, “Well done, princess.” Tivver, on his way to open the door for them, gave her a heartfelt compliment of his own. “That was hot.”
Kaelin still hadn’t moved. She was staring ahead blankly, as if she couldn’t quite believe she had done it. When Darian took her hand and smiled at her, some of the tension finally drained out of her and she came back to herself. Then, when he whispered, “Come on, let’s go,” she remembered the situation they were actually in and finally moved. Together with Darian, she followed after the others toward the door, entered last, and gently closed it behind her.