by Matt Wallace
“What happened to them?”
“The rule of blood was overthrown by… by the jealous. Those who were jealous and ambitious and filled with greed and rancor. They took the nobles’ land and created places like the Bottoms.”
Tiny tears begin to spill from the meaty burrows of the old woman’s eyes. “Are they all gone?” she asks in the meekest of voices.
Lexi forces her lips to smile. She raises the old woman’s hands in hers and holds them against her chest, leaning forward and kissing the wrinkled forehead of the elder.
“No,” she whispers. “But they have been too long forgotten. We must remember them. We must tell others. Do you understand?”
The old woman nods silently and tearfully, breaking Lexi’s heart all over again.
She rises from her knees and returns behind the barrel. Lexi takes up her paring knife, but she can’t seem to focus on cutting another onion until she’s watched the woman escorted through the recesses of the crowd by her young caretaker.
When she can no longer see them, Lexi blinks away tears of her own and reaches for a new bulb. She’s aware of the others, many others like the old woman, watching her intently with the same sunken and desperate faces, the same tiny spark of hope in their eyes. She can feel them wanting to approach her the same way the old woman did, but they remain at a respectful distance, waiting for Lexi to finish her cutting and beckon them forth.
After Lexi has diced the onions, she and Shaheen spend the next two hours handing out the rest of the food they’ve brought with them to the Bottoms. The people linger, drinking what fresh water remains and gratefully dining on cheese and the mixture of onions and rice (which Lexi begrudgingly admitted to herself was a good idea on the part of Kamen Lim).
“Should I start loading the wagon?” Shaheen asks her after the last grain of food has been served.
“Yes, I’ll help you.”
As the two of them return the carts and empty barrels to the wagon that ferried the provisions, Kamen Lim begins gently and politely dispersing the remaining petitioners in the alley.
“It was a good speech,” he offers Lexi when the alley is empty.
“Thank you,” she replies stiffly.
“I have a… suggestion, if you don’t mind, Te-Gen.”
Lexi sighs. “Of course. What is your suggestion, Aegin Lim?”
He glances at Shaheen. Lexi sighs again, turning to the girl. “Wait for me by the horses, Shaheen.”
The girl bows her head obediently, quickly collecting Char and shooing her toward the front of the wagon.
“I would leave out how these folk might be descended from nobility themselves,” Kamen Lim says a moment later. “It’s a cruel untruth to tell them.”
“Shall we really quibble over the truth of the words I spoke? Is that a thing you want to explore?”
Kamen Lim holds up his hands in a placating gesture. “I meant no offense. It simply is not the message Councilwoman Burr would wish you to convey. The rest, however, was very nearly perfect.”
“What happens if other Aegins who are not sympathetic to your cause hear me spinning tales of lost nobility in the Capitol? What happens when the Protectorate Ministry finds out?”
“You let me worry about that. You’re burdened enough.” He almost sounds genuinely concerned for Lexi’s spirit under the weight she is shouldering. “It was a good first day!” Lim then declares. “I feel good about our progress.”
He motions for her to make her way around the wagon, and Lexi obliges with a strained smile.
It is only when her back is turned to him that the rage and pain seeps out through her eyes.
THE RULE OF REBELLION
BRIO’S NEW GAIT HAS A kind of inconsistent music to it, a repeated clink and creaking followed by two deep thuds, rhythmic yet off-time. It’s like the drunken pounding-of-boots-and-mug-bottoms orchestra that accompanies a slurred shanty chorus sung in a tavern.
His instruments are the copper hinges and leather straps of the harness securing a forged iron peg to the stump of his leg. That peg leg and a cane fashioned from a shaved tree branch provide the thudding crescendo of his gait’s symphony.
Brio demonstrates his new ease of movement for Evie in one of several small rooms above Kellan’s shop that the blacksmith has offered to the Sparrow General and her officers as personal quarters. Talma was quick to do the same, and while it was equally appreciated, the aroma of state-issued week-old organs and rancid game meat permeating the building in which her shop resided made the choice an easy one for the rebellion leaders (though none of them mentioned the smell to the kindly old butcher, who seemed so accustomed to the odor as to no longer be aware of it).
Evie sits on the edge of a stiff straw cot, watching Brio use his hip to shift his new leg forward, aided in his balance by the cane.
“I guess we both owe the Sicclunan smiths a lot,” she says, glancing at her sparrow-emblazoned armor stacked neatly in the corner, its joints and straps freshly greased with pig fat from Kellan’s stores.
Brio halts, slightly winded from his enthusiastic demonstration. There is a rickety rocking chair installed in the corner opposite her armor. He begins awkwardly lowering himself onto its seat, one hand gripping the handle of his cane while the other steadies the chair by its back.
Evie quickly rises from the cot. “Let me help—”
“No,” he says, gently yet with firmness. “I need to do it myself.”
Evie nods silently, but she doesn’t sit back down on the cot. She watches him negotiate the tenuous descent into the rocking chair. It takes several seconds for him to configure his new appendage comfortably, as well as reposition his cane, which he almost trips over while sitting, but Brio manages.
After he is settled, Evie lowers her body onto the cot’s edge once again, her eyes still filled with concern.
Brio steadily catches his breath, resting his cane across his lap. He smiles warmly at her as sweat stipples his brow. “We’re all adjusting to new circumstances,” he says, adding, “General.”
Evie grins, still slightly embarrassed, and shakes her head as she fixes him with a reprimanding gaze.
Brio arrived that morning with the rest of the Sicclunan forces and civilians who remained behind as Evie’s army took the Crachian border crossing. They’d begun making camp alongside the base the rebellion has established outside the city gates, and Brio was escorted to the edge of the Shade to reunite with Evie.
“You’ve done well here, Evie,” he says after she has finished informing him of the events over the past few weeks.
“The people of this city did the work,” she insists. “They bled and died taking it from the Aegins and the Skrain, while I spent my time getting dressed in all that ridiculous finery.”
“It’s good armor for a good general, and you need it just as we all need you.”
“So Mother Manai keeps telling me,” Evie mutters.
“Where is Mother, by the way? I have yet to see her among your esteemed coterie.”
Evie takes up the flat pillow crowning the cot and flings it across the room at him. Brio bats it away with his cane, chuckling at her sensitivity.
“I sent Sirach and her night brigade out to scout,” she answers him. “They’re going to circumvent the Skrain encampment. We need to know how far away and how many the main force is that’s coming to bolster them. Mother went along to assess whatever Savages they’re bringing with them. She’s the expert, after all.”
Brio grows quiet, his expression turning introspective. Evie has several guesses as to what thoughts her words have inspired within him, but she imagines she only needs one.
“They’ll raze this entire city to the ground, you know,” he finally says. “They’ll have the Skrain murder everyone, rebel and innocents alike, if that’s what it takes. Not just to defeat us, but to wipe any memory that this happened from Crache’s history. The idea of what we’re doing will be even more terrifying to them than the rebellion itself. They cannot allo
w that idea to spread any more than it already has.”
“The walls are strong, and we’ll have our full force to defend them, bolstered by the willing from the Shade,” Evie says, though she isn’t sure whether she’s defending their actions or positing a scenario with the hope Brio will poke holes in its solidity.
He sighs, reclining in the rocking chair. “They will tear these walls down, Evie. They will bring the largest siege weapons the Skrain have ever constructed, and they will knock down every wall protecting this city. It doesn’t matter to them how long it takes.”
Evie can only nod. She knows he speaks the truth.
“How badly do you think we will be outnumbered?” Brio asks.
There is no attack in his question, only genuine concern. She shrugs. “Five-to-one? Ten-to-one maybe? At the very least, it won’t be the full force of Crache. We broke through the middle of the front line, but there have to be legions spread across what remains. They won’t be able to recall and organize them in time, not if they mean to begin the siege when the Skrain already entrenched here are reinforced. In any case, we won’t know for sure about their numbers until Sirach and Mother return.”
“You’re fond of her, aren’t you?”
“Mother Manai? She’s become our little rebellion’s greatest asset.”
“Sirach, I meant.”
“Oh.” Evie shifts her weight atop the cot uncomfortably. She’d been hoping to avoid this subject in the face of total annihilation by the Skrain.
“It isn’t any business of mine, of course,” Brio admits.
“I suppose not.”
She studies the kindness writ upon his face. It is remarkable to her how feelings, even those cultivated over a lifetime, can change so drastically. She accepted the mission given to her by Lexi with years of deep and confused feelings for Brio still bubbling in her guts. Much of her remained in love with the boy he was.
Now, looking at the man before her, Evie feels none of that. She cares for him, respects him, and even feels protective of him, but that’s because Brio needs protecting. The rest is… perhaps not gone, but clarified.
The only uncertainty left within her is reserved for her feelings about the battle yet to come.
“You’re different, you know,” he says, his tone inscrutable. “Not from the girl I knew as a child, but from the woman who came to rescue me in that Savage camp. You’re changed since then, I think.”
Evie smiles. “I was just thinking the same thing, in a way.”
An impossibly heavy fist that can only belong to Bam begins colliding with the outside of the room’s only door. Brio starts at the sudden pounding, but Evie has grown accustomed to it. “Come in, Bam!” she calls out, grinning at Brio’s reaction.
The door swings wide and Bam’s massive frame presses it against the wall to clear the way for Lariat. He’s wearing the barbed and spiked straps across his barrel torso and down his arms and hands that he wears in battle.
“Problem needin’ the general’s attention,” the broom-mustached ex-Savage informs Evie. “I woulda settled it, but you told me not to kill no one unless they was trying to kill me.”
“Who says you can’t follow orders?” Evie says, commending him.
The old man guffaws, and she is certain she can see every hair in his mustache vibrate.
“Can I be of assistance?” Brio asks from his chair.
“Don’t trouble yourself,” Evie says.
Brio is already working himself up out of the rocker, however. “I will trouble myself, if you don’t mind. But you go ahead. I will catch up. Where are you going?”
The question is directed at Lariat, who regards the slender Gen leader’s spunk with warm amusement. “Little nothin’ of a watering hole down the way,” he answers. “Broken mug nailed above the door.”
“I will find it,” Brio assures Evie.
“I’ll go with Lariat,” she tells Bam. “You escort Brio.”
“Is that necessary?” Brio asks.
“Yes.” Evie levels him with a gaze that will brook no argument.
Satisfied when Brio offers none, Evie looks to Bam, seeing a scowl beneath his ragged hood and past the mess of curly tendrils that perpetually shroud his face.
“I’ll be fine, Bam,” Evie placates her devoted bodyguard. “Lariat is with me.”
“I’m faster’n you anyway,” he taunts the stoic hulk.
Bam answers that with a solitary grunt.
Grinning, Evie follows Lariat out of the room and down the cramped building’s dilapidated staircase. They emerge onto the street a moment later. Lariat falls into step beside Evie, spiked hands never leaving the horizontal handles of the katars sheathed on either of his hips. He retains his usual jovial air, but keeps an ever-watchful eye on Evie and their surroundings, and those that pass them by.
It still makes Evie slightly uneasy, the loyalty and protectiveness they all display toward her. Despite the battles they’ve won and how far their campaign has progressed from a few rogue Savages, a large part of her still doesn’t believe she has earned or deserves their fealty. It is the thought that wakes her up every morning, and drives her to earn that fealty every day, however she can.
Lariat leads her to the tavern marked by the broken mug hung above its door, which is just three uneven boards nailed together and barely hanging from two rusty hinges. He pulls it open easily and steps aside, motioning with a smile and a grand sweep of his arm for Evie to enter.
“Duty’s waitin’,” he says, low enough for only her to hear.
The smell of stale rice wine mixed with several other foul odors Evie doesn’t care to identify immediately sting her nostrils. The cramped interior of the tavern is little more than a hastily constructed bar counter and two equally shoddy tables with unmatched chairs. A stout barkeep protects a shelf of a few bottles and a large jug, along with a collection of cups, most of them chipped. He wears his worry on a thick hung brow as he surveys the scene unfolding in his establishment.
The tavern’s occupants are divided into two distinct groups, currently facing off against each other on either side of the confines.
Diggs stands between them. The handsome elder ex-Savage turns the leather-covered head of a mace slowly in one palm.
Though no one seems willing to cross him, there is still plenty of hot blood simmering in the air.
It is no chore to discern the sides. The members of Evie’s forces, ex-Savages all, are still branded by the bluish-green runes covering their exposed skin, generated by the blood coins that remain anchored in their guts.
The other group is composed of locals from the Shade, from the look of them mostly beggars who’ve copped a few coins and menial workers.
The contingents are hurling insults and threatening gestures at one another as Evie walks in, several of them holding smashed cups and broken table legs threateningly.
“What’s happening here?” she demands, silencing their expletive volleys.
“I believe you call it a clash of cultures,” Diggs tells her. “Agitated by a waning supply of spirits.”
He grins mischievously at her. Evie is as susceptible to Diggs’ charm as the next warm-blooded creature, but she has no time or energy for it under the present circumstance.
“We wanna be served!” one of her fighters yells, already sounding as though they have been, several times over.
“This is our place!” a local fires back at him. “Our mugs get filled first!”
Evie looks with irritation from the two congregations to the barkeep. “These don’t seem like insurmountable problems,” she says dryly.
“I don’t have enough wine for the lot of ’em,” he protests. “Just this afternoon I’ve seen more thirsty gullets than I get in a week, normal. Your soldiers have drunk me out of stock.”
Evie sighs, feeling a dull, painful throb beginning to form between her ears. “Back to camp!” she orders her fighters. “All of you!”
None of them move at first. It’s clear their blo
od is still raging.
Lariat slaps a leather and steel adorned hand against the katar scabbard hanging from his left hip. “If you missed the general’s words, maybe I need to make them hearin’ holes in your heads bigger!”
That snaps them out of it, or at least enough of them to get the rest moving when they see their fellows begin to depart the cramped battlefield.
“I apologize for the disturbance,” Evie says, addressing the Shade denizens who remain. “It will not happen again.”
“Thank ye, General,” the barkeep offers.
Bam enters the tavern a moment later, nearly knocking the flimsy door off its hinges.
Brio follows in his wake, leaning heavily on his cane, obviously exerted from the effort of the short march. “Have I missed the excitement?” he asks, gazing about the now calm waters of the tavern interior.
“It turns out the situation called for a general, not a diplomat,” Evie explains.
“I see. So glad I made the trip then.”
“I told you not to.”
“You did indeed,” Brio relents.
Evie looks up at Lariat and Diggs. “They can’t go to a tavern outside the Shade?” she asks. “We control the damn city. It’s not as if they’ll be turned away.”
“Here’s where our kind feel comfortable, like,” Lariat says.
“And I don’t know that you want them tempted with the finer things this city has to offer,” Diggs adds. “You told them no looting.”
“Your counselors make salient points, General.”
Evie’s eyes narrow dangerously at Brio. He stifles a chuckle and hangs his head, leaning his full weight against his cane.
“Would you like one on the house, General?” the barkeep asks Evie. “It’d be an honor to say I served the Blood Sparrow herself.”
Her head snaps toward him in surprise bordering on alarm, and then to the members of the Elder Company flanking her. “So it’s the Blood Sparrow now?” she practically spits at them.
Lariat shrugs, not even attempting to hide his abject amusement.
“These things take on their own life,” Diggs offers. “And they do paint your armor in red.”