Reaping the Aurora

by Joshua Palmatier

  But not everyone relied on the food provided for them. Many of them had arrived at the Needle with their own supplies and had set up camp in the tent city outside the circle of stone buildings, either bartering what they had or plying their own trade, such as weaving baskets or working with stone or clay or leather. A small market system had arisen, not unlike the marketplaces of Erenthrall from before, growing as more people arrived. Dierdre wasn’t certain how long it would last—there were only so many resources within easy reach of the Needle—but for now it survived. She had heard of excursions into the hills to the north and west, groups of ten or twenty men and women heading off in hopes of finding something worthwhile to bring back like fresh meat, hides, or supplies left in abandoned farms or villages. Others headed south, although they risked running into the Gorrani there. Few headed east, since the riches of Tumbor were now encased inside the distortion.

  Dierdre’s enforcer led her through the throngs of tents, not pausing to take in the variety of odd wares being offered at most. The stalls were mixed in with the tents used as homes, with only a few central locations for trading. Many had simply set their offerings out before their tent flaps. They passed a man bartering little hand-molded clay bowls, another showing carved wooden utensils, and a woman with little dolls made of tied and twisted straw.

  Then her red-haired guide cut back through the tents and into the stone city again, except these streets weren’t as well traveled. She couldn’t shake images of the Eastend and West Forks districts in Erenthrall, where no one could be trusted and few respectable people moved around outside of midday. Certainly not this close to dusk. Dalton had used such districts to the Kormanley’s advantage, recruiting to the violent sect from them and keeping himself hidden there once he’d been connected by the Hounds to the attacks on the city during the Purge.

  Dierdre hadn’t realized the Needle contained such areas. But she supposed that every gathering of a significant amount of people developed an underbelly. And the Needle had grown over the last month, nearly doubled now.

  The woman halted in front of a three-story building with yellow lantern light showing in three of the twelve windows. There were still a few hours before sunset, but the narrow street was already sunk in shadow. Dierdre picked out a few architectural motifs above windows and the front door, lintels and sills with geometric designs, but she didn’t know their significance. They entered the building after a short pause, the red-haired enforcer glancing back at her once.

  Inside, she moved immediately to the back of the building, avoiding the stairs that led to the upper floors. She tapped on the far door on the left, a muffled voice coming from within. When she opened the door, lantern light spilled out into the hall. She grabbed Dierdre’s arm and tugged her inside, closing the door behind her.

  Four others sat around a rough wooden table, three men and another woman, none of them Darius. All of them stared at Dierdre, a few of them trading the hand signals with the red-haired enforcer. She recognized three of them as other enforcers, out of uniform. Two of them were playing cards.

  One of them grunted. “I didn’t realize she would be coming.” He was older, closing on fifty, and he had a pipe resting to one side, smoke curling up from its bowl. He stuck it between his teeth and pulled on it, eyeing her as he exhaled. The slightly sweet scent of arruga leaf permeated the room.

  “She was looking for Darius,” the red-haired enforcer said as she moved forward to take a seat at the table. “And she knew the signal.”

  The elder enforcer’s eyes narrowed as he blew another plume of smoke into the air. “Darius wasn’t certain of her.”

  Dierdre hid the clench of her gut at her brother’s betrayal with a scowl, crossing her arms over her chest.

  “She’s here now,” one of the others said—younger, with a black mustache that needed trimming and long shaggy dark hair. He played a card. “Your turn.”

  The elderly man shrugged and turned back to his cards, setting the pipe aside. “We’ll let Darius decide. He should be here shortly.”

  That appeared to settle things, the others relaxing as a few low-murmured conversations broke out and the card game continued. Dierdre remained by the door, watching carefully, trying to eavesdrop. But the discussions were trivial, gossip among guardsmen, complaints about their watches and duties along the wall or with the cooks and servants providing food.

  She flinched when another tap came at the door, the elderly enforcer barking out, “Come!” as everyone shifted their hands unobtrusively closer to weapons. Dierdre hadn’t noticed this when she’d entered.

  But it was her brother Darius, entering with two other enforcers at his side.

  “Who brought her?” he demanded as soon as he caught sight of her, the tension in the room instantly escalating. The two men with Darius closed in on either side of her.

  She stiffened in affront. “You aren’t certain of me?” she spat in accusation before anyone could answer. “What’s going on here? Why are you meeting in secret? And why are you using Kormanley signals? Does Father know of this?”

  “Because this is the Kormanley . . . or at least the start of it. And no, Father doesn’t know about this.”

  Dierdre glanced around at all of them. Those at the table watched with a casual, dangerous intensity, the cards and conversation discarded. The two new men who flanked her appeared to be twins. Mussed brown hair, thin faces, hard eyes.

  They were all waiting for a decision from Darius.

  She returned her gaze to him, met his brown eyes flecked with yellow, mirrors to her own. “What do you mean the start of the Kormanley?”

  Darius didn’t answer immediately, his expression fixed, judgmental.

  Then he spun and took two steps to the table, leaning on it with both hands. “Is this everyone?”

  The twins relaxed, pulling back from her sides and drifting toward the table as well. The others shifted forward, hands withdrawing from knives and daggers. The cards and conversations lay forgotten.

  “All of those who could make it,” the red-haired woman said, her fingers drumming on the table in annoyance. “A few were placed on guard duty at the wall or are otherwise occupied by Ty in the temple or outer city.”

  “There are others I don’t quite trust enough yet to bring to the meetings,” the elder enforcer added. He sucked on his pipe, his eyes shifting toward Dierdre. She hadn’t moved from her position, but at his look she stepped forward, taking a place to one side of her brother. She’d never liked living in his shadow. In Erenthrall, Dalton had always sent him out to the drop-off points, coordinating the cells of the violent sect of the Kormanley, occasionally attending the small and secretive meetings. She’d been used mostly as a courier and recruiter.

  “What is it that we’re here to discuss?” she asked bluntly.

  “Father,” Darius said curtly. “The way they are treating him is intolerable.”

  “Have you seen him recently?”

  “Not since his revelation of a new vision. Ty has managed to keep the guard on Father’s door using enforcers mostly loyal to himself.” He nodded toward the older enforcer and the red-haired woman. “Trenton and Cerena—we’ve been seen too often together at the wall. He knows about you both, or at least strongly suspects. Javers and Jonnas, I’m not as certain about.”

  The twins shrugged, one of them saying, “He hasn’t paid undue attention to us.”

  Darius shifted toward the other three. “I’m fairly certain he’s unaware of the rest of you, including you, Armone.”

  The mustached younger man grinned. “I’ve been careful to stay clear of you lot when on duty.”

  Trenton blew smoke toward the rafters. “He’s suspicious of everyone not in his own inner circle or part of that group from the Hollow. That’s how he’s been able to keep you from Father. One of his own or someone from the Hollow is always in charge of the guards at the door
.” He pointed toward Dierdre with the end of his pipe. “And I assume you’ve had no luck gaining an audience either.”

  “No. I managed to see him immediately after his last sermon, when he told of his vision. Marcus, Kara, and the others were in council then and hadn’t yet decided to cut him off completely. But they came and dragged me out before we were finished talking.”

  Darius shoved back from the table. “Which is why we’re meeting. It was an outrage when Ty seized control after the Gorrani attack and imprisoned him, then handed the Needle over to the Wielder Kara, but Father ordered me to wait, to be patient, to bide our time. He said he needed to see what visions would come.” He shot them all a penetrating look. “Well, he’s had his vision. Only now we can’t find out what it means and plan accordingly, because we can’t speak to him.”

  “They can’t keep him locked in those rooms forever,” Cerena said. “He’s only been held for a little over a week. He’s gone longer than that without giving a sermon. They’ll let him speak eventually.”

  “Will they?” Darius asked the room, and everyone shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t think they will. They know how much power he can wield with a simple vision. They won’t hand that power to him.”

  “Why didn’t they pull him from the tier’s wall when he first mentioned the vision?” Armone asked. “They must have known how much damage it would do.”

  “They couldn’t,” Dierdre said, with an unpleasant smile. “It was too late. Think of the outrage of those listening if he’d been cut off in the middle of explaining what he’d seen. They would have had a riot on the plaza right then.”

  “Maybe there should have been a riot,” Javers said. Or Jonnas. Dierdre didn’t yet know which twin was which.

  “We may have been able to free Father in the chaos,” the other twin finished.

  “Or Father may have been killed instead,” Darius countered. “A convenient accident.”

  Dierdre frowned, recalling her own earlier thoughts about Father dying. “They wouldn’t.”

  The doubt from the others was palpable.

  “They may have a riot yet,” Armone said, slouching back into his chair, one hand raised to his chin, finger stroking his mustache. “Father’s followers are restless. They have questions about this new vision. They want answers.”

  “Which is why we’re here,” Darius muttered sharply, stepping back to the table and rapping his knuckles against it to capture their attention again. “We need to use this unrest to our advantage.”

  “How?”

  “We need to break Ty’s hold on the enforcers. We’ve already started recruiting our fellow enforcers to our cause, but it won’t be enough without some other force putting the pressure on Ty as well. If we can get Father’s followers to protest his imprisonment, cause a few riots, perhaps create a few of our own, then Ty’s hold on many of the enforcers will weaken.”

  “Cause a few . . .” Dierdre trailed off, her gaze darting toward the others’ faces, their own eyes studiously lowered.

  The start of the Kormanley.

  She turned on her brother. “You want to return to the tactics we used in Erenthrall. The bombings, the threats—”

  “The preaching,” he interrupted. “It doesn’t have to start with bombings. But consider what Commander Ty and this Wielder Kara Tremain are doing. Is it any different than what Baron Arent and Prime Wielder Augustus did in Erenthrall? They are controlling the people using the supplies scavenged from the surrounding communities and they have seized the node at the Needle. They don’t have the same level of power that Arent and Augustus did, but their power is growing. Do we want to let them create another Erenthrall here? Another society controlled by an abuse of the ley?”

  Dierdre drew breath to protest—she knew Kara wasn’t using the ley to control anyone, that she was using it to heal the ley system.

  But Darius stepped close to her, face-to-face. She forced herself not to step back, although one hand fell to the table to steady herself.

  “Can we trust you? Or has Marcus blinded you to what Kara and the others are truly doing?”

  Her jaw snapped shut as anger boiled up in her chest.

  “Kara’s afraid,” she blurted, the betrayal of what Marcus had confided to her slicing down through the anger. But she ignored it, turning to face the others, one by one, as she spoke. “It’s not enough to break Ty’s control, you’ll have to break Kara’s grip on the Wielders as well. You can do it by forcing her to use the ley when she isn’t ready, isn’t prepared, perhaps even cause an accident within the node itself.”

  In sudden inspiration, she grabbed Darius’ shoulder and smiled. “And I know exactly who we can ask to help us.”

  “Marcus?”

  “No, not Marcus. He isn’t ready yet. Someone who already hates Kara. Two people, actually. The Wielders, Iscivius and Irmona.”

  Seven

  “WHAT’S GOING ON HERE?” Commander Ty roared as he and the twenty-four enforcers he’d gathered as he charged through the corridors of the temple toward the open plaza came upon the enforcers already clogging up the exit. There were six of them, holding the doorway against the surging crowd outside. The noise from the plaza was deafening in the narrowed corridor, an amalgam of furious shouting, angry retorts, and the distinct sound of a brawl.

  When no one responded, Ty’s own fury edged up another notch. Ty grabbed the shoulder of one of the enforcers before him and jerked the man around. He had shaggy dark hair and a limp mustache. His eyes narrowed when he saw Ty, then shifted toward the enforcers behind him with relief.

  “What’s going on?” Ty demanded again.

  “The Father’s worshippers are rioting,” the man said. “We tried to calm them, but when we refused to bring out Father Dalton, they became agitated. We’ve managed to keep them out of the temple, but they’re attacking our men in the barracks and kitchens.”

  Ty swore, craning his neck so he could see out through the opening the enforcers held and onto the plaza beyond. Commoners from the outer city and the tents thronged the area, some clothed in the white shirts they’d taken to wearing in support of Dalton and the Kormanley. A few even had the Kormanley convergence symbol stitched or painted onto their shirts with ash.

  For a moment, a sense of sickening dislocation swept over Ty and he found himself back in Erenthrall, at the edge of a crowd gathered in a marketplace to witness the judgment of a suspected Kormanley man, part of the Dogs intent on keeping the crowd under control. Nervous sweat slicked his skin beneath his uniform as the tensions and unease within the citizens grew, until it boiled over and the entire marketplace erupted in chaos. Ty’s alpha had ordered his unit into the crowd, their swords wounding and killing indiscriminately. Men, women, children—it hadn’t mattered.

  It had been the beginning of the Purge . . . and the riots had only gotten worse.

  A bitter taste in his mouth, Ty glanced down at the enforcer he still held by the shoulder. “What’s your name?”

  “Armone.”

  “Find Second Darius, Armone. Tell him to bring as many men from the wall as he can spare. We need to quell this riot now, before it escalates and expands into the streets of the outer city. Tell him to use whatever force necessary.”

  Armone nodded and pushed past Ty and the others in the hall as Ty turned toward them.

  “We’re going to push out into the plaza,” Ty said, voice raised to reach the men at the back. “Draw swords or blades if necessary, but try to only wound if you can.”

  With that, he shouldered through those holding the door, coming face-to-face with a man, maybe thirty, screaming in outrage and grappling with the last enforcer at the edge of the plaza. Ty punched him in the face over the enforcer’s shoulder, then shoved out into the plaza, instantly surrounded by people crying out at the blasphemy of holding Father hostage, hands snatching at his red shirt, dragging at his arms.
He tried to move through them, protecting himself with hunched shoulders—

  And then a woman spit in his face.

  Ty grabbed the woman by the throat, lifted her, and flung her into the crowd behind, three other people falling to the ground under her weight. He wiped the spittle from his cheek, then clenched his jaw and waded into the fray, stepping on one of the fallen bodies. He punched at faces, kidneys, lower backs—hauling his victims aside as they screamed in pain or moaned and folded over his fists. All the brawling techniques that the Dogs had trained for in the den beneath the Amber Tower resurged with a vengeance. He sank into the moment, breath heaved in through his mouth, exhaled out through his nose with a low grunting sound, but he never lost control. The riot eddied around him, a background of shouts and cries of pain, but his focus remained on the men and women immediately before him. Some of them dove at him, faces looming from the tangle of arms and legs and bodies as they attacked. He grabbed their arms, jerked them into range as they grasped at him or scratched, then drove them to their knees with a head butt or fist to the gut. Or he twisted their arms behind them and shoved them to the flagstone. Some of the leering faces spouting hatred wrenched back from him in fear. A few were weeping, attempting to flee but trapped by the press of bodies.

  He’d made it twenty paces out into the plaza, a string of groaning bodies behind him, when he sensed a commotion from the other side of the square and realized Darius had arrived. He continued forward, catching anyone within reach, but the tenor of the crowd had changed. Instead of shouting “Let him speak!” or “Usurpers!” as they pushed forward toward the temple, they were now attempting to escape, the tidal flow receding.