by Jon Hollins
The crowd gasped.
“Oh for fuck’s …” said Quirk, which was uncharitable, and which she would almost certainly regret later. She ran to Firkin’s side once more. He was covered in a sheen of sweat, muttering something under his breath.
“Are you okay?” she asked yet again, but he didn’t seem to be listening to her. “Come on,” she said, shaking him lightly. He stared at her wild-eyed, then focused on some spot a mile above her head.
Hold it together. Just hold it together a little longer. “A drink!” she said out loud. “He needs a drink!”
She was almost immediately drenched in wine. Skins exploded on the ground all about her.
“Water, you ignorant arseholes,” she muttered to herself. But she knew she was unlikely to find that here. She picked up one of the skins and upended it over Firkin’s mouth. He gasped and gulped and then flopped back panting.
“Can you hear me?” she asked him. “Can you understand me?”
“Floor hit me in the face.” Firkin sounded confused.
“Can you get up?”
“Done it a thousand times,” said Firkin, without any sign of moving.
“Can you do it now?” Quirk could feel the crowd’s mounting frustration at the delay. They were like toddlers in need of constant distraction.
“Think I’m going to go to sleep right now,” said Firkin, rolling over onto his side.
One other sober person, thought Quirk. That’s all I ask. Then an image of Afrit floated into her head. One sober, nonjudgmental person.
She shook Firkin once more. He snored theatrically. The crowd booed. Gods piss on them.
She didn’t see that she had much of a choice. She stood, whirled on the crowed. “The priests have struck against Firkin!” she said as thunderously as she could. “Now we must strike against them!”
Silence fell upon the temple. A thousand pairs of eyes settled upon Quirk, judged her, and found her wanting.
“Who the fuck are you?” A voice floated out of the crowd.
Quirk took a breath. “I am Quirkelle Bal Tehrin of Tamathia. I was Firkin’s companion in the liberation of Kondorra. I am Avarra’s foremost dragon expert. I am a defender of the Vale. And I am here to organize you into the fighting force that will wrench control away from the High Priests and deliver it into your waiting hands.”
The silence continued.
“Well fuck me then,” said another conversationally.
“Is there going to be a buffet?” said someone else, quite clearly. “I could have sworn they said there was going to be a buffet.”
Quirk licked dry lips. She’d known organizing the religiously drunk was going to be difficult. She’d hoped for Firkin’s and Afrit’s help, but clearly she didn’t have to time to deal with either of them.
She blew out a breath, touched the fire inside her.
“We will take this city,” she said, letting her voice ring out through the silent hall. “In Firkin’s name. In Barph’s name. And we will start tomorrow, with day’s break. We will mass in Mead Square.” She had spent a lot of the time since their escape examining a series of haphazard, half-scribbled maps of the city, which was the best any of the Vinlanders could provide, and she thought she had a rough idea of how things were laid out. “From there we shall push forward in three divisions. One group will go to the east, toward the Second District. They shall take and occupy the Barcian Cathedral. The next group shall go southeast to the Twelfth District.” As far as Quirk could tell, the districts of Vinter had been named by rolling a dice. She was pretty sure at this point that there were at least two separate Ninth Districts. “There they will take and hold Municipal Hall. Finally the third group will proceed south to the Fifth District. There they shall hold and take the Trinity Chapels.”
Silence. A belch. Someone muttering, sotto voce, “Bossy bitch, ain’t she?”
“Is that clear?” Quirk barked. “Mead Square. Daybreak.”
“If she thinks I’m getting out of bed before my head clears …” said someone in the front row. There were giggles.
Knole piss on these people and their idiot religion. She didn’t want to lead them. She didn’t want to order them about. She only wanted to help them achieve what they themselves said they wanted to achieve.
She held out her hands, palms up, facing the moldering ceiling, and with a twist of her will and the utterance of two inhuman words, sent two frothing pillars of fire three feet into the air. She held them there for two seconds, bathing in the blast of heat. Then she let them fade, leaving behind a lingering flare in their eyeballs, and the smell of scorched hair from the front row.
Now she had their gods-hexed attention.
“Is that clear?” she thundered.
The response was not coordinated. It was not organized. But it was definitely an affirmative as the crowd backed for the exits as fast as their feet and volume would take them.
“Tomorrow we take the city!” Quirk yelled after them. She didn’t need them too chastened. “Tomorrow we rip it out of the High Priests’ hands.” There were a few cheers. Enough, she hoped.
And if it wasn’t enough? Well then, gods forgive her, she would burn this whole city down herself if that was what it took.
She waited until the place was empty before she started to peel Firkin up off the floor. He was dead weight, betraying no signs of consciousness. As she struggled, several altar attendants ran forward and took him from her. She chewed her lip as they bore him away. Then, when she turned to leave herself, Afrit was there. She was still giving Quirk the same disapproving look.
“Really?” Quirk asked. “Really?”
“One of the first things I teach,” Afrit said, “is that even in the brutal practicality of real-world politics, you have to draw a line. You have to say what wrongs you will not do, no matter the benefits. You have to say that some goods are not worth it.”
This was followed by a condescending stare.
Quirk sighed. Apparently she was going to have to do this. “Yes,” she said. “Lette and Balur have done terrible, terrible things. They are low, base, awful people. But they are effective. And I hate that that is all that counts right now. But that is all that counts right now. If we had access to a pair of people who were just as likely to return with Barph’s Strength and whose ideas of morality didn’t make me want to vomit, I would suggest we use them. But we don’t. So if saving Vinter, saving Avarra takes us using them, then we use them.”
That wasn’t an apology, Quirk told herself. It was an explanation. Not an apology.
“This isn’t about Lette and Balur,” said Afrit, with what Quirk suspected was an absence of patience that matched her own.
Quirk was now confused as well as impatient. “It’s not?”
“Firkin is sick, Quirk.” Afrit’s anger was a hot flame in her eyes. “He’s really, really sick. And this is far too much to ask of him. This is taking advantage.”
Quirk closed her eyes. And she tried to hear Afrit. She really did. But did the woman not understand?
“You’re right,” she said. “He’s sick. And this may break him. But that thing I just mentioned? That thing where we save all of Vinter? Where we don’t oppress them? Where we don’t eat them? Because dragons really do actually eat their subjects, Afrit. That bit where we save a whole country from all of that? That makes us different from the dragons. And so if breaking Firkin will save all the other lives in Vinter? In Avarra? Yeah, then I’m okay with that.”
“So we’re only like the dragons for Firkin?” There was no bend in Afrit. And Quirk could almost admire her in that moment. Almost.
“I’m not going to apologize.” Quirk thought perhaps it would be easier just to say it out loud.
“You don’t have to,” said Afrit, her face cold. “Not to me. But before all this is over, I think you might need to ask Firkin for his forgiveness.”
37
Punch Drunk
Quirk watched as the sun slowly inched above the rooftops su
rrounding Mead Square. Its warm glow splashed onto the haphazardly cast flagstones and spread with slow majesty to fill the space, like well-aged whiskey suffusing a man’s soul.
For her part, if Quirk could have ripped the sun from the heavens and shoved it up the collective arseholes of all the Vinlanders clustered in this city, she would have happily done so. Daybreak. She had said daybreak.
It was half past nine in the morning. Daybreak had come to Vinland three and a half hours ago. And how many Vinlanders were here? How many were ready and willing to throw themselves against the High Priests and free their city from tyranny?
Twelve.
“Where are they?” She wheeled on Afrit and Firkin, who were huddled in one of the remaining shadows.
“Sleep, I think,” said one of the Vinlanders. He had showed up early and stood with them, taking turns sucking on the neck of a wineskin that he was passing back and forth with Firkin. Quirk thought his name was Durmitt.
“Never liked mornings,” slurred Firkin. “Bet Lawl came up with mornings. Seem like the sort of think he’d do.” He spat a wad of phlegm the color of Quirk’s nightmares.
“Barph never shows up on time,” said Durmitt, holding up the wineskin like a talisman. “Been waiting for him to show up for eight hundred years now, and he’s still late. Fine divine example that is.”
“Didn’t Lawl banish Barph?” said Afrit. “Where I grew up that was the story I always heard.”
“Fucking Lawl,” Firkin spat again.
Quirk wheeled on him. He was as good a target for her frustration as anyone else. “Where did all this hatred of Lawl come from anyway? Weren’t you happily telling everyone that Will was his prophet back in Kondorra?”
Firkin shied away as if she’d struck him, wrapping his hands protectively around his head. “Shh!” he hissed. “It sleeps.”
Quirk could have lived without Afrit’s accusatory stare.
Durmitt, it turned out, was right though. By midday Mead Square was full. People were starting to throng in the streets beyond its edges. Quirk clambered astride the fountain at the square’s heart to get a better look. Once the fountain had run with mead for all to sup from. Now it was dry and dusty. The gathering around it still resembled a party far more than the warband she wanted—there was far too much drinking, barbecuing, and singing about bawdy tavern girls and boys in her opinion—but it was a start.
“Okay,” she shouted down to Firkin, “now you speak to them!”
Firkin blinked at her. “Oh,” he said, “you’re doing a fine job with all that.” He flapped a hand at her. “You run along and do it. I’m fine down here.”
Quirk felt the lid she had been clamping down on her anger all morning quake. She knelt down and hissed in his face. “Listen to me, you disgusting old drunk. You are, for better or worse, the leader of this ragtag bunch of idiots. And quite frankly, you are welcome to the job. I don’t want it. I am not a leader. I am not a general. I am, at best, the secretary for this war. I am behind the scenes, organizing people, and keeping others on schedule and on task. That’s all. Now someone needs to stand up and lead. Someone needs to put passion in these people. Because they have to fight, and they have to win. And I will fight today. I will do that for you. Because I know, as much as I hate it, that I can do it, and I can do it well. But that’s all. So get your filthy, sour-smelling arse up there and tell everyone to fight, before I set fire to your feet to make you dance for them.”
Firkin belched, apparently opening up a portal to the sulfur pits of the Hallows somewhere in the back of his throat. But then he shrugged and said, “Fine then. If you’re going to be pushy about it.”
She had to help him to his feet, but he got up.
“Get up where they can see you,” she said, helping him over the ledge and into the bowl of the fountain. He seemed more frail than his ropey muscles would suggest. “Tell them the plan.” Then she decided she should check. “You remember the plan? Three prongs …”
He pulled away from her with a grumble, grabbed the fountain’s stone spire, and hauled himself up into view. It took perhaps half a minute for those closest to the fountain to see him. Then a hush fell, slowly rippling out through the crowd until everyone was staring up at him.
Firkin swallowed and then grimaced as if he’d tasted something foul. “All right,” he said, and even Quirk could barely hear him. “So we’ve got here, and …” He shook his head. “So you’re meant to be splitting up, and …” He sighed. “Three prongs …”
There was silence in the square. The crowd stared up at Firkin in confusion. And Quirk was going to kill him. She was actually going to kill him. Not in self-defense. Not to achieve the liberation of the masses. Simply because he had dragged her down to the level of Lette and Balur. She was going to kill him purely out of frustration.
“What?” yelled someone out in the crowd. “We can’t hear you.”
Firkin sighed again heavily. He looked all about him. He looked down at Quirk. And just for a moment, she thought she saw something glimmering in his eyes. And then he looked away. He grimaced at the crowd once more. And was there some theatricality to it? Some exaggeration?
“You know what?” asked Firkin. And suddenly his voice was clear and loud, shrill as it was. Quirk felt the energy of it go through the crowd like the crackle of magic running down her spine.
Firkin grinned, showing all his rotten teeth. “Just get out there,” he bellowed, “and rip this city a new arsehole!”
The roar that rose up seemed to shake the world. And then, with an enormous heave, Mead Square vomited the drunk, madcap devotees of Barph and Firkin out onto the streets of Vinter.
Quirk burned. She truly burned. She could feel the fire inside her, desperate to leak out, desperate to spark and jump and ignite. It wanted to be alive, writhing out of her and gathering up this stupid little man and whisking him away to a place of ash and obliteration so that she would be free, free and dancing in the ruins of this city.
“You,” she hissed. “You …”
Someone put a hand on her shoulder. Afrit, she suspected. Afrit was a big one for putting her hands on people’s shoulders. Quirk shook it off.
Firkin shrugged. “Seemed the simpler message,” he slurred. “And who likes prongs. Stabby things. Mostly associated with pitchforks. And pitchforks are mostly associated with shit. Don’t want folk thinking of shit when they’re ripping up a city.” He looked off to the heavens. “Well, perhaps you do?” He looked back at Quirk. “Are you kinky? I never could figure you out. Got to be something really messed up the way you keep your gusset closeted away.”
Quirk breathed slowly. There was smoke on her breath.
From all around she could hear the sound of chaos on the streets. Wood splintering and glass shattering. Tendrils of smoke were already reaching up into the sky.
Firkin nodded. “Seems like they’ve got the general idea.”
Quirk let the flame fill her. Calm came with the flame. “This is our territory,” she said quietly. “They’re destroying what we control. There are tactical objectives we need to achieve. You need to achieve. There—”
Firkin was looking at her with such contempt it actually brought her to a stop. It was such an unusual look to find on the old man’s face. As if he actually cared about something.
“Barph is an anarchist,” the old man said. “He doesn’t care for your tactics. He doesn’t care for objectives. He wants to tear, and rip, and laugh, and fuck. That’s all.” He pointed a dirty finger at her. “You should understand, little firefly. Little spark in the night. Barph wants it to burn. Barph loves you.”
And his words cut, because they were unfair, because they were everything she was striving to not be, and because they were everything jackasses like him were forcing her to be through their stupidity and their inaction. And Quirk wanted to cut him back, wanted to use her own words to hurt and wound.
“You’re not Barph,” she told him. “You speak for no one except a bottle.”
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And Firkin started to laugh at her, and Quirk reached for more words, but then she saw he was crying too.
She did not understand Firkin. She truly did not. Was there a plan? Was it all madness and unlikely events? She didn’t know, and she didn’t have time to figure it out. A city was burning, and now she was the only one who could even try to control the flame.
The streets were a swarming mass of people cheering and smashing, drinking and laughing. Some held blades, others had heavy clubs; yet more wielded burning torches. Some held no weapons at all. They pushed forward in loose waves, breaking upon street corners, spilling and flowing, slowly losing coherence, spreading thinner and thinner.
“This way!” Quirk called at the top of her lungs. “This way!” Desperately she tried to steer the crowd in the direction of the Twelfth District and the Municipal Hall. Of all her targets, the hall was the one she valued the most. As little bureaucracy as there was in Vinter, what did exist all passed through the Municipal Hall. If she crippled the High Priests’ ability to communicate, while she relied on Firkin’s more informal but significantly more robust network, they should be at an advantage. Unfortunately, it was a lot like trying to steer a Placid Ocean galleon by standing on the deck and blowing at the mainsail.
Someone was pulling on her arm. She ripped it away. She had to get to the head of this crowd, lead from the front.
“Quirk!” She spun around at her name. It was Afrit reaching out for her sleeve again.
“What?” she snapped.
Afrit was shaking her head, bellowing to be heard over the sound of the crowd. “We have to abandon this. We have to just let them tire themselves out. Figure out a new way to come at this.”
Quirk furrowed her brow. “Are you insane?” Was she the only one who understood the urgency of what was going on?
“The day is already lost!” Afrit shouted.
Quirk’s eyes flew wide. Truly? Truly in the middle of this crowd? She grabbed Afrit by the lapels and pushed her out toward the edge of the crowd. “Be quiet!” she hissed. “Everything hangs by threads, and you try to demoralize everyone? That will not stand. Help me or get back to Mead Square to wait until we’ve taken some gods-hexed buildings.”