Wallace

"Big guy marches in here like he owns the place and expects to boss us around? Why the hell should we let you run the place anyhow?"

I looked around the little squat structure. With mud walls and a straw roof, you could scarcely believe that there was running water, indoor plumbing, and refined steel just a mile or so from the stone age building. The thing didn't even have a door, and the night breeze blew right through the opening to rustle the straw.

Neither was there a table. Hell, we didn't even have chairs. Though that may have been for the best, as the ceiling was low enough that even sitting there wouldn't have been room for me. Instead, I sat on the floor with the group of sprites Temerity had put me in contact with. Not the dirt, mind you, though the roundhouse lacked a proper floor. Instead, bundles of rushes were packed in tight to cover the ground.

I sat cross-legged on the floor and was surprised to find that the rushes did a decent job of insulating me from the cold ground.

While the building was squat, it was also wide. I shared the space with nearly two dozen sprites, a few of whom held candles, the only light in the room.

At the centre of the roundhouse was a pole that held up the centre of the roof. Bent and warped, it looked like they'd picked a straight looking tree limb and hacked off any knots or branches.

It was against this pole that the sprite addressing me leaned. He was one of the few sprites who held a candle, and his colourless features seemed to absorb the ruddy light. It turned his skin orange while his hair seemed ablaze atop his head.

"I don't know," I replied honestly, "I don't think you should. I certainly don't want the job."

The roundhouse was quiet for a moment as the sprite stared at me and then glanced side to side.

"Is this some sort of joke?" he demanded.

"Nah," I jerked a thumb over my shoulder, "I've got this cool hotel, comes from my world, it's pretty great. Got sort of a whole fortress vibe going on, what with it being atop a big concrete block. I'd really like to go back there, hang out, maybe explore a little."

"Then what are you doing here?" asked a feminine voice from the back of the room.

"Simon sucks, the nobles suck, everybody sucks. I'm here to fuck up Simon, and a while back, I came up with a way to neutralise the pheromones the fey use. Figured it would be wrong not to use it. And using it, well, that was bound to kick off revolution as soon as you guys noticed, so I figured I'd lend a hand to keep things from getting too crazy."

That got a round of murmurs from the crowd, and even their leader had to fight to wipe the surprise from his features.

"And if we don't accept your helping hand, you don't fix the fey for us?"

"Nah, did it already, actually."

The crowd, who'd still been muttering about what neutralising the pheremones might mean, went utterly silent.

"What?"

"Already did it," I repeated, "This shit is kicking off with or without me."

"Then... then what do you want? Why are you here?"

I shrugged, "To keep things from getting too crazy? Revolutions are always a mess, tons of people die, and sometimes you just end up back where you were. Maybe with a different guy in charge, but back all the same."

"What, you don't want us to hurt the fey? You just expect us to leave them alone because you asked nicely? Maybe you don't know what it's like for us, human, but we owe the fey some retribution."

"Oh, hell no. I'm sure tons of dudes deserve to get super-murdered. Hanging, drawing and quartering, getting whipped to death would be peak comedic irony. I'm not saying don't kill anyone. I'm saying don't kill everyone."

"And just who deserves to live or die? You decide? That's part of your advice?"

"Hell no, that sounds like way too much responsibility. I'm not going to advise you on who to kill. I'm going to advise you on how to decide who to kill."

"And just how is it you're so wise in the ways of revolution?" a sprite, male by his voice, demanded from the crowd.

"The history of my world is rife with revolutions," I explained, "Most of which don't work out."

"What's an example of one that did? What did they do that's so different from all the others?"

"As much as I hate to admit it, probably the Americans?" I pondered, putting my chin in my hand, "It's hard to think of any that worked out better or with less bloodshed. I mean, yeah, they fought a whole war and killed a couple hundred-thousand people, but when I worry about bloodshed, I'm talking about the sort that involves people dragged from their beds in the middle of the night. Their trick was that the revolution there actually kept most of the old power structure in place. Theirs was a colonial revolution. So there were a ton of American colonists, a smaller group of old white dudes running the day-to-day, and then a bunch of different old white dudes back in London who they reported and paid taxes to. American old white dudes told the English old white dudes to go pound salt, both sides lined up their little soldiers and had them fight, and in the end, the American old white dudes were still in charge, except they didn't need to keep paying taxes to the English old white dudes."

"How does that help us? Among the sprites, there are no dudes, as you call them. Once the fey are gone, no leaders will remain."

"Sure there will be. Everyone seems happy to let you talk. What do you do?"

The sprite frowned and spared a self-conscious glance for the crowd, "I run the smithy for the nearby farms."

"Well, there you go. You guys actually have something of an advantage, at least compared to human slave-states. The fey expect you to do everything."

"How's that help us?" One of them shouted from the back.

"The way it worked with humans, Americans, actually, only had the slaves doing the most menial labour. Stuff that took no training at all, but the fey are way too fucking lazy for that. Even if they could manage it, none of them want to be smiths. The idea's really simple," I explained, spreading my arms, "everybody keeps doing exactly what they're doing. Except instead of giving all your hard work up to the fey, you keep it. Use it to improve your own lives. I don't know how much of the crops you farm end up in the hands of the fey, but I bet life would be way cooler if you could keep it for yourselves."

Now that got some thoughtful nods from the group.

"We can't hardly eat so much food," one of them protested.

"Then do what the fey are already doing, sell it to the elves, the gnomes, and the goblins. Come to think of it, the currency you guys use is actually set up pretty well for this sort of decentralised setup."

The leader shook his head, a confused frown on his face, "What do you mean?"

"Right, currency makes it tricky to tell what your work is really worth. If you work for so many hours and get paid such and such amount, are you really getting the fair value of all the work you put in? Well, probably not, because the guy in charge paid you a hundred bucks but sold what you made for, I don't know, at least more than a hundred bucks."

"Bucks? What are bucks? We use mana."

"Exactly," I agreed excitedly, "The value of everything is baked into the system, so it's really easy to tell when you're getting screwed. That's not to say you don't need people working outside of direct resource extraction and manufacture. You'll need some people to administrate, buy, sell, whatever. But with mana backing the value of everything, it's a lot easier to tell when you're getting screwed over by some middle man. You guys already know how to run everything. You just need some way to get the fey off your backs so you can live life for your own sake, instead of someone else."

"What of the fey? How would you deal with them? You seem to have much to say about how bloody this might be."

"That's because not every purple-skinned humanoid in the city deserves to die screaming," I raised my hands, palms out, "Some totally do, but not all of them. And unless you want to kill them all, then you'll need to share the city with the ones that are still around when all's said and done."

"What if we do want ta kill 'em all?" A sprite shouted.

"Then you should start thinking about how you're going to take down half a ton of nigh-indestructible human mage."

That shut them the hell up.

I turned back to the leader, "Justice? Awesome. Killing slave masters? Super awesome. Genocide? Not awesome. Get it?"

"Ah, yes," he replied, glancing over his shoulder at the man who'd shouted, "But who decides?"

"You guys do. My world had a similar problem, where you had a large group of people, almost all of whom had given passive acceptance to some truly horrific actions. Actions that were perpetrated by a much smaller group among the larger collective. Justice had to be done, but this raised the question, how do you separate the real monsters from those who stood by because they were scared or didn't want to rock the boat?"

"Well, how?" the leader urged.

"You have trials. And for it to count, they need to seem legitimate. Find two people you can trust from each species to act as judges. Hell, try to find a couple of fey abolitionists if you can manage it."

"What's the point of putting on this show? We know the faces of the fey who've hurt us," the sprite said darkly.

I had to suppress a shudder. I was a little more 'on' than usual, trying to use humour to keep the circumstances from absolutely crushing me, but damn if they didn't make it tricky.

"Because beyond sharing this city with the fey in the middle, you've also got to share this little corner of the planet with Parabuteo and Caniforma. You might have- you do have -sympathisers in both cities, but the fact remains that you'll be rising up to oust the city nobility, slaveholders or not. Another well-known revolution on my own world, the French revolution, had exactly that problem. The French revolted and started chopping the heads off their nobility, and their neighbours rained down holy hell on them for it. Nobles don't like seeing other nobles torn down by peasants, even if they're alleged enemies. The trials will put their worries at ease, especially if there's a couple of their own kind on the panel of judges."

"And then we kill them."

"Yes. Well, some of them. You'll want to keep other sentences on the table. Sentencing some to, I don't know, prison time, lashes, whatever, will broaden the list of people who you'll appear to have a legitimate grievance against. That was actually a problem in Britain in, I want to say, the eighteen hundreds? Hanging was the punishment on the books for a ton of crimes, and often juries wouldn't convict obviously guilty people because they didn't want them to hang."

"Does anything happen here that hasn't already on your own world?" the leader asked tiredly.

"I've got thousands of years of history to look back on, and the benefit of others having written it down, and the further benefit that I got to read it."

"History seems to have taught you many lessons."

"Yeah, foremost of which is I do not want to be in charge. Which is good," I added, "Because next most important is that I sure as hell shouldn't be. I'll be here to help out, give advice, and at some point I'll need to force my way into Simon's manor to kick his ass. But beyond that, it's up to all of you. The fey are already done for. They just don't know it. But I caution against striking too soon. Meet up with others, talk, plan it out, and when you're ready, strike."