Rivers of molten iron ran through Galier’s veins as he walked the halls of keep Kalagor, his thick soled boots smacking against the tile to echo throughout the holding.

It was a good saying. One of the few good things the north produced maybe. He burned with confidence and energy, strolling through the halls that had once felt so oppressive to him. That had all changed now. Now he held power of a kind too, not so much as lord Kalagor or lady Ealhold, but enough that they were forced to take him seriously.

Molten iron. Powerful in its potential, but still dangerous as it was forged and shaped. It suited him well.

Unferth the pirate escorted him to the same strange room as always, with its weapon racks and disturbing lack of windows, but Galier had memorized the route long since. He’d walked these halls more than a dozen times in the past month, always guided by Unferth, but otherwise alone. Whether the escort was an insult or a courtesy, Galier did not know.

They invited him to their meetings more frequently now, as a sign of respect, he hoped. The letter had come from Derranhall weeks ago, informing them that Galier was the new house seat until Ketrim recovered. Along with that, it bluntly explained the situation of the army being gathered there. The information it contained only made Galier more convinced that they would need support from within the city if they were to have any chance.

The others were more skeptical. Unferth and lady Ealhold in particular thought that they could only rely on the gathered northerners. The thought of convincing Maerinen supporters, particularly old blood ones, had them digging in their heels. But it did not matter, they could not stop Galier from continuing with his plans in secret.

And those plans were going well. He had been uncertain at first—his first meeting with Stellaphrena’s students had not gone exactly as he’d intended—but as time went on, he’d met with them again and again, the same small group to start with, but then with others as well. None of them knew his intentions exactly, and he planned to keep it that way. Oh, some had an inkling, but only a small handful. A handful Galier could control.

One of those was young Scythese of Sapho, a man Galier had begun to discover was in fact just as strange as his reputation made him seem. Above all he was wholly dedicated to Stellaphrena. Her will was his will, as far as anyone was concerned. But while Scythese might be strange, his support meant a lot. It meant that Galier had not been wrong in his estimation. If Scythese supported him, the others would too. In time. Perhaps even Stellaphrena herself, but he wouldn’t let his goals get so lofty. Not yet.

So Galier was secure in his position within their little revolution, and when he walked, he let that confidence show. Maybe a little more that was warranted, to make up for his first visit. The fear and anxiety were things of the past.

Just as the room was familiar, so too were the occupants. Lord Kalagor was present and wore a variation of his customary sharp dark coat and trousers, dignified and unchanging as always. Strange to think a man such as he, so proper and so refined would be one to tear down the society he seemed perfectly molded to fit.

Lord Vaeor Kalagor appeared to be the ideal of an old blood lord. Elegant, powerful, and proud. He could trace his lineage back across the sea to old blood families for generations, except for one sticking point. He’d married into a new blood family far more powerful than his own had ever been. He’d taken his new family name of course, as was proper, but he hadn’t stopped there.

There was little mixing between the old blood and the new, it had always been so. The Monarch did not approve of it, and supposedly the empress herself was to blame. What lord Kalagor had done went against that implicit rule. But he wasn’t content to defy tradition. Taking a family name was shameful enough for someone of his social stature—the old blood did not carry family names as a rule, if your family was important at all, they would be referred to by their lands—but he’d taken it a step further, abandoning his own given name in favor of one from his wife’s homeland.

Perhaps it made sense why lord Kalagor always looked so sour, maybe it even made sense why he had become involved in this dirty business, Galier did not know, but he did know that lord Kalagor was a passionate and powerful man. He would see this revenge of his through to the end. If that meant his death, then so be it.

Galier could see it in his eyes. He did not think about life after. And that made him dangerous. Both dangerous to the government he opposed and to his own allies. Who knew what a man in the throes of grief would do? But luckily for them, lady Ealhold stood by his side, ready to take up the reins should he falter. Ready and with a hand itching to snatch them away at the slightest hint of danger.

Of course, Eliah Ealhold was dangerous in her own right. She kept her reputation pristine, never letting any accusations gain enough ground to stick. It was a remarkable feat. Galier knew next to nothing of the extent of what she’d done to undermine the Monarch, but the few tidbits he had been allowed were enough to knock him out cold. If they were ever worried that he might turn on them, they could be sure he wouldn’t now. People like these would not hesitate to have him killed the moment he became a threat. Yet he couldn’t help but admire them despite that.

Galier had begun his escapade into the world of revolution through force. The groundwork left by Martim had been massive in scale and unstoppable now that it had begun. But, little by little, starting with his meeting with them and stoked by the lectures he attended by the seaside, he had begun to see the right of it.

He fought for an amorphous cause. They seemed to see it through the murk and mire. Galier could only catch glimpses from time to time. But he was already in the thick of it, struggling to make sense of it all, just like he always had.

This was not so different from his training at Derranhall and not so different from his first days in Maerin. He would adapt, as he always had. He only wished he had Jormand with him. The big fellow had always stood by his side through the worst of Martim’s abuses, even when he was worse off for it. He offered Galier a hand even when it earned him a lashing. No one could replace that.

Galier told himself that he needed to be stronger. For now Jormand was off to the north, preparing for the very future that Galier was shaping now. He would just have to make it into something Jormand could be proud of when he returned. He would find out just what that was along the way.

“The boy has arrived.” Lady Ealhold remarked with a sneer as Galier entered. Those dusky eyes mocked him, but he ignored her. She antagonised to find his breaking point and exploit it; he would not let her.

Lord Kalagor looked up from the parchment in his hands. “Welcome,” He said, setting it down on the table. “Have a seat, we have much to discuss today.” He looked distracted as he pulled up a chair and took a seat himself. His posture was perfect as ever, but there was something off. Galier could feel it.

He pulled up a chair across from lord Kalagor. Dragging it across the tiled floor made an awful racket and he cringed internally. Here he was already making a fool of himself. No wonder they don’t respect you. He thought to himself while trying to regain his composure as he sat.

Lady Elahold elected not to take a seat herself, preferring to stalk over the back of the room, behind lord Kalagor’s right shoulder where she inspected a spear with far more interest than it was due.

“It concerns certain friends of yours…”

Galier froze. Friends of his? Did he mean Jormand and Lana? Were they finally coming back? Jormand had pleaded for more time in his letter, it seemed strange that he would be ready so soon. There was some matter with his sister that needed clearing up. Galier only hoped that it did not concern the succession.

In lieu of explaining what he meant, lord Kalagor stared at Galier for a moment, his expression grim. Galier fidgeted in his seat uncomfortably until lady Ealhold finally spoke up, turning from her intent study of the weapon rack.

“We received a letter from a Stellaphrena, a disgraceful lady from Althos, and apparently a friend of yours?” Her voice was mocking. She knew she’d found something that she could hold over Galier’s head.

If he had been frozen before, now he shattered, his mind losing focus as sweat began to coalesce and drip down his spine. It was not what he had been expecting, but it was worrying anyway. Lord Kalagor and lady Ealhold were not supposed to know about Stellaphrena and her students until Galier was sure that he could count on them. He hadn’t even told Stellaphrena about their plans at all. He had barely even mentioned them to Scythese!

“You understand this puts us in an awkward position, don’t you? We cannot afford for our plans to be spoiled by your flapping tongue…” She’d taken a sword from the wall and was holding it up to the light of lanterns to examine it. In her delicate fingers it looked out of place, but when she grasped it by the hilt and swung it to rest by her side, it looked more than natural.

“Enough of that.” Lord Kalagor interrupted. Lady Ealhold immediately froze where she stood, sword still in hand. Her eyes burned, but she did not make another move towards Galier. She was still under lord Kalagor’s control. For now.

The cold sweat still ran down his back, but his heart stopped beating so fast, eventually.

“Eliah is correct, if a touch overzealous.” Lord Kalagor continued in a dark tone directed to Galier. “We cannot allow leaks. If word gets out, even just a rumor… You saw what the Monarch was prepared to do to Martim, to Tegrimm, to Carienne…” Lord Kalagor rarely mentioned his wife. The submerged notes of fury that were always present in his voice grew much more powerful when he did. “We will not survive another assault like that.”

Galier gulped, his throat drying quickly. He had been there at one of those assassination attempts, on lord Tegrimm, Eliah’s husband. If Jormand hadn’t thrown his fight along with his sword, he would not have survived.

Lord Kalagor’s eyes dug into him like augurs from across the table. The man’s dark complexion coupled with his sharp features made Galier think of a wolf about to leap in for the kill. The smoldering rage in his eyes did not soften him in the slightest.

“We need to be sure that we can trust anyone who might support us. Without a shadow of a doubt, and this,” He held up the parchment he had been reading before and waved it towards Galier. “This is dangerous.” He pushed it across the table towards Galier.

“So tell me, what do you know about this Stellaphrena, and why did you take it upon yourself to invest our trust in her.” It was a command, not a request, and Galier stumbled to reply.

“I… I did not tell her…” He managed, trying to get things straight in his head. He hadn’t told her, he hadn’t even had an opportunity to! When he went to her lectures, he hardly ever even spoke to her! Which meant Scythese must have told her, and that meant that Galier had told Scythese far more than he had meant to. He had never mentioned lord Kalagor or Lady Eliah by name, not even once.

“This letter would seem to say something different, lad.” Chimed in a heavily accented voice from behind him. Galier had forgotten Unferth was even there, but as he turned around, he was far too aware of the burly pirate, and his sharp-bladed boarding axe swinging idly in one of his beefy hands.

“I promise, I never told her,” Galier was regaining a little of his confidence, but his heart was beating like it wanted to break out of his chest. “I’ve been talking to some of her students, that’s all. Some of them really want to change things, I… I thought they might be able to help…” He stammered his way through it all, sounding a good deal more frantic than he would have liked, but he could not help it. All of his instincts were telling him to run, but there was nowhere to go.

“I see,” Lord Kalagor said, examining Galier over interlocked fingers. His eyes were narrowed like he was evaluating what Galier had said, or at least he hoped so. “Be that as it may, it does not change our current predicament. No matter how she found out, this Stellaphrena knows. And that presents a very real danger to us.”

He paused, his gaze pummeling Galier into his chair and compelling him to speak the truth, reminding him of a night on the Maerin wharf when control had been wrenched away. That wasn’t happening again, there was not a chance of that. Galier tried to steel himself, but he was shaken to his core.

“Can she be trusted?” Lord Kalagor asked. His tone was deathly serious, as well it should be. He and Eliah were right. A misstep here would spell the end of their plans.

Galier didn’t know what to say. He hardly knew Stellaphrena, except by reputation and through her lectures. She spoke with students normally, but Galier had always been hesitant to strike up a conversation. She was openly disdainful of nobility, Galier included, and it hardly made approaching her easier. Aside from that, he preferred to talk to her students directly. They all obviously agreed with her revolutionary fire, but they could be influenced and maneuvered where Galier needed.

He couldn’t tell lord Kalagor that however. He didn’t know if Stellaphrena could be trusted, but honesty was not his goal now. If he told the truth, revealed how careless he had been, he might just meet his end in that little room at the end of the sword Eliah still held.

“Yes, I think she can.” He lied with as much confidence as he could muster. He wanted to cringe back in his chair, but he could not let that happen. They could not suspect that he was lying.

“Very well,” Lord Kalagor said, sounding relieved. “Then we have other matters to discuss. Lady Ealhold, if you would kindly put my sword away?”

Eliah scowled, but put the sword back on the rack where it belonged. That lifted a bit of the weight from Galier’s back, but he would not put it past her to just throttle him right there in his chair.

“Please have a seat, we must put this behind us.” Lord Kalagor gestured to a chair and Eliah petulantly took it, still staring daggers at Galier. Unferth rounded the table as well, taking the chair on the fourth side. Far from the scowl that Eliah wore or the tired look on lord Kalagor’s face now that anger had subsided, Unferth wore an amused expression. Galier was relieved to see that his axe was safely back on his belt instead of in his hand.

“Have you received any further communication from Derranhall?” Lord Kalagor asked Galier.

He shook his head, he hadn’t received so much as a letter since the first one.

“Not a word,” He said. “But lady Ingrid was clear that we cannot expect much more than they have already gathered.”

It was soldiers that lord Kalagor was interested in, of course. He didn’t have much interest in ships, like a proper old blood lord. He didn’t know the value of them.

The news caused the older lord to sigh and shake his head. He was of the opinion that they needed far more in the way of troops. As it was, they would hardly outnumber the swollen garrison in Maerin, and many would be lost scaling the walls or attacking the harbor.

Galier agreed, it was the reason he had thought to recruit Scythese and his friends in the first place. Well, one of the reasons. They were no soldiers of course, but many of them were old blood, and would not be suspected once the fighting started. If Lana had taught him anything, it was that an innocuous little thing with a knife could be far more deadly than any soldier.

“I had hoped that things might change. Martim promised four thousand, plus ships and horses…” Lord Kalagor gave a wry grin and shook his head again. “I was naive to believe him. Perhaps it is time to reassess our plan.”

Eliah immediately drew herself up at the remark. “You do them a disservice, Vaeor. Each of house Derran’s landsmen is easily the equal of five imperial soldiers.”

Haughty and with a voice dripping in disdain for the Monarch’s soldiers, it was hard to even make eye contact with Eliah.

Galier had no idea where she had gotten that number from. It was true that in many raids, small forces of northerners had taken on much larger forces before, Galier himself had led such raids, but it was never because of some greater degree of skill. Far from it.

In Galier’s experience, the imperial soldiers were in fact better trained and significantly more experienced than the gathered hordes of northerners he commanded. Their weakness was often that training actually. Once the officer was downed, the rest became unable to make any sort of decision. They would begin to scatter. But in a protracted battle throughout the entirety of Maerin, well, the sheer amount of officers that would need to be hunted down… It was unthinkable.

Of course he couldn’t explain all of that to Eliah, she wasn’t likely to even let him get the words out, much less be convinced by anything he had to say.

“I agree with Eliah, you don’t know what they’re capable of.” Unferth said, taking over the table with his surprisingly powerful voice. He was trying to affect a refined accent, but it did not do much good. “But it wouldn’t hurt to have some more bodies.” It was clearly an afterthought, to try to smooth things over. Pride overshadowed reasonability in the seasoned pirate. He would try assaulting the main gate and lead the charge himself if they let him.

“I think I might have a solution.” Galier said. All eyes turned, looking at him with no small amount of annoyance that he dared speak. He was almost cowed to silence, but the remaining dregs of his earlier confidence had not quite abandoned him yet.

He drew himself up into the most commanding posture he could manage and went on. “Well, we might not need more soldiers…” Their suspicious looks almost shut him up right then and there, but something kept him going. He needed to prove himself to these people, even if just to spite them.

“The wall is our biggest obstacle,” He said, pointing to the map of Maerin on the table and tracing his finger along a section of it. “We’d lose too many trying to force our way over, and we won't last in a siege.”

Everyone else nodded, looking at Galier as if he were just stating the obvious. He supposed that he really was. “Well, what if we already had people already inside?”

“Just what exactly are you proposing?” Contempt dripped from Eliah’s words. At least she didn’t shut him down immediately.

“If there was a disturbance inside the city, they would send guards there, right?” The group nodded, beginning to see, although they did not look convinced in the slightest. Unferth was stroking his short beard in some semblance of thought, but he hardly looked ready to voice his support. Neither did lord Kalagor who was now studiously looking over the map. Maybe planning the best place for Galier’s disturbance, maybe just looking at the map. Galier chose to take it as permission to continue.

“If we coordinate it right, we could make sure that the guards were drawn away from the exact spot we want to attack.” He motioned to a section of wall then towards the streets that led inward, deeper into the city. “Even if they turned ‘round and came back, they’d be stuck in these streets where our forces have the advantage.”

He could see confusion mounting in lord Kalagor’s face already and quickly explained to forestall any complaint. “Imperial soldiers are trained to fight in open fields, forests, swamps even, but they’re no good in cities. Their formations require space. But landsmen from back home, we train in towns and on ships, places with little space to move. We’re used to tight quarters, this could work to our advantage. We just need to make sure we can get in.” Turning to Unferth, who was starting to grin at the prospect of the slaughter, he said: “But getting in is still a problem.”

Eliah cut in before either of the others could. “Yes, it is a problem. But it isn’t our only one.” She stood from her chair and leaned on the table, looming over galier. “Who, pray tell, do you think is going to create this ‘disturbance’ of yours?” Her look was expectant, and when Galier looked around the table, it was reflected from all sides.

Galier smiled, happy that it was she who voiced the concern he had been expecting. “That’s where my ‘friends,’ I think you called them, come in.”

He nodded towards lord Kalagor who was now drumming his fingers on the map, his brows drawn together in thought. It was as if he wasn’t entirely paying attention. Galier elected to continue on anyway.

“I’ve been speaking with some of Stellaphrena’s followers. Students, they call themselves, but they’re dedicated to her teachings. I think, given a little push, they could be just the distraction we need.”

“They’d be slaughtered.” Lord Kalagor said, looking up from the map with a dark expression. “It’s an interesting idea, I’ll give you that. Nobody would expect our attack to coincide with a commoner’s uprising, especially one led by the old blood.” Galier smiled, feeling sufficiently proud of himself for having convinced the older lord even a little.

Eliah looked somewhat less sour too, now. She had conspicuously sat down again when Galier presented a viable solution to the problem she brought up.

“But,” Lord Kalagor said, shattering Galier’s self-congratulations, “I will not send unarmed civilians to be massacred. They wouldn’t even buy us more than a few minutes. I will not have it.” He clearly thought he had shut the plan down, and for a moment he did.

Galier sighed heavily. He’d been convinced his plan would work, and he still thought it could, but without lord Kalagor’s support… He looked up from the map, berating himself for not thinking the plan through enough, and his eyes landed on the weapon rack behind lord Kalagor’s back.

From wall to wall, it was a fine collection of exceptionally well crafted weapons. Spears, swords, axes, anything a warrior could want and more.

The others had already moved on to discussing something else when Galier launched himself from his seat, a new plan already forming in his mind. “What if they’re not unarmed?”

Lord Kalagor looked up at him, confusion clouding his face. “What?” He asked, clearly somewhat annoyed by Galier’s continued interruptions.

“We could arm them. Train them too. I could.” A distasteful look was already forming on lord Kalagor’s face. Galier opened his mouth to explain further, but Eliah beat him to it.

“You want us to fund a second revolution, just to make a diversion for the first one?” She was even less willing to put up with Galier’s ideas, and the others were clearly in agreement, looking at Galier with a clear message in their eyes. His ideas weren’t welcome anymore.

“At least let me try, I think we could manage it.”

Eliah rolled her eyes and looked to lord Kalagor with an exasperated look. The older lord just shook his head and sighed.

“Fine, do it. Just don’t promise anything until you talk to the rest of us, understood? I will not have you putting our organization in jeopardy again.”

Galier smiled and took his seat again. “I understand perfectly,” He said, already going through how he would introduce the idea to Scythese and his friends in his mind. He was happy enough to let the others take the rest of the meeting after that. His part was cut out and ready to be addressed once he had a plan.