There was some understanding that what they were doing did not coincide with what they were promised. The talk of revolt began with a whisper, as it always did. Then the whispers grew loud and gained echoes. Those echoes had wider reach. The message became simplified. Nuance was stripped as the voice became unclear, yet more poignant in its newfound simplicity. When Alanei Deidre first heard of the movement, it was called the Requestrium. They spread literature and held speeches, and put together resources to formally approach the Lord Mayor for a solution to the recession. That was the plan. But it didn’t work. Many among them grew frustrated, impatient.

Then came the large man in the fur coat. An Aldrenite, suspiciously enough. He spoke of conspiracy. The palatial district’s most wealthy planned all of this to maintain their seat of power. And many of them agreed with ferocity. The speeches stopped being held in the open, and became more for themselves. The ideas echoed, but did not spread. The words distorted, yet grew stronger and surer. Alanei was nearly finished with her Regal studies during that time. Even with her limited education she understood the wealthy had nothing to gain by deliberately making their foundation weaker. She studied under Lord Jace and Lord Horatio, as a rare talent that impressed both a member of the State and the Economy enough to give her tutelage.

“I’m moving assets to Cadeau de Chires,” Horatio told her one day. “At the beginning of calamity, diversifying is the wisest move, lest you wish to depend on luck.”

“Because if you do it too late you’d have nothing left to diversify with.”

“Exactly. Sounds easy, but it is monumentally difficult to tell precisely when calamity begins. Elsewise we’d all be businessmen, right, Lord Jace?”

Lord Jace huffed disapprovingly. Alanei didn’t know then why the knight always seemed to be in a bad mood.

“There’s more to the prosperity of an empire than money and the movement of goods,” he replied.

“On the contrary…” Horatio began.

The talk extended for hours with Jace become heated and Horatio staying as cool as spring, his general demeanor having been tempered just a few years longer by the heat of the market. Afterward, however, Horatio pulled Alanei aside and told her the truth.

“Calamity had begun when your head reached your father’s hips.”

“What do you mean?” She asked.

“I hadn’t figured it out until a few months ago. It’s the patience of the wizened magnate you see,” Horatio said immodestly, but with ample awareness. “Patience blinded me. You win some, you lose some. You lose a little more than you win, it happens. But keep that up long enough and people would begin to see something was wrong. The boys and girls saw it first, and old cats like me admonished them. But they might’ve planned that would happen from the start. They want us to come to the conclusion that moving to Cadeau is the wisest business choice.”

“Sir, you are suggesting the Lord Mayor would threaten to doom this city on purpose!”

“Not the Lord Mayor. This is above his pay grade. This is ideological. Plans within plans. Movements of power deeper in the empire beyond even my ken needs Cadeau de Chires to grow. I have a few ears near the capital, but even I fear to theorize why. Keep what I’ve told you to yourself, however. Work such as this would likely require our friend Jace’s cooperation as well.”

The implication was clear, of course. Horatio was too cautious to say it. Who else had more power than the Lord Mayor in Ralagast? Alanei didn’t say it out loud. She daren’t not dwell on the image of the person in her mind. It was said they knew when they were being thought of. Speak their name and they would know where the speaker was as well.

So Alanei kept to herself and her studies. She woke early and went home late to an adoring sister and a tired father. Heila would run and bury her face into her stomach when she came home, laughing and smiling. They’d play board games and cards, and Alanei would convince Heila to go to bed since the younger sibling needed the sleep. Then Alanei would help her father with work. The good news was there had been less work overall, and that meant well for her father’s ailing body. That was also the bad news. Regal studies were expensive.

“What on Etrylis are you talking about? The less people getting hurt, the better. Besides, at the rate Ms. Ureila goes through Ritali flower and tetralichen, we’d float on her supplements for a while yet.”

Therein lied the problem. Her father still regarded her as a child. Too innocent to be told the truth. Too dumb even to understand that operating expenditures for all necessary services across the city had been steadily declining. Perhaps for years. Horatio was right. There was risk in impulse and downfall in patience. Even when youth and wisdom married, there were yet plans that circumvented their cumulative powers.

When was it she decided the Requestrium? They promised to pay them, except as much as Ralagastii needed money, that wasn’t enough to sway youth. No, ideology swayed youth. But for Alanei, she made her decision after an argument with her father over a single candlelight in the dead of night, their faces washed with grim shadow and heated argument. She had made her decision in impulse, then reasoned it was for the best in the long run for the survival of the clinic. Her father had been right to regard her as a child.

Now she stood among dozens of confused peers as they stood in freezing sleet. The fires were very nearly gone. The strangely heavy water lingered on her senses, each drop like cold static, drowning even a gas based fire. Meanwhile, the two most zealous among them wielded those horrific devices. Far more powerful than a bow, and more accurate too.

“Take them out into the rain!” One of them, named Portien ordered.

The submissive ones among them did so, dragging the wealthy out onto the streets. But they were not enthused to carry out the order. It was as apparent as could be; no one had wanted this. They only followed the insurgency’s leadership because they were all in too deep. It was too late to back out now.

“Tie them up! Make sure they can breathe. Just barely.”

Alanei brought the rope around the bellies of the wealthy. Their clothes were soaked and many of them were out of shape. They had begun to shake. She couldn’t meet them in the eye.

“Do you need help?” A young man asked, taking her side to help with the knot.

“No,” she said.

“Exaggerate your movements more. Pretend to be enthused. If we don’t, they might turn on us.” He nodded to the two gun wielders, still barking orders and harassment.

“You too?” Alanei said.

“It wasn’t supposed to like this,” he said. “I never particularly cared about the Requestrium’s cause to be honest. But even for me this is too much.”

“Right.”

“Do you know why they even want us to do this?”

“I overheard them talking about the other squads. Those weapons of theirs have held the knights back well enough but a few are proving problematic. They need assurances.”

“Hostages.” The young man swore. “This is low.”

Boots clinked towards them.

“Are you two finished?” Portien shouted.

“Yes,” Alanei said immediately.

“Bring them by the gas tanks.”

Alanei turned to the hostages and said, “Well come on then, you parasitic pigs!” And with a hard yank dragged them along. The young man with her raised an eyebrow. They set the hostages by the others. The entire neighborhood had been brought to heel, nearly a hundred citizens in total.

Satisfied, Portien left them.

“Impressive theatrics,” the young man said. “What’s your name, by the way?”

“Alanei.”

“Ayden.” He extended a hand. Alanei shook it briefly. The man seemed too calm in the midst of all this.

“Why did you join the movement?” Alanei asked.

“Money,” came the swift and honest reply. “My family needs it. Medicine. Food. Doctoral visitations.”

“My family runs a clinic,” Alanei said. “It hasn’t been doing well in the past few years. On top of receiving less operating subsidies from the city, my father didn’t want to stop giving discounts to the locals. Accidents happened fairly often in construction and many of our neighbors were men of hammer and nail. Well, they were often when there was a lot of building to do.”

“Looks like we both need money then, huh?” Ayden swept his gaze across the situation he had placed himself in. People his age forcing adults on their knees, making them and their children kneel in rain. Many of them weren’t physically fit. There was a lot of shivering among the prisoners. Red eyes and running noses.

The problem was he was afraid to ask the obvious question. It never boded well to be a part of anything when one was afraid to do the thing that gave them direction. He wanted to ask, “What next?”

How were they supposed to get what they want? Where would the money come from? And even if the city dispensed the currency, fixed the heady problem that caused this recession, how were they supposed to reintegrate into Ralagast as once-violent vigilantes? He looked into the eyes of Portien and his partner, Ophiel. They were chosen to wield the limited supply of the planar weaponry based on their pure belief. Sheer zeal. It often seemed the case that power fell on the hands of the unworthy. Ayden wondered if that was because the most unworthy sought power the most.

Even as he stole from the city’s well-to-do folk he took what he knew they wouldn’t miss. A necklace here. A modest jewel there. Something these folk would notice weeks later and become frustrated for but a moment of their lives. He looked down by his feet. He watched the overweight man he had helped force onto his knees shiver as the icy water soaked into the fabrics.

“Do you regret joining?” Alanei asked, pulling him from his stupor.

“I don’t think we get to regret. This is who we are now,” he said. He took breath and blinked the cold water from his eyes. “I never did patch things up with my sister.”

“Let me guess, she didn’t agree with your choice?”

“Your family too?”

“My father kept insisting our finances were fine, and that I should finish my Regal studies and work under the Lord Mayor.”

“My sister thought I should find some menial labor job rather than be a thief.”

“Well… here’s to wiser family.”

“Here’s to ignoring their advice.”

Splashing footfalls interrupted their respite. It was Portien’s partner Ophiel, his finger ever itchy on the trigger of his weapon.

“What was that I heard?” He said loudly.

“Pard—” Alanei did not get to finish.

“Regal studies? The work of the palatial machinations that caused this to begin with?”

“Sir! I thought working under the Lord Mayor was the best way to change—”

“The process from within, right? That’s what all statesmen say! Come here!”

Ophiel’s fingers closed tightly around Alanei’s hair, dragging her to the open road. She cried out. It was barely audible in the downpour.

Ayden rushed forward.

“Hey, that’s clearly in the past!” He shouted. “She’s here isn’t she? With us!”

“I’d be the judge of that! Mind your post!”

Ophiel threw Alanei onto the pavestones. She felt something twist in her wrist as she slammed against the stone. An energetic whine grew in Ophiel’s weapon.

“Please…” Alanei said. “I’m not a statesman.”

“My father lost his job in this recession,” Ophiel said coldly. “My mother took my siblings to live with her relatives. I stayed because I still believed in my father, in the family. Then he fell in the riots. His skull caved in at the hands of the Knights of the Preservation. I wandered the streets for weeks living on scraps, and upon a chance caught sight of mother walking with her hands around another man’s arm, my younger brother and sister close behind. And you know what? They pretended not to see me!

“This city needs to fall! A world that lets this happen to anyone is not a world worth having! We need to begin again! Do you underst—”

Metal tore with a metallic scream. The air boiled and warped as the weapon fell away, smoking, useless. Alanei looked down the street and saw Portien lying on the road, incapacitated. Beside him was a man in the armor and cape of a knight. The tip of the knight’s rapier smoked from the recent casting of a repulsion Spell.

“Let them go,” Edeard said calmly. “You’re done.”