Famed Inventor dead by villainous deeds!

Noble sabotage? Proof inside!

Critical repairs denied the Inventor in the hours before his untimely death!

As far as excuses for bloody revolution went, Alva’s death sufficed.

Word spread quickly, encouraged by Reed’s radio jockeys. By the evening, Guildsmen the city over toasted in Alva’s memory. The same men who lambasted Alva as a slave to the Houses a week past now extolled his virtues. Contractors who sued the Inventor over delinquent payments with the Harvest now praised his vision and generosity.

“Even Inventors are not safe before the scheming Houses!” proclaimed the shock jockeys.

In death, Alva joined the proletariat.

As the sun set, new men prowled the taverns. They offered round after round of liquid courage, offered quiet agreement that something must be done, and paid their tabs using Reed’s election funds.

Of course, the payments and words were both blatantly illegal, but this would not matter come dawn.

None of the old rules would matter by dawn.

These strangers shared a litany of woes: unpaid dues, unfair taxes, unprincipled behavior…

Words were no longer enough. Laws were no longer enough. If not now, when?

The wiser men noticed that these new orators were strangers, their stories canned and accents carefully sanitized. Most, however, latched onto this narrative of noble malfeasance. The Houses had not cared for the dead in the harbor attack; the Houses did not care for the death of an Inventor! If neither tragedy nor fame moved the nobles, then what hope did a common man have?

“Yes,” whispered vipers in their ears, “you attempted a peaceful resolution all Solace! Protests to force redress, and what did you meet for your troubles but the end of a club?”

Not that the vipers made mention of all those rocks thrown at noble cars or the pedestrians harassed on their way to church.

“We warned them,” these men assured. “Our hands are forced!”

The only path lay through fire and blood.

Despite all the incendiary rhetoric and free booze, the strangers persuaded less than half of the assembled to march in the night with dire chants and torches blazing. The rest remained behind, debating how best to bring a formal lawsuit to the Conclave, how best to strike come spring, or simply craving a warm bed.

Half was still quite enough.

Led by the nose, the raging mob marched for ivory gates, chanting “No more nobles, no more lies. Guildsmaster Reed save our lives!”

A phalanx of constables already manned the gates, their rifles loaded. Their captain shouted, “Disperse or be prosecuted!”

A hail of vulgarities and stones answered him.

The crowd was brave, but any given man not as much. None yet dared rush a line of rifles. Instead, the crowd flirted with the gate like a rising tide.

In the world beyond, the parties continued. A few noble women watched the spectacle from a balcony with murmurs of general concern while their husbands debated whether the agitators should be dispersed and blacklisted or arrested and flogged.

The constable chief, Lawrence Brookings, overheard this conversation from his table. Rising from his conversation with Nancy Cecille, he approached the men on the balcony. “Good sirs, that crowd outnumber my men three to one. If we are to arrest them, we will require your personal assistance.”

Oddly enough, none of them volunteered personally, though they were quite willing to offer their servants.

The noise below swelled as they swished their drinks. An incendiary grenade flew from the back of the crowd, smashed into an oak tree, and smoldered. Wet, cold wood would not burn easily, but more would follow.

Chief Brookings folded his arms across his chest and watched the restless tide. He was no stranger to riots; he had cracked enough heads in his time. Neither could he claim any moral superiority on this matter; noble bribes paid for his home, his car, and his children’s prosperous careers.

A gentle music tickled at his ears, memory of the songs his father used to strum after dinner.

For some reason, he thought of his first case – back when he strode the streets of a grimy harbor town, flush with purpose. A twenty-one-year-old junior constable on the warpath, ready to clean up Lumia with spit and gumption.

Three weeks into his career, he solved a murder by asking questions where other men shrugged.

When had that man faded into Chief Brookings, lapdog of the nobility?

Somewhere along the way, he forgot the songs his father used to play.

A fire lit in his chest with a vigor thirty years forgotten. Chief Brookings set down the booze, straightened his collar, and abandoned the party.

Nearby, Mirielle Visage offered him a silent toast.

***

The heroic Guildsmaster Reed arrived at the ivory gates on a stallion, dressed in heavy leather and equestrian boots. Groomed and polished, he held his head tall and bellowed, “Hold, good Guildsmen! Hold! There must be justice tonight, but I am fain to see redress for Alva’s death be granted through violence!”

“Aye, Reed can set this straight!” called one of his masons.

“Part the way!” called another.

“I don’t think that’s what ‘fain’ means…” muttered a bystander.

The Guildsmaster rode through the crowd, greeting supporters by name. He took his time, shaking hands, praising men. When he reached the crest of the tide, he straightened on his saddle and recited, “It is true that the nobility has refused just payment for just work, broken our strikes with unlawful actions, and shut us out of the Conclave. Yes, they have sinned against us, but we must be the better men!”

The crowd subsided to murmuring, watching this hero on his steed brave the gate and its guns. Here was spectacle to recount to one’s grandchildren – the turning of an age.

Reed brandished a receipt for groceries in his hand. “I hold in my hand the proof that the Houses conspired to spread false accusations against my honored opponent, Father Lucas!”

The Guildsmaster waved the receipt high, confident in his lies.

History was not built on truth.

It was built on victory.

“Well? Not a single noble dog willing to answer my testimony?! Face the light of truth or face consequences most severe!”

Beneath his leathers, Reed wore an armored breastplate. The armor chafed against his ribs, but its Novian steel would prove equal to the next act in this play.

As he posed, a constable without a badge finished loading his rifle. He then aimed his rifle for the Guildsmaster’s chest.

The shot rang through the night, and the crowd recoiled.

Reed wheezed and clutched at his ribs. No need to feign the pain; his ribs screamed beneath his dented armor. He barely remembered to clap a hand over the gleam of metal as he slumped forward, and the scalding metal burned his palm.

“They’ve shot Reed!” one of his agents shouted. “They’ve shot the messenger of truth! Our election candidate!”

His horse reared, dancing away from the helping hands. Reed steered with his knees, gritting his teeth, and searched for two more of his men.

The men shoved away the helping hands, escorted the horse, and quietly snatched up the bullet from the road before anyone thought to examine the casing.

“Make way! We must find a doctor! Make way!”

Reed and his men retreated, and the crowd found its courage. The spark had been struck, and rocks flew like a hailstorm. The tide surged to the base of the gate and slammed into the base.

A gate of ivory and wood, carved for genteel eyes, would not survive long.

Meanwhile, Reed slipped from his horse at the edge of the road and stumbled into the copse of brittle trees. There he shed his armor, still wheezing, and donned a heavy cloak and hat. “Hells, I cracked a rib! I want that man’s head! Rubber shot my arse!”

“The deed must be real. Such a shot would never stop you,” reassured the nearest man.

Reed pinned the Moros provocateur with a baleful stare. “You will be standing before the next.”

“But you are a hero!”

The Guildsmaster held the agent’s gaze until the lesser flinched away. Then he nodded. “Yes. Yes, I am.”

A hero for history and a king by morning.

He turned to watch his revolution flower.

His tide battered against the ivory gates. The constables behind the ornamental parapets hunkered against the rain of invectives, their rifles forgotten as the wood beneath their feet rocked.

“Come on you chicken bastards,” Reed murmured, “fire!”

There was no birth without blood.

“Fire already!”

But the useless cowards clutched at posts and hid their faces.

Reed gestured to the Moros agents. Who would know the direction of a shot in the chaos? Blood was blood in the dark of the night.

“Gladly,” said the first agent, sliding a round into the chamber of his rifle.

As the agent took aim, though, an old man in the constable’s dress uniform stepped to the highest parapet and roared with the vigor of a sergeant, “Stow your guns, you twits! You’re as like to shoot yourselves in the face as stop this madness!”

The tide paused, craning their necks to catch this new spectacle.

Chief Lawrence Brookings strode to the edge of his platform, dragging a constable with no badge into view.

The man from Moros sighted a random target from the crowd.

Reed smacked the man’s gun down. “Not now, you idiot! It must seem the constables or we’re sod!”

The chief shook his captive like a cat. “Take a good look! Is this the man you’ll kill for?!”

The false constable squirmed, trying to tug down his cap. His forehead, nose, and cheeks were already turning interesting shades of purple. In fact, close inspection would reveal that he appeared to have been punched repeatedly by someone with wood-carved knuckles.

“They were waiting for me!” he protested. “A woman! A dozen women! Carven, still, lifeless! It was all a set-up, start to finish! I’m an innocent victim of circumstance!”

Tucked into the shadows beyond the fence, Thea snorted to herself. As though she had needed more than one.

Brookings shook the man harder. “This is Shady Eddy! He’s bilked every housewife he can reach with opium rattles! This ale-doused nutcase would sell his own son for a silver note! So why does he have pockets full of gold?!”

Several rocks whizzed past the chief’s head.

“You shot Reed!” someone braved.

“Shady Eddy shot Reed!” Brookings retorted, standing firm. “And where is Reed?”

“At the hospital!”

“Did he take a car? There’s only the one road, people! Someone would have seen him headed downhill! And where was he shot? Did he bleed? Or was he playing up the rapport like that two-copper speech of his?”

No two men in the crowd could agree, all of their accounts scattered and contradictory.

“Was he shot?”

“He clutched his ribs!”

“Maybe he had gas!”

That savage unity of riots began to dribble away.

“Shady Eddy doesn’t get out of bed for less than a silver,” Brookings asserted, flinging the lowlife to his lieutenants. “Somebody paid him, and I want that man kissing my boots for mercy. I don’t care if he’s a street sweeper or the honorable Lord Mishkan, there will be hell to pay!”

A third of the crowd cheered.

“What is this insanity? You! Tonberry of the Carpenters! Your boys built this damned gate. Does your own work offend you? Or are you just hoping for better rates when you rebuild it in Spring?!”

Another third of the crowd hooted.

“And the masons too? You louts remember how long these foundations took? You know the Houses will demand you rebuild the road while they’ve got you on the hook!”

Agent provocateurs decided now was the time to slink from the crowd.

“This isn’t my Lumia! In my day, if we were pissed at nobles, we egged their houses! Are we gonna put those torches to the hill? To burn women and children?! My boys have spent all Solace freezing their privates off trying to keep you lot from murdering each other, and this is how you repay them! If you kill nobles tonight, there will be the army with the morning!”

The riot was broken, but the men remained bitter. “They deny us the Conclave! They deny us a voice!”

Brookings drew himself up. “Aye, we’ve got some real problems. The nobles play their stupid games, and we’re the pieces.” Here were words that could cost a chief his job, but Brookings thought of his father and his youth. “You know what? Pawns outnumber the queen. Let’s put the screws to them the proper way. Strike so hard the city stops. Strike so tight they can’t put petrol in their fancy cars! And if that isn’t enough to bring them to the table, then I will bring my boys to join the pickets!”

The nobles could hardly police the city themselves! Without the constables to enforce their justice, the Houses would break faster than a farmhand’s contract!

One shocking pledge killed Reed’s revolution.

Guildsmen rushed to the gate – not to tear it down but to pledge themselves to the coming strike.

Brookings vowed on his badge that he would see the culprit behind Shady Eddy dragged to the Conclave.

The crowd reciprocated by producing men for questioning. These men had encouraged rebellion, and their incendiary words would weigh heavily against them now.

None were Ruhum natives.

The constables relinquished the parapets and swept the surrounding landscape, but they found no sign of Reed. Runners were sent to inquire at the hospitals, and one brave young man searched the forest for Shady Eddy’s assailant.

He found three women, triplets in perfect Livery black, framed by the moonlight.

Thea raised her finger to her lips and smiled for the youth. “Shhh….”

The young man would not report what he saw. Indeed, he would never speak of it in what remained of his life, holding it as something precious and strange.

Chief Brookings shouted himself absolutely hoarse over the next hours, guiding the crowd from his perch. By the time he could surrender the gate to a lieutenant, he trembled like a drunk. He returned to the party to find the festivities unabated, and he collapsed in a corner to nurse seltzer water.

None of the nobles thanked him, and none of the journalists asked him for an interview. In the history of Ruhum, he would not even merit a mention.

He sagged, head against the wall. “Aure above, that could have gone sour fast.”

Lords and Ladies laughed and gossiped.

In the morning, Brookings would put the squeeze to those strangers from Moros. He pledged to the strike and he meant it. Enough of this squabble between House and Guild; he was sick of sending his boys home in casts.

Didn’t any of these people appreciate the hell they made of things while they threw their tantrums?

Questions and culprits; demands and complaints. If he actually managed to charge a noble with a crime for once, he would award himself a medal.

Just another day on his damned job.

“You told me it was a fool’s line of work, pa,” he chuckled to his cup. “I should have listened.”

***

Curses on the constables, curses on the chief, and curses on the fecklessness of men! Bribes, favors and plans, all shot by nothing more than a few words by a noble’s lapdog in uniform!

Why had Brookings grown a spine on the very eve of revolution? Why now?!

Reed retreated to his manor, smoldering. His ribs ached with every breath, and he coughed a thick phlegm tinged with blood.

The doctors would patch his ribs, but his revolution lay dead and cold on the floor.

He stormed into his study, opened his secret stairs, and stomped down.

“Your vaunted spies cool their heels in constable cells!” he roared into the basement. “If even one of them breathes a word of confession, I will feed your liver to my dogs, you cretin!”

No answer. He stopped on the middle stair, hacked red phlegm, and listened.

“Answer me, spy! You promised me a night of fire and blood, and all I have found is spittle!”

Too enraged to notice the silence below, he barged into the secret study.

There he found Thomas and Trent standing over the corpse of the Moros ringmaster. The corpse lay slumped in Reed’s reading chair, a bullet through his throat. Congealed blood covered his throat and the chair, well-congealed and cold.

“What in the hells?” Reed snarled. “You dolts shot him! I was not done with him yet!”

A pair of crimson heels rapped against the stone stairs, and Mirielle Visage descended behind the Guildsman. She let one finger glide along the wall, sparing him a pitying look. “Hello, Reed.”

Reed narrowed his eyes. Glanced between the Lady Visage and his trusted minions. Growled. “You two timing bastards. I practically raised you!”

“Incorrect,” Thomas replied, syllables precise and sharp. “You merely encouraged the worst of what they could be.”

Reed darted to the bookcase, snatched up a pistol, and whirled for Mirielle. If he could not rely on his help, he could at least rely on a noble to save her own skin in a hostage situation!

Trent was there before his arm could finish its arc. He casually grabbed the pistol by its tip and squeezed. The metal whined, and the muzzle crumpled closed.

“Thank you, Thea,” Mirielle said pleasantly.

Trent then struck Reed in his cracked rib, and Reed’s world collapsed into a struggle to even breathe.

“This is rather unpleasant, isn’t it?” Lady Visage remarked. “I don’t really enjoy this sort of thing.”

“What…do you want…” Reed snarled, blood leaking between his teeth.

“Stability, Reed. Stability. Wars and revolutions make things so much more complicated. Why, a whole new set of bribes with the dawn!” She laughed dourly. “You have no idea how much work I’ve put into cultivating my crop of Inventors. My little flock, the perfect mixture of indolent and greedy. I know you don’t see it, but I like to consider myself a conductor of generational symphonies.”

She would not be explaining herself to anyone she intended to let live.

“The Church, the Houses, the Guilds. You all have your place in this. The simmering pot from which our Great Work is born.” Mirielle kneeled to tip Reed’s chin with her forefingers.

Could he hear a music, something familiar, like his mother used to play?

“No one interferes with our Great Work, my dear. Not the Conclave, not the angels, and certainly not a penny thug with delusions of grandeur. Your little revolution would not have survived the season, dear. You would have been hanged as insufficiently revolutionary by the time the first flowers bloomed.”

“Just who the hells do you think you are?” Reed growled. His lung could not draw air properly, and the room swam with every heartbeat. He tried to stagger upright regardless.

Thomas approached, revealing a Moros knife. The blade was curved like a crocodile tooth and thirsty for blood. “The ones who will purify the world.”

He spit. Lunatics. I am undone by lunatics in high heels!

“Why is it no one ever seems to believe us?” Mirielle mused. She nodded to her pet in Thomas’ skin.

The thug drove the knife into Reed’s spine, and all feeling vanished in his legs.

“I assure you, Reed. We are entirely serious.”

Thomas and Trent closed their eyes as one. Heartbeat by heartbeat, they shed the seeming of mortal beings. They were dolls, ball jointed and smooth faced, with matching silken black hair and cold eyes that watched as Reed bled.

The Guildsmaster knew the risks. They had been worth it. Men like him didn’t die in dotage.

Of course he would be undone by the vipers in the Conclave.

I could have been a king…

Spitting, he murmured in a failing wheeze, “Go to hell…”

Mirielle sighed. “Where do you think we are, Reed?”

“Death is a reprieve,” the doll counseled. “Journey well.”

Mirielle ran a finger along his scalp, and a song of peace carried the pain away.

He felt great.

He felt

***

Chief Brooking’s investigators found the grisly scene in Reed’s study a few hours later. The pictures leaked to the papers by breakfast. By dusk, all Lumia knew that Guildsmaster Reed was a traitor to the Regency.

The Moros agents corroborated many dirty details in feeble attempts to avoid the hangman’s noose.

The proletariat swirled in confusion. Was this election a sham? A Moros plot?!

Sensing the mood, the Conclave swiftly pounced. An emergency session was called, and the nobles reached a convenient accord: since only one election candidate remained and the process itself had fallen under suspicion, better that the matter be retired posthaste.

If the wording of this agreement happened to bar any future elections for city manager, that was a regrettable necessity.

Thus, Tura became Lumia’s city manager before the end of the week.

On the first day of Spring, the Keeper of the Flame knighted Tura on the steps of the Cathedral of Fire. The Whistler knelt for the honor, his hair now braided, and accepted the responsibility of a sham position in humility.

He then mounted the steps and entered the Cathedral to inspect his new offices.

Oliver walked beside him, a guest of the city manager.

They both stared a moment at the soft leather chairs and hardwood walls of Tura’s new view.

“Swanky,” Oliver admitted at last.

The Whistler laughed. “These are not the circumstances I expected, but the view is impressive.”

“I just hope it doesn’t turn into a gilded cage. The Conclave will blame you for everything now.”

“Of course they will. A drink?”

They shared a quiet toast, watching the crowd thin in the church square several stories below.

The view reminded Oliver of Mirielle’s receiving room.

“You seem ill at ease, my young friend.”

“There is a woman on my mind.” Lace was a heretic and a criminal, but she hid among her own kind with ease. How was Oliver supposed to find one witch amongst the entire city?

“Oh? Is this the noble you’re reputed to fancy?”

The young Inventor flushed. “I’d like to find her too. The two of you should meet. She may be noble, but Alisandra believes in Lumia.”

“You sound like quite the fan,” Tura teased.

“Not like that!” The young man sighed. I know my place, Tura. I know what is out of my reach. “Would you be willing to meet?”

“For you, Oliver? I will bump her to the very front of the queue. You believed in me when no one else did, my friend, and I will return that favor now.”

“Excellent. I’ll arrange the matter.” Oliver smiled at last. With the way things have gone these last weeks, we need to leverage every ally we can find.

Spirits buoyed, the young Inventor departed to handle the details with Alisandra.

In his wake, Tura mixed himself a stiff drink and watched the bustle of Lumia. Cars and carts, nobles and beggars…the razor edge of human progress in a city of rich and poor. He remembered the feel of an empty belly and old shoes better than silk and satin.

This city did not Sing enough.

His new secretary knocked.

“Yes?”

“There is a witch who would like to speak with you, sir.” She spoke the words slowly, her eyes drawn unblinking to the window as though the sun fought against some inner vision.

Tura frowned. As a Whistler and an Inventor, he never understood the Auren fixation on heresy. Brands and declarations were tools of a church that merely pretended to political neutrality; what difference was there between an Auren pastor and the Tempest’s temple?

He was not suicidal enough to openly oppose the church in which he stood, but he would be quite happy to search for common ground with those maligned as heretics in the shadows.

Pouring another drink, Tura nodded. “See her in.”