Chapter 41: Riot Out of Luck

We busted out of the ground at a sprint.

The darkness of the tunnel gave way to complete chaos, shouting, screams, and more dust in the air than in the underground tunnel, surprisingly, but I digress.

“This way!” Electra shouted.

We darted from the smoke and dust into the open air, and a glimmering row of guardsmen materialized right in front of us.

“Out of the way!” I pushed my armor harder. Ducking my head, I crashed through the closest man, taking him in his stomach with two folded elbows. Clearly, he wasn’t expecting someone as small as me to hit like a truck. A second later, Dum crashed through the hole I’d formed in the line, widening it enough for the rest of us to slip through.

“Stop them!”

“Time to toss our party favor!” I shouted over my shoulder.

With a grunt, Dum spun around. He threw Maria like a boulder at the disoriented guards. They caught her, damn stat boosts. Then the man on the left slipped on a piece of rubble, and they tumbled in on themselves like shiny silver bowling pins while the rest of the confused guards had to choose between pursuing us or helping their comrades.

To say nothing of the wall.

Electra ducked down the nearest street, but even the row of well-appointed houses couldn’t hide the rising cloud of dust and the hole in the inner wall that caused it. A whole section so wide maybe five people could walk through it side by side had gone down. Right now, more guardsmen rushed towards the site of the breach while nobles and well-to-do merchants looked on in bewilderment.

And, I noticed, more than a fair bit of worry. I could feel it thrumming through the air, like a dissonant chord. A weakness: Hawkwright had kept the people here so insulated from his secret war that they were struck dumb by the disaster.

I was good at exploiting weaknesses.

I sucked in a deep breath. “They breached the wall!” My voice cut through the air in a shrill scream. With my class, I could put just the right amount of terror behind every word. “The Tarnished! The Tarnished broke through! They’re coming to kill us and steal all of our precious heirlooms!”

Electra shot a glance at me, mouthing ‘heirlooms?’, but I could feel the impact my words were having. Let me tell you, the threat to their money was hitting a lot harder than the one to their lives.

Probably because these people had never known true danger a day in their lives.

“They’re here for the silver! They’re here for the gold!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. “Quick! They’re breaking through! Lock up your safes before they break in our doors!”

I heard a shifting as people started to look at me, murmuring among themselves. They didn’t believe, but then another man, tall and thin, came around the corner from the other direction. “The wall is down! The wall is down!”

His voice joined mine, and like a chorus, they formed a unison greater than the sum of their parts.

I grinned as I heard other people start to repeat my words. ‘The tarnished’, ‘broken through’, ‘the wall!’. They grew louder and louder, and when the next person started to run…

That was the pebble that kicked off the avalanche.

“Now that’s how you start a riot.” I cackled, nudging Electra to follow the crowd. Naturally, they ran towards the perceived safety of the castle. We followed along without a single person looking our way.

Well, except for one of us. I cast a glance at my largest follower. Even now, the men and women around us gave Dum a large berth, casting fearful glances at him as though he were about to turn on them as one of the ‘poors’ in their midst.

“Dum.” My voice carried directly to his ears. “I need you to split off. Sow chaos, get the whole inner city into a riot if you can, then get the hell out.”

He grimaced. “Uh, how’m I gonna do that second part, Boss?”

“You know,” I said. “They usually leave the main gate open in the middle of the day, don’t they? Think you can do it?” It really was his best chance of getting out of here alive. I was forming an exit strategy already, but there was no way it would work for four people.

I wasn’t sure if it would work for three.

He gave me a hard look before glancing back in the direction we were going.

“I’ll give it my best shot.”

Little Mistress leveled up, and I put the points into my physical skills. I was going to need all the edge I could get in this upcoming confrontation, because there was no way that Seneschal Hawkwright left his home undefended, and I was just about to send away my best muscle.

“Godspeed, you big lug.” I gave him a shove to the side, and he broke off. The stampede had grown so thick he actually had to shove his way to the nearest street. Then he was out of sight, and my eyes were filled with the castle ahead.

Seeing as it was shorter than the inner walls, this was the first time I’d laid eyes on it. The building was simple, less ostentatious than the manor houses surrounding it, with four squat towers and sturdy stone walls decorated with yet more silver.

If nothing else, Silverwall continued to live up to its name.

I could see a low gate, with two men standing in front of it. Their armor was richly appointed, and unless I missed my guess, entirely ceremonial. Even from here, I could see the trepidation in their eyes as a mob bore down on them. Already I heard people clamoring for the gates to open, that the hounds were loose in the city, and dammit the Duchess better protect them.

“Follow me, we’re slipping around the side.”

Rel and Electra fell in step behind me. We were to the fence fast enough that we could still slip through the gathering crowd, with a few power armor assisted shoves. Now, more and more people joined the press, and I could see the mob slipping fully out of my control.

That was fine. I’d spent the last few weeks trying to whip up a riot; I wasn’t about to complain when one dropped right into my lap.

We went around the side of the castle’s outer fence. The squat building itself didn’t have any parapets, and hopefully all those within would be too busy focusing on the mess out front. Once we reached the far side of the castle, I grabbed two of the wrought iron bars and bent them outward with a whine from my armor’s servos.

“Right, let’s go.” The three of us raced across the castle’s lawn and pressed up against the grey stone walls.

Electra looked up, eyes tracking the murder holes and archer’s nests. “Think they can see us.”

“Not unless someone sticks their head out.” I started along towards the nearest door. “Almost wished it was still raining, but we made it through all the same.”

“If it was raining, wouldn’t have been so many people out and about,” she replied.

I blinked. “True.” I glanced up at the sky, noting how the clouds had well and truly broken. “It looks like the monsoon is over.” I grimaced. “Probably bad news for us.”

“How d’you figure?”

“Ground might still be muddy, but now that it’s stopped raining, Hawkwright could send word to let the monsters loose any day.”

“Uh…um Mistress?”

I turned to look at Rel. The woman ducked her head. “The jungle easily drinks that much water. The rivers will be full and near overflowing, but the ground will be solid enough within the day.”

“Well, fuck me.” I looked back towards the castle. “At least the River’s to the north of us.”

“Didn’t you build a bridge over it, Empress?”

“Not one we can’t collapse.” I frowned. “Let’s get inside first, quickly now.”

Electra tested the door. It was a smaller one, set low enough that I had to duck to enter, some kind of servant’s entrance. Fortunately, it was left unlocked.

“Guess no one expected to be put under siege today.” Electra grinned as we slipped inside. I looked around the narrow passage, quickly pushing us further into the castle. These outer rooms and ways sat empty, hopefully because everyone had been drawn to the other side of the caste, and that suited my purposes perfectly.

The first empty room with naught but a rickety wooden table and half burned candles I found, I slipped inside, and Relia barred the door behind us.

“Plan?” Electra asked.

I took a deep breath. “Don’t get caught, find Hawkwright, take care of him, get the hell out again.”

She winced. “Seems rough.”

“I’m working on it.” I ran a hand down my face. “Rel, I don’t suppose you were ever in this castle, were you?”

“No, Mistress.” She shook her head. “My mother was a successful ship captain for a time, but not so successful to be invited by the Duchess.”

“So we’re flying blind.” Electra leaned against the wall. “Any ideas?”

“I’m working on it.” I sighed. “We have one more objective though.” I pulled out the vial of golden dust from my belt. “If we find out where this stuff is kept, we need to burn it all.”

“Yeah…” Electra replied. “Never good to leave something like that with your enemies.”

“Just a whiff of this turned Arlo from an ineffectual combatant into a juggernaut.” I swirled the dust around, watching how it glimmered against the glass. “That means it’ll be somewhere secure; can’t have the help getting ideas.”

“Not sure how it’d work on a or a .”

“Arlo was a ,” I said. “If it did that to him, it’ll give anyone enough of a boost to be a nuisance. Tower or Dungeon, I’d bet.”

Electra nodded. “My vote is tower. Gets damp around here. Keep something like that in a dungeon, and it’ll turn into slurry if you’re not careful.”

“Makes sense.” I fished my mirror out of my pocket. “Right. I’m going to bring the skywhale back to Silverwall, now that the clouds have broken. Then I’ll need to check up on things back at Lady’s Port.”

“Hey, Maybe Ishanti knows a thing or two about the layout of this place!” Electra grinned.

“One can hope.”

I flicked the mirror open, giving Dave a small smile as he blinked at me happily.

“Hey buddy,” I said. “Yeah, I’m still alive. Listen, can you tell my spy plane to loop back towards the city?”

He flickered a few different colors, eyes going bright orange to a deep red.

“What do you mean he’s heading south?” I blanched. “They’re on the move.”

Electra blinked. “The monsters?”

I nodded.

The blonde looked at me, then around the small stone room we sat in. “Well, shit.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. When the goody two-shoes started cussing, you knew we were up the creek.

“Hawkwright must have left an order for them to start the stampede the moment the rain stopped or something.” I grit my teeth. “Not good. Tell him to come back anyway, I need him overhead.”

“Not keeping an eye on the monsters?” Electra asked.

“We know which way they’re going.”

She gave a stiff nod. “Right.”

“Put me through to Ishanti,” I told Dave. “The defenses need to be ready.”

Dave burbled something I didn’t quite catch.

“What?”

The mirror flickered, and suddenly I was staring into Dee’s face. “Boss! Thank the tides! I thought my idiot brother got himself lost.”

“Dee?” I felt my stomach twist into a knot. “Dee, where the fuck is Ishanti?”

He blinked. “She left already, boss.”

“Left?”

“Yes…” He blinked rapidly. “Just yesterday, said she got an order direct from you, and sailed south t’wards the capital.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. A dozen curses vied to explode from my mouth, but in the end, I think Electra said it best.

“Well, shit.”