Their roar became a scream - revolt and outrage.
But then, the city answered them.
And her walls came to life.
* * *
The grey stone of the main hospice was sealed. Its apothecaries and herbalists rushed from corridor to corridor as though the building was listing this way and that, and they had to hold it upright lest it fall. Scurrying in, secure under its shelter, Mael stopped at a line of pegs and threw a cloak at the Foundersdaughter, then they ran down the colonnade, just another pair of figures racing in the panic.
One corner, two, and they found themselves back at Mostak’s door.
In the room was a figure, leaning over him.
Mael paused, but Selana shoved past, grabbing the figure’s arm.
“Wait!” she cried.
Startled, the apothecary - the same man they’d spoken to earlier - turned to say something, and then his expression and his shoulders sagged with relief.
“My Lord, you’re all right, thank the Gods! The city’s going crazed. Phylos told me... but I couldn’t, I...”
“You’re a brave man,” she told him.
As she spoke, Mael heard the crack in her voice - he realised that Mostak’s hand, callused and thin, was reached out to her. Choking, the Lord of the City fell to her knees in a billow of stolen fabric.
The commander struggled to sit up. He was pale, but the sheen to his skin had gone and his eyes were clear. Whatever orders Phylos had given the apothecary, the man had apparently found his own courage.
Mostak laid his thin hand on Selana’s shining hair, looked up at Mael.
“It’s all right,” he said. His voice was weak but steady, a soldier’s determination. “It’s all right. I know all of it. Now, help me stand. It’s starting, out there - and we need to get to the palace.”
* * *
The first one came from the city’s lowest streets, tearing itself bodily from the stone. It had been a creature of lost Swathe, perhaps, or a crafting of the Founder’s forgotten masons -now it was a blunt thing, misshapen and clumsy, its mouth stretched in dismay and its strength shattering buildings. The crush of people in the roadway paused before it, those at the front pulling back as their anger was suddenly leaking down the insides of their thighs.
Further back, the rage continued and the press tried to surge forwards - there were cries and seethings and fallings, there was a mass of trampling and feet. As the stone thing rose, stinking of age and rank air, stinking like rotted breath, like the inside of a dead cavern, so the front of the crowd broke and tried to flee through alleyways and over gardens - but those behind had no warning and could not move for the press that was pushing them forwards.
The creature hit the mob head-on like a fist, hammering, shattering bodies, crushing flesh into the roadway, broken and screaming. It picked bodies up and slammed them down into the stone, it roared at them in bafflement and pain.
People screamed, horror crystallising and anger forgotten. All they wanted was to get away.
But from the alleyways came the vialer, the creatures of hoof and horn, with weapons raised and eyes of chaos. They hit broadside and slashed and tore their way through the people. They laughed like a rising storm, exalting in blood and pain. They pulled people to the ground and disembowelled them or kicked them to death. They tore clothes from skin and skin from bone and they wrapped themselves in all of it, laughing in gore and glory.
At the back of the crowd, the press was still pushing, shouting, making demands - though there were the lucky ones, the wary ones, who’d peeled away from the sides. These fled outward into the streets - some crying in terror, others looking for friends and retribution.
At the centre, though, there was a core that stood unbroken. A core that had seen enough of Fhaveon’s brutality and that feared neither creature of dust and history, nor the madness of the vialer. There were hands that gripped weapons and eyes that hardened.
And there was a resolution that would not be broken.
* * *
In the upper tiers of the city, in the central market, another resistance was gathering.
This was not a haphazard mob, rampaging loose through the streets, this stood solid, answering to the cry of a single voice. She was Mistress Cirel Alaxien, a senior member of the Harvester’s Cartel and hers was a strident shout across the thunder of the people’s anger - she was rallying point and focus, and she was crafting that anger into a weapon that would hit back. The city, she said, had betrayed them, and the city, she said, would be made to pay.
When the cavalry came in a thunder, a shaking of ground and a rising of dust against the pale blue of the autumn sky, it was Cirel’s voice that held the people steady. She turned them, she commanded them, and she hurled them back at the incoming horses.
And then the madness really began.
In the market, the people had torn down the last of the stalls, had armed themselves with wooden stakes as long as spears and hacked to crude points at one end. As the horses came closer, sweat and dust and hooves and muscle, the very city seeming to shake beneath their weight, so the stakes were braced hard against the ground. They were not dug in, the flags would not allow it, but they were enough.
As the last command was given and the horses went from canter to full gallop, so the first rank of the mob peeled away to the sides - revealing the death-spikes aimed at the charge. Unable to stop on the smoothness of the stone, the horses hit the spikes chest-first. Many of the spikes were not braced hard enough and simply skidded - many, but not all.
The air was suddenly filled with screaming, terrible and high-pitched and rending the sky from top to bottom. Some of the horses fell, rolling; others went up on their hind legs, cracked forehooves kicking. A horse who still had the stake embedded in his chest turned, the whites of his eyes blazing, his teeth bared, pulling his rein out of the hands of his rider. Blood frothed in his mouth, on his chest, scattered across the faces of those before him. Another horse had taken a long scratch - a tear in her hide. With her rider bent hard over her neck she came through the barricade and hammered straight into the heart of the waiting people, kicking and plunging and biting, her rider striking out with blade and fury.
Smoke billowed from the torched remnants of the stalls. Some riders fell, went for weapons, were cut down as they tried to stand. Others stayed in their saddles, fighting for control or rallying their mounts to rage into the heart of the mob. The tan commander called for them to muster, to fall back in on his location, but around him horses were rolling, tack and armour clattering. Some among the mob were close enough to attack the fallen animals, and as the horses tried to stand they were injured and hacked down, slipping in their own flooding gore, skidding and panicking until they finally fell. Others in the mob, those with more wit or courage, mounted the beasts themselves and rode them back at the attacking cavalry, mount to mount, kicking and fighting.
Chaos screamed like the fallen horses. Ash and smoke were blinding. Terhnwood weapons clattered, shattered, shards spiralling, shining in sudden breaks of sun.
On foot, the people were bewildered, surrounded. The smells of rich blood and horseshit and fear all meshed one with another, heady and confusing. In some, adrenaline raged and they fought their way through to the attacking soldiers, needing to vent their anger and helplessness. Others, overwhelmed, tried to cower or flee and were cut down where they stood by those riders who had penetrated deep into the mass of the mob.
The last of the stalls were burning, the flames hot on skin and rising into the clear air. And now, in among the attacking forces, came new things, creatures with the forms of horses and the upper bodies of men and women, creatures heavier than the cavalry mounts with huge claws that rent any flesh they found. The people screamed and thrashed, ran this way and that, but the monsters were everywhere and they were pure destruction, tearing the world asunder.
In the midst of it all, Cirel slipped quietly away. Her task was done and she was less than a shadow, sliding back the way she had come - sliding back to the side of the Cartel itself and back to where Phylos was laughing.
She had done enough.
* * *
It had all happened exactly as he had designed it.
Rage carefully crafted and built, now ignited and channelled into the ash-and-blood streets of the city, where it broke against the walls and tore down the crystal trees. It had been stoked to the point of detonation, and now it had its outlet.
Above it all, celebrating in its eruption, Phylos stood upon the palace balcony, his red robe blazing and his arms outstretched. Behind him rose the white wall of the Valiembor building, rose the sky, rose the blazing sun; before him, the zig-zag streets of the city roared with fury as though their people had climbed from the very rhez itself.
Yes. Witness what I have crafted. What I have done!
In his mind, Phylos could feel Vahl’s presence stronger than it had ever been, massive and exultant. The Count of Time was upon them both, and Phylos had brought the city to exactly where they needed her to be.
So many returns, scheming. Waiting.
Fhaveon was in the grip of her own death.
To his left, Phylos could see the remnant of the central market blazing, filling the air with ash and shrieks and smoke, could see the destruction wrought by the cavalry and the struggling, failing people. The great mosaic was covered with blood and vomit and garbage. Above it, Rakanne’s imperious face stared outwards, insensible, as if she couldn’t find it in her stone heart to care.
And somewhere, still out of his reach but getting stronger, Vahl was laughing.
Phylos knew that down there, somewhere loose in the morass, was Ythalla, armed and brutal, her soldiery given leave to do anything they pleased. They had been force-fed with their own might and righteousness, and now they were off their rein, given their freedom. They were savage and gleeful, exalting in their brutality - the death toll was rising, and the injured were left to rot where they lay. Even as Phylos stood, so the mob was shattering under their force - anywhere the people of the city rallied, the soldiers broke them like wooden uprights, burned them and cast them down. Until there was no protest any more, just scattered groups and odd individuals, stumbling and coughing, hoping only to flee with their lives.
The city was a mass of destruction and any sense of unity or defiance among her people was hunted down and cut out, an infection to be exterminated.
Vahl’s laughter was as rich as the spilled blood of the people.
Yes! See what we have brought to pass!
Phylos
wanted
his forces to be feared. He wanted the riots to be put down. The contest at the harvest, the arrest of Fletcher Wyll - all of this had brought the city to this moment.
What we have brought to pass!
On the edge of the mosaic, where the last of the market burned, there was a gathering growing - the final massing of the city’s people, the rioters that had found themselves so utterly outmatched. They knew they were dead, but they didn’t care, they were fighting fierce, taking on all comers and savagely defending the burning market as if it were a symbol, some icon of their lost livelihoods.
Phylos shouted his scorn at the pure blue sky.
And they came to him, Amal’s inhuman fighters - twisting themselves from the very walls, falling free and rising up, monstrosities, creatures of power and beauty, bare-chested and wild-haired, centaurs and mwenar and vialer. They came to smash the last of the resistance and run rampage, deal death through the streets. They bore burning brands and chased and tortured the survivors as if in sport. They assailed the soldiers indiscriminately, trampled any human in their way, dismembered screaming victims. And Phylos let them, watched them, revelled in their strength. He let the chaos reign, let Vahl enjoy the last blaze of the city that had been built solely to defy him.
The single point of regret - Maugrim had failed and Roviarath still stood firm. But Vahl’s joy was high and Phylos knew that the death of Fhaveon would be enough.
So many returns of planning.
And this was perfect.
Perfect.
It was enough to bring tears to his eyes.
The final moments were almost upon them. As the chaos became too much for the city to bear, as she teetered on the brink of death, so he would step forth and control the violence. He would free the people, establish his absolute leadership, be hailed as hero and deliverer. He would buy the city’s soul, and wed its legitimacy.
The Varchinde would belong to the true son of House Valiembor.
And to the lingering eagerness of Kas Vahl Zaxaar.
This moment had been so long in the crafting, that he almost did not want it to come to pass, did not know what would fill his life when it had. He stood upon its edge, waiting.
And below, the city burned.
The palace seemed immune to the madness, a rock in a blood-sea tossed by storm.
Upon the balcony, Phylos still stood like a god, his laughter thrown skyward. In his heart, he could feel Vahl’s awareness and glory meshing with his own, feel the creature’s seethe of pleasure.
He could also feel it rising - it was coming closer.
Vahl had only ever spared a shred of his awareness for Phylos - the Merchant Master did not know where Vahl was hidden, but had been promised, long ago, that Vahl would come when the Count of Time was ready. When Fhaveon was prepared, when the way was clear, when his place of hiding had outlived its usefulness, then Vahl would manifest in the city and finally win his war.
He would rule through Phylos’s arm and might.
Blood Valiembor would be all.
His heart trembling now with fierce anticipation, Phylos could see Ythalla, riding a man down, the hooves of her heavy chearl hammering him, screaming, into the gore-slick mosaic. She turned the creature, raised her metal blade in circular gesture, commanding her tan of elite cavalry to follow her lead.