"Also see that Fallon gets plenty of water, even if he doesn't want it." Aida ticked off her fingers as they power-walked the hallways. Riccaro struggled to maintain a formally-appropriate distance behind her. "He's feverish, so he needs to be cooled down however you can to keep his brain from cooking. Do you have ice?"
"Ice, Dyn... Aida?" He squinted at her and frowned as if she made up the word.
"Guess that's a no. Oh, it's probably too late already, but have anyone who takes care of him wear gloves and not touch their skin until they've wiped themselves down with alcohol, the harder the better. Hard alcohol, not hard wiping."
"Gloves and alcohol." Riccaro nodded. That he didn't even question what had to sound like ridiculous orders made her wonder what prior guests had asked of him.
They passed out the front doors to a scene on the brink of chaos. A raging mob pressed up against the bars of the bronze gates, shouting and throwing garbage. Several scaled the stone walls, straddling the top and shouting down at Broadaxe. The Feral stood with feet planted wide, bloody axe over her shoulder, bodies and severed bits strewn about her.
Riccaro mopped his brow with his sleeve. "Your other Feral ran to keep others from the back gate. I will leave you to handle this while I see to your Seneschal."
Before she could countermand him, he scurried away.
"Mother! Mother!" At sight of her, the mob dissolved into an indecipherable array of calls; angry, pleading, demanding.
"Careful." Aliasara placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. "This could turn ugly with a single wrong word. Most of these people have little, if anything, to lose."
Aida, nodded, took a deep breath, and raised her hands as she walked forward. Hopefully the gesture didn't carry some other meaning here. Ancient memories of posture and poise from a brief spate of ballet lessons she'd taken in the 50s when they'd started letting Negros into dance studios kicked in. She hoped for an appearance of regality from her efforts. Also, something to occupy her attention as she approached the corpses lest she regally vomit.
Broadaxe glanced in her direction and nodded. The crowd roared, then stilled, waiting to see Aida's reaction. Winging it, she slapped the huge woman as soon as she reached her. "How dare you take a life without my permission? Do it again and I'll have you starved. Get out of my sight."
The Feral stared at Aida sullenly, then glanced at Ghillie, the ghost at Aida's heel. Ghillie's hand slipped inside her suit. Broadaxe snorted, flicked blood from her axe, and stormed off.
A tumult arose in the crowd, a disconcerting mix of "murderer" and "Mother!"
Aida raised her hands again. "My name is Aida, Dynast of the... the One-Eighth-"
Someone in the tight press outside shouted "Shithole", eliciting laughs.
"The same." Aida forced herself to smile. "I call it like I see it."
A few people laughed and she pushed on, wishing she'd thought a little harder about what she was going to say on the way here. Or thought about it at all. "I grieve for and with any of you who lost loved ones at the hands of my Feral. They're overprotective of my person at times and when all you've got is an axe, well..."
Sullen stares. Apparently that aphorism didn't exist here.
"Anyway, though my Feral did the deed without my notice or consent, I am ultimately responsible. If anyone wishes vengeance, take it."
Shrugging off Aliasara's restraining hands, Aida strode to the gate, standing with her head held high in easy reach of those on the other side of the bars. She started to shake as her brain caught up with her mouth.
The crowd fell silent. She scanned those in the front, noting the raggedness of their clothing, their varied skin colors and conditions, broken, brown or black teeth, emaciation and swollen bellies, rheumy eyes, and far too many scars. Whatever Innoculists were, they didn't help any with malnutrition or dentistry.
Apparently life was cheap enough that watching a few of their fellows get butchered didn't overly aggravate the rest. They began to cry out her name, reaching through the bars not to pull her to pieces, but simply to touch her. The orgy turned out to be fortuitous: before that much physical contact, all of them handling her at once might have overwhelmed her after so many years of so little touch. She walked back and forth the length of the gate a few times then stepped back to keep Ghillie and Aliasara from exploding with worry and the people at the front from being crushed to death against the gate.
The crowd hushed expectantly.
In the movies, the hero knew exactly what to say at times like this, something inspiring that moved the crowd and audience to tears. Instead, Aida stared at them, feeling a growing sense of panic as the silence echoed the utter blankness of her mind.
"Wish my mother'd ever shut up this long!" someone catcalled from the crowd to a mixture of raucous laughter, shushes, and murmurs.
"And yet I'll bet your mother cared for you, tended you when felt unwell, protected you from a hard world, and would give her life for you," Aida shouted back.
Silence answered her. An an idea formed. When Aida spoke again she employed her best amateur-theater monologue voice.
"While some of you gather here out of curiosity, many of you came searching for something you've lost. You don't know where it went or how to get it back. Something gone so long you've forgotten what it feels like. Something no human should ever be deprived of..."
She trailed off for effect, an ad hoc speech assembling in the back of her brain.
"Hope."
Their enraptured faces bolstered her confidence. She pushed on.
"I've been in the Jade Eye." She pointed. Heads turned to look at it even though they lived with it always in view high overhead. "I've heard how the Dynasts and their ilk talk of you. 'Filthy menials' they call you, disdain dribbling from their lips. They think of you little more than slaves, maybe less since they can sell their slaves."
Angry mutters. She paced back and forth, voice rising as she got caught up in the moment.
"To them, you are but means to their ends, keeping themselves fat and happy with your sweat and tears and blood. You starve while they pleasure themselves with food, drink, and jars overflowing with quivering genitalia."
Angry mutters turned to startled laughter from some, startled shock among others.
Perfect.
"You might have gathered that though I am one of them, I am not like them. They call me a barbarian Dynast, taken from a verse so far from here no one's ever heard of the Dynasty."
Slack jaws and scrunched faces as they tried to imagine such a thing reminded Aida of trying to explain life before the Internet to her great-grand niece.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
"There's no such place!" someone called.
"There is! And because I come from there I have not been corrupted by their customs and outlook, I do not hold you as less than me. I believe that all men and women are endowed with unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
Jubilant cries resounded and she worried for a moment they'd tear the gate down. She stepped closer to them and raised her hands, the silence this produced at the front slowly rippling back. Ghillie hovered so close Aida could feel her. She would have to apologize later.
"Or not. I'm a goddamn Dynast," she muttered. A flicker of guilt nagged her at the thought, but fell away as she pushed on.
"In Heaven's Tread I am merely a visitor and my powers limited, but all are welcome in my verse regardless of wealth, rank, or the color of your skin. Any and all may come to live in peace, harmony, and equality!"
In the quiet that followed she felt like she was vibrating. Her hand went to her choker. Wouldn't do to literally blow the crowd away. Fortunately, it lay still. A feeling swelled in her, one she slowly realized was the rush of swaying a crowd, of a thousand people hanging off her every word.
"Isn't your verse called the Eighth Shithole?" the heckler shouted, eliciting more rough laughter.
Her lips compressed with anger. Not the first time in her life impulsivity bit her in the butt. Probably not the last either.
She snarled and raised her voice.
"Like you I was not dealt a fair hand. While Ocyl rules all of this-" she waved all about "-I got a rotting shell in a volcanic waste. But I didn't complain! No, I set out on the path to make something of what I got. Join me on that path, come to the One-Eighth and make that something with me!"
As a great cheer went up, she wondered how many boundaries she was overstepping. Would Ocyl consider it stealing or kidnapping if a thousand of his people followed her home? Or would he even care, even notice? And if they followed, they'd call home a barren patch of nothing. Where would they live? What would they eat?
"Figure it out later," she muttered, turning to Ghillie. "Get me a torch, lamp, whatever."
Ghillie's eyes flicked to the cheering crowd and bristling thrust of arms reaching towards Aida.
Aida laughed. "If they broke through wanting to kill me, do you really think you could stop them? Get me a light. Go."
The girl inhaled deeply, then nodded and sprinted for the house.
Aida turned back, raising her hands again for silence. She began to recite:
"'Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame...'"
As she spoke she grew more dramatic, striking poses and pacing in rhythm to her words. Ghillie arrived just in time with one of the glowing filament lamps which Aida took and thrust high, affecting a statuesque pose as she concluded: "'...I lift my lamp beside the golden door!'"
A brief silence shattered as the crowd broke into jubilant cries. At first, she couldn't decipher anything distinct, but then the assembled mass found a common call: "Mother, take me with you!"
Those at the gate threw themselves against it while others began to scale the walls again.
"Uh... crap." She stepped back and Ghillie slid in front of her. Aida shouted and waved, trying to get the crowd's attention, but she could barely hear her own voice over the tumult.
Ghillie pulled at her arm, but she shook the Feral off. If the crowd got inside they'd probably turn into a mob instantly. She ran towards the gate and jumped. Her foot planted on the wall beside it and she launched higher, barely catching the wall's lip. Continuing the smooth motion, she hauled herself up and stood for a moment between statue-Ocyl's feet in shock at what she'd just pulled off. The sturdy wall-end supporting the statue and anchoring the gate had to be three meters tall, higher than she could have ever scaled in her youth. She'd just done it without even slowing down.
Her sudden appearance startled those climbing up the other side who fell back onto their fellows below in a chorus of curses and shoving.
Even from her new vantage, all the jumping, shouting, and waving she could muster she didn't get their attention. She felt the desperation and anger below palpably, fueling the crowd's transition to a mob. For a moment, she thought to get the choker ring to do its thing somehow, but dismissed the idea immediately. Even if she figured out how, if she hurt anyone...
Impulsively, she grabbed the collar of her dress with both hands then yanked apart and down, rending it down the middle before standing with her arms wide.
"Me and dresses these days," she muttered, her whole body hot as the torn dress fell away from her chest. She couldn't argue with the results though, the mob settling back down as they stared at her in shock.
She let them wait for a moment while her mind scrambled for something suitably dramatic to say. "My people! Your passion fills my heart with joy, but it tears me apart and I rend my clothes to think of what would happen to you should Ocyl find you within these walls. Stay yourselves, put your affairs in order. Make ready to join and one week from today I will lead you to a new land, a blank page in the Book, a new verse, a fresh start. You are all welcome, but think of how much remains to do between now and then if you would come with me. Gather everything you possess, return here seven days hence, and I shall give you all that I have."
A great cry went up. She stood, exultant and relieved, beaming at them. Those in the back began to disperse. She leaned down to touch as many hands as possible before dropping back inside and wrapping what remained of her dress about herself.
Ghillie simply shook her head and walked away as Aliasara wrapped her in a tight hug.
"That went about as well as could be hoped." Aliasara fussed hopelessly with the torn gown while Aida considered the perpetual, diffuse daylight. "How the hell do they measure time here? I just realized it's been day the whole time I've been here. How are they going to know if it's been a week?"
"You slept longer than you think; the sun plazas dimmed and returned while you slumbered." Aliasara gave up at restoring Aida to any lasting form of modesty.
"Everyone's seen everything now anyway, don't know who I need to hide it from," Aida said, flicking the torn collar of her dress. "But all those people, they'll know when a week is up?"
"The Clockpriests of Gears send criers through the streets for they track it religiously, in every sense of the word." Aliasara glanced at the churning host beyond the villa, some departing, others pushing forward to look through the gates. "They really don't know what to make of you."
Aida laughed. "That's been true my entire life. Glad the nursing home didn't smother it completely."
"I meant that in a good way." Aliasara touched Aida's arm, looking at her as though for the first time. "You're truly unlike any Dynast I've ever seen. Ever heard of. If that was me up there I would but bare my breast but you bared your heart. Do you actually care about us menials?"
"I hate that word. There's a word I hate that they say where I'm from that people use the same way as Dynast and their people use 'menials' here," Aida spat. "You're all niggers to them no matter what your skin color."
"I don't understand."
"It's what folks used to call black people where I'm from to 'keep them in their place'. Still do some places."
"Black people?" Aliasara brushed a finger along Aida's arm skin. "But all dark skin descends from Holy Ebon, the Mother of the Dynasty. Only those who bear enough of the First Dynast's dark blood can hope to Partake in Immortality, only they are pure enough to stand as Verser Lord and Ladies."
"Where I come from, no one's ever heard of Ebon. On Earth, white people ruled most of the world with ships and gunpowder for a few centuries and then with machines and oil for the last one. Only really changed in the last few decades, maybe century, and often slowly and unevenly at that."
"The Pale run things?" Aliasara laughed before realizing Aida wasn't joking. "I heard you were a barbarian Dynast, but I had no idea how different your verse was."
"Me either, believe me. On good days my head's swimming, the rest of the time it's straight up drowning."
Riccaro walked their direction briskly, clearly wishing to run but constrained by decorum from such an uncouth display of haste.
"Dy... Aida." He tried to hide the heaviness of his breathing and pointedly looked anywhere but at her mostly-bare chest. "Dynast Ocyl has arrived."
"Ocyl? I just saw him." Aida followed Riccaro's gaze. "What does he want?"
Ocyl rounded the side of the villa riding one of the smaller, sleeker striders. About him rode rings of his Porcelain Guard while behind them marched a formation of soldiers carrying oval shields and long spears.
Her heart caught in her throat. "They aren't arresting me for what I just said, are they?"
At that moment, Ghille returned with a pale blue shawl from somewhere. Aida draped it across her shoulders and chest.
"I can't see why." Riccaro's lack of conviction worried her. "Though usually he deems Ferals sufficient protection when he travels."
"Am I about to be hauled off for inciting his people to emigrate?" She glanced from Aliasara to Riccaro. "I was trying to stop a riot and didn't have time to think it all through."
Aliasara gave her a wan smile, her eyes fixed on Ocyl. The striders' height allowed them to step over hedges and lawn ornaments with ease. "I'm sure it couldn't be that. You are his guest!"
Riccaro busied himself smoothing his robes. "Dynast Ocyl would not have troubled himself coming here for nothing."
Aida thought Ocyl a man capable of anything for any reason, whatever image he liked to present.
She sighed and walk towards him, Ghillie and Aliasara close at her flanks while Riccaro trailed wearing a self-satisfied smile.
Waving, Aida scrutinized the Dynast's wave back for any sign of his intentions. Zilch.
She sighed, straightened, and walked faster towards where Ocyl's escorts dismounted in the courtyard. "Nothing for it. Whatever it is now, might as well get it over with."