Thick layers of stained glass windows reflected the inside lighting in the grand dining room as a large chandelier composed of hundreds of lit candles blazed in the center of the space. Underneath the lights and the hanging gemstones in the late night festivities, dozens of nobles danced and twirled on a grand dance floor. The walls were comprised of three floors of viewing balconies on either side, packed with individual seating areas alongside booths and tables lined with individuals sharing in the dinner feast.
The clothing the nobles wore screamed into the night as every man and woman wore a slightly different shade of some color or another ranging from the deepest of marune reds to the lightest of blues so bright it was almost white. Interspersed between everyone was a constant flow of black uniforms with buttoned up neck pieces, tight cuffs, and matching black shoes. They carried food and drink between the tables like a never ending flow of constant movement and silver platters. Other servants stood silently next to the tables of dining nobles, wearing a matching black uniform but even more well covered so that not a single inch of their skin could be seen beneath thin black gloves and a shocking white mask. The mask was blank except for two small holes the size of a pea where the eyes would be, and another small hole by the mouth area.
Despite the strange look of the fully covered men and women standing by the tablesides, no one paid them any mind as conversations echoed against the tall ceiling of the room alongside the music coming from a small orchestra to the side of the dance floor. One such person, caught between an ongoing conversation as two couples argued across the table to either side of him, was a middle aged man with shocking gray hair pulled back tightly against his scalp. Vibrant blue eyes seemed to ripple with internal movement as the very iris shifted back and forth like a flowing fountain of color. Despite the unique nature of his eyes, the man simply stared off into the distance, watching the dancers pace up and down the dance floor while he absentmindedly listened to the conversation happening around him.
He wore a thin red suit jacket with a matching red bowtie that looked all the more vibrant against the black satin shirt and pants he wore underneath the bold jacket. An intricate gray mask carved into the likeness of a wolf perched over the top half of his face, leaving the bottom half uncovered. A thin gray mustache and well trimmed beard lined his mouth as he brought a small piece of cooked duck up to eat, not even noticing the rich honeyed glaze that covered the meat. Instead, his eyes traced a single woman dancing tightly next to another man in the center of the room.
She wore a deep green dress that hugged her body in between small cutouts in the sides along her waistline and hips that left little to the imagination. A matching green mask depicting a snake's guise covered the top half of her face, her dark black hair done up in an intricate bun accented by several golden clasps that held it up from her dark skin. The man continued watching her spin in place, armed with the grace of a lifelong dancer when a voice brought him out of his reverie.
“-isn't that right Julius?” A man turned to him from the side of the table.
Julius rejoined the conversation without a moment of hesitation, “Yes of course, while the benefits of using those slave laborers are quite well proven, I'm a bit personally concerned about the possible security risks they pose to the country.”
The squat man that had dragged him back into the conversation nodded his red face, the caricature of a lion strapped to his head bobbing up and down before he returned to address the rest of the group.
“Exactly, even Lord Julius knows the folly of using ‘Free Peoples’ slaves to do the work of a serf.”
Another man sat across from the table had abandoned his meal as he spoke out from under a mask depicting a Heron.
“Julius just toes the family line. It's easy to say that the economics of using mountain goats doesn't matter when you already belong to one of the five princedoms. For the rest of us, those cost cutting risks are just about the only thing that can set us apart.”
“Aha! You even admit that it's a risk!”
“Of course it's a risk, just like planting a fourth harvest this year is a risk if the ground gets cold too early and we could lose the seeds. Not like half of the lesser houses took that very same risk with the good chance that it pays off for us in the long run.”
Julius let his attention drift away from the conversation once again, scanning over the dancers as they left the lacquered wooden floor while the orchestra changed songs. He couldn't find any trace of the snake he had been watching, dancers filtering on and off the floor as a dozen men rose from their seats with their ladies in tow by the hand. The next song started soon after, a fast paced waltz as he was once again drawn back to his chair by a different person this time.
A thin black gloved hand rested on his shoulder as a plain white mask drew down to his head level and whispered into his ear with a lightly feminine voice.
“My lord, you have an important message from Lord Zackarious's handler.”
He nodded, allowing his mind to wander in a different way this time as he opened his vision to the several dozen tethers that were linked to his mind. Several of them buzzed with excitement, trying to call his attention but he simply pulled on the vibrating tether that he knew was linked to the messenger handling a particularly sensitive plan of his.
“My lord.” The voice came over the tether.
“Speak quickly.”
“Yes my lord. Lord Zackarious was killed tonight by a strange girl who infiltrated his new hideout. He happened to reveal our family by name before he was murdered.”
Julius paused to take in the information. Not many people would have the courage to outright kill a member of the Brent family, so he asked the next obvious question.
“Who was it?”
“We don't have a name, but she appears to wear a wooden carved mask and thick coverings like one of the elbow servants. My lord, he also reported that she was already dead before she killed him. His last messages were screaming about some sort of walking death. I apologize that we don't know more, my lord.”
“Hmmf. That's enough. Send out a couple of scouts to take a look at the area. With any luck they'll decide to take that underground hell hole for themselves and we'll be able to track their movements. Out.”
“Understood sir. Out.”
Julius released the tether, his sense of focus returning to the present as he started to attack his plate of food with his fork. It didn’t do much to calm his anger about the situation, but at least it allowed him to keep his emotions from bleeding out in a more noticeable way. By his side, his statuesque servant had returned to her traditional position as the other couples seated at Julius's table continued their conversation about things below his notice.
As he chewed, Julius decided to look up at the second floor balcony where a single table stood out more prominently than the rest. He could just see the heads of five men seated side by side facing out upon the night's feast as they alternated between looking at one another without speaking a single word aloud. On the end of the table a single man dressed in a clean red collared shirt and the mask of a red devil looked down upon the first level to meet Julius's eyes. No messages passed between them, but Julius knew well enough that any deaths in the family were reported immediately to Lord Brent.
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Julius bowed his head subserviently to the prince, and when he looked back up the man had returned to other conversations. The message was clear, Julius needed to clean up this mess before it became something bigger. Before he looked away, the woman in a green dress walked up to the great table and took a place standing directly behind a man dressed in matching green. Her head angled up until she stood so perfectly straight that she held the same statuesque pose as all the other masked servants in the room.
‘The snake has returned to her place.’ he thought to himself.
Above them a hundred gemstones and colored shards of glass hung from the great chandelier, glinting in the artificial light over the party.
—
“You're late.”
“You know how things go Cody. And I'm doing you a favor here anyways.”
“I don't know that it still counts as a favor when I'm paying you for it.” Cody said as he handed over a small pouch of coin.
Rammond dropped the conversation to search through the bag and count his earnings for the night as Cody walked away. They had done this enough times for the two of them to settle into the swing of things, both confident in the other's capability to uphold their end of the bargain. Rammond would take care of Cody's night shift for patrol duty every once in a while in return for a little pay. Both of them agreed not to speak of the event, and Cody got some much needed free time on a night he would otherwise be busy.
The torchlight disappeared behind him, and Cody took the chance to duck around a nearby corner to finally put himself out of sight of the guardsman taking his place. He rifled around in his bag for a couple seconds then took out a long brown overshirt that he quickly pulled on over his uniform. It was a thin piece of clothing that didn't do very much good guarding against the cold, but did do a decent job of hiding his noticeable green spaulders and armor. He sat there for another couple seconds after putting his small pack back on, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness just a bit before continuing.
He weaved his way between buildings, taking a snaking route to his destination that avoided the main streets and alleyways that were often patrolled each night. A two story building came into sight, marked by yellow shutters and a small white sheet hung out of a window to dry. The inside of the building looked dark, its owners probably sleeping at this time of night, but Cody wasn't interested in the main building. To the side of the house in a thin alleyway stood a small slanted hatch that was receded into the nearby wall, conveniently left unlocked despite the late night.
As he opened the small hatch he hesitated in the alleyway for a moment. This was perhaps the sixth time he had been to one of these meetings, so it wasn't the fear of being caught that stalled him. Instead he looked down into the soft darkness of the stairway ahead of him, leading down into a forgotten basement in the middle of the city. No, what made him pause was the uncertainty. Uncertainty for whether it was-. No. He wasn't going to think that way. He dragged himself away from his thoughts and started moving once again.
Cody closed the hatch behind him, and carefully made his way down the worn stone steps in the darkness. At the end of the stairs a metallic door closed off the area from the main basement, the cracks in the door revealing the faint presence of light on the other side. Upon reaching the door, he knocked two times as was customary, then a thin slit opened up at eye level as someone looked out at him. The light from inside the room was somewhat blinding to Cody as he tried to meet the man's eyes, and he was relieved to hear a familiar voice a moment later.
“Your name?”
“Cody Tane.” He replied.
“Good lad.” The voice responded at once and shut the eye hole. A couple seconds of ratcheting sounds and moving metal came from the door before it swung open to let Cody in.
The light was more blinding than anything as Cody walked into a small coat room that opened up into a larger room farther ahead. The man closed the door behind him, putting several bars and locks back into place as Cody walked forward, slowly getting his senses back in the strong firelight. He turned the corner to find a large room filled with around thirty people sitting close to one another at several tables or leaning on the wall. They all were looking towards a single corner of the room where a woman stood on a raised platform addressing the crowd in a calm, but well audible voice.
“-has seen to nothing if not its own power. They see not what they can do for the people, but what the people can do for them. Every inch of their wealth is an accumlation of the hard work of us. The everyman, the maiden, the barkeep, your brothers and your sisters on the streets of Midton. We all work day and night so that-”
Cody sat down at one of the tables next to a man that he recognized. A small glance from the man led to an ear splitting grin as he reached out a hand and clapped Cody on the shoulder.
“Good to see you here Cody. Been a couple of meetings since I last caught you here.”
“Good to see you too Tom. I hadn't realized Lucy was a speaker at these events before.” Cody pointed up at the woman in the corner as he spoke.
“No, she hasn't been until now. Old man Joell just got caught by the messengers last night, so they opened the stage for anyone who was willing to speak tonight.”
Cody considered that as he focused on the woman's words again.
“-to prevent the deterioration of this land? To guard us against the nightmares to our south? To protect us from the lies and songbirds of the east? To prepare us against the distant burning wastes or the bloody plains? What does that do for us, the daily worker who has to submit half his grain to taxes? What does that do for us, the craftsman that pays half his profits for the right to even rent his shop? They swindle us in the name of a war that does not exist! A war that would cost nothing to the workers of this land, yet cost everything in the eyes of the prince of lies.”
Cody winced at the last line. She had good points he had to admit, but that didn't make him feel any more comfortable blaspheming against a god in the flesh. Princeling or not.
To his left Tom whispered into his ear, “She’s been doing a good job. A lot of her points are the same things I've been hearing for the last couple of years, but she brings a nice new energy to the conversation.”
Cody’s fists balled slightly under the table, but he said nothing as a man on the other side of the table turned around to address them.
“That's just because she's reciting the same points from ‘The Princeling's Conundrum’.”
“Ohh, that's the book that Master Bertrand wrote right?” Tom asked the man.
“Mmhm, now He was a good speaker. Up until they hanged him.”
Cody’s fists shook under the table as he tried to hold himself back.
‘How can these men talk about the death of our peers so casually?’ he thought.
Cody opened his mouth to ask the question out loud when the room started clapping. Lucy was taking a deep bow up on stage, a slight smile on her lips as she received the polite applause of the people around her. Cody joined in on the applause, looking around him at the determined faces of the men seated to his left and right. They were happy he realized. Content to have their hearts stirred by the strings of rebellion that they risked their lives meeting in secret to hear.
He clapped along, but Cody felt no real mirth in the moment. Was he too headstrong compared to the others? Was he too invested in making real change, or were these people too invested in public speaking as he often thought about their meetings? Was he the only one who wanted for more after he heard the speeches they gave late in the night? Or was he just showing the bravado of a young soldier that was rebelling against his lord?
Cody said nothing as his head spun with question upon question. He held his tongue and clapped his hands as another speaker took the stage to give the same speech with different words. He sat beside revolutionaries and intellectuals, an entire room of men and women that he respected just for being there, while he quietly drank from the mugs of watered down ale that had been placed in pitchers on the tables. Who was he to complain about their inaction when the men and women around him had weathered the storm so much longer than he had?
So he sat and waited, listening to words as eloquent as they were pointless pounded into his head for the next several hours. When he left the basement, trailing out of the room in small groups so that the patrols wouldn't notice everyone leaving at once, he was finally left alone to his thoughts once again. He found himself wandering the streets after he took off his worn overshirt to reveal the soldier’s armor hidden underneath once again. Who was he to do anything? Especially after all the speeches that warned him of the folly of men who thought they had the right to more than their individual worth. When the people he called friends warned him that revolution needed to be spread in the hearts of a nation, not the actions of any one individual.
Who was he?