Not so much as the sound of men choking on their own blood broke the silence as Acheliah composed herself. The Bureaucrat's Rebellion was over as soon as it had begun. Promises of protection from divine fury had failed and none yet stood to point the finger of blame for that lie.
Only Lucius still stood, in brazen confrontation against the angel. His stigmata surged with power, clashing against the angel’s magic the way two counterflowing streams fight for space. The bloody ground between them twisted and spattered, throwing blood out of the way as the weeping mother of a nation walked toward him. With his sword in one hand, still raised, he ripped her steel feathers from his body and cast them aside. His own blood mingled with the gore, crackling against the marble as Acheliah struggled to control her anger.
When she pointed a finger at him, he braced. “Try me.”
“This is your fault,” she declared.
Between them, a defenseless girl threw herself. Frederika Ashe rushed forward, letting the boy’s sword nearly rest on her shoulder. “My lady, please calm yourself. He saved us, he saved me!”
Lucius said, “Step aside Erika.”
“Enough blood, enough!”
Acheliah cocked her head, staring over the girl’s shoulder. “You should be groveling.”
“I’ve fought worse.”
“Only because I don’t have my blade,” the angel said.
“You think I’m going to back down?”
Frederika dropped to her knees, soiling her dress with blood as she clasped her hands in prayer. “This man stands in front of the mother of this child!”
Only then did Acheliah deign to look behind, where Lupa still stood with her bloody weapon, one arm shielding Aisha who could do nothing more than breathe, pressed to the wall for support. “Where is the wizard? This is his doing.”
“Not here.”
“Lies!” Again, she spread her wings, blasting a gust of wind across the room and sending a dozen women to the ground, fainted.
“He’s been gone for months, Acheliah! Your demon killer is gone.”
“He is the demon you stupid child! He should never have been allowed back, never should have had his punishment rescinded. This is the work of the blasphemer.”
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Prince Gabriel, his eyes racked with his own grief and cradling an injured arm, pushed himself through the wind, his voice nearly drowned. “God-mother, he fought for us, not for them.”
Acheliah faltered, her magic subsiding as she turned to face the prince.
He straightened up. “You already killed that girl’s father, would you kill her savior too?”
The news broke all three of the Ashe siblings. Frederika wilted and Annika relinquished Andrey from her clutches to throw herself wailing at Gabriel. Only then did the angel stop to look at the indiscriminate slaughter she had brought to the nobility of Vassermark. “He had already been killed,” she said, hiding her face from the broken families she had made.
“You didn’t even leave us prisoners to interrogate.”
If courage can be measured by the difference in power between the one who stands up and thrusts himself upon the stage and the one who doesn’t want to see them there, then the bravest man in Vassermark stepped into the feast hall at that time. Nothing more than a junior guard, his cheeks still soft from youth, his voice cracked with late traces of puberty as he said, “My lord, we have the criminals secured.”
Lucius would have been happy to vanish with his prizes and secure their safety, but Prince Gabriel ordered, “Join me.”
Still limping from the wounds Acheliah had given him, he followed the angel out of the feast hall and to the courtyard. Gabriel interrogated the boy, learning who he was and why nobody of higher station had come to report. Namely, none were available. Lucius had a good idea what had happened, so he barely listened. Instead, he demanded to know why Aisha was following him and all the other girls were in her wake like ducklings.
“And where exactly would be safer?” she answered, voicing the same sentiment the Ashe family had.
“The fighting is over,” he growled, and they stepped into the lower class feasting area. Where Kajsa should have been, where Sammy and Sera still were, was comparatively untouched by violence, but not for lack of interlopers. From the moment they took their signal and pointed blades at the innocent, for those in the outer courtyard were certainly innocent of the decisions made by the nobility, they were suppressed.
Leomund Tolzi stood in the center, sweat dotting his brow and glistening in the setting sun. His breathing remained steady, despite the obvious exertion. Nearly one hundred revelers, a third of which had taken up blades, knelt on the ground or prostrated themselves before him. The tables and chairs they had seat at were reduced to rubbish amidst the spilled food and blood for while he stood like the pinnacle of a sundial, all else had been crushed flat by his will.
Through Vita’s efforts, she had gifted him a power surpassing what could be called a mere stigmata. He had a heavenly presence that demanded obeisance from even his enemies. When contrasted by the bloodbath Acheliah had caused. That difference in image between a man of the sun faith(1) and the angel of the water goddess fueled the schism that King Charles von Arandall had started when he married a woman of the central kingdoms and made the dwindling royal family into a monogamy.
The nucleus of class division had been excised by death, but the religious issues of Vassermark were prime to prosper in the very stronghold of the goddess of mysteries and knowledge.
Lucius, for his suspicious role in the affair, was put under house arrest within the castle.
1. Leomund was effectively an atheist for most of his time with me and the boy, but such realities do little to stop veneration and hero worship.