35

Where Revolutions Begin

With their business concluded, the guards brought them to the entrance, freed them from their shackles, and kicked them onto the curb.

When one began freeing Ves’sa, she tried to give him a good bite. This gave him cause to stop.

‘So, Kathiya said, rubbing at the impressions left by the shackles. ‘We have no idea who we’re after, how many there are, where they are, or what they’re even doing. Should we give up now or later?’

‘I’ve done more off of less before. We’ll do fine.’

Caspar stood and stretched, like he had just woken from a rather nice nap.

‘Where do we begin, boss?’

Where do revolutions start? It’s not the top. The ruling class is always interested in things staying the same, which also goes for the uppers and middles; they have too much stuff holding them back. Then it has to be the opposite of the top: the bottom, naturally. It starts with the peasants.

‘Let’s take a look at the slums. I’m sure if we wander enough, we’re bound to find something.’

Their wandering brought them to the outer rim of the city. A desperate mess of hovels built from whatever people brought, could find, and what they could take. This area was mostly made up of immigrants to the city.

Savanti has nothing against immigrants. Most of the population are not natives themselves, and those that actually are native soon left to become not native somewhere else. Savanti has no care from where anyone originated. What it does care about is how much coin they have.

Here, you can never tell a good man from an evil man, but you can instantly tell a rich one from a poor one.

Kathiya seemed completely at home.

‘Actually,’ she said as she strolled through the streets as one would do through a field of wheat, ‘it’s quite nice. Reminds me of living in Orrick.’

That’s the thing about slums; every successful city has them. When a city strikes it rich, others come to see if they’re willing to share. Naturally, they aren’t, so the slums are made for those with no money to be contained somewhere so the nobility don’t have to look at them.

They always hope some gold will roll down to them, but gold never rolls downhill.

They’re just as poor as when they arrived, only now they’re stuck, poor, and drunk from hopes and dreams.

They saw one such soul being batted away from a mid-end tavern by a guard with a truncheon.

‘What’s going on with these guards?’ asked Caspar. ‘They seem different than the usual ones you get in the cities.’

‘They’re not guards,’ Ludgar said, spitting on the ground in disgust at their presence. ‘They’re part of the Mercs Guild.’

‘Mercs Guild?’ Kathiya questioned in amusement. ‘I’ve heard of a Merchants Guild. I’ve heard of a Thieves Guild. Hell, I’ve even heard of an Assassins Guild. But a Mercs Guild? How haven’t they torn themselves apart?’

‘It makes more sense than it sounds like it would.’

In truth, a Mercenaries Guild sounds like it would make no sense at all. What you functionally have is a group of bands of people who are happy to kill whatever in order to get paid, getting together to decide between each other who they should fight for. The simple answer is: anyone.

Guilds don’t exist to make things simple.

When the Mercenaries Guild was founded some years ago, they decided that it would be in everyone's interest if they got to decide who fought for what. This led to two opposing sides hiring mercs from the same company. Then they soon realized they can make far more money taking things slow and only pretending to fight each other.

Despite what you may have heard, most generals are not stupid. They soon discovered this and forced them to begin fighting seriously. The only problem there is that the only way to force a merc into doing anything is by paying them more money.

This brought the Merc Scaling System. The amount a guild merc will work is directly proportional to the amount of money one side is willing to spend over the other.

For instance, if two sides of a conflict play the exact same amount, the merc is unwilling to fight seriously for either side. They’ll put on a good show, there’s no question about that, but no progress will be made in earnest.

It’s only when one side begins paying more than the other will actual progress be made. And how much progress depends on how much is paid.

For someone like Kathiya, this made complete and perfect sense and wondered why everyone didn’t do something like this.

Stolen story; please report.

For someone like Ludgar, it was more of a disappointment. Why ever fight if you’re not going to give it your all? There’s nothing worse than fighting someone who is unwilling to fight back. Takes all the fun out of it.

All in all, it’s a pretty lucrative system, if not a completely immoral one. The only issue is the amount of negotiation and paperwork it requires. Typical mercs do not like math, and they like reading even less.

That’s where the Guild stepped in.

They handle the negotiations, the paperwork, the correspondence, everything like that, and the mercs can do what they do best.

A fine idea in itself, but this left one major downside for Ludgar.

‘We’re mercs,’ Caspar exclaimed in astute realization. ‘Why don’t we join them?’

‘Because I don’t want sixty percent of my earnings going to some fucking busybody, paper pushing cunt of a woman.’

‘Woah. Sounds like some history there,’ Kathiya mumbled to Ves’sa, as she fussed at the straps of her muzzle.

Ves’sa continued emitting a low growl.

A group of guards, clad in their dark, faded green armour sturdy enough for ample protection while light enough for mobility, kicked the door of one of the hovels down. A moment later, they had restrained a peasant and taken whatever they found that could be of any value. Two of them were fighting over the culprit.

‘Fuck you, he’s mine! I found him! I deserve the reward!’

‘Piss off! I shackled him. The money’s mine!’

There’s the difference between them and Ludgar’s team. While money is their primary concern, they still divide up the loot, and distribute it evenly. They believed in Ludgar enough not to run away with the money, or cheat them out of it.

It was trust. That’s what separated them. When you make it all about money, you lose that trust; that absolute battlefield necessity.

‘Ah!’ Kathiya yelled. ‘Hey! Don’t bite! I’m trying to help you!’

Even so, they still need the money, so they need to do their job. And how do you find revolutionaries that don’t want to be found?

That’s simple. You don’t find them. They find you.

‘Let’s split into groups.’ Ludgar announced. ‘It’ll be easier if we’re more than just a large mass of mercs.’

‘I’ll have no part in this,’ Ves’sa said, stretching out her wings, neck, and jaw. She took off into the sky of Savanti, letting the remaining chains and shackles fall from her, leaving the four mercs behind.

‘What’s that about?’ Caspar asked.

‘Guess she likes revolutions,’ Ludgar said, watching their barbarian disappear behind the crystal towers. ‘Or hates subversion.’ He turned his attention to a niche antiques store, and got a look about him like he was formulating something disastrous.

‘Why does the savage have better principles than we do?’ said Sethel.

‘Who knows? Anyway, we have work to do.’ He picked up two glass bottles from the floor, and handed one to Caspar, who accepted without really thinking about it. ‘Kid, your job is to get inside. Kathiya, you can help.’

‘How?’ Before Caspar knew what was happening, one of the bottles was flipping through the air, and crashed into the window of an antique soup spoon shop, coating the pavement in a layer of glass and spoons. ‘What?’ He shouted in shock and surprise. ‘Why?’

‘Good luck, kid.’ Ludgar nudged his shoulder and disappeared into the street with Sethel in tow.

The door to the store slammed open, and an enraged shopkeeper emerged, pointing an accusatory finger to the young fox with a glass bottle in hand.

‘You!’ he yelled. ‘I have lost three windows to you rioters! Guards!’

‘No, no, wait I-’ before he could even get the words out, two guards were on him, pinning him to the ground.

They dragged him off, and he found Kathiya watching from the shadows of an alley.

‘That fucking dick.’ He mumbled to himself in the cell. This was more like what he was expecting from when they were first apprehended: dark, dank, iron bars. The usual stuff for a dungeon. Well, not exactly; there were no walls of brick, just an iron cage. All four walls were bars of iron, and the size was not nearly enough. His feet almost poked out the bars on the other side. Probably a cost thing, since they could fit more criminals in a smaller area cell. No... not a cell. A cage. Like something you would find with one of those wandering circuses. He remembered visiting one once. He liked it. He threw nuts at the caged animals.

He didn’t like it so much anymore.

Screaming, yelling, wailing: all the sounds you would expect to find in a dungeon. Now imagine those sounds from a full dungeon compressed into a single room.

Now imagine the same for the smell.

Something shuffled to his right, a body leaned against the bars next to him. It turned and spoke in hushed tones.

‘They get you too, huh?’

‘Yeah. Bastard. Gonna get him back for this.’

He chuckled, leaning further into the low lamplight. Caspar got a better view of the guy. Brown fur, white around the face, but also dark patterns around the eyes. Like a mask. He smiled with a row of needle-like teeth.

‘You hate them too right?’ Even in the dark, there was a gleam in his black eye. A spark of some great thing to come. ‘If you want revenge against the people who put you here, I know just the place. Somewhere where the elite in their crystal towers dare not tread. A place where people like us can end their greed and corruption.’ He spoke with almost grandiose fervour, like how a priest would speak of their gods. ‘Come to the tilted building past the Gilded Herald; an old tavern, you can’t miss it. Dark wood and collapsed roofing. It doesn’t look much, but below the rotting exterior beats the heart of something strong, true, and pure.’

‘What’s there?’ Caspar asked, as curious as someone would be when presented with something that sounds so mysterious and powerful.

‘Something better. There’s real change coming to the City of Art.’

‘Art? I thought it was the “City of Poets?”’

‘Savanti has so many titles, it’s hard to keep track. The city of Poets, the City of Art, the city of Actors, Artists, Decadence, Crystal, Glass, I could go on. I never felt any of those were appropriate. I’ve always preferred “City of Masks” myself.’

‘Right. Tilted, dark building. Past the Gilded Herald.’

A click echoed out ahead, and the entire room either quietened, shuffled, or yelped in surprise. The heavy thuds of footsteps and jangling of keys approached Caspar’s cage. Caspar inched back into the corner as best he could. He heard of the kinds of tortures people do in places like this, and if they were about to do any of that to him, he’d at least not make it easy for them.

The merc warden opened the prison door.

‘Well, the spoon merchant's payment hasn’t cleared up, so you’re free to go.’

‘... That’s it?’

‘That’s it.’

Caspar crawled to the cage door, looking back to the raccoon, who gave a knowing wink.

‘You’ve trapped me for several hours and just opened the door and let me go?’

‘Don’t be so dramatic. You’ve been here ten minutes. Now get out, we have at least five noble-annoying vagrants we can fit in there.’