Another day and yet more troubling news, folks.
You all know the Penitents. Those lovely folks that show up at your door to talk about how to become closer to God through their tender ministrations.
Well, seems they’re not content stirring trouble in the Church. Now a flock of them have taken to wandering circles around the Conclave, flagellating themselves for peace!
Here’s what their Father Maxwell had to say on their motivations:
“The unjust murder of Aldersman Lee demands recompense. With the murderer loose, we must demonstrate our resolve! Degeneracy proliferates in the boroughs, and we must stand against the rot!”
Pretty sure the only rot around here is between his ears…
That aside, for the three of you left within spitting distance of the Conclave, I’d recommend taking a different route to work for the foreseeable future.
Spring 48 (Sevensborough)
As the dawn’s fog burned away, ten squads of constables entered Sevensborough. Armed with rifles and dogs, they swiftly seized control of the ruined remains of The Mayor’s Dive and Main Street. Meeting no resistance – meeting no one at all! – the constables cheered their easy victory.
Look at how the rats scurried before them. Order came to the borough today!
Laughing, constable boys joked of bringing in tractors to pave the entire mess in one swoop.
When Tommy’s boys heard, they marched north. A dozen young men in suits arrived on Main first, intent on seizing the deal Tommy had secured with Margaret Dune.
Unfortunately for them, nobody had seen Margaret in days; Tommy was dead; and the constables considered these adolescent gangsters “a part of the problem.”
Half suffered arrest, and the other half fled to rouse the rest of the gang.
Shortly thereafter, the gangster boys returned to Main with firepower. Diplomacy lasted a couple moments, and then the trigger fingers set to work.
Though outnumbered, the boys knew the borough inside and out. Half the constables that entered the borough that morning lay face-down in the street by the time the rest reached to Sixborough.
Victorious, the gangsters looted the fallen and retreated to their warren to share news of victory with those still abed.
They were met with horror bordering on mutiny.
“How in the icy hells do we ride the Inquisition gravy train when you’re shooting constables?!” roared one of the older boys, fancying himself Tommy’s replacement.
Except he wasn’t the only one with big ideas.
“Constables deserve what they get!” roared another of the older boys, also fancying himself Tommy’s replacement.
“This is our borough. Margaret swore we’d own it; she broke the agreement!”
“Bloody heathens are the real problem! Just pretend we weren’t even around!”
The would-be dictators of the warren fell to arguing, and the gang shortly fractured. One troupe retreated deep into the warren to wait out the storm; another struck for the inner boroughs to rat the rest to the church; and the most sane of the lot abandoned the borough entirely.
Having twice now played the fools of history, Tommy’s legacy dissolved.
***
“Oliver! Wake up! They just arrested fifteen boys in Thirdborough for conspiracy to incite rebellion!”
The mayor jolted upright, head swimming. He sat amidst an old barn’s hay, the morning sun streamed through cracks in the ceiling, and his skull still throbbed from working so late.
“What in the icy hells did they do now?!” the former mayor grumbled, dusting straw from his belly.
“Tommy’s tots decided to trade shots with the constabulary. We’ve got dead coneheads strewn from Main to the bridge!”
Oliver rubbed his face, trying to process that.
Instead, his mind swam back into his tangled dreams. Dreams of fire and death like usual…
“Does Boucher know?” he managed at last.
“You’re the last one. Been trying to find you for an hour!”
“Being easy to find isn’t really in my best interest at the moment!” he snapped back. “…sorry. Please tell me somebody has eyes on the coneheads.”
“Precincts are positively buzzing right now!”
“And Briarwood?”
The man grimaced. “We’re waiting to hear if they’re calling in reserves.”
Slim hope to stake our lives on.
“Right. Let me dunk my head in the horse trough and we’ll be off.”
Thirty minutes later, Oliver ducked into the aldersman’s bungalow. He snagged biscuits from the table and regarded his assembled allies.
Belle, plucking at her dress. Nix – that traitor! – rested on her shoulder, and a tiny bump against her bosom marked the sleeping phoenix chick.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Boucher, somber, carrying a rifle slung over his shoulder. He looked as ragged as Oliver felt.
Greenleaf, withdrawn, today accompanied by a slim sylph. The diminutive elemental beast rested on his shoulder, quiet and still for a creature that could blow down the building.
“Apologies to be tardy,” Oliver offered, standing with his food.
“Still talking like you belong to your noble masters,” Greenleaf sniffed.
Ignoring that, the former mayor added, “I got the quick and dirty version. What more do we know?”
Boucher spread his hands. “Tommy’s boys thought they were greeting allies. The constables disagreed. Shots fired, and now we have bodies.”
Damn fools thought they weren’t in the same boat as the rest of us
“Most the boys buggered off as soon as they realized the trouble they’ve sparked,” the aldersman continued. “We cornered a few on the way out; seems the consensus was they had a deal with Margaret Dune.”
“And Margaret Dune is currently awaiting trial in Waves,” Greenleaf chimed in, amused.
Oliver’s eyebrows shot to his receding hairline. “How in the–”
“The Tempest,” Belle answered quietly. “She tried to shoot Valkyrie and I outside a Fourthborough clinic, Boucher.”
A shot of fury burst up Oliver’s spine. “She what?”
Fury and a sickening feeling in his gut like staring down the edge of a very steep cliff.
“She saved us,” Belle reassured softly, glancing away.
And when were you going to tell me this?!
He already knew her response: she hadn’t wanted him to worry.
One thought went to Margaret, served a sliver of the justice she had met out; the next to a gangster lookout crumpled against a wall, four ribs fractured, from the idle attentions of a god.
Grains of sand band together and pick up speed.
Lee, Tommy, Margaret – each one a power vacuum now open for business.
Titles like that are bought with blood.
Though he had the means to meet such violence, didn’t he? All he had to do was call for Alisandra.
Nix caught his eye.
You’re right, he admitted. I can’t…I can’t guarantee which Ali I’ll get.
His lifelong friend…or the Holy Tempest.
If we just had time to sit down over burgers and talk, I’m sure we could…
But that was the young Oliver thinking, still convinced that all the ills of the world were the result of miscommunications. That optimist would have waltzed to the Conclave to argue against his supposed crimes; that optimist would be in an Inquisitor cell by now.
Shaking away despair, Oliver forced his thoughts to one crisis at a time. “Greenleaf.”
The Deepbloom aldersman raised his chin. “Yes?”
“You don’t look too busy. Up for a little mischief?”
“Depends on the mischief,” Greenleaf answered.
***
An hour later, Oliver and Greenleaf pulled up to their first stop on a whirlwind tour of Sevensborough warehouses.
The mayor stopped at the great fence, rolled down the window, and smiled for the nerve-wracked young man with a rifle responsible for the gate.
“Hi there, Johnny. I hear you boys have been stuck on site since this whole mess started. They at least feeding you something warm?”
On his shoulder, Nix chirped in agreement.
Johnny scowled. “You can’t be here, Oliver. You’re a damned fugitive.”
“And a year ago I was the mayor that saw the man beneath the booze. Dragged that man out of the bottle and onto those two feet you’re standing on,” he countered.
“We’ve orders to–”
“Put a bullet in your friends and family if they poke their noses out?” Oliver hazarded. “You wouldn’t pull that trigger, Johnny. You’re better than those fat cats that fancy themselves your masters.”
Greenleaf snorted, his sylph peeking out her head from his beard.
“We both know those fat cats would spend you to save a copper. What’s in there that’s worth a life?”
You really going to make a widow of your love
So Firstborough bankers can count a couple extra coins?
Johnny wrestled, briefly, with the truth of this.
Then he opened the gate.
By the time the manager noticed, Oliver had ten men out of the back of his vehicle and well into commandeering the warehouse fleet.
Most the workers joined them, and they drove away with a jaunty wave for the bureaucrat shouting from the safety of his office window.
***
At its core, the evacuation was a math problem.
Oliver explained as everyone helped load trucks.
“An accurate census of Sevensborough would require an act of God, but my best guess is the slum hosts a bit shy of ten thousand people at its peak. Less in Spring; we’re probably hovering around seven thousand right now.”
“Around two-thirds the borough are heretics, at least as the church seems to reckon it, and seventy percent of those heretics are willing to go with us.”
“Seven thousand times two-thirds times point seventy. A bit more than three thousand people now requiring food, shelter, and transport to Lumia. Noble cars could make that trip in three hours before the roads rotted. With the piss-poor maintenance on these trucks and those roads, probably six now. Truck like this can hold ten – maybe fifteen if they’re light on luggage.”
“Figure it up. Three hundred loads and a hundred trucks. Guaranteed at least a few break down or run out of gas. Plus, Walter can only handle so many in a batch. The second we start showing up, rates for food, water, and bedding in Walter are gonna jump into the gold per day.”
“Add all this up, and you realize our quandary.”
The mayor pointed to the first trucks now rumbling into the east.
“This borough is our bastion or our tomb until the last truck runs, and that’s gonna be days from now at best. Even the Conclave can put two-and-two together given days and fireworks.”
Greeted by the nervous silence of young men, Oliver cracked his best grin.
“Nothing’s ever easy in life, my boys! If you’re bored of helping on the trucks, grab a hammer. We’re going to need one hell of a barricade!”
***
The hammer did not fall quite yet, but Ruhum began to rumble.
These first stirrings began with the warehouse owners. Learning their trucks were commandeered by heretics, the owners first filed for insurance…and second petitioned for redress from the Conclave.
But the Conclave had already scattered, the noble factions battening down their own fortresses in anticipation of trouble. Who knew when the Holy Receivership would strike next, and who would be the victim?
In the last centuries, the Houses had ruled alone, and they easily convinced themselves that the Holy Receivership was a sword of their only worthy enemies – their fellow Houses. They did not cede the field; they simply planned their next strike.
Having found no purchase with the Houses, the aggrieved owners pleaded with the church.
Except the deacons were in conference; the Penitents plied the crowds outside the Conclave; and the Inquisition held these merchants in scorn. Angela Cecille remembered the knives of rich coin counters eager to carve her family’s estates, and she planned fates for them little better than those reserved for heretics.
Though, deprived of her right hand, at the moment she struggled to assemble proxies. Her plans would lay fallow a little while longer.
Next, the warehouse owners complained to the constabulary.
Being in the middle of burying all involvement in this disaster, the borough constabulary dismissed the complaints as the responsibility of Mel, and Mel blamed the boroughs.
Despairing, the merchant men tried Briarwood, only to find the army base amidst a scandal of its own.
On paper, the base maintained five hundred trucks ready at a moment’s notice. Yet when an enterprising lieutenant looked to the trouble ahead and decided to check the motor pool, he found more than half of this number field stripped – parts sold and papers falsified!
The generals, fat with the proceeds, reminded the merchant men of their own involvement. After all, the warehouses demanded trucks for their goods…the prices were singular…and no one involved asked too many questions about procurement.
Briarwood engines now bore heretics to the east on warehouse merchant gasoline.
Ignored at every turn, the merchant men retreated for now. They had the found the limits of power in money and could but wait with the rest of the country.
Pleased with the turn in the weather, the rest of Ruhum still slumbered through the day.
That evening, a couple of radio jockeys picked up some juicy gossip: conveys sighted departing the outermost borough, frantic preparations within, and all those fresh corpses…Enthralled, they named these troubles:
The Sevensborough Rebellion