We regret to inform the assembled that Angela Cecille has been found dead. The manner of her death is unquestionably the work of the black forces that gather against our city on the hill, and we must gird ourselves.

One of our brightest stars has been taken from us, and Ruhum has been diminished this day.

Spring 51

While the deacons debating how to approach the news of Cecille’s murder, a janitor leaked the news to the papers. He included vivid descriptions of an office shredded, its oak desk reduced to splinters and every surface bleached like exposure to the sun. Angela had been found savaged amongst holy tomes, her hand clutching a rosary of Fire and her expression defiant to the last.

Or at least that’s how the story was told.

The velvet walls of the deacons’ chambers muffled the whispers.

“The Holy Receivership…”

“Angela kept such a tight rein, but now…”

“We must reinstate the Keeper of Fire…”

“I am – of course – willing to accept the burden of…”

The golden filigree glinted with the reflection of so many clutched knives.

None present bothered to inform the Conclave.

Whispers and promises; alliances and lies; petty tyrants all dreaming of whom God would crown king.

***

In high Spring, Mel always emptied of the working folk. Restaurants and bars closed, slumbering for their clientele currently abroad at farm or factory. With the Sevensborough Rebellion locking down the eastern boroughs in de facto martial law, the inner boroughs sank into depression.

Yet the Conclave square rang with exulting voices. The crowds only grew; black armbands found new hosts. The derelict and the faithful mingled, drawn into the shadows of the skyscrapers by the allure of carnival.

News of Cecille’s murder broke by a thousand whispers even before the noon paper, and the carnival’s delicate balance tipped towards the faithful. Tambourines fell silent, and card games were tucked away. Instead, the guitars began to play somber hymns, and eager Penitents mingling among the crowd encouraged prayer circles.

Mourners soon flooded the square, anticipating official announcements and judgement for whatever heretic dared such offense!

Rumors of Azure assassins spontaneously generated by tea time, and the Penitents were happy to offer any who worried of such plots a black armband to prove their defiance against the southern threat.

Some asked what the armbands meant, but the answer varied.

Going back to the straight and narrow

or

No more noble boots on our neck

or

Letting those Azure sods know we mean business

or

Purity of body and soul

Three in ten accepted the armbands. Accepted a shared yearning for a new world. A remade order where all the old lies fell away…

Sorrowful, scornful, or bored, the crowd swelled, waiting for news.

Waiting for the first words of a new era.

***

Valkyrie Osh, Spear of the Tempest, woke on the couch in the back of the Mishkan accounts office and rubbed her face against the intrusion of daylight. She shifted under her blankets – abandoned jackets – and cursed her pillow – a wadded up dress.

“I miss the loft,” she grumbled, popping her back. After a moment she found yesterday’s dress, rumpled from her escapades, and tugged it over her head. Then she shuffled across the room, stepping over scattered papers and broken furniture, and poked at the inexplicable coffee maker for her ‘morning’ meal.

The constables had ransacked Alisandra’s office recently. For what purpose, she had no idea. They’d taken papers at random, stolen all the valuables, and left the coffee maker behind.

I haven’t checked the Catechisms today. Maybe coffee’s heretical this week?

She produced a black brew, sipped it, and gagged. Then, setting the cup aside, she shuffled to the window to gauge the hour. Just after lunch…probably.

Valkyrie had spent all yesterday chasing fresh leads and proof for the papers against the Inquisition. Fourteen hours collecting statements and evidence, and by the next day’s light she wondered if her efforts produced any results at all.

She’d had to spin faerie fire three separate times to maintain her cover…

“Seems scandal alone aren’t strong enough to dethrone the Grand Inquisitor,” she sighed. Great start to being her Spear, Val.

Would the job always be this exhausting though? I slept sixteen hours and still feel like a sack of potatoes.

What if this exhaustion was only the beginning? How much more would the faerie fire demand? What happened when mere exhaustion was no longer payment enough?

Rie offered no answers.

Outside, a stray dog nosed at the trash in the alley. He sought for meager scraps without success. This little street of Mel lay dead and forgotten, a monument to the offices of Houses past. A girl could skip down the lane, naming the Lords discarded and Ladies disgraced, and even during the business day an hour could go without sight of a single pedestrian.

Five blocks from the Conclave. Five blocks from Power. Discarded out of hand…

When she was younger, she’d snuck out of her mother’s apartment to haunt the abandoned mansions a few blocks west. Yesterday, wearing a younger girl’s mien and carrying ill-gotten evidence in a school bag, Valkyrie had passed one such manor and learned that a deacon just moved in.

“Can we actually turn this tide?” she asked Rie, not really expecting an answer today.

Would we even recognize it? echoed in her head, plaintive.

“Rie? Are…you okay?”

But the bubble of awareness evaporated.

“Hells, you’re worse than Lyla in one of her moods…”

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

And aren’t you supposed to be…me?

Mysteries for another day, she figured.

“Should we dip in on everyone? We can find out if Conner actually graduated!”

Though the constable lockdown rippled westward. Even the coneheads in Fourthborough were sure to march on edge now. Was an idle conversation worth the risk? Then again, perhaps fresh perspectives could help her figure out better tools for her tasks?

As she debated, the Mishkan office door slammed open.

Given the staff had been fired when the House was dissolved and a large red notice on the door warned of imminent repossession, Valkyrie immediately dropped to her knees and wrapped a glamour of a chair in her place.

One confident set of footsteps marched up the stairs, and the office door swung open to reveal Abigail, that same heretic that helped her escape 1540 Conclave Square! Though the towering woman now wore men’s clothes: leather jacket, trousers, and boots.

The clothes of someone ready for the long haul – and any trouble along the way.

“What are you doing here?” Valkyrie asked, keeping her glamour firm.

Abigail froze, alert but self-possessed. “Show yourself.”

“No thanks. Answer the question.”

The woman tilted her head, frowning at such a familiar voice. Her gaze fell on the coffee maker, still steaming. “You are making yourself comfortable.”

“Tastes like a boot, actually.”

Finally recognizing the voice, Abigail suppressed a smile. “Have you a sylph, Valkyrie, or is this more of your strange magic?”

Mental note: learn to pitch my voice. “I still want to know why you’re here.”

“Third chair from the window,” Abigail retorted.

Sighing, Valkyrie dropped her glamour and rose to her feet. “You’re looking well, Abigail.”

“As are you.” The woman tapped a finger on her hip. “…are you a friend of Walter’s now?”

“I work for the Lady Mishkan.”

“Excellent!” Abigail nodded firmly. “She owes me payment.”

Valkyrie tilted her head, sorting through her discussions with Ali, her demonic lessons, and her own intuition. “…smuggler?”

“Mishkan liked flowery words such as ‘economically motivated liberator.’”

Valkyrie rolled her eyes. “Please.”

There was a faint glint from Abigail’s palm as she pocketed her knife. “Were all here arrested?”

“Do you see any blood?” Valkyrie snapped sourly.

“Fair enough,” the Jungle smuggler agreed. “Good fortune for them. I am still owed my last payment.”

“How much?”

Abigail raised an eyebrow and fought a smirk.

“You know I’ll just ask Ali next I see her,” Valkyrie pointed out. “If I overpay you now, you’ll be on the hook for more later.”

Jungle honor and all that.

“True.” The smuggler stepped over to the coffee maker and started poking at the brew. After a moment, the machine released a gout of white smoke and fell dead. Sighing, she held up four fingers.

“Have you been helping with the evacuation to Lumia?” Valkyrie asked, debating if she trusted this stranger enough to dig up the gold notes in her presence.

When the girl stilled herself, listening for echoes as Mirielle had whispered, she heard…

Sea and darkness

The hunting hounds and the furtive refuge

Abigail’s strong hand on a woman’s shoulder

“A pretty lady should not cry”

“I intend to depart this land,” Abigail answered. “I am willing to take work in that direction.”

Valkyrie nodded, moving to her makeshift bed, and dug out her wad of gold notes. “Can you do me a favor?”

“I accept contracts.”

Still a bit shell-shocked at the money at her disposal, Valkyrie counted out notes. “Alisandra Mishkan pays her debts, even when the secretary has to flee.” She held out twenty gold. “You have friends in the business. Settle any remaining debts that Mishkan holds, and hire any who will listen to help with the evacuation.”

The smuggler accepted the notes thoughtfully. “It is odd. You remind me of an old employer.”

You really should stay for the party, my stalwart darling

Soon as you clean out the rats, Visage

Oh, but there’d be no one left, my dear! Just poor Thea and her toys. Speaking of which, about that shipment…

“Mirielle and I know each other,” Valkyrie coughed.

“She died in Lumia. You were not born,” stated Abigail, professionally curious.

“She was dead when we met, yes.”

Abigail paused. “You are Jungle strange.”

I think that’s a compliment?

“Damn straight,” Valkyrie answered, preening a little.

Counting the money, Abigail stated, “Come to the Sackcloth Mermaid in Thirdborough if you require me. They know me as Tulip. You must be a friend of Walter.”

“Oh, very cloak and dagger. I like–”

At this point, a rock crashed through a window, and the two displayed vastly different reactions: Abigail ducked into a crouch, her dagger instantly back in her hand; Valkyrie leaped across the clutter to the street-side window and peered out.

A mob approached another shop, its vanguard of young men picking up rocks and sticks to throw against every window in sight.

Boys throwing rocks didn’t bother Valkyrie, but two things leaped to her attention.

First, there were several house wives and even working-age men in the crowd. The kind of folk she would expect to be working at this time of day!

Second, here and there among the crowd, she caught flashes of dark armbands.

Like the folk at the Conclave Square…

“This country is sinking,” Abigail muttered, testing the alley windows for easy exit.

“What in the world do they even want?” Valkyrie muttered.

Abigail popped a lock with a mean twist. “To be angry.”

Her piece said, the smuggler ducked out a window and away.

Meanwhile, the crowd milled outside the building three offices down, tossing more rocks to fill the time.

“What drew them here though?” the girl wondered.

Another rock.

“Any thoughts, Rie?”

It is so quiet now, her guardian moped.

Valkyrie huffed. “Dammit, Rie, if you’re lonely, has it occurred to you that you share a brain with me?!”

Another rock broke a window. From inside, a man shouted, “I had nothing to do with it!”

“Hells,” the girl squeaked. The crowd were not here for something – they were here for someone!

She rushed down the stairs in her rumpled dress, panic on her tongue, deaf to Rie’s dirge of echoes.

Aligned in brilliant choreography

We knew what needed to be said

…I knew what needed to be said

Now this silence

This enveloping chill

Malkuth’s cutting touch finding every gap

I am She Who Listens

Where am I to find my Song?

Did the demon speak true?

Cast from the Throne’s Light

Down to the very bottom

The doubts of She Who Listens, no chain on her waking half. She Who Sings hurried into the street, barefoot, and shouted before a hostile crowd: “Hey!”

A few glanced her way, but her voice competed with the boys at the front and the next crash of breaking glass.

Valkyrie swore, tempted to summon up the biggest dragon she could conjure and send these louts off pissing their pants!

…but then, would the man huddled in the empty office fare any better?

When Mrs. Hewes hurled that fruit her way, Valkyrie would have filled the Conclave Square with faerie fire terrors without a second thought. Now? Now she wondered where that future would lead her.

What she would become when she answered every challenge with terror.

From where this Song? Rie whispered.

Who cares about the stupid Song! I need your help!

Lacking any better ideas, Valkyrie drew in a deep breath, cast within herself for color, and sang it out.

Crisp Harvest leaves and fresh fallen snow

Cold on my lips and your warmth in my hand

The land slips its feet into the sheets

So why don’t we?

I’ll still love you when the first rose blooms

Her voice caught and echoed through the narrow street like an opera house; it stole the strength from the breaking glass with its honey. She enriched the colors of Spring, throwing the world into brilliant relief.

The crowd turned, one at a time, and each one that turned her way added a little more. Though she could not control their yearnings, she could shepherd them onwards by a voice lilting higher.

Flaxen fields and calm winter ponds; old lovers and newborns; bawdy dances and a job well done…

Their dreams and hers, intermingling as she sang.

Fire came calling in the name of their god

And I’ll still love you when the last Gate calls

Her voice trailed off, and the crowd stared at her in a daze.

Their hatred punctured like a cyst, replaced with the warmth of their own Spring.

Belatedly, Valkyrie realized the song she’d cast forth: Ruhum as they know it. Or knew it as children. Or imagined it before…before everything.

The funny part? It really was beautiful.

No more real than my own magics…but beautiful.

And seductive as any drug, she realized now. How it roused housewives and working men to vengeance for a world that had never been and could never be!

A few of the men with black armbands resisted her. One threw another rock.

Valkyrie’s spell, however, stole the weight behind that anger. The rock shattered a window, but it sounded like tawdry vandalism instead of righteous crusade.

“Go,” Valkyrie sang softly. “Your heaven isn’t here.”

And they dispersed as bidden, each led by their nostalgia and yearning.

Deprived of the strength of a crowd, the men with black armbands trailed away.

Left alone on the street, Valkyrie shuddered and hugged herself against a sudden cold. From their dreams, she now understood – at least a little – the horrible allure of an unobtainable future.

“G-good job, Rie. I couldn’t do it without you…”

The guardian replied, A place like their vision does not exist in this silence.

“I know…”

But that song…your song…

“Stolen, of course, same as demon knowledge and magic both. What can I say, Rie? I never could keep my hands to myself!” Valkyrie shook her head and broke into a jog. “Come on, let’s help that poor sod inside.”

Blind and reaching before the majesty of the Song, but…

But still better than this silence.