CHAPTER EIGHT
We follow the mob of Selene’s supporters through the streets, sticking to the rooftops so we won’t be caught up in the middle of them. If any of them recognizes me or Alaric, we’ll probably have to fight our way out.
I can feel the tension in the streets, quite literally, thanks to my powers. The emotions of the crowd are surging, a whole composed of many, many component parts. I can feel the emotions, the animal instincts, of the people down below, an undercurrent of violence rising in the mob.
Someone throws a stone, and that undercurrent turns into something far more dangerous.
The crowd surges forward, people smashing their way into homes and stores. They’re still chanting the same things as they go, but now it’s a battle cry, not just a demand.
“Give us the true games! Give us the true games!”
The street below is in chaos, and worse, the guards don’t seem to be moving to intervene. They’re keeping their distance, as if they think it’s best to treat this violence like a wildfire: as something to contain and then deal with once it’s burnt out.
“You notice they’re only attacking some places?” Alaric says, as we try to keep pace with the mob, moving swiftly over the rooftops and watching the chaos below.
I hadn’t noticed it until Alaric points it out.
Now, though, I can see that people are breaking into only a few of the houses they pass, smashing up a small number of stalls and causing damage only in particular places.
It isn’t even the whole mob getting involved in the violence.
I can feel a different strand among the feelings of violence and mayhem: a sense of determination and duty.
Once I feel that, it’s easy to pick out the smaller group within the crowd, armed and partially armored, wearing the colors of one of the gangs.
“She’s paid one of the gangs,” I say.
Alaric nods. “That’s what it looks like. My guess is that Selene’s paying them to attack those who aren’t her supporters. It’s a way of intimidating those who want to stand against her.”
That makes me angry, even as I admire the skill with which she’s manipulating the city.
Selene is causing chaos, which I have no doubt she’ll have the senate use to justify more authoritarian measures.
She’s increasing the tension in the city and preparing the way for revolution.
She’s attacking her enemies, while giving rewards to the gangs who might support her during any uprising to come.
And meanwhile, the guards continue to stand back. Is this because they don’t think they can take the mob on directly? Are they just biding their time, letting the violence burn itself out? Or are these guards under Selene’s control, the way so many of the guards in Ironhold seem to be?
“We need to do something about this,” I say. “We can’t just let this happen.”
“Don’t worry,” Alaric says. “We won’t.”
He starts to run along the rooftops now, skimming from roof to roof with all the grace and agility I remember so well from our time in the colosseum.
I hurry to keep up, borrowing a touch of grace from one of the birds nesting in the eaves of a house.
I’m careful not to take too much, for too long.
Doing so can hurt the animals I borrow from, draining them or even killing them.
It can also hurt me. I’ve seen beast whisperers with animalistic features, patches of fur or eyes like cats.
They’re the ones who’ve held onto attributes from animals too long, unable to give back what they’ve taken.
For now, I just take enough to keep up with Alaric as he hurries ahead of the mob, running into the forum and taking up position atop the fountain there. I run beside him, hoping he knows what he’s doing.
“What’s your plan?” I ask. “I assume you do have a plan?”
“Perhaps my plan is simply to improvise what happens next,” Alaric counters, with a grin. “And then to stun you with my brilliance.”
The worrying thing is that might be his plan.
Alaric has often been prepared to throw himself into the middle of dangerous situations, confident his skills can handle it.
I really hope he has something more than that in mind here.
No matter how skilled a gladiator he is, Alaric can’t take on a whole mob.
They’re coming now, advancing on the forum, still chanting the same things.
“Give us the true games!”
“We want jobs!”
“The slums are a part of the city!”
I can hear the desperation in some of their voices.
Along with Rowan and some of the others on the senate, I worked hard to try to make sure conditions improved for the people of the slums, but we were never able to achieve as much as we wanted.
It always felt as if there were something holding us back.
It means that the ordinary people of the city are still poor, still often hungry, still prey to the gangs that make the slums their home.
Exactly the kind of people Selene can manipulate by promising them a better life.
Alaric stands there before them and he looks at me. “Can you do anything to calm them long enough to make them listen?”
“I’ll try,” I say, reaching out with my magic.
I’ve influenced people plenty of times now, but never so many at once.
I don’t have the kind of precise emotional control that I might have had with only one or two people, so the best I can do is calm people a fraction, make them hesitate for a second or two in their desire to demonstrate their anger by inflicting violence on the city.
As I do it, Alaric makes bursts of light flare around him, drawing attention to himself.
“Citizens of Aetheria,” he calls out. “You’ve been lied to.”
He pauses for effect, and Alaric’s charismatic enough that he can get away with it. People stop and stare at him.
“Hey, aren’t you-” someone begins.
Alaric beats them to it. “Alaric Blackthorn. Former gladiator, former noble. Current leader of the resistance movement in Aetheria.”
He says it as if they should applaud him. Of course he does. Alaric is good at being the center of attention.
“Look at yourselves, out here,” Alaric says. “Why are you here? Because someone told you it might make your lives better? Because someone told you it was time to show the rich folk of the city that you won’t be held down anymore?”
“It’s true!” a man calls back. He might be one of the gang members. It’s hard to tell in the thronging crowd.
“It’s true that you’re suffering,” Alaric shoots back.
“But the things Selene Ravenscroft wants aren’t the answer.
She would make slaves of you, not free you.
She would reinstate her version of the empire; a place where those with less magic would be less, with no chance to rise and become more.
You’re out here shouting for the grand tournament, but that’s her project. It only helps her, not you!”
Alaric is convincing some of them. A few people are drifting away on the fringes of the crowd. But not as many as I might have hoped.
“He’s just traitorous scum!” one of the gang members calls out, pointing with a blade in his hand. “Get him!”
The crowd starts towards us, heading for the fountain.
That’s when members of the resistance start to appear, charging to meet the ones trying to kill Alaric.
They must have been waiting in the surrounding streets, carefully hidden until needed.
They slam into the mob, and now the sounds of battle fill my ears.
“You planned this all along!” I say to Alaric. “You knew they’d come here.”
“My people heard Selene was trying to organize all this,” Alaric explains, even as his people fight with the gang members coopted into the mob. “She paid the gangs to move with the crowd, with the idea they’d all meet here. I told my people to be waiting.”
Magic fills the air as the resistance battle against the gang members in the crowd.
Small bursts of flame flicker, and darts of power.
One man moves with extraordinary speed as he swings a club at another, only for it to shatter against skin that’s briefly like stone.
This is Aetheria, and even the simplest fight involves power most people in the world beyond could only dream of.
Alaric’s people are being selective, pushing aside ordinary members of the crowd, trying to target the gang members instead.
One member of the resistance suffers a cut to his arm, only for Thalia to run to him, healing the injury in seconds.
A man in the colors of one of the gangs stands over her as she works, raising a blade.
Alaric leaps into the fray then. Literally leaps, jumping down from the top of the fountain so his feet connect with Thalia’s attacker.
He draws a pair of daggers, plunging into the fight, his illusions producing a trio of copies that swirl around him, making it hard for anyone to know exactly where he is.
I curse and jump down, determined to help. A man comes at me with a blade and I sidestep, tripping him and sending him tumbling into the crowd. Another attacker tries to grab me, so I elbow him hard in the stomach, doubling him over just in time for my knee to rise and meet his jaw.
I can see some of the ordinary people fleeing from the fight, but the gang members are still fighting with swords and knives, turning this into a bloody, deadly battle that makes my heart beat faster with adrenaline.
Worse, the same guards who were standing back before are moving forward now, clearly intending to arrest as many of the resistance as they can. I avoid a blow from another gang member, twist a blade out of his hand, and try to work out what I can do that might help.
I can feel animals nearby and I reach out with my powers, summoning them, hoping it will be enough.
A swarm of rats comes from a crack in the stones, coming up from the layers of catacombs beneath the city streets.
Birds fly down through the darkness, drawn from all around by my powers.
I send the small creatures into the fight to bite and peck and claw, making people cry out and fall back.
It isn’t much, but I hope it will buy us time.
“Alaric, we need to go!” I call out.
A quartet of Alarics looks round at me, and he lets his illusion fall so that suddenly, there’s only one. He looks as though he might throw himself back into the battle, too caught up in the wild joy of it to stop, but then he nods.
“Everybody back!” he calls to the resistance. “Make for your bolt holes!”
We start to retreat. A guard grabs for me, but Alaric punches him hard enough to send him sprawling and we run. I send a few more small creatures at the guards, hoping it will be enough to distract them as we flee.
Members of the resistance are scattering in every direction, fleeing into the night. I hope the dark spaces of the city will protect them, even as I know the magical lights on so many of the streets will make it hard to simply disappear.
There’s no time to think about it, though, because Alaric and I are sprinting along the streets. He has a grip on one of my arms as if afraid of losing me. I call on whatever speed and grace I can draw from an alley cat to keep up, moving swiftly through the night.
Alaric pulls me into an alley suddenly, throwing up a wall of illusions across the entrance and holding me close as a squad of guards goes thundering past. We start to move slower now, slipping through the night in silence, while around us, the sounds of the hunt for resistance members go on unabated.
We reach an inn that seems to have closed, as if the owner’s afraid of the violence in the city, but Alaric takes out a key, opening one of the doors. I see a guard rounding the corner, but before he can look around and see us, Alaric pulls me inside, shutting the door behind us.
We’re safe, at least for now, but I suspect that, after tonight, I will never truly be safe again. I was seen fighting with the resistance, and that means…
That means the guards will hunt me wherever I go in the city, now.