Side Story 03
By the window of his study, Albert stood with Daniel a half step behind him, the same position his assistant always kept. The two of them watched chaos they felt utterly helpless against.
Below, past the palace's outer gardens, the city burned in patches, small, stubborn fires that refused to merge into a single blaze, and refused to die down either, which made it all the more unsettling.
It felt as if whoever was behind the flames was deliberately calibrating just how much chaos to unleash on the city.
Less than half an hour later, the mob seemed to have made its decision. Flame gathered against order—order represented by the ducal guard, and the sound of their clash, just beyond the garden, carried clearly up to the floor where the two of them stood.
"Why," Albert said. Not really a question, more an attempt to force his own mind into making sense of it. "We gave them what they wanted, didn't we? The lockdown's lifted. The gates are wide open right now. So why keep pushing this madness?"
"I wouldn't know, my lord."
Albert turned to Daniel, then theorized aloud, "Unless that fool didn't actually lift it. Unless he made the idiotic choice to challenge the angry crowd instead."
"I don't think your brother would be that unwise, my liege.
A simpler explanation might be that twelve days of being told a dangerous criminal walked among them, twelve days feeling trapped in their own city, doesn't just get undone by opening the gates.
All that tells them is that no one intends to answer for those twelve days of suffering. "
"So they choose to burn the city instead."
"I don't think they mean to burn the city," Daniel said, glancing out the window.
Albert already knew what he meant. He could hear it. Literally. "They're coming," Albert said.
"They are, my lord."
Leaving his study, which only deepened the sense of uselessness pressing down on him, Albert made his way down to the ground floor. Descending the stairs, he stopped a guard rushing up them. "Where's Bertrand?"
"Coordinating what's left of the ducal guard, I believe, my lord. Casualties have been significant, from what's been reported."
"Significant casualties," Albert repeated. "From townsfolk with pitchforks and torches?"
The guard's silence dragged a beat too long to mean nothing. "My lord. There have been reports. Of gunfire."
"Gunfire." Albert turned to his assistant, as if Daniel could possibly have an explanation.
"I wasn't there myself, and I have nothing beyond the reports. But several guardsmen have described the same thing independently, so..."
"Where would a mob get guns?"
The guard had no answer, so Albert let him continue on his way and kept moving toward the ground floor, which, mere minutes later, had become unrecognizable.
It had turned into a hospital in every sense but the formal one.
Rows of men lay along the walls on whatever had been near enough to serve as bedding, cloaks and tapestries stripped down and pressed into service, the air thick with the metallic smell of blood, boiled water, and something sharper underneath that Albert couldn't name.
More kept arriving, faster than anyone could keep up with, injuries that only confirmed what the guard had said.
Trying to help wherever he could, Albert and Daniel held a man still while a healer worked.
The man's leg below the knee was simply gone, in a way no sword or axe could account for, the wound too ragged, too wide.
While they worked, a scream cut through the room, startling Albert.
Nearby, another guard was being held down by two of his fellows while a third dug shrapnel out of a wound before it could be properly healed.
As the healer finished, Albert watched a stretcher pass by carrying a man missing both legs. He grabbed a passing guard. "A gun did that?"
"Of course no—" the guard started, clearly annoyed at being stopped, then caught himself and adjusted his tone. "It was a cannon, my lord."
"A cannon?" Albert asked, needing to confirm what he'd just heard.
"Yes, my lord. Portable cannon."
"Where would townsfolk get a cannon?" Them having guns was already absurd. Them having cannons was a whole new level.
"I wouldn't know, my lord, but they're killing our men out there with them," the guard said, before hurrying off after a comrade who soon succumbed to his wounds.
It was about then that a voice called out, "My lord."
Albert turned to find Bertrand crossing the hall toward him, in a state he'd never seen his brother in before, still half in bloodied armor, a fresh cut along his jaw, eyes bloodshot.
Bertrand seemed to register how disheveled Albert looked too, but ignored it entirely. "We're barricading the gates," he said, without preamble. "Every able-bodied man is to help barricading."
Albert looked at his brother, at the blood on him that clearly wasn't all his own, most likely a comrade's, and something ugly and reflexive rose up in him despite everything around them insisting it shouldn't.
"Barricading," Albert said. "That's the plan?"
"It is," Bertrand answered. "You have a better one, brother? Because I'd genuinely love to hear it. I'd very much like things to stop getting uglier than they already are."
Biting his lip, Albert asked, "How ugly is it out there?"
"Worse than this. Much, much worse than this. What you're seeing in here are the lucky ones. I watched one of my men, Anton, burn alive."
"Burned?"
The thought alone seemed to nauseate Bertrand. "There's no stopping these people, not when we can't even tell friend from enemy anymore."
"What?"
"You heard me. How do you think they got guns?"
"How would I know that?"
"Because someone gave them to them."
"Who?" Albert frowned, sensing exactly where Bertrand was heading with this.
Bertrand wiped at the cut on his jaw. "Lord Vasseur."
"Lord Vasseur?"
"Yes. Your close friend. Him. He told us he'd bring his personal guard and servants to help cull the mob. Instead he hit us from the flank. My men, holding the line bravely, got cut down from behind by people they thought were allies."
The name landed on Albert like a slap, if slower to register.
Gaspard Vasseur. A lord whose family history and ties to their own ran almost as deep.
Well established in the mercantile world, Vasseur was a man Albert had spent years cultivating a friendship with, unlike Bertrand, whose actions had so far only ever managed to sour that lord's business.
Truth was, if Albert had a single ally among the nobility for his claim over Bertrand, it was that man. Bertrand knew it. Which was exactly why Albert understood his brother's suspicion, even as he rejected it.
"I promise you, I gave no such order. It would be an absurd order. Why would I orchestrate a siege on my own home?"
Bertrand said nothing for a moment, clearly still weighing him, but before he could settle on an answer, a thud interrupted them, deep and heavy, coming from somewhere behind him, the sound of something massive slamming against a door.
A guardsman came sprinting in to report. "They're here, my lords. They're here. They’re ramming the door."
The look of pure horror that crossed Bertrand's face told Albert everything he needed to know. After ordering the man to hold the door, Bertrand said, "We have to go."
"Go where," Albert said, and he could hear his own voice climbing toward panic, hating it, unable to stop it.
How could he not, seeing his typically unshakable brother's confidence collapse like this, at least where strength usually carried him through.
Now he just looked helpless. "This is our home, Bertrand, we can't just—"
"There is no can't," Bertrand said, gripping his shoulder hard enough to hurt. "There's only what keeps you alive the next ten minutes, and what doesn't. Standing here arguing with me is the second one."
In the silence that followed, the sound of the crowd pressed in, no longer distant, no longer something Albert could watch safely through glass. It had texture now, individual voices distinguishable inside the roar, and none of them were saying anything reasonable.
"Go now. Through the west passage."
"Sylvie," Albert said suddenly, remembering their sister. "She's upstairs, still in mourning, I told her to stay—"
"I'll get her," Bertrand cut in. "You go now, through the west passage, the one behind Father's old study, the one that runs under the wine cellar and out through the old drainage tunnel to the northern district. You remember it."
"I'm not leaving without—"
"You are," Bertrand said, and there was nothing left in his voice for Albert to push against. "Go, Albert. You too, Daniel," he added, glancing at the assistant. "Don't worry about Sylvie. I'll get her out. I swear it on Father's unburied shroud."
A hand on his shoulder, Daniel was already guiding Albert away from his brother, toward whom he felt nothing now but regret. Was it too late already, he wondered. The urgency of the moment quickly swept the thought away.
The passage behind their father's study was exactly where Albert remembered, a section of paneling that gave way under pressure at the base rather than the middle, a detail he'd learned as a boy sneaking down to steal wine.
The stairs beyond were narrower than he remembered, built for one man at a time, cold in the particular way stone that never sees daylight is cold.
Daniel went first, lantern in hand, taken from the study wall, Albert close behind, the sounds of the palace above fading with every step down, replaced by drip and echo and the smell of old water.
"You think I was a terrible brother?" Albert asked, mostly to distract himself from the claustrophobia of the tunnel.
"I'd say you could have been worse, my lord," Daniel said, keeping up his usual composure even now.
"Are you saying that just because I never tried anything against his life?"
"Perhaps, my lord. Perhaps. My point stands regardless. You could have been worse."
"You can be honest with me, Daniel. I think there's genuinely no better time than now."
He seemed to consider that, then said, "I think, my lord, it would be better if I didn't. For my sake as much as yours."
"I see," Albert said, nodding, and they continued in silence.
The tunnel widened as they went, old brick giving way to older stone, and ahead of them Albert could make out a grey suggestion of light, the end of the passage. They were just a turn away from the exit.
They took the turn exactly where Albert remembered it, and were perhaps thirty paces from the exit when the shapes at the tunnel’s mouth resolved into men.
Three of them. They were dressed like ducal guards, but there was one problem with that: ducal guards didn’t typically carry guns.
These men did. And they weren’t moving. They stood perfectly still at the mouth of the tunnel, as though they had been waiting there.
Waiting for someone. Obviously, for them.
The moment one of the men moved, lifting something Albert recognized as a gun, Daniel shoved him backward and sideways with more force than his assistant had ever used on him in his life, forcing him into a run as the sound came, impossibly loud in that narrow space, a crack he felt in his teeth before he even registered it as sound, followed by a duller thud.
It was only after rounding the corner, still running, that Albert realized no footsteps followed him.
He only understood, some time later, feeling his way back through the dark the way he'd come, palms scraping stone, his own breath the loudest thing in the world, that he was alone in the tunnel now, and that somewhere behind him, so close to their escape, his assistant had gone down.