Chapter 31
It was already early evening when Chaska and Shiro left the Lazarin temple, business there finished.
"Vanya got abducted?! Why didn't you tell me sooner?" Chaska scolded as they rode through the city atop the vaulter.
"Well," Shiro started, arm tightly secured around her waist while she held the reins, both to keep himself from falling in their haste and to try calming the stiffness that seemed to mellow, at least figuratively, at her contact. "I didn't want to burden you with that."
"Burden me?" Her words landed more like a reproach. "Vanya got abducted and that was your concern?"
"Yes," Shiro replied simply, meeting her eyes as she looked back. "For you, getting to Nazim's workshop takes priority over helping Anya find her sister, right? So why bother with the guilt of admitting what actually matters to you comes first?"
She stayed quiet a moment before sighing. "I hate how much sense you make. You make me sound like a selfish, heartless bit—could you please stop poking me for a second?"
"Sorry," Shiro murmured. "Can't help it."
"And get your hand off there, you're going to make us crash if you keep this up," she said, slapping his hand away.
"Aww, don't you love me anymore? You loved me so much more earlier."
"Not even going to respond that," she said, urging the vaulter forward through a city already in flames. People had started erecting pyres across the streets, gathering crowds around them, some already clashing with ducal guards trying to disperse them, sparking pockets of violence.
The two of them didn't stop at any of the pyres, focused entirely on reaching Anya at the merchant guild, which they found a dozen or so minutes later, thick with a crowd. Even among the hundred or so people gathered around the building, Anya spotted them immediately.
"Master Shiro, there you finally are. Where were you?"
"Sorry," Chaska apologized, hugging her, a move that clearly caught Anya off guard. "I didn't know about, what happened with Vanya?"
Recovering quickly, Anya explained, "It's confirmed. Vanya's been caught. I've had reports of people seeing her taken to the ducal palace."
"The ducal palace," Chaska winced, clearly already weighing the implications.
"Yes. Which is why, to get her back, we're taking down that palace," Anya said, gesturing at the crowd around them, gathered for one purpose: guns, being demonstrated and distributed by men standing on a podium.
"These siblings think they can do whatever they want.
Let's see if they can handle the consequences of their actions. "
"Anya, who are these people?" Chaska asked, voicing exactly what Shiro had been wondering too at the sight of the crowd around them, who definitely weren't the typical angry rioters.
"As you've guessed, these men aren't ordinary rioters. They were sent by a very special crowd."
"Nobles," Chaska guessed.
She confirmed that with a nod. "Turns out commoners aren't the only ones tired of what's going on.
Many nobles are as well, which is why they sent these people over, along with the one representing them.
" She nudged toward a man standing off in the corner, clearly a noble by how pompously he dressed.
"I had the feeling you didn't just hand your weapon over," Shiro chuckled.
"Of course," she said, as if that were obvious. "Originally, I planned to sell to whichever sibling could act as a counterforce against whoever wronged me. At this point, though, I don't care if I don't break even on this deal, so long as these bastards pay."
"Ouuuf," Shiro shivered questionably. "Remind me to never wrong you."
"Yeah. What about you two, Chaska, Master Shiro? Ready to—" She paused, noticing the bulge in Shiro's pants. "Ready to storm the ducal palace?"
"Fuck yeaaaah," Shiro confirmed giddily. In that moment, he could literally feel his heart pounding, blood pumping from his heart and surging throughout his entire body. Every beat seemed to send another wave of energy through him, making his limbs tingle and his thoughts race.
He felt fucking fantastic.
And he couldn't wait to storm that palace.
???
Chaska nocked one of the heavier arrows, the variant Shiro had specifically warned her about, and drew the bow back with a strength that would have earned her a weak, wasted shot with her old bow. With this one, the one Shiro had gotten from Nazim called Reaper, it was more than enough.
The velocity with which the arrow shot into the sky proved as much. For a long second it hung up there before finally descending, culminating in a violent reverberation somewhere among the ducal guard's back lines.
Screams followed, several at once, men crying out in pain. There was something horrifying about it, but she didn't have time to sit with the thought, since a heavily armored guard, having clearly witnessed what she'd just done, was already charging her out of the frontline.
Chaska didn't reach for another special arrow. She only had three of those, the rest of her supply was what Shiro called standard, and with only three of the specialized kind left, she raised her pistol instead, aimed for the head, and squeezed the trigger.
She knew better than to aim anywhere else against that armor.
A shot to the chest or shoulder would just deflect, often violently, into whoever happened to be nearby.
Her first shot did exactly that, glancing off a pauldron and drawing a scream from some unlucky bystander a few paces over.
The second shot found the gap in his visor. The knight dropped where he stood.
"Captain Leodoro!" someone screamed.
Chaska looked up to find another guard already charging, less armored than the captain but still carrying enough steel to make the charge feel like being run down by something far heavier than a man.
Having emptied all three of her pistols, she nocked another arrow, but before she could aim, a pitchfork caught the man in the side. With his armor, it did little to wound him, but enough to break his stride, and that was all it took.
The crowd didn't wait for him to recover. Pitchforks, shovels, anything they'd carried into the fight, closed in on him in a scrum that turned him into something Chaska made a point of not looking at directly.
It was a miserable death, and it left her mind almost as quickly as it entered, because a scream rose up from somewhere, followed a moment later by a voice she recognized shouting behind her.
"Make way! Make way!"
Chaska turned to see Anya pushing forward, flanked by three burly men hauling a strange cannon between them. The warning sent anyone who'd survived long enough to know what that cannon could do scrambling out of the way.
Revolver in hand, another gift Shiro had given her, the way he'd given Chaska her bow, Anya fired alongside her men to hold back guards brave enough to try to stop them.
"Light those bastards up!" she roared, as her revolver and then her flintlock ran dry.
The cannon roared. Even the braver members of the guard scattered along with everyone else, and even braced for it, Chaska still felt the sound land somewhere deep behind her ribs.
"Pull back and recharge!" Anya ordered.
"We're running low on canister shot!" one of her men called back. "Three left!"
"I know. You think I haven't been counting? Do what you can—" Mid-scolding, she caught sight of Chaska reloading and paused. "You alright?"
"Yeah."
"Hm." Anya nodded, then asked, "Got something to say to me?"
"No," Chaska said.
Something in her expression must have said otherwise, because Anya softened. "You can say it, if you want."
"Alright, then. Where's your noble friend?"
Chaska had initially assumed this would be a straightforward push against the ducal guard using the guns Anya had handed out.
It hadn't gone that way. The guns had mattered, mostly early on, thinning enough of the guard to embolden a crowd that had only gathered for a lockdown announcement into something willing to actually fight.
By now, gunfire had thinned considerably, the battle mostly pitchforks against swords, with Anya's cannon doing the heavy lifting when it came to taking down the ducal guards.
The plan, as it had been explained to her, was that the noble Anya had allied with would strike later, delivering the intended killing blow. Even with bodies piling up on both sides, there'd been no sign of him yet.
"Well, I was wondering the same thing," Anya admitted, right as commotion broke out somewhere to their left.
"Is that them?"
"Has to be," Anya said, scanning the crowd, the mob ahead already cheering at something. "What's happening?"
"Vaulter cavalry's hitting the bastards from the right," someone reported. "Our right, their left!"
"It's them. Finally." Anya sighed in relief. "Where's Master Shiro?"
"No idea. Heard his gun a while ago, so I'm guessing he's still where we left him."
"Well, with the cavalry finally here, we're going to need him to push, never mind.
" She turned to her crew. "I'll leave this to you.
Once you're out of canister shot, switch to full support fire.
Save the hand mortar unless it's absolutely necessary, that thing costs a fortune to fire.
" Then she grabbed Chaska's hand. "Let's go find him. "
The last time Chaska had seen of Shiro, he'd been with the first group of gunmen, the ones who'd kicked all of this off, doing more than anyone to embolden the crowd with the weapon he carried, one that spat blue fire along with everything else it destroyed.
She expected to find him still doing exactly that.
Instead, she found him half naked, waving a flag improvised from his own shirt in one hand, shotgun in the other, standing atop a cannon his crew was pushing forward, its barrel aimed at a knot of guardsmen retreating toward the estate.
A few braver knights broke off to try and stop him.
All it earned them was a shout of "à bas la monarchie!
à bas la tyrannie!" and a blast that swallowed them whole in flame.
It was a horrifying sight, made worse by the darkness of the night, worse still by how the screaming braided together with Shiro's laughter, unmistakably delighted, unmistakably unwell. He turned down toward the men working the cannon.
"What are we waiting for, my common brethren? Obliterate them!"
"Yes, sir!" they answered, and fired.
"Allez bourgeois, dites adieu à veaux, vaches, cochons...
hahaha," Shiro called out, waving grandly to the crowd cheering around him.
"March forward, my friends! Let's not let these dinosaur-riding cavaliers steal all the glory of this battle, this will be our victory!
" he declared, still standing atop the cannon, chest out, proud, and, Chaska noted with a complicated expression, sporting quite the bulge in his pants.
"What's up with him?" Anya asked, half amused, half concerned.
"He's high."
"High?"
"Long story—"
As if he'd heard them, Shiro turned, spotted them, and made his way over, greeting Chaska with a kiss before doing the same to Anya. "Hey, what are you two doing back here? The real fight's up ahead," he said, pointing toward the ducal palace. "Let's go get Vanya out."
He grabbed both their hands and pulled them forward, into the mob, now swollen with a wave of vaulter-riding troops courtesy of their noble ally.
They reached the ducal palace to find its doors sealed, and nothing in the crowd's arsenal so much as scratched them, until the solution arrived, once again, courtesy of Lord Vasseur: a team of massive, helmed ramblers, normally used to haul freight wagons, brought forward with exactly one purpose in mind, ramming the door.
It was enough to put hope back in everyone's chest, at least until the first impact made clear the door would open eventually, just not in the next ten minutes.
"This is going to take a while," Chaska said, immediately regretting it, since she was hardly the only one with reason to be impatient.
"Definitely too long," Shiro agreed. "How about we go ahead instead. I feel like I can pull it off right now."
"Go ahead?" Chaska and Anya both frowned.
"Yeah," Shiro said, pointing up. It took them a second to understand what he meant.
"Hold on tight," he said, pulling them close before putting Chaska through one of the most horrifying experiences of her life.
One moment she was on solid ground, exactly where she'd assumed she'd stay until the day she died. The next they were crashing through a window on the estate's top floor, having decided a less crowded floor was the smarter entry point. Shiro had taken that logic to its extreme.
The moment they were safely inside, Chaska slapped his arm. "Don't ever do that to me again. I thought I was going to die. I almost peed myself. If I hadn't already."
Shiro just laughed. Anya, watching him, recalled what Chaska had said earlier about him being high. There was something distinctly unhinged about his behavior tonight.
"Now," Shiro said, "time to actually go find and free Vanya."
"Any idea where she's being kept?" Chaska asked.
"No," Anya said, shaking her head, "but I know someone who will. The—"
She never finished the sentence. One moment she was speaking, the next she was being yanked backward, and Chaska caught, in the whiplash of the motion, something hovering where Anya had just been standing, now clenched in Shiro's fist.
"Knew I couldn't shake the habit of grabbing whatever gets thrown at me," Shiro said, smiling at her before glancing down at the dagger caught between his gauntleted hands.
"Good thing I've got these." He turned toward the end of the corridor, where the one who'd thrown it now stood.
"Hello, Karen. Heard you've been talking shit about me. "
"Hiiiiro!" the silhouette at the end of the corridor roared. A moment later, a dozen more blades came flying down the corridor. He dropped the captured dagger and raised his shotgun, firing a blast of pellets that scattered the incoming daggers out of the air.
"It's Shiro," he corrected, and kicked one of the fallen daggers back down the hall toward her.