Chapter 40 Sheuan
Sheuan
Langzu – inner Bian
Vendors refusing to accept ration tickets, or asking for more tickets than is warranted, has become an issue in Langzu.
We distribute the tickets monthly, and the vendors at sanctioned markets are required to take them, but they complain about the hassle of redeeming them.
Twice a month is not enough, they say. They hate having to line up to exchange the tickets for money from the Sovereign’s enforcers, and this takes time from their work.
However, I do not think increasing the frequency of redemption events will solve the problem.
“Sovereign,” Sheuan muttered. She inclined her head to him, her mind racing.
She was caught out, alone in the night air of the streets.
What possible excuse could she have that made any sense?
It wasn’t as though she could say she’d stayed late at the workshop making filters.
She’d slipped away from the enforcers set to ostensibly protect her.
And she knew inner Bian like the back of her hand; she couldn’t say she’d gotten lost. Detained?
But by who? She had to have an excuse for privacy.
Ah, wait, she had just the thing. Her heart raced and she tried to reframe the feeling in her veins from fear to a slight anxiety. “I hesitate to say in front of others. Please, can we speak in your rooms about this? Back at the castle?”
Two of the enforcers closest to the Sovereign held lanterns aloft, illuminating their silver armbands and the smooth lines of his face. His expression might have said he was concerned, but she caught the gleam of triumph in his gaze. She had him. “Where were you? Answer me.”
She inclined her head again, the picture of a deferent wife to the most powerful man in the realm. “I went to see a physician. I wanted to go alone, so I found a way to leave the enforcers behind. It was a private matter. A womanly one.”
He didn’t look unsettled, like some men did when womanly medical issues were mentioned – he only looked bored. “Yes? What was it? The volume of your monthly flow? And did the physician tell you everything was fine?”
She glanced at the enforcers as though nervous to reveal any information in their presence. Several of them shifted from foot to foot, avoiding her gaze, embarrassed. “Well, it wasn’t that. He said he wouldn’t know for certain until a few weeks more. But since you and I…” She trailed off.
It was like placing a hand on a dog’s back when it hadn’t heard you approach. The Sovereign flinched away when it finally came together in his mind. And this time, his expression was easy to read, his brows low, his jaw slightly slack. He was annoyed, yes, but perturbed too.
Sheuan wanted to laugh, but she stuffed the sound down her throat, burying it under caution and fear.
As though she’d let herself become pregnant by him, at this time.
That was one of the first things Mitoran had taught her – what herbs to take to prevent that, and how much to mix into her tea.
If he already held power over her, imagine how much more he would hold if she were carrying his child.
The annoyance she understood. She’d given him a very reasonable explanation for her disappearance; if he asked after the doctor, he’d look overzealous.
But she wasn’t even sure he’d thought that far ahead.
It was the clear discomfort he’d shown that piqued her curiosity.
He’d told her himself: he hadn’t been intimate with many people over the years.
Perhaps they’d been mostly men, and maybe this wasn’t a worry he’d ever encountered before.
They’d only been together once, but once could have been enough.
Shouts rose in the distance. The enforcers’ heads whipped about. Someone screamed. The distant clash of metal.
Sheuan felt all the hairs on her arms rise at once. Something bad was happening. The Sovereign beckoned to her, and then she was cloistered in the middle of the enforcers.
An enforcer jogged up to the others, breathless. “A riot. Outskirters in the inner city. They started raiding the merchant carts and stalls. Some of them are trying to set fire to the estates. We need to get you back to the castle. Now.”
The Sovereign’s special enforcers closed in around them.
She’d been so preoccupied with the reason her father had been executed, she hadn’t kept a close enough eye on the situation in the city.
Restoration had been delayed, the winter rains hadn’t yet arrived, and crops were failing.
The Sovereign was still handing out ration tickets, but those tickets purchased fewer and fewer goods these days. She should have expected riots.
Even if she had, she wouldn’t have expected them in inner Bian. Somehow she’d always thought violence would be confined to the outskirts.
“Take as many enforcers as you can find,” the Sovereign said to the man who’d run up. “Arrest any rioters who are trying to destroy property or set fire to buildings. Send someone to warn the noble and royal families, and get the guards out in front of their estates.”
“The looters?”
“Leave them. We have to prioritize and shut down any destruction first. We need to get this under control and make sure it doesn’t get any worse.”
The man nodded and darted away.
Sheuan was already making a mental map of the city in her mind. She’d arrived from the direction of the lakebed. Outer Bian ringed inner Bian in a half-circle, on the opposite side. They should be able to make it up and into the castle before danger struck.
That was assuming the rioters had planned none of this, that they were just reacting to the poor conditions, that this had all just sprung up as randomly as a grass fire.
The Sovereign’s shoulder jostled hers as they made their way down empty streets.
The sounds of breaking wood and screams grew louder.
She breathed in deep, letting it out in one long, controlled movement.
They had to move toward the riots to get to the castle. The scent of smoke drifted in the wind.
Some other part of her mind flitted back to the conversation she’d just had with the Sovereign and his strange reaction.
Why would he be so worried that she was pregnant?
Wouldn’t most people in his position want a child for their legacy?
The Sovereign had no heirs, had done nothing more than dangle marriage as bait before other prospective suitors.
She’d cornered him into it. Still, she would have thought a child would be something he wanted, especially with the filters protecting his chosen from restoration.
The man’s hair was nearly all white. He was older than her father had been, and Sheuan was a grown woman.
He wouldn’t live forever, and then what would happen to the organization he’d built?
She had no illusions that he’d pass the whole thing on to her. What, then, was his endgame?
All she knew for certain was that with the development of these riots, he’d want restoration to occur sooner rather than later. Which meant he’d want her to make more filters.
She was so buried in these thoughts that the chaos surrounding them became nothing more than background noise.
They turned into an alley to avoid a group of rioters storming toward her mother’s old estate.
And when that group passed, they moved into the main street, only to be forced into another alley.
Were they getting any closer to the castle? She thought she recognized the walls of the nearest building.
And then they stopped, and Sheuan ran her face into an enforcer’s broad shoulder.
For a moment, all she could do was study the silver embroidery on silver cloth, an eye and a cherry branch.
She’d always thought it some ridiculous reference to the power of Kluehnn combined with the Sovereign’s power.
But here, this close, she noticed a small design difference.
Kluehnn’s eyes were always depicted symmetrically, rays emanating from the center.
This one was asymmetrical, like a normal eye, bereft of rays.
Her nose hurt. She put a hand to it. No blood.
Her gaze lifted over the enforcer’s shoulder.
A group of rioters stood at the mouth of the alley, blocking the way out.
They looked tired and gaunt, but some held makeshift weapons high.
A few, she noticed, had swords. Swords they must have taken from the bodies of enforcers.
She glanced behind. Another group of rioters, closing in.
They were surrounded.