Page 84 of City of Stone and Silence

It’s not hard to find the center of the crowd. Torches, lanterns, and bonfires are concentrated in the High Market, sending up a dull crimson glow bright enough to highlight the lowest clouds.

It’s strange, though, passing through the streets and alleys I’ve walked so many times. The riot—rising, rebellion, whatever it is—feels like a weird inverse festival. There are the same crowds, pressing close and forcing me to close down my Kindre senses, the same constant noise, the same jittery energy. But the voices are raised in anger rather than excitement, and people roam in tight packs, watching one another warily.

The story of the night is written in the debris still littering the road. I pass Kamura’s noodle stall, half demolished, its timbers and boards pulled away to form a makeshift barricade. These barriers are everywhere, facing north toward the wall and the Ward Guard barracked there. People are milling around, not quite sure what to do next, still angry but without an obvious target. This might actually work. If Garo can make them listen …

We push into the center of the market, where people are densest. All sorts are represented in the crowd, from laborers in rude vests to upper-ward servants still wearing their tailored uniforms, old men leaning on walking sticks, and young women in colorful robes. There are a lot of walking sticks around, I notice, along with empty sleeves and ugly scars. People Grandma helped.

In the center of the crowd, there’s a small clear space. A dozen people are sitting in a circle, arguing furiously, with everyone else pressing as close as they can. I assume these are the leaders, or what passes for them. We manage to reach the edge of the council area by vigorous shoving. A ring of people at the front are holding the rest back, big, tough-looking men and women in leather vests and colorful bandannas. When Garo attempts to get through, several hands shove him backward, and Giniva has to catch him before he falls.

“I need to speak to whoever’s in charge!” Garo shouts, though he has a hard time making himself heard above the clamor. “Please, let me pass.”

“You and everyone else in the ward,” one of the bouncers roars back. “Get rotted.”

I push my way up beside him. “We have information.”

“I don’t—” the bouncer begins, but her companion leans close and points at me.

“Isn’t that Tori?” he says. “From the hospital?”

I nod, vigorously. The bouncer detaches herself and talks to one of the people in the circle, and a moment later Garo and I are escorted through. I gesture desperately to Giniva, Vekata, and the others to wait.

A woman, in her thirties and hard-bitten from outdoor work, gives us a dismissive look as the bouncers return to holding back the crowd. Her companions in the circle don’t even look up, continuing their frantic argument. The woman steps closer and half-whispers, half-shouts.

“Who are you supposed to be? A couple of kids?”

“My name is Garo,” Garo says. “This is Tori.”

“Grandma’s Tori?” the woman says.

I nod again.

“Hmm.” She frowns. “You probably don’t remember me. I came in with—”

“Infected boil on your backside, right?” I force a grin. “I was the one who lanced it.”

“Rotting Blessed that hurt.” The woman gives me a friendly clap on the shoulder. “I’m Hotara. What are you doing here?”

“We need to talk to you. To everyone.” I pull Garo forward. “We might have a chance to help Grandma, but we have to move quickly.”

“Good luck getting this lot to move anywhere.” Hotara waves at her fellow leaders. “The only thing they agree on is that they disagree on everything.”

“Can you get them to quiet down?” Garo says. “Just a few moments will do.”

Hotara gives me a questioning look, and I nod. She shrugs.

“I’ll do what I can.” Turning away from us, she takes a deep breath, and bellows at a volume I couldn’t have achieved with a megaphone. “Everyone shut your rotting mouths for a minute!”

Astonishingly, people do, if only from sheer surprise. There’s a moment of opportunity, and Garo takes it, raising one hand dramatically in front of him. He’s smooth as anything, young, handsome, confident.

“Friends!” he begins. “People of the Blessed Empire! My brothers!”

Then he starts to speak, and I realize it’s not going to work.

I’m not sure if the problem is that Garo didn’t pay attention to his rhetoric tutors, or that he listened to them too closely. He certainly sounds good, lots of ringing phrases, good projection, with the stance of a dramatist on the stage. But what he’s actually saying is—well, boring. He talks about the decline of the Imperial system, the rise of commercial interests, and the challenges posed by the increasing urbanization of labor. He tells the people of the Eleventh Ward, gathered in the middle of the night half in fear, half in fury, that what they ought to demand is tax reform and a reorganization of the civil service. It sounds like something he’s practiced, and I’m sure it was very convincing to his First Ward friends, as they sat around his dining room trying to figure out how to save the world. Here, though, the muttering starts before he’s gone through more than a paragraph, and by the time he mentions that the Immortals are holding people here in the ward—I might have started with that—nobody’s listening. He’s glancing around as he speaks, looking desperate. I want to hug him and slap him at the same time.

Blessed protect us from well-intentioned nobility. I may have spent the last few years in the Second Ward, but I remember being hungry and afraid.

We’re not going to get another chance at this. By morning, the Ward Guard will have re-established control, and the prisoners will be moved somewhere more secure. Grandma, Kosura, and the others will be out of reach, along with any information about Isoka. I know what I have to do, but—