The Conjuring Man, page 11
“You’d still have the basics of enchantment,” Adam reminded her. He wasn’t sure of the difference between charms and enchantment, but he understood that magical masters had no trouble making decent livings. “It’ll be worthwhile.”
“I’ll speak to my father tonight,” Lilith said. She stood, nearly cracking her head into the ceiling. “And if he doesn’t approve, I’ll tell him I’m doing it anyway.”
Adam swallowed. “And if he tries to block you ...?”
“I disown him,” Lilith said, sharply. “I won’t deal with him being ... that ... any longer. If the family has a problem with it, they can damn well bring him to heel before I make any more concessions to them.”
She stood, brushing down her tunic. Adam felt a lump in his throat. It wasn’t easy to be a man alone and far harder a woman, even with magic. If she disowned her father ... he told himself he’d do everything in his power to help, although it might not be anything like enough. And if her father pushed against him too ...
I know how to craft runic tiles and spell circuits too, he reminded himself. He might not be a formal craftsman, but he didn’t have to let that stand in his way. And I can make a living somewhere – anywhere – else too.
He frowned as he heard the sound of running footsteps coming to a halt outside the door. A moment later, he heard a knock. Someone was outside ... Lilith visibly winced as she sat back down, a moment before Adam could open the door. They weren’t alone, but still ...
A messenger stood outside, breathing heavily. “Councillor,” he managed, between gasps. He looked and sounded as if he’d run all the way from town. “There’s an uprising in Farrakhan against the monarchy, and they’re asking for help!”
Adam hesitated, caught by surprise. He wasn’t used to being any kind of leadership figure. “Help? How can we help?”
Taffy stood, brushing down her work tunic. “We have an airship loaded with bombs,” she said, sharply. “I think it’s time to take Voidsdaughter into battle.”
Chapter Eleven: Dalia of Farrakhan
“Are we actually going to do anything?” Dalia knew she shouldn’t be talking to her superior in quite that tone of voice, but she found it hard to care. “Or are we going to do nothing as the king tightens his grip and the city crumbles to ruin?”
She paced the room, trying to keep her voice under control. It was frustrating! She’d watched helplessly as her older brother was marched off to war – no one knew what had happened to him, or any of the other soldiers who hadn’t made it back to Farrakhan – and her youngest brother had been put on notice that he’d be expected to take the king’s coin as soon as he hit puberty. Her father’s taxes had been raised – everyone’s taxes had been – while her mother was running around all day, trying to find enough food to keep the family alive for another month or two. Dalia herself had been lucky. She’d only been catcalled by the dragoons on the streets, the king’s personal armsmen. She knew girls who’d been swept off their feet – literally – and never been seen again.
It had been inevitable, she supposed, that she’d drifted into the Levellers. She was sick and tired of watching as her family was drained dry, all the while waiting helplessly for an arranged marriage and a chance to churn out more boys for the army and girls to produce more children. The Levellers offered her and her peers a chance to be something more, a chance to break free of the king and the city’s aristocracy, a chance to reach their full potential rather than linger in the gutter. She knew boys who could have made it, if they hadn’t been denied accreditation by the guilds, and girls who would have gone far if they hadn’t been told to get married and have children of their own. And she was uneasily aware she might not even live long enough to get married. There was less and less food in the shops with each passing day.
Her master looked sympathetic. “The dragoons have the city under tight control,” he pointed out, curtly. “If we rise too soon, we’ll be slaughtered.”
Dalia gritted her teeth. The hell of it was that her master had a point. The dragoons were marching the streets, throwing their weight around to make it clear the city was under their control. She’d seen them crashing into homes and shops, searching the premises for unpaid taxes, weapons, and whatever else their captains thought to demand. And while they hadn’t broken up the movement, as far as she knew, they had convinced the activists to keep their heads down. There were caches of weapons within the city, and plans for an uprising to take control of the garrison, the castle and the walls, but they were worse than useless as long as the dragoons remained in full control. The bastards were even harassing groups of more than three men!
“We have to do something,” she protested, finally. “If not now, when?”
Her anger rose. She didn’t have much more time before she was married off. Her brother didn’t have much time before he was conscripted or forced to go on the run. Her father was already old and frail, worn down by the twin demands of his shop and the government’s taxes, and it was just a matter of time before he collapsed. What would happen then? Her older brother would technically inherit, if he were still alive ... was he? Dalia’s heart twisted at the thought. Her brother could be overbearing at times – all brothers seemed to think they had the right to poke their noses into their sisters’ business whenever the whim struck them – but he wasn’t a bad sort. He didn’t deserve to die fighting for the king. She tried to convince herself, once again, that he wasn’t already dead.
“We need to wait for our chance,” her master said. “If we move too soon ...”
Dalia snorted, rudely. Her master was old, set in his ways. He’d been a revolutionary before firearms, the printing press and everything else that had turned revolution from a theoretical prospect in a far-distant future to a real possibility. And yet, he’d never taken the final step to fight for his demands, to risk everything for freedom. He’d told them he was still alive, when other revolutionaries had been hung, drawn and quartered, but Dalia suspected he was – at heart – a coward. He certainly had more to lose than she did.
“Take the latest set of posters,” he told her. “And pin them up wherever you can.”
“Fine,” Dalia snarled. She knew she was risking a beating, but she really didn’t care. “And you can come up with a plan to act before it’s too late.”
She turned and stomped away, anger burning through her. The posters were pointless. The dragoons tore the papers down as soon as they saw them. She risked a terrible fate if she was caught posting them too ... so did her master, if she was forced to talk. She’d taken oaths of dread silence, sworn on all she held dear, but she’d been cautioned that everyone talked eventually. Her master had told her little about cells outside her own, yet she knew too many young men and women who were involved in one cell or another. It was yet another reason to move quickly, she thought as she scooped up the leaflets and stuck them in her shirt. She liked to think no one knew she was a revolutionary, but she suspected it was an open secret. There was little true privacy for young women and prying eyes followed them everywhere. And if she’d been seeing a young man, the secret wouldn’t have lasted long at all.
Which is proof the people are with us, she thought. People talked, particularly older women who thought the younger generation should aspire to nothing more than emulating their mothers and grandmothers. They would have ratted me out if they didn’t approve of what I was doing.
The street felt darker, even though it was broad daylight, as she stepped out of the pub. Men – and a handful of women – strode along the pavements, doing their best to stay close together without drawing attention from the dragoons. It looked absurd, she noted, to see so few people walking on the roads themselves, but the dragoons had no qualms about whipping pedestrians who blocked horsemen and carriages from rocketing down the streets as quickly as possible. She’d seen people get pushed aside, even trampled, in the past, but this was different. The city was slowly losing its soul.
And yet, the sense of anger grew stronger as she made her way to the shopping district. Long lines of people, mainly housewives, were waiting outside the shops, muttering angrily despite the handful of dragoons watching them from a safe distance. Dalia clenched her teeth, feeling a surge of hatred as she took in the soldiers. They were warmly dressed and well fed and marched around as though they owned the city, while her family was struggling to put bread on the table. She wished she had magic. She would have struck them dead on the spot in the certain knowledge the entire city would cheer, then liberate her brother from their clutches ...
The muttering grew stronger as a shop closed, the disappointed women forced to join other lines and hope for the best. A number of men appeared, their faces dark and cold. It was rare for men to join the lines – shopping was women’s work, Dalia had always been told – but the population was desperate. Her father would be out on the streets too, if he hadn’t had to mind the shop. She saw men getting angry, as the dragoons shifted uneasily in response. They were armed to the teeth and yet they were so badly outnumbered they could be overwhelmed and slaughtered if the crowd turned on them. She wondered, once again, what had happened to her city. Men who had no qualms about beating their womenfolk were seemingly unwilling to stand up for them.
She forced herself to keep going, heading into the alleyway to pin up the first poster. The dragoons were a little more careful about wandering the darkened passageways and side-streets, all too aware they could be surrounded and beaten to death before they could raise the alarm. It was funny, she reflected darkly, how only a few short weeks ago being caught in an alleyway would be enough to brand a young woman a whore. Now, it was the safest place for a young girl. The whores and pimps had taken themselves off to haunt the streets outside the garrison, while the alleyways kept the women away from the dragoons ...
A hand fell on her shoulder. Dalia jumped. She’d always prided herself on being aware of her surroundings and yet someone had come up behind her ... she spun around and came face to face with a dragoon, his face shifting into a leer as he lowered his eyes from the poster to her chest. She’d been careful to wear a loose shirt, but there was no disguising the shape of her breasts. Raw anger shot through her as he tightened his grip. She knew what he was going to say before he opened his mouth. It was his duty to bring her to his superiors, so she could be put on the rack to make her talk, but instead ... he’d let her go if she went down on him. Or worse. She felt a wave of disgust at the thought. How dare he? How dare he?
“Well,” he breathed. “What do we have here?”
He pressed his lips to hers, trying to steal a kiss. Dalia brought her knee up and rammed it into his groin as hard as she could, gritting her teeth at the pain. He wore a protective codpiece ... the impact should have had him bent over, screaming in agony, but instead he merely staggered. She pulled herself free, a crazy thought running through her mind as he lurched after her. She could hitch up her skirts and run, relying on speed and a matchless knowledge of the city to make her escape, or she could try to trigger a riot by running in the other direction. If she did ... he growled, his eyes promising more than just rape when he got his hands on her. Dalia had no more time to think; she turned and ran back the way she’d come, his footsteps echoing in her ears. She screamed as she ran onto the street, the dragoon right behind her. The crowd stared. If they hadn’t already been so angry ...
A group of men tackled the dragoon. His peers at the far end of the streets shouted, driving their horses forward as the women started throwing bags and rocks and everything else that came to hand. The leader drew his sword, only to be struck in the head by a rock and sent tumbling to the ground. His men hesitated, a fraction of a second too long. They were surrounded and yanked down, weeks of suppressed anger and hatred bubbling up and turning to rage. Dalia saw a man’s head crushed under his own horse, his skull busting like a coconut ... she would have felt sick, if she hadn’t known the man had been a dragoon. He’d deserved worse just for taking the king’s coin.
“Kill the dragoons,” she shouted. Normally, very few people would pay attention to a young woman. But the times were anything but normal. “Kill them all!”
She caught hold of a young boy as the riot spread out of control. “Take a message to the Traveller’s Tea,” she said, slipping him a silver coin. “Tell the manager the time is now. He’ll understand.”
The boy nodded, threw her a jaunty salute and hurried off. Dalia hoped he’d be safe. Street children were surprisingly dependable – any messenger who took the money without delivering the message would feel the wrath of his peers – but the streets were no longer safe. The chant was spreading rapidly, more and more people pouring onto the streets to take up the fight against the dragoons. She heard others screaming into the air – “death to the aristos, death to the guilds” – and gritted her teeth, hoping to all the gods the riot drove the dragoons off the streets long enough for the movement to get organised. They didn’t have much time. If the dragoons withdrew to the castle, they could dig in behind solid walls and wait for the king to send help. Everyone knew the castle was impregnable ...
She gathered herself and hurried back to the pub. The streets were in chaos. Dragoons lay dead on the ground, some horrifically mutilated. A number of guildhouses and small banks were already being looted, the former guildmasters being paraded around the streets and forced to concede all the rights they’d withheld for far too long. Dalia hoped they’d never have a chance to take revenge, after being put through hell. The guildsmen were known to have the king’s ear, as long as they behaved themselves. She’d hung up posters suggesting they had their hands on a very different part of his anatomy.
Her master was standing outside his pub, handing out weapons to the rest of the cell. Dalia took a rifle, silently glad she’d had time to learn how to use it. The firearm wasn’t that complex, compared to the steam locomotives she’d admired before the war, but loading and firing the rifle required care and attention. She took a red bandana and wrapped it around her arm, wincing slightly at the bruises the dragoon had left behind. She hadn’t even noticed that her arm hurt until now. She hoped the bastard had enjoyed being beaten to death.
“The time is now,” she said. Her master no longer had any reason to delay. There were revolutionary cells all over the city. Either they joined them in fighting for their freedom or they abandoned the cause, dooming themselves to being branded cowards or simply being wiped out when the dragoons regained control of the streets. “We have to move fast.”
“We have to deal with the castle,” her master said. He looked both determined and fearful as he spoke. “Everything else can wait.”
Dalia nodded and led the team down the street, a sense of unreality sweeping over her as they hurried through shattered shop fronts and stepped over dead bodies ... not all of them, she realised numbly, belonging to dragoons. It felt as if they were hovering on the cusp of freedom or complete destruction, as if everything rested on their next move. All the old certainties, all the old ways to behave, had vanished utterly. A day ago, no man would follow a young woman into combat. Now, they ran behind her without complaint.
The shooting grew louder as they reached the square and turned to face the castle. It was a blocky, ugly structure, a solid keep surrounded by high stone walls broken only by arrow slits and portholes. She saw dragoons pulling back frantically, shooting madly in all directions as they tried to retreat. A line of well-dressed men and women followed ... a surge of hatred ran through her as she spotted the Lord Mayor, a man known for corruption on a scale that would daunt even the king’s taxmen. He was easily the most hated person in the city ...
She sensed, more than felt, the arrow passing through the air above, so close it practically slipped through her hair. She raised her rifle and snapped off a shot, aiming at one of the arrow slits. She couldn’t tell if she’d hit anything as more revolutionaries – from her cell and others – added their own fire to the din. The portcullis came down so quickly she knew someone had panicked and cut the chain, the spikes striking a handful of people who’d moved too slowly and pinned them to the ground. The Lord Mayor, caught on the wrong side of the gate, raised his hands in surrender. It was too late. Dalia would have preferred to take him alive, to find out where he’d hidden the stolen money, but she couldn’t blame her peers for opening fire. The mayor didn’t stand a chance.
“Get back,” she ordered, as the defenders opened fire. They were clearing the streets around the castle walls, driving the revolutionaries into cover. She saw a man picked up and hurled through the air by an arrow, the shaft stabbing through his body and pinning him to the wall. “We need to keep them from breaking out!”
Her master joined them, already looking tired. Dalia understood. There’d been so many cells in only limited contact with each other that organising the shift from taking the city to actually running it was incredibly difficult. She’d heard the horror stories from Alluvia. Those revolutionaries had destroyed the kingdom while trying to save it ...
“Stalemate,” he said, grimly. “We can’t get to them and they can’t get to us.”
Dalia scowled. She’d seen men caught in the open and mown down effortlessly. Her authority wouldn’t last if she ordered her ragtag force to charge the castle, knowing most would be dead within seconds. And who knew what would happen then? There were already men signing up to join the revolutionary army, men who didn’t know her or objected to taking orders from women on general principles ... she wouldn’t have cared that much, she admitted to herself, if the city wasn’t balanced on a knife edge. If the king had a chance to mount a counterattack ...
“But we sent word to Heart’s Eye,” her master added. “If they have gunpowder, or something, they can bring the walls down.”
Dalia hoped – prayed – he was right.
Chapter Twelve
