The Conjuring Man, page 14
Adam felt a flicker of something he didn’t care to look at too closely. Dalia was striking, with dark skin and smoky eyes and an attitude that both drew his attention and cautioned him to stay well away from her. It would have cautioned him even if he hadn’t already been dating Lilith. He wasn’t sure why he felt that way. Dalia had shoved her way onto the stage – there were already reports insisting she’d thrown the first stone or fired the first shot or whatever else had triggered the rising – and now she demanded everyone pay heed to her and the rest of the radicals. Adam understood the urge to demand equality, and an end to all the old restrictions, but he also feared where it might lead. The mob could not be trusted. Beneficence had learnt that the hard way.
“We demand an end to the guilds,” someone else said. “They need to be torn down and banned from ever rising again.”
“The guilds serve a valuable purpose,” a third person insisted. “They need to be reformed. A secret ballot ...”
“The guilds have ever barred people from joining and rising to the top,” Dalia snapped, sharply. Adam wondered if she or one of her male relatives had ever been denied entry to a guild. It was rare for women to join, although that was slowly changing in the wake of the New Learning. “If we give them an inch, they’ll take a mile and then we’ll be back in the same boat. Again!”
“There are more important issues right now,” one of the royalists said. “Who is in charge of the city?”
The question hung in the air. The old council was dead and gone. The Lord Mayor had been the king’s servant before his death, while the rest of the councillors had been hacked to pieces by the mob if they hadn’t made it out before it was too late. Adam had no intention of shedding any tears for them, but their deaths had left a power vacuum that needed to be filled as quickly as possible. The city needed some kind of governing body ...
“Us,” Dalia said. “We, the people.”
“And who gets to vote?” The royalist, Adam decided, had nerve. The royalists might be able to call on the princess’s troops, if all hell broke loose, but they were camped outside the walls and wouldn’t be able to get to the hall until it was all over. “Property owners? People born in the city? People who have lived in the city for a year and a day? Everyone?”
“Everyone,” Dalia said, firmly. “If we exclude someone, for whatever reason, it will be used as an excuse to exclude more and more people until the franchise becomes a joke.”
Taffy nudged Adam. “She has a point.”
Adam nodded, slowly. He could see both sides of the argument. On one hand, it was easy to come up with reasons to include immigrants, or women, or people who didn’t own land and therefore had no stake in the city. On the other, why should a person be allowed to move into the city one day and register as a voter the next? Or ... he could think of a dozen arguments, all surprisingly reasonable, to include some groups of voters and exclude others. To him, they were intellectual arguments; to them, they were a matter of life and death.
“Excuse me,” an older woman said. She wore an outfit that was as close to noble dress as possible without running afoul of the sumptuary laws, suggesting she – or her husband – was a prosperous merchant. “We pay taxes. We should have a say in how the tax money is spent. But why should people who don’t pay taxes have any say? In anything?”
Dalia’s dark eyes flashed fire. “Because they live in the city too?”
“They still don’t pay,” the woman said. She had nerve too, Adam decided. “Why should we let you vote yourself whatever you want?”
“You don’t,” Dalia snapped. “Your husband pays the taxes. You’re just a ... parasite on him.”
The woman’s face went red. “Excuse me?”
Dalia smirked, as if she’d just broken a social taboo. Perhaps she had. It was rare for young women to contradict her elders in public, certainly in front of the men. A week ago, Dalia would have been marched home and her parents told to deal with her, if she wasn’t put in the stocks or worse. Now, Dalia had power and her elders had to deal with her as an equal – or superior. The world had tilted on its axis and everyone had to adapt or die.
“Your husband pays the taxes,” she said. “That’s fine, as long as your husband takes care of you. But what happens when he grows sick of you? Or finds another woman? Or simply dies? Do you really want your position to be dependent on him for the rest of your life?”
Adam rolled his eyes as the argument raged on, wondering when – if – the city’s competing factions were going to come to an agreement. There were just too many factions and too little common ground, save perhaps the need to maintain the city’s relative independence from whoever won the civil war. Adam gritted his teeth, half-wishing he’d thought to withdraw before the friendly debates had turned into arguments. He might be famous – and Taffy and Lilith had been welcomed because he’d brought them – but he had little voice at the table. He was an outsider. No one would ever forget it.
Betty put her fingers to her lips and whistled. Silence fell. Adam was morbidly impressed. Betty had spent time in the city, forging links with some of the Levellers ... not all, he suspected, and not the more radical factions. It was frustrating as hell that the old cell structure hadn’t led to effective leadership, now the Levellers had come out into the open. Dalia and her peers had claimed leadership through taking the lead when all hell had broken loose ...
“There are two points that need to be made, and made quickly,” she said, into the silence. “The first is that the city needs a working government that enjoys the support of most of the population. This requires both a universal adult franchise, with no room for excluding anyone from voting, and a clear set of rules for governing the city, detailing what the council can and cannot do. It may lead to compromises not everyone will be happy with, because they won’t get everything they want, but at least they can live with it.
“The second point is that the king is still out there. Yes, he was surprised by the sheer violence of the uprising and the airship, which turned his impregnable garrison into a very pregnable target indeed. Yes, it will take him time to hear the news and put together some kind of response. But he will. Never doubt it. The king will not recognise your freedom unless you force him to do so, and he will only honour his agreements – such as they are – as long as he thinks there are no other options. A monarch’s power rests on his ability to enforce it, and on the perception he can enforce it, and if that is called into question, his throne becomes very insecure indeed. Your victory is a lethal threat to him.”
“So what?” Dalia’s voice echoed on the air. “His dragoons don’t even want to fight.”
“He can still push them to fight,” Betty said. “History tells us, time and time again, that you cannot expect a king to keep his agreements. How many rebellions have forced kings to make concessions to his people, only to have those concessions revoked the moment the king thought he could get away with it? You cannot rely on the king to keep an agreement he made under duress. They always wait until the rebel army goes home and disperses, then move in for the kill. And the former rebels wind up worse than ever before.”
Dalia’s mentor held up a hand. “What do you propose?”
“This is a death match,” Betty said, flatly. “The king cannot let us get away with destroying his garrison and overthrowing his loyalists. He cannot even offer us concessions, no matter how insincere, without looking weak and defenceless. His aristos will start licking their lips and wondering what they can get away with, perhaps even shifting their allegiance to Princess Violet or a more distant claimant. And, in the meantime, all the other cities and rural populations will start seeing us as an example to be emulated. The longer the king leaves us alone, the greater the risk another city will follow in our footsteps.
“We are committed. We were committed from the moment we rose up against him. And now we must fight to the finish.”
“We?” Dalia snorted. “You weren’t here when we rose up.”
“No,” Betty agreed. “I was in Heart’s Ease. But that doesn’t make me wrong.”
Dalia’s mentor cleared his throat. “What do you propose?”
“There are two problems,” Betty said. “First, we have to defeat the king – or, at the very least, make it impossible for him to defeat us. Second, we have to ensure that Princess Violet doesn’t become a threat in her own right. She is already recruiting soldiers and preparing for a march to the capital to defeat her brother and take the throne for herself. She is even planning to be formally crowned here and now, throwing down the gauntlet to the king and his aristos in a manner they cannot ignore. The weaker the king looks, the more his aristos will shift to her, demanding – in exchange for their support – that she makes concessions to them.”
She took a breath. “We already have the building blocks of an army,” she said. “We need to build up our forces to produce an army that will not only defeat the king, but make it impossible for the princess to turn on us afterwards. She will, if she is forced to rely on the aristos for her support. They won’t give her a choice. We must, and we must be capable of dealing with her if she sides against us. And time is not on our side. We need to start now.”
Adam leaned back in his chair and listened as the argument raged on. It was hard to tell who was on what side, but half the representatives seemed inclined to agree with Betty and the other half feared what would happen if the army turned into a threat in its own right. Adam suspected they had a point. It had taken him a long time to overcome the prejudice against soldiers – he’d never trust a mercenary, no matter what golden promises he made – and Farrakhan had far more recent reasons to be wary of standing armies. But if the city had a defence force of its own ...
“Adam,” Betty said. “What sort of weapons and tools could the university supply?”
Adam started, feeling put on the spot. “We are churning out more rifles and cannons,” he said, “although our own defences come first. We are also producing charged wands and staffs to add magical firepower, as well as other tools. I believe the railway could be repaired quickly, once the command is given. Beyond that, I don’t know.”
He felt a trickle of sweat run down his back. Betty was right. They were caught in a death match. But he had no authority to promise anything on the university’s behalf, save perhaps his own presence. He had no idea why Praxis or Yvonne hadn’t been invited to the meeting. They were university councillors. They could have spoken for their peers ...
“Then we need to get started,” Betty said. “Sort out elections now, then get organised before the king recovers his balance and sends an army to burn the city to the ground.”
Dalia leaned forward. “Can’t you just bomb the army from above?”
“No,” Adam said. “The airship isn’t very accurate. We were lucky the castle was such a big target, and we still missed on the first bombing run. We couldn’t hit a moving target.”
And the king might rig up a row of cannons in a bid to bring us down. The cannons weren’t any more accurate than the airship’s bombs, but cannonballs were cheap and it would only take one hit to blow the airship out of the sky. Muskets would be enough if the balls hit something vital, something we couldn’t afford to lose.
He shook his head. It didn’t matter. Hitting a marching army would be tricky and striking a fast-moving cavalry troop would be pretty much impossible, particularly if the horsemen had the sense to scatter. The airship was an effective weapon, but she wasn’t a war-winner in her own right. He made a mental note to look into other possible uses for the craft, if he had nothing else to do with his time. If they flew further into the kingdom and dropped leaflets ...
“We have a rough council here,” Dalia said. “Do we need elections?”
“We need a degree of legitimacy,” her mentor countered. “And we also need to decide on what terms we’ll ally with the princess.”
Betty nodded. “I need to speak to the rest of my team,” she said. “I don’t want to rush you, but can I urge you to sort out the matter as quickly as possible? We really don’t have much time.”
She motioned for Adam to follow her out of the hall and onto the streets. The roads were chaotic, with bands of armed men and women somehow managing to be both friendly and hostile to each other simultaneously. He had no trouble picking Dalia’s supporters out of the crowd. They all wore a red bandana around their upper arms, making them stand out. Others wore livery of their own ... his lips twitched in cold amusement, remembering the handful of noble entourages he’d seen draped in their master’s colours. Dalia would probably not be amused if he pointed out she was practically copying the aristocracy.
“It’s going better than I expected,” Betty said, cheerfully. “I’ve seen more chaotic councils in my life.”
Lilith shot her an odd look. “It looks as if they’ll never agree on anything.”
“It’ll take them a while,” Betty agreed. “There’ll be people who want the old order preserved, with a handful of minor changes, and people who’ll want to upend everything and rebuild from scratch. They’ll have to come to a balance point between merely changing the people in charge and tearing the old certainties to pieces, leaving chaos in its wake. But the king is breathing down their necks, as is the princess, and so ...”
She shrugged. “We have enough time to build an army and start preparing for the next move,” she said. “I trust you’ll be helping, as a councillor?”
Adam flushed. “I’ll do my best.”
“I have to head back to Heart’s Eye,” Lilith said. “I have to speak to my father about the apprenticeship, and then ...”
“Good luck,” Adam said. He wanted to offer to accompany her, but he knew it would be worse than useless even if he wasn’t needed in the city. “Ask the university to send all the help it can.”
“I will,” Lilith said. “You’ll certainly get a lot of volunteers, whatever else happens.”
“I hope so,” Adam agreed. “We have a lot of work to do.”
Chapter Fifteen
If my mother ever finds out I did this, Adam thought as he stepped onto the training ground, she’ll disown me on the spot.
The thought made him smile, even though it was serious enough to make him think twice about telling anyone. It was bad enough being a soldier, but being a sergeant was worse ... at least as far as his hometown’s population was concerned. Sergeants were all sweetness and light until the recruit was tricked into taking the king’s coin, whereupon they turned into nasty bastards who beat and flogged their charges until they did whatever they were told without question. The fact Adam wasn’t a real sergeant wouldn’t stop his old neighbours spitting whenever they heard his name, particularly when he wasn’t around to see it. He hoped no one back home would ever hear about what he’d done.
“This is your rifle,” he said, addressing the line of prospective recruits. “If you take care of it, it will take care of you.”
He paused, allowing his words to sink in as his eyes swept over the line. They were a mixed bag, mostly lower-class working men with a handful of upper-class men and women thrown in, and they were looking at him as if they were hanging on every word. He felt like a fraud. Hell, he was a fraud. A few days of training and a couple of battles didn’t make him qualified to teach new recruits. But the city adamantly refused to hire mercenaries or trust the king’s former soldiers, and there weren’t many other options. He just hoped they’d listen to him, at least long enough to master the basics. The rest would come in time.
“The basic rifle is not a very accurate weapon,” he said. “If you fire alone, the odds of you hitting your target are very low. If you fire as part of a team, however, you’ll be putting out so many bullets that some of them will almost certainly hit something. During the Zangarian Civil War, we saw enemy cavalry charge into the teeth of musket and rifle fire and get shot to bloody pieces. The rifle can and will dominate the battlefield, as long as you know what you are doing with it.”
He opened the rifle and demonstrated how to load the bullet and powder, then fire the first shot on the makeshift firing range. A handful of titters echoed behind him as the bullet missed its target. Adam did his best to ignore the laughter. Instead, he walked from recruit to recruit, watching as they prepared their rifles to fire. They seemed to be listening to him as they lined up, although it was hard to be sure. He suspected he lacked the presence his first sergeant had shown when he’d been drilling his recruits in the basics. And besides, his power to punish was limited.
“You must always clean your rifle,” he said, when everyone had taken a shot. He’d wanted them to have more time to practice, but supplies of gunpowder and shot were low. He’d been told there was more on the way, yet ... he shook his head. They’d just have to wait and hope for the best. “If the barrel gets fouled, your accuracy will become even worse” – there were some chuckles – “and there will be a very real chance of the weapon exploding when you try to fire it. Keep it clean, keep it safe, keep yourself safe ...”
He paced the line again, watching how they cleaned their guns. “There’ll be random inspections,” he cautioned them, although he wasn’t sure it was true. The city’s radical factions chafed against any discipline, no matter how necessary. It was funny and yet deeply worrying. If the mob couldn’t be kept in line, how long would it be until they started lashing out at the nearest target? “If your weapon is found to be unclean, you’ll be in the shit.”
He took a breath, then went through the rest of the spiel. He introduced them to grenades – explosive and gas – and everything else he’d learnt, at least in the abstract. He didn’t have the authority to make them dig trenches, even though it might make the difference between life and death. He briefly touched on battlefield medicine, although he doubted it would be any real use. The wounded would be lucky if they survived long enough to reach the chirurgeons and lucky still to survive their tender ministrations.
