We Come with the Dawn

We Come with the Dawn

Postby Carnath-Emory » Wed Oct 09, 2013 4:08 am

Gloria Wynsee's insurgency had been anything but silent: it had proclaimed itself upon walls and doorways, it had spoken from sleeve-cuffs and jacket hems. It had also left behind very little in the way of parchment, but this was a lack which Darkenhold's architect proved able to remedy, and when even that supply began to run short they scrounged scraps from every office, from every desk. She no more pressed the man on the source of all that paper than she did the origins of the tool he offered - to Gloria, once; to her, now. In that very hour, the inquisitor she meant to murder was riding in pursuit of the boy she'd meant to save; Myrken was becoming a simmering violence, an outrage that caved girls cheeks in under the guise of etiquette and moral hygeine. There were no questions in her at all, save for those that pursued expediency and precision.

Show me how to work this thing, how clanking iron turns ink into words.
Show me the words which are best for this, best to establish an authority and quell a panic.
'Dissolution', he'd mused. 'Dissolution' is a very good word, and pointed to the place upon the page where it belonged. In the end it was the only change they made.

***

Rare indeed, those occasions that Myrken's Militia gathers outside its arena as a single body. A season of deadly firestorms, born of the years-ago Fivefold Blight. Townsedge. Haberdasher's Row. Despite a Myrkentown prone to unrest, such gatherings were not even a yearly event. But even as a swordswoman was setting ink to parchment in a miles-away basement, the Militia was congregating in accordance with her hours-ago directions: a trickling arrival - twos and threes; a trickle that became a steadily-increasing flow, groups of men and women grown increasingly larger as the night wore on, and the dark-clad figures encountered each other upon the dim streets.

Their destination was Myrkentown's most impoverished district. There was so little sympathy here for Rhaena's constabulary: not amongst these families, who had the most to fear from it; whose need was acute. Warned well in advance, the area's population kept carefully to their homes as their streets began to fill with uniformed men and the tools of insurgency. Sometimes, a militiaman's idle glance might note wide eyes staring from behind a grimy window; sometimes, such a man might grin his silent reassurance. But they were quiet, this lot, as their numbers steadily grew. Quiet, until the brightening dawn signaled archers towards rooftops and flag-bearers with them, and the Myrken Militia commenced its slow advance.

***

By that time, the children have surely begun their work. Three of them: Son and Cat and Cherny too, armed with printed posters and motivated by an incendiary combination of coin and resentment, outrage and fierce pride. Everywhere, she'd told them. Put them everywhere, for this must be seen.


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Re: We Come with the Dawn

Postby Cherny » Wed Oct 09, 2013 4:42 am

In the hour or so just after dawn, while the Civil Constables slept off their celebrations for another day's work well done, another step taken towards a cleaner Myrkentown, dark figures hasten down sidestreets, darting across intersections and emerging from shadowed doorways and alleys only long enough for a moment's excited industry.

They have leather buckets and wide brushes and a wad of printed papers, and they put all these things to very good use. At first the obvious places - street corners and crossings, walls where a great many people might pass, might see. Wherever the Vice-Governor's edicts were posted, they were soon overlaid with fresh paste and parchment, or torn down and left in ragged shreds in the gutter. At first they consider strategy - where might their work be best seen, where might the most eyes fall upon it - but as the morning mist thins and they find themselves with posters yet to paste, a certain excitement, a certain recklessness creeps into their efforts, and at least two of these miscreants find increasing delight in egging one another on to yet greater acts of daring and defiance.

Wharf Street and Bridge Street are slathered in posters by the time they range further afield, straying into more affluent districts - Callister Street, Ravensridge Road, Weavers Row, good neighbourhoods where the most respectable and prosperous make their homes. Elegant townhouses and stylish boutiques, shops selling all manner of dainty luxuries, the homes of socialites and dilettantes and families with old money and older names.

The rooftops are busy with great black birds, crows or ravens or the like, flapping from one building to the next, taking up position like dour-looking watchmen; they are silent, for the most part, their hoarse cries echoing down dawn-lit streets only when they catch sight of likely witnesses - workers and tradesmen, bakers and couriers, those whose livelihoods depend on their work beginning with the sun or before. By the time such early risers reach the still-wet posters the culprits are long gone.

In the shadows of a doorway on Dyers Avenue, Cherny grins breathlessly to his fellow conspirator. His eyes are bright with mischief, a febrile energy running from toes to fingertips that keeps him shifting and fidgeting, glancing up and down the street as if searching for yet more places to cover in rebellion.

"They've b-been watching." A lift of his chin for the crow that idly preens its pinions on a nearby roof ridge. "Since, since C-catch. Since they c-came for Catch. They know w-what houses h-have Civils in. We've j-just enough for, for their front d-doors, I reckon." Thumb running over the edges of the papers that fill the satchel at his side, and a nod towards the sweep of dignified houses that line Merchants Row. "S-six along there. Th-three more down Haberd-dashers. Couple on B-beauregard, and that'll d-do it." It's a bold plan, audacious, and not without risk. They'll have to be quick and quiet, lest the alarm be raised. But imagine their faces, as they open their doors! A nudge of a bony elbow for the older boy's ribs, goading him, daring him.

"Up f-for it?"
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Re: We Come with the Dawn

Postby catch » Wed Oct 09, 2013 4:54 am

Son was a boy who kept his head down. He'd had to. Myrkenwood was certainly no worse than what he has experienced in his life so far, servitude to a Lord who was quite certain of his place, and when Papa had died, Son had been put in the least-offensive part of the household, a Groundskeeper, a job that any mentally-feeble creature might perform. In the ruddy pre-dawn, Son's eyes were glimmering, his lips pulled back over his teeth in feral joy. He had trouble keeping quiet during the whole affair, unable to restrain the harsh laughter that rattled in his throat; at least he kept it down, a low and throaty chuckle that only Cherny could hear. His hunter's blood was up, but this, this, this was so different. This was striking back. This was organized, directed mayhem. This was permission, from Myrken's highest, right-minded rulers, to wreak mischief. They had been chosen for this, and Son - were he not such a hungry boy - would have been happy enough to do it for free.

Son glances up at the silent watchers. The animals were always strange, around Cherny; these black birds liked to croak, in discordant, boyish tones, the way the puppies muttered little words to themselves. But they were useful. Damn useful. And crows were clever birds. Son had seen a carnie with a talking crow, though it didn't seem as intelligent about it as Cherny's were.

Cherny was goading. Daring. Son glanced back down, and - with another of those strange, rough chuckles - the boy stooped. The bricks here were older, more worn; it was the work of a moment to chip one out, the boy hauling one free with the strength of his fingers alone. That enough was a thrill, but then he passes the brick from one hand to the other, and his dull, little eyes glimmer with that darkness, that lean, wicked hunger, a boy's rage of a lifetime of insults from men like these.

Besides. They had hurt Cherny's friend.

"Think they'd get th' message better f'it came crashin' through they's winders," he says, purposefully making his accent as broad and ignorant as possible, his throat as sweet as possible.

"Doan' you?"
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Re: We Come with the Dawn

Postby Cherny » Wed Oct 09, 2013 5:13 am

For Cherny it's been months of manners, of doing his very best to learn the rules of polite society, to follow them, to keep himself beneath notice. He's returned to his bed in the hayloft with guts soured by swallowing his outrage, by smiling nicely and nodding deferentially to those responsible for turning Myrkentown into something hollow, something superficial and false. It's been a caper so far, the danger making their mischief all the more exhilerating, and more than once he's had to stuff a sleeve in his mouth to stifle his own hoarse laughter as they fled the scene of some particularly brazen piece of bill-sticking.

It's dizzying, intoxicating. It has him emboldened such that when Son tugs a half-brick free of its crumbling mortar, when he proposes a more emphatic means of bringing the Marshall's declaration to the attention of those most deserving, there is only a moment of hesitation before he nods, and his grin takes on a more spiteful edge as he nods.

"I know j-just the one. B-but we'll need to d-do it last." Because the smashing of window-glass in such a well-to-do street would raise the alarm like nothing else. But even as he counsels that last scrap of caution he's remembering languid, mocking voices that laughed and bantered in between a lunatick's animal cries of pain.

"We'll do it l-last, and we'll d-do it thorough."

They're decided, then; a firm nod as he meets the older boy's gaze, and there's a hunger in the squire's dark eyes, a need to visit hurts upon the deserving.

"Better g-get moving."
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Re: We Come with the Dawn

Postby catch » Wed Oct 09, 2013 5:51 am

Last. Thorough. It's not that the boys do not understand their danger. But it is in their nature, not just to be kind, to lash out after the weeks, months, years of injustice. It was that same drive that sent boys to war, that sent children into daring escapades that adults would hardly contemplate. They were young. They were invincible. They were doing good work, and their passions burned within their breasts, as the cool, autumn air burned their lungs.

Cherny's plan is executed, these last, few doors nipped up to. By now they were experts; a slap of horse-hair brush upon fine, painted wood, the swipe of a hand, and the poster was there, the boys taking to their heels while the crows, silent, followed, croaking only when they suspected the boys might be seen. The last house, Cherny's chosen house, the ring-leader of Catch's demise, required a little more thought. For, as they ran, they tossed ideas between themselves. As they crouched, waiting for an all-clear from the crows, they held hasty, half-silent conference.

Cherny used the last parchment to roll together horse-apples from a neat manure-pile, meant for a garden that had been, like all others, ravaged by the locusts, and so now sat idle. He heaped it around the door-step while Son wrapped the parchment about the half-brick. They stood back, well back, and Cherny, his eyes and hand more keen from practice, tossed a little stone from his sling - giving Son the mark. A tinkle of glass is soon followed by a terrible shattering of it, for Son, his arm more powerful, threw the brick only a second later, breaking glass within and without, for the brick had struck some display-case or other, a ruin of porcelain and glass.

The boys did not wait to see their handiwork. In a storm of crows they ran, and they no longer needed to hide their voices, which rose in wicked glee, wild laughter as mischief managed.

What they did not see was what had been planned, not by themselves, but the crows. The ring-leader burst from his house, his bare foot sinking immediately into the horse-shit, and before he could retreat, could react, the crows covered him with their own excrement, their croaking laughter all variations on Cherny's boyish laugh as they spun acrobatics upon the air. They, too, were giddy with this permissible mayhem, and they took full advantage.
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Re: We Come with the Dawn

Postby Jirai » Wed Oct 09, 2013 10:09 am

"What," Rhaena demanded with icy tones, "Is this?"

A lace gloved hand slammed the poster down onto the table, heedless of the furniture's airy fragility. The uniformed man in front of her flinched, then offered a shrug. "No one knows, milady. They appeared this morning, all over town."

"This is unacceptable! Where is Giuseppe?" She was pacing now, skirts snapping with every turn.

"He's gone, milady."

"Gone? What do you mean, gone?"

"He's not at the Inquisitory. No one has seen him."

Gloved hands balled into fists, bronze eyes going blank for a moment. Then she was glaring at the man, furious. She knew where he had gone. "Fine. Forget Giuseppe. Get Agnieszka, Aris. Tell her to take care of Emory. I will deal with Aloisious myself. And then I will deal with Giuseppe."

The Lady stalked out of the room.
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Re: We Come with the Dawn

Postby Carnath-Emory » Thu Oct 10, 2013 2:04 am

In a small city-state well west of the Amasynian Peninsula, a swordswoman who'd fled the impossible to search for the unobtainable had come across a handful of children playing what seemed an odd game. Its name, they told her - when she asked, with more gestures than words - was saute-mouton. These boys here, they explained, are a long row of very patient sheep - excepting you, Chlodomer! cried one, and delivered that giggling sheep-boy a swift kick in the rump - but at their rear stands a man, leaping each of their backs, and when he reaches the front of the line, he becomes a sheep as well. Every man must be a sheep; every sheep must become a man; the line slowly moves -

This is how the Militia advances upon Myrkentown's center of business: with the constant stop-start motion of saute-mouton.

It is a steady and not-quite conventional advance. Spotters overheard; boots upon the ground; sometimes, signalled by rooftop flags, a detachment of men breaks away from the main body of those who march, lingering in their wake to guard an intersection already claimed. Sometimes they range ahead to secure the mouth of a street which might become a chokepoint, and archers who'd held their rooftop positions in the hour before dawn become swift motion then, darting ahead across sturdy shingles to flank the men below.

It is a calculated exchange, weighing the cost of debilitating their forces against the necessity of holding what they claim. It began in the moment she split a detachment free, to tarry in their wake and ensure that their starting-point - Myrken's poorest district - did not become the brunt of sudden reprisals. It continues now, for the sheer weight of their numbers allows the Militia some leeway: how many civil constables are there, after all?

Even as they move into Myrkentown's industrial center - the shopfronts and teahouses and smithies that cluster near the Meetinghouse at the city's heart - several hundred of them remain. Black-stained uniforms, column after column of them, unmistakable even when small detachments disperse towards narrow side-streets, corners that might prove potentially troublesome. Unrelentingly dark even beneath the summer's vivid sunlight - as they must be, for if there is to be any opposition to their advance, it will begin here.
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Re: We Come with the Dawn

Postby channe » Thu Oct 10, 2013 2:15 am

In a dark room, Agnieszka straps on her blade and her armor, tying her hair and breathing out quietly, Rhaena's messenger tremling in the door.

"Tell Rhaena that I'll take care of Ariane." A pause, and a terrible quietude in her voice -- "I'll kill her for what she's done. I'll kill her for my Lady."

She leaves, stalking down back-streets, the hood brought over her dark hair to hide her identity.
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Re: We Come with the Dawn

Postby catch » Thu Oct 10, 2013 2:46 am

Behind the advancement of black, the wave and wave of silent, grim men and women, not all of them militia, and many of them wearing the leather dusters of Shadow Militia, those not well-trained or equipped, yet still lending their bodies for when bodies were all that was needed - behind them, from the fringes of town, comes something as pale as they were dark, and noisy, perhaps, as they were quiet. Not a terrible noise. It is off-key, the humming, a tuneless and aimless song. It burns in his throat, and it throbs in time to the wreckage of his body, bones twisted and wrongly set, a shivering of his nerves that drew him to a fever-pitch.

He should be remarked on, for he was naked as a child, his pale body lit from without by a sun, within by fever, his hair glittering with foam and sweat from the effort of moving. He had never felt as he should, not hunger, not pleasure, and not even pain. And, perhaps, he was. Hailed by Militia, while he was behind their lines, perhaps a kind word, perhaps a stern word. He is a flicker, on the edge of vision; he is the glimmer of something grand, but when the head is turned, he is gone. The only hail he acknowledges, he meets with his blazing eye, the contraption strapped to his head clicking as the dragon's eye fastened on the barking questionee - a brief moment - a breathless moment, where he was gone before the man could say anything else.

At the fringes of the militia's movement, he stops where a brief clash of Civil Constables and Milita had begin. No bodies, but blood, the Constables chased away. There is one of their sticks, fancy staves with brass heads and cores of iron. He bends, a painful affair, though the hum still throbs in his throat, and as his fingers close on it, he could feel the cry of the wood, could feel the iron core gnawing and laughing within.

For once, he felt a kinship with Iron.

He straightens, as much as he is able, fingers and hands that are not well-put together clenching the walking-stick to his chest. Blood mingles with blood, a wet spatter as his body shudders, sending foam and blood and pus spilling into the street. The Song threatened; his throat bulged.

But he remembers. He obeys.

He waits a moment to catch his breath, waits for his spasm to pass, his muscles to loosen back into corded knots that howled at the rearrangement of his bones, begging to be free. It is a moment, before he moves, before he knows the Wormwoman has abandoned the Lady. He waits until he can breathe again, great and ragged gasps. Like the long-ago movements of a hated Governor, the cane tapes once, twice, into the cobble-stones. Then it beats, a dirge-tattoo, the brass head scrabbling and skipping along as he staggers, with a single, bloody mind, towards where he knows the Lady to be.
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Re: We Come with the Dawn

Postby Carnath-Emory » Thu Oct 10, 2013 9:35 am

On a desk in the Marshall's room sits a page upon which she'd detailed the threat which Myrken faces. She'd written it months ago, and it begins with this:

Image

an amateur's fumbling demonstration of two minds existing in near-Perfect tandem. What is known by one is known by both; a trouble shared is a trouble magnified, a circumstance that is made all the more acute by the fact that what they share is everything. Everything. This, as explained painstakingly by Aleksei River, by Lamai Carver; even hating what they'd described, she had not failed to understand.

Everything which follows the diagram intends to map out an approach towards stabilising Myrken while managing a Governor who is not capable of being stable at all. In ink on parchment, a fatalist's assumptions war with a swordswoman's unyielding sympathies; expecting the worst only brings the best into sharper relief. Pragmatism falters, again and again, upon the slopes of precious humanity -

If I were to picture all of Myrken as a single lake, she'd told Darkenhold's architect, months ago - for her approach of this had begun that far back. If Myrken is a lake, then every action is a pebble flung into its surface, and because we number thousands there is no end to this, each rippling into the next, each touching and corrupting and embracing and effecting patterns as far away as the opposite shore. It is not possible to act in isolation. Even the smallest thing has its repercussions.

If I am to unseat a man,
she'd begun, her words already stumbling.

You must teach me this, she'd insisted, this woman who was never so demanding.

For what I will create with the solution to this problem is an avalanche. And I need its ripples to touch only one man.

Because her fear had been civil war, the bloodsoaked, spiraling chaos which comes so naturally of an absence of leadership. And her error - as she saw sign after sign of a Myrken sinking into disarray; as she witnessed one madness after another, each one stranger than the one before - was not inaction, although there was that: a swordswoman's long and uncharacteristic hesitance.

Her error was believing that the problem was Glenn Burnie.

***

And now it is everything that she'd intended to forestall, conducted with all the quiet, stern care of which she is capable. By the time they've surrounded the Inquisitory, they tread pavements littered with blood. Here, where a small detachment of militiamen had collided with with a clutch of civil constables, a moment's shock evolving quickly into clubs and ready fists. Here, where an attempt at ambush had fallen prey to keen-eyed archers; here, where they'd chased a handful of crimson-clad men because the memory of stocks and whips was bright in their mind, and they'd cheered, cheered when they found the stocks burned.

Vengeful, that lot. She'd knew there'd be no avoiding that, not completely; made her orders damned clear all the same and regretted, furiously regretted, that she had let it come to this at all.

Civil constables rally at the Foundation's square, where the fight grows heated and protracted. Atop rooftops, mustard-bright flags signal for reinforcements: men with rough barricades and perhaps the Shadow Militia hastens to join them, men and women who just moments ago saw - could have sworn they saw - perhaps imagined they saw - a silver-stained wraith, pale beneath the sun....

The group which moves directly for the Meetinghouse is smaller than might be expected - given the importance of the location, given the nature of what they expect to find there. But these are men and women chosen specifically for the purpose: level-headed, quicker to think than act; capable, all the same. They infiltrate the building at speed: move quickly amongst staring eyes and hesitant hands; they search -

Not a word, when all of it comes to nothing: no sign of the woman who'd made herself Queen in all but name, no sign at all of the un-sane thing which had flung the Governor down into a labyrinth. Not one word, save for the quick instructions which she gives to her men, and:

"Time to leave," she murmurs - towards those clerks and secretaries that remain, as she retraces her way into the foyer. Towards eyes that have turned towards her, uncertain and wide, and with a jerk of her head back towards the Meetinghouse doors and the distant ring of conflict. Take your chances, her eyes say, and they are a flood of sudden motion around her as she strides back into the sun.

Hrimfax. Haste. There is only one place that Rhaena Olwak might be hiding and heavy hooves devour the distance between Here and There; she does not dismount until she's come within two streets of the woman's home.

It's when she sees what's waiting here, narrow and dark upon the street-corner, that she pauses for the first time in days.
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Re: We Come with the Dawn

Postby channe » Thu Oct 10, 2013 4:54 pm

And these would be Agnieszka's thoughts, if she'd been able to have them, as well: Should have. Could have. Would have. If only.

If only she'd pressed the matter with Rhaena.

But she'd been in Thessilane, at Glenn's behest, too concerned about the Hawk outside to see the snake within. And then she'd wildly underestimated Rhaena's power, and showing her own to the thing in Noura had only destroyed what was left of Constantine Kostroma's covenant --

-- and now she was standing outside the door, her sword drawn, pointed shining in the sun at one of Myrken's destitute homeless, one of the omnipresent beggars in the market, a few of the dandy civil constables standing around her jeering. She's dressed beautifully; easy skirts that are hiked up to make for smooth movement, a ribbon at her throat, and silver in her hair. Agnieszka has never dressed like this; and, despite the chaos buried inside, she has never been this cruel. No, she has never been this: the kind of child to pick legs off a spider, the kind of woman to pursue the less fortunate. For the civil guardsmen are hauling the man to his knees, and Agnieszka is moving closer, laughing, her eyes alight with amusement. She sheathes the sword, and the man seems to breathe a little easier, but as she raises her hand, he shivers in terror -- moans slightly, like he knows what is coming --

"I told you before," she says, quietly. "I told you. Wear a cravat. But you haven't. And you have. No. Tie. And you know what happens to people who can't fucking bathe."

She pauses, looks him over. "Hold him still, boys," she says, and reaches out with her ungloved hand to clasp the man's throat. Not tightly; her hands barely touch. But the man hollers, and shivers with every inch of his body, and trembles, and quakes, and stiffens, and screams -- until Agnieszka drops her hand, gives the order to take him away, and turns towards Ariane.

"You," she says, "are dressed like a whore. But well enough that you are, because you and me, we have business." A pause. "You are not going to get close to Rhaena."
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