Magic—it had been magic, certainly. Wizardry, probably. And the knife had stopped it. She was safe from magic other than witchcraft and warlockry—at least some of it.
She could do anything—and she knew what she wanted. She had already said it.
Tabaea the First, Empress of Ethshar! “Listen, you people!” Tabaea shouted, “you people who live here in the Wall Street Field, listen to me! Why are you here?” She paused dramatically and sensed half a hundred faces turned attentively toward her—soldiers and magicians and beggars and thieves.
“You’re here because the fat old overlord of this stinking city, the man who claims to protect you, has sent you here!” Tabaea proclaimed. “He’s taken your homes with his taxes, stolen your food to feed his soldiers, and given you nothing in return but dungeons and slavery!” She pushed aside a soldier and stepped up atop a makeshift wooden shelter. “Haven’t you had enough of this? Haven’t you had enough of seeing the rich get richer, seeing them buy your friends, your neighbors, your sons and daughters from the slavers, when they’ve stolen a few coins in order to eat? Haven’t you heard enough of girls and boys tortured in the Nightside brothels to please the perverted tastes of some wealthy degenerate?” The words seemed to be coming from somewhere deep within her, of their own accord; one of her victims, she realized, someone she had killed, must have been skilled in oratory. And she could augment that, now that she had seen how; she warmed the air about her, then let a feint orange glow seep out.
A warlock and an orator both; she suppressed a smile. Self-delight would win no converts; only anger would do that. “Haven’t you had enough!” she screamed at the people of the Field.
Some of the soldiers were backing away; some of the civilians were muttering.
“I say that Ederd has had his chance!” Tabaea shouted. “I say his time is over! Let the old man step aside, and let a woman of the people see justice done in this city! Not the justice of slaver and swordsman, but true justice! Not Lord Kalthon’s justice, but my justice! The justice of one who has no need to fear nor favor, because I cannot be harmed! Beholden to no one save those who aid me now, I am the Empress of Ethshar! Who’s with me?”
A dozen voices shouted. “I said, who’s with me!” This time, a hundred chorused in reply. “Then let’s show old Ederd who’s in charge here! Come with me to the palace! We’ll throw Ederd and his lackeys out in the Wall Street Field and take the palace for our own! Come on!” She turned and stepped off the shelter, but not down to the ground; instead she caught herself in the air, warlock fashion, and propelled herself forward, above the crowd.
Using too much warlockry wasn’t safe, of course; she doubted she was any more immune to the Calling than anyone else was. But warlockry was showy, and that was what she needed right now.
The soldiers had mostly faded away, falling back into the darkness, out of sight of the angry crowd; Tabaea and her followers marched unimpeded out of the Field onto Wall Street and down Wall Street to Grandgate Market. Many of the people behind her had torches or makeshift clubs, she saw with pleasure; one had picked up a soldier’s fallen sword. She was at the head of an army.
The Empress Tabaea, at the head of her army. She smiled broadly.
“Come on!” she called. “Come on!”
CHAPTER 24
It was Alorria of Dwomor who rousted Lord Torrut out of his bed; the soldier who had guarded the bedchamber door stood nervously beside her, holding a lamp.
“She said it was an emergency, sir...”
“It is an emergency,” Alorria said, tugging at the bedclothes. “There’s an uprising!”
Lord Torrut was not a young man anymore and did not wake as quickly as he once had; he looked up Wearily at the unfamiliar but unmistakably attractive face and smiled. “Ah, young lady...” he began. Then his head sank a little, and he saw the rest of her. His eyes widened. “Is it the baby?” he said. “Soldier, go fetch a midwife!”
“No, it’s not the baby,” Alorria snapped. “The baby’s fine and not due for sixnights. There’s an uprising! They’re marching on the palace!” Torrut sat up and shook his head to clear it; then, speaking as he reached for his tunic, he asked, “Who’s marching? What’s going on?”
“There’s a woman named Tabaea who has just declared herself Empress of Ethshar, and she’s raised an army of the poor and discontented from the Wall Street Field. They’re marching here to take the palace and kill the overlord.” Alorria stepped back, to give the commander of the city guard room to stand.
“From the Field?” Lord Torrut said, astonished; he stopped with one arm in its sleeve and the other bare. “You don’t need me for that! A hundred men and a magician or two should be able to handle it.”
Alorria shook her head. “Tabaea’s a magician—a very powerful one, the one that Lady Sarai’s been looking for for months, the one who’s been murdering other magicians.”
“Well, but surely...”
“The magicians are trying to stop her, and Captain Tikri’s getting the palace guard ready to defend against her, but so far nothing’s working. She’s already walked right through a squadron of guards, out on Wall Street; she crippled a warlock and brushed aside the wizards’ spells as if they were mere illusions.”
Torrut stared at her for a moment, then turned to his door guard. “Is this true?” he demanded.
The guard turned up an empty palm. “I don’t know, my lord,” he said. “This woman was sent by Lady Sarai and Captain Tikri, but that’s all I know.”
“Damn.” Torrut slid his arm into the empty sleeve and then reached for his kilt. “Who are you, young woman? Why wasn’t one of the regular messengers sent?”
“My husband’s a wizard,” Alorria explained. “Everyone else was busy, and I wanted to help, so they sent me to fetch you.”
Torrut nodded. “Good of you. Listen, I want you to take this soldier to vouch for you and go wake the overlord. I don’t know what’s going on here, or how much danger there really is, but I’m not about to let anyone say I didn’t do my best to protect Ederd. While you do that, I’ll go down and see what’s happening for myself.”
“Wake the overlord?” Alorria squeaked. Even though she was the daughter of a king herself, she lived in awe of the three Ethsharitic overlords. Beside her the guardsman looked very unhappy indeed.
“That’s right,” Torrut said, standing up and pulling his kilt into position. “Somebody better.” He smiled, “Don’t worry, Ederd’s a gentle old man; he won’t have your heads lopped off for disturbing him. For that matter, despite his age, he doesn’t mind looking at a lovely young woman any more than I do. All this fuss may be nothing, but I think Ederd would want to know.” He reached for his sword belt. “Now, go on, both of you!”
They went.
When Alorria had come up to the level where most of the higher nobility had their apartments, the stairways and passages had been quiet and dim; now, though, she could hear voices and running footsteps and could see lights behind a dozen doors. “Which way?” she asked. The guard pointed.
Officials were hurrying about; Alorria knew that the magicians were gathering two flights below, to prepare a defense against Tabaea’s advance, and to find a way to kill the mysterious self-proclaimed “empress.”
And out in the streets, Tabaea was marching steadily closer. Once Tabaea was out of the Wall Street Field, she got as far as the intersection of Gate Street and Wizard Street before she encountered any further organized resistance. There, though, she found herself facing a living barricade of soldiers, swords drawn, formed up in a line three deep that stretched from one side of the avenue to the other.