The Great Pandemonium: The Direction of the Dawning Sun

Act III. Bittersweet Reality, Part I

"Silent now, the Ash-in-born,

and so too stilled have been their Songs-

in Eral they weep now silver tears

as devils they have been made in Wrong."

-The Ash-in-born, traditional Enkiri verse, as collected by Teren Isyleid

Act III. Bittersweet Reality

Harenholl was not the most hospitable place during a winter night. The city sat higher than most, originally just a well-positioned coastal fortress on an opportune gap in the cliffs. It began as a mere watchtower surrounded by few hovels for the guards, their horses, and their supplies. From there the first Empress expanded her borders and methodically conquered the barbarians in the surrounding lowlands, pushing them north and south and founding the Empire itself. Over the centuries the watchtower crumbled, the hovels became houses, and the city had grown down and outwards to engulf the entire clifftop and most of the valley below.

Still, in spite of all the bodies packed into the walls and all the fires burning in the hearths, it was still bone-chillingly cold on the streets at night. The salty wind tore in from the ocean and clawed at every bit of exposed flesh with nails of ice and whisperings of an impending blizzard. Of course the snow would never actually stick, it would just turn into the same kind of icy slush they were slogging through now.

Only it would not be made of piss and seawater mixed with shit. It would actually be tolerable.

That she was soaked to the hips in half-frozen sewage kept thawed only by the fact it was mixed with salt water was not helping her irritated mood. Her legs were numbed to the bone and she had not been able to feel her toes since the last run back to the manor, though judging by the fact that she could still run they were still attached to her feet somehow.

Why couldn't that woman kill her blighted husband in the spring.

It had taken six journeys to and from Galenfyr's wine cellar down through the sewers and out through the spillway near the docks to get almost everyone out. Things had gone remarkably well considering the sheer number of terrified people they were forcing to wade through icy cold filth. Half of them were eager to be free of their shackles and the rest were more petrified than the icicles they passed at the thought of having control over their own lives.

Akkali never expected any less. These people had been cowed for countless generations; not everyone was going to see freedom as the best idea in the world. She thought of it as something like throwing a domesticated dog out into the wild-not every dog was going to have the self-reliance to make it.

But it was far better than the alternative. She had read that during the old Imperial coronations countless Enkiri were put up in the Stadium as fodder for the bloody spectacles the nobles so seemed to enjoy. It had skipped the past two generations, ostensibly because those Emperors felt like investing the treasury in the army rather than a death match. Now it seemed that they were quite willing to resurrect the old tradition of literally throwing people to the wolves for the three-year-old boy that was about to take the throne.

Though he would undoubtedly be in the stands watching, Galenfyr would never allow her or Teren to become such a sacrifice. They were far too valuable as research projects. Slaves like Serres and Alariel, ones that would put up a decent fight to entertain the spectators, were likely to find themselves taken to the Stadium before dawn. And slaves like Bretanni were particularly vulnerable simply because they were getting on in years and loosing their value their master's eyes. Akkali had not failed to notice that Valenmir did not bring a single slave under the age of forty that was not part of his personal retinue of guards. The man was treating the Stadium like a disposal service. He was simply saving Alariel and her men as trump cards to put all his money on once the rest of his entries had been slaughtered and the odds were less in his favor.