A Blight of Blackwings

by Kevin Hearne

  They’ll know that I’m behind it, and that’s fine.

  Adithi, sitting next to me on the rooftop, is playing a different game with the horses. She and Tamhan have decided to reveal her power for the first time. She waits for them to be saddled and taken out, and then, when all seems calm, without any warning to their riders, the horses buck every single one of them into the dirt and run back to the stables.

  One soldier thinks he can beat his horse into submission. It’s a terrible decision. Adithi doesn’t hesitate: She has another horse trot over, turn around, and kick him in the ribs. He doesn’t die, but he won’t be abusing any more horses anytime soon.

  I watch a different scene develop: Most of the cavalry take their unhorsing and stings with expected grace—“woe is me,” basically. Wherever it happens, people titter and move along. But when two get dumped near the South Side Market, a kid, maybe eight or nine years old, laughs pretty loud and points. The soldiers don’t like it, and one of them shoves the kid into the dirt.

  Except that kid is a member of a hunting family taking their hides to market, and they aren’t going to ignore that. They step up, berating the soldier. I can’t hear anything, but what I see is clear enough.

  The soldier’s partner comes to his side and they’re telling the adults to back down. But it’s a family like Abhi’s, with their wagon full of weapons, and when that first soldier stupidly draws his sword, the spears and knives come out, and those two soldiers might as well be stew meat. The hunters are used to taking down much bigger and more dangerous game than a couple of dudes, and they’re not scared.

  The soldiers realize they’ve made a mistake a split second before they’re pierced from multiple directions. And then they’re down in the dust with wide eyes and spears in their guts, and the leader of the family points to them and then to his kid as he shouts at the shocked faces of bystanders. He was just protecting his child. The city watch was to blame. They started it. Something along those lines.

  Nobody argues with them. In fact, a couple of guys walk up, looking like they want to help. The spears are yanked out, the watchmen die, and their bodies are soon loaded into the wagon, and a small crowd of people follow, half amazed and half giddy. I bring some more hornets in to keep multiple eyes on things, and I don’t get the sense that anyone’s run away to squeal. That in itself is remarkable.

  We may have greatly overestimated the citizens’ support of the city watch.

  “We need to get to the South Side Market,” I tell Adithi, who hasn’t seen any of this like I have since there were no horses involved. “Things are going to blow up there. Two members of the watch are dead.”

  “From your hornets?”

  “No, from some hunters. They’re moving the bodies in plain view, and it seems like people are on their side. When the watch comes after them, it’s going to be a fight. The leader of the hunters is making speeches, and I want to hear what he’s saying.”

  “Do you think he’s one of Tamhan’s crew?”

  “I have no idea. But the city watch is going to hear about it, and they can’t just let this slide. They’ll come after those hunters, and there’s no way they’re going to go quietly to the dungeon.”

  “Well, I’ll keep them from using horses.”

  It takes us a quarter hour to get to the market, with Adithi guiding me. My eyes are open, but I don’t see much in front of me; I’m looking instead through the eyes of multiple hornets at the goings-on ahead of us. Together with their helpers, the hunters unload the bodies and disappear into a stall featuring riverbed yams, swamp onions, and cranberries; they are muck farmers, wading up to their knees in icky water somewhere upriver in the alluvial tater beds every city depends on for basic calories. My guess is that they probably have their own wagon behind the stall, and plan to dump the bodies on the plains next time they head up to their fields. Scavengers will make sure they disappear.

  The leader of the hunting family is up on his now-clear wagon bed, shouting at the crowd, and he has a piece of paper in his hand—it’s our broadside!

  “He has to be one of Tamhan’s friends,” I say to Adithi. “I’ll bet you five wheels of fancy cheese that he’s talking revolution.”

  “I can’t wait to hear it,” she replies. “The riders have come back to the stables and they’re having trouble mounting. That’s going to be their problem all day.”

  As we draw near enough to hear I slip out of the hornets’ vision and tell them to do as they wish but ask that they remain nearby. The hunter is projecting his voice from the cart, and we edge closer to hear him.

  “When has the city watch ever protected us? They literally push us around! They don’t serve us; they bully us! And so it is time for us to consider a new government that does serve our interests instead of the interests of the viceroy’s rich cronies!”

  That’s an applause line, and he gets it. Adithi and I join in.

  “I have not met these beast callers yet, but I have heard that they are no friends of the rich! They were poor, living down by the river—all the seekers were!”

  “Definitely one of Tamhan’s,” Adithi agreed. “He wouldn’t know that otherwise.”

  “And you know what they want? The same thing you do! A government that supports them and doesn’t oppress them!”

  A roar of approval greets him. “A government that improves our lives instead of filling the treasuries of the viceroy’s friends!”

  Another roar. “A government where you get to vote for leaders who will answer to you and not to some king we’ll never meet, who has no idea of what we need! That’s a republic!”

  That gets a loud response indeed, and I start to wonder if these are all Tamhan’s friends or if the sentiment against the government is really that strong.

  He points to something on the far side of the crowd, where I can’t see. “Here comes the city watch to shut me up. To punish me for protecting my child! To throw me in a dungeon for speaking out against their injustice! Are we going to let them?”

  The crowd roars “no,” and I clutch at Adithi. “Watch over me,” I say, as I leave my own sight and call out to the hornets. I send them at the city watch—a big group this time, twenty or more men led by an officer of some sort, maybe the captain—to distract the watch from the mob. They soon discover how difficult it is to follow orders with a hornet or three in the face. I make sure the captain gets special attention, not only because that will deprive them of leadership but because he could be the one who was responsible for Sudhi’s death.

  The hornets dive in and the watch lashes out, angry, and the mob responds in kind. I don’t know what to do except keep the hornets focused on the watch, and it’s remarkable how quickly they’re disarmed or brought down.

  I recognize that captain from his strangled-sounding voice. We heard him in the teahouse, bragging about Sudhi’s death. He fights well and hurts some people, so they hurt him back. He and one other are killed, and the rest surrender after that. I come out of the hornets’ heads a bit dizzy, listening to an exultant mob.

  “This is wild. What’s happening with the horses?” I ask Adithi.

  “They’re safe. One of the riders got the bright idea that if they didn’t want to go out, maybe they’d go in. The rider opened the gates and stood back and the horses trotted right to their stables. I think they got the message.”

  “That’s good, but now what do we do? We didn’t expect this. I mean, Tamhan didn’t plan for it to go this far.”

  Adithi pointed. “That man is clever.” The hunter was shouting from the cart again, and people were quieting to listen. “He knows that when you have a mob, you use it or lose it.”

  “Friends! Hear me! Hear me! We need law. We do need a city watch. But we need a city watch that protects us rather than the viceroy. We need a new government—but we need the time and
space to talk that out and make it happen. The viceroy doesn’t want to grant us that. So let’s make him. Let’s find all the city watch and make them the same offer that I make right now to those men over there: Join us and keep the actual peace—prevent looting and property damage—or stay with a failing government and be cast out. And we’ll have the protection of the beast callers! Yes, we will!”

  “Pretty cheeky of him to assume that,” Adithi says.

  “He’s right, though.”

  The man responds to imagined doubters. “Did you notice the hornets stinging the city watch? That was the hivemistress aiding us! And have you noticed how no cavalry has come to trample us? The horsemistress is keeping them stabled!”

  Adithi’s jaw drops. “Well, I guess my secret’s out now for sure.”

  “Like you said, he’s using what he’s got before he loses it.”

  “So let us go!” the hunter shouts. “We will circle the city and secure it from the viceroy’s forces! Let him stay in his tower or let him come down and talk with us! And then we will discuss our new government, right here, in the South Side Market! This will forever be the place where a new Nentian government began!”

  The mob shouts their agreement, and he gestures to the west. The crowd surges in that direction. We’re going to move clockwise, apparently.

  “I don’t know who that man is, but I bet he’ll be part of the new republic,” Adithi says.

  “I just hope we can do this without killing anyone else,” I reply. “I’m glad he’s saying we should give the watch an option.”

  A mob is not the best, though. It’s strange to be in one, to realize that, Hey, I’m part of a mob right now, and mobs are pretty famous for not doing anything nice to other people. No one sees a mob tearing down the street and thinks, Oh, neat! I wonder what kindness they will bestow upon our neighbors! No one wishes a mob would form outside their house and improve the neighborhood.

  But perhaps this one can allow improvements to unfold in the future. That’s what I tell myself as people get worked up and confront pairs of watchmen roaming the city. The watch is out looking for broadsides and for us, so even though there are more than three hundred of them in the garrison, they’re all spread out and caught in pairs or small groups. I have a little swarm of hornets buzzing above the leaders—a couple dozen, nothing huge, but it’s enough to make the watchmen understand who they’re up against. Most of them surrender and pledge to join the new republic, as long as they’re paid. To my great relief, the mob just takes their weapons and moves on. There is one pair of watchmen near the church, however, that have crossbows, and they fire into the crowd, thinking that’s going to make them back off. Instead, the mob tears them apart. We don’t have any more trouble until we get back to the stables.

  The watch is in there, probably near fifty of them, and they have a defensible position—at least for a little while. But they also know it’s not a castle. It can be set on fire, for example, though that would put the horses at risk. The hunter who’s been leading everything tells the mob to chill out and surround the place but to let him talk. There’s space cleared, and when he stands alone, he tells the soldiers to send someone out to negotiate. Adithi and I have moved closer to him but have yet to identify ourselves. I think that would instantly make us a target and that being unknown is our best defense right now. But it’s good to be able to hear. The hornets are buzzing over his head and he points up to them.

  “The hivemistress is watching,” the hunter calls out to the stables. “And the horsemistress too.”

  “Yeah? So?” a voice responds.

  “So it’s time for a new government!”

  The mob cheers. A skeptical voice rings out from the stables.

  “With a couple kids running things?”

  “No. With elected leaders. A republic that will still need a city watch. Most of the watch has already agreed to join us.”

  “What about the captain?”

  “He’s dead. But come on out and let’s talk. You have my word you won’t be hurt if you talk, even if you disagree!”

  Once they send someone out, it’s a done deal inside of five minutes. No one dies and it’s the best. I like the not dying a whole lot.

  After the muscle is firmly under our control, we go to Khul Bashab’s Tower of Kalaad and issue an invitation to the viceroy to attend talks in the South Side Market about a new government. He declines and stays inside his walled compound with his bodyguards and such, which is fine with everyone.

  “Good! We’ll make more progress without him!” the hunter says. The city is essentially ours as long as we can keep it. I figure we’ll have a week at the least before the viceroy’s cousin hears about it downriver, and then another week before he can send any forces of significance up here.

  That might mean we’ll have a chance. Two weeks to prepare.

  “Adithi. Have you seen where the next source of the Sixth Kenning is going to be?”

  “It’s with those baboons in the north right now.”

  “Yes, but where will it be next? Reach out and feel it.”

  She takes a moment and closes her eyes. Then they fly open and her jaw drops. “Holy hanging horse nuts!”

  “Yes.” A hive of burrow wasps right outside the city walls is going to be the next source of the Sixth Kenning. We’ll be able to have people seek the Sixth Kenning nearby, and we’ll have more beast callers on our side. I cannot help it: I do a little dance and make a high-pitched squealing noise. “You know what this is?”

  Adithi laughs. “It’s the best!”

  “Yes! It’s the best!”

  Maybe it’s a coincidence, but I don’t think it is. The timing is too perfect. I think there’s something behind this. Maybe it’s Kalaad, maybe some other deity, moving silently to our benefit. I just get the feeling that we’re not alone in wanting the world to change.

  “Come on,” I tell her, dispelling the hornets to do as they please. “Let’s go to the market and see if Tamhan shows up. Maybe he’ll try to explain what a clave republic is.”

  * * *

  —

  Hanima’s words about some other deity made many of us wonder: Was it Raena—or possibly Meso—who was manipulating events in Ghurana Nent and bringing the Sixth Kenning to light since the krakens had been outmaneuvered somehow by the Eculans?

  On another level, it made me wonder personally if this story of revolution and governments oppressing people made Pelenaut Röllend nervous. Or if anyone on Survivor Field felt oppressed by the pelenaut’s efforts to keep them fed and healthy and their children going to school.

  I am sure that someone out there thought of their situation and cast about, looking for someone to blame. But in our case, unlike the Nentians, we had a very clear enemy from outside: the Bone Giants.

  Fintan grinned at the audience. “We should probably check in with Viceroy Bhamet Senesh about now, shouldn’t we?”

  There is a profound difference between cowardice in battle and standing up to be mowed down at harvest time when you can come back and win later. The first is a lack of courage; the second is also not courage, but rather a stupid refusal to acknowledge that the field is not yours to take on a particular day. When there’s a man coming with a sickle in your direction and your choices are to bend or to stand there and be cut down, I’m going to fucking bend and come back in another season when it’s my turn to be the reaper, not stand there and die.

  That sounds good. I’ll use that, or something like it, when someone demands that I explain how I lost Khul Bashab to a bunch of kids.

  How was I supposed to keep order when I have perhaps the smallest garrison in the country and my calls for aid went ignored? How was I supposed to emerge victorious when we could never confirm that one of the Sixth Kenning kids could control horses and thereby suborn the power of my ca
valry to quash civil unrest? That’s the sort of vital information you want to know ahead of time, like how long your cock is and whether or not you might be about to step on it.

  And you also want a kenning to counter a kenning. Pretty much a basic rule of engagement. Like, if one side has a bloodcat and the other side has a pillow, but the pillow guys are going into the fight thinking it’s just pillows all around, it’s not going to end well for them. Like it didn’t end well for us. Our defense was about as robust as a pillow’s too. Once Captain Khatagar was taken out, the watch essentially folded.

  So now I’m stuck in my tower and the compound. They don’t seem intent on placing my head on a spike, which is a relief to me but very foolish of them. Because I’m going to get a message out. Eventually. After I endure a lecture from Threat Sweat himself.

  He’s perspiring in a self-satisfied, I-told-you-so way as he tilts up one of his chins and looks down his nose at me. “I tried to warn you,” he says. “I said that if you didn’t deal with this threat, it would deal with you.”

  “You are correct, Dhanush. You warned me. And I did my best to act on those warnings. It is not as if I have been doing nothing but casually inserting whole vegetables into my anus these past weeks. I’ve been dealing with their broadsides. I’ve set spies on them and tried to find their whereabouts. We even found one of them and removed him from the board. But the game has swung in their favor nevertheless, because we simply cannot see what they are doing.”

  “They are using the river people against you.”

  “The river people?”

  “The poor, Viceroy.”

  “Oh, yes, I know. They are the eyes and ears and cloak of their rebellion. But listen, Patriarch. I need you to get a message to my cousin downriver. I need multiple copies sent via multiple couriers to make sure it arrives.”