Shield of the People

by Marshall Ryan Maresca

  Exhausted, Amaya went to her own room, ready to fall onto her cot. She did not expect to find anyone waiting for her there.

  “Amaya,” Dayne said as soon as she entered. He looked harried, desperate. “I need your help.”

  * * *

  Amaya looked like she was ready to tear Dayne’s face off. “Why the rutting blazes are you in my room?”

  “I told you—” Dayne started to say, hoping Amaya wouldn’t get much louder. He didn’t need to draw any attention right now.

  “I am not about to ‘help’ you, Dayne. Surely you can see your Lady Mirianne for that!”

  “What?” Dayne almost started laughing, and bit his lip. “Did you think I came here for . . . no, I wouldn’t do that.”

  Now her face got even harder. “You wouldn’t?”

  “Not in a sneak-in-your-room sort of way,” Dayne said.

  “So why are you sneaking into my room?”

  “Because I’m not supposed to be here.”

  “Right, you’re living in the Parliament now or something?” She sat down on her bunk and rubbed her feet. “How is that?”

  “Odd,” Dayne said. “Part of what I’m doing is dealing with the marshals who are coordinating the election. I think there’s some trouble.”

  She perked up a bit at that. “You think the marshals are doing something fishy?”

  Dayne thought on this for a moment, then shook his head. “My read on Chief Samsell is he’s legitimate, but he doesn’t want anyone else in his business.”

  “Sounds like the marshals. So what’s the trouble?”

  “The Veracity Press folk received a declaration from some revolutionary group. Sons of the Six Sisters.”

  “Six Sisters?” she asked. “As in the daughters of The Lady from the Grand Ten?”

  That was accurate, but he was surprised that Amaya would say that. History was not a passion of hers. “Right. Lady Hessen hid young Maradaine XI with her daughters when the Black Mage took the city. So the Six Sisters have always been a symbol tied to the contiguity of the throne.”

  “And The Lady was part of that,” Amaya said. He wasn’t quite sure where she was going with this, but she was clearly engaged. “So what about this declaration?”

  “They said they intended to ambush and destroy the Acoran votes before they reached the city for certification. I told Chief Samsell, but he said threats like that happen all the time and they aren’t anything to be concerned about.”

  “But?” she asked,

  “But they were specific about attacking the train in the Miniara Pass on the Old Canthen Road, which is the very route the ballot wagons are taking.”

  “So you think it’s real, and he’s ignoring it?”

  “I think it can’t be ignored.”

  “All right, so what do you suggest? Ride up on the Miniara Pass and see?”

  “I would. Except I’m stuck here talking to the press and having my time wasted.”

  “That’s what you do?”

  “That’s what they have me do.”

  She scoffed. “It’s absurd. But, fine, you’re stuck. What can I do?”

  “You’re an Adept! Surely you have the authority or autonomy to do something.”

  “I have my own duties, Dayne,” she said. She shook her head. “I have a responsibility to train the third-years. I can’t just traipse off and— when is this supposed ambush?”

  “Tomorrow night.”

  She screwed her face in thought. “I do have a responsibility, but I also have a fair amount of leeway of how I exercise that.”

  That was promising. “What do you have in mind?”

  “Let’s say I take the third-years on a training exercise. A fully armed and armored hike out of the city, to the Miniara Pass and back. If that threat is hollow, it’s still a perfectly good training regimen for them. And if it’s real, there I am with sixteen armed elite warriors. In training.”

  “I could kiss you.”

  “Don’t.”

  Dayne reflexively took a step back. “Of course. I just meant . . .”

  “It doesn’t matter what you meant. We—let’s just try and stay on this level. Colleagues who respect each other and want what’s best for the Order.”

  “And Druthal.”

  “And Druthal,” she said. “Now get the blazes out of here and let me sleep.”

  “Right.” Dayne went to the door. “Thank you, Amaya.”

  “Just go.”

  Dayne left and slipped out the back way of the chapterhouse compound. It wasn’t perfect, but now at least he could rest easy, knowing he had done what he could. And Amaya was someone he could trust to do the right thing, he was certain of that.

  * * *

  “The sun is up and you are not!”

  Despite every part of her body still hurting, Jerinne was ready for this. She was off her cot and on her feet as soon as she heard Vien speak.

  “Well, look at all of you,” Vien said as she walked through the room. “You’re all so very shiny and eager today. Ready for another glorious day.”

  “Ready and able,” Candion said. “What do you have today?”

  “What do we have?” Vien asked. “You’re ready for another run through the city, back here for conditioning intervals, then weapons training? That what you’re ready for?”

  “Yes,” Candion said, looking a bit annoyed. Jerinne could see it on everyone’s face: Vien’s attitude as Initiate Prefect was already intolerable. Jerinne was glad she wasn’t the only one. “Maybe we can stab each other today.”

  “You’re not ready for that,” Vien said. “Definitely not you, Candion, who dropped from number four to number seven. Catastrophic, Candion.”

  “What?” he yelped.

  “New rankings?” Enther asked.

  “Every day, new rankings,” Vien said. “Every day, new challenges. Today we’re onto something special.”

  “You beat us with hammers?” Candion asked.

  “That’s next week. No, today is a special exercise. Full dress, uniform and mail shirt, shields and your choice of weapon from the armory. Then go to breakfast and meet us in the foyer downstairs.”

  “No run?” Miara asked.

  “Not today,” Vien said. “Dressed, armed, fed, and foyer in fifteen minutes, people. Don’t hold things up.”

  She left the barracks, and everyone scrambled to their trunks for their uniforms and armor shirts.

  “What is this?” Raila asked Jerinne as she pulled her slacks on. “Something happened last night?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean yesterday, Vien acted like today was going to be more of yesterday, and today she’s changed it to something different.”

  “She’s messing with us,” Enther said.

  “No,” Raila said, furrowing her brow in thought. “Something did happen, but Vien doesn’t really know what. She’s following new orders, either from the Grandmaster or Madam Tyrell.”

  “You think?” Jerinne asked. Raila put on her uniform jacket, but showed a bit of her stomach in the process. Jerinne’s eye went to the bare flesh, but what she noticed were the bruises. “That’s from yesterday?”

  Raila looked down at her stomach. “Saints, those look horrid. Though everyone here has their share.”

  Jerinne took a closer look, since Raila was inviting her. The bruises were a gruesome mixture of purple and yellow. Jerinne wondered if the ones on her back were the same. “We’ll be keeping the infirmary busy.”

  “Stop dragging, you two,” Enther said. He was already fully dressed. “I’m sure I’m at the bottom of the rankings now.”

  “Still Fendall!” someone shouted from the doorway. He rattled off the ranking, and Jerinne was indeed last. She was surprised by that, but maybe Madam Tyrell was punishing her for some imagined s
light.

  Jerinne ignored it and put her boots on. It didn’t matter. What mattered was where they ended the year. Advancement to Candidate. Everything else was noise.

  She kept repeating that to herself as she went down to the armory with the rest of the third-years.

  “All right, all right, shields for everyone,” droned the irritated Candidate who had pulled armory duty. “And weapons of choice. Those are the instruction.”

  “I’m thinking sword,” Raila said. “That’s traditional, no?” Raila’s voice was shaking a little. She had dropped two places in the ranking, and that seemed to have rattled her.

  “Sure,” Jerinne said. “But I’m going to go with the quarterstaff.”

  “Really?” Raila asked. “Any reason?”

  “Could use the practice,” she said. Though she was thinking about Fredelle Pence from the Royal First, quite adept in its use. It was as much a Tarian tradition as the sword, wasn’t it?

  “Quarterstaff and shield,” the Candidate said, handing them over to Jerinne. As soon as she had the shield, she recognized it. From the weight, the chips on the paint, she knew it was the same one she had when she went to the Parliament. When she lost to Tharek Pell.

  Perhaps that was why she was dead last.

  “Come on,” she said to Raila. “Let’s get something in our bellies before we do whatever this is.”

  * * *

  “This is slightly unorthodox,” Grandmaster Orren said, watching the staff compile the marching packs in the lobby. Amaya was rather impressed how efficiently they had put them together.

  “That’s true, sir,” Amaya said. “But I was thinking, what’s a different way we can set these Initiates off their bearings? We can train them with weapons and physical conditioning until they vomit, bruise them within an inch of their life, but that does little beyond abuse them.”

  “I said something to that effect last night,” he said. “I’m not saying I disapprove of this plan, I simply find it odd that you came up with it so suddenly.”

  “Inspired in my sleep,” she said. She had spent all night weighing over telling the Grandmaster the real reason she was hiking the Initiates out to the Miniara Pass. Some small instinct in her gut told her not to.

  Perhaps it was because he had reacted to her and Dayne saving the Parliament with punishment. She hadn’t been able to reconcile that, even if they had broken orders. And maybe the secret message from Master Denbar had put her guard up. Regardless, she definitely couldn’t say she was following up on Dayne’s hunch about an ambush on the ballot wagons. Even the idea of saying it out loud was ludicrous.

  “I had been reading a bit of history lately, how Lief Frannel and his squad of volunteers ambushed Tochrin’s reinforcements in Miniara Pass.”

  “And here I thought Dayne had been a negative influence on you,” he said. Amaya wasn’t sure how to take that.

  “So I thought, training exercise of a hike in full dress, re-create the tactics of the battle in the pass itself, spend the night under the stars and hike back.”

  “It has merit,” he said. “Unorthodox, but merit. And the details of the third-year Initiate training are on your shoulders, so if this is how you feel the next two days are best spent, I wouldn’t argue that with you.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “But,” he said sharply, “in the future, tell me before the staff, all right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He chuckled and headed up to his sanctum.

  “We’re all set, madam,” one of the staff told her, pointing to the eighteen packs. “Food, water, camp rolls, supplies for everyone.”

  “I’m quite impressed,” she said.

  He shrugged. “The equipment is standard, and it’s part of how we’re trained.”

  “Of course,” she said. She realized that for the staff here, and the whole service class in the country, there was probably just as much training, trial, and hierarchy as there was in the Elite Orders.

  He nodded and led the rest of the staff off, as Vien and the third-years came into the lobby. They were all impressively decked out in their armor and tunics. If, somehow, Dayne was right and there was a fight waiting for them in the pass, they certainly looked ready.

  She had no idea if any of them had been in a real fight, other than Jerinne. Maybe not even Vien.

  “Good morning, all,” Amaya said. “You’re probably wondering what’s going on today.”

  “Whatever it is, we’re ready,” Tander said. Tander, the pretty, blond-haired boy currently at the top of the ranking. And deservedly so—he had the skills, the demeanor, the drive. He was like a shorter, less annoying Dayne.

  “That’s good,” she said. “Grab a pack, and get ready to march at double time.”

  “What’s the mission, ma’am, if we’re allowed to know?” Dade asked. A good, solid kid who probably wouldn’t make Candidate, though not out of any particular failing. But in a few years he would make a fine Constabulary officer, or security chief for some minor noble.

  “Who knows the history of the Battles of the Incursion?” Amaya asked. “Vien, give them the brief.”

  Vien stepped forward and barked out, “In 1008 the city was under siege by who?” She paused just long enough for the Initiates to think she expected an answer, and then said, “The Black Mage and his army, led by General Tochrin. The city forces were holding their own, mostly buying time for civilians to be evacuated across the river. But Tochrin had what?”

  Now she paused longer, looking expectantly.

  “Reinforcements from Ressinar?” Enther offered.

  “Very good, Enther. Coming on Canthen Road through the Miniara Pass. Those reinforcements would have given Tochrin the edge to push into the city before the evacuation was complete. So what happened?”

  Jerinne raised her hand. “Lief Frannel and his ‘score of good men’ led an ambush on the reinforcements in the pass, stopping them before ‘their poison infected the city.’”

  Amaya grinned. Jerinne had been reading, probably because of Dayne’s prodding this past month. The girl had been all but bedridden for two weeks.

  “Twenty-one people stopped an army there,” Vien said. “And all of us make eighteen, but it’ll do. We’re going to go see the Miniara Pass, and learn about how the attack went.”

  “And how to defend against such an ambush,” Amaya said. “It’s twenty miles away. If we go strong, we can make it by four bells, and have several hours before sunset to look it over.”

  The Initiates did not look happy about that.

  No matter.

  “All right, let’s move,” she said. “Sunlight’s burning.” She grabbed her pack and slung it over her shoulders, marching out of the chapterhouse, hearing the boots of the Initiates behind her.

  Whether Dayne was right or not, Amaya thought, this would be a good day.

  Chapter 10

  DAYNE CHANGED OUT of the dress uniform and back to his normal Tarian tunic following the morning’s briefing with the press. This one was nowhere near as painful, but it was still incredibly awkward. He had gotten Hemmit and Maresh into the briefing, though. If he was going to have almost no influence on what he was saying, he could at least open up who he was saying it to.

  He emerged from his quarters in the Parliament to find Hemmit and Maresh waiting for him in the hallway.

  “You shouldn’t be down here,” Dayne said.

  “True,” Hemmit said, “but we have something you’re going to want to know about.”

  “They’ve dismissed your information on the Six Sisters. They say it’s ‘not a credible threat.’”

  “That’s sewage,” Maresh said. “They aren’t doing anything about it?”

  “Marshal Chief Samsell says the ballots are already under escort, and he doesn’t believe there’s anything else that needs to be done.”


  “So what are you going to do?”

  “It’s not like I can up and leave the city.”

  Hemmit smirked. “So what are you going to do?”

  “Nothing,” Dayne said. “But I’ve convinced Amaya to look into it herself. But that isn’t why you came, is it?”

  “No,” Hemmit said. He passed a note to Dayne. “Seems you made an impression on the leader of the Open Hand. He wants to meet with you.”

  “With me?” Dayne opened the letter. It was from Bishop Issendel, asking for Dayne to meet him at a public house called the Buttered Pear. “Then why did he reach out to you?”

  “Not sure,” Hemmit said. “But shouldn’t we go hear what he has to say?”

  Dayne let himself smile. “So where is the Buttered Pear?”

  The place in question was on the Trelan Docks, at almost the northernmost tip of the district. It was a brightly colored place—or at least it had been, but the paint had faded and chipped, now a dull shade of what it once must have been. When they entered, a white-suited proprietor rushed up to them. “Hello, gentlemen,” he said in a strong Scallic accent. “Are you in need of directions?”

  “Are we not welcome to have lunch here?” Hemmit asked.

  “Of course, of course,” the proprietor said. “It’s just . . . usually when high city fellows like yourselves come in here, with a look on their face much like the one you have, well . . . usually that means they’ve wandered too far up the docks and don’t know where they are.”

  “We are where we want to be,” Hemmit said, his voice rising.

  “This is the Buttered Pear,” Dayne said, signaling Hemmit to calm down. “We came here to meet someone.”

  “Oh, of course,” the Proprietor said. “Is it Mister Ret?”

  “Mister Ret?” Dayne asked. “Isn’t he a bishop?”

  “He is a man of god, yes,” the proprietor said. “But he is also a man of simple tastes. Come along.”

  He led them through the place to a porch in the back of the restaurant, overlooking the river. At the only table, Bishop Issendel sat with Sister Frienne, but they were both out of their holy vestments. Bishop Issendel wore a simple suit of pale linen, with a tied string in place of a cravat. Sister Frienne was in a matching dress, modest and simple, though it was fringed with the red of her vestments.