Chapter 20
“I thought Sabra couldn’t be here,” she whispered to Nemith, who looked just as surprised as she felt.
“He’s a citizen of Patchwork,” he answered slowly. “Deathwatchers can attend the New Day if they want, but they almost never do. Besides, he’s done nothing criminal as far as they know. They couldn’t deny him passage here, but they’ll probably keep him under guard just to be safe.”
Jaas could only wonder what Arico was thinking, letting Sabra come here. From the looks he was getting, the crowd were both afraid of and fascinated by him. It was understandable, given that none of them had ever seen even a dwarf, much less a legendary giant.
People slowly condensed into the center of the patch, stopping once they couldn’t get any closer to the middle. The steps on the hill were shallow and about five hands apart from each other, each one stretching almost completely from north to south. Judging by the sheer numbers of people still arriving here, by the time everyone had arrived the crowd would probably fill up the entire patch! Nemith moved with the crowd, taking up position a little to the right of the midline, and relatively close to the front. Jaas followed, doing her best not to bump into anyone before sitting down. Then she noticed the altar in front of the crowd.
It was situated right next to the threads, directly in the audience’s line of sight but a fair distance away from them. Either made entirely of gold, or at least gold-plated, it stood out in the rising light. No doubt when the sun had risen high enough, it would shine to the entire crowd.
Disturbed, Jaas thought back over some of the stories of human sacrifice in old Vasiriah. Had the people of Patchwork brought back the old ways? Was that why all the children were waiting for them in another patch? She hoped the altar was just some kind of symbol, not to be used.
Off to the left a good distance, a navigator arrived with a pair of priests in white. They slowly walked towards the altar as the navigator left just as suddenly. As they approached, the entire crowd stood up, growing quiet. Jaas stood as well, feeling a growing sense of premonition in the back of her mind. Something important was about to happen.
-.-
Arico floated in the threads, trying to balance his distractions. His stomach was doing backflips as he recited his words again and again, trying to remember every one. He knew that it was actually his mind doing backflips, because his stomach technically didn’t exist right now, but it was still unpleasant. At least he had privacy here. He repeated his words again, one last time. Brevity is the soul of wit, he’d heard, but in this case it would also be necessary.
The roiling chaos of white flowed all around him, beckoning and tugging at his attention as it always did. There were stories of navigators who had lost themselves to that hypnotic motion, never to leave the threads. The same fate had befallen people who’d gone to sleep inside the threads. No sign of them had been seen again, despite large searches being arranged.
From his viewpoint into the New Day square, he was staring at… well, everyone. He could see the entire crowd from here, just over the altar. He’d even been able to pick Jaas and Nemith out of the crowd. Nemith had wisely situated them a good ways back for safety. Good man. He wasn’t privy to the whole plan, but he’d probably guessed a good bit of it.
There didn’t seem to be any guards near the stage, either. It seemed Sabra was just as interesting to them as Arico had hoped. He allowed himself a moment of smugness. It had been a good idea after all.
A tiny white edge of string extended from the ground in front of him, just shy of the threads. Arico had covered it in a thin layer of dirt to hide it, but he knew it extended forward and underneath the altar where it was connected to a tinder twig. Which in turn was inside the crate he and Sabra had stolen from Sevvas patch.
A crate full of tightly wrapped packages of sparkpowder.
The High Penet had arrived with one of his acolytes to the right, and the crowd had stood in unison for the opening speech. Taking a deep breath, Arico reached out of the threads as they approached and gave the string a hard pull. About a second later the altar exploded.
The blast itself was nothing short of perfection. It had better be—Arico had spent several hours the night before burying the crate in just the right position, while Alzhi had covered for him and made sure no one interrupted. As the altar came apart in midair, its pieces were hurled up and away from the crowd, back into the threads. Arico instinctively winced as the storm of shrapnel and debris rushed at him, but he was perfectly safe. It was all threaded just before it reached him.
The altar had been far enough away from the crowd that they were safe from the blast, but the High Penet and his acolyte were less fortunate. The shockwave had taken them both off their feet, slamming them to the ground with brutal force.
Threads couldn’t carry sound, so Arico couldn’t hear the explosion, but its effects on the crowd were obviously stunning. The nearest people had clearly screamed as they flinched away from it.
He waited a few seconds and then stepped out, right behind where the altar had stood. “Citizens of Patchwork!” He called out as loudly as he could to the crowd. “Don’t be afraid. I’m not here to harm anyone. Even those who deserve it most, like your High Penet.” Arico spared a contemptuous glance for the High Penet and his aide. “He who would force himself on innocent children in the name of serving Aquun!”
A shocked noise rippled through the closest sections of the crowd. The High Penet’s taste for little boys was something of an open secret in Sustained territory, but it would probably surprise the stra’tchi.
“But he’s not the only monster living in Patchwork,” Arico continued, looking back at the crowd. “My name is Arico, and I’m here to tell you the vile truth! The High Penet and his colleagues; the Sustained Council and their Lord Ascendant, all of them have been lying to us for our entire lives! Manipulating us, controlling us, and using us for their own ends!”
He took a second to let that sink in. Off to the sides in the distance, he could see Sustained guards moving his way. He was safe for now, though. The crowd was very thick, and it extended in both directions almost right up to the threads themselves. Thanks to Sabra’s distracting presence most of the guards were too far away to matter, but he wouldn’t have long before the nearest ones pushed their way through the crowd and reached him.
Some of them were certainly navigators, but he wasn’t concerned about that either. Even if they got to the nearest threads, it would take them time to figure out exactly where to exit the threads close enough to reach him. Just like weight, distance meant pretty much nothing when it came to navigating.
“They’ve taken our children away from us!” He continued to the crowd. “But it’s not to keep bloodlines apart as they claim, and it’s not to protect us from the Blood Fever! They do it to protect themselves! They know that anyone can be born a navigator, not just the Sustained children. I stand before you all as proof of this. I was raised in a farming patch! That’s why they hide the children away in brick buildings for the test itself: so they can keep us from seeing that their test is nothing but a sham! They’ve taken the Waters for themselves too, turning a sacred gift from Aquun into a commodity that they can withhold from us whenever they want!”
He stopped for a moment, trying not to look in Jaas’ direction. The Hauld had encouraged him to mention one last thing, in light of their recent digging project. “They’ve even manipulated what we know, hiding our true history from us so they could better control us!”
He poured intensity into his voice. “Some of you already knew this, deep in your bones. You’ve seen for yourself just what the Council does. What they are. And you all felt the tremor: the threads have been breached and a visitor from the Outside has come here to Patchwork at last. I’ve had the chance to learn from her, and now I know just how deeply we’ve been deceived! In the coming days I will share that knowledge with you… if you have the courage to listen!”
The nearest guard finally managed to push his way past the crowd to get a clear shot, and drew his matchlock. As he took aim, Arico lifted his arms as if to embrace the crowd and stepped backwards into the threads.
-.-
The crowd erupted into chatter as the Sustained guards converged on where the altar had been. Frightened voices overlapped each other in ever-increasing volume across the entire patch. Jaas knew how they felt. She’d expected something to happen, just not anything so eye-catching.
The people around them were all talking at once, but she was able to pick out bits and pieces of the conversations. Something about a prophecy, and a harbinger? Whatever it was, it had a lot of people worried.
Suddenly she realized they were in a precarious situation here. “Why aren’t we leaving?” She asked Nemith.
“It’s safer here,” he assured her. “They’ll be looking for both you and Arico again, but they don’t know what you look like now. It’s best to stay put and just be faces in the crowd.”
Of course he was right. It had been almost a month since she’d arrived in the city. Her skin was still darker than most people here, but her hair had grown, and with Endu’s help she’d braided it to match one of the local styles. All the same, she felt very exposed here. They had no weapons, and probably no help from the crowd if they were discovered.
Up ahead, another penet had arrived and was trying to calm the crowd down. Arico’s speech was a tough act to follow, it seemed. It took the poor man a while to get the people’s attention and keep it.
The High Penet and his assistant had apparently survived the sparkpowder explosion, and were being taken away by a few of the guards and a navigator. Arico had timed the blast expertly. He’d destroyed the evil symbol, carefully avoided killing anyone in the process, and had a chance to speak to every stra’tchi in the city, all in one stroke! It was brilliant. She briefly wondered who had come up with the idea.
Apparently, the Sustained had decided not to cancel the Laentana. The new penet gave a brief speech about not letting hatred and violence poison people against the spirit of celebration, and concluded that the day should continue as planned.
Hatred and violence. Jaas could almost feel the contempt from the crowd over that. Even the ones closest to the blast could probably remember Arico’s message being neither hateful nor violent. It had been a wake-up call to them, and Jaas could tell a lot of people had heard it loud and clear.
The crowd dispersed, splitting up into two roughly equal groups as they returned to the navigators waiting for them. Jaas couldn’t see Sabra anymore, either. Hopefully that was a good sign.
As she took Nemith’s hand and they reached one of the navigators, Jaas couldn’t help but wonder what new move Arico had planned for her. He’d mentioned her to the entire city. Like it or not, she was now deeply embedded in this revolution of his.
