"They're waiting for something, boss. It's like everyone smells that something is going to happen." "I think you're right, Loiosh. I wonder." Not far from the new headquarters was a small park, shaped like a diamond with an arc cut out of one side. It was called the Exodus, which had something to do with the arrival of masses of Easterners to Adrilankha during the Interregnum. There were a few clumps of half-starved trees, a pond full of water and algae, and unkept grass and weeds with several paths cutting across them. I crossed the Exodus on a path that took me near the small rise by the arc. I stopped there for a while and watched.
There was a pack of about two dozen boys and girls, most of them nine to eleven years old, who were industriously turning trees into spears. They had a pile of perhaps fifty already, and the work was neatly divided up: Some cut down the saplings, others trimmed and shortened them, another group removed the bark, while others smoothed and polished them, and yet another group put points on them. They were all filthy, but most of them seemed to be enjoying themselves.
There were a few who seemed grimly intent on their jobs, as if they considered themselves to be involved in matters of high importance, and some, especially the ones cutting up the logs, just seemed tired.
I watched them for a while as the significance washed over me. It wasn't so much that they were making weapons, it was the systematic way in which they were going about it. Someone had put them up to this and explained exactly what to do. Yes. Someone.
I started walking again, faster now, but I didn't make it to the headquarters. I was still half a mile away when I came upon a guard station. There was no one there wearing the gold cloak, however; instead there were a score of men and women, mostly Easterners, but I picked out a few Teckla as well, all armed, and all wearing yellow headbands. They stood outside the guardhouse, smiling and saluting everyone who came by.
They scowled at my Jhereg colors, but were willing to talk to me. I said, "What does the headband mean?"
"It means," said a willowy human woman of middle years, "that we are protectors. We have taken control."
"Of what?" I said.
"Of this part of the city."
"Can you tell me what happened?"
"Press gangs," she said, as if that explained everything.
"I don't understand."
"You will, Jhereg. You'd best move along now."
It was either that or start killing Easterners. I moved along.
"I don't like this, boss. We should get out of here."
"Not yet, Loiosh."
A breeze came up, and brought with it a smell that I couldn't place. I'd smelled it before; the associations were not pleasant. But what was it?
"Horses, boss." "That's it. Where?" "Left here. Not far."
It wasn't far. Just around a curve in the street, and there ere more of the brutes than I'd ever seen at one place since the Eastern horse-army at the Wall of Baritt's Tomb. But this tjme, instead of being ridden, they were attached to large carts—six or seven carts, I think—and the carts were being loaded with boxes. I recognized them as the sort of farmers transports that regularly came into South Adrilankha with deliveries, and left while it was still morning. What was most unusual was how many of them there were.
I approached, and asked one of the workmen what was going on. He, too, sneered at my colors, but said, "We have control of South Adrilankha; now we are issuing proclamations for the rest of the city." "Proclamations? Let me see one." He shrugged and pulled a piece of paper out of the box. It was neatly set in printer's type, and said, in distinctly unimaginative language, that the Easterners and Teckla of South Adrilankha were refusing to admit press gangs into the city, and were demanding the release of their imprisoned leaders, and were rising as one to take the government from the hands of tyrants, and so on and so on.
It was there, as these wagons began to drive off, that I began to get a sense of unreality—a sense that became stronger as I wandered off and saw, lying unattended and ignored in the street, the body of a Dragaeran, dead from many wounds, wearing the gold cloak of the Phoenix Guards.
A long time later, in the cottage of an Eastern family where I spent a night, I found Maria Parachezk's little pamphlet "Grey Hole in the City," a description of those few days in Adrilankha. As I read it, I lived it again; but more than that, I found myself nodding and saying, "Yes, that's true," and, "I remember that," as she described the pikemen's stand at Smallmarket, the Guardsmen walking twenty abreast down the Avenue of the Moneylenders, the burning of the grain exchange, and other events that I actually witnessed. If you find the pamphlet, read it, and, if you like, insert here descriptions of any event that catches your imagination. Because until I read it, I didn't really remember any of those things.
I remember laughs and screams, fading into each other as if they were part of a single musical composition, although they were long hours apart. I remember the smell of the burning grain, and looking down at my hands to see the ashes there. I remember standing in an alley, out of the way of a marching battalion of Phoenix Guards, tapping a broken axe handle against the wall of a boardinghouse. There was blood on the axe handle, but I don't know how I acquired the thing, much less if I was the one to blood it.
Maria Parachezk, whoever she is, was able to make sense out of the whole thing, put events in order and connect them logically. I wasn't then, so I'm not going to pretend to now. Apparently the insurgents, Easterners and Teckla, were actually winning until late in the second day of the rebellion, the third of the new year, when the sailors on the Whitecrest withdrew their support of the rebels and allowed the landing of the Fourth Seaguard, who broke the siege at the Imperial Palace. But, from where I was, I never saw any difference between winning and losing, right up until the end, when the Orca came through the streets, mowing down everyone they saw. I didn't even find out until afterward that the Imperial Palace had been attacked twice and was under siege for nine hours.
I remember that, at one point, I became aware that I'd been in South Adrilankha for an entire day, and I remember the early evening of that day, when it seemed that the whole city was screaming, but, as I go through my memories like a cedar chest I've lost something in, I don't think that I saw anything more than sporadic fighting even at the worst. There'd be silence, a few people running, then the sound of metal on metal or metal on wood, screams,the horrible smell of burnt human flesh, so like and so unlike the smell of cooking meat. Did I actually strike a blow for "my people"? I don't remember. I've asked Loiosh, but he remembers even less; only that he kept asking me to go home and I kept saying not yet. I know that I tried to make contact with Cawti several times, but she wasn't receiving. For some reason, it was only when the massacre started—and even then I wasn't conscious of it as a massacre—that I remembered my grandfather. I walked quickly through the streets, only dimly aware that I was hurrying past the bodies of Easterners, men, women, and children. I am grateful that I can bring to mind so little of what I must have seen. I know that I skidded on something and almost fell, and only later did I realize that it was blood, flowing from the lacerated body of an old woman who was still moving.
I came across some fighting, but mostly I skirted it. At one point I ran into a patrol of four Dragaerans wearing the gold cloaks. I stopped, they stopped. They saw I was an Easterner, and they saw I was a Jhereg, and I guess that puzzled them. They didn't know what to do with me. I was not then holding a weapon, but they looked at the two jhereg on my shoulders and the rapier at my side. I said, "Well?" and they shrugged and moved on.