One of the javelins was saying something to the sword, utterly inaudible over the chanting of several hundred angry voices. He got a headshake in response, but the first one gripped his staff as if he was going hit the crowd with it, and Arylis flinched back. She had absolutely no desire to be struck by accident. For that matter, she wasn’t sure that if the javelin hit her it would be by accident. There was no way the Guardsmen could differentiate between her as separate from the rest of the crowd, after all.
The peacekeeper staffs had a rough look to them. They were solid eldritch oak, with rounded sarkolis caps that glowed faintly and ominously, and Arylis wished she could pull back well out of the crowd control weapon’s fifty-foot range. Getting struck with one wouldn’t kill her, but being unconscious and alone in a crowd this angry could be deadly all on its own.
“Please,” she tried to yell over the roar of the crowd, “I just need to come in!”
A crash sounded somewhere behind her, and she dared a fearful look over her shoulder into the mass of people. Had more people joined in since she worked her way to the front of the townhouse?
And then a dragon bellowed suddenly and she found herself in what had abruptly become a great deal of open space. She looked up…and swallowed a squeak of terror as a yellow-young to be ridden-soared over in a slow pass. The crowd roared back at the sky, even the chanting lost in momentary surprise. Some of the protestors recognized the threat inherent in that pass, but at least half the crowd had misinterpreted it as no more than a surprise bit of airshow. After all, for all their fury, they knew it was the Air Force’s job to protect the Union’s citizens, not threaten them with lethal force!
The pilot turned the dragon and began a second pass, coming in so low this time that Arylis could feel the air pressure change as the spells pulled in aetheric power to hold the beast aloft.
She clambered a few steps up and crouched against the rail wall to the side of the stairs her arms still wrapped around the cake carrier. Groups at the edges of the crowd had begun to move away and the center moved back with it. The chanting was gone, replaced by individual yells and shrieks, and she drew in a deep breath of relief. They’d all go home now, she thought, and in a few moments she might even be able to speak loudly enough to be heard over the din and possibly gain admittance at least into the public reception hall.
She looked back to the Guardsmen and saw not calm, but horror sketched across both their faces. They were screaming at the pilot, who certainly couldn’t hear them. She snapped her head back the other way and saw the dragon open its mouth.
Two shots burned over her head passing a warmth and numbness across the back of her neck. Through a darkening sight Arylis saw the pilot collapse limp in his straps and the dragon’s mouth go slack and snap shut.
* * *
“What the hell was that?”
A noncommittal grunt answered.
Icy fingers running down the back of Arylis’s neck cut through the thumping in her head. She awoke, still on the steps to Garth Showma House, but with a nearly empty street in front of her. The yellow perched on a nearby building roof and lowed mournfully, its pilot limp in his cockpit.
More people in GSG uniforms scurried from huddle to huddle in the street giving aid or assistance as needed to those left behind by the crowd.
She moaned and found one of the Guardsmen immediately at her side.
“Awake now, Missus?”
She nodded slowly, surprised to find her neck functioned just fine and that the pain in her left arm was only the too tight tangle of the cake carrier’s strap.
“Why don’t you head on home then? We’re going to help a group down to the slider station nice and slow here in a minute if you feel you can stand?”
“No.” I need to go see the Duke.
“That’s alright, you can rest a few more minutes, and we’ll get someone to carry you. Maybe there’s someone you could send for?”
“I need to get in,” Arylis said and was rewarded with a long sigh for her accidental repeat of the chant. “No, not that-” she tried to explain “-I’m trying to see the Duke.” She pointed her cake in an effort to explain.
The man cursed softly. “A cake delivery? In the midst of all that? I’d hate to have your boss, Missus.”
He didn’t get it right, but the door was opening and another retainer was summoned to help her up and walk her inside. Arylis saved her explanations for further inside the townhouse.
She found a comfortable chair in the receptions office and settled into it. Office doors were flying open, and staff were rushing about entirely too quickly to catch their attention immediately. She rested, for just a moment.
“I don’t believe for one moment the Undersecretary for Dragon Affairs personally authorized that disaster!” The voice echoed down the hall.
“I’m just telling you where the staffer I spoke with said the order came from, Fifty.”
“That pilot up there isn’t even a commissioned Twenty-Five.”
“Hope to Graholis he never gets a commission either, Fifty.”
“Hm. Kid might not even be alive.”
An inarticulate grumble answered that one.
“Trooper’s right, Fifty. I don’t want to serve with anyone who’d even think about firing on civilians.”
“He’s going to say he didn’t mean it. You know he’s going to say he was just faking to scare the crowd, and he’d never have dropped gas on anyone!”
“Don’t they gas people sometimes in Mythal?”
“I don’t care what the spell-blasted Mythlans do. We don’t, and that boy up there needs a healer. The dragon probably caught some of the blast, too. See about finding a dragon healer while you’re at it.”
Arylis let herself slip back into a dozy grey while she waited for the public offices to calm.
* * *
Later, hours later, Thankhar Olderhan, the Duke of Garth Showma personally opened the door and bowed to the fifty’s wife as she dropped him a curtsy and prepared to withdraw from his private office. She still seemed more than a little awed that the duke himself had wanted to hear her story, and she’d been more than a little nervous when she entered the warm, wood paneled room with its comfortable chairs, large desk, and the PC which now held a certified copy of her husband’s shocking message. He’d spent over an hour taking her back through every aspect of the extraordinary circumstances which had brought her to Garth Showma House-and damned nearly gotten her killed-and everything she’d said had only made him even more grimly confident that she was absolutely trustworthy.
“Thank you, Madam Ulthar,” he said as she rose from her curtsy. “It’s my honor to have men like your husband in the Second Andarans, and I genuinely can’t tell you how deeply grateful I am for your own integrity-and courage-in bringing his message to me so quickly. Magister Halathyn would be as proud of you as I am, I’m sure.”
“Thank you, Your Grace.” The words came out husky and the young woman’s beautiful brown eyes filled with tears. “I only…I mean, it was Therman who did it, really. And-”
“Your husband, Madam Ulthar, would be the first to tell me what a critical and personal service you’ve done me and my entire house, as well as the entire Union,” he said firmly. “And I’m very much afraid he may have put you at risk by asking you to undertake it. Because of that, you’ll be moving into Garth Showma House-unless you’d be more comfortable at Garth Showma itself? — until we know precisely what’s going on out there.”
“Oh, Your Grace, I couldn’t! I mean-”
“My dear, Her Grace has already spoken in this matter,” he told her with a faint smile. “I assure you that I’m not foolish enough to argue with her about it, and I’d recommend you not argue, either. It will be safer for both of us.”