Chapter 128: One Star

I was standing in the great hall when my disciples came to me.

Thirty-five of them. Thirty-five ordinary faces in thirty-five ordinary tunics, men and women who had bought and sold my goods.

They gathered in a loose half circle in front of me, and every single one of them was looking at me with the same thing in their eyes.

They knew. Not everything. But enough.

I took a deep breath, and I nodded.

They moved.

The palace had never been so empty of its masters. Of the forty soldiers who served Culex, sixteen, the four-stars and five-stars of every faction, had ridden out with their captains. Twenty-four remained, three from every faction, and every one of them was a Fighter...

Every other soldier worth fearing was miles down the road. Culex himself had not come outside. He sat on his throne five floors above us, behind a door and a flight of stairs and an overconfidence I had spent a month feeding.

There was one more exception among the soldiers, a woman in a green shirt with three stars on the chest.

Charolette had taken the vacant place in Daniel’s faction when Rico was promoted, and the rest of us had shifted up around her like pebbles in a stream.

Martha was a five-star now. Jonas was still four.

She knew about the plan.

I had told her one night, two weeks ago, in a corridor with no torches. I had expected shock. I had expected her to step back, to draw her blade, to ask whether I had lost my mind.

She had only smiled, a small, quiet, knowing smile, and said she had already guessed.

Now she stood three paces to my right, her sword at her hip, her blue eyes on the crowd. Close enough that I could feel the warmth of her sleeve against mine.

I did not move away. Neither did she.

My disciples fanned out through the hall, and the guests began to gather around them.

They came slowly at first, a trickle, then a stream, drawn by whispers and the strangeness of the hour. Men in patched tunics. Women with hollow cheeks.

A boy no older than twelve, clutching a bucket. Hazel pushed through the crowd with her crossbow on her back, Camila at her side.

Theodore, still wearing Rudy’s lazy mask, slouched against a pillar with his arms folded and a dry smirk on his face.

Within minutes, the hall was packed so tightly that I could hear them breathing.

A hundred and fifty faces. All of them tired. All of them afraid.

Beneath the lightless chandelier stood the wheeled podium. It had been scrubbed clean, but a faint rust-colored stain still clung to its edge. I walked toward it. My boots rang on the stone like the strokes of a bell.

I climbed onto the platform where Quinn had died.

The hall grew quiet.

I closed my eyes and reached inward, into the cluster of Gifts glowing in my Core. One of them was a small, humble thing. Latent rank. One of the many Lee had handed over from his pile.

It was the only one I needed.

A warm tingle rose in my throat, like the first sip of strong liquor. It would translate whatever language I spoke into the ears of everyone who listened, each in the tongue they knew best.

It could not make my words true. It could not make them kind. It could only make sure that every single person in that hall, Valemont-born or Nuesaki or Euniscopian, would hear exactly what I said.

In the crowd, Camila’s head tilted.

"What?" A man called from the front. He was gaunt and gray, with a bandaged hand, and his voice cracked with suspicion. "What is this? Why are we here?"

I looked down at him. I let the silence stretch until it was heavy enough to choke on. Then I took off my cap and let the lamplight fall on my face. I did not smile. Peter would have smiled. Peter would have stammered. I did neither.

"Do you want to fight for the Twilight Order?" I said.

"Do you want to escape from here?"

Somewhere in the back, a woman gasped.

Camila’s eyes went wide. She was staring at me with her lips parted, and I knew exactly what she was hearing: plain, perfect Euniscopian, in my voice, without a single word lost. Beside her, Hazel’s mouth fell open too. She looked from me to Camila and back, as if I had just grown a second head.

No one answered. Someone muttered, he is mad, and someone else hissed, shut up, listen.

Their faces were full of confusion and dread. They looked at the doors, at the stairs, at one another, and I could feel every one of them wondering whether this was a trap.

I let them wonder.

"Look at me," I said. "Look at my shirt. One star. The weakest soldier in this palace. I am not a hero. I am not a king. I am not a man you would notice if you passed me in a corridor." I spread my arms. "And yet I am standing on the place where a man was killed in front of you, and no one has stopped me. Do you know why?"

Silence.

"Because they are afraid of you."

A shudder ran through the crowd.

"He told you he gave you shelter." I stabbed a finger at the ceiling. "He said he gave you food, and entertainment, and protection. Let me tell you what he really gave you. He gave you a hole in the floor to use as a toilet. He gave you water that flows only when you kill for him. He gave you a room with four strangers and a quota of dead beasts to fill every night, or you do not eat." My voice rose, rough and hot. "He gave you a door that opens only if you sell your memories! Your name! Your mother’s face! The road home! He would rip every one of them out of your head and call it mercy!"

Someone started to cry.

"And when one of us broke his rules," I said, softer, "he gave us a lesson..."

My eyes moved to the stain on the podium.

"You watched a man’s face torn off. You watched it because you were told to. And then you did something I will never forget." I let the pause grow teeth. "You clapped."

A hush fell, thick and suffocating, like snow over a grave.

"I clapped too," I said, and my voice broke on it, and I did not hide it. "I stood in that line, and I clapped, because my hands were more afraid of the King than my heart was ashamed of me. I will carry that for as long as I live. But I will not carry it one day longer than I have to." My fist clenched until the knuckles cracked. "Because I am done being afraid."

A man in the third row lifted his head.

"Do you know how many of him there are?" I asked. "One. One man, upstairs, on a chair. And today, he has twenty-four soldiers in this palace, and I have looked into the face of every one of them. They are afraid too. They are fathers and sons and brothers, and they eat the same bread you do! And they are paid in the same terror! Every wall in this castle was built with your obedience! Every chain on your wrists was forged from your silence!" I swept my arm across the sea of faces. "There are more than hundred of you! There are twenty-four of them! Tell me, who is holding whom!?"

A murmur, low and rising. The gaunt man with the bandaged hand had taken a step forward. Beside me, Charolette’s fingers had tightened on her sword, and her shoulder pressed against mine, hot and steady, like a second pulse.

They were listening.

Now I had to make them move.