Chapter 130: Loyalty

Most of the soldiers looked at the rebels the way a man looks at a wave that has already left the sea.

They stood frozen in the corridors, swords half raised, faces gray.

A hundred and fifty guests were pouring out of the great hall. The soldiers had been trained to break up brawls. Nobody had ever trained them for this.

Twenty-four of them had retreated up the spiral staircase in a panic, boots clattering, voices cracking. They bunched at the first landing like frightened sheep. A few had already dropped their swords.

Then one of them planted his feet in the middle of the stairs and held out his arm.

"Stop."

It was not a shout. It was a flat, hard word, and it landed like a stone in a pond.

The soldier who had spoken was lean and wiry, with a broken nose and sharp, tired eyes, and his name was Raisen Kukini.

He had two stars on his chest and a voice that did not shake. "Nobody runs. Nobody drops anything. Stand where you are."

They stopped. They did not know why. They only knew that a man who could still speak calmly was a rope in a flood, and they grabbed it with both hands. ℯⅇ𝙡.

A door slammed open on the landing above.

Bianca came running from her room, one shoe on and one in her hand, her hair tangled with sleep.

The intake clerk. The woman who had smiled at me on my first day and explained the rules in a warm, patient voice. She skidded to a stop at the top of the steps with her olive eyes wide. "Wha... what is happening?"

Raisen did not answer at once. He walked up three stairs, took her by the elbow and spoke low and fast.

I could not hear his words from where I stood, but I saw his lips form the shapes of them: the guests, the Order, the captains gone, the King alone. I saw what he was proposing.

Bianca listened. Her face went from white to red to something very still.

Then she nodded.

By the time we reached the staircase, the first of the guests had already packed the landing.

The spiral stair wound upward in a great stone coil, narrow and steep, lit by torches that guttered in the draft. Soldiers crowded its lower turns. Raisen stood in the middle of them with his sword in his fist. When he saw us, he drew in a breath, and I watched him decide.

He raised his voice. It cracked at the edges, but it carried. "W... we are on your side!" He swung his sword in a wide arc, and the blade caught the torchlight. "We have always been on your side! We did not choose this uniform! If you accept us, we will fight for you!"

Silence fell across the staircase.

It was a long, ugly silence, and it hung there on a knife’s edge. Behind me, I felt the crowd shift. Arthur’s spear came half up. Sera’s fingers brushed the head of Puppeteer, who hissed softly. I held up my hand.

Wait.

I looked at Raisen. I looked at the fourteen soldiers who had gathered behind him, pale and trembling and clutching their swords like prayer beads. I looked at Bianca, standing a step above them, her chin up.

I nodded once.

A ragged cheer went up. Fourteen men and a woman lowered their blades and fell in beside us.

Then, above us, someone spat.

"We will not betray our king!"

Ten soldiers broke away from Raisen’s line.

They did it all at once, in a rush of boots and steel, and they pounded up the steps to the higher landing.

They were ordinary Fighters, a few stars each, the kind of men Culex had picked from the guests and fed better than their neighbors.

They turned on the stair and drew their swords in a silver rasp, and their faces were pale, but they did not shake.

"We will not betray our king!" the tallest one shouted again.

Now the shape of it was clear. Fourteen soldiers and Bianca stood with the rebels. Ten stood with Culex.

I will be honest. I looked at the ten, and something in my chest twisted, and it was not hatred. I respected them more than the fourteen.

The fourteen had changed sides when the wind changed.

It was a sensible thing to do. It was the thing I had counted on.

But the ten had looked at a crowd of a hundred and fifty, and they had looked at the odds, and they had looked at the cold arithmetic of who would live and who would not. And they had made their choice anyway.

Five of them turned and bolted up the stairs toward the throne room, running for the King, to warn him.

The other five stayed.

They spread across the width of the stair and raised their swords. They were buying time, with their bodies, for a man who had never once given them a reason to.

That was honor, of a kind. I did not know whether it was beautiful or terrible. I knew only that I would not forget their faces.

We climbed.

I was at the front, with Theodore on my left, Arthur and Sera behind me, Mary at my shoulder.

Lee had stayed in the great hall with the guests, holding the floor while the rest of the palace came apart.

Raisen’s soldiers surged past us up the steps.

"Hold the line!" one of the loyal soldiers cried.

The first clash rang out like a struck bell.

Steel met steel in the narrow stair, and sparks leapt off the stone.

The loyal five had set themselves in a staggered diagonal, two on the lower step, two above, one at the rear, so that no more than two attackers could reach them at once.

It was a good formation. It was a formation made by men who had trained together.

Raisen took the lead against them.

He did not charge.