Without another word, Vac rose to his feet. It was a slow process: he was a man of bulk—not tall by any measure, but stocky, densely built. His joints were getting a little old. So sometimes the limitations of his body robbed him of his haste.
And in times of crisis he deliberately moved slowly. It was his private little method of mastering the world. He who is afraid runs around like a headless chicken. And he who fears nothing stands up slowly, and walks slowly across the room, and slowly down the hall. He moves step-by-step onto the balcony, into the cold wind. But he does not lay his hand leisurely on the balustrade—he does so with absolute deliberation. And he does not rest his hand upon the rail—he grips it.
In that way Vac moved to face the crowd from above. The mob gushed through the streets like a flooded river, but spotted Governor Vac on the balcony before they had reached the heavy front doors to the Old Fort. When he made his appearance before them, they drew to a halt. The cobblestone streets of the old district were full of gaunt-faced men brandishing knives and broomsticks. And, in recent years, swords had become popular decorations, commemorating the bold and fiercely independent heritage of Falcon Point, so a good number of the rioters had blades tailor-made for the killing of men.
These they lifted high above their heads, shouting threats and curses at the governor, which echoed through the corridors of the old district, with its streets of stone and its buildings of brick and plaster. The clamor of the crowd was threat upon threat, each cry ringing through the street blurring together with all the other cries so that nothing that anyone said was intelligible to the man they were yelling at.
Vac answered with a steadfast glare, and he gripped the railing on the balcony. The Old Fort was a stone sentinel. The sky at his back was duller than slate.
From the moment he first showed his face, the shouts crescendoed for several minutes, but in time they began to dwindle slightly. They would escalate again soon enough, for the volume of an impassioned crowd cycles up and down as perfectly as a sine wave.
When the low point in that cycle came, Vac’s voice boomed across the crowd: “What do I have to say for myself, you ask?”
Whether or not anyone had asked that, he had no idea. But he asked it with such dominance that they all believed that they had collectively asked precisely that question. So their shouts declined further still. Some of them repeated his question back at him. But the cycle was broken. Their cries did not redouble, but they dried out, wilted, and at last faded into silence. Two thousand angry young men, at least, were hushed in anticipation of Vac’s answer to their burning question.
He milked the silence. He knew how long it would last and how long it would not last. He could read it in the tension of the air, and in the eyes of each man in the crowd—and he met many of those eyes directly.
Just before the first murmurings resumed, he spoke: “I can understand why you’re all here. You’ve lost a lot lately and you’re angry. You’re scared. You’re hungry. Well, if you kill me and my staff, the meat on our bones isn’t going to last you very long. And our pantries are just as empty as yours. So you’ll still be hungry, and you’ll still be angry, and you’ll still be scared. Therefore, instead of storming the Old Fort, I ask you to do something strange instead. Go home. Be with your families. Hold them tight and tell them you love them. And pray. Pray for the city. Pray for your families and yourselves. Pray for me and my staff.
“While you’re doing that, I can guarantee we won’t be doing that. We’ll be working night and day to figure out how to get food into the city. How to get our businesses and industries running without magic. And how to keep you safe from looters, from foreign enemies, and from yourselves. So I ask you now, from the bottom of my heart, please get the hell out of here so I can keep this city alive.”
After blasting out those words, Vac fell silent; and the wind blew through the city streets, over the heads of the men in the mob, and licked his stony cheeks.
Then one of them—a man in a dark brown cotton jacket—yelled out in the silence: “Why should you have peace when there’s no peace for any of us!”
Vac looked down on him from above. He did not speak: he stared in a silence and a stillness that was greater than an earthquake. Anger was in his brows, and his eyes did not waver nor blink, nor did he shift his weight on his feet, nor twitch his fingers. Instead, their grip was firm on the rail. Vac was a statue. He was made of stone, the same old, weathered, unbreakable stone that made up the Old Fort.
This mob had gathered to storm the capitol and turn its leader into lifeless flesh. They came to spill this man’s blood. But now it was unthinkable. In him was more dignity and more stone-cold resolve than in all their number combined.
So, without shouting, without speaking, without murmuring, they lowered their heads. They broke the stare and looked toward their feet. They turned their backs to the Old Fort. They wandered home.
Those who had shouted the loudest, those who had wanted to remain firm, those who were content to match the governor’s gaze—they glanced about them to see their friends and neighbors departing. A few of them tried to rally the mob—the man in the jacket urged his compatriots to stand their ground—but the miraculous energy of the throng was gone, suppressed from above. The spirit of rebellion and outrage was dead and buried with hardly a word to its memory.
Vac remained motionless until the mob was dispersed, until not one of them was still staring back up at him, until even the man in the jacket had cast his eyes aside. Then he loosened his hold on the rail, popped his knuckles against it, and walked back in from the balcony.
Coonhil greeted him with a handshake and a pat on the back, but he, like the mob, could not find a word worthy of the moment.
“Now where were we?” Vac said, his voice a little gruff. “The economy?”
“Well, I believe so,” Coonhil answered, following Vac’s momentum back toward the office.
“Good. Let’s get on with it then,” said Vac.
Coonhil said nothing, in disbelief that Vac was so soon ready to get back down to business.
Vac glanced at him. He didn’t smile. “I need a glass of water,” he said.
Don't miss a single word of stories as they are published! You'll also receive first notice of special sales and behind-the-scenes information.