“What is this thing?” she gasped as the carriage shot over uneven cobbles, crashing her teeth together.
“This is the greatest work of conduit design you’ll ever see, you miserable little traitor.”
“It’s Duris’s car,” Bringham said. “Just not the one he brings to work or puts on the market. This one’s more of a passion project.”
“Why does this thing even exist?” Sciona demanded. It seemed that there was an element of fun at play for Duris, who was visibly enjoying the drive. But if it was just for fun, there would be no need for the armor.
“It exists for occasions like this,” Bringham said.
“Right.” Sciona realized that an order of men who subsisted on human blood had to be prepared for their food source to rise in rebellion. “You had all this ready in case there was ever an uprising.” She looked to the staff resting against Bringham’s shoulder—a wartime conduit made to maim and kill enemies. “You’ve always been ready to subdue the Kwen with violence.”
“Hey, I have a wife and children to protect,” Duris snapped. “You think I’m taking chances with these demons about?”
“Demons, Archmage?” Sciona said. “You mean the people who work your factories and make you your fortune? The people of the city you’re sworn to protect?”
“I’m sworn to protect Tiran and its true citizens,” Duris shot back, “not the filth that came crawling through the barrier three centuries late to leech off our hard-won fortune.”
Sciona swallowed her ire, caught between wanting to watch Duris’s marvelous vehicle at work and very much not wanting to watch the bodies bounce off the sides as they drove through the crowds toward Bringham’s mansion.
“Really, Duris, you should be thanking Highmage Freynan,” Bringham said with a smile. “When else were you going to get to tearing around in this thing without regard for traffic regulations or pedestrians?”
“And what is going on?” Sciona asked as her brain tried to catch up through the pumping mess of emotion and adrenaline. “Why is this car allowed on the streets?” Magical carriages were carefully regulated for safety reasons. “Why were you two allowed to take me out of that jail when you’re not police or my family?” She turned to Bringham. “Why are the authorities firing on civilians? The city chairs didn’t…”
Bringham confirmed what she was already putting together. “The city chairs have declared martial law. All government agents, including mages, can do whatever is necessary to restore order until the emergency has passed.”
So, breaking a twelve-year-old boy’s hand, Sciona thought. Electrocuting a man with no trial. That’s restoring order? But if she tried to have this discussion now, she was going to end up screaming, and she didn’t want to give Duris the satisfaction of seeing her break down.
They were roaring through Sciona’s neighborhood now, a working-class area inhabited by both Kwen and Tiranish. Here, the poorest of ethnically Tiranish citizens clashed with the Kwen mobs, and the result was total chaos. Sciona couldn’t see down the darkened street to her own apartment complex as it flashed by, but she got a clear, terrible look at the Berald family bakery at the corner.
Men argued before its smashed windows, backlit by fire. It was hard to make out any faces with the bakery burning in the background. God—a thought seized Sciona’s heart in her chest: were Ansel and his family still inside? Had they managed to escape their third-story apartment before the smoke and flames from the bakery reached them? A moment later, she realized that if they weren’t burning to death, then they were among the men who had rushed to confront the Kwen in front of the shop.
There were no city guards or mages here to defend the ‘true Tiranish’ Duris claimed to serve. There was only brown hair and copper as men shoved and fought. A fist flew into a jaw. Someone picked up a brick. And what a hideous day, Sciona thought—what a cosmically hideous moment—to realize that she truly did care about the people of this city. Her neighbors weren’t just faceless nothings she passed on her way to greatness. They mattered.
Maybe not all of the Kwen and Tiranish out there were innocent souls, but they had all been ignorant of the cost of magic. None of them deserved to suffer its fallout.
Sciona felt a lump build in her throat as she watched the shadows of people beating each other in the brief flashes of light from the street lamps. Thomil had known this would happen. He had tried to tell her that it wouldn’t be the mages who paid for Tiran’s crimes—and that included Sciona, with her cushy cell and magical guard. It was the poor of Tiran who bore the brunt of this horror on both sides.
“Animals,” Duris muttered, and it was unclear whether he meant just the Kwen or the entire seething mass of poor citizens venting their anguish on each other. “Filthy animals.”
It was how he got to sleep at night beside his wife, Sciona imagined. The corpses that had made his fortune weren’t girls like his daughters, weren’t ladies like his wife, weren’t old men and women like his esteemed parents. The people he fed on had to be of intrinsically lower quality. They had to be monsters.
Sciona kept her eyes open, even as they warmed with tears, and envied Duris’s powers of denial.
I did this, she thought as she watched figures smashing storefront windows in the dark. Horror tangled with thrill in the pit of her stomach. I did all of this.
That little tingle of a thrill reminded her that she was not blameless like so many of the people taking to the streets or cowering in their homes. Some deep part of her was like Renthorn the Third, a creature of ego and hunger whose personal glory had been more important to her than any of the lives she destroyed.
As they neared Bringham’s mansion, faint red light spilled down the streets. For a moment, Sciona thought her Freynan Mirrors had inexplicably reopened with the stroke of noon. Then she realized it was no spell but the sun over the far hills, making its final appearance for the next two months.
This was the last day of Feryn’s Feast. What should have been a time of community, during which people reaffirmed their faith and their bonds with one another, had turned into a city-wide riot. In minutes the sun would set, and who could say if Tiran would still be standing when it rose again?
“Men, love your progeny as God loves his Tiranish children. For, as the Tiranish are made in the image of Feryn, your children are your mirror. He of good character will rule his children well and their quality will speak to his when they go about the world. Govern your children for, in life, they are your truest reflection; in death, they are your legacy, and a man’s legacy is as near as he may reach to immortal godhood.”
— The Tirasid, Conduct, Verse 28 （56 of Tiran）
THE SUN WAS gone by the time Duris’s car reached Bringham’s mansion.
The Deep Night began with Kwen massed outside the archmage’s estate, rattling at the gates in an attempt to bring them down. The crowd was so dense that it was impossible for Duris’s car to pass the double gates without allowing the Kwen an opening to push inside. Duris had to cast a ring of fire to clear a path, burning clothing and skin from the Kwen who didn’t get out of the way fast enough.