The Price {Completed}

Chapter Fourteen

News of the entire royal family's assassination spread through the city as if it had wings. Barely before noon on the day after our ballet's premiere, the streets clogged with men, women and children, all cheering and holding signs crudely painted with slogans and the Vigilant Men's mantra. They began celebrations in the street, offering free beer to any who passed and would toast the Common Army with them.

Yet, even as they yelled at the tops of their lungs that the tyrant had fallen, none cared to crow too loud about how the prince, princess, and queen had been found shot in the nursery by an unknown zealot. Perhaps they realized that the murders of two innocent children were not going to increase their chance of drawing others into their cause.

Even still, they had the majority of the city under their thumb. Nobles and the rich didn't dare exit their mansions for fear of the mobs. No one knew when or which house would be targeted by the workers. There was no order, there was no system. Just men and women choosing a mansion and breaking in to haul the family out. A few stories emerged of Vigilant Men executing any titled noble they stumbled upon, but the Common Army soon squelched the spreading of those tales with vicious fines and public punishments.

The Lennox Company did not rehearse for the first time in years. Instead, Mr. Lennox left us at the boarding house, barricaded in and guarded by the landlord and his son holding guns, while he disappeared into the city until nightfall. When he reappeared with the setting sun, he held a smile on his face.

"Where did you go?" I asked.

Mr. Lennox sat on one of the dining room chairs, unwinding his scarf and setting his hat on the table. Snow slowly melted on his black jacket.

"I paid a visit to Doctor Alkaev," he said. "You remember him?"

I nodded.

"He was eager to see the ballet we danced for the king."

The ballet he had commissioned from Mr. Lennox in the first place. I still had no idea why the Common Army wanted a story of a goddess and a creature. Nonetheless, a shiver ran down my spine just thinking about dancing the same ballet the nobles loved so much in front of the men who very well could have been the ones to shoot them in the streets.

"Surely a ballet is not really something that anyone would want to see during such a time as this? The king is still hanging from his front gate," I said.

"Doctor Alkaev wants the ballet, and we're going to give it to him," Mr. Lennox said. "To some, we may look as if we were loyal puppets to the king. We need to show them that we fall on the right side."

The right side being the winning side. Surely, the Common Army couldn't fail to see that was what he did. Move from side to side, always making sure he did not fall with the people he once professed to ally with. But perhaps Doctor Alkaev would be enough to secure our place in the new order.

The performance was set for the next week to give Doctor Alkaev and the Common Army enough time to sketch out a skeleton government to support the hole left by the monarchy. So, when we arrived at some archduke's home that had been converted into the Common Army's headquarters, we were met with the news that Doctor Alkaev had taken temporary charge of the kingdom. Our neighboring kingdoms—Lenotskaya and Prest—had not yet fallen to revolution. But the longer the Common Army held Rumonin, the more inevitable it became that the workers in the other two kingdoms would soon follow. With this in mind, Doctor Alkaev stood a good chance of being elected as Rumonin's official representative permanently. It was his mind, after all, that was behind the overthrow of the king in the first place. Who better to lead all three cities in throwing off the shackles of crowns and blood lines?