The Rebel Assassin

Chapter 48: The Day of Prosperity, Part Two

It was the loudest silence Gordan had ever heard.

There was something mythical about the moment, something that reminded him of legends portrayed in carved stone or stained glass or epic poems of the ancient times passed from mouth to ear. This young woman who had flown into the square, wrestled the royal's representative to the ground, and now held a bloodied knife in the air, demanded silence and was obeyed.

The guards had all been subdued. Some people had fled. Gordan knew some must have died in the crush and the fighting, and it was likely that not all the victims had been guilty of anything. The scene balanced on a knife's edge between dream and nightmare.

And everyone was well aware that though the rebels in the crowd may have done most of the fighting, this short, slender woman in all back, clothes and long hair rippling, was the one orchestrating every move.

"Prosperity," she said, and her voice rang tight but loud. She may not have been scared, but she was as tense as the crowd. "Cannot be built on lies and inequality. The Queen knows this, and like her father and grandmother before her, she does not care. She had been given the opportunity to choose another path. Her answer was to seize power. Now, we have an answer for her." She seized the fabric at her shoulder and tore it away, revealing blinding, interlocking gold circles in her flesh. "The Guardians will not stand for this. We are not yours. We are Solangia's. On behalf of our country and our people, we declare war on you and your throne!"

Her final, harsh yell pulled answering shouts from the crowd, cheers that lashed the air with anger. The ones who left the audience left silently, threading their way against the grain of the crowd that pressed toward the girl in black, like a moth that had ceased to fly toward the light and instead reached for the darkness.

And out of the turmoil, a single voice rose in dissent.

"Traitor!"

The girl's head snapped to the side, eyes trained on a roof on the other side of the square.

"Traitor, rebel, scum!" The shouter was a man on the rooftop, in the tattered uniform of a royal guard. A long scratch across his face was visible even from the ground. Blood and dirt stained his tunic. He clutched a crossbow to his chest, breathing heavily. He had clearly survived the chaos only by fighting his way up to the high ground, and there was no way for him to escape from there. Even now, rebels were swarming to the house and starting to climb up to him.

He had to know there was no chance he would leave the square alive. Which meant he had nothing to lose.

"Guardians serve the crown, or they die!" He lifted the crossbow, pointed at the girl in black.

The crowd screamed.

In the single second the guard took to aim, Gordan found his mind clear and unconcerned, watching the girl. If this Guardian died now, just after declaring war on the queen, she would be a martyr for the revolution. He wondered, looking at her calm face, whether she was even scared.

She raised one hand, more as if to shield her eyes from the sun than to block a deadly bolt.

And the man on the roof dropped the crossbow, stumbled forward, and toppled to the ground, dead.

In the rising tide of confusion and cheers, she raised the bloodied knife to the sky, and silence came again, in fits and starts, never as fully quiet as it had been before. Rebels were dragging the man's body to the stage, displaying the dark, wet bloodstain over his heart to everyone who could push close enough to every word of her level yet forceful voice.

"Our powers are at Solangia's service. The queen will remember the legends of Assassins who can kill without touching their victim or nocking an arrow, and she will fear us!"