TORI
The headquarters of the Red Sash Rebellion—which is what they’re calling us now—is the old Ward Guard barracks in the southwest corner of the Eighth Ward. It was built to house a central reserve that could move via the military highway to prevent an uprising in any of the lower wards. Having failed in that purpose, it turned out be to be useful to us for similar reasons. Three stories high, backed against the ward walls on two sides, it’s built like a fortress. There’s a large square in front, formerly the site of a daily market, now used by Red Sashes for drills and practice. The shops and apartments around the edges have been taken over by Hasaka’s people for more living space, their owners fled or kicked out.
A line of Red Sashes waits at the edge of the square, keeping back a small crowd of civilians. There’s not much to distinguish the two groups, except for the eponymous swathes of crimson fabric and the spears in the hands of the former. Both look dirty and threadbare, though the Red Sashes are perhaps a bit better fed.
I cross the square from the small apartment building I’ve claimed for my own. I don’t wear a sash, but no one challenges me—even if they didn’t know me by sight, the trio of Blues behind me is identification enough. Two men and a woman in nondescript clothing, wearing the red sash of the revolution crossed with a blue one. That band of blue cloth and their eerie, silent movement marks them out, and the rebels in the square give us a wide berth. I can taste the tang of discomfort and fear in their minds, and the steady pulse of obedience from the Blues.
Which is as it should be. It’s hard to believe I used to keep my Kindre senses shut down most of the time. It’s like going through life with your eyes closed tight, out of fear of the sun.
The two soldiers at the front door bow as I enter, and I give them a brief nod. Inside, people bustle about, but armed Red Sashes and civilians alike pause whatever they’re doing and bow, too. I used to stop them, but I’ve given up trying. Let them bow, if it makes them feel like someone’s in charge.
We use the map room on the second floor for our conferences. It’s cramped, nearly filled with a big table bearing a large-scale map of Kahnzoka and its wards. The others are already waiting when I arrive, and with a silent pulse of Kindre power I order the Blues to stay outside.
There are four of us left, the commanders of the rebellion, since Hotara died in the battle for the Sixteenth Ward. One way or another, we’re all tied to Grandma Tadeka, whose death was the spark that started everything. Hasaka watched the door at Grandma’s hospital and mage-blood sanctuary, and was the unofficial head of her security. He’s a tall, powerfully built man, long arms wrapped in dark tattoos, and his time in the Ward Guard makes him an invaluable resource. Unfortunately, the rigors of rebellion have brought out the worst in his gloomy nature, and a dour, sullen expression now seems permanently etched onto his features. Still, what discipline and training the Red Sashes have, they mostly owe to his efforts, and he commands our fighting soldiers.
His boyfriend, Jakibsa, sits beside him, a stack of paper sorting itself in midair in front of him with a faint glow of Tartak blue. A pen hovers by his ear, revolving slowly. Jakibsa is cheerier than his lover, though you wouldn’t know it to look at him. Long hair brushed forward over one side of his face can’t entirely hide the red-and-white burn scars that disfigure him, and his gloved hands are nearly useless, forcing him to rely on his Tartak Well. At Grandma’s, Jakibsa managed a wing of the hospital, tracking meals and medicine and linens—now he’s our quartermaster, overseeing the rebellion’s food, weapons, and supplies.
Giniva, on the other side of the table, is engrossed in a study of the map, unconsciously coiling and uncoiling the end of her thick braid around her fingers. She’s a mage-blood, who’d joined the sanctuary just before everything exploded. She has every right to hate me—her sister had tried to join along with her, but I’d seen a plan to betray us in her mind and told Grandma to send her away. In spite of that, Giniva has never shown any resentment, attacking any work we put before her with quiet, understated efficiency. She’s shown a particular flair for gathering and organizing information, so she’s our head of intelligence, if you can dignify the haphazard collection of watchposts and patrols with the name.
And then, of course, there’s me. Gelmei Tori, a few months past my fourteenth birthday, raised in a Third Ward mansion since I was eight years old, carefully insulated by hired servants from everything that was wrong with the world. A spoiled little girl who until a few months ago had never earned a day’s wage, never kissed a boy, never made her own supper.
Isoka had wanted me that way, free from pain and need, protected from the bloodstains she gladly took on herself. All I wanted was to make her happy. Now she’s gone, probably never coming back, probably dead, and it’s for the best. I’m not who she wanted me to be, who I was supposed to be. I stabbed a boy in the throat and felt his hot blood gush across my hands. I crushed a woman’s mind like a butterfly in my palm, and watched as she died at my command. I pulled a terrified family out of hiding and used them like hunting dogs to bring down my prey. I burned the Sixteenth Ward to ash and bone.
Monster, the voice in my head says. Monster, monster, monster.
The Red Sashes are what I have left. The three in this room, and everyone fighting for us out in the city, are what’s left of Grandma’s sanctuary and the people who joined us in the streets. I will do what I can for them. And, maybe, for the chance to get my hands around Kuon Naga’s throat, and squeeze until his eyeballs pop like grapes.
As Grandma Tadeka once told me, sometimes you have to do what you can with what you have.
* * *
The others are all staring at me, waiting. I realize I’ve drifted off again, lost in my own thoughts. It’s happening more than it used to. Maybe Kindre is driving me mad. Not that it matters. None of us are likely to live long enough to worry about our long-term mental health.
“Sorry,” I mutter. “Thinking. Give me the news.”
Hasaka and Jakibsa look at one another, and I can hear tinny anxiety in their minds. Giniva just sits up, expectant, calm as ever.
“Well,” Hasaka says. “Not much news on my front. Some hints that more militia troops are moving into position off the Fourth District, but they haven’t tried anything beyond the usual skirmishing.”
“‘The usual skirmishing”’ means arrows fired back and forth, people dying in pain and blood. Just not very many of them. Not enough to really matter, and anyway probably more of them dying than us, which has to be a good thing, right?
Kahnzoka is a city of walls. The main defenses face outward, protecting the capital against any outside force. Inside, the wards are divided from one another by an interlocking set of barriers, manned by the Ward Guard. This is supposed to stop rebellions like ours, but the city’s architects hadn’t expected a secret gang of mage-bloods, nor the assistance of the criminal underworld and their smugglers’ paths. We’d taken the city, down to the waterfront and up to the Second and Third Wards, and manned those same walls against the government’s counterattack.
We’d done as well as we had because the Ward Guard are better at beating up dissidents and taking bribes than actually fighting, and the provincial militias they’d called on for reinforcements are little better. The Navy is another matter, which is why we had to abandon the waterfront and pull back behind the north wall of the Sixteenth Ward, but so far we’ve held the rest. But the real soldiers of the Empire, the Invincible Legions, are out there somewhere, and everyone knows they have to be coming. It’s just a matter of time.