Western Gate

The Western Gate opened at sunrise.

That was the last normal thing it did.

Merchants had already begun gathering beyond the inner road while most shutters inside the city remained closed.

I stood in the upper room of a cooper’s shop and watched the officer overseeing the gate wave the first wagon forward.

“Arden said the south group is ready,” a Rochefort Knight said.

“And the mercenaries?” I asked.

“They’re complaining, so I assume they’re ready.”

“Sounds about right.”

We had warned the city quietly where we could manage it. Not everyone listened; some refused to leave their homes, while others had nowhere else to go.

Revolutions were inconvenient in that regard.

The gate officer stepped beneath the arch, so I raised one hand. Across the street, a blue cloth vanished from a second-floor window, and the first wagon rolled under the gate.

“Now!”

The city moved.

A cart abandoned beside the northern wall tipped sideways, spilling barrels across the road and blocking the nearest reinforcement route. Two shop doors opened at once, and Rochefort Knights poured into the street. Mercenaries dropped from the cooper’s roof behind the gatehouse while another group appeared from an alley the Imperial patrol had walked past three minutes earlier.

The surprise lasted only a moment; the guards reacted quickly, which was reassuring. I had been worried that catching them unprepared would make this boring.

Steel left sheaths beneath the arch. One Imperial Knight shouted for the gate to close while another kicked the nearest barrel aside and tried to clear the road. Rochefort Knights met them before they could fully close the gate.

I went down the stairs, and by the time I reached the street, the fighting had already broken into smaller groups.

Exactly as planned, which unfortunately meant that something would probably go wrong soon.

A young Imperial Knight lowered his spear the moment three mercenaries surrounded him.

“Put it down,” I said.

He dropped it. Marek kicked the weapon away and pointed towards the wall.

“They’re actually surrendering?” Marek asked with a perplexed look.

Tessa glanced at him.

“Try not to sound too disappointed.”

I left them with the prisoner and moved towards the gatehouse. A shout cut across the fighting.

“Back!”

A knight had one arm locked around a civilian near the base of the stairs, sword pressed against his throat. The civilian’s hands were raised, eyes fixed on the blade hard enough that he did not seem aware of anything else.

“Drop your weapons!” the knight shouted.

Everyone close enough to intervene stopped. His attention moved towards me as the sword pressed closer and blood appeared beneath the edge. The nearest Rochefort Knight was too far left, and the civilian blocked most of the knight’s body.

Throwing a knife would also have required owning one. That was usually Isabelle’s department, and she was nowhere nearby.

His weight shifted, and his sword hand began to move.

So did I.

My blade entered below his raised arm before he could pull the civilian backwards, and his grip loosened instantly. I caught the civilian by the coat and dragged him clear while the knight fell. The civilian stared once at the body behind us.

“Get out of here!”

That worked better than comfort.

The gatehouse changed hands twenty minutes later.

The city did not.

Imperial reinforcements arrived from the central avenue before we had fully secured the gate; most came on foot. Four mounted knights led the front, forcing civilians and carts aside as they entered the district.

“Hold the square!” I shouted.

Rochefort Knights formed across the road. One horse broke from the line when a thrown spear struck the rider’s shoulder. The knight recovered almost immediately and drove the animal forward, eyes fixed on the knights and mercenaries ahead.

A woman stepped from a bakery carrying a child. By the time she heard the horse, it was already bearing down on her. The rider did not see her at all.

I sprinted across the road towards them.

The horse was already close enough that stopping it cleanly was impossible. I caught the woman around the shoulders and threw both of us towards the bakery wall as the animal passed. Its flank struck mine hard enough to turn the street sideways.

The knight looked back only after he had gone several paces further. Our eyes met long enough for shock to cross his face before the battle carried him away. Beside me, the woman was still holding the child tightly enough that he had begun complaining.

“Get inside, and stay away from the windows.”

I forced myself upright before the pain in my ribs could settle properly. A crash sounded somewhere behind the buildings.

Not steel.

Stone.

A scream rose from the corner ahead. A house on Weaver Street had taken a ballista bolt through its front wall. One side collapsed into the shop beneath it while smoke and dust rolled across the street.

“Leon!” Tessa shouted.

I looked towards the gate.

The line was holding.

Marek and Tessa were already moving with Rochefort Knights into the next Imperial push. Timber cracked somewhere inside the building as the structure shifted again.

I went towards it and found a woman trapped beneath a fallen beam just inside the ground-floor entrance, blood running down one side of her face.

“My daughter!”

I crouched beside her.

“Where?”

“Upstairs. Lysa! Lysa!”

A child cried somewhere above us. The staircase had collapsed halfway down.

“Get her first,” she said.

I looked at the beam across the woman’s legs, then at the split support above her. Every movement upstairs sent dust drifting from it.

“You’re first.”

“No, my daughter—”

“I heard you.”

I wedged my sword beneath the beam and lifted enough to drag the broken section sideways. The woman tried to help, which mostly made the angle worse.

“Stop moving.”

“Go get her!”

“I will. But right now, you’re in more danger than she is, so stay still and let me help you.”

She finally stopped resisting, so I adjusted my grip until the sword caught properly beneath the weight.

The beam shifted.

I pulled her free and handed her to two civilians at the doorway.

“Take her across the street.”

I turned back towards the staircase and made my way through the wreckage.

What remained of the stairs was useless, so I climbed through the exposed timber in the back room instead. The first-floor corridor sloped towards the street badly enough that nobody would be using it again.

“Lysa?”

A small voice answered from the room ahead. I found her crouched beside a bed, perhaps six years old, both arms wrapped around a brown teddy bear missing one button eye.

“Your mother’s outside.”

She remained still, staring at me. One look at her eyes told me how frightened she was, so I crouched until we were the same height.

“What’s his name?”

Her eyes dropped towards the bear.

“What?”

“The bear.”

“Arthur.”

“Good name.”

“He’s a knight.”

I looked at the bear again. One ear hung by several threads.

“He’s had a difficult morning, hasn’t he?”

Lysa’s mouth moved slightly, but the floor shifted beneath us.

That ended that conversation.

I picked her up; she grabbed my neck with one arm and kept Arthur crushed between us as the corridor dropped another inch. At the far end, a window overlooked an abandoned hay cart in the alley.

It had to be a window.

Some patterns in my life were starting to feel deliberate.

“Hold on tightly.”

Lysa did, and I ran.

The floor broke behind my third step. Timber snapped, plaster disappeared into the shop below, and the corridor tilted hard enough that I hit the wall with one shoulder.

I kept moving, and realised the window was closed.

Naturally.

I turned sideways and hit it with my back rather than introducing another child to the joys of flying glass. The frame burst outward, and for one unpleasant second there was nothing beneath us.

Then hay.

A great deal of it, in fact.

I landed badly, rolled enough to keep Lysa protected and stopped with half the cart attempting to enter my cloak.

“Arthur?”

She looked down and saw he was still there.

Behind us, the building collapsed. Her mother screamed her name from across the street. Lysa climbed off me before I had the chance to sit up and ran towards her.

I watched them meet halfway.

Her mother dropped to her knees and wrapped both arms around the girl.

For a moment, another pair of arms appeared instead. Elara, throwing herself over me while burning timber hit the floor.

As I watched them now, the thought shifted slightly.

Perhaps she had never been deciding what her life was worth.

Perhaps she had simply seen a frightened child and moved.

Steel rang behind me, and the street returned. Marek and Tessa had almost pushed the Imperial line back to the gate. Tessa caught my eye from across the square, glanced at the ruined building, then shook her head in a way that promised a future conversation.

I raised one hand to indicate I remained inconveniently alive, and she turned back towards the fight.

The Western Gate finally fell just before midday. Inside the gatehouse, the last organised Imperial group surrendered.

We accepted their weapons while Rochefort Knights secured the road beyond, and civilians emerged slowly from whichever buildings had survived the morning.

Someone climbed the tower with the revolutionary banner.

Red-and-gold Imperial cloth came down.

In its place, the new flag rose.

The cheer reached the streets before the fabric reached the top. I stood beneath it with dust in my hair, hay down the back of my shirt and blood on my sleeve that belonged to at least three different people.

Nobody seemed to care about the appearance.

The gate was ours.

And somewhere across the capital, our people were still fighting.