Heir of Beasts

Ch. 5.5- The Martyr

Okay guys, this week has been insane and I just finished chapter four. I haven't had time to edit it and it's not nearly as good as I want it to be, but I wanted to post something, so here it is. Please forgive any errors, I'll be polishing it and reposting by Monday. Thanks!

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Sholu climbs the gallows' steps to stand beside me. The wind picks up, pulling strands of hair loose from my braid and sending the tails of his kata into a frenetic dance. I will the fabric to twine around his neck like a Vetivera vine and choke the life from him. Let him be the showpiece, not me.

He brushes his hair from his face and begins to address the crowd.

"People of Arzsa," he calls out, his voice carrying in all directions like the proclamation of an angry god. "Today we gather to witness the cleansing of a nation."

Cleansing. He's taken the Yukkaiti's phrase and fed it back to us, partially digested and stinking like a sunbaked carcass. I feel the anger within me rising, swallowing some of my fear, stilling my shaking hands. A cleansing? He dares call what has happened here, the evil he has wrought, a cleansing? He dares dress this madness up in white and ask us to call it pure?

I look around for Shira, searching for one pure thing amongst this virgin sacrifice, but I can't find him. The faces all bleed together like ink on parchment.

"For a millennium we have let one family steer us. And for what, for the diluted hero's blood that runs in their veins? For their claim that their rule is blessed by our goddess?"

"Well?" He questions the silent crowd. "Why? Why have you followed blindly where they lead, when they lead to ruin? Why, if they're goddess-blessed, does the River Imer run dry? Why do our crops lie fallow in the fields? Why do the cloth-weavers and silk merchants have empty coffers while they live in a palace?!"

A murmur travels through the crowd. A few mild faces begin to scowl. Are they listening to this? Can they really be that stupid? The river lies low in its bed because of the second major drought in the last ten years, the same drought that's been killing crops and ruining farmers from Shikkah all the way north to Alumankarra and Unren. The cloth-weavers and silk merchants suffer because our wealth comes from exporting luxury goods, and the market has decreased significantly as our neighbors focus less on fine silks and more on avoiding famine. Then there's the lingering effects of the Yukkaiti civil war, the increased piracy along the Macchon sea, the increase in Kamai tariffs in response to the piracy... none of this is the doing of the Dimaraste.

If anything, the fact that Shikkah is still standing is our doing. Our own coffers were hollowed out keeping the country from starving during the drought ten years ago, and they still hadn't refilled by the time the second drought came. Who do they think paid the farmers? Who do they think imported food? Who do they think made sure the silk merchants didn't lose their businesses, who kept the silk farms from drying up to dust? That was our doing.

"They have led us towards ruin," Sholu repeats, grey eyes blazing with the bright fury of a sun. "They have told us to follow them, to trust them, to lay our fate as an offering at their feet while we grow smaller and poorer with every passing year. While they look down on those of us who are able to rise above our born station, mocking us as Vasayaste, little lords."

"Well, I am Vasayaste," Sholu says. "I am a little lord. I was born on the streets and grew up with the gangs. And yet, with my little hands, I managed to claw my way upwards. And now, with those same hands they eschewed as those of a beggar, I have knocked them from their pedestal. Gods tumble down from high and walk among us!" He shouts. "Because they are not gods! They never were! They are just men, men who have committed crimes against our free will for generations. And like men, they too can bleed. They too can die- will die."