Covenant's End - Ari Marmell Page 0,76
“Maybe if we ever have to do this a third time, yes?”
From neighboring streets, her god-enhanced hearing detecting the muffled thumps and stifled grunts of other sentries receiving more or less the same treatment from Paschal's men.
The sounds of fellow Finders being silenced, beaten, maybe worse by the City Guard.
I should feel weird about this. I should be at least a little conflicted. Shouldn't I?
And yet, nothing. The thought of battling against her former brethren with her former foes, even the possibility of remaining an enemy of the Guild after Lisette was gone, scarcely registered. This was what she had to do. For herself, for the people she loved.
This was what Lisette had made her do.
She was still lost in thought when the five-hundred count Paschal had allowed for silencing the sentries came to an end. Still lost in thought when something enormously heavy clanked and clattered over the haphazard cobblestones, moving into position directly across the main entrance to the Finders’ Guild.
The canon roared. The fortified door disintegrated in a cloud of fire and splinters and smoke. From every visible alley, every street corner, every doorway, soldiers—heavily armed and clad in the black and silver of the Guard—charged their longtime enemy.
Shins charged with them, and there was no more time for thought at all.
Major Sorelle's cannon was not the only one fired within Davillon's borders that night.
Across town, in a district where not only cannon fire but violence of any sort was nigh mythical, one of the walls of the Ducarte estate had come tumbling down at the first shot. Louis Rittier—son of the late and lamented Clarence Rittier, newly risen to the office of the Marquis de Ducarte, had shot from his bed, screaming, at the sudden blast. Sheets and carpet grew thick with rainwater; shreds of silk, all that remained of the bed's canopy, flopped and writhed like dying worms. He huddled now behind a heavy table, frantically scrambling to don his trousers and sword-belt, while the captain of his House soldiers struggled to report over the twin percussions of rain and gunfire.
“…not just any soldiers, either!” the captain was shouting as he, too, crouched behind the makeshift shelter. “My people are reporting the ensigns of multiple families, including Luchene's!”
“Gods damn it!” She knew. The duchess somehow knew about Suvagne's planned coup and just as clearly knew that he was to have been a part of it. What he could not imagine is what could possibly have possessed her to move against them with open violence rather than politically. “Get a messenger to the Guard! Tell Archibeque to get his people over here and restore some semblance of bloody order!”
“My lord, I…. There are guardsmen among the attacking force as well.”
Rittier felt the blood run from his cheeks. “How did this…. How have we heard nothing of this?!”
“It's only possible if they put this together fast, my lord. And if we're the first of the Houses they moved against…. If we're to be the example…”
The young aristocrat was nodding, slowly pulling himself together. All right, so…his own House soldiers were gathered in their full numbers on the estate. They'd been intended to initiate open action, not defend against it, but they were well armed, well rested, well equipped. Whatever maneuvering Luchene had done to unite the larger houses and the guard, to engage in something of this sort, had to be borderline legal at best. His allies would almost certainly mount a magisterial challenge, and even if they did not, most of the soldiers outside had to be harboring doubts about opening fire on an aristocrat's property.
This wasn't a battle House Rittier could win, but they didn't have to win, just endure.
“Captain,” he ordered, finally snapping shut the buckle on his belt, “send a messenger under a flag of parlay. Tell whatever bastard's leading this farce that I do not recognize his legal authority to attack me or mine. Tell him I challenge him to a duel of honor for staining my own, and point out that he'll be saving lives on both sides if he accepts. That should buy us enough time for you to slip other messengers out into the street to inform our allies what's happening.”
“Sir!” The soldier snapped off a salute and scurried out the door at an awkward, crouching shuffle.
Some few minutes later, the firing stopped.
Slowly, suspiciously, the marquis stood, abandoning the safety of cover, and moved to the window to see what he might see. His captain joined him once more