Between Burning Worlds (System Divine #2) - Jessica Brody Page 0,233

go back out again.

In his few short years of training as an officer and then a commandeur, Marcellus had seen little violence. A few Fret fights over scraps of food, one or two disputes between workers in the fabriques and exploits, and of course the recent riots. But those incidents paled in comparison to the brutality that was playing out in front of him now.

In the blink of an eye, two hundred Third Estaters had been transformed from happy, docile banquet guests into enraged, wild-eyed fighters. They used every weapon they could find—overturned tables, shards of broken champagne flutes, titan food platters, even their own fists. They fought and yelled and destroyed, but this was so much more than just a riot. This felt like a war. A war in the Patriarche’s own backyard.

Most of the Third Estaters stormed the stage where the Patriarche still cowered behind a circular wall of officers and advisors who struggled to fight off the attackers. Others, who couldn’t reach the stage, turned on one another or on the unsuspecting and unarmed Second Estate guests who were unable to flee.

The officers and guards tried to fight back, firing a barrage of rayonette pulses at anyone they could find, but it seemed they didn’t quite know what to do with this turn of events. They weren’t used to fighting without the help of the droids. They were overwhelmed and outnumbered.

“No, stop! I beg you! I have children at home! Please!” The cry came from somewhere below him, and Marcellus looked down at the lawn to see a man in a blue tuxedo looming over a defenseless Second Estate woman, a shard of stone from a busted fountain in his hand. Marcellus toggled his rayonette back to paralyze mode and took aim. A pulse rippled through the air, finding its way into the man’s leg. He cried out in pain and slumped over the woman, who hastily pushed him away before fleeing from the gardens.

Marcellus desperately scanned the crowd for Chatine, praying she’d had the foresight to run as soon as those Skins had flickered red. He thought of Alouette and Cerise and hoped that they were still in the Ministère, far away from this anarchy.

There was a horrified scream followed by a thump, and Marcellus glanced down to see Georges Bissette, the Ascension banquet host, lying at the foot of the steps, his head cracked open on the stone as a woman in a dark silk gown stood over him with a glint of untrammeled fury in her eyes.

“Oh my Sols!” someone shrieked next to Marcellus. “She just … He just … What is happening?”

He glanced up to see one of the Matrone’s handmaids—a young woman named Margaux—staring wide-eyed at the body. Her eyes rolled back in her head, and then she went down. Marcellus dove to catch her before she hit the ground. “Get the Matrone inside!” he shouted to no one in particular. Most of her handmaids were crying hysterically, but one of them took control of the situation and began to usher the Matrone and the rest of the women up the steps to the Palais terrace. An advisor in a dark green robe appeared beside Marcellus, scooped Margaux into his arms, and followed after the others.

Marcellus continued to fire paralyzeur pulses into the crowd, trying to incapacitate as many Third Estaters as he could.

“Ma chéri!” the Matrone called. She had stopped halfway up the steps and was now staring into the gardens with a look of utter terror on her face.

Marcellus’s gaze darted back toward the stage in the center of the lawn, where the Patriarche’s guards diligently fought off attacker after attacker, each one charging with more determination, more ferocity, than the last.

“We have to get the Patriarche back inside the Palais!” someone called from the stage. Marcellus squinted into the mayhem to see Chaumont shouting at a female officer who was currently trying to ward off a man wielding half of a broken chair.

She nodded and gestured toward one of her colleagues. “Call in all guards stationed around Ledôme. Tell them to abandon their posts and get to the Palais now. And gather any nearby sergents and officers you can find. We need to clear a path for the Patriarche.” She shoved the Third Estater back with the heel of her boot and then fired a paralyzing pulse into each of his legs. The man crumpled with a whimper.

“What in the name of the Sols is going on!” the Patriarche