Sorcha's Revolt
CHAPTER TWO - SABRA

"Why aren't you wearing a mask?" Sorcha asked.

"I used it to stab a man in the throat," Sabra said, flicking her head to indicate the tavern where the fight had begun. "What's your excuse?" "None, that is, I... I threw it away."

"Oh." Sabra's eyebrow arched and she ran her gaze critically over her sister's harem outfit. "Did you throw all your clothes away too?" "Yes," Sorcha said, crossly. "Not that it matters; we're surrounded by Kellions, what are you doing here?"

"You're supposed to be dead." DeSilva said, in a hollow voice. He had barely blinked or breathed since recognizing Sabra.

"Don't be silly," Sorcha snapped and looked again at Sabra, but DeSilva's closed a hand tight on her arm and spoke through gritted teeth.

"You weren't there. She had three arrows in her, she was dead, I buried her." Pushing Sorcha behind him, he drew his sword and put the point to Sabra's breast. "You're not her."

Sabra swatted his sword aside with her own. "Behave, I've full good reason to gut you both."

DeSilva put his sword back on guard, but this time Sorcha pushed his arm down. "Put it away, I know my own sister!"

"Funny, I used to think I knew you, too." Sabra's lip twisted in contempt and she turned away, showing her back to Sorcha and DeSilva.

"What did we just miss?" DeSilva looked around the bloodstained street; the bodies had been removed, but the smell of the fight was still strong on the air. Sabra put her sword away and glanced at the last of the body-detail returning from the canal.

"Dacoits," she said, "but they're dead now."

The inn door opened and light spilled out into the street; Sabra was suddenly spotlit, and Sorcha gave a small yelp of concern when she saw the dark stain spreading on her sister's arm.

"Oh! Sabra, you're wounded."

Sabra glanced at the cut as if she had not noticed until now. She betrayed very little reaction but probed it with her fingers until the pain awoke.

"Yes. It's just a scratch."

"Sabra, there's blood everywhere..."

The light flickered and a man appeared in the doorway of the inn to call Sabra's name. She looked up and waved to him; he waved back, showing her something shiny that flashed in the firelight. Sabra's mask. She gave a small start, then paused to look back at Sorcha and DeSilva.

"You two should see to that horse and then come inside. There's a lot to talk about."

Without another word she jogged back to the inn and spoke to the man in the doorway. They stood very close, and their hands lingered in contact as he gave Sabra back her mask.

"Now who do you suppose...?" Sorcha began, but DeSilva cut her off with a grunt and took the horse by the reins.

"None of our business. Come on."

"Surely you're the tiniest bit curious?" Sorcha asked as they sought out the stables in the dark.

"Not a bit of it," DeSilva replied, then swore as he walked face-first into a low-hanging gable at the side of the inn. "Damn and buggeration!"

Sorcha took back the reins of the horse while DeSilva stood, doubled up and leaning against the inn's wall, one hand clapped to his head in pain. After a while he said, "Well of course I'm bloody curious, but it'll only mean a fight if I even look at it."

Sorcha rolled her eyes. "That's the chief thing on your mind? Sabra miraculously pops up from the grave in the middle of what looks like a full-on rebellion, and the first thing you think of is to kill her boyfriend?"

"Maybe he just likes her; doesn't mean she likes him," DeSilva grumbled.

"Well, I'm not suggesting that they've slept together..."

"Oh yes you are!" DeSilva stood up and narrowly missed banging his head again. "Let's get this horse away."

Several minutes stumbling about in the dark eventually located the stables. Once inside, there was not even the moonlight; the stables were utterly dark.

"Make a light," Sorcha said. "We're off the street, no one will see."

DeSilva raised one hand, palm-upward, and caused a warm light to fill up the room.

"Be careful," Sorcha warned. "Try not to set the place on fire."

"There's a lamp over there," DeSilva said, pointing.

Sorcha reached for it, then jumped back as the lamp winked alight of its own accord. Sorcha glared accusingly at DeSilva, who grinned in return and snapped his fingers, making a spark jump between finger and thumb. "It's fun to be a sorcerer."

"Don't show off too much," Sorcha warned him. "People drop dead when you do too much of that; let's not have any witnesses to begin with, just to save you killing them all."

"Witnesses to what?" DeSilva asked, letting the light in his hand die so that only the lamp brightened the stable.

"Witchcraft," Sorcha said, starting to take the horse's saddle off. "Between me looking like this and you chucking fireballs, we'll have a righteous mob after us with pitchforks if you don't behave."

DeSilva opened a stall for Sorcha to lead the horse in. "Oh, come on; Warmistress Eliana controls the weather in Silveneir, weird lights shine out all the time from her tower."

"She's the Warmistress," Sorcha said, looking hard at him and willing comprehension through his skull. "She can do whatever she likes. We're just passing through... unless you mean to go and say hello to your aunt Eliana."

"I hadn't thought about it. I mean, I could just conquer the city and move into the palace. It's very nice; I grew up there."

Sorcha paused in the act of removing the horse's bridle. "Are you serious?"

"Maybe, who's going to stop me?"

"I've got a better idea," Sorcha said, coming out of the stall and closing it behind her. "Perhaps we should go inside and have a drink, face whatever ghastly conversation that awaits with your father and my sister, and then hopefully you and I can finally retire for the night. When we're alone in bed, you can indulge all the macho fantasies you want. I've already warned you about the howling mob, so let's just go inside."

She put out the light and they fumbled back through the dark to the front door of the inn. As they approached the door, Sorcha dug her elbow hard into DeSilva's ribs and hissed, "And don't say anything stupid until we know precisely what's going on."

"Stupid? DeSilva echoed. "Me? Don't forget it's a bunch of Kellions in there; you'd be smart to keep your mouth shut." "Let's just see how Sabra's getting on," Sorcha said icily, and pushed wide the door before they could bicker any further.

Inside, the bar was crowded and noisy, the air choked with tobacco smoke. Around the edges of the room, Kellion men stood or lounged against the walls, minding the doors and windows. The men by the broken window were armed with short-barrelled muskets, but the majority carried only knives and rapiers.

In the centre of the room, the bar tables and chairs had been drawn up into a cluster where a large group of older Kellions were arguing violently.

Sorcha spotted DeSilva's father in the centre of group, the sole member of the company to be sitting down. All the rest were on their feet, brandishing fists and fingers beneath each other's chins and yelling at the tops of their lungs. Sabra was slouching against the bar, accompanied by a tall Kellion youth; by their attitude of studied cool, DeSilva guessed that both Sabra and her companion were numbered in the minders watching the room.

"We should find out what's happening first," DeSilva said, and led the way through the press to his father's table.

The arguing Kellion elders were ranked three deep; before DeSilva could get through them, DeKellia stood up and slammed both fists on the table and rose to his feet.

"Shut up!" he roared, and a moment of stunned silence ensued before the group again fell to yelling abuse at one another.

DeKellia sighed and reached down for the volleygun beside his chair. Sorcha saw the movement and covered her ears before the roar of seven barrels echoed in the enclosed room and a shower of debris came down from the ceiling. DeKellia sat with the volleygun smoking in his lap, listening to the silence.

"Alright," he said. "Veen, you agreed to this in principle before, what's the problem now?"

An overweight, bull-necked Kellion who had sat down in the aftermath of the row met DeKellia's eyes and spoke quickly but with perfect enunciation so that sarcasm dripped from every clipped syllable.

"The 'problem', as you put it, is that no self-respecting Kellion man will ever see his women herded out to face a battlefield!" The fat Kellion's voice rose as he spoke, departing its initial softness to become a snarl of raw outrage. "Leaving aside the danger, DeKellia, it is a rank contradiction of our culture and everything in which we believe; what are we fighting for if not for the right to keep our traditional ways?"

"Those ways must be validated," DeKellia replied, calmly. "It must be demonstrated that we are not merely foreign barbarians defending the institution of slavery but civilized men fighting for a way of life no less moral and legitimate than that of Silveneir's native population. We are, let us not forget, in Silveneir."

"As you never tire of reminding us," Veen replied, snidely.

"I'm Silvan," Sorcha said. The only woman at a table of Kellion men, her remark was at first met with silence. Then Veen sniggered and laughter rolled around the table. Sorcha's face coloured and she looked away, biting her lip.

"I doubt anyone needs reminding that Naril witches also make fine actresses," Veen remarked, running his eyes over Sorcha's tattooed body.

Dressed as she was, she could not hide from his gaze; the blush spread from her cheeks to her entire body, eliciting a chorus of filthy laughter from the assembled men.

"Enough," DeKellia said. "Listen to her point."

Veen's eyes brows rose and he shook his head. "Very well, DeKellia, let the girl speak. Come on, petal; we're waiting."

Sorcha's throat closed and her mind went blank. She swallowed, felt DeSilva's hand on her shoulder, and took a deep breath before she could say, "I'm Silvan. My point is that the girl in the corner there is my sister, and here we both are dressed in Kellion clothes."

Veen sat back in his chair, his brows furrowed. There was no lechery in his eyes now; he studied Sorcha with an intensity so fierce that she stood rooted to the spot, certain he was resolved to murder and restrained only by consideration of the method. She only knew when he finally spoke that the man's intellect had been savagely dissecting the new perspective. "I see your point," Veen said.

Half the men at the table groaned; the rest were silent. Veen and DeKellia rose to their feet, but there was little warmth of feeling.

"We'll talk to our women," Veen said. "You will expect us to ask them, I am sure, else there is not much point to the exercise. I shall make it clear that they are permitted to say no."

"Then we'll need more than their signatures on a petition," DeKellia replied. "Get a hand-written letter from each girl who refuses, giving her reasons but also her understanding of the situation and why we asked." "Not every girl is literate," one of Veen's faction said.

DeKellia shook his head and pressed one hand to his brow. "For Haroum's sake, Veen, I'm not an administrator; this is all well within your capacity. Ask the women, send me any that agree, that's all there is to it."

As the meeting broke up, DeKellia caught Sorcha and DeSilva by an elbow each and steered them to the bar. "Excellent timing, the pair of you; not sure I'd have won that otherwise."

"What exactly was the argument?" DeSilva asked.

"Strategy." DeKellia smiled, disengaging from the couple to order drinks. "It's the same old argument between Kellia and Silveneir, except we're now all being forced to share the same country and it can't be ignored anymore. All Kellion women are slaves by default; Silvans in general violently disagree."

"That explains the barricades and the army outside," DeSilva said, "but how have we helped solve it?"

"By convincing the Waymasters to allow the formation of a Kellion Women's Regiment," DeKellia said, and remained silent when Sorcha and DeSilva laughed.

"Are you serious?" Sorcha boggled, having witnessed a previous last-ditch attempt at fielding Kellion harem girls in battle. "Kellion women are useless in a fight!"

"That's beside the point. We've enough Silvan women among the various harems to make a show of force, so long as enough Kellion women join in that it's not just propaganda. Either way, Kellion women taking up arms will strike a chord with Silvans and validate us enormously."

"Wait," DeSilva said, barely able to keep a straight face, "you're seriously telling us that your plan to fight the Silvan army is to enlist slave-girls who might once have been soldiers to fight for their Kellion masters? That's ridiculous; come on, what's the real plan?"

"I suppose Sabra is already signed up for this?" Sorcha asked, looking past DeKellia's shoulder to where her sister still chatted with her Kellion companion.

"She's already a sergeant," DeKellia chuckled, ignoring his son's incredulity. "At least, as soon as I can find her some stripes. Compared to most of our potential recruits, she's a grim-eyed veteran. So are you."

DeKellia's eye twinkled and his smirk twitched the black scar on his cheek. Sorcha put up one hand and looked very deliberately away. "Oh no, not a chance, no way. I'll save you the confusion of having two Sergeant Kavnors."

"In that case I'll need your written reasons and a declaration of support for the cause," DeKellia said, suddenly deadly serious. "Barring a couple of dozen out on the barricade, the thirty-odd men you see here are it; this is the revolution. All the women are shut up for the night in the houses hereabouts; if I can get even one out of every harem to join up, we'll have doubled our numbers."

"There's more than thirty Kellions in Silveneir," DeSilva said, and his father nodded.

"Yes, and the balance of the population between men and women, taking into account polygamy and military losses, is about the same in Kellia as in Silveneir; that is to say, mostly female. The men here stand for about two hundred Kellion men and women overall; that's barely a tenth of the Kellions in Silveneir, but the rest of the Foreign Quarter is under martial law. Far as we know, we're the only ones holding out; if there's anyone else, they either don't know we're here or they can't get in to join us. Anyway... now you know what's going on. I'll need that letter tomorrow morning, Sorcha, when you've dealt with your other business. This way."

He pushed a way through the crowd, but Sorcha and DeSilva did not immediately follow.

"Is he serious?" Sorcha asked, but DeSilva could only shake his head.

"I don't know. You didn't see what he did at Narillion. He might just be mad enough to make the Silvan army gun down a regiment of women; it's horrible, but I see why he'd do it."

Sorcha stared at DeSilva. "There's no possible rationale..."

"Yes, there is. The Silvan army will falter when they see what they've done, and just at that same moment, the Kellions will go berserk. With my father leading the charge..."

"He thinks he can beat the Silvan army with just fifty men," Sorcha finished. "That fat Kellion was right, I should have kept my mouth shut. We can't let it happen that way, Monte, there'll be a massacre.'

"We may not be able to stop him, and we can't think about it now; he's waiting." DeSilva took Sorcha's hand and led her through the crowd to where DeKellia, Sabra and her tall male friend stood.

"Now listen to me, you three," DeKellia said, sternly. "I shall say this only once; I have no time to bother with any adolescent shit. Whatever you have to say to each other, speak now or shut up henceforth. That's it. Taban, you come with me; Sabra can handle herself just fine."

As DeSilva took Sabra's companion away, DeSilva leant towards her and hissed, "Did I hear that right?"

"Yes," Sabra said, acidly, "he's the brother of the man you killed not twenty-for hours before you left me for dead in a shallow grave."

"Oh, now that's a bit harsh..." DeSilva began, but Sabra was having none of it.

"Akurites regenerate, Monte, that's why Kellions used to make armour out of them; sometimes it even survives the death of its wearer long enough to revive them." At the time of her apparent death, Sabra had been wearing a suit of living Akurite armour. "I'll spare you the horror of describing what it's like to wake up dead and skip to the soul-crushing misery of trudging quite literally a thousand miles alone through war-torn wastelands, following the tracks of the barbarian horde towards your homeland! I'm sure you already know what a relief it is, after something like that, to suddenly be presented with a warm bed and a hot bath and a bunch of people who've been through their own slice of hell but somehow still keep it together enough to pour a drink for the new girl while she recovers! So I hope you understand why having the bastard skunner fiancé who left me for dead and my bitch-whore sister turning up arm-in-arm fails to inspire me with abundant joy. You're lucky I don't kill the pair of you."

"Well, I didn't know any of that," DeSilva shot back. "Rathelon put three arrows in you and smacked me around the head with a broadsword, I was out cold for hours and still half-concussed when I woke up; I barely recall burying you, but I know I wasn't exactly grinning about it. You died, Sabra; you shuddered and died in my arms. And then I had to go on alone, so yeah, I know exactly what it's like. But I'm sure that you have no idea of the relief of having someone else who shares your grief." He put his arm around Sorcha and drew her to him fiercely, still glaring at Sabra. "I'm sorry. I'm really, really sorry, but we thought you were dead! We got talking about it one night and we woke up together in bed the next morning. What the hell would anyone expect to happen?"

"Look, none of it was anyone's fault," Sorcha put in, at which Sabra stood back and regarded her with unconcealed disdain.

"How long has this thing with Taban's brother been going on?" DeSilva demanded.

"None of your business," Sabra cut back. "Certainly not as long as you've been screwing my sister."

"I suppose all this needs to be gone over," Sorcha began, trying to pour oil on the troubled waters, "but we're not going to solve anything tonight..."

"There's nothing to be solved!" Sabra was in full temper now and would not be calmed. "It's all very straightforward; my skank-slut sister ran off with my fiancé, and now she's standing in front of me, dressed as a prostitute, trying to apologize, although for why I am not quite sure."

"For you," Sorcha said, on the verge of tears. "It was for you; we both grieved for you, Sabra, we both blamed ourselves..."

Sabra stepped forward and silenced her sister's apologies with a resounding slap.

"Don't give me that shit," she hissed. "I went all through that a thousand times in my head, and of course it would make perfect sense for the two of you to get together if I'd died... but I didn't actually die, so all your reasons are irrelevant and there's only the facts of the matter."

Sabra stood back and picked up her glass from the bar, signalling for another even as she addressed Sorcha and DeSilva in turn.

"The facts of the matter are that you, Monte, are a risible scrote with none of your father's grace, courage or wit, while you, my dear sister, are a sex-crazed bimbo with the morals and taste of a backstreet whore."

Saying so, Sabra poured her first drink over DeSilva, picked up the fresh wine glass from the bar and threw the contents in Sorcha's face. They both stood dripping wine and blinking stupidly while Sabra turned on her heel and strode away. Then the entire bar, which had fallen silent unnoticed while they argued, erupted into applause, jeers, whistling and catcalls.