Now the beggars’ shouts of agreement were filled with a lot more hostility and aggression. The crowd surged forward, and people were now yelling their own angry insults at the guards.
“It’s Saint Suncred’s Moon, you shit-eaters!” someone yelled behind me. “Never in the history of Luminescent Spires have the poor been locked out of the city on a day of Saint Suncred’s Moon, never! How dare you bleedin’ well lock us out. We’re starving, and our bleedin’ kids are starving too! Let us in, you fuckers, fuckin’ well let us in!”
“We’re all dying slow, horrible deaths!” Friya shouted just behind me, caught up in the contagious spirit of the growing riot. “I’d rather die on the end of a spear, fighting these evil bastards, than die a slow death of starvation like a trapped rat in a cage!”
The crowd roared their agreement with this sentiment, and the booming cry rolled through their ranks like a peal of thunder.
“Kill the guards! Storm the gates!” someone yelled from the back.
“They can’t kill us all! We can take ‘em!” someone else screamed.
“The nobles and merchants inside the walls are all sitting inside their cozy homes sucking juicy meat off the bones and dippin’ their fuckin’ bread in gravy while they leave us to starve out here!” an old man in the middle of the crowd shouted. “And on Saint Suncred’s Moon, too. It’s not just a disgrace, it’s criminal, it is. We won’t stand for it, we won’t fuckin’ stand for it any longer!”
“My two little boys at home are on their deathbeds because of Elandriel’s greed!” a woman shrieked shrilly from the back of the crowd. “If you don’t let us in, we’ll burn the whole city down!”
“Get some torches!” someone else yelled. “Let’s burn this fuckin’ place down! It’s turning into a hellhole anyway, with all the murders and disappearing people! Let’s burn the whole place down!”
Now, I realized, was the perfect time to start a chant to really whip the crowd into a rabid frenzy.
“Burn it down! Burn it down! Burn it down!” I roared, and soon everyone was chanting along with me.
Even though the guards were heavily armed and well-armored, they were greatly outnumbered and starting to look nervous. Even with the assistance of the crossbowmen and archers looking down from the walls, they wouldn’t be able to stop at a good number of the guards from being killed in a riot, and none of them looked as if they were quite ready to die today. What was more, I could see that at least some of the guards were clearly sympathetic to the beggars’ cause; Saint Suncred’s Moon was a valued tradition in the city, and a few of the guards from the lower classes likely had relatives who relied on charity for food.
As the chanting began to get more ferocious and the mood became increasingly tense, the head guard and his sergeants huddled together and shared a hushed but frantic conversation. After about a minute, the head guard climbed up onto a crate to address us.
“All right, all right, listen up!” he yelled, his voice all but drowned out by the fierce and determined chanting. “We’ll let you in to be fed, but only under escort! You’ll come in groups of three. Everyone gets their usual Saint Suncred’s loaves, buns, and fruit. Then you’ll leave the city right away. No loitering around after that! That’s the best I can offer, and it’s a good deal too. That way, nobody has to die today.”
“That’s good enough for us!” I roared back.
If there was an actual riot, security would be beefed up all over the city, and that was the last thing I wanted. Now that I had a solution to my problem, it was time to nip the riot in the bud before it exploded.
“Thank you, guards!” I yelled, to the same rhythm of the “burn it down” chant. “Thank you, guards! Thank you, guards!”
In addition to changing the mood of the crowd, the new chant was also meant to flatter the guards and get them feeling prideful and self-important. It was another way for them to let their guard down, and thus exploit a vulnerability in their defenses.
Now that I’d achieved my aim, I slipped back through to the rear of the crowd, quietly pulling Friya and Yumo-Rezu along with me.
“Why are you moving us to the back?” Yumo-Rezu whispered. “It’s going to take all day for us to get in from back here.”
“That’s the point,” I said. “The guards are going to be extremely vigilant and thorough when checking the first few sets of people they allow in, but as the day goes on, they’ll get more tired and sloppy, and less thorough. By the time they get to us, they won’t even care about checking us.”
We hung back, waiting near the rear of the crowd. The hours passed slowly, with the guards allowing in small groups of beggars and peasants. As I’d predicted, the guards started out by rigorously searching and interrogating everyone who came in, but after a couple hours, they began to grow weary of this, and started rushing people in after a few quick questions.
By the time the three of us reached the front of the crowd, the sun was clipping behind the distant mounts, and dusk was settling in. We were some of the last few beggars and peasants left. The guards all looked exhausted and apathetic, and when we came to the spear wall, they didn’t even question us. Besides, the rank magical stink coming from our clothes probably allayed any doubts or suspicions they might have had about us.
“You three filthy scumbags, move it.” The head guard wrinkled his nose at the stench coming from us. “The sun’s almost
