Page 114 of City of Stone and Silence

There’s a long silence, and I hear rising voices from outside, arguments. Garo looks over his shoulder, then back at me.

“It won’t work,” I whisper.

He smiles. “I have to try.”

The conference room is crowded. Hasaka, Hotara, Jakibsa, and Giniva sit at the table with me and Garo, with the rest of the space packed with whoever managed to fit—red sashes, Grandma’s assistants, people from the mage-blood sanctuary, veterans of the street fighting. Garo looks them over, a fixed smile on his face. The muttering in the room has turned sour in the time the two of us have been alone.

“Comrades,” he begins, and my heart sinks, because it’s going to be his speech in the High Market all over again. Sure enough, he starts to lay out the agreement he’s made with Kuon Naga—amnesty, a shuffling of council seats, and all the rest, and it doesn’t take a Kindre adept to feel the tide of discontent.

“We’re supposed to just go home, after all this?” says a red sash in the front row, a big man with a dockworker’s calluses.

“Of course we are,” Hasaka shoots back loyally, from his seat beside Garo. “That was the point of negotiating. Would you rather end up on a gibbet?”

“I’d rather keep fighting,” the man says.

“Then you’re a fool,” an old man says. I recognize him as one of the veterans from the sanctuary. “The Legions will roll over us like a cartful of bricks when they get here. We have to make a deal now.”

“What do we gain, though?” Hotara says. “We’ll still have the draft.”

“Kuon Naga promised amnesty for rebels,” Jakibsa says. When Garo nods, he says, “That means he didn’t offer it for mage-bloods. If we stand down, there’s nothing to stop him from having us all rounded up.”

Hasaka starts at this, staring at his lover, then looking over at Garo, who frowns.

“I’m sure,” he says hesitantly, “that we could negotiate something—”

“Not to mention,” Hotara says, “the question of whether we can trust that snake. What’s to stop him from turning on us when we disarm?”

Several people shout “Nothing!” simultaneously. Someone in back adds, “Down with the draft! Down with the Immortals!”

“Please!” Garo gets to his feet. “The court is willing to show mercy now—”

“Because we’re winning!” someone shouts back, and there are angry murmurs of agreement.

“—but if we take this further, they won’t be able to,” Garo proceeds, doggedly. “We need to make peace while there’s still a peace to be made.”

“How much are they paying you?” This shriek comes from a woman in the front row, a tall, scarecrow-looking thing in a ragged robe. “How much did you get from selling us out, coward?”

“Traitor!”

“We want to fight!”

Garo looks at me, pleadingly.

I open my mind, just for a moment. Even that much is a mistake. The torrent of raw emotion is too much, the carrion stench of bloodlust and scintillating blue of pride. That day in the market comes back to me, and what happened afterward—the street soaked in blood and charred bodies. If I reach out and try to calm them, I have no idea what will happen.

And the shouts are spreading, down the stairs and out into the road. I can hear chanting begin.

I stand up beside Garo. Hasaka does, too, but the crowd is pressing forward. I hear Hotara shouting for calm, a few red sashes trying to maintain order, but it doesn’t make a difference. I take Garo’s hand and pull him back through the barrack’s curtained doorway. Hasaka, understanding, plants himself in front of it, refusing to move.

Garo has the look of someone in a bad dream as I drag him over to the window.

“I have to … say something.” He looks back at the doorway, blocked by the curtain, the angry chanting rising louder and louder. “I have to make them understand. Tori—”

“You have to go, Garo.”

“Go?”

I gesture at the window. His eyes widen. “You’re not serious.”