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“SHE’S A SVIKIST!” it came.
At that very moment, the crowd descended into absolute chaos. Which is not to say it hadn’t been chaotic before; it had. It was just that now all of that chaotic energy, which had been, up to that point, directed toward a very particular subject, began to suddenly turn in on itself as every closely held belief of those present flipped inside out and became as unclear to those who held them as a ship navigating a foggy sea. It began in ripples: little exclamations of confusion, followed by rebuttals of those very exclamations, which led to recriminations, which led to someone getting hit squarely in the nose. The man the Spokes had been roughly escorting to the door, presumably to his death, was just as roughly dropped as his captors began sparring angrily with one another, arguing over whether the Bicycle Maiden was truly who she said she was, considering the sort of antipatriotic, Svikist, antirevolution thing she’d just said. The entire scene soon escalated to an out-and-out brawl, easily two hundred humans and animals in the giant, collective scrape.
“Oh boy,” was all Prue could say.
“Ms. McKeel,” came a voice, managing to cut through the din: It was being spoken directly into her right ear. She looked over and saw that the voice was coming from the small, furry frame of the possum she’d seen earlier, held to a human’s height by the attaché. “I’d say you should come with me, immediately.”
The battle raged below the balcony; the combatants on the staircase seemed to flow like a wave upward, flattening all in its path. They had crested the second floor; the riot seemed to be making its way toward Prue. Judging from the curses coming from within the scrum, Prue could tell she had as many defenders as detractors, but still: She blathered something to the possum and then wordlessly followed him and the attaché toward the double doors in a crouched run with her hands over her head.
When they’d arrived at the safety of the Interim Governor-Regent’s office, the attaché slammed the door behind him as the battle waged loudly without.
“So that couldn’t have gone worse,” said the possum.
“I didn’t know it would be taken so badly,” said Prue, still reeling. Her entire body felt like one of those plastic horse puppets, the ones with the elastic in the joints, atop their plastic pedestals with the button underneath that makes the thing collapse.
“Then you don’t know this crowd,” said the attaché.
Promptly, some celestial being pushed in the button on Prue’s pedestal, and her elastic joints gave way and she slid down the wainscoting of the wall until she was a crumpled mass on the floor.
“Easy, easy,” said the possum, walking to her side. “It’ll pass. They get fired up fairly easily. They’ll likely simmer down in a short matter of time.”
“Who are you?” asked Prue blearily.
“I’m Ambrose Pupkin, Interim Governor-Regent-elect,” said the possum, bowing a little. He, too, wore a brass sprocket brooch on his vest. “Now you see what I’ve had to deal with.”
“What happened out there? Why’d they react that way?” asked Prue.
“I could’ve warned you,” said Ambrose. “Had you taken a moment.”
“I thought I knew. I thought they worshipped me.”
“They do, to a degree,” said the possum. “But you don’t understand what we’ve gone through, over the last many months, since you were here.”
Prue rubbed her eyes a little. The animal wavered in her vision. “Have we met before?” she asked.
“No,” said Ambrose. “Though I’ve watched you. I was around when you first arrived here at the Mansion. I was a lowly janitor then. And look what the revolution’s done for me. Me, the Interim Governor-Regent-elect.”
“Why not just Governor-Regent?” asked Prue, wiping a strand of hair from her brow. “Why the long title?”
“Better to stay this way,” he said. “The last Governor-Regent-elect lost his head.”
“Oh,” said Prue, thinking she understood what Ambrose had said, but then realized she hadn’t, not entirely. “Oh!” she said again, with a renewed understanding.
The possum went on, “Interim doesn’t quite suggest accountability, if you get my meaning. The buck doesn’t stop here, not yet. I’m just passing through.” He scissored his little fingers in the air, miming a walking figure.
“I see why they gave the job to the janitor,” said Prue.
The possum winked at her. “You catch on fast,” he said. “Now what’s all this business about Alexei? The boy’s been dead five years. Not only that, but his tomb is graffitied with anti-Svik slogans.”
Prue shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “It’s what the tree told me.”
“You see?” said Ambrose, snapping his little fingers. “That’s one place you went wrong. You’re a tree-talker, aren’t you? North Wood mysticism. Doesn’t necessarily fly in the South.”
“But still . . .”
“But still nothing. You’d have been better off saying you received it from a vision in your dreams. A dappled goddess, or some such nonsense, bearing a crystal staff et cetera, et cetera. You start talking the Council Tree to a bunch of red-blooded South Wooders, you’re sunk.”
“Okay,” was Prue’s only reply.
