City of Ruin - Mark Charan Newton [52]
A quick breakfast and he was out the door. The skies had cleared and the sun was purpling the day. This would be a crisp morning. Sometimes it seemed as if this ice age wasn’t natural, as if it could somehow be the amalgamation of a thousand cultists trying their best to reduce the entire land to freezing temperatures. You’d get the occasional breeze that promised spring, but that was soon beaten back by another more chilling.
Hands in his pockets, he strode towards the arranged meeting point, by the corner of the iren on the border of Althing and Saltwater. The strike would be heading down from Port Nostalgia towards the Onyx Wings, which was an impressive distance, and would take them past some of the wealthiest zones of Villiren. Past the houses of wealthy businessmen.
Fifty or so of his men were already gathered, in their dark-blue masks. A lot of the strikers would be wearing masks too: no one wanted to be recognized by the authorities while causing political trouble. As individuals they could suffer, so united they would make their stand – and such unification would now be their downfall.
Malum gave the instructions. They’d blend in with the strike movement, by now a large crowd, and pretend they were part of the protest. Lutto had given instructions for soldiers from the Regiment of Foot to guard much of the rich property nearby, so lesser ranks of the Inquisition had been delegated here. Tensions existed though because the military were trying to get the citizens on Lutto’s side, so he had ordered them not to attack civilians. Therefore only the gangs could perpetrate violence. Dannan’s crew turned up too, black-masked and keeping to themselves. Pretty soon everyone had massed, and they knew exactly what they would be doing and where to go.
*
Slipping across the border of Althing and through much of the social housing, they headed north to the Shanties: where the strike action was scheduled to start.
Rumels and humans, workers of the ocean, of deep and open-cast pits, metal-smiths and construction workers and stevedores, there were much more than the predicted thousand here. At least four thousand were crammed in between the back of the cheap terraces and the industrial warehouses, and they were angry and loud and organized, young men mainly, because poverty didn’t allow them the chance of ageing.
‘Fuck Ferryby’s,’ some chanted. And ‘Broun Merchants kills workers!’
Painted signs were brandished aloft, demanding improved wages and better protection and rights – for an end to the employment of slaves, lowering their wages. There were declarations of the numbers who had died during the last ten days at their workplaces. Some proclaimed that cultists were using their magic in order to be rid of regular labour.
This busy industrial zone had ground to a halt.
Red sunlight streamed across the seething masses like a premonition of the spilled blood Malum had planned. A nod directed across Malum’s own ranks and the Bloods and the Screams proceeded to merge with the strikers’ procession, flowing in gradually then dispersing.
Bodies crammed tightly, there wasn’t much room for fighting in this mass. Someone blew a conch and several announcements were called just out of earshot. The noise level altered as the crowd began to march. There was a strangely positive mood: most participants seemed peaceful, seemed to have found their purpose here. They drifted on past the stench of the fish warehouses, stepping across the fresh marine brine that washed constantly over the cobbles. Surrounding structures became