Kushiel's Scion - Jacqueline Carey [201]
"I think mayhap you should roll your barrel into our courtyard tonight and sleep there, my friend," I said. "Canis, do you know if Gilot is here?"
"You worry on my behalf!" He beamed. "How kind. No, he departed for the market with his lady-friend and her daughter an hour ago. You're early," he added.
"I know," I said. "Do you know which market?"
He shrugged. "No."
With a curse, I plunged into the city in search of Gilot. Along the way, I stopped in every wineshop I passed, looking for Eamonn or Lucius, or anyone else worth warning.
All I found was a steadily rising buzz of hostility. Students debated in heated tones, some of them still wearing their scholars' robes. Mostly they argued with one another, but in some places they quarreled with shopkeepers and other workers—members of the Tiberian citizen assembly that had supported the call for a decree. Some voices were louder than others, declaiming their outrage with an orator's skill. The citizens responding were beginning to sound nervous and unsure.
Master Strozzi, purported member of the Unseen Guild, had taught rhetoric. Claudia had called him an old blowhard, but mayhap his skills had their uses.
Starting a riot's one of the easiest things in the world.
There was no riot, not yet. But I could feel the tide of anger rising, and with it, my belief in the Unseen Guild's power. I wanted, with growing urgency, to find my friends and get them off the streets and into safety.
I made my way to the nearest market, which was in the colonnade of the Great Forum. Although it was an hour shy of sunset, the vendors there were concluding their last hasty transactions, packing away their wares. I pushed my way through an anxious throng; housewives, for the most part, clinging together in groups. In the Forum itself, students roamed in packs, chanting angry slogans. A phalanx of the city cohort stood, armed and watchful and vastly outnumbered.
"Gilot!" With a vast sense of relief, I spotted him and waved my arm. "Gilot!"
"Imri!" He waded through the crowd toward me, shepherding Anna and carrying her daughter Belinda on his shoulder. The child's eyes were wide and scared. For that matter, so were her mother's. "What are you doing here?"
"Looking for you," I said. "Come on, let's get off the streets. It's growing ugly."
Gilot must have felt anxious himself, for he didn't even bother to reprimand me for travelling the city alone. By now, the streets were well and truly clogged with irate students and nervous citizens. It took a long time to get back to the insula, and there were a few points where I had to push and shove. When at last we reached it, I was glad to see that if Canis had not moved his barrel, at least he had prudently removed himself from the vicinity.
"Name of Elua!" In the courtyard, Gilot set Belinda down and wiped his brow. "What in the seven hells is that all about?"
"Politics," I said briefly. "Have you seen Eamonn or Lucius?"
"No." He eyed me. The toddler Belinda clung to his leg, while Anna stood beside him, clutching an armful of green cloth to her breast. "Imriel, you are not going out there."
"They're my friends," I said.
We exchanged a long, hard glance which ended in Gilot rolling his eyes. I could be stubborn when I chose, and he knew me well enough to know when to cede ground. "Stay in your apartment," he said to Anna, "and bar the door. We'll be back ere you know it."
"You don't have to come," I said.
"Oh, I'm coming," Gilot retorted.
I waited while he kissed Anna farewell, then stooped and kissed Belinda. And then the two of us navigated the narrow gateway passage and plunged back into the streets.
It was beginning.
I thought about Master Piero's lecture as we hunted for our friends; that first lecture I had witnessed. Here it was, the group-mind at work. And it could be directed and shaped, as surely as he had led the pigeons with scattered grain. The anger of the students was being shaped,