The House of Defiance had become Finnian's new ship. It was a loud, bustling, and often chaotic vessel, but it was sturdy, and it had a purpose. In the two months since its founding, it had become a true sanctuary, an island of defiant hope in the fearful sea of Aethelburg.
Finnian had found his own purpose within its walls. The ghost of the man who had stared, broken, at his salt-stained charts was gone. In his place was a teacher. He and a slowly recovering Captain Malik had gathered a class of two dozen aspiring sailors, young men and women who still dreamed of the sea, even in a starless world.
"The sky is a liar now," Finnian told his class, tapping a large, newly drawn chart of the coastline that was covered in notations about currents and coastal bird nesting sites. "So we learn to listen to a truer voice. The sea. She doesn't lie. She can be cruel, but she is honest. You learn her language, the shape of her waves, the color of her water, and she will tell you where you are."
His crew, the half-dozen survivors of The Sea Lark, had become the sanctuary's unofficial security force. They were tough, practical men who knew how to handle trouble. They stood with the Royal Guard contingent at the doors, their presence a quiet deterrent to the Covenanters who often gathered outside.
Life had settled into a new, tense routine. Inside the sanctuary's walls, there was the sound of hammers repairing tools, healers grinding herbs, and children laughing at a storyteller's tale. Outside, there was the low, constant chant of Ouen's followers, a daily reminder of the war being waged for the city's soul.
The escalation came on a cold, grey afternoon.
Finnian was in the middle of a lesson on tide-reading when a shadow fell over the room. The chanting outside had grown louder, more aggressive. He glanced out the main doors and his blood ran cold. The usual gathering of a few dozen Covenanters had swelled to over a hundred. They were not just preaching. They were carrying torches. In the flat, grey light of midday, the flames were a clear, unambiguous threat.
"Malik," Finnian said, his voice low. The old captain, who was demonstrating knots to a student, looked up and his eyes hardened.
"Get the students to the back rooms," Malik ordered, his captain's authority returning in a flash. "Bar the windows."
Finnian and his sailors moved with the swift efficiency of a crew facing a storm. They joined the Royal Guards at the main entrance, forming a grim, determined line. The sanctuary, which had been humming with productive energy moments before, fell into a panicked silence. Hanna and her healers began moving the sick from the main clinic to the reinforced cellars below.
Outside, the hulking, bald-headed Covenanter enforcer, a man they had come to know as Vorlag, stepped forward. His voice was a raw, brutal roar that carried through the thick oak doors.
"The King's heresy has been allowed to fester in this house for too long!" Vorlag bellowed. "It is a cancer on the soul of Aethelburg! It bleeds the faith from our city and insults the God of Bargains with its cowardly charity! We are here to purify this den of faithless cowards! We will cleanse it with the fire of the true God's wrath!"
Finnian braced himself for a charge, his hand gripping the heavy belaying pin he now carried at his belt. But the charge didn't come. Instead, Vorlag gave a sharp command. "Purify it!"
The first volley of torches arced through the air, landing with a soft, whooshing sound on the thick, dry thatch of the warehouse's roof.
"The roof!" a guard screamed.
The effect was instantaneous. Panic erupted inside. A plume of thick, acrid smoke began to drift down from the ceiling. The sanctuary, their beacon of hope, was turning into a death trap.
"Bucket brigade!" Malik roared, his voice cutting through the rising screams. "Sailors, you're with me! Joric, hold this door at all costs!"
The Royal Guard lieutenant nodded grimly, forming a shield wall at the entrance.
What followed was a nightmare of organized chaos. Finnian and Malik led a desperate chain of artisans, sailors, and even priests, sloshing buckets of water up a rickety ladder to the smoking roof beams. Below, Hanna's healers were trying to evacuate the clinic, the sick choking on the thickening smoke.
The Covenanters, seeing the chaos, now charged the doors. The sounds of battle were a brutal cacophony, the clash of steel on the guards' shields, the wet thud of clubs, the screams of the wounded.
Finnian was on the roof ladder, throwing a bucket of water onto a patch of hungry flames, when a section of the thatch gave way. He fell, landing hard on the floor below, the air knocked from his lungs. Through the smoke, he saw a group of Covenanters, their faces contorted with religious fury, break past the shield wall. They were making for the clinic.
He scrambled to his feet, his belaying pin in hand, and met them. He was not a soldier, but he was a sailor who had survived a god's wrath, and he would not let these fanatics harm his new crew. A Covenanter swung a heavy club at him. Finnian ducked under it, slamming the heavy wooden pin into the man's knee. The man howled and went down. Another came at him, and from the side, one of his sailors expertly threw a loop of rope, snaring the man's feet and bringing him crashing to the floor.
It was a desperate, ugly brawl. The guards were a rock of disciplined steel, but they were outnumbered. The artisans and sailors fought with the desperate ferocity of people defending their home.
The tide turned when the horns blew. A thunder of armored feet echoed from the street, and a wave of Royal Guards, led by Captain Eva herself, slammed into the flank of the Covenanter mob. The fanatics, caught between the sanctuary's defenders and the main Guard force, finally broke and fled.
Eva strode into the smoking, ruined hall, her face a mask of cold fury. The attack had been repelled.
But the cost was devastating.
The fire was eventually extinguished, but a third of the roof had collapsed, leaving a gaping, blackened hole open to the grey sky. The main hall was a wreck of overturned tables, shattered pottery, and puddles of sooty water. Dozens were wounded, both guards and civilians. And lying near the door, a crude club beside his still form, was one of Finnian's youngest sailors, a boy of sixteen who had dreamed of charting the starless seas. He was dead.
Finnian stood amidst the wreckage, the smell of smoke and blood filling his lungs. He looked at the weeping healers, the terrified faces of the people they had tried to protect, and the body of the boy he had failed.
He had survived a shipwreck only to watch his crew die in a street brawl. He finally understood. Defiance was not enough. Building a sanctuary was not enough. As long as Ouen and his Covenanters were allowed to preach their poison, no place would ever be safe. They couldn't just defend. They had to fight back.
His gaze swept across the ruined hall and met Captain Eva's. She was looking at him, and in her hard, flint-grey eyes, he saw the same, terrible understanding. A silent pact was made between the sailor and the soldier.
The War of Truth, with its proclamations and debates, was over. The civil war for Aethelburg had just begun, and it would be fought with fire and paid for in blood.
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The Chronicle of the Fallen
Time Period Covered: Day 71 of the Age of Fear
• Victims of The Reaping: 0
• Victims of the Covenant: 2
• Deaths from Civil Unrest: 8 (Includes 1 Royal Guard, 1 sailor, and 6 Covenanters from the attack on the sanctuary)
• Total Lives Lost: 10
Of Note Among the Fallen:
— A young sailor-in-training at the Aethelburg House of Defiance.
— The last master flute-maker in the western territories, who made a bargain to cure his wife's blindness.