### Chapter 26 – The First Cut
They moved like a shadowed breath against the city — five figures threading between shuttered doors and carts overturned to hide their shape. The plan had been honed until there was no room for hesitation: strike quickly, vanish quieter, and make sure their target bled in a way everyone could understand.
Rennick led, his face set like flint. Beside him, Marenya carried a coil of thin rope and a small iron hook, tools learned at a hundred hungry camps. Corin clutched a sharpened bar; Davren had two knives, youthful hands steady despite the tremor in his jaw. Liora kept her head, her eyes finding safe angles, counting patrols and timing breath.
Their target was a patrol post on the east road — a band of soldiers who had been robbing grain from small villages for months. Captain Rallan, the patrol's leader, was said to delight in public beatings; his cruelty had cost them a baker's family and a dozen others. Tonight, Rallan would not wake to boast.
They waited until the patrol's rota thinned, until the moon dipped behind slate clouds. Then Rennick signaled. Davren slipped forward like a cat, light on his soles. He cut the bell-rope that hung outside the guardhouse, a small motion that tethered a lantern to a silence. The darkness dropped like a curtain.
Rennick and Marenya moved to the courtyard where the soldiers smoked and traded crude songs. Rallan sat at the center, easy and arrogant, a flagon in his hand. The guards' laughter slotted into the night, careless as birds. It made Rennick's hands itch.
It happened so fast no one had time to draw a breath. Corin smashed the hook into the post behind Rallan, jerking a net of rope taught across the gateway. Marenya was there in an instant, a length of rope around a soldier's throat; hands that had never known mercy now learned it. Rennick stepped forward, blade whispering out, and then the patrol erupted—shouts, the metal clink of armor, the thin squeal of fear—but theirs was a practiced chaos. They moved with silent economy: two strikes, a shadowed throw, a body falling like a puppet cut from its strings.
Rallan went down clutching at his throat, eyes wide in disbelief. He gurgled something—orders, curses—but his voice choked into mud. Davren, grinning and horrified both, delivered the last, clean cut. The rest faltered, stunned, and Marenya's rope snapped over one man's jaw as he lunged. Corin's crude bar found the next's skull.
Within minutes, the patrol lay in a heap: some dead, some broken and alive, mouths full of gravel and fear. The Silent Flame did not slaughter for sport. They left the living as witnesses, loosed to run back to barracks and tell what had happened. That, more than the bodies, was the point.
Rennick wiped his blade on Rallan's cloak and felt the old, sharp thrill—danger braided with necessity. "Go," he breathed. "Run." They melted away as quickly as they had come, each step measured, each shadow their ally.
By dawn, the city hummed with the news. The patrol's survivors told the story with eyes enlarged by dread: the crown had been touched. Kael's soldiers had been struck where they thought themselves safe. Panic drifted through the camps like smoke.
Yet the victory was not without cost. A young soldier—barely more than a boy—had collapsed with a knife between his ribs rather than die publicly. He was the son of a woman who had once aided Liora with herbs. When Rennick learned the truth, something inside him cracked: the Stir had been necessary, but the price had cut deeper than they expected.
Word reached the Silent Flame that the palace's response would be swift. Rumors said Tharos would patrol the streets himself; Silaris would hunt with traps set in alleys where children used to play. The crown would not ignore such a wound.
In the cavern, they counted spoils: grain sacks hidden under cloaks, a handful of muskets too old to trust, the satisfaction of proving they could strike. But Liora pressed her hands to her mouth and would not meet Rennick's eye.
"We made them bleed," she said, voice small. "They made us live in the shadow of what comes next."
Rennick sat with that and let it make new iron in his chest. "Then we must be smarter," he said quietly. "We fight not because we want blood, but because we want a city that can be lived in. We keep our people safe by being harder to find than a ghost."
Marenya nodded. "We teach the city how to hide, how to move. We build a net of safety. Tonight was the first cut — not the last. But it must be the right kind of cut."
They set watches, tightened escape routes, hid the grain in cellars no patrol would think to search. The Silent Flame had drawn first blood. The crown would answer. The question that hummed beneath their bones was not whether the rebellion would continue, but whether Draeven could stand the tithe the war would demand.
Above them, on the palace balcony, Kael watched dawn spill over roofs. He lifted a hand to shade his eyes and listened to the city's sudden, panicked murmur. Selara's fingers touched his wrist, cool and deliberate.
"They cut the skin," she said softly. "Soon they will want to cut deeper."
Kael considered the shapes of the city—where the rebels had come from, where they might hide—and his mind arranged itself into plans. "Then we break them," he said. "And when their teeth are pulled, we will show the city how empty rebellion tastes."
Below, the Silent Flame moved like embers across a dry floor. The first cut bled, but it did not die. Both sides were sharpening knives. The city held its breath.
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