Chapter 14: ACT I, SCENE 6

ACT I, SCENE 6Day 28 Hours and 50 Minutes Since the Ash FellCathedral ProperThe muffled underbelly Vespar has just opened a door to explodes into a deafening wall of raw human panic. Then the warmth of burning Gloom-Oak collides with his face.The sanctuary is claustrophobic. Vespar sees hundreds of desperate citizens of his city packed into pews. An elderly man completely still, next to a child screaming for their parent. Vespar nearly retches when he sees a woman holding just one piece of another human. He hears people calling out names: Elena! Henry! My baby! Not far from the hatch is a man weeping into his stained palms. A refugee is pounding their fists into a pillar; blood runs down the pillar. A family clings to each other.Breathe.Then, like one of his arrows, a voice cuts clear across the Cathedral to his hatch.“He is five years old, Varis!” Immediately Vespar finds her.A noble: velvet festival gown, tears along the hem, silver hair tangled and clinging to wet cheeks—screaming:“He is a noble-born son of the High Quarter, Varis! He is a Vance! You bar the oak doors for common slum-dwellers, fine, but you locked my boy out in that black blizzard! He only slipped away from the carriage guards to run to his uncle Ansel’s bread cart! He just wanted a festival pastry!”No.Vespar hears it...And then Vespar sees Captain Varis Lang standing rigid, his face a pale, grim mask, his arms crossed over his breastplate.“My Lady Vance. The gates are locked down. Whatever is happening outside will freeze a man’s blood in minutes.”Vespar looks down. Kendra has already climbed up to his side. A monument.“I’m sorry your son is gone.”Vespar notices when the pain starts and his palms feel wet—her fingers have found his and dug hard into the leather at his wrist, splitting the fresh bandage.“That’s Lady Cassandra...” Kendra whispers, her voice shaking so hard it is barely audible over the echoes of the altar argument. “Vespar... my father’s brother married into the High Quarter estate years ago. That boy she’s screaming about... the child by the bread cart... that was Leo. He always ran to my dad’s stall for sweet rolls.” Vespar had done the same. Her fingers loosen from his sleeve as she stares blankly through the crack. “We... I... locked the gate. I helped you down there... we didn’t just leave my father out there in the dark. We left Leo. He is just a baby...”Just as Vespar is about to retreat with Kendra, movement by the altar pulls him back in.Lady Cassandra turns away from the Captain, a sneer across her face, her frantic eyes sweeping across the Cathedral without stopping on a single person. Somehow, through the haze of blue firelight, those bloodshot eyes lock with Vespar’s through the cracked hatch. Her face changes. She notices Vespar. She knows him. A noble has found Vespar. Lady Cassandra Vance starts toward Vespar... and Kendra Vance.