The morning light did not come to the lower dungeons of Marchand as a blessing. It arrived as a herald of death, creeping through the dim dungeon corridors. It touched the damp stones and the puddles of filth, but brought no warmth. For Barison, he had spent the long, dark hours of the night huddled in the corner of his cell, cradling the broken form of Lord Brock, but when Brock’s breathing had come to an end Barison had cried for the loss. He felt no shame at the tears, but they had hollowed him all the same.

Then Lord Hoff’s men had arrived and taken the broken corpse of Brock to hang, and that had been the blow that had nearly shattered Barison. He had not fought, for Brock was now somewhere better, but the disregard for the man’s shell had been a hard thing to witness. They had broken the man’s body, and even in death there had been no peace for the man.

Barison had prayed then, but shed no more tears. He had prayed for the souls of the dead, for the guards who had lost their humanity, and for the city that was currently tearing itself apart. He had even prayed for the wine he no longer possessed, a small, selfish wish for the burning comfort of alcohol to dull the edge of the horror. But for Barison, there was no answer. No warm comfort to stave off the dark thoughts swimming through his mind. There was only silence.

The oppressive silence of the dungeon was shattered, but not by the rhythmic march of the Governor’s guards. Instead it was a discordant, thundering sound, the feet of a hundred souls charging the stairs at once. There was the sound of iron meeting steel, the screech of locks being forced, and a roar of voices that sounded like a flooded river breaking a dam. And then Barison had received a strange thing, the frail youth who had been forced into his cell only moments ago, the one that he had heard called Ester, even as she fell. Who had spoken her name? He did not know.

The sound of violence echoed, shadows danced in the torchlight, and then the shadows had become an overwhelming surge of violence that had swept those few guards in the dungeons away in a brutal moment. Then the violence had passed, and with it the small girl's consciousness. He had caught her and spirited her away to the rear of the cell, his eyes searching the dark cells around him, but no one paid him any attention, all eyes instead drawn towards the brutality of the guards executions.

"Open them! Open them all! Revolution calls, and there is work to be done!" a voice screamed from darkness.

Barison stood up slowly, the word revolution dancing through his mind. How apt the blood and mangled corpses of the Governor’s guards as a backdrop for the word. There would be no peace, no good from the bloodshed and death. How many opportunistic killers hid behind the rationale of change? Barison had seen it a hundred times in his travels to the Northern Kingdoms. Death, and brutality only ever brought more death and brutality. It was the way of humankind, to spread misery, to go against the words of the Cantor.

Barison’s leg, still bruised from the beating he had taken from William, protested as he shuffled to the front of the cell. He watched through the thick iron bars as a group of men burst into the corridor. These were not soldiers. They were the good men and women of the Garden District, laborers, scavengers, and desperate souls. They carried torches that cast long, dancing shadows against the walls, and their faces were twisted with a mix of terror and wild joy.

One by one, the heavy doors of the cells were flung open. Barison watched as his fellow prisoners stepped out into the dungeon corridors. They moved like dead returning to the land of the living, blinking blearily at the torchlight.

Among them Barison could see the woman he had spoken to during the night. She had been weeping for hours, terrified for her two young sons who had been taken from her. As the door swung wide, two men reached in and half-carried her out. Her face was a mask of shock, tears of joy carving tracks through the grime on her cheeks. Her eyes caught Barison’s for a fleeting second. She didn't speak, but she smiled, a fragile thing that held more hope than Barison had seen in years. She didn't wait for a word of comfort. She turned and ran toward the light spilling from the open entrance, her feet slapping against the cold stone as she disappeared toward the surface.

Barison felt the first stirring of warmth then, and he wondered then if maybe, just maybe, this rebellion would be something different, that his worries for the cities future would be unearned. The Governor had been a cruel man, and there could be good from more people like her. She was not a monster, none of those in the cells had been. Only people, desperate and broken, and perhaps this was the Cantor’s answer to his prayers. He sent a silent prayer of thanks to the Heavens. Who was he to judge the salvation that had come? Who was he to guess the Cantor’s blessings?

A shadow fell across Barison’s own cell as a young man stepped forward and beckoned him forward.. He was a ruffian, barely more than a boy, with a squeaky voice that suggested he had only recently finished puberty. He wore a bloodstained cape that was far too large for his thin frame, the fine silk dragging in the muck of the floor. He had likely stripped it from a dead guard or a nobleman in the halls above. In one hand, he held a flickering torch; in the other, the iron key to Barison’s future.

"You’re free now," the youth said. "Ain't no one gonna hold us down anymore. The Governor’s dead, and the palace is ours."

The boy turned the key, and the heavy door of Barison's cell groaned open.

"Grab a sword if you got the skill for it," the youth continued, gesturing vaguely toward the pile of weapons the rebels had brought with them. "Otherwise, get free of the Governor’s grounds. We plan to burn this place to the ground until not a single stone stands on another."

Barison stepped out of the cell, but he did not reach for a blade. He looked at the boy, seeing the soot on his forehead and the wild light in his eyes. This child was the new face of Marchand, a face bathed in the fire of blood and resentment. Barison bowed his head deeply, his voice soft and steady.

"The Cantor smiles on you this day, my brother, for the act of kindness you show to such as these. To set the captive free is a holy thing."

The boy squished up his nose in immediate disgust. He turned his head and spat on the floor, a thick wad of phlegm slapping wetly against the stone near Barison’s boot.

"You one of them crazy folks who thinks the sky can talk and shit?" the youth asked, his tone not quite mocking, but near enough.

Barison did not take offense, instead nodding gently, as he folded his hands into the ruins of his sleeves. "The sky has a great deal to say, if one knows how to hear the tune. But today, it sings through your hands."

"Well, keep them ideas in your own head," the youth snapped, though his bravado seemed to falter under Barison’s calm gaze. "Don't want none of your crazy shit infecting the rest of us. We got work to do."

There was something in the fright of the youth’s eye then; it wasn't the fear of the beyond, not for himself. It was the hounded look of someone who had not yet found what they were looking for. Barison had seen the look many times, and he felt the urge then to comfort the boy. To reach out and speak the words that would heal him, if only he could find them. Instead, Barison stepped closer, his voice dropping to a whisper that only the two of them could hear.

"Who are you looking for, my brother? Beneath the anger, I see a man searching for something he lost."

The youth’s expression shifted for a fraction of a second. The mask of the revolutionary slipped, revealing a frightened boy who had seen too much blood in a single night. He shook his head quickly, refusing to answer. He turned away, barking a harsh order at a group of men who were dragging a crate of supplies through the corridor. He gave no answers, not now, and even if he had, what would Barison have been able to do?

Barison closed his eyes for a brief moment, sending a silent prayer that the boy would find peace before he was consumed by the violence and became something unrecognizable.

"If you ain't gonna fight, get clear," the youth said, returning his attention to Barison. His voice was more subdued now, the hint of mockery gone. "We’ve got most of the guards cornered in the west wing, but they’ve got better equipment and the skills to hold out a while longer. There’s still a lot of fighting left to take the city, and I don't want you getting caught up if you ain't able to defend yourself."

"Thank you," Barison replied. He began to recite a scripture of blessing from the Cantor holy book, a simple series of words meant to bring protection to the traveler..

A low groan drifted from the back of the cell Barison had just vacated. The vulnerability was gone from the youth’s eyes in an instant, his hand already closing around the hilt of a rusted dagger at his belt as he tried to peer past Barison.

"You got someone else in here? No other cell had two people, who you have hiding? A guard?"

Barison moved quickly, stepping into the boy’s line of sight. He didn't want the youth to look too closely into the shadows of the cell. He knew exactly who was lying there, wrapped in the remaining cloth of his torn cloak. He had seen the fine silk of the girl’s dress and the regal lines of her face. He did not know, but he suspected the royal blood that coursed through her veins. If these men, driven by years of hatred for her father, found her, Barison knew her life would end in a matter of heartbeats. Or worse, in a matter of days.

He had to lie, and it came easily to him. Most of the Cantor faith believed that to lie was to sin, but Barison knew that the greatest tenant of the Cantor faith was preservation of life. How many times had he lied to allow a street urchin to eat for a day? He did not hesitate for a moment, the words already coming fast, a hint of worry carefully adding weight to the words.

"She is my daughter," Barison said. "She was caught in the crossfire when your men breached the walls. She has been injured, and I must take her someplace quiet to clean her wounds and see to her fever."

The youth relaxed slightly, but his face held something far more dangerous as he craned to look past Barison’s broad shoulders.

"Is she a looker?"

A flash of coldness ran through Barison at the youth’s words; he could see the way the youth held the knife, the subtle way he clutched it tighter, the blatant hunger in those eyes. Barison checked over his shoulder subtly, ensuring the bloody cloak still swaddled Ester, leaving only a sliver of her pale forehead visible. The boy was leaning forward now, trying to get a better look.

Barison stepped fully in front of him, reaching out and gripping the youth’s shoulder. He held the boy’s gaze, forcing him to focus on Barison’s face rather than the shadows behind him.

"Brother, you have done a good deed for my daughter and me, and I have no doubt your mother and father would be as proud of your actions today as we are thankful. We have been saved by your actions, and the Cantor will remember it. If you would like to help us further, I have no doubt that we will be able to reward you with such fruits of the spirit as you have time for."

The boy, could not meet Barison’s gaze now, his eyes shifted. There was shame now, and Barison was thankful for that. The boy mumbled now.

"Fruits of the... what?"

Barison drew in a long, deep breath. He knew that the only way to get rid of a man like this was to become so tedious that he couldn't stand to stay. He began to recite a particularly dull and long-winded portion of the holy text, a parable about a man who owned a vineyard.

"Consider the man of the Southern Reach," Barison began, his voice taking on the musical tone of the Cantor. "He made a wine that was as thick as honey and as dark as the night. He bottled it in jars of clay and hid it beneath the earth, for he would not share his gifts with the world. He said to himself, 'This is my labor, and this is my sweat, and no man shall taste of it but me.' But as the seasons turned, the wine began to ferment, and the jars began to crack, for the spirit cannot be contained in a heart that is closed. And the man saw the wine leaking into the soil, and he wept, for he realized that a gift not shared is a gift that rots..."

By the time Barison reached the part about the man's cousin coming to visit and the detailed description of the clay jars, the dangerous look in the youth’s eyes had faded, and Barison was thankful. He did not know what he would have done if he had been attacked, or the young girl threatened.

"Yeah, alright, old man," the youth said, pushing Barison’s hand off his shoulder. "Keep your wine and your stories. Just get out before the smoke gets too thick."

The boy turned and fled down the corridor, shouting for his comrades to follow him toward the upper armory. He didn't look back once.

Barison let out a long breath as he turned back into the cell and knelt beside the girl who was still unconscious. Her breathing was shallow, but steady. He gently rolled her over, checking the bandage he had fashioned from a strip of his own shirt. He wrapped her tightly in the bloody merchant’s cloak, swaddling her limbs so that she looked like nothing more than a bundle of rags in his large arms.

Gently, he stooped and picked up her frail figure. She was lighter than he expected, a slip of a girl who had lived her entire life in a gilded cage and was now being carried out of its ruins as a corpse. He adjusted her weight, his back aching, and began the long trek out of the dungeon.

He moved through the hallways with his head down, trying to look like just another victim of the night’s chaos. He passed groups of men carrying out the spoils of death, so proud of their newfound riches. He stepped over the bodies of guards he had seen only days before, their armor now dented and bloody. No one stopped him. In the madness of change, a man carrying a shrouded body was a common sight.

As he reached the final flight of stairs, he could feel the air change. The damp rot of the dungeon was replaced by a choking soot that soon coated Barison’s throat. Even before he arrived in the courtyard above Barison knew what he would find, and he felt the tears sting the corners of his eyes, and not just from the ash.

The Governor’s mansion was a nightmare in broad daylight. The upper floors were a blazing inferno, orange flames licking the sky and sending great plumes of black into the air. The beautiful gardens, once the pride of the city, were trampled into a mire of mud and blood.

He looked up at the parapets. He could see the bodies of the Governor's elite guards hanging from the stone railings, their colorful uniforms a stark contrast to the grey stone. They looked like broken dolls tossed aside by a frustrated child. The reign of Marchand’s elite had ended in fire, but as Barison looked at the faces of the looters and the shouting mobs, he didn't see the peace he had prayed for. This was just darkness of a different sort.

He did not cry, he did not let the damp in his eyes fall at the familiar sight of men turning animal. He had seen enough of the world to know that the fall of a tyrant rarely meant the rise of a saint. Despite the rational part of his mind he still felt the overwhelming sense of loss. How many lives had been snuffed out? For what great cause had there been such devastation and murder? These had been neighbors, families, torn apart, and they celebrated in the streets, waving bloody trophies, and torn robes as if they had won some great prize.

To some, this was justice for the atrocities of Lord Hoff and the cruelty of the Governess. But Barison remembered the words of the Cantor scrolls: "Death begets Death, and Life begets Life." By killing the masters, the servants had only learned how to be masters of death.

He took one final moment to offer a silent prayer for the souls floating in the smoke above the mansion. Then, he turned his back on the fire. He adjusted his grip on the girl, feeling the warmth of her against his chest. He could do little good for the dead, but he could answer the Cantor’s song; he could save the girl placed in his care.

"I will see you through, little one," he whispered into the folds of the cloak.

He began to walk quicker then, feeling newfound purpose as he moved away from the palace grounds and picked his way through the breached walls into the narrow streets of the city. Behind him, the palace groaned as a section of the roof collapsed, sending a burst of flames and ash into the air. Barison walked on, a lone merchant of faith, carrying the daughter of the city's rage into the unknown.