Vayne's official arrival to the city of Rabanastre was nowhere near as ostentatious as his predecessor's. Starting from the South Gate, he stood atop a military hoverbarge as it, accompanied by four smaller vehicles, made a circuit around the city before finally heading towards the palace.
Sherral remembered well the last consul's proverbial unveiling: He had built up an entire parade around himself. There had been dancers and people breathing fire. Even with the party for the entire city that would be taking place on House Solidor gil that evening, Lord Vayne still would have had more than enough to ensure a reveal that would have left every previous consul in the dust for sheer, expensive, over-the-top pomp and circumstance.
Which meant this was intentional.
-----
Each captain in the garrison was gathered at the palace courtyard, standing to the front of one of the two rows of soldiers that lined the steps leading up to the palace doors. Major Ronick, commander for the entire garrison, stood at the top of the steps, behind a desk marked with the symbol of the Empire.
“We will have order!” Ronick called to the restless crowd. “I give you your new consul, His Imperial Highness Lord Vayne Solidor, commandant of the Archadian Empire's Western Arm – Your Excellency!”
Sherral arched an eyebrow underneath his helmet. Silently, but with a distinct air of irritation, Vayne was moving, heading down the steps and into the crowd, soldiers and Rabanastran civilians alike parting as he strode by. Wordlessly, the man moved back onto the hoverbarge, climbing up onto one of the archer's nests.
People were muttering now. This had not happened before.
“People of Rabanastre,” Vayne began. “Is it with hatred you look upon your consul? With hatred you look upon the Empire?”
The response was immediate. Dozens of Rabanastrans screamed, yelling demands for him to return to Archadia, or insults against the Empire. A few soldiers' hands went to their swords – Vayne seemed to notice them immediately, and without turning swivelled his eyes towards them to give them a bland look that makes them pause, and draw their hands away again.
“There was little point in asking,” Vayne said, and his voice was softer, but it still carried. “But know this: I harbour no idle hopes of frustrating that hatred. Nor shall I ask your fealty – that is the due of your fallen king and rightly so.”
The crowd had gone quiet now. Perhaps a few of them were remembering that Vayne and King Raminas were, even when war was looming on the horizon, friends of a sort. More likely they were just surprised – the last consul would have been giving dire warnings about crossing him by now.
“King Raminas,” Vayne said with feeling, “loved his people, strove to bring you peace. His – was a rule worthy of your devotion. Even now, he remains among you, protecting you. His ardour for the peace and weal of Dalmasca falters not.”
The crowd was not just silent anymore: They were listening intently, hanging on every word, and Sherral could almost detect approval amongst them. More than approval – they liked Vayne. For all his talk of frustrating their hatred, he had done exactly that: Everything about this, from his understated arrival to his interruption of Major Ronick to this speech had been calculated to catch the people of Rabanastre off-guard and earn their respect.
Yet, for all of that, Sherral couldn't detect anything other than sincerity from him.
“I would ask only that you do your King honour. Together, let us embrace the peace His Majesty would surely desire,” Vayne said. “Two years now divide us from war's bitter end, yet still its shadow looms over all, stifling the infant peace, a pall only you may cast off. Achieve but this one thing and your hatred of me and the Empire shall grieve me not.
“I will stand fast. I will endure your hatred, suffer your slings and arrows, I will defend Dalmasca. Here I will pay my debt, I swear it now.”
Vayne gestured towards the palace. “Though King Raminas and Lady Ashe are gone, they stand ever at the side of their people. In honouring peace, you do honour to their memory and to Dalmasca. What I ask, I ask plain: My hopes now rest with you.”
Vayne paused, surveying the crowd, and then touched his right hand to the left of his chest and bowed to the crowd. They exploded with applause.
-----
The Insurgency. They came when the city's revelry was at its height, just after the fireworks, leaping from small, light gliders, landing in the palace courtyard. Their numbers surprised Sherral – between disgruntled Dalmascan ex-military, disgruntled Bhujerban ex-military, and mercenaries, they had nearly enough to challenge the garrison on even terms.
A few, dressed in Bhujerban green and cream, threw down purple-red magicite, smashing it with quick strikes of their weapons. The sparkling dust drifted up into the air, and as realisation dawned, Sherral tapped the side of his helmet, hollering a command over the comm lines to raise the city's Paling.
The Paling doesn't rise quickly enough. From the desert around Rabanastre come monsters, those that can fly swooping in onto the palace. As for those that can't – it doesn't take long for reports to start coming over the comm lines, from Sherral's own division and others, of monsters throwing themselves against the gates and climbing the walls. He cursed: The guard on the walls was at its thinnest for months right now, and worse, there are trader's camps out there.
He saw one of the Bhujerban insurgents reaching for another mote of magicite. With a growl, he drew his sword, the white magicite of the blade flaring bright for a second before the dozen spells on it activate and the world slows to a crawl.
When his sword ran out of Mist, he had cut down more insurgents than he cared to count, cleaving them in two before they could reach their weapons. He raised the magicite blade, sucking the Mist that rose from their bodies towards it.
”The Paling will be up in ten minutes, Captain Maduin.”
“That'll hardly do us good if every monster in Dalmasca is inside our walls by then,” Sherral growled.
”This is Major Ronick. Insurgents have infiltrated the palace. I repeat, insurgents have infiltrated the palace. They are targeting His Excellency himself.”
Sherral cast a glance at the palace. There was a door near enough nearby, but also enough insurgents and monsters that he'd be mauled before he even got within twenty feet of it. He had to try anyway.
He was beginning move when a shadow fell over the courtyard. The distinctive shape of the airship Ifrit, its belly glowing with fire, was looming over the palace. But the Ifrit was meant to be patrolling the Phon Coast. It would have taken it nearly a week to get here.
There was no more time to question it. The Ifrit's cannons lit up, bolts of fire exploding out of it and tearing through the courtyard, targeted at where the insurgents are thickest – which included the space between the door and Sherral. Sherral raised an arm against the explosion, then, as the smoke and heat washed over him, charged through, barrelling through the door and into a servants' corridor of the palace.
”This is Captain Ganin, there are Insurgents coming through the Garamsythe Waterway, and bringing with them practically every kind of monster down there with them. I'm knee-deep in - flans.”
“Major Ronick here. Ganin, withdraw your men and destroy the entrance to the Waterway.”
“Roger that.”
Vayne's chambers weren't far, but every stair and corridor of the palace seemed to be infested with not just flans, but worse things: Ghosts, forming temporary bodies from the Garamsythe's filthy waters; gargoyles and steelings fluttering around; a few marlboros, filling the corridors with poisonous gas that Sherral's helmet rendered harmless – he carved through them with extreme prejudice nevertheless.
As he reached Vayne's floor, a mace swung out at him, denting his helmet and knocking him backwards. As he tumbled down the flight of stairs, the display on his helmet flickered, then went pitch black, leaving only the sound of whoever was wielding that mace stomping down towards him.
He heard a crash of magicite, and the familiar smell of Mist. Every monster in a fifty foot radius started moving towards them.
He stumbled to his feet, dragging off his now uselessly, crumpled helmet and tossing it to one side, staring up at the man – he was half a foot taller than Sherral, clothed in the colours of a Dalmascan soldier, but Sherral could tell just by looking at him that he's not Dalmascan. He was a Rozarrian.
“Pretty sword there, little Archadi - ...” Any further remarks were cut off as Sherral activated the aforementioned sword. A second passed. As the Hastega spells faded, Sherral continued up the stairs, and the Rozarrian tumbled in a dozen pieces down it.
Monsters were still swarming up the staircase, drawn to the magicite dust in the air. Sherral turned slightly mid-step, raising one hand and releasing his Quickening, the beam of light tearing the staircase apart and incinerating the monsters on it, leaving a cloud of ash and wood in Sherral's wake.
-----
An insurgent's body hit the floor, his neck snapped. Vayne brushed down his hands, turning an amused gaze on Sherral.
“I'm flattered by your concern, Captain Maduin,” he said. “How goes the battle?”
Sherral was about to answer when a pair of doors burst open, and Captain Ganin entered, followed by a pair of soldiers that only by their muttered arguments could Sherral identify as Lieutenant Deweg and Private Gibbs.
“Your Excellency,” Ganin said. “The insurgents are in retreat, but the monsters they summoned here are not. The West, East and South walls are nearly overwhelmed, and the palace is infested with every rank thing from the Garamsythe.”
“A curious thing,” Vayne said calmly, but Sherral can hear steel in his voice, “I did not think the Insurgency would use such – indiscriminate tactics. Perhaps there are even dissidents amongst the dissidents.”
“Your Excellency, we should see to your evacuation ...” Captain Ganin started.
“I think not. While we are under the attack, I have little option but to take to the field,” Vayne said. “With me, Captains.”
-----
The monsters were dealt with in short order – first in the palace, and then at the walls.
When the casualty reports came in an hour after the battle is declared won, Sherral found that there had been severe damage to the western wall in three sections, two Paling generators had been destroyed, twenty-six men of the Western Division had been killed, and a further fourteen had been injured.
Twenty-six. Sherral had lost more men from a division before, but that had been in war, not peace time. Those men's families must have thought they were safe.
-----
It was not yet dawn when Sherral was summoned to Vayne's chambers in the palace.
He was not the only one there. Major Ronick was already there, and they were swiftly joined by the captains of the East, South, North and city guard divisions. Only Ganin was absent.
His absence was explained shortly. Vayne strode into the chambers, and behind him, resplendent in gold and red, came Judge Magister Ghis, with two soldiers behind him hauling Captain Ganin, stripped of his armour and with a festering wound on his shoulder.
“And now we see how the Insurgency located so many weapons,” Vayne began, “and how they did infiltrate this palace without even a single member of my palace guard stopping them until battle was already joined.”
Ronick stiffened. “Your Excellency, I swear I had no idea ...”
“Peace, Major. Reginald Ganin had us all fooled, I fear,” Vayne said. “I profess, I suspected a traitor in our ranks, yet he was not my first choice. Still, under the eye of Judge Magister Ghis, he has confessed all, how he has stolen weapons from our armoury and supplied them to insurgents; how he did arrange for their passage to the palace; how, for certain elements of the insurgency that lack even the honour of their brethren, he did procure for them magicite primed to draw beasts of Mist towards it.”
Sherral held himself carefully still, and tried not to look at Ganin. Even now, the man looked unrepentant, and Sherral felt sure that if he looked too hard at that face, he might lose control and take retribution for the twenty-six lost men under his command right there.
“He has identified a leader of the Insurgency, a Lady Amalia,” Ghis continued. “But it was not her who sought your services, was it?”
Ganin grit his teeth, then shook his head. “Amalia would never deal with an Archadian, nor command a strategy that might lead to the deaths of Dalmascans. She led the attack on the palace, but the magicite – a stroke of genius that would have led her from certain defeat to certain victory had it but been hers. But there are other leaders within the Insurgency, those who do not hold her in high regard.”
“Amalia,” Vayne murmured, seeming nearly amused. “And these other leaders – have you names for them, Ganin?”
“Invid. Dagon. Adela,” Ganin said. Sherral noted that the last name sounds Rozarrian. “They paid me for information, they paid me for weapons, they paid me to lure patrols to isolated areas so that they could be struck down, they paid me for your head on a stake, Vayne Solidor, and would've paid more once the deed was done. Money that would see my family live like kings.”
“Your family will be executed in front of all of Archades,” Ghis said sharply.
“No,” Vayne said, and the force in his voice made Ghis take a step back. “I cannot promise they shall live like kings, Captain Ganin, but for the years of honourable and loyal service you and your father and your grandfather gave the Empire before this treachery I will see them fed, clothed and sheltered.”
Ganin looked up at Vayne, eyes wide. Vayne's face was like stone.
“But I shall also see your children protected from the shame of a traitor's name. Your family shall take new name and form new house, and the line of Ganin that was once celebrated shall end,” Vayne said. “Major Ronick, if you will see my will done in this regard. I shall provide you with all the backing of House Solidor.”
“As you will, Your Excellency.”
“Then he is yours, Ghis,” Vayne said. “Pass judgement as you see fit.”
Ghis bowed his head slightly and drew his sword.
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