The Cellarer had been right. It was barely noon before Draka was scraping the bottom of the barrel sized pot to get a full ladle of stew to tip into a bowl held by a scrawny elderly man. The man didn’t seem as disappointed as Draka expected when he saw how little he was able to get. Instead, he gave Draka a knowing nod of thanks and moved on.

  “Well,” the kitchener snuffed out the small fire that warmed the pot through the morning and stretched. “That’s that bit. I’ll see if there’s anything we might’ve missed from inside. You get any for yourself?”

  Draka sighed. There were still so many moving down the line, taking the stems left of grapes and scraping the platters of crumbs onto cloths that remained after the last of the plates and bowls were handed out.

  “Majesty?”

  Draka turned to him and shook his head, motioning for him to go. He’d rather whatever could be given to the people was scraped for all there was. If he could, he’d hunt the entirety of his lands to desolation to feed them. He was smart enough to know that would only make things worse, but he hated seeing so many empty bellies. So much desperation.

  He looked into the pot. There was still some slimy stuff on the sides he might be able to scrape off to fill at least a bowl—maybe two—from. Draka grabbed the spoon the kitchener left behind and began scraping.

  “That’s always been my favorite part of a stew, too,” Nina made him jump. She was in her nun outfit again. Her cheeks were a little red from the sun. She must have been out there with the others, too. She smiled, her green eyes twinkling at his annoyance.

  He returned to scraping.

  “I thought I’d give you an update while I could,” her voice lowered to a whisper as she bent over the pot as if she were helping. “I hired some street thugs to join you tonight, make it look like they’re rising against him so that when you attack the palace, you don’t look like a tyrant. His boys have been painting the city with graffiti to keep people from thinking it’s out of nowhere. They’ll be in the square after ten o’clock on the astrological clock.”

  Draka blinked and looked up at her in confusion.

  “You really are lost here, aren’t you?” She shook her head at him. She swatted the back of his head. “Keep up! It’s in the nave. Ten. Have your army ready. Until then, try not to kick it off too early. I’ll lead Marion and the other three through the canal tunnel and get Alice right from under their noses just before the fighting. They won’t even know what hit them until it’s you doing it. If—and I mean this, my Prince—if you do it the way I tell you.”

  She straightened from the pot and nun-bowed to him. “And, I put a few whispers out there for you, since you didn’t bother to mention who you were to anyone. You can thank me later, my Prince.”

  Another twinkling eyed grin, one that made Draka stop scraping for a moment to gape at her, and she was on her way back down the line like any other novice or nun working.

  Draka huffed. He grabbed the ladle and filled it with the slush. A proud grin spread across his face. One full ladle. He could feed one more.

  He leaned over the table to see if there was anyone coming down the line of tables being taken apart, if there was anyone still trying to pry what they could glean from the platters and cloths before they were pulled or disassembled. There was a young girl meandering from one nun to the other, holding her own small bowl up for them. One of the nuns was weeping as she shook her head. A monk nearly sunk into the ground beneath him.

  The girl was undeterred. She sidestepped to the next and held her bowl up. Then the next. Then the next.

  Draka drummed the table until she finally looked his way. He waved her over with a wide smile. She ran to him, holding the bowl with both hands over her head with her tongue sticking out in determination. Draka sat on the table, keeping a hand under the ladle cup to catch any spills, and slid himself to her side. As she reached him, he crouched down so he could tip the ladle into the bowl.

  One of the Baron’s men snatched the ladle from his hand. “Awe, finally,” he lifted the ladle high over his chin and opened mouth.

  Draka held a finger for the girl as her dirty cheeks began puffing and her eyes filled right before his eyes. He reached up and, with a quick twist, snapped the ladle bowl off and dropped it into the girl’s bowl. The man didn’t get a drop.

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  “What the!” The Baron’s man jumped back from him, reaching for his sword. Others, who had been lounging around the Palais gates across the square watching the lines, were already on their feet. “Oh, you think that’s funny, do you?”

  Draka narrowed his eyes at him. His own sword was at his side as well. Unlike the man-at-arms before him, he didn’t need to threaten children or wear armor while doing it.

  He waited. Draw it. Draka begged him. Draw your sword.

  The Clerics had migrated from the tables as well, matching the Baron’s Men’s numbers, also without their armor, but their maces were in their hands. The fully armored Monastic Knights rushed from the ends of the Cathedral to form squad formations of shields and spears, awaiting orders.

  “Back,” one of the other Baron’s men pushed the first away from Draka. “Get in the plowing garrison, you fool.”

  “You saw what he did! That’s our food!”

  “Not him. Not him. Not here.”

  Draka eyed the rest of the Baron’s Men as they slowly backed to their half of the square, back to where they had been sitting and watching the food lines throughout the morning. Only, now, they did so the way one would if they were backing away from rabid lions. Because that was how Draka knew they saw him. A rabid lion. And he was.

  “They’re doing that all over the city,” Draka was surprised to hear Enya’s voice behind him. He thought she was on the lower end, on one of the eastern sections or islands or whatever they call them.

  He didn’t turn away from the Palais gate. The thick double portcullis. The Baron’s Men slowly sinking back toward it. The thick bricks and cement. The fa?ade of windows facing the street.

  “I had to stop my detachment from putting down an entire patrol because they started stealing the food we gave them right after they left the lines,” Enya shook her head. “They’re not being nice about it, either. They have their orders.”

  Draka glared through those gates, hoping that Christophe or Clarissa saw even if he couldn’t see them.

  “They aren’t supposed to intervene,” Enya finally drew Draka’s gaze to her. His eyes widened. She was in her full plate. The look she gave him worried him to the core. “They’re not obeying. I’ve ordered everything shut down and all non-combatants to return from the other districts before things escalated, leaving Paladinate forces as a deterrent for the checkers. I just got here a moment ago. I recommend non-combatants get inside, and we finish up.”

  Draka looked around the square. She was right. He hadn’t noticed until that moment. The square was nearly clear of all but a few street orphans—like the little girl—and straggling elderly or homeless. But those who knew they’d be in the cross between the fighting, those who understood that they were in the center of a powder keg, were long gone. The remaining faces, those burly, hard-faced men wearing the Baron’s colors staring across the wide square between the Cathedral and Palais, were not filled with fear, caution, or even hesitation. They were filled with anticipation. Bloodlust. They, too, are waiting on something.

  They’re waiting for orders.

  Draka nodded to Enya with a downward motion of his hand to keep things de-escalated. Then, he gave her cuirass a yank at the collar to draw her attention to it.

  She nodded.

  His glance returned to the gate of the Palais Rohan. That is going to be a problem when this all fully comes to blows. He didn’t like the idea of having a siege inside of the city, especially if it included the Cathedral within the fray. He would have to hit it fast—and hard.

  “You!” Enya grabbed the closest cleric, who was eyeing the Baron’s men just as hard and readily as Draka. “Get the others and move the Diocese inside. We’re finishing tear-down. And gear up! Full up.” She called with a hand signal to the squads of Monastic Knights that had formed when Draka and the clerics nearly fought the Baron’s men, “Fall out to your command!”

  All at once, their formations of shields and spears broke apart and scattered back to where they were.

  To Draka, with a hand on the one he didn’t realize until then had been gripping his sword, Enya said softly, “The time will come, your majesty.”

  When he looked at her, Enya had the same look on her face that he had seen Philip give him several times before. She knew what he was thinking, knew what was flowing through his veins. War.

  “Not yet,” her words echoed with Philip’s voice.

  Draka nodded and turned back to help bring down the tables.