Chapter 5 (Part II): The Liberal Art of War

Days passed and things didn’t calm down in Kingstown. Azraea became certain they wouldn’t. For a time they seemed to plateau, and Azraea decided that if they didn’t get to work then, they might never do so. Vinny had hesitated, but eventually admitted that sooner was better than never. On the upside, he reasoned, if they could get their story about Defiance into the news right now, it would probably spread like wildfire, and having met Syliva face to face, Azraea imagined that the dragon's new position would make her all the more prone to charge headlong into their trap.

Azraea and Vinny set about trying to make inroads with the remaining heralds in the city, ready to drop substantial gold in the hands of anyone who could put the story of Defiance into the week’s news. Vinny’s attempts to approach people didn’t go over well, of course, because few people wanted to be seen doing business with anyone who even looked Gnoman while the dragon was 'investigating' her conspiracy. Azraea’s attempts didn’t fare any better; as usual, her skin color invited a lot of snide comments and rhetorical questions about her citizenship, and on top of that many of the people she talked to connected her to the confrontation in the market (despite the shoddy wanted posters), and talking to her seemed to be considered an even bigger risk than talking to Vinny.  

On the upside, Vinny pointed out that at least one of the people they’d approached would either be such a sycophant or such a coward that they would probably go running to the dragon with their story. If that was the case then their main objective, to taunt the dragon into flying into their trap, might yet be satisfied. Azraea agreed that might be true, but she'd never been the sort of person who could simply take a seat and see how things played out.

When she’d witnessed the dragon’s extreme reaction to their encounter, Azraea had at first felt badly for setting off a horrific chain of violent events. However, now over the subsequent days her mindset had shifted. She’d taunted the dragon with her lack of formal power and, bam; suddenly the colossal piece of luggage was perched next to the king receiving her new title. Azraea might not be able to hurt the dragon physically, but it sure looked like her words had struck a nerve. It felt empowering. If Syliva had insecurities like that, she wasn’t the unstoppable force of nature they’d always been led to believe – the dragon had anxieties, or at least concerns, serious enough to act upon.

So, Azraea had started questioning the dragon’s other actions, trying to discern what else the dragon feared. The Kingstown Herald had been enough of a threat to Syliva she’d taken rather severe action to shut it down, so it was clear that as superior as she acted, she was vain enough to keep tabs on what was said about her in the media. That got Azraea curious about what else might have penetrated the lizard’s metaphorically thin skin, and after some arguing with Vinny, convinced him that they should make a discrete trip to the public library.

While dodging guards and unrest through the town had been something of a challenge, It had been no real trouble to get into the library itself – Azraea wasn’t just on a first name basis with every librarian in the building, she could also name their favorite books, and tell you how many children they had. Although Vinny had been impressed by her use of an existing information network, he didn’t appreciate the point of the exercise until she led him to the periodicals section in the basement. The library had copies of nearly every periodical printed in Kingstown since the movable type press was introduced eighty five years earlier, and it had extensive notes about the heralds dating back much further than that. The oldest documents, of course, had to be handled with extreme care, under supervision by one of the librarians, but Azraea was more interested in publications from the past month.

Reading through copies of the papers provided a good review of how the whole alchemy conspiracy had played out (much to her surprise, none of it seemed remotely related to Meingen’s activities), but Azraea’s ‘ah ha’ moment came when she found the papers printed by the University.

She hadn’t given it much thought, but the university’s journalism department had recently acquired its own printing press and the students had, of course, used it to begin publishing a school newspaper. The content wasn’t especially interesting – messages from the schools presiding officials, administrators, department heads, and some things about graduation and such, but then she ran across something odd. Just after they had left, there was mention of an alternate paper in an editorial. When she asked one of the librarians about it, she learned that earlier in the spring the journalism students had begun printing an unofficial paper off the books, using it to say things the school wouldn’t ordinarily allow. Apparently she’d been too preoccupied with her final semester to notice the minor scandal. The librarian dug up some copies for her and… its aggression was impressive. The writers hadn’t held back.

Admittedly, it wasn’t exactly professional, objective journalism. It had a definite slant to it, and relied heavily on satire to make its point. It was bold, though, treading into territory even The Kingstown Herald, at its most defiant, had not dared to enter. The underground paper had not only vocalized opposition to Broad Beard’s rhetoric, but provided a platform to organize the ill-fated protests that Kaira’s friend Schroeder had been unfortunate enough to witness. And then, there it was: in the last issue there was a front page piece that called the whole conspiracy a fraud, and laid it at the feet of Broad Beard Press’s owner, Syliva. It not only drew the connection compellingly, it took no quarter in shaming and humiliating the old reptile. The street date made it the last of the underground papers printed before the dragon burned the university to the ground.  

Azraea had been vexed by the dragon’s decision to burn the university. She’d run the numbers several times over the years, every time she paid tuition and bought books, and she believed Shroeder was right; the university had provided a sizable income for the students’ primary lender, the dragon. After discussing the issue with Ochsner long distance she had become even more certain that there could have been no profit in burning the kingdom's largest school to the ground.

Vinny had suggested that the economic situation had become so bad that Syliva didn’t expect to see any more loans paid back, but even if students were defaulting on their loans there were better ways to make money off the college than to sell its charred remains. Ochsner had then suggested that the dragon had simply lost her temper and incinerated the whole thing without thinking of the consequences. Ochsner had said that the general state of the kingdom suggested that the dragon was, on occasion, fairly short-sighted for a centuries old creature. Syliva had made some shrewd business deals, of course, but in her greed, she’d also run the whole economy into the ground.

Azraea had doubted the suggestion at the time; she had seen the dragon’s temper up close and lived to tell of it. Given the contents of the school paper, though, it looked like Ochsner might have been right. The journalism students had slighted Syliva and she had rained fiery retribution down on the whole school as a result.

That made Azraea very interested in whatever might be left of the journalism school.

Despite the turmoil in the city, guards had been allocated to the task of patrolling the perimeter of the burnt out campus. Trespassing was something Azraea would not have considered a few months ago, but now, attired in black, close-fitted clothing that Vinny insisted was essential for this sort of work, she didn’t hesitate to slip past the men. Azraea and Vinny quickly made their way to the center of campus, out of sight.

 As they picked their way through the dark ruins by starlight, Vinny finally asked, “So, I get why a paper that the dragon didn’t own would be a problem for her – even a tiny little one - but doesn’t burning down the whole university seem excessive?”

“Everything she does seems excessive,” Azraea said, “I think excess might be her most defining trait.”

“But why even let it get that far? Why didn’t she buy off the university same as the other heralds?”

“What was there to buy? She already owned a large chunk of the university.”

“Yeah, exactly, so why not just throw her weight around and put a stop to it right away?”

“Oh, if you think it’s that easy to control anything that happens in your school, you haven’t spent enough time in academia. You can bully, you can bribe, and you can persuade, but dealing with a small town’s worth of administrators, faculty and students is like herding cats. Hundreds of cats. Cats with oppositional defiance disorder.”

 “So a few weeks back, the dragon used her influence with the Beard and the Vulpine to pick a fight with the university’s students. Why? She just needed a scapegoat for the kingdom’s problems?”

“Maybe,” Azraea said, “Or maybe she just thought it would be fun. Having talked to her face to face, I think she… well, for lack of a better way to put it, I think she gets off on that sort of thing.”

“What do you mean? Like... sexually?”

“You remember when we first met? You remember rescuing me from that pawner?”

“Seems like a lifetime ago, but yeah. Rapey Jake is hard to forget.”

“I got the same vibe from Syliva that I got from him. When she was threatening us, looming over us, it was the exact same gleam in her eye… the exact same… just vibe. I don’t know how else to put it. There was some grandstanding, she was showing off for the crowd like Tharkrada did for his troops when he fought Kaira, but there was something else too. Something personal… if there were an evil version of the word ‘intimate’, that’s what I’d use.”

“And you think that she was picking on the university students to scratch the itch under her scales.”

Azraea grimaced at the gross mental image that conjured, but she nodded, “Most people, they've got metaphorical safe spaces they can run to when threatened; they have money or connections that can bail them out of a fleeting spot of trouble. Bullies don't pick on them because they know it'd come back to bite them in the ass. Instead, the bullies pick on people like my parents, the farmers in Rosebud, the people in Defiance..." 
Azraea's teeth ground in the back of her mouth as she listened to the silenced screams echoing through the ruins, "College students in Caelia live paycheck to paycheck, semester to semester. They succeed or fail at the whim of others. But people talk about how 'entitled' and 'spoiled' they are. People never like college students – even alumni. Once they have that diploma in hand and find a job, they treat college students like dirt. A college is like a kick-me sign turned into a community.”

It wasn't an experience Vinny could relate to directly, given the militant nature of Gnoman society, but he understood bullies and predators well enough. “So the dragon saw an easy victim to metaphorically screw; what went wrong?”

“Well, the way I figure it, getting people to hate students is easy, but in a war where words and information are your weapons, I would think it generally unwise to go up against a small army of liberal arts majors.”

Vinny laughed quietly, “What’s so dangerous about liberal arts majors?”

“They go into their degree path knowing they’ll never make any money, throwing away years of their lives and incurring massive debt without any hope of seeing it pay off” she said, “They’re academic martyrs. Give them a printing press and you have a serious threat on your hands.”

Azraea led them towards the school of journalism. The burned out remains were a tad disorienting but given the years she’d spent here, so long as she could see the castle to the southwest, she couldn’t get lost. Vinny followed closely behind, wary of any pursuit.

Azraea found the scorched frame she thought was the building – the entrance was marked by a granite statue of the Elven god of knowledge that was identifiable even when broken off at the knees.

“Look at the doors,” Vinny said, “people tried to evacuate the other buildings, but this one was smoked before anyone could react. This looks like the first place she hit. Too bad nothing’s left.”

“They moved the press to the basement because the sound of the boards clacking was annoying one of the magisters,” Azraea said, “And it doesn’t look like the first floor collapsed completely.” She followed the edge of the building. Despite the fact that the first floor hadn’t fully caved in, it was an impassable ruin of charred wood and fallen brick. Fortunately she found what she was looking for; the coal chute to the basement was still largely clear.

“You lead a charmed life, kid,” Vinny commented on their luck as he helped her haul the few charred beams and bricks off of it and open the chute.

“If you say so,” Azraea said, “then I’ll go first.” She sat down and slowly slid down the short chute into the pitch-black basement. She ignited a fireball in her hand and found that, indeed, half of it was caved in. Timber jutted through the ceiling, spilling bricks onto everything that had been beneath it. Fortunately, the half of the basement with the printing press was still mostly intact, though it was a mess. Rains had washed dirt and ash down into the basement. The floor and the machine were covered in gunk and the stored paper was ruined.

Vinny slid in behind her, and looked around, “Compared to ‘totally incinerated’ this is pretty good.”

“Yeah, I don’t know what I was expecting to find.”

“No, I wasn’t being sarcastic,” Vinny said as he walked around the thing, “It’s really pretty good. I can get the papers and ink,” he said, “if you can get it cleaned up and working. We can start our own underground press. Literally”

“You want to start printing our own paper?” Azraea asked.

“Yeah, sure,” Vinny said, “Maybe we can’t go the whole way with it, but we can manage some flyers, right? The way I see it, anything that’ll rattle the scaly old bat’s cage is worth doing at this point, and apparently a free press concerns her a great deal. Of course, while I have acquired a rather impressive repertoire of skills over the years, I’ll admit that I haven’t a clue how you would run this thing.”

Azraea found a charred skeleton in the mess of collapsed timbers. Some poor soul had been down there using the machine when the building caught fire and had run for the stairs only to be crushed by the building caving in. She looked around and found two more charred bodies.
Azraea’s eyes glowed green, “I’m sure I can find someone here eager to teach me.”