Frost Fever by Jonathan Moeller

Author:Jonathan Moeller [Moeller, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Azure Flame Media, LLC
Published: 2015-09-29T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7: The Glory of the Revolution

A moment of searing disorientation, the sensation of falling, and I suddenly found myself in the middle of a street a block from the Wisconsin State Capitol, the summer air hot and muggy against my face.

The rift way snapped shut behind me, and I felt the cold weight of the bracelet upon my left wrist.

I had returned to the middle of a mess.

Black plumes of smoke rose from the square, wreathing the white dome of the Capitol. The air stank of smoke and blood and the tang of powerful explosives. I heard the distant wail of emergency sirens, and the much nearer chatter of automatic gunfire. A barricade still sealed off the square, and a dozen dead men in blue Homeland Security uniforms lay before it. I couldn’t tell if they were Rebels or legitimate officers. Twenty or thirty more people in civilian clothes lay scattered on the street, some of them wounded and moaning with pain, some of them dead.

The Knight had dropped me right into the middle of a fight. Unless I missed my guess, Rogomil’s Rebels had seized the Capitol and the barricades, which made me wonder just how many men he had smuggled into Madison. Then I realized that I had to get out of sight, right now, before anyone else saw me. I sprinted off the street, jumped the curb, and darted into an alley between a bank branch and a sandwich shop. Both buildings were dark, their doors closed and their shutters drawn. With luck, no one had seen me. A digital clock hung over the bank’s entrance, and with a shock I realized that less than an hour had passed since I had fled into the Shadowlands with Alexandra.

It felt a lot longer than that.

I leaned against the concrete wall of the alley, closed my eyes, and tried to think.

I was in a lot of trouble, and couldn’t see a way out.

For one thing, I was in the middle of a war zone. The Rebels might have seized the Capitol, but that wouldn’t last long. If Carothrace and Tamirlas had escaped the ambush, they would call their men-at-arms and commandeer the local branches of Homeland Security. Guns and bombs and helicopters did not work in the Shadowlands, but they worked just fine on Earth, and the Elven nobles would sweep the Rebels from Madison. For that matter, the High Queen might send men from her Wizards’ Legion to aid the nobles, and they would call a firestorm of elemental magic upon the Rebels’ heads.

Knowing Rogomil, he would escape long before that.

Why seize the square, then? Why hold the Capitol? Rogomil was a lot of things, most of them bad, but he wasn’t an idiot and he wasn’t suicidal. If he was sticking around, he would have a good reason, or at least a reason that made sense.

I tried to think it through. The Rebels wanted to overthrow the High Queen and restore self-rule to humanity. So how

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