The Our City movement had begun soon after the flotilla departed, Dinlay explained. Some argument in Tosella had sparked it off, apparently. A newlywed couple had found themselves a cluster of empty rooms in a big mansion between the Blue Tower and Hidden Canal. The rooms were up in the eaves and had odd split-level floors with a rolling step, which was why they’d never been claimed. However, there was a good-size room at one end where the man could set up his jewelry workshop. But they didn’t register their residency until after the wedding, as was traditional in Makkathran. That was when the trouble started. They came back from their honeymoon and found that a stopover family had moved in.

“Temporary,” Macsen grunted. “That’s all. Two brothers had brought their mother from Fandine province to Makkathran for a Skylord’s guidance. She was arthritic and was succumbing to the onset of dementia. They just missed one Skylord by a week, and there were no approaching Skylords sighted by the Astronomy Guild, so it was probably going to be several months until the next one arrived. In the meantime, the brothers couldn’t afford to rent a tavern room for that long or take one in the new inns out in the villages. The empty rooms were a logical solution.”

“The newlyweds told them to get out,” Dinlay said. “At which point one of the sons went and registered their residency claim with the Board of Occupancy at the Courts of Justice. As they’d lived in the rooms for the required two days and two nights, they were entitled.”

“Oh, Lady,” Edeard moaned. He knew how this tale was going to unfold. There had always been resentment at the number of stopover visitors. He and Mayor Trahaval had talked about the problem before he’d confronted the nest. There hadn’t been an immediate solution, though the inns being built in the coastal towns and out on the Iguru had seemed like a solution that ultimately would solve everything. It was only by the grace of the Lady that there hadn’t been an “incident” like this one back then.

“The jeweler and his new bride both had large families, and they were well connected,” Dinlay continued. “Worse, no other empty cluster of rooms would do-for the newlyweds or the stopover brothers. It had to be this one. So the couple made their stand: Makkathran buildings for Makkathran citizens. It was a popular cause. The stopover brothers and their mother were forcefully evicted. By the time the constables arrived, they were already out on the street and in need of hospital treatment from a beating. The newlyweds were installed along with their furniture, and a huge crowd of their relatives blocked the entrance to the mansion. Not that they really needed to; the constables who arrived on the scene weren’t entirely unsympathetic. All they did was cart off the brothers and their mother.

“That might have been the end of it. But legally the rooms were registered to the brothers. So the newlyweds brought in legal help to revoke the residency and make it their own.”

Edeard closed his eyes in anguish. “Please! Lady, no, not him.”

“Oh, yes,” Macsen said with vicious delight. “Master Cherix took the case.”

Because the couple, legally, were unequivocally in the wrong and everyone knew it, all Cherix could do in court was fight a holding action. A registration of occupancy could be overturned only by an order of the Grand Council. In order to get that, the legal case had to become a political campaign. The Our City movement was born four weeks before the elections. Mayor Trahaval was strictly in favor of existing law and order, as espoused by the Waterwalker, as he was fond of repeating at every speech. Doblek, up until then a simple formality opposition candidate, chose to support Our City. He won a landslide majority, as did a host of Our City representatives.

The Our City movement was something its members took very seriously. By the end of the first week every single vacant space in every building in Makkathran was occupied and registered by one of their own. And the visitors arriving with their dying relatives had nowhere to stay; like the brothers before them, most couldn’t afford the inns for what might be months. It all came to a head in Ilongo a week after Doblek was sworn in at the Orchard Palace. Some newly arrived visitors, outraged at being told they couldn’t stay in the city where their dearly beloved were due to be guided from, tried to squat in some of Ilongo’s central mansions. There were riots that the constables alone couldn’t quell, not that they tried particularly hard. That was when Doblek acted with impressive resolution, ordering the militia in to stamp down hard on the disturbance.

From that day on, anyone who came to Makkathran to be guided by a Skylord and couldn’t afford a tavern room was prevented from passing through the city gates until a day before the great event, when the Lady’s Mothers organized their passage up the towers. Even then, relatives who’d been camping outside were discouraged from accompanying them to Eyrie.

“Doblek really thought he was emulating you on the day of banishment,” Macsen said. “Throwing them all out and forbidding them to come back was what you did to Bise and the rest. And enough stupid people think the same; they applaud how tough he was.”

“I’m surprised he had the courage to suggest such a thing,” Edeard said. “That’s not the Doblek I remember.”

“Power changes people,” Dinlay said simply, giving Macsen a sharp look. “And necessity. What else could he do?”

Edeard realized this was an old argument between his friends.

“I could accept that if he’d made any attempt to alter things since then,” Macsen said. “But he hasn’t. He doesn’t know what to do, and more people are arriving each day. Did you know we’ve only just started getting our first visitors from the most distant provinces? And I include Rulan in that.”

“Cheap,” Dinlay muttered.

“Not really. The volume of people coming here is still rising. Doblek has done nothing to address that. Nothing! He had to deploy another militia troop to safeguard the route into Makkathran. The people he’d forced outside were starting to waylay merchant carts and caravans. So now we have a permanent presence of militia extending well out into the Iguru, and the stopover camps are hacking down the forests outside for fuel. You know those trees were planted by Rah and the Lady themselves.”

“The area circling Makkathran was designated a forest zone by Rah,” Dinlay said wearily. “He didn’t go around planting seeds himself; that’s One City propaganda.”

“Whatever,” Macsen said. “The problem is Doblek’s actions, or rather lack of them. What does he think is going to happen, that it’ll all sort itself out? And Edeard, we’ve heard rumors that the Fandine militia is on the march through Plax.”

Edeard gave Macsen a puzzled look. “Why?”

“Because we’ve used our militia against their citizens. They’re claiming the right of protection.”

“Oh, Great Lady!”

“It’s the distance,” Dinlay said. “That’s our trouble. Rumor grows with each mile. A report of what was a grazed arm and a bloody nose in Makkathran has become some kind of mass murder of innocents by the time it reaches Fandine.”

“So is it true about the Fandine militia, then?”

“General Larose sent fast scouts out last week. We’ll know soon enough.”

“Militias fighting on the Iguru,” Edeard muttered in disbelief. The loss of life during the last campaign against the bandits had appalled him. He’d thought such horror had ended then. It certainly couldn’t be allowed to happen again; he had never forgotten the carnage Owain had unleashed. “I must speak with Doblek.”

“To what end?” Macsen asked. “You think he’ll back down and order the militia back inside the gate?”

“He was elected courtesy of Our City,” Dinlay said. “He’ll never go against the cause that put him in the Orchard Palace.”