Page 103 of New Storm Rising
“Hm…indeed?”
Ah.I nodded to myself.Seems things have been set in motion.
Struggling to poke my head through the (too bloody small!) opening in my dress, I peeked out into the hallway. “What is going on?”
Mr Ambrose turned around, revealing the nervous figure of the man standing on the porch outside. “Ah, my dear wife. It seems that the townsfolk waylaid one of the men sent to town to obtain supplies. They need urgent help with dealing with the outsiders who are terrorizing their town, and they seem to think I am a white knight in shining armour.”
“Oh my!” I gasped. “I wonder who gave them that idea?”
“It must have been someone very insightful and intelligent, Mrs Ambrose.”
“Must it? And I suppose he was irresistibly, ravishingly handsome, too?”
“Most definitely.”
Dang! I wanted that poker face of his. No, scratch that. Considering how much dough I made the last time I played, Ineededthat poker face of his!
“Well then, let’s go, shall we?” Buttoning up my dress the rest of the way, I smirked at him. “We wouldn’t want to disrupt the plans of an insightful, intelligent, ravishingly handsome man.”
“Indeed.”
He extended his arm. Taking it, I let myself be led out into the clearing. This time, we didn’t head into the mine to reach the town. Hardly surprising, considering the passage was nothing but dirt and rubble now. Instead, Mr Ambrose led me towards a familiar coach.
It wasn’t long before we reached the meeting spot the guard had arranged. A crowd of…well, I suppose you could call them townspeople. But townspeople usually had a town, not tents. And clothes, not rags. And…well, lots of stuff these people didn’t seem to have. Including hope.
The coach rolled to a stop, the earth crunching beneath its wheels. Pushing open the door, Mr Rikkard Ambrose descended, surveying the assembled crowd.
“I was informed you wished to meet with me?”
The people exchanged hesitant looks. Finally, a diminutive little woman was pushed to the front of the crowd.
“Um, Sir…we wanted to ask…that is…we wanted to talk about something.”
“Speak.”
The woman opened her mouth again—and then it all came flooding out. How the Spaniards had tricked them with honeyed words and promises of wealth. How those foreigners had brought men to the town—men who turned out to be the worst sort of thugs. Then came the thefts. The attacks, both on men and women. Especially women.
They bore it all. They suffered in silence. But then…then the thugs descended on the miners, first blocking access to their work, then destroying the mine itself. The mine had been the biggest employer in town. People could suffer in silence. But starve in silence? Die in silence?
That was another matter altogether.
“We must fight back,” the little woman said, chin raised and fists clenched in determination. “But…we cannot win alone. Are…are you willing to help us?”
Mr Ambrose cocked his head.
“Are you willing to do what is necessary?”
“Y-yes!”
For a long, long moment, Mr Rikkard Ambrose regarded the woman.
“Very well then.” Taking a step forward, he gazed down at the townspeople, his ice-cold eyes sweeping over them as though he could see not just them, but what the future held for them. “We will act tomorrow. Here is what we are going to do…”
***
The young woman, Nelly, glanced nervously from right to left. Probably because she, together with only four other townspeople, one icicle of an English businessman and my humble self, was currently making her way down the town’s main street, Hispanic thugs glaring at them from all sides. The only reason the Spaniards hadn’t attacked yet was that they hadn’t figured out where the heck these ants had gotten the courage to show up in their territory.
From a glance at her face, I’d say that Nelly hadn’t either.
