"Rebellion doesn't begin with fire. It begins with belief, the kind that tastes like freedom and burns like vengeance."
Kael stepped forward from where he had been standing near the fireplace. The young man's face was flushed with emotion, his eyes bright with the fervor of the newly awakened.
"Lady Nisheena is right about one thing," he said, his voice cutting through the murmur of conversation. "Picking sides between the Dabru and Urartu will only get us killed. But staying neutral? That's just another way to die slowly."
He moved to the center of the room, and Nisheena felt a chill as she recognized something in his posture, the bearing of a natural leader discovering his own power. The crowd turned toward him like flowers following the sun, their attention drawn by an indefinable quality in his presence.
"Think about it," Kael continued, his voice growing stronger. "What happens when one side wins? Do you think they'll just leave us alone? Do you think they'll be grateful for our neutrality?" He shook his head, dark hair catching the lamplight. "They'll come for us next. Winners always do."
"What are you suggesting?" asked Tommin, an older carpenter whose hands bore the scars of decades working with sharp tools.
"I'm suggesting we stop being victims," Kael replied, his eyes blazing with conviction. "I'm suggesting we stop letting these families treat us like cattle to be owned and bartered. We outnumber them three to one. If we unite, if we stand together, we can drive them both out of Baelur forever."
The room fell silent as the implications sank in. What Kael was proposing wasn't just rebellion, it was revolution. The complete overthrow of the social order that had governed their town for generations.
"You're talking about war," said Miren, Kael's own mother, her voice barely above a whisper. "War against both families at once. That's suicide."
"Is it?" Kael's gaze swept across the crowd, meeting eyes and holding them. "They're about to tear each other apart. They'll be weakened, vulnerable. This might be our only chance to break free."
Nisheena watched in growing horror as she saw the idea take root in the faces around her. The desperate hope of people who had been ground down for too long, who suddenly saw a path to something better than mere survival. She had seen this before, in other places, other times, the moment when reasonable people convinced themselves that violence could solve what patience and wisdom could not.
"This is madness," she said, her voice sharp with authority. "You're talking about attacking families with trained soldiers, with weapons and fortifications. What do you have? Farm tools and kitchen knives?"
"We have numbers," Kael shot back, his respectful tone toward her noticeably absent. "We have a surprise. And we have something they don't, we're fighting for our freedom, not their gold."
"And what happens when the capital sends investigators? When the crown demands to know why their appointed families were slaughtered by peasants?" Nisheena's voice rose, desperation creeping in. "They'll burn this entire town to ash and scatter the stones!"
"The capital doesn't care about us," Bren interjected, his earlier support for Tarkun forgotten in the face of this new possibility. "When did they last send aid when the cursed lands spawned monsters? When did they help during the plague years? We're on our own anyway!"
A rumble of agreement rippled through the crowd. Nisheena felt control of the situation slipping away like sand through her fingers. These people had found something more intoxicating than ale or coin; they had found hope. The kind of desperate, dangerous hope that led to atrocities committed in the name of justice.
"Besides," Kael added, his voice taking on a harder edge, "what would you know about fighting for freedom? You've always had yours. The rest of us have to take ours."
The casual cruelty of the words hit Nisheena like a physical blow. Here was the boy she had watched grow up, whose scraped knees she had bandaged, whose father's funeral she had helped organize, dismissing her concerns as if she were a stranger. The transformation was complete; Kael had become something she didn't recognize.