The smell of thickly tarred smoke and freshly baked bread blended together in Sostrate’s cramped little apartment, an aroma that meant refuge. It wouldn’t be long before the loaves would cool on the counter and our mouths would water even more. It was getting harder and harder to come by food without going to great expense. If they couldn’t sweep us from the streets with clubs, they could try to starve us out. The Lathraí districts had a lot of community gardens, but meat was now a once-a-week luxury at best for most families.

“There is only one way things will change.” Sostrate hadn’t said much since I returned, keeping the silence of a mind in full motion. For her to break it meant she had come to a decision. 

The others straightened up in their various clustered seats. There were only a few here I knew beyond a name, but our blood had mingled on the streets many times and that was good enough for me. 

She raised her head, sweeping her gaze across us. “The monopoly of force held by those above is the greatest obstacle we face. For as long as it is there, the State may kill or disappear us as they please. Agathe has done much to connect people together, but she misses a crucial piece of the puzzle: dual power.”

“Can we do such a thing with so few?”

“What are numbers?” Sostrate flicked up a puff of flour from the counter. “The polizí can handle one march of ten thousand people in the street. They cannot handle ten marches of a thousand people, a hundred of a hundred. We begin small, and spread through the city like a fire borne as embers on the wind. Then, through all of Astera.”

“Seisa is already primed to explode,” Meliton said. He was a great tree of a man, tall and broad with a strength that seemed drawn from the earth itself as if by roots. I knew him as solid, always a figure on the barricades that could not be pushed back by even the strongest of men. He carried his own gravity with him. “It will not take long before the battles of clubs become battles of fire and ash.” 

Sostrate dipped her head slightly. “An unfortunate reality. We will have to face violence on a different scale soon.” 

I swallowed hard, knowing what was meant without it being said. Once civilian forces became exhausted with us or threatened too greatly by dual power, the military would fall upon Seisa like a hammer. It had happened before in response to riots. That they had not already was almost a surprising lethargy, or perhaps overconfidence. “We will have to spread beyond Seisa before that happens.”

Sostrate flashed me a quick smile, apparently pleased that I was participating. “What would you suggest, Karsa?” 

I thought of Endeis’s journals and Agathe’s little paper. Between the two of them, my sister and Agathe had done much to stir up the fire within Seisa, despite every effort to stamp out their voices. There was logic in trying the same. “The message has to spread. Example is not enough. We need blueprints, persuasion.” 

“I can put together a blueprint,” Sostrate said firmly. “How to build cells, how to operate mutual aid, the mechanics of what we are doing. But you are right, I think we need a voice. If we can increase the circulation of Agathe’s paper beyond Seisa and add our own columns or articles to it, more people will understand the cause. That will be our wind, spreading our embers.” 

Meliton grimaced. “Agathe is very set upon passivity.” 

Sostrate looked at me. “Karsa, you know her better than most. Would you be willing to try to convince her? If she cannot be moved, we will work on our own. If she can be moved, that will aid us greatly.” 

I had a lifetime of experience of dealing with stubbornness: my sister, my mother, and I all had it running through our veins like the blood of life. More than that, I knew Agathe on a more personal level than anyone else in the room. “I can try.” 

Sostrate’s little timer rang and all of us straightened up, trying not to show eagerness. Her baking was a thing of legend. “Karsa, may I have a word with you?” Sostrate tilted her head towards the cramped living room. I followed her without hesitation, confident that they would save us both bread.

Everyone took that as cue that the meeting was over. Meliton grabbed a dish towel and moved towards the oven to start pulling out loaves. 

Sostrate sat down on the threadbare couch. Once, she had lived in the nicest part of the district in her own home, but the memories of her loss had been too much there. Here the only sign of her old life was the framed photograph of her husband and little boy poised on the table by the window, weathered from being carried in a pocket for several years. Well, that and her collection of poetry, some volumes so well-thumbed that the pages had come loose from their bindings. My eyes settled on one: Variations on a Rose.

“You were a literature student, weren’t you?”

I nodded. “I used to read a lot of Arete.”

Her eyes lit up. “You have good taste. Variations is a favorite of mine.” 

I felt an actual smile flash across my face. “I didn’t know you were such a romantic.” 

“I could say the same, Karsa, though I know why.” She studied me for a long moment. “I want you to write the column, if Agathe agrees.” 

“Me?” I blinked at her. “I don’t know how to fire anyone up. That was always—”

“I know you are not your sister,” Sostrate said, gently cutting me off. “I am not asking you to be. Agathe and Endeis both mentioned that you wrote poetry. That is more than anyone else here can say.”

“Poetry is very different from…this.”

She shook her head. “I am not looking for grand ideas. I want people to feel what we are feeling. What is a poem if not a feeling?”

I hadn’t touched a pen since the bombing. “I don’t know if I can.”

“You may always decline, but I want you to consider it deeply. For yourself and for us. Besides, Agathe may take such an imposition better if she thinks it is in good hands.” Sostrate smiled at me. “I made an extra loaf for you to take with you, as a peace offering. You had best take it soon, before anyone else gets their greasy little paws on it.” 

I sighed, combing my fingers through my hair. “I’ll think about it.”

“Good.” She rose to her feet and refocused on the kitchen. “Meliton, not that one! Karsa is taking it to Agathe.”

He grumbled and swatted at me as I approached, but then gave my shoulder a squeeze. “Be safe, Karsa. Do you want anyone going with you?”

I shook my head. “I’ll be fine.”

“If the polizí crash wherever Agathe and the others are, don’t engage. Evade and return only once you’ve lost any tails. I know you can outrun just about everyone,” Sostrate said firmly. “At this point, I have no interest in heroes. Understood?”

When Sostrate took that tone, there were only words of agreement. It was like having a second mother, in a strange but comfortable way. “Understood.”

“You’re such a good girl, Karsa,” Meliton teased. 

Sostrate glared at him, though there was a hint of a smile on her lips. “Better than you ruffians, anyway.” 

The big man bumped me with his shoulder as I passed him to wrap up the loaf in crinkling brown paper. “See you in a few hours.”

I cracked a tiny smile and tucked the wrapped loaf under my arm. “It’s Agathe. It might take a few days to convince her of this.”

He chuckled. “Probably.”

All too soon, I was out the door and on my way. The sun was already red and low on the western horizon. I took the narrow back alleys and hopped a few broken-down fences, then climbed a closed dumpster to make it to the roof walks, where the neighborhood children linked buildings with board walkways. The heights could be considerable, but it was safer than street level: you could see polizí coming from a long way off. The neighborhoods were relatively safe from crime with the patrols of locals, but a squad car could ruin your life. 

Eventually, there was no choice but to drop down as I got closer to the newer hideout of Agathe’s little newspaper. It was surrounded by parking lot, the remnants of a restaurant that had closed before I was born. Boards shut up the cracked windows and a rusted padlock held the door, but that was just an act. Golden light leaked from under the door.

I pulled out a cigarette and lit it as I walked up the path. It was a warm summer night, the cracked asphalt beneath my feet still radiating the sun’s heat. Brief movement at a door down the street told me I was being watched. They’d probably already called the neighborhood watch to tell her someone was coming.

It’s what we would have done.

I thumped on the door in the same pattern I’d used when I came to pick up my sister from Agathe’s house in the old days. 

There was a pause, then the door opened a crack. I could see Isidoros’s eyes, red from tear gas and exhaustion. The medic frowned at me. “What do you want, Karsa?”

I exhaled smoke away from him, trailing ash as I lowered the tightly rolled cylinder. Meliton had made a pack for me hand-rolling, which seemed to hold the terrible tobacco better. “To talk.”

“And why should we let you?”

“Every voice is equal in the community, no?” Before he could retort, I produced the loaf of bread. Even wrapped, the smell of Sostrate’s fresh baking was heavenly. “I brought food.”

Even before the shortages and the expense, gifts of food had a special place for my people. Making a meal for someone was an act of love. That Sostrate had been willing to do so for them was something they were almost bound by celestial law to honor. 

He shut the door, but I heard him unlock the heavy chain on the interior.  “Did you bring any weapons?” he asked once he’d opened the heavy wooden door again.

“Do I seem so dangerous?”

“Everyone with Sostrate is dangerous.”

“Not to you,” I promised, holding out the bread for inspection. “This is all I brought, though if you don’t eat it while it’s good, you could probably sharpen it into a weapon when it’s stale.”

He laughed without thinking, then tried to sober himself. The little lines around his mouth faded slightly, a hint of a relief creeping into his expression. “Are you back to stay?”

“I suppose that depends. Is Agathe in?”

“Asleep. I’ll go wake her up. She’d kill me if we all ate it without her.” He stepped away from the door, back into a lively living place.

“Karsa?” 

I knew that voice, and it did not belong here: Diores, my coworker and friend from Eleon’s Café. There were Ieró in the movement, but only a few and he hadn’t been when I left. More than that, he came from a good family with a lot of money. If his skull was cracked by the police, attack dogs in attorneys’ suits would probably eat Seisa’s polizí in a few vicious bites.

I turned to face him. It was hard to believe it had only been a month or two since I last saw him, singing his song in the café just before the bombing. I had no words. How much like a ghost I must have seemed, with the way he gaped at me.

“You’re alive!” He sprang up from his seat on a rust-spotted stool, the piece of trash furniture squeaking dangerously. “Everyone at the café thought…well…with Endeis…”

I flinched at the unspoken reminder of my sister’s arrest, of her imprisonment in some steel and concrete hell. “Not yet. What are you doing here?”

He recoiled from my stinging tone. “Helping.” 

I had so many questions and none at all at the same time. Whatever Diores’s motives, they were probably idealistic to a rosy hue and made him solidly Agathe’s problem. He didn’t seem as weathered and tired as the rest, maybe a new arrival. Maybe he didn't know about the street fights yet, the bloody battles for street corners, the crunch of broken glass and crack of broken bones. 

I stared at him as a frazzled Agathe emerged from the back. “Oh.”