Queen Evette had supported the flotilla of ships transporting Enis and his followers for the simple fact that these were just the sort of people the Convocation didn't want. There is no telling how many hours of meetings in the Matriarchies of the past were spent dealing with the mass of commoners and, more specifically, men that weren't fulfilled by servicing Ladies as consorts, being or watching sport-fighters, or doing slavish menial labor to the larger society. With only these options available to men, there is going to be dissatisfaction among them and this issue frustrates the peace of highly influential women. When something is proposed that might remove a large group of men from society, it is an irresistible opportunity. Evette figured that she had solved a problem.
As we have seen previously, most of these fickle men decided not to get off the boat. The captains dutifully pulled away from the shore and began the voyage back to Manatoa, just as they had bargained with the Queen, with only a relative handful having actually chosen to disembark. The men had simply taken an unpleasant and crowded boat ride and were headed back to a situation that didn't want them in the first place.
Kiyomai has been listening to so many complaints as everyone turns to him as their spokesman. He has met with the ship captains, who have already been paid by the Queen and express no interest in leaving this large group of men anywhere except their home port of Manatoa. A few more members of the Conclave have managed to get to the fleet and the consensus among that group is that conditions are right for an coup. The Matriarchy has been discredited and disbanded, the Royals are in disarray, the Commoner's Council can't figure out its place, and there is a massive power vacuum on the island at the moment.
Even Kiyomai agrees that if the Conclave wants to take control of Manatoa and Firsthome, now would be the time. He is willing to stir up the men on-board the flotilla to serve as an ad-hoc invasion army, as the Conclave desires.
"The Convocation tricked you into coming onto these boats and starving you to death." Kiyomai's words went straight to the empty bellies of the men within earshot. "They wanted you gone and this voyage to protect the island was a convenient way to do it. Enough food to get you far enough away that you couldn't return, but yet you have survived against all odds. Sent to starve in a swamp, but we refused to obey.
"Now, we make our own way to Manatoa and the stores of food it contains. The Ladies and their Matrons horde it for themselves and their lavish parties, offering us only the scraps. Are you tired of your hunger? (yes! came the ragged reply) Are you tired of begging women for the little you had? (yes!) Now, you know the reward of the Ladies to you - nothing and sent to die. It is time for us to put down the women who have enslaved us. (yes!)" Kiyomai saw the growing blood-lust in the eyes around him.
"Take what you have produced. It is yours. Put out the women who oppressed you. (yes!)
It is hard to say what Kiyomai and the Conclave thought such rhetoric would produce.
The captains in the Queen's employ were easily overpowered and the boats made landfall back on the island of Firsthome, a few miles north of the settled lands, dis-engorging the angry mobs of men into the outlying plantations of the Convocation. Where had Kiyomai thought the horde would send the Ladies and their Matrons and Dames except to their deaths? There was little time to consider the consequences as the Conclave swept up their spokesman and rushed straight for Manatoa and the royal palace.
It all went so quickly and Kiyomai, who was once Weslyn, couldn't get his bearings enough to steer much of anything in this initial flow of anger, vengeance, and blood. Houses were attacked with the mindless rage of the mob, women slaughtered before they could even rise from their beds. It was the wee hours of the morning and as the twilight of dawn began to light the sky, the murderous work was mostly done and the wrath of the men was spent in the gorging of broken kitchens and pantries across the land.
At the palace, Daavor was awakened with noise and the last shreds of the echoes of his visions. The Queen and all the women in her house were going to die. He wanted no part of any of it, so he rose from the royal bed and fled blindly from the noise of destruction. His legs seemed to carry him of their own accord and he found himself blundering into the make-shift nursery within Michiana's apartments.
Lanolylc burst into the room at almost the same time, the racket disturbing the nearby bassinet, Michiana's infant daughter letting out lusty wails. "Did you see this, you old goat!" Lan picked up the girl and tried to calm her. "Did you neglect to warn anyone about this, just like the other times?"
The Queen's prophet was as confused as anyone else, but his mind was still filled with the last visions brought back to the fore. "Never mind that. They are coming to kill the child! Everyone will die. You must get her away!"
Lan made for a window and kicked it open. This room was on the ground floor and it was nothing to hold the baby close and fling himself out into the bushes that surrounded the palace. His mind was still raging at what he saw as Daavor's on-going betrayal of the Convocation that Lan served. There were screams behind him as the former Council head scampered away from the dawn's confusion clutching Michiana's daughter.
Within the palace, Kiyomai was still incapable of finding his bearings. He followed the press of the Conclave members as they moved from room to room, slaughtering everyone they could reach. The Queen had already been felled, still half-dozing in her ornate bed. Attending women and men were scattered about, their necks slashed and hearts exposed. The part of the night's obvious leader, the one that had been Weslyn, was horrified by all of this, but the hands of his Conclave "friends" were pulling him along with them regardless.
For a second, he saw the terrified yet beautiful face of his former wife. Michiana saw him and her expression went sad. After all the battles they had had and the disagreements that led to their quick separation, they really still loved each other in their awkward, adolescent way. She had finally embraced the ways of Kiyami in the last days of her life. But her exchange with Weslyn lasted only a second as the woman's belly was slashed and her expiring body thrown into a corner of the room. Now, Kiyomai stood over the ruin that his young ambition brought. The Conclave men were growing very indiscriminate in their slaughter and man-servants were dying alongside the women they pathetically tried to defend. Weslyn had already died among these and Kiyomai was finally waking to his new purpose as the morning swept him on.
They had just broken into the nursery next to Michiana's sleeping chamber. The lamps had been lit by servants who had heard the baby's cries, attempting to survey the scene. The men were rushing in with their knives toward anything that they could see.
"Enough!" bellowed Kiyomai with all the authority he could muster.
The murderous eyes of the Conclave men snapped to their spokesman and the command broke the spell of blood-lust.
"That is enough killing for the night." The man's voice was low and cold. This was far beyond what he had ever envisioned. "No more."
Looking about the room, Daavor was standing still there, crouched behind an empty cradle. The terrified servants had fled in the lull of butchery, but the Conclavists left in the room turned to look on the prophet.
Before any one could act, Kiyomai commanded again. "Take him and lock him up." It was the voice of the leader of this situation and the Conclave men, once motivated by their own lusts, simply obeyed him. As if some power radiated from the man, everything gave way to his will. The broken window let in a sharp breeze that seemed to clear the air and men's minds.
"Yes, Kiyomai." The men dropped their blood-stained weapons and hustled the prophet out of the room, unharmed.
Those few women who remained in the room and had not yet fled, fell to their knees, half in fear of the man, half in gratitude for his preventing their deaths.
As a cleansing rain fell out of leaden skies, the terrors of the early morning were mostly gone, replaced by an emptiness. Dead Ladies and Matrons were dragged out into the streets and a press of commoners, into which the men from the flotilla had melted, looked with awe on the scene. Hunger whipped up into murder had settled into an uneasy and dark satiety. Victims of the early morning looked like bleached fish along roads and paths. The crowd slowly moved toward the palace to get a clearer sense of what the twilight had brought.
Rumors had already spread. Men had invaded the city and the palace in the dark, murdering noble women wherever they found them. The Queen and the High Princess were dead. Michiana's infant daughter, the future deliverer, was nowhere to be found. Witnesses had put out that the terror had been stopped by one man. With the Convocation destroyed in one early morning, the crowds pondered, who was now in charge?
In the balcony of the palace, where a succession of Queens had stood to meet their mostly-adoring subjects, now stood a rain-soaked man. People in the know identified him as the one who stopped the killing. The man raised his hand in a weary greeting.
Conclavists, now rain-washed of the blood of the slaughter, also scattered among the crowds, began to chant. "Kiyomai, Kiyomai." The crowds took it up and gave the shouted waves of gratitude for deliverance. "Kiyomai! Kiyomai!"