CHAPTER 73: ANOTHER FLAME

Cebu Colony – Province of Toledo

The sun burned high above the sugar fields of Toledo when the first rumors came. Whispers among the cane cutters, passed from one row to the next. A missing tax collector. A garrison depot emptied overnight. Graffiti scrawled on a church wall in thick charcoal: "We bleed. You feed."

Governor Marcial de los Reyes looked down at the message, lips pressed in a hard line. Behind him, his aide, Catalina, waited nervously with a sheaf of weekly reports.

"This was written last night?" he asked.

Catalina nodded. "Yes, Governor. The local priest said it was already there by morning mass. No one saw who did it."

Marcial didn’t believe that. Someone always saw. But in this part of the colony, silence was currency.

He turned away from the church steps and walked briskly to the awaiting carriage. Catalina followed, nearly tripping over her skirts.

"Cancel today’s appointments," he said. "We’re going to Pinamungajan."

"Sir, that’s a five-hour ride. You have a council meeting—"

"That council can wait. Rebellion doesn’t."

Pinamungajan – Western Sugar Belt

By sunset, the road turned rough and the fields dense. Workers along the plantation trails stopped to stare at the carriage as it passed, their eyes guarded, their expressions unreadable. Marcial recognized the signs—he’d seen them before, in Mindoro a decade ago. People who had no more faith in petitions. Only in silence. Only in each other.

The carriage rolled into the village square, where a small detachment of colonial police had gathered. Captain Ibarra approached the governor and saluted.

"No violence yet, sir. But the men are refusing to load cane into the port wagons. They’re blocking the routes and—"

"Have they issued demands?"

Ibarra hesitated. "Not officially. But a document was found posted outside the cooperative’s office. Signed by someone calling themselves ’The One-Eighth’."

Marcial raised an eyebrow. "Meaning?"

"They claim to speak for the one-eighth of harvest profits that workers supposedly see. They want a new contract. A flat wage. And they’ve threatened to burn the next sugar shipment if they don’t receive a response."

Marcial stared at the captain. "And did they?"

"...Yes, sir. This morning."

He closed his eyes. A full export load, gone. The northern buyers would demand answers—and compensations.

But he said nothing. Instead, he motioned to Catalina.

"Have someone gather the village leaders. Here. Now."

"But sir, they’re part of the—"

"I said now."

An hour later, as torches were lit and tables pulled into the square, a group of twenty men and women sat facing the governor. Some were barefoot. Others wore torn camisa de chino shirts soaked with field sweat. A few had the confident stance of former revolutionary fighters—ones who had traded rifles for plows after the last ceasefire.

Marcial stood before them alone. No guards. No desk. Just a notepad and a voice.

"I’m Governor de los Reyes," he began. "I’m here to listen."

The villagers did not applaud. One man—a tall, weathered worker with a jagged scar across his temple—stood.

"You’re here to listen now. Where were you when the sugar quota doubled two seasons ago? When men died lifting sacks for two centavos a day? When my son broke his spine on the refinery line?"

Marcial met the man’s eyes. "What’s your name?"

"Paterno Diaz."

"Well, Mr. Diaz, I won’t insult you with excuses. I wasn’t here then. But I am now."

Diaz snorted. "And what can you give us? Promises?"

"No. Options."

Marcial looked at them all.

"You’ve made a statement. A loud one. The destroyed shipment, the letter—those won’t be ignored. But if you want change, real change, you must bring me something more dangerous than fire."

He paused.

"Bring me a plan."

Murmurs spread through the crowd. Another woman stood, her hair wrapped in a red kerchief.

"We sent plans already. A full proposal for profit-sharing. It was sent through the colonial guild registry six months ago."

Catalina blinked. "That would’ve gone to the bureau office in Liloan."

Marcial turned to her. "And how many letters do they process?"

"Thousands per quarter, sir."

He turned back to the crowd. "Then we’ll get it directly from you now. On paper. Signed. And I’ll countersign it with you—tonight."

"Why now?" someone asked suspiciously. "What changed?"

Marcial didn’t hesitate. "Because fire isn’t a negotiation. It’s a point of no return. And I don’t want this province to burn."

Three Days Later – Cebu City Colonial Office

The table was long, made of native hardwood, surrounded by senior bureaucrats and trade officials. On it sat the "Toledo Accord," a hastily prepared but comprehensive proposal outlining new harvest wage schemes, medical clinics for sugar laborers, and labor-hour caps during drought season.

One of the trade officers scoffed.

"This was signed under threat of violence."

"And yet," Marcial said coldly, "it’s more humane than anything we’ve written in ten years."

"This sets a precedent," barked the labor ministry’s representative. "If we yield here, every province will think they can burn a shipment and get what they want."

"Or," Marcial replied, "they’ll see that we’re capable of self-correction. Which is more dangerous—fire? Or a system that never bends?"

The room fell silent.

He left them with copies and returned to the outer office, where Catalina was waiting with more reports.

"Three landowners from Carcar are protesting the accord," she said. "One is threatening to withdraw from the Kareya cooperative entirely."

Marcial exhaled. "Let him. No reforms survive with everyone’s blessing."

That Night – Danao District

The first counterattack came not with a rifle, but with sabotage.

A cooperative mill scheduled to reopen under the new labor agreement was found burned to the ground. A guard had gone missing. So had the ledgers and title scrolls.

Marcial arrived the next morning. Nothing was left but soot and molten cane press parts.

Catalina handed him a letter.

No signature. Just a seal: a stylized letter "R."

"You bend. We break."

Marcial stared at it for a long time.

And then, with ice in his voice, said, "Summon the provincial magistrates. Tell them the governor invokes Emergency Clause Nine. We’re nationalizing the mills."

"What?"

"No more shared management. Until these attacks stop, the sugar network comes under direct civic control. And no one—no landowner, no guildmaster—touches a single cane stalk unless my seal is on it."

"You’ll be called a tyrant."

"Better that than a coward."

One Week Later – Escalation

The backlash came swiftly. Three major landowning families declared a tax strike. Armed guards began patrolling privately held lands. In Barili, two surveyors were shot in the thigh with slingshot pellets wrapped in nails.

At night, villages that had once danced around fire pits now stayed indoors. The fear was thick.

In the town of Aloguinsan, a crowd of farmers gathered again. But this time, the chants were not about rebellion.

They shouted a new phrase: "Let the state harvest."

Marcial, hearing of it, immediately deployed state engineers and neutral laborers to aid the harvest under tight security. The yields were distributed with records so transparent even hostile newspapers printed them without edits.

It worked—for now.

But in the shadows, another rebellion brewed.

Cebu Highlands – A Secret Meeting

Deep in a thicket outside Argao, a dozen figures sat in a circle.

They were not peasants. Not landowners. Something in between.

Failed sons of rich families. Dismissed officers. Radical students returned from failed city ventures. Each had their own grievance.

At the center sat a woman known only as Salvadora.

"This is what you do not understand," she whispered, voice like silk drawn over knives. "They replaced beatings with papers. The whip with red ink. And now you cheer because your cell has windows."

One man grumbled, "But the reforms—"

"Are designed to rot from within," Salvadora said, rising. "They raise a governor like de los Reyes to be their smiling face. And what do they take? Your sons. Your daughters. Your dignity, measured in harvest quotas."

She pointed to a map.

"Tonight, we do not protest. Tonight, we cut."

And with that, the fire returned.

Toledo Province – The Second Blaze

At midnight, coordinated attacks struck four different storage depots. No deaths, but supply lines were crippled. Fuel caches were drained. A shipment of medical supplies was hijacked and later returned—deliberately—with every crate stamped:

"Freedom cannot be rationed."

Governor Marcial summoned his entire command cabinet at dawn.

"We are no longer facing farmers," he said. "These are trained agitators. Possibly former cadets or foreign saboteurs. I want a name. A face. An ideology."

Captain Ibarra stepped forward, dropping a dossier on the table.

"We have one lead. Her name is believed to be Salvadora. Alias unknown. Suspected connections to the Red Pavilion—an underground network from Negros expelled after the mining protests last year."

"Do we know where she is?"

"No. But she leaves pamphlets. Radical literature."

"Track the printers," Marcial ordered. "Every ink stain. Every rebel song. Hunt it all."

"But sir," Catalina asked quietly. "What if finding her only confirms their fears? That we are what they say?"

Marcial paused.

And then: "Then we prove them wrong. Not by stopping the search... but by not becoming monsters in the process."

One Month Later.

The rebellion did not vanish, but it waned. Support for the state-run harvest grew. Reforms, though slow, gained trust among the workers. Cooperative councils were created with direct representation. Clerks were retrained in local languages.

In one village, a child asked her teacher, "Who owns the sugar now?"

The teacher smiled and replied, "We all do. Or at least, we’re trying."

Marcial stood atop a mill balcony days later, looking out at the revived fields. The land was scarred, yes. But it was producing again. And not just sugar.

It was producing belief.

For now.

But even he knew: belief is flammable.