Ixchanil organizes the anger the northern coast is not allowed to show. There has always been resistance in Tamadrez, in the way there is always resistance in any place that pays tribute in its own people, but it has stayed small, scattered, and quiet, because the north has watched what happens to coasts that rise before they are ready. Ixchanil's particular gift is patience. The cells exist, the caches exist, the names of who can be counted on exist, and Ixchanil's whole work is keeping all of it folded shut until the one moment it can be opened to effect.
That moment has a shape. Gorath elects its emperors from its generals, and an emperor who cannot win loses the throne. When Veramus falls, and the empire turns inward to fight over who replaces him, the legions that hold Pesalolo will look north for their next campaign. That is the opening. Ixchanil coordinates with Torven Vorekan, who organizes the enslaved Drasnians on the southern coast, so that when the rising comes it comes on both sides of the Freedom Mountains at once. It is also why a Trømgar agent named Sigvar can be found in the northern harbors, moving the Warcouncil of Levke's gold into hands that will need weapons the day the empire stops watching.
Every season the young ones come to me and say now, now, the garrison is thin, the tribute came up short. And I tell them what I tell them. Not yet. We rise once. We had better rise when it cannot be put down. — Ixchanil
The patience has a cost, and the cost is Ixchanil's standing. To the impatient, the careful man looks like the frightened one, and there are northerners who think Ixchanil has been bought as thoroughly as Kishuntar the reeve. The danger is not that the rising never comes. It is that someone younger and louder forces it early, on a rumor of an opening that turns out to be false, and spends three centuries of held breath in a single bad week.