Lofhearth were buildings out of time and place.

Having outlived their original purposes, they lingered on in the industrial landscape. Rather than demolish them, Kaihonjin urban planners buried these structures in forgotten places, tucked away in alley complexes or paved canal ways. Lofhearth concentrated Æfrians deemed surplus over the needs of an efficient economy. It was an ideal solution which prevented both unsightly vagrancy and building housing for people who couldn’t pay.

They also made excellent hiding places for criminals.

Though Mildred knew of lofhearth closer to The Silk Pillow, she ordered Thomas and Sayuri—to the latter’s chagrin—on a forced march several kilometers to a part of the plains called Edgarstún.

Despite the name change, cookie-cutter, concrete buildings formed unbroken terrain for most of the plains. The only sign they were now in Edgarstún was the Ueden battery plant, Mildred knew Edgarstún because she’d lived there through Year 6 schooling. Her former school was long buried under the new battery plant, which dominated the skyline from every direction with its pristine white walls and steep, three-tiered ziggurat shape.

Ignoring the siren call of sleep and the whining of the Ueichi brat, Mildred passed by closer lofhearth before finally finding a rearing red-and-black unicorn spray painted on a brick wall at the entrance to an alley. Lofhearth run by the GGUW were much, much safer.

She slipped her cloak off and made Sayuri put it on and draw up the hood before turning the alley corner.

This lofhearth was a four-story, half-timbered lodge in a courtyard formed by cement tenements. Its shutter windows were smashed open, its roof collapsed and replaced by a polyethylene tarp. The building’s former identity was written in the brickwork mosaic in front of the building where old words curled around the faded crest of a griffin:

Edgarstún Fér-rǽden af Yeoman

Its new identity was indicated by a young man in blue coveralls sitting on a metal folding chair and reading a thick book in the light of an oil lantern. He looked up at the arrivals with bloodshot eyes under sandy, uncut hair.

“Y’askin for a stay, are ya?” the young man said, slipping a bookmark into the tome and setting it beside him.

“We are,” Mildred said.

“Well, who are ya then? And d’ya have anyone around here who’ll vouch for ya?”

“I’m Mildred. Daughter of the Drakes of Edgarstún.”

“Aye, I know the Drakes. You that rape baby of Wulfrun’s then? S’plains the squinty eyes.”

She bit her tongue and nodded.

“And the other two?”

“Thomas Chester. Of the Chesters of Burnehithe. I’ve lived in the Silk District seven years now,” Thomas said.

“Never heard of ya, but yer a long way from home mate. Why ya’ve come?” the young man asked.

“Trouble with the law,” Mildred said. “Row with some CP’s.”

The young man raised his eyebrows, “oh, mushed up some fishsticks did y? Don’t seem tae be in bad shape for it.”

Thomas opened one side of his jacket to display the handgun tucked inside. “Bit more than a row.”

He laughed. “Alright big man. Alright. Ya can put ‘er away. Ya seem the type could fry a fish. Now who’s— wait, there was a third one with ya, weren’t there?”

Mildred glanced around and was startled to see Sayuri was gone. Years of practice using her face muscles as a work tool kept the surprise from her face.

“There wasn’t. Sure you haven’t been up a bit long, son?” Thomas said.

“I have at that. Tell ya what, ye both seem like good folk, and I cannae fathom a member of the Drake clan consortin’ with undesirable foreign elements. Consensually, anyhow. So, I can let ya in for a night. Can’t allow anyone who tries to come in behind, understand?”

The young man rapped on the door. A peephole slid open and a set of equally bloodshot eyes peered out.

“Aye, they’re good ones. Let ‘em in.”

The peephole slid closed and a rusty eyebolt screeched before the door opened.

Mildred was anxious to know where Sayuri had gotten off to, but she placed her faith in Thomas who seemed unconcerned. As they stepped inside, she caught a glimpse of the book the man had been reading. Embossed on the leather cover was: An Æfrian Translation of ‘On Property, Vol. 2’ by Tomohiko Saito.

Of course it was, she thought. Zooks didn’t read anything but Saito.

The bottom floor foyer was a dark wooden hall stuffed with salvaged furniture. Reclining on half-rotted couches and chairs were men and women either already asleep or nearing the end of their nightly journey based on the discarded pipes, tubing, and needles that lay about them.

The man who let them in was the same size as Thomas and dressed in blue coveralls. “You can lay down anywhere with an open door. If it’s closed, it stays closed, got it?”

Milly watched Thomas try to return the man’s serious expression while swaying on his feet. He’d been up for almost an entire day at this point, she realized.

“Got it. Let’s get you to bed, Tommy.”

He grunted and let her take him towards the stairs at the end of the dark hall.

As they walked, she swore she heard three sets of footsteps, but whenever she turned around, the hallway would be empty. Could Sayuri turn invisible? Kinkawa couldn’t do that, could it? The last thing she needed was for rich people to be able to pay for magic powers.

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Climbing the stairs, they arrived on the ruined fourth story. The tarp roof whipped like a sail in a storm and did nothing to keep out the chill. The only light came from a candle in its death knells beside a middle-aged man slumped in a brown chair. He snored softly, scorched pipe clenched in his fist and burnt wax staining his fingers.

Mildred and Thomas gave the man a wide berth and settled themselves in a corner at the front of the building where half the wall remained as a bulwark against the wind. As soon as they sat down, there was a brief moment where Milly felt herself affected by the Shroud, and then Sayuri appeared beside them.

“Loothsa fuck me!” Mildred said in a low, breathless voice.

In full voice, Sayuri said, “That word again…”

Milly jerked her head towards the opening in the tarp and whispered, “Did you forget why you went invisible, you daft little girl?”

“Thou shalt referest to me not as a little girl!” Sayuri whispered back

“Yes, I shalt, now give me my cloak back.”

Sayuri paused for a moment, gripping the hem of the cloak and running her hands up and down it. “I am cold…”

“So am I and it’s my cloak.”

“Wouldst thou treat one in thy care poorly so?”

“Yes.”

Sayuri took off the cloak and threw it at Milly. Thomas shrugged off his grenadier’s jacket and passed it to Sayuri. Chivalrous, maybe, but Milly couldn’t help seeing an Æfrian yet again sacrifice their own comfort for the sake of a Kaihonjin. One literally covered in gold.

“Can’t you just do some hatsu to cook yourself back up?” Milly asked.

“To perform seishin-hatsuden when t’would have deleterious impact on thee seemeth imprudent,” Sayuri said.

“Thanks, I guess,” Milly replied, hugging her cloak.

She would’ve felt bad for Thomas except, in the brief interval after handing his jacket to Sayuri, he’d fallen fast asleep with his head lolled against a ruined cabinet. This earned a chuckle from her. That, and the absurd sight of this shivering little girl wrapped in a military jacket twice her size.

~~~

It was the woman’s uncanniness that so disconcerted Sayuri. Her genetic mixture was an indeterminable slurry and her features roused in one a profound sense of discomfort.

It was undeniable, self-evident fact that talents conveyed themselves through the medium of body and mind, and that body and mind were genetically determined.

Though normal distribution curves might explain superlative anomalies across all genetic populations, one was obliged to look at a people or nation in totality to grasp the median endowment of natural gift which could be greater or lesser between populations. This median predisposed groups to higher or lower duties, roles, and work.

What was vexing about konketsujin such as this woman was that one was never sure to which set of duties and responsibilities they belonged to, nor to which side of natural gift. Though, in this case, it was clearly the Afujin side.

One could not treat such genetic admixtures with the gentle guidance one did with Afujin, yet one could also not assume the rationality and volition belonging to Kaihonjin. The result was a state of uncertainty as to proper relations.

“Once it’s light out we’re gonna need to paint over all that kinkawa,” the woman said, pulling from her pack a bottle of pale cream. “And no more “eth,” no more “est,” and definitely no more “thee” and “thou”. “Lady Ueichi” is right the hell out.”

It was a perfectly achievable objective. Linguistics was Sayuri’s third favorite area of study after history and political economy and she had a natural talent for it. Without seeking to acquire them, passable versions of the continental languages spoken by her father’s foreign business partners found their way onto her tongue. And her grasp of Æfrian, though possessing a few lexical gaps, was fluent.

Sayuri had ascertained through various means, most recently observing Chester, what parts of her speech were outdated. In fact, it took deliberate effort to keep a modern Æfrian dialect out of her mouth.

“Thou sayest t’would put me at risk, though t’be the duty of Mr. Chester to fell those who would render harm unto me?”

The woman rubbed her forehead. “Sayuri, “fell” isn’t a word. At least not the way you’re using it.”

“‘Tis!” she said, “‘tis the transitive form of the verb “to fall,” as one felleth a tree by ax.”

“Transitive? You’re talking like a lunatic. Listen, you don’t want to be a burden to Mr. Chester, do you?” the woman said, patting the sleeping man’s boot.

“Nay— N-No, I do not.”

“So don’t force him to “fell” someone,” the woman said.

Sayuri looked out the ruined wall towards the gray light creeping across the alleyway. There was, perhaps, a kernel of Kaihonjin rationality in the woman after all.

“I can try,” she said. The glided palatal of the “y” felt slippery and loose in her mouth.

“Good. Now, while we wait for more light, let’s get you some clothes to change into.”

~~~

The girl blushed furiously. “He-here? Right now? In these… circumstances?”

Mildred looked at the addict snoring in the corner and Thomas drooling on his pinewood pillow.

“The circumstances are as good as they’re gonna get.”

The girl glared at her. “Fine. Give me your clothes.”

Mildred pulled out a woad-dyed linen gown, a dark blue cloak with fringes of burnt orange, and a pair of moccasins and set them down in front of Sayuri.

Sayuri looked at her and said flatly, “you had another cloak this whole time.”

“I did.”

“So why then did you not give it to me?”

“Because you were being annoying.”

“But is not Mr. Chester the one you have inconvenienced by so doing?”

“Yeah, well,” Milly looked over at Thomas slumbering away. “He’s got years of annoyance he hasn’t paid off yet.”

Sayuri stood and handed the grenadier’s jacket back to Milly who draped it gently over Thomas. When she turned back, Sayuri was staring at her feet.

“Erm, I would ask that you look away as well,” the girl said.

For however much the brat thought she transcended the primitive Æfrian peasants, Sayuri was as bashful and self-conscious as every new girl who came to work at The Silk Pillow.

“Take your time,” Mildred said, turning away.

A few minutes of grunting and muttering in Kaihongo and Sayuri finished putting on the clothes.

“Must they be so antiquated?” Sayuri asked, staring down at the woad-dyed gown.

They didn’t have to be. Mildred’s wardrobe was ample enough to accommodate a myriad of tastes. She’d picked a traditional Æfrian outfit because she thought it would be funny to make Sayuri wear one. And she had been right.

“Why are you giggling?”

“Thought of a funny joke.”

“What is it?”

“You wouldn’t get it.”

Soon, the silvery-blue light of the alley cut through the gaps in the tarp, giving Mildred enough light to work on Sayuri’s face. She had the girl kneel in front of her. Her face had a tight, almost nervous anticipation. Fortunately, she only needed to do a little work. The stark white foundation was meant to be bluntly functional, not aesthetically pleasing.

Pouring a small bit of water over a make-up sponge and squeezing it dry, Mildred wiped up the bone-white foundation and dabbed it along Sayuri’s nose and cheeks. The girl winced.

“Something wrong?”

“No, just… cold.”

Or the makeup was being applied by a konketsujin, Mildred suspected. She continued dabbing along Sayuri’s face, getting pleasure from painting over and burying the intricate lines of gold threads that flowed across it.

“What did Mr. Chester do to you?”

Milly stopped. “What are you on about now?”

“When we first showed up, you seemed wroth, and the other women in your hotel said things which insinuated you didn’t wish to see him. He didn’t— didn’t… t-transgress against you?” Sayuri said with genuine alarm.

Milly burst out laughing. “Not in the way you’re thinking. He did something worse.”

“W-What could be worse!?”

“He asked me to marry him,” she said, running the brush down Sayuri’s neck, making sure to get any spot under her chin where an errant beam of light might catch a trace of gold. She felt the girl’s sigh of relief as it pushed out her throat.

“Oh, you frightened me! Pray tell why marriage is such a bad thing?”

“It’s not that bad, I’m joking. Mostly. I’m just not someone who gives her freedom up. Nothing else is more important to me.”

“So then why—”

“If you keep moving your jaw you’re gonna make me smudge.”

Outside, dawn crawled over the horizon and cast golden hues over the alley. Only in a place so forgotten, rotten, and polluted could the golden rays of dawn look so maddeningly pretty, and in an hour, the Shroud would wipe any desire to witness it from their minds.