It’s said that the Ancients could shop without leaving their home. I wonder, where is the satisfaction in that?

Petra Van Sill, Old Angeles Gazette

“Corporal Donnall, reporting!” Peter said, saluting.

Laura rolled her eyes. Johanna swallowed a laugh. Tom shook his head.

The truth was that Peter was looking a bit different in some interesting leathers. Johanna was guessing it was the so-called “uniform”. Valetta’s guards used practical clothing and light armor, but hardly a uniform clothing style. But the army was about being interchangeable soldiers, even in the case of levies conscripted for war.

Even as Talented, they were going to have one. Johanna’s contention that anyone would immediately spot the huge flaming spear, the big non-standard hammer… and of course Laura as the source of the dread they experienced – all that fell on deaf ears.

But outside of battle, they were certainly not going to keep wearing their old scavenger clothing. The Keep staff – or, in Peter’s case, himself – had done their best to clean the clothes they’d picked from Valetta, but they had little extra gear. Peter was going to be provided some warm attire for the winter, but no one would mistake him as a civilian with it.

As an equivalent of a high-ranked officer, the three “official” Talented were expected to wear proper clothing, and they had nothing for a Montana winter. They’d even gotten a little extra on their first stipend – which was a sizeable sum, while not entirely on par with what a good salvage run would yield – and it was time to find out some winter field clothing.

They’d been offered to have a tailor come at the Keep and propose them clothes to fit, but all three of them had insisted on being able to find their own. Peter had snuck out to scout New Benton, of course, but that only frustrated Johanna. The training was hard, and they were confined to the Keep. Taking an official opportunity to get out was a boon none of them were going to pass.

“And I’m now officially allocated as a bodyguard for the Warden’s own Saint,” Peter proudly added.

“Really,” Laura said. “Does this mean you’re getting in the Keep?”

Peter deflated slightly.

“Not yet. Even for those who are married and both on the draft, they still keep couples separated. I still don’t know how anyone would volunteer for that.”

“I’m assuming that changes if you aren’t a levy,” Johanna mused, restraining herself from looking behind.

Four additional bodyguards – Keep guards – had joined them. The fact that rather than having Laura be officially escorted by her husband, both Donnalls rated their respective escort showed a relative lack of trust from the Warden and his people. Johanna had decided to politely ignore the fact. Privately, she thought that, if they all wanted to make problems, four guards were not going to matter very much.

The only question was, what for? Misplaced or not, the war was threatening Montana. Maybe Valetta… and Anasta and her brother and family… might be safe, but the tribesmen didn’t follow the civilized laws of the Union. And even if they had not asked for it, the exercises clearly showed how much of a difference a mind sorceress could do against unprepared fighters.

She was slightly jealous of Laura.

But today, they were going out of the Keep and into the city, at last. And she was going to enjoy this first moment of freedom to the fullest.

The Keep’s outer walls abutted both the military compound to its north and the oldest sector of New Benton to its east. They just had to pass the gate to enter the city properly.

As she did so, she checked the sky. Faintly in the distance, there was a small swirl of manalight.

An artifact. And she already knew exactly where it was.

Elena had known she’d be able to spot artifacts – since that was how Johanna had been tasked to demonstrate mana sight – and so she had not hesitated to ask Adjutant Agnello whether or not the Warden had artifacts. She had not seen traces of any when arriving.

It turned out that the Maistry family had three of such. But they were all deployed currently at the Kootenai Gap forts.

The prosaically-named Hammer of Fixing was mostly logistics. It did look like an extra-large smith’s hammer, except that, when you hammered anything with it, it got fixed, no matter how you struck. Put two parts of a broken spear, and you got a fixed spear, even if you hammered on the head of the spear instead of where the weapon had broken. Chainmail links? Restored – if you didn’t forget to put some small pieces of steel to provide raw material to rebuild the missing ones. Anything that included metal could be fixed by a simple stroke.

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Siegebreaker was the legendary staff. Johanna had read of it in many novels and had been astounded to discover it was real, or at least based on a real staff – just with minor exaggerations. Tap a wall with it, and it would split open. It took time to make an opening large enough to slip in soldiers, but walls were powerless against it.

And, for some reason, a simple wood palisade would remain intact. Siegebreaker broke only stone walls.

The last was the Mirror of the World. The oldest in the Warden’s arsenal, with a flowery name given by its discoverers, it was a three-foot circular mirror pane, circled with Ancient steel and modern-made support to place it on the ground. If one looked at it, you could see clearly dozen of miles in the distance behind you… and somehow knew exactly how many people you were seeing there. A perfect tool for battlefield commanders.

But here in the city, she knew what was there in the distance. The cathedral of New Benton held relics, including a holy book that used to be the property of Saint Matthew of Bamford. The bishop of New Benton used it in grand ceremonies to cure the sick, as Saint Matthew once did.

Based on what she could see swirling in the sky, the book had to be an artifact, like any other. And Johanna was not sure that Saint Matthew had actually been a Saint like Laura was… or someone who had merely held on to an artifact, using it to heal people.

They would not go there, though. Laura was definitively not looking at attracting the curiosity of the bishopric by going on their grounds. Rumors had probably reached the ears of the bishop already.

New Benton, Peter informed them, was made of five major districts, built over time. The original core, adjacent to the Warden’s Keep, was the oldest, dating back to the foundation of New Benton just after the Fall. Almost everything there was over a century old, although Johanna couldn’t spot any Ancient buildings. Upon asking one of their escorts, she learned that the only Ancient buildings from the city’s founding era were incorporated into the Keep itself, something she had not noticed before.

Despite that lack, it was The upscale district. The ancient houses, small and large, still reflected the original layout of when the city had been a single unit, but even small buildings belonged to upper-middle-class citizens.

And if she had once thought living in Valetta was expensive, the old district proved Johanna wrong. A quick check on the storefronts around told her that, no, she definitively did not want to shop there. Even with her pay.

With Peter giving them “I heard that…” advice, with just enough wink to tell her he’d actually checked, they crossed over to a second district, much more popular. There, it looked almost… Valettan. Stores, small marketplaces, what looked like factories for all kinds of trades, and good housing. The kind of place where they might set their sights on after the war.

Although Johanna realized quickly that you could place all of Valetta in just that New Benton’s district, with room to spare. And that was reflected by having the street they were in full of a dozen clothiers.

They picked one more or less at random, after checking quickly what each had to offer. Less than five minutes in, however, they were out. The saleswoman just had to look at Tom and admit that, although they did some adjustments, they were certainly not going to be able to outfit him that easily. They needed a real tailor, not some half-assed version.

The next store was better. A little pricier than what she’d seen in Valetta, but certainly reasonable, and, yes, they could and would fit you, although they were certainly not going to make clothes to order.

“That’s in Core Benton if you want to. If you really care about each detail, then yes, it will be good. But we have everything you want here, and for a reasonable price,” the tailor’s helper said.

So, they spent about half an hour checking the various types of winter clothes, before settling on the look. And pockets. Although the clothier looked sick when she asked if the pockets would be good enough to store some dried food. That’s what you did as salvagers once you started to fill the backpack – move the food out. While she didn’t intend to do winter salvager here, she did intend to have that clothing available once they mustered out, in case.

Then, of course, it took almost an hour to get properly measured. The tailor himself, who’d come down from his first-floor workshop, promised that the fitting would be done within four days, and the clothes would be delivered at the Keep.

Despite achieving the primary objective of getting serious clothes, Johanna and her friends didn’t feel like heading back. So, they kept wandering a bit, looking at shops and stores. Johanna, in particular, was looking to see if there was a market for salvaging. A question directed at their escorts was met with pleas of ignorance.

Their next New Benton experience was lunch. Namely, a pizza restaurant. Johanna’s mother had her own family pizza recipes, but having an eatery dedicated exclusively to the venerable ancient recipe was still mind-boggling. You could only find that in such a huge city as New Benton.

They found themselves on two tables, the four of them seated on one, their escort at a second one, which let them chat a bit more freely.

“Elena says cities are even bigger south,” Johanna said as she perused the menu, titled “Hiro Shujinko’s genuine Sicilian Pizzas. We deliver anywhere in New Benton, guaranteed!”.

“Kinda hard to believe, but she probably knows,” Tom said.

When the waitress arrived, Johanna had to ask about Sicilian Pizzas.

“Oh, New Benton is home to a large community that traces its origins back from Europe, before the Fall. That is why you’ll find unique recipes around here. The multi-century tradition is followed around here.”

“So his family is from Sicily?”

The waitress laughed.

“Ah no. He’s from the south. He migrated here twenty years ago, but learned all from a local family.”

Johanna chatted a bit with the waitress, trying to figure out all about the south. The waitress herself was New Bentonite, though, and didn’t know much about the central States of the Union. She pointed out the different pizzas, though, including the variants whose recipes came from there.

“Ultra spicy is more expensive since the genuine serrano peppers are costly to import from Aztlan.”

The waitress took their orders and moved to the table where their escort sat, taking theirs as well. Other tables in the restaurant started to fill as groups of people and couples moved in.

Once they got served their pizzas, she wondered how different that “Sicilian Pizza” was from her mother’s. Same rectangular shape, same tomatoes, same mushrooms… the only thing that was different was the oil, maybe.

The feeling of nostalgia was overwhelming. A pizzeria. And the right names and recipes, almost to a point. To find the stuff still there, unchanged after fifteen decades of the apocalypse, was genuinely comforting. And they even delivered, although how that worked without phones was a mystery. Who cared if the pizza was owned by a Japanese guy instead of some “Enzo” fronting for the Sicilian mafia.

The only regret Moore had was that even the sight of the four tearing into various pizzas didn’t get him salivating even in the abstract.