Chapter Thirteen - Troublesome Time

By the time I was done relating my story to the very attentive Cinder, Alex had returned along with Mem and Rem.

Mem seemed very pleased, and was swaying her head from side to side in an amused fashion. Rem did not seem very pleased, and looked fit to disembowel her sister for what seemed like the crime of being in a good mood.

"Are we ready to head out?" I asked.

"Yes yes yes," Cinder said as she jumped to her feet. "I'll inform the elder that we're to leave. We'll be carrying some light supplies with us. Is there anything in particular you need? Alex?" The first half of that question was aimed at me, but she quickly turned it towards Alex, who was the appropriate person to ask, after all.

Alex hummed. "I think that I have enough supplies in my bag for a few days on the road. Our resupply mission yesterday wasn't as successful as I would have liked, but I did pick up some basics. We'll have plenty to eat and changes of clothes, as well as toiletries."

Rem hissed at the last.

"Do you have an issue with toiletries?" I asked.

Rem raised her arms a little, what I interpreted as mild aggression from her. What would be mild dislike for a more humanoid person. "I hate the bathroom," she said. "It's the worst place to clean. There's too many rules. Then the stupid maid makes me clean myself there. It's gross!"

"Rem has a hard time in the bathroom," Alex said. Then the maid ducked under a swing of Rem's scythe.

"Rem doesn't have a hard time! It's stupid in there."

"You keep destroying the bathroom tissue, and drinking the shampoo," Alex pointed out rather calmly.

"It seems like bathroom matters are a roll-licking good time for you," I said with a skeletal grin.

Rem stared. "What?"

"I'm merely saying that you're not as soap-fisticated as you could be."

Rem glanced between Alex and I. "Is the dead one broken?"

"He's making jokes!" Mem said. "Mem loves jokes. She heard one that was very nice recently."

"Oh?" I asked.

Mem bobbed her head. "Why did the butcher slay two pigs and a goat when the cultivator came to town?"

I had to admit, I didn't know that one. "I don't know, why?" I asked.

Mem blinked her many eyes, then shrugged her shoulders. "Mem doesn't know. She didn't hear the end of the joke because people started screaming at her. But they did laugh after, so it must have been funny."

"Ah... I see."

Cinder cleared her throat. "If... we're all quite ready, I think we can find Elder Frost at the front of the pavilion."

I acquiesced, even though I was still in a mood for a bit more wordplay, but there was a time and place for such things, not to mention a people. Of all the reactions to proper wordplay, by far the worst was the uncomprehending 'what' of someone too foolish to understand.

We found Elder Frost at the front, as promised. She had a small bag on her hip and her arms folded into the sleeves of her dress as she spoke in hushed words with Soot. Char was nearby as well, looking as though he was very recently chastised.

The elder finished speaking with Soot, who nodded then rolled back and away. Soot soon bowed our way before Char grabbed the back of his chair and started pushing him in.

"Hello, Elder Frost," I said.

"Harold," she replied. "Cinder. I was just giving Soot some final instructions. A team from the sect will be arriving soon, to watch over the city in my absence."

"Is it just Mister Soot and Mister Char right now?" Alex asked.

Elder Frost stared for a moment before replying. "For the moment. More sect members are coming down. If... when, we succeed in defeating the Mantis Queen, they'll be charged with clearing the city of her spawn. Especially the more troublesome ones."

"All of my sisters are troublesome," Rem grumbled.

"She's not wrong," Elder Frost agreed. "Though there are degrees to such things. Mem here is accused of kidnapping people's pets and some breaking and entering and trespassing, as well as rooting through people's trash, but never any... terrible crimes, for example."

"Mem didn't kidnap them," Mem said. "She just stayed with them while they were all alone."

"I see," I said. "It's comforting to see that justice is being applied fairly. Shall we be off then?"

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The Elder nodded graciously. "Follow me, please," she replied before she took off, walking at a careful pace with the assistance of her cane. She set a very steady pace which we all fell in behind. I didn't mind having her in the lead, the woman clearly knew her way around this city better than I did, and it allowed me some time to glance around and take it all in.

Shitake City seemed like a place that one could fully immerse themselves in for a mortal lifetime without discovering everything there was to learn about it.

It was layered, with space within the walls clearly at a premium, so the locals built up. We actually crossed some newer constructions as we headed north. A few buildings looked like they were being dismantled next to others which were brand new. A renovation? The newer buildings had an extra two floors on their neighbours, which I imagined added up to quite a lot of additional floor space.

"Is the city going through a boom period?" I asked.

"Hmm hmm hmm, a little bit," Cinder replied. "Most of the empire is in a boom at the moment."

"Truly?"

She nodded. "It's only been some fifty or so years since the entire continent was entirely brought into the grasp of the empire."

"Hmph, you wouldn't think that, from the way the Emperor goes on about the empire being eternal and all-encompassing," Elder Frost said. "But it's not wrong. There are, or were, several parts of the continent which were still either unexplored or considered entirely uninhabitable. Some are still the latter, but fewer now than before. Now the Emperor is pushing for a wider expansion."

"Wider?" I asked.

"More children, bigger families," Cinder explained. "A slow but steady cultural shift towards a more agrarian way of life for the majority, to support larger cities for the minority. You don't see it here as much in the far-east of the empire."

"I imagine because the location is less hospitable?"

She nodded. "Exactly. This is no longer the last frontier. There's nothing new to discover in the Flamming Steppes. We don't produce enough food to export much, nor any other resource of great value. What we do have are poisons, a toxic environment, and lots of room."

"Room might be worth much, one day," the elder said. "I visited the west some thirty years ago. The far western sects are much stronger than we, but their lands are also much kinder. The cities are larger and more open, and the sects can afford to pitch a wider net when recruiting from the talented and ambitious."

I hummed to myself. I'd have to ask the Limpet about it. She was surprisingly well-travelled for someone her age. "Do people travel a lot?" I asked. "From... do they call the areas provinces or states?"

"Provinces," Cinder said. "We don't have a local provincial government here. Though some of the western provinces might. The central ones certainly do. As for travel. No. Not really."

"Travel is expensive, and time consuming. Merchants travel, those with nothing but desperation in their bellies, and some few wandering cultivators will take on a dao that will have them explore the world, but most stay where they're from, with rare exceptions," Elder Frost said.

"I see. I think that was often the same in my day. There were times when it changed, where a nation's people would become rich enough to travel, but most people lived and died within a day's walk of the same place," I said.

"That's rather sad," Alex said. "But I can understand it."

"Why?" Rem asked. "It's stupid. You go where the prey goes."

Alex shook their head. "As a butler, your job would be to tend to the master's domicile. A domicile rarely packs up and moves. It's natural for a maid or butler to remain in one place their entire lives if that place is where their master needs them, isn't it?"

I wondered... I had had a number of maids and butlers in my day. I warned them of my intentions before taking my rest, but I had left them in charge of some small estates and laboratories. Were they still there to this day? "You'd think wanderlust would kick in eventually," I said. "Even I ventured out of the lab, at times."

We reached the outer wall of the city, where the gate was opened for us, then the time for chatter was reaching a middle, because it was time to get a move on.

***