Ghulen smiled as he trod Monopolis' frigid, arrow-straight and sword-smooth stone streets lit by precisely-placed thrumming blue current lamp posts. Every building under the ever-dark, many-mooned sky screamed cold utility and efficiency, with no effort or energy spent on decoration, variety, or anything beyond pure function and form. Black banners containing the gold city-on-coin sigil of Monopolis hung from every post, pole, and rail as if Rega figured everyone was so stupid they'd forget where they were without constant reminders.
Another litter hurried past, their alert Feral escorts resting wary hands on weapons as the burly porters hustled their Dynastic masters off towards the nearest Thorn. The Ferals, of course, didn't smile back.
A waft of fear drifted in their wake. Amidst the common stink of Ferals' and servants' worried sweat, there mixed that rare, potent scent of Dynastic anxiety. Monopolis's dark streets always lingered with the perfume that Dynasts and Versers wore like walls hide the smells of mundane existence from their refined nostrils. In much the same way, they strove to hold themselves aloft and aloof from the ugly, verse-spanning infestations of their menials. No natural odors stirred in the chilly, windless, sunless, starless void of Monopolis. Likewiise, the city held a complete void of dirt, grass, trees, or animals beyond the human variety or their slaves and meat-beasts. Instead, Monopolis reeked of raw currence. The charged, acid scent oozed up through the very stones of the streets and gave the air a feeling of energy and potency like a storm was always about to hit even though none ever had or would. Intoxicating and harsh.
Underneath it all, he smelled a faint but spread reek of rotters, as if they were all about but at a distance. None to be seen though. Strange.
A gathering of Ancients met in an open plaza, a veritable army of servants, slaves, slavants, Ferals, and the odd freemancer or Legionnaire officer standing in silent ranks unmoving but for darting eyes. It looked a mismatched army whose soldiers suspected any of their fellows might prove traitor an any moment. Their smells mingled into a veritable bouquet of some of Ghulen's favorite aromas: distrust, anger, suspicion, fear.
Locating Rega's retinue among the assembly couldn't be easier: just had to look for the gilded scale armor and gold-threaded robes they wore as none-too-subtle reminders of Rega's wealth.
He slipped into their ranks and listened to the argument raging on the raised platform at the heart of the Plaza as five of the most powerful beings in all the Book scrabbled at one another.
“...then give me one Legion even. I'll smash them in a week. A day!” Jaxe shouted, the Pale, barrel-chested Dynasty practically frothing at the mouth. The arm everyone knew was useless slung across his belly, clever loops of cloth stitched into his clothing letting him adjust it so it appeared to be stuffed through a fold of clothing or held tight across his chest.
Baka snorted from his seat in an ornate, overly-high-backed ebonwood chair. “Give a Legion to a cripple just to take his vengeance on some Feral following a barbarian and her pack of mongrels? I can think of ten things I'd rather have the Legions doing.”
“I'm not a cripple,” Jaxe said, thudding his fist against his dead arm for emphasis. “The arm will work again or I'll chop it off and grow a new one that will.”
A putrescent smell reminiscent of rotting meat floating in a latrine clogged Ghulen's nose and he snorted irritably. Judging by the grimaces and gagging among Jaxe's menials along with a sudden breakout of frowns and dark looks among those occupying the platform, Ghulen was lucky to be as far as he was from the odor's source. A rotter in elegant robes shambled from the ranks of Jaxe's followers, the finery stained with patches of some foul, yellow-brown liquid.
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“Get that thing out of here!” Baka roared, rising from his chair.
Jaxe grinned. “The mighty commander of all The Book's Legions can't handle the smell of a single rotter?”
“If you want to keep your pet, take it away now in one piece or ten seconds from now in a hundred,” Baka growled, reaching for the massive, oiled steel blade leaning against his chair. Ghulen doubted he could lift the thing in two hands if he tried, much less swing it about with one hand as Baka was known to do.
“You think it smells bad intact and your solution is to try spreading it across the plaza to see if that helps?” Jaxe crossed his good arm over his bad and leaned back in his chair. "We're in good hands here."
“Jaxe,” Rega said in that barely-audible, perfectly-controlled way she had. “Remove it. Now.”
As if to emphasize her point, her gray-haired Seneschal vomited noisily behind her.
Jaxe sneered. “Am I troubling your Seneschal, Rega? Can't imagine why. You'd think a perfectionist like him would appreciate the efforts I've gone through to ensure the preservation of this fine specimen."
Rega frowned. Well, for her anyway: a slight compression and down turn of her lips. “That thing is disgusting and pointless. As is your needling of my Seneschal. Remove it or yourself from this council.”
With an air of flippant disregard, Jaxe waved a hand. A handful of his purple-liveried underlings rushed forwards to lead the offending rotter away.
“If anyone is going to be granted a Legion to hunt some menial, it should be me,” said a Dynast wearing riotously multi-hued silks cut to reveal her three Century Threads. She sat primly erect in a chair of silver filigree so fine he wondered if her posture served more to keep from crushing the fine-wrought, quasi-throne she occupied than from etiquette. The woman raised her pointed nose, glaring at Baka as the immense Dynast rose and paced his side of the table restlessly. “Jaxe may endlessly insist that this Mother of Exiles is a threat, but even agreeing that she is or will be, her First Disciple is several times more so. I don't know how he got in to Silk, but this cult leader is a worse disease upon every verse he infiltrates than the Wretch Plague.”
Jaxe waved his hand at her dismissively. “Please, Asta, if your Verser Lords and Ladies can't put down a minor uprising in some back corner of your verse, I think it's them you need to be ripping the limbs off of, not the menials.”
The silk-draped Dynast wheeled on him and thrust a finger his direction. “Do you have any conception how bad it is? Do you know the count of my mulberry forests ablaze as we speak? Here you are sitting in your fine purple silks, yet if this keeps up there will soon be no more silk anywhere in the Book. This is no ordinary revolt as you try to make it out to be. It's far, far more dangerous. This Semon has them convinced the Mother of Exiles herself will tear down the walls of my verse then march to their rescue killing armies with a word. They all believe she'll be arriving any day even as my Versers slaughter them by the villageful and she never comes.”
A fourth Dynast lounged indolently sideways in his chair as though trying to outdo Jaxe's distain for formality and decorum. One leg dangled over an elaborate, stuffed armrest. Tiny metal rings of brass, bronze, silver, and gold pierced the dark flesh of the rail-thin Dynast's face, bare chest, and arms, hung so thickly in places it looked like a shirt of maille disintegrated from him but left patches behind. Only where two Century Threads wrapped his torso might it be possible to trace a line across his body without hitting a metal-ringed piercing.
"You just need to be more creative with your executions. Let them listen to their fellows die screaming every hour of day and night. To top it, maybe try burning one of their fruit orchards or drain a rice paddy for every mulberry tree they burn. Make them choose between their fragile new faith and their livelihood and you'll see them fall back into line before we could even get a Legion organized and marched there.”
“You think I haven't tried that, Tyrs? I've been at this since before your Partaking so don't try to tell me how to handle my menials.” Asta rose and leaned on the table, shaking with anger she barely kept out of her voice. Ghulen could smell her desperation even from his removed position, though to anyone who couldn't smell like he could, her carefully-masked expression would hide it. “They die screaming, yes, but screaming out prayers and praises to that damned woman. The more horribly they die, the more they're praised as 'Mother's Martyrs'. You want to judge me, you come to Silk and see. The beasts no longer fear the butchers.”