The carriage’s arrival at Easterfell’s gate is heralded only by the bleeding sun. In a desperate, foolish bid for survival, the sun’s light blazes across the sky, a shocking red against an indigo sky.
Night crushes it without remorse, and the carriage slips, unnoticed, onto the streets of Easterfell.
Bali watches the murder through the carriage’s tinted windows, her black eyes lined with tears and half-formed sleeping dust. She yawns—again—into her lai, her chin pulling the fabric away from its place around the lower half of her face, and she fixes it with a grumble. The scent of sweat, though faint, pulses from the mask regardless of its position across her nose. She plucks at it. If her lai is compromised, she doesn’t want to imagine the drenching her takka must have taken from around her scalp and neck. The half-a-day’s journey from Barrow had been comfortable for the most part. ‘Padded benches, silk curtains and elevated chassis’ had all been advertised, and present, and has all resulted in the smoothest carriage ride of Bali’s (limited) experience. The carriage, buoyed by shadows, does not touch the ground until its destination has been reached. It floats. It drifts. It does not care for the terrain, nor the obstacles that might fall before it.
Luxury, the dealer had told her. Truth.
The fact that it is a (mostly) sealed, black box travelling under direct sunlight? Oversight.
Cho’s ever-present snoring rumbles behind Bali, reminding her that at least one of them hadn’t been bothered by the heat. Not a great consolation; Cho isn’t bothered by anything.
A knock raps at the door; the coachman. Their gloved knuckles remain pressed to the glass, waiting for some acknowledgement. Bali gives it, and the door opens, revealing her driver, still as shrouded in their cloak and shadows as they had been at the start of the journey. Their dark attire reveals little more than a height and a build, both of which are bigger than Bali, but Bali is short and slender so the comparison is meaningless. She tries to peer at the coachman’s face, though they are hidden so deep within their hood that the task is fruitless.
“You’ll wait?”
The coachman tilts their head. “You’ll pay?” They ask, voice a hoarse whisper.
Bali grimaces, an invisible protest behind the lai. “Of course,” she says, stepping off the carriage. The coachman pulls back into the light of a street lamp. Bali watches them as she fumbles through her pockets—her clothes always have an abundance of them stitched into the lining—trying to weigh up which one of her three Yona pouches she ought to produce. The ride had been expensive, as only luxury could be, so she can’t be poor. She doesn’t like the idea of throwing the heaviest pouch about either. People get funny ideas around money that she doesn’t want to entertain. After a moment’s hesitation, she holds the middle pouch out, shaking it when the coachman doesn’t immediately grab it. “That should keep you until midnight, yes?”
The coachman takes the pouch and weighs it in their palm. “Your business will be done by midnight?”
“If the Fates will it so.”
“And if they don’t?”
Bali shrugs a shoulder. “Then the journey back will be rather disappointing.”
The coachman dips their head in a solemn manner and turns their attention towards the carriage, raising a hand in wide, beckoning motion. The shadows respond slowly, lowering the carriage they had been keeping afloat to the ground and creeping back towards their master. The coachman makes another gesture, spreading their fingers wide like a puppeteer dropping the strings, and the dark mass falls into the shadow around their feet.
Bali shivers at the display. It is a needless bit of magic—the shadows would simply have settled where they fell once the coachman had released their control—suggesting that her driver has more than enough power to spare.
Or else they are, at the very least, very dedicated to their role.
Neither power or reckless tenacity is something to be underestimated, but, as long as it’s not aimed towards her, Bali has no problems with it.
She turns back to the carriage. “Come, Cho, we have -” The bench is empty. Typical.
***
The job had only come with three pieces of information: a name, a town, and a picture. The name, Nivaan Ward, doesn’t have much value. People with two names either have an interesting family history (which is the only interesting thing about them) or have been granted a title all of their own. ‘Ward’ falls into the former these days. It used to be the title awarded to High Priests whose service to the Fates were loyal and true, but the Fates are nothing more than a myth these days, and their priests have fared no better. Given the lack of function such a title holds, Bali presumes the use of it to be some kind of sentimentality, a memory of the time their family had importance.
As for the place; well, Easterfell is just another town, albeit a small one. Her research had revealed a shallow history, the kind one might expect from a community unused to outside influence. Rural. Self-sufficient. Easterfell had developed less than half-a-day’s journey from a major city, but they’d never had much to do with each other, not even so much as a trade route. And, of course, without a trade route, it’s easy to assume there’s no Guild either. Guilds are the backbone of intercity relations and are always at their most prosperous where the people gather. Barrow has four, if Bali includes her own (and she does).
Still, the town looks nice. The buildings are all short, no taller than two stories, and line the wide, winding streets in an orderly fashion, not a corner out of place. Plants are everywhere. They grow up from slithers of land in front of houses, sprout from boxes hanging outside windows, and curl around the bricks of the buildings in little caresses. Trees stand tall between every other streetlamp, imposing in the near dark of dusk with their branches full and waving.
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There are, as far as Bali knows, no trees like this in Barrow. Towering. Healthy. Flourishing. The trees she remembers are dark, twisting tendrils, punching up between the cracks in the cobblestones.
The only unusual aspect of Easterfell are the streetlamps. Without the distraction of the coachmen, she can feel the hum of the posts whenever she draws near to one, the engraved stone overflowing with magic. How does a little rural town like this have magic infused lights? Without a trade route, at least one of the townsfolk must have made them, but where did they learn? Despite Magai being the most dominant population, and thus most people having the potential for magic, few have the opportunity to understand magic, much less the chance to use it. An untrained Mage is dangerous.
And that brings her to the picture. It’s clearly a replica; the outline of Nivaan’s face is doubled in a way that no artist’s hand would dare, but magic can. His lips are smudged, caught somewhere between a frown and neutrality, and leaving a blurriness to his chin. Particular attention has been given to his eyes. Silver eyes. They stare out at Bali, pulling her into their eerie brightness. There are ghosts waiting for her in the depths, whispering about memories she has no business knowing, and no desire to understand.
Bali is no mage but she’s not ignorant. Replicas require a lot of focus—the mage has to hold the image they wish to capture in their mind for as long as it takes to print it on the page. A single distraction can warp the image, and it’s generally considered best practice to have the object of the replica there to study. For accuracy, of course.
The inclusion of a replica—and a badly made one at that—implies a personal angle to the job. It’s not a very big revelation. Nobody hires Bali with impartial motives, but it feels a little sad to hold something so intimate, knowing it’s a death sentence.
She spies a lit window ahead of her, and she lets herself wander close. The sign above the door names the place as Mira’s Eatery. There’s a faint smell of bread, sweeter than any Bali has ever encountered before, drifting on the air. Her stomach grumbles. She sighs, rubbing a hand over it in consolation. Another grumble; louder, this time. The betrayal is intolerable.
Bali saunters into the building.
The front counter is unoccupied, though a number of treats lie on its surface, trapped beneath heavy glass domes. She eyes them longingly before turning her attention to the seating arrangement. It is a small choice between five tables of various sizes, and eighteen chairs, not a single matching set between them. The cushions and tablecloths that clutter the room are equally inconsistent with an assortment of colours and patterns that Bali can barely stand to look at.
After a moment’s hesitation, she settles for a table at the back of the room, lit by a single sconce hanging on the wall behind it. The candle’s flame flickers brightly as she draws near, shifting from its natural orange colour to a deep purple. It goes well against the dark wood of the wall, and she is so enamoured by its dance atop the sconce that she forgets to check her seat, almost missing it when she tries to sit down. Her landing is punctuated with a yelp. Then a laugh. Her own, of course. There’s no-one else to see her.
While she’s laughing, a long, furry something bounds through the room and onto her table, accompanied by a shriek and “Get back ‘ere, fiend!” from somewhere behind the eatery’s counter. The something, which looks rather like a cat covered in flour, deposits a cucumber in front of Bali, staring up at her with piercing blue eyes until Bali picks it up.
“Uh, thanks.” The cucumber is soggy. Bali holds it gingerly between two fingernails, feeling the flesh part, ever so slightly, under the pressure. She quirks an eyebrow. “I don’t believe this qualifies as a meal though, Cho.”
Her companion flicks an ear.
“It’s probably not too late to return it,” Bali lies. She looks over to the counter and its occupant, attempting to inject an apology onto her face. Her success is (non-existent) minimal. It is difficult to express anything when a mask covers one’s mouth—all the work has to go into the brow and its limited range of movement. What she intends to be contriteness might as well be anger for all the woman can see.
In response, the woman straightens her back to an intimidating size, the muscles in her neck and shoulders growing taut. She’s covered in flour. Under other circumstances, this would be amusing, but the woman is holding a rolling pin in her hand, and she looks quite ready to make use of it. Bali contemplates the cucumber again.
No. She’s not that desperate. An apology ought to fix this, maybe a few Yona? She places (drops) the cucumber onto the table, ignoring Cho’s protests, and retrieves the smaller of her remaining pouches. She almost gets to her feet before freezing. Does Easterfell even use the Crown’s currency? Without a trade route, she can’t imagine there’d be much use for it.
“I don’t know why this is even my problem,” Bali mutters. “I only came in here to eat something tasty, you know?”
Her companion blinks, catching Bali’s eyes within her blue ones. Slowly, Cho brings a dark-furred paw up to rest on the cucumber, stretching out her toes until the tips of her claws peek out from their sheaths. Her meow is clipped and low.
“I’m not going to praise you for stealing—you weren’t even smart about it.”
Cho huffs, tail twitching.
The woman—Mira, perhaps, from the sign?— taps (thumps) her rolling pin onto the counter’s surface, cutting off whatever nonsense argument Cho had planned. “Are ye’ done yapping?” Her words are punctuated with a scowl.
Bali’s apology, it seems, is long overdue. “I-”
The woman sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose between her fingers. “Save it, kid, just get your beast off my table. Don’t they teach you damn Creepers any manners?”
“I-” Bali stops herself and throws a glance at her companion. Cho’s ears lay flat against her skull, the pupils of her eyes blown wide into saucers and fixed on the wall in front of her. Beneath Bali’s gaze, her claws extend, sinking deep into the cucumber’s flesh. She grumbles. Bali pokes her ribs. The grumbling continues, unperturbed. Bali pokes her once more, resting the tip of her finger on Cho’s skin. “My Luuno taught me that disrespecting a crypt cat is akin to disrespecting the Fates. Perhaps ‘manners’ are simply subjective.” She smiles to soften the rebuke, the motion immediately swallowed by her lai.
“And what did your ‘luno’ say about disrespecting your elders?”
“Probably the same thing you were told regarding customers.”
The woman—she must be Mira—snorts. “You ain’t no customer ‘til I say so, kid.” The rolling pin clatters against the countertop, closely followed by the chink of plates connecting with each other, as if Mira is fidgeting with the objects in front of her. “What are ye ‘ere for, anyways? You’re on the wrong side of town if yer fixing to visit the ol’ Creeper’s grave hoard.”
“That’s the second time you’ve said that word, but it doesn’t sound like an endearment,” Bali says, flicking her attention towards the counter. It’s a bit of a mistake; there’s an apple tart at the centre, bright, and sweet, and proudly calling Bali’s name. She swallows and drags her eyes up to Mira. “Let’s make a deal, shall we? Since Cho, here,” the cat flicks her tail, “stole from you, you would be owed compensation. However, you negated that with your degrading remarks towards both myself and my companion, as well as the Kepaan that tends to your dead.” She elevates her voice, attempting to sound as offended as she feels she probably would be, if she’d actually earned the Keepa title and not expulsion. How would her Luuno put it? Firm, but polite, no room for discussion. “Just treat me like the customer I intended to be when I walked in here, and then I’ll leave. You’ll never have to see me again.”
“What-”
“Of course, prying into my business will invalidate the deal, so I suggest you serve me that tart without any further questions. Thank you!”