> In Yunei tradition, station is a consequence of virtue, with the Emperor being deemed to have achieved, across his many past incarnations, as perfect an understanding of virtue as can be realized by a mortal soul. Under this view of the world, it is understood that the Crowns transcend virtue, having no need of the clumsy rules and forms of etiquette which serve to guide and educate mundane beings: virtue is so innate to their nature that they can do no wrong, even when their behaviour would seem deeply Improper in a mortal. It is to this state that followers of the Proper Way ultimately aspire. —Anoloa Nwodike, The Crowns
CONTEMPLATING CONTRADICTIONS
On family estate, the Gate, Yonguitang Earthmote 09.06.03.11.02
It was Proper for a noble of Deng-Nah On’s station to have mistresses, of course, and his wife Di-Ha had carefully chosen three of her friends for him. And yet, despite the fact that they existed and served their lord with his wife’s knowledge and express approval, and had usually been her friends and known they would marry and serve the same man since girlhood, it was still deemed Improper for them to ever actually see each other in person. Correspondence was acceptable: to actually lay eyes on each other was not.
Just one of the many peculiarities of Proper Behaviour that Deng-Nah had often found frustrating and confusing. So girls could grow up together, know their roles all their lives, be the closest of friends and confidants and choose each other for a Proper role, and yet when that role was fulfilled, they would never see each other again?
It was Improper to question such things, of course. But if there was logic to the convention, Deng-Nah failed to understand it.
The Proper Form thus created a periodic awkward dance where if, for example, Lady Di-Ha On wanted to “surprise” her husband by coming home from the capitol early, the effect of the surprise was rather spoiled by the need to banish the current mistress-in-residence back to her own waiting house.
Di-Ha knew this, of course, and would never be rude to her friend, and furthermore it was Improper to abruptly pitch a mistress out on her ear without good cause. Which suggested she must have some important or secret news from the capitol to share.
Spying at court was a major part of a wife’s duties, after all. Though the On family were the very lowest rung of nobility at court, the bottom-feeders of the Transcendent Emperor’s lake, the way to ascend higher through the Degrees of Nobility and thus come closer to perfection was to mercilessly uncover and exploit all the imperfections and Impropriety of other families, while shielding their own reputation.
Di-Ha was an expert. As graceful as petals on still water, as serene as snowfall, precise and masterful in all the Proper arts, and as ruthless as a wasp. She was, Deng-Nah knew, a catch above his own station, being a third cousin once removed to the Empress. By rights, she should have married into a family of the second degree, but there had been a scandal fifty years ago involving a rather incautious and foolish great-aunt, and her family’s fortunes were still being repaired.
Their marriage was politically convenient for both families, and what man could complain at fathering heirs with such a beautiful and intelligent woman? But Deng-Nah had been delighted and astonished to find that, while she was like a sight-hound with her thoughts ever locked on the prey of restoring her family’s reputation, and everything she said, thought and did was through that lens, There was still some real affection between them.
Thus, as the gates were flung wide and Sumi’s palanquin departed via the Wind Gate at the same time as Lady Di-Ha’s was carried in through the Earth Gate, Deng-Nah found himself looking forward to her company. Any other womans affection might be an affectation for the sake of propriety, but Di-Ha was an incredible woman far outside the norm. Mistresses were nice…but Deng-Nah’s first love was his wife. And that, somehow, felt right in a way that was far beyond what the Proper Way required.
She was also entering the eighth jō of pregnancy, so the fact that she alighted from her palanquin with no discernible difficulty and only the most delicate of support from her handmaiden was enough to almost make Deng-Nah break protocol and beam with pride. What a woman!
But she would be even less forgiving of Improper behaviour on his part than his father would be, so he kept his face suitably grave and restrained, and bowed to her.
“Lady Di-Ha, my love. Welcome home.”
She dipped the small curtsey that was Proper for heavily pregnant ladies, and replied so softly she could hardly be said to have spoken at all. “Thank you, my love.” All according to form, of course. It was not done to seem too emotional in public settings.
“I hope your health has remained with you,” Nah continued, stepping forward to take her arm. She smiled at him, and then bowed her head to Deng-Li, who returned the formality with a dip of his own head before turning and leaving them alone.
“I remain blessed,” she agreed.
They continued in this anodyne, acceptable vein for the few minutes it took to walk to their private chamber, where Di-Ha’s maid settled her comfortably on a cushion and retreated to sit outside the door. She would listen to every word, of course. Deng-Nah wondered how loyal the girl would be: she was a new one, not familiar to him. Fourteen or so?
Di-Ha guessed at his thoughts from the way his eyes followed the girl out of the room. “Luyo is young and innocent,” she said in a soft tone. “I do not doubt her loyalty.”
“There are concerns besides loyalty, my love. Innocence can lead to foolishness.”
“All the more reason to mentor her,” Di-Ha replied. “She is a cousin of Her Majesty the Empress, and to me.”
“The Empress must favor you greatly, to entrust her to your care,” Deng-Nah observed. “You have been successful at court.”
“Indeed I have. And there is much that is interesting at court…” Di-Ha adjusted herself slightly and allowed a brief moment of discomfort to show.
“Do you need anything, my love?”
Di-Ha sighed. “My legs long for a walk around the garden, but my feet and back would not tolerate it. I must endure. You are kind to offer.” She favored him with a smile—delicate, precise and restrained as ever—and looked him up and down. “What of your own health? Sumi tells me your sleep has been interrupted by strange dreams of late.”
Deng-Nah nodded gravely. “She has been a great help and comfort. I cannot fault her care of me. It seems I am simply…afflicted, though I do not know how or why.”
She nodded, grateful of his courtesy in praising her friend and chosen mistress. “You dream of…foreigners?”
“Yes. It is most strange. I saw their faces clearly enough to draw them. Father tells me one of them was an elf. I have…never seen an elf in my life, that I know of. How then would my dreams tell me what one should look like?”
“Most curious,” she agreed, thoughtfully. There was a moment of silence between them before she turned toward the door. “Luyo?”
The door slid open. “My lady?” The girl outside very properly did not look at them directly.
“MY husband and I will take tea.”
“Yes, my lady.” The door closed.
Di-Ha lowered her voice as the girl departed, her soft, shuffling footsteps nevertheless audible thanks to the tuned floorboards. “There has been much discussion of foreign happenings at court.”
“How unusual,” Deng-Nah frowned. “Why should the Proper People be concerned with foreigners?”
“There is talk of a conqueror. One who holds all the lands of the Great Crescent in his grip.” She indicated briefly upwards with her eyes, referring to the largest earthmote. “The rumor from agents in foreign lands is that he has no need of armies: he conquers with powerful magic that controls the mind.”
“A sorcerer?”
“So it is whispered. The symbol he uses is a circle of plain steel, and he seduces the weak, the destitute and the Improper by giving them purpose, housing and food.”
“A circle?” Deng-Nah pursed his lips thoughtfully.
“Yes. You have heard of this?”
“Men and women wearing such a symbol have been reported preaching in heathen language outside the gate. And there is a building under construction, a circular compound many blocks across.”
She shifted with a frown. “Have you seen it for yourself?”
“No. But I have read the report. They say it is a very strange building, without tile or brick or wood. The outer wall is sheer and plain, with a band of lightstones behind frosted glass near the top. And our people watching from afar can see that those who dwell within stick to a precise schedule every day.”
“There is nothing nothing obviously improper about any of that, on the face of things.”
“Not on the face of things,” Nah agreed.
She nodded. “The concern at court is that this conqueror will soon set his sights on the glory of the Yunei people.”
“A foreign invader? There cannot be any belief that he could succeed, surely?”
“Her majesty the Empress expressed to me her confidence that no loyal subject of his majesty the Transcendent Emperor would be so disloyal as to say such a thing.”
Ah. Which meant in fact the Empress thought the Empire was anything but secure. And for her to confide as much to Di-Ha…
“Nevertheless, the foreign barbarian must surely be ignorant of the impossibility of his ambitions. The On family’s duty is to vigilantly and dutifully serve,” he said aloud. “It would be an intolerable insult to the beloved Emperor if his rule were to be challenged in even the least degree by a foreigner.”
“Intolerable,” Di-Ha agreed.
Deng-Nah nodded thoughtfully. In the corridor outside, he heard the sound of Luyo returning with the tea service. “I shall meditate on what walls and soldiers can do against a sorcerer of the mind,” he declared.
Di-Ha favored him with another smile, then returned the conversation back to less sensitive matters as her maid returned and began the tea service.
Deng-Nah’s thoughts the rest of the day kept circling back to his dreams. Could this sorcerer have been exerting his will, somehow? It seemed…unlikely, he felt.
For the second time today, he felt a degree of frustration toward the rules of Proper Conduct. Not just the need to couch everything in terms of it being unthinkable that anyone was anything other than perfectly loyal to the Emperor, or the notion that loyalty meant never expressing any doubts as to the invincibility of the realm or the superiority of the Yunei people.
Deng-Nah had not seen foreigners in person, but he had seen their flying ships, lumbering in the distance above the far end of the Foreign Quarter beyond the gate. And it had occurred to him that a force of those could fly lazily over a city dropping firebombs, and reduce whole districts to cinders. Buildings made of wood and paper would be defenseless.
What airships did the Empire have? They had been deemed Improper by the present Emperor’s grandfather. Or, more likely, the Council of Lords had deemed them an unacceptable risk of cultural contamination and a possible avenue for the import of foreign ideas, which surely the uneducated and weak-minded peasantry would be seduced by, and so the Emperor had decreed as they wished, which was as things had always been.
The Emperor was transcendent, most proper, most wise, most enlightened and most holy…and thus, officially, not to be bothered with such mundanities as policy and governance. Thus the Council of Lords advised him, and he in his unrivalled wisdom accepted their advice and made his decrees based on their recommendations.
It seemed to Deng-Nah that the whole system would be more honest if they just acknowledged that the Emperor’s role was symbolic. But of course, to say as much would be not only Improper, but gravely disloyal.
He frowned at himself and put down the letter he’d been staring out without reading for some minutes. Where were these thoughts coming from? Was it just lack of sleep making him irritable and prompting his thoughts to wander?
Inspiration struck him. He stood, smoothing his robes, and gestured to his bodyguard, Sho-Gong.
“My lord?”
“I wish to stand atop the gate and look outward.”
“…As you wish, lord.” In the Yunei language, this was a single syllable, but still Sho-Gong managed to pack a remarkable amount of surprise and caution into it. But it was not a bodyguard’s place to question his lord, and so he did not. Very Proper.
Minutes later, Deng-Nah was in his palanquin, being borne through the streets toward the gate. Why hadn’t he done this sooner? It would not be long now until his father passed on lordship of the town and responsibility for this one gateway between the Emperor’s realm and heathen lands became Deng-Nah’s. If he was to be a good and dutiful bulwark for his people, he needed to know what he was dealing with on the far side of the wall.
So it was that he ascended the steps inside one of the gate towers and emerged onto the battlement above the gate to be assailed immediately by entirely new smells and sounds. The very cadence of the market-cries and ware-hawking merchants rising up from below were alien, as too was the acrid scent on the breeze.
He wrinkled his nose at it. “What is that stench?”
“The esteemed lord’s nose is perhaps offended by the smell of foreign sky-ships,” he was informed by the scribe who had dutifully hurried up to this perch behind him.
“Elaborate.”
“If the esteemed lord looks, he will see the heathen devices are held aloft by bags. These have been filled with an alchemical mixture. It is this mixture which creates the foul odor he speaks of.”
“Hmm. How does it work?” Deng-Nah mused. He’d meant for it to be a quiet, inner thought, but the scribe took it as a direct question. Damn it! He needed a good night’s sleep soon, or such slips could become…problematic.
“It would be highly improper for this humble scribe to know such a thing, of course,” the scribe replied, carefully. From the look on his face, he was now worrying that admitting even the small knowledge he had thus far revealed might land him in trouble.
Deng-Nah grunted and said nothing. Why should a man be punished for knowing such things?
…Now there was a most improper thought indeed. What was wrong with him? He was quite sure he wouldn’t have thought like this a few weeks ago.
He raised a hand to his brow and surveyed the Foreign Quarter closely. There were so many airships, he realized. Enough that if the foreigners actually did want to invade his city…he was not so sure his soldiers had a reply to such a force. The number of ships alone could surely carry a large force of men far beyond the walls, and if they themselves could circle overhead with weapons…
He made up his mind. He tore his gaze away from the view and looekd to the scribe, who was standing rod-straight and dutifully attentive. “You will prepare a report for me. I wish to know the number of these ships that routinely make port, and what banners, house crests or colors they display. I wish to know especially of their armament.”
“It shall be as the esteemed lord commands.”
Deng-Nah nodded, turned away, and walked back down the stairs.
And all the way back home, in his mind’s eye, he saw his city burning.
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> “GOING OUT OF BUSINESS The proprietor’s eyes have been opened to the evils of private enterprise by the truth of Oneness. All stock has been donated to the Church of the One, to be sold and the wealth redistributed to the poor. THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED. Experience Oneness for yourself. Seek the Circle.” —Sign hung in the door of an upper-class dress shop in Auldenheigh.
BACK INTO DANGER
The Auld Forest, Enerlend, Garanhir 09.06.03.11.03
Adrey couldn’t shake the feeling that the moment of transition on these witch-paths in the woods ought to trip her up, somehow. They were definitely confusing, but not in any way that imbalanced a body. It felt more like…like she’d been thoughtlessly strolling through her house with the intention of going to her bedroom, only to realize she’d wandered into the parlour instead. It brought a body up short, every time.
Ellaenie stopped and looked around too, then glanced back and giggled a little bashfully. “It disorients me as well,” she admitted. “I don’t think you could ever get used to it or the magic wouldn’t work.”
Adrey suppresed a little shiver. “You know, I don’t think I much like the idea of a method of travel that one can’t grow accustomed to and which relies on…how did you put it? Blind spots in the mind?”
Ellaenie shrugged. “The mind is full of blind spots, you know that perfectly well. And you exploit some of them yourself.”
“I do?”
Ellaenie just smirked at her, and continued on down the trail.
Adrey sighed and followed her. She’d be the first to admit a minimal knowledge of magic. Knowing how to charge her own magestones and induce them to glow was a necessary minimum, but she’d never seen the point in learning beyond that. It often had seemed to her that magic wasn’t worth the effort, or the hazards. As the basic rules of the Art laid out plainly, a wizard who tried to fling a fireball was as like as not to burn their own hand to a withered black stump. What was the point in magic where you had to put in as much effort to achieve the same result anyway, and at greater risk?
Ellaenie was challenging that presumption. She’d grown so much, and the sisterly love Adrey had felt for her before was now transformed into a considerable degree of awe. She was a crownspouse, a master of the Craft, a Wordspeaker, a mother in both the literal and witch-coven senses of the word…
It made Adrey take a hard look at herself. At what she’d given up to fight back against the Oneists. Ellaenie had love, and a family. Adrey didn’t. The last few weeks at the Oasis had been difficult for her, because every time she saw Ellaenie scoop up her daughter, or melt into her husband’s affectionate arms, she’d felt a stab of envy.
Inevitably followed a moment later by a pang of foolishness.
As that thought crossed her mind, Ellaenie slowed and fell back a few paces to take her arm. “You don’t have to do this, you know,” she said, quietly.
“If I don’t, somebody else has do. And I spent eight years training to,” Adrey replied. She didn’t question that Ellaenie could guess what was on her mind so accurately as to be almost reading it.
“You’re not as certain as you’re trying to sound, Addie.”
Adrey sighed, knowing it was true. “I wish things could have been different. That’s all. I am certain of where I need to be and what I need to do, I just…”
“Wish you needn’t.”
Adrey nodded, and they walked in comfortable silence for a little while, until they reached a rise at the forest’s edge, and a stony ridge. To their left, the river Heigh was no more than a mile or two away, running arrow-straight down off the mountains in a tangle of rapid tributaries. In the distance, the city was a smudge of smoke and spires, built just below the last and largest tributary where the waters calmed and deepened enough to allow barges and boats to come up from the Blue Sea and the city of Betenstad.
The sky above Auldenheigh was heavy with the fat bodies of airships.
Ellaenie sighed to look at it, and Adrey didn’t need witchcraft to guess her friend’s feelings. “You can’t come with me, Ellie. Not yet.”
“I know. But…I’m scared for you, Addie. Look at all those ships! The Oneists must have brought everything they have. The whole city must be—”
“I’m not scared,” Adrey interrupted, and gave her a smile. “If they catch me, you’ll rescue me. I know you will.”
“They’ll use you as bait.”
“And you’ll know it and be ready.” They turned to face each other. “Ellie, them being there makes it all the more necessary I go back. The war’s starting for real, now. We’ve finally struck a real, telling blow. Now we have to follow through.”
Ellaenie nodded, though her eyes were still fixed on the airships. “…You’re right, of course.”
“Good.” Adrey backed up a step and spread her arms. “How do I look?”
Elaenie looked her disguise up and down. “Like you scrape a living foraging in the forest.”
Adrey allowed herself a satisfied smile and a little twirl. They’d planned carefully for this. Her skirts were thorn-tattered and trail-dusty, her bonnet stained and sun-bleached, her pinny filthy from digging up fungi, and the basket on her back was appropriately full of truffles, morels, chanterelles, king bolette, yarrow, allium, hazelnut, nettle and wild mustard. Even her hands were appropriately hard and rough, thanks to a near-decade of knife fighting practice and other exercises that had quite callused her palms.
The rest was expression and posture. She’d seem like a young widow, recently bereaved and fallen on desperately hard times. There was, frankly, some danger that a guard or constable might try to take advantage of her, but the Oneists wouldn’t. That part of their humanity had been stripped out, like so much else.
No, the danger from them was that they’d try to recruit her. But she had a cover story for that as well.
Ellaenie gave that peculiar, tremulous nod that people did when girding their courage and committing. “Well…I suppose you’d better go.”
“I suppose so. Take care of Lisze for me.”
“And you take care of yourself for us.”
They shared a long, tight hug. They hadn’t got the chance, last time they parted, and this time they knew the value of such a parting. Then…it was over. Ellaenie took a deep breath, stepped back, and waved goodbye, and they turned away from each other and parted. Adrey had gone maybe twelve or fifteen steps when she heard a soft creaking and rustling. When she turned and looked back, the easy, broad trail they’d followed through the woods was entirely impossible to see. And yet she couldn’t identify what could have moved to hide it. Every branch, leaf, fern, stone and length of fallen deadwood seemed to be exactly where it had always been.
Of Ellaenie, though, there was not even a rustle or footstep.
…Does she even fully understand just how magical she’s become? Adrey asked herself.
She wasn’t sure if it was encouraging or terrifying. So, she put it from her mind, turned toward the city, and struck out for home.
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Six hours later, she was so footsore and stiff-legged despite taking a couple of good breaks that she didn’t need to play-act a tired, pained gait. Crowns, to think there were people who really had to actually scrape a living like this…
When she got her titles and county back, a lot more of Adrey’s wealth and lands would be devoted to supporting the poor, she decided. Goodness, for the cost of a single seasonal ballgown that she’d only wear once, she could have run a soup kitchen for the better part of a year! And the ingredients would have come from hard-working people who needed the money.
All that was for the future, though. For now, she trudged wearily along the main road past the farmlands and livestock yards that formed the outermost ring of Auldenheigh’s urban sprawl.
This close, she could get a decent count of the Oneist airships, and the only conclusion she could draw was that Civorage must have sent every available ship to pacify the city. Formations of them patrolled above each district in V-shaped flights, and the air was thick with the scent of their engines and of minor bag leaks.
The activity was no less thick on the ground. Any pretence at business as usual was long gone, now: Auldenheigh was under martial law, by ducal decree. If Adrey remembered her history lessons, the last time that measure had been taken was…hm…two hundred and eleven years ago, during the succession dispute that had ultimately seen Harol of Banmor, Ellaenie’s ancestor, triumph over his rival, Eirich of House Thorpe.
There had been heads lining the road on spikes in those days, Adrey recalled. Those, at least, were mercifully absent now, but in their place were figures in the rough white woollen robes of Circle novices, preaching by the roadside and loudly declaiming their past deeds and exhorting travellers to unburden themselves of loneliness and wickedness.
She’d almost have preferred heads on spikes. The guillotine held no particular fear for Adrey; an instant and painless execution seemed a better way to go than most of the alternatives. But to lose herself? To be transformed in mind and spirit? She understood why Lisze was finding it so hard. It wasn’t just the false comfort she'd lost. She had awakened to fact of her complete violation, poor girl.
No, on the whole Adrey would choose a swift death over the Circle. In fact, she sometimes wondered why humans didn’t carry a vamdraech like the elves. Better suicide than Shade, surely?
These and other such cheery thoughts were how she distracted herself from the pain in her feet and the weight of her foraged load as she limped up to the checkpoint at the city outskirts. Two small static balloons hung overhead with marksmen in the baskets, and between their tethers was a cordon and a team of soldiers. All were wearing the steel ring of the Circles, but they had the sharp, alert look that said these were free-minded collaborators.
One of them waved her forward. “Travel pass.”
Adrey sighed, nodded, and went digging in her pockets. She didn’t say anything. Skinner and his fellows had driven home to her again and again that the safest lie was always silence, and the second-safest was as few words as possible: blabber and bluster and fib, and you’d slip up. Liars always offered long stories, whereas the truth was perfunctory.
Of course, once she’d learned that lesson they’d taught her the art of obfuscation through gab and how to overwhelm with a wall of words to sell the impression of a scatterbrain. But that wouldn’t fit this persona at all.
She handed the papers over and settled the basket on her shoulders, waiting disinterestedly while staring off into the distance at nothing in particular. Just a disinterested civilian going through an unpleasant routine necessity. The guard glanced at her pass, looked her up and down, then handed the forged documents back and waved her through. Adrey muttered a silent, exhausted ‘thank you’ and trudged into the city. Only once she was well past the checkpoint did she permit himself a sigh of relief and let go of the tension in her shoulders. She was past the first hurdle.
But far from the most dangerous.
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> Contemporary example of a Yunei sword, created by an exiled smith according to the “Proper Way.” The creator notes that the technique has remained unchanged for hundreds of years. The steel is of exceptional quality, but observe the shortness of the blade, which is a consequence of the fact that the average height of a Yunei man is 4’6”. —Note on an exhibit in the Auldenheigh Armory Museum.
SWORD PRACTICE
On family estate, The Gate, Yonguitang Earthmote. 09.06.03.11.08
Sword practice was a welcome change of pace. It was expected, Proper, and inescapably necessary that a man such as Deng-Nah should be competent with a blade, for his own safety and that of his family. Bodyguards were one line of defense, not the very last one, and Sho-Gong had taught him often that in an attack on his lord’s life, the opening Sho-Gong created for Deng-Nah’s blade might be the difference between life and death.
All that was very rational, but Deng-Nah enjoyed sword practice for the simple fact of being free to move and exercise. Leaden though he felt from weeks of troubled sleep, his body was over-rested and screaming for activity. Indeed, the last time he’d slept at all well had been after wearing himself out in training.
He and Sho-Gong sparred in the sandy ring behind the house, and Deng-Nah felt alive for it. Maybe it was the sleeplessness or maybe he was simply in an appropriately meditative mood today, but the steps and motions of the sword dance came effortlessly to him. Each exchange passed without thought, in a blur of flashing steel and deft footfalls, only to end and he would start thinking again, listening, analysing, learning.
Sho-Gong was a master, and had always been able to find something to improve before. Today, however, he simply smiled.
“Very good, my lord.”
Deng-Nah rotated his shoulder and waggled his wrist a bit, loosening them up. “I felt I was a bit slow getting the point back to your center line.”
“If so, I did not notice, lord. Either I am slowing down, or you are sharper than ever.”
Nah sighed. “I don’t feel sharp, at the moment. I feel sluggish and heavy.”
“I see the weariness in your face, certainly. It is not weighing down your hands and feet though. You fight with the strength and speed of the Horned King.”
“…Thank you, Sho-Gong. Another round?”
“Maneuvers, my lord. Perhaps it is time to practice the Sleeping Bear.”
Deng-Nah frowned at him. Had some rumor reached his bodyguard’s ears, or was it just prudent revisitation of a past lesson that may have become rusty? The Sleeping Bear was the art of fending off an attacker who came in the night and tried to kill him in his bed.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
It was true, they hadn’t tried that in a while. And it was a nice warm day, the sand was dry…he nodded, and lay down, setting his sword to his right within arm’s reach as Proper manner dictated.
The lesson never started, however. Sho-Gong was stalking toward one corner of the square ready to begin when he abruptly stopped and scooted aside, bowing low.
“Deng-Nah.”
Nah looked up, then swiftly rose to his feet. His father had joined them, wearing an almost imperceptible air of disapproval over something.
“Leave us,” he ordered Sho-Gong, who dipped even lower and scurried out.
“It is most pleasant to see you, Father. To what do I owe this honor?” Nah asked. He took up his discarded robe and shrugged it about his shoulders.
“This.” Deng-Li flourished a scroll. “It was delivered to the house for your attention this morning.”
Nah blinked, rather than dare a frown. It was…not improper for a father to read messages addressed to his son. But it was mildly insulting, suggesting that Li thought his son still an ungoverned youth rather than a Proper man.
“May I ask what it is?” he inquired.
“It is a report from the gate-garrison’s scribe, describing the comings and goings of foreign ships.” Li brandished it again. “for what do you send for such information, my son?”
“For the protection and glory of the divine Empire,” Nah replied, properly. Li frowned.
“Explain,” he said. Quite rudely, in fact. What was the matter with the old man? Nah felt his brow try to twitch downwards, but caught himself and suppressed his emotions.
“Forgive my questioning, father, but I was of the belief that dutiful service to His Majesty the Transcendent Emperor requires no explanation,” he said, levelly.
It was a perfectly true, perfectly civil, perfectly polite and perfectly Proper thing to say. Why, then, did his father respond as though Nah had clenched his fist and snarled at him? Was the old man going senile?
He quashed such thoughts at once. They were disloyal, and Improper.
“What you imply, my son,” Li replied, with forced evenness, “is that the Empire has something to fear from the barbarians.”
“A naked brute armed only with a rock may dash out even the most enlightened lord’s brains, father,” Nah replied, keeping his tone reasonable. “Is it not dutiful to attend to the Empire’s obvious superiority with diligence?”
“A fine argument. Why, then, be so secretive? And what of your dreams and paintings of foreigners, hmm?” Deng-Li did scowl. “You pay attention to barbarians and elves in an unhealthy degree, Deng-Nah.”
Honesty, then. “I do not control my dreams any more than you, father. I can only do with them what seems Proper. That they are so vivid and insistent seems to me a warning.” Deng-Nah tugged tight the sash of his tunic with a rather more vicious motion than he’d really intended. He was tense, he realized. His father’s questions were bordering on accusation.
An accusation of what, though?
He took a deep breath and gathered himself. “Father, I value your wisdom and insight. If you have some concern, then I would hear it so as to steer myself on the Proper path.”
Deng-Li gave him a shaky look, then looked down at his feet. When he did speak, his voice was hoarse and choked. “…What I am about to say,” he rasped, “Is not to be heard by anyone else. Give me your word on it.”
“Father…you already have my word. I am your sworn man. I shall never betray your secrets, on my oath and honor.”
Deng-Li nodded gravely, still not looking up. He shuffled his feet, cleared his throat, and straightened his shoulders. “When your mother bled to death after birthing you despite the best efforts of the healers, I was…most badly affected,” he said, his mood suddenly softened. “My…my troubled mind led me…to take Improper action. One unbefitting of our station. In my moment of weakness I succumbed to peasant superstition, and I…consulted a witch.”
“…Father—”
Deng-Li gave him a miserable look. “Grief makes a man do foolish things, my son. I had just lost a very fine wife and…I wished to be sure that the heir she bore me would prosper. I wished to be sure that you would live a long and healthy life. And the witch assured me that, so far as her scrying of the future portended, you would at least grow to adulthood…”
Deng-Nah tilted his head. “How did you manage this?” he asked.
Deng-Li shook his head. “I manufactured some excuse to go beyond the gate. There was some visiting barbarian prince writing a silly book about his travels or some such nonsense,” he flapped a hand dismissively. “The pretense of meeting him was sufficient to hide my meeting with the witch.”
He shook his head in disgust. “She wore the brand of exile as though proud of it. And she drank strange brews made of strange herbs, and rattled bones and hummed and sang over you. And she told me what I wished to hear, that you would be a strong child and grow into a strong man, and so you have. But…”
“…She also told you something else?”
Deng-Li glanced sharply at him, then sighed and nodded. “She told me,” he said, slowly, “That when you were grown, you would…you would run away into exile yourself, of your own choosing.”
Deng-Nah blinked at him. “I cannot imagine doing such a thing!” he objected. “I have duties, a fine wife, and an heir of my own on the way!”
“And yet…everything the witch predicted has come true so far. Your dreams of foreign faces, your sudden interest in what is happening outside the gate.” Deng-Li let out a shaky breath. “I only hope…I do not believe in destiny, my son. I do not believe the future is set. I tell you this now in the hope of breaking that witch’s prophecy. I beg you, when the choice is before you…stay. Do not dishonor your family, disgrace your wife and cast your unborn child down from their noble position.”
“Father,” Deng-Nah rushed forward and took the old man’s shaking hand to steady it. “I cannot conceive of anything that would persuade me to betray you so.”
Deng-Li nodded miserably, then pressed the scroll from the gate scribe into Nah’s hand. “Remember those words when the inconceivable comes,” he said. Then he withdrew his hand, clapped Deng-Nah on the shoulder with it, gave him a deeply troubled look, and strode away.
Deng-Nah was left alone with a head full of whirling confusion. No thoughts emerged from the maelstrom, nothing coherent he could latch onto.
His hands unrolled the scroll automatically, without his conscious will, and his eyes scanned it for lack of anything else to do. It took a while before what he was seeing finally registered.
“What—?”
Yesterday there had been more than twenty ships in the port beyond the gate. Now, there were eleven. Overnight, the Clear Skies and Oneist ships had flown away.
He didn’t know why…but something about that fact made him suddenly and terribly afraid.
----------------------------------------
> As befits an insular culture, the Yunei have their own ways of depicting and referring to the Crowns and Heralds. It is deemed most Improper to speak the names of the “beings of light” and so they are instead referrred to always by title: King Eärrach for instance is known as The Horned King, while his hounds are known as Dawn and Dusk, and play a pivotal role in teaching certain aspects of Yunei philosophy to children*.* Perhaps most interesting is Dragon, who played a pivotal role in liberating the Yunei from the Ordfey. The Yunei refer to her as “The River of Heaven” or “The Golden River” and her likeness is ubiquitous in Yunei art. Dragon in turn repays this special place of privilege by assuming a Yunei appearance when taking mortal form. —Anoloa Nwodike, The Crowns
COMING IN TO LAND
Airship Cavalier Queen, approaching Yonguitang Earthmote 09.06.03.11.11
Jerl had never much bothered to look at Yonguitang Earthmore before. What point was there? He knew it only as an asymmetrical, vaguely K-shaped mote. Its only relevance for a non-Yunei shipman was that if one followed the line of Yonguitang’s flat trailing edge to dexter, it reliably pointed the way to a lesser mote named Navirin, whose people farmed coffee, silk and sugar, traded it with all comers, and largely didn’t bother anyone.
Yonguitang itself? Up until now, there had never been a reason for him to consider going there.
Now, over the past few days that distant warped K in the sky had flattened out before him, and become a vast and mountainous country not all that much smaller than Garanhir, and he was heading for the sinister end of the trailing edge, and The Gate.
“Coming up on the first beacon, skipper. They’ve run up a signal for us,” Gebby called from the wheelhouse.
“Thank you, Gebby!” Jerl pulled out his telescope and took a good look, feeling a sudden nervous pulse in his chest. If something went awry here…
But no. The flags trailing in the breeze were an invitation to continue on course at slow speed, angling downwards on a shallow approach. He took out his signal mirror, flashed an acknowledgement, and trotted up to the wheelhouse to get ready for arrival.
A brief roll of turbulence signalled the moment they cleared through some lurking weather and out into open air. As they did so, the cloud banks rolled back and Jerl saw The Gate laid out below, just as he’d envisioned in his mind’s eye from studying the map back at the Thundering Hall. Though in truth, the reality was more impressive than he’d imagined.
The wall and gate for which the city was named were huge and ornate. The wall itself, which cut right through the middle, was a fortification fit to dissuade anyone who didn’t have a death wish, encrusted as it was with machicolations and jutting towers from which the defenders would have no trouble catching attackers at the wall’s base in enfilade…though from this angle, Jerl could see very clearly that those towers were not topped with any kind of anti-air weaponry. Militarily, the wall was thoroughly obsolete.
As a work of art, on the other hand, it was breathtaking. The entire outward-facing surface seemed to be a bas-relief testament to the glory of the Yunei Empire, laid out beneath the swooping, sinuous likeness of Dragon herself. Vast portions of the stonework had been gilded, and several details of the sculpture-work had been picked out with jade or other precious stones. Even the tops of the guard towers were roofed with swooping gables and planted with small, twisted decorative junipers, accented by lacquered wood and hung with lanterns and wind chimes.
The statement was obvious: Here is the Yunei Empire. Beyond is a land of wonders, riches and artistry, and we shall deign to allow you a glimpse of its very hem. But you cannot enter.
The foreign enclave had made a decent attempt to answer the grandeur, Jerl thought. The buildings were nothing exceptional, being brick-built and tile-roofed, but they were tasteful, and served as the pleasant backdrop for bunting, banners, lightstone strings and flower displays. He found himself looking forward to getting down among them and seeing what it all looked like up close.
Well…except for one building. There, smack dead in the center of town, was a Circle under construction. The completed sections of wall, bare and smooth and undecorated, were an eye-catching soulless blot in an otherwise merry riot of messy color.
Funny, though. The dock was certainly oversized for the number of ships currently present. There were about a dozen or so, all freemerchants so far as he could tell, and all rather elderly at that. There wasn’t a Oneist airship anywhere in the sky about them, tnor any Clear Skies Guild blue-and-white livery. Curious, for a town with a Circle. Many of the old ships still had sails rather than engines, or antiquated balloon bags and “onion net” envelopes. The Queen looked to be the largest, youngest and best-appointed ship in the harbour, as Gebby spiralled her expertly down the approach toward a mooring platform right on the earthmote’s edge.
He always had been an exceptionally deft touch. The dockers didn’t even need to send out a wing crew, Gebby came close enough for the lines to be thrown by hand, and with a familiar series of work shanties, creaks, rattles and hefty clunking noises, the Queen settled into a cradle, the bolt was driven through the keel, and Marren’s riggers started bleeding bag gas off into storage. A textbook landing.
“Docking at an actual cradle. Been a while since we did that, nay?” Sin commented as she appeared at Jerl’s elbow.
Jerl snorted. “Let’s hope it doesn’t turn out like Long Drop.”
“Eh, Long Drop wasn’t so bad. For me, anyway. I guess you going through that nasty first time around might have left an impression.”
“This is the first time around here, Sin.”
“…Right. Guess I’ll stay on my guard.”
“When do you not?”
She snorted and shrugged. “I mean, have you seen Derghan’s butt? Hard to concentrate when he’s walking in front of me.”
Jerl laughed. “Hah! I prefer Mouse’s, but fair.”
He received a light punch in the arm from Mouse for that, but it was all in good fun.
There was a delegation already forming on the quayside as the ramp extended. Jerl had been expecting a Yunei official of some sort, and there were indeed Yunei among the group…but they were all exile-branded. Meanwhile, the unbranded woman standing tall among the dwarves as she waited for him must surely be of mixed heritage. She offered him a tight, professional smile and flipped a clipboard and pen into position.
“Welcome to the Gate,” she said. “I’m harbourmaster Limei Brecks.”
“Jerl Holten, freemerchant. This is the Cavalier Queen.” Jerl shook her hand, indicating over his shoulder with a tilt of his head.
“Your first time here?” she asked, as her pen started to scratch out his details on the form.
“First and only, most likely.”
“Importing or exporting?”
“Little of both.” He gestured to Sin, whom several of the locals were staring at. He got the impression most of them had never seen an elf before. “This is Sinikka Nerissith, my quartermaster. She’ll handle the details.”
Brecks nodded. “Very good. Berth fees are standard as laid out by the Guilds Agreement, import tariff is two point two percent, export is three percent. You’re a powered brig—ten guns?”
“Yes? I…didn’t know there was a gun tax at this port.”
“There isn’t. But by decree of Lord Deng-Nah On, the armament of all ships making port is to be recorded. Could be he’ll announce one soon…if so, you got here just in time.”
“We have a Guild navigator and the latest almanacs,” Sin chimed in. “We’re willing to trade data for a favorable rate.”
Brecks looked very interested indeed, though she maintained professional composure. “In that case...” she turned and spoke a few words in the Yunei language to the man beside her with an abacus. He rattled the beads back and forth for a few seconds, rattled off an answer, and Brecks nodded. “Twenty-four brass and nine steel for a week at berth, increasing to five brass per day thereafter.”
“We don’t expect to be here a whole week,” Sin replied.
“In that case, the daily rate is four brass…”
“Three and sixteen,” Sin counter-offered.
“Three-and-twenty.”
Sin nodded, counted out the coins and handed them to Jerl, who handed them to Brecks, who handed them to one of her attendants.
“Very good, captain. A few notes on local laws and customs you should be aware of: The Yunei Empire considers this side of the wall to be a lawless enclave. Indeed, they only tolerate us as a necessary dumping ground for exiles. Among ourselves, we go by ‘Out-Town’ and maintain our own laws, enforcement and services. You are strongly advised not to approach or attempt to bypass the wall and the gate: the penalty for trespassing in the Yunei Empire is death, and the execution method is, uh, designed to serve as a deterrent.”
“I get the picture.”
Brecks nodded grimly. “I note you have a lot of elves on your crew. They especially should stay away from the wall, as the Imperial Army are under strict orders to kill elves on sight.”
“Unprovoked?”
Brecks shrugged. “The history of the Ordfey is deemed to be provocation enough. In any case, Just..stay away from the wall. It’s easiest for everyone.”
“And what if I needed to speak with Lord Deng-Nah On?” Jerl asked. Brecks looked like she was about to laugh at his joke, then faltered when she sensed he wasn’t joking.
“I…well. That’s almost unheard of. I think his father deigned to give Prince Ruber of Valai a brief meeting once, but as a rule…you have to remember, as far as the Empire is officially concerned, the world is stratified into the Proper people at the top, with less Proper people below them, criminal exiles below them, foreigners like you and me below the exiles, then beasts, pond scum...and elves.” She gave Sin an apologetic shrug.
Sin just shrugged back.
“…How did Prince Ruber manage it?” Jerl asked.
“I really don’t know. You’d need the patronage of a well-regarded and Proper person, I think.”
Jerl nodded. “Well, anyway. Thank you, harbourmaster. I suppose we’ll go looking for our buyer now.”
Brecks nodded and tucked away her clipboard. “If you have any more questions, the harbourmasters’ offices are on Second Street, toward the Dexter end. Welcome to the Gate,” she said. She dipped a small Yunei-style bow, then turned and led her entourage away.
Sin leaned over to lower her voice. “Guess it’s time to start working on a plan,” she suggested.
“I’m working on one. For now…let’s do like we said to the harbourmaster and go find a buyer. May as well offload the last of our Winter Bazaar cargo. Mouse?”
Mouse looked up and hopped down off the crate he’d been lurking on, forgotten and ignored. He and Jerl shared a small smirk at the by-now familiar way Sin jumped and blinked as she remembered his existence. “Find a way past the wall?”
“Think you can do it?”
“One I can use? Easy. One you can use…little trickier.” He flashed a grin and shrugged. “We’ll see.”
Jerl returned his grin, then turned back toward his ship. By reputation, he knew he wouldn’t get good prices for his wares here. The Gate was a place where exiles left Yonguitang, and the few who clung on generated neither resources nor luxuries, so they had little wealth. Still, there was some kind of an economy here, and Jerl was no longer looking for the best deal, just for something to keep him and his crew plausibly busy while they planned and prepared. Thanks to Sayf’s generosity, funds were no longer an issue.
He was back on the right course, though, he could feel it. Time was thrumming somehow inside him, giving him a sense of anticipation. Something pivotal was coming.
He wondered what it might be.
----------------------------------------
> BY ORDER OF THE DUKESMOOT Due to the recent terrorist attack, a curfew is in effect. All citizens abroad from the second hour after nightfall until one hour before dawn must show a work pass. Passes can be acquired from your local constabulary precinct, or from Town Hall. Curfew breakers will be detained for questioning, and may face fines or imprisonment. REWARD OF 5 SILVER GUILDMARKS FOR INFORMATION LEADING TO THE CAPTURE OF TERRORISTS. —Notice posted in Auldenheigh
TRYING TO MAKE CONTACT
Hatpin Safehouse, Auldenheigh, Enerlend, Garanhir 09.06.03.11.11
More than a week on from her return to the city and Adrey still hadn’t made contact with the Blackdrake network or any other resistance element, and that was starting to get very worrying indeed.
“Hatpin” Safehouse was named for an in-joke between herself and Mister Skinner, who’d taken to calling the slim stiletto daggers she wore under her skirts “her ladyship’s hatpins” during their training. To him and him alone, it was a hint as to her identity. To everyone else in the network or to a Oneist intercepting her dead drops, it was just another random word.
Now, Adrey was beginning to worry perhaps Skinner had been captured and become One. If he had, then her little shibboleth would have been a mistake. But that was the problem with a foe who learned everything their enemies knew upon capture, instantly and effortlessly.
The safehouse itself was nothing much, just a room at a small, affordable boarding house for women, on Wells Street in Porterlands. She’d rented it using the clothes, money and documents she’d smuggled into the city in her mushroom basket, under the name Mrs. Adelia Rubb.
The Proprietress, a Miss Esme Brooknetter, was about the most formidable creature Adrey had ever met: taller even than Adrey herself, thin as a willow switch, tough as the boot leather she so strongly resembled, and icily hostile to anything remotely male. She’d made it plain to Adrey that the merest hint of a “gentleman guest” in the night would be grounds for her to be ejected without the return of any outstanding balance on the room. She’d even reacted with sniffy disdain when ‘Adelia’ stammeringly explained that she was happily married.
“Well, I ‘ope ‘yer not expectin’ Mister Rubb to join you ‘ere,” she said.
‘Adelia’ had hastily and rapidly shaken her head. “N-no, ma’am.”
The use of this meek honorific had softened Miss Brooknetter somewhat, and she’d gone on to get Adrey settled in to a surprisingly well-appointed bedroom, clearly furnished with third-hand castoffs from the nobility, and instructed her as to the exceedingly tight dinner and bathroom schedule.
And after that, Adrey had been left to her own devices. Fortunately, she had business to keep her busy and out of the boarding house most of the day.
First she took a membership at a local gymnasium and swimming baths which, again, exclusively permitted only women. It served the double purpose of keeping her in fighting trim, and giving her somewhere to change outfits. Not entirely ideal, as if anyone noted her leaving in a completely different persona than she arrived then there might be talk, but it would serve for getting started.
Second and more dangerous was the need to make contact. After a month away and with the city so heavily locked down, there was every possibility that some or even all of the dead drops were compromised, or that the enemy knew their codes. There were plans and procedures in place for all of that, of course, but if any of the drops was being actively watched…
Nothing for it. Adrey wrote out two notes in code. The content was quite simple—“*Returning agent has established “Hatpin” safehouse, wants to come back in. Request verification and collection.“—*followed by a unique checksum pairing each drop location to the one she would use for replies. She used dead drops miles away from the boarding house, but not from each other.
Paranoia, paranoia, paranoia. And it would never quite be watertight no matter what they did, because if Adrey could remember all these details, then so too could a Oneist agent who ransacked her mind. But what else was there to do but take the risk and try?
Now, after a week with no contact, she was seriously starting to worry that she should move and establish a new house. But she wasn’t panicking yet. She helped Mrs. Brooknetter with the washing up after breakfast, then left citing her continuing need to find work, and walked the two miles or so over to her receiving drop locations.
This time, there were notes. Each with the correct marks and checks, at the correct sights, neither containing an alarm signal: “Request acknowledged. Welcome back.”
The rest of the notes were a string of coded instructions to the effect that if she wanted to come in then she should sit on a bench at the Ropely Park tram stop, twenty-three minutes before nightfall that very night, and which of several pre-arranged phrases she should use to identify herself.
Well…if this was a trap, then the resistance was so thoroughly compromised as to effectively make her a dead woman walking. She just had to have faith that it wasn’t, she supposed, and hope that Prince Sayf or somebody would have told her if she was walking into such peril.
…Yes. Somehow, she felt confident he would have let her know. He loved Ellaenie too much to do otherwise.
It was this thought alone that gave her the courage to go to the meeting. She sat on the bench dressed in her ‘neutral’ persona, a well-to-do lady of the lower gentility, at exactly twenty-three to dark. She fussed with her bag and skirts to hide her nerves, and tried not to probe at the hard lump of the cyanide pill tucked between her back teeth and her cheek.
Two minutes after she sat down, a tram rolled in, offloaded a few passengers, then rolled away again. One of the passengers, a slim and dapper young man in nicely tailored clothes, approached the bench.
“Do you mind if I sit here, madam?”
“Not at all.”
He smiled, tipped his hat, and sat. After a second of getting comfortable he frowned and peered about. “…This is Emlidge Road isn’t it?”
Adrey shook her head, heart pounding, and gave the correct response. “Sorry. You must have forgotten your glasses.”
“Oh, damn. Sorry to bother you, madam.” He rose and bustled off through the park. As he went, he left behind a slip of paper which Adrey slipped under her purse. She gave it a minute or so for people to move on, then discreetly read it.
“Board the next tram. Get off at the stop I mentioned and go into the pub. Ask for James.”
She obeyed. It was only three stops from Ropely Park to Emlidge Road, but they passed like a glacial year, made doubly tense and claustrophobic by the fact that she was in an enclosed space with only two easily controlled exits…
Nothing happened. She alighted safely at Emlidge Road, and sure enough there was a pub right over the road, the Hunting Hounds Inn. The sign swinging above the door depicted Maicoh and Maingan. She trotted across the road, in through the door, and found herself in a nicely appointed place with several large kegs behind the bar being tended by a freckled, rather zaftig young woman with blonde hair, who looked up and gave Adrey a smile as she entered. “Hello, miss!”
“Ah, hello,” Adrey replied. “Is James here today?”
She smiled and nodded. “’e’s by the fire in the lounge room, just over there, miss.”
Adrey thanked her, resisted the urge to take a deep breath, and headed through toward the lounge.
A movement in the corner of her eye caught her attention as he passed the front door. Two men she vaguely remembered seeing on the tram were crossing the road, heading for the Hunting Hounds with a little too much purpose to be just coming in for a pint.
Shit.
Rather than enter the lounge, she slipped sideways down the narrow space between the bar and a wall where a small brass sign discreetly indicated the water closet may be found. She found the back door and slipped out into the alley where she found herself squeezed between the wall and the mass of a brewer’s wagon. A man in a flat cap blinked down at her in surprise from the driver’s seat. She blinked back, equally surprised to see him there.
Then the door latch behind her clicked. In one smooth, well-practiced movement she dipped in her pocket, drew steel, turned, took the merest shaving of a second to assess—
The first of the two men who’d followed her into the bar didn’t have time to do more than widen his eyes as her knife passed cleanly through the front of his throat and up into his brain. He twitched and fell stone dead, dropping the pistol he’d been in the middle of drawing from his coat.
She twirled around the falling man like she was dancing a violent allemande, seized his companion’s gun hand around the wrist to force it out of the way, and drove one of her ‘hatpins’ between his ribs with terrible accuracy. He uttered a quiet “oof!” as it pierced his heart, blinked at her in astonishment, and then folded up bonelessly at her feet. Adrey confiscated the pistol as he collapsed, and aimed it back into the pub for a moment in case anyone else was coming.
There was a moment of terrible stillness. It started to dawn on her that she’d just killed, for the very first time in her life. Two men were dead by her hand, and the most she felt about it was mild surprise at how easy it had been. Her gun hand wasn’t trembling in the least bit.
“…Nicely done,” Skinner commented from up on the wagon. “Think ye’d best get up here and we’d best be off.”
“Right.” Adrey tucked the stolen pistol into her belt at the small of her back, under her coat. She retrieved her blades, gave them a brisk wipe clean on their victims’ clothes, and climbed up alongside him. “It’s good to see you again.”
“And you, but that was too bloody close.” He twitched the reins and the placid draft horse who’d stood quietly through the double murder grumbled deep in his belly before plodding forward.
“I take it we’re compromised, somewhere.”
“Yeah, but it’s not a disaster. Not yet. Get that bloody pill out y’mouth, would ya? Can’t have you accidentally crunchin’ it just as we got you back.”
Adrey nodded, and gratefully spat the little rubber-coated pellet into her palm. “Better that than Encircled,” she said.
“True. Bloody true. ‘Ere. Check behind ‘yer seat. You’ll find somethin’ to make you look a bit more like you belong on this heap.”
Adrey nodded, turned, and found a voluminous brown man’s raincoat and flat cap. With them on, she’d pass for a tall and beardless boy, from a distance. She shrugged into them as Skinner encouraged the horse up to a lumbering trot, and they rolled away toward the warehouse district.
“So,” she said, as she settled in for the ride. “Tell me what’s been happening.”
----------------------------------------
> “Salt pork, peas, beans, ship’s biscuit and a ration of small beer, cooked slow in the casserole pot. That’s the airman’s stew, lad, an’ you’ll eat it twice a day aboard ship. By the Crowns, you get sick of it during a long haul! But the worst part is, after you’re retired from the life, you’ll sometimes find yourself hankering for a bowl…” —Overheard in the Rosehip Inn, Cantre
DOING BUSINESS
The Gate, Yonguitang Earthmote 09.06.03.11.12
“I understand they look small, of course, but I’ve read enough about Yonguitang to know she has a sopping wet season, and that she bobs low enough for snow at some ends of the year. This is ithmink pelts, the snow elf Sets trap and farm them ‘cuz they’re the very best fur you can get. Those little beasts can’t afford to ever get wet to the skin, so the fur is both warm and perfectly waterproof. And, as a bonus, look at that color! The posh noblewomen up on Garanhir love it!”
Jerl grinned as the merchant gave his crate of furs an uncertain glance. He was in his element right now. Haggling and pattering and bullshitting his way through a sale? What could be better?!
“If it’s that great, why sell it here so cheap?” the merchant asked.
“Oh, well. The Oneists have locked down Auldenheigh and they’re only letting their Clear Skies friends do business,” Jerl explained. “Us freemerchants are running out of independent harbors. I’m not selling at a loss here, but I tell you, if I was to let it go for these prices up in Antage or a major Guild hub? They’d think I was cracked.”
The merchant stroked his chin, then shrugged and nodded. “You said thirty for the whole crate?”
“Thirty-eight,” Jerl answered, having first said forty.
“I’ll give you thirty-two.”
“Can’t quite go that low, friend. Settle on thirty-six?”
“…Done.”
They shook on it, a neat roll of coins was counted into Jerl’s palm, and the merchant’s two strapping young helpers hoisted the crate onto a litter and trotted away after him. The merchant was grinning: so was Jerl. He’d written that crate off as a complete loss, so walking away with a profit, even a narrowish one, was quite alright by him. That one crate of furs would keep them in hard tack, dried peas and salt pork for a couple of months.
Or, the local equivalent, anyway. Sin had been restocking their provisions with what looked to be mostly rice, beans and smoked eels. Jerl wondered where it came from: the foreigners’ side of the Gate had a small strip of arable land and rice paddies, but no river. From what he could tell, the people here got their water from collecting the rain. It didn’t seem like enough farmland to keep everyone fed, and yet food was abundant enough to buy for reasonable prices.
Perhaps the wall didn’t separate one side from the other as completely as was advertised. On that thought, Mouse had slipped away to explore, and had been gone for several hours at this point. Jerl wasn’t worried: if anything happened, he’d know thanks to Mind.
He was musing on these thoughts when Harad slipped out of the shadows among some nearby crates and barrels to walk with him. Jerl still didn’t quite know what to make of the intense Rüwyrdan warrior. He was fairly sure he’d been on the receiving end of the closest thing to approval the dark-mooded bastard ever gave, but except on that one occasion, Harad had been closed and grim.
He had a disconcerting habit of picking up conversations without preamble, and ending them without pleasantries.
“Nothing,” he said.
Jerl restrained himself, with an effort, from asking the redundant questions. He knew where Harad had been and what he was referring to: he’d scouted the Circle building in the middle of Out-Town. Anyone else, and Jerl might have asked something like ‘you’re sure?’ or ‘you checked thoroughly?’ or even ‘did you find any clues to where the’ve gone?’ But Harad, he knew for a fact, would have been entirely thorough, and wouldn’t have reported ‘nothing’ if he had in fact found something.
He was a tough elf to converse with. Asking for his thoughts was redundant, because if he had any he would have shared them. How did one…actually talk to somebody without all the meaningless back-and-forth of saying aloud what both parties already knew?
…Well…
“There’s a bloody great stone building there, Harad. I doubt you found exactly nothing.”
“True. Things were put away correctly. Tools stowed, fires put out neatly, beds made, unfinished construction covered with oilcloths. They left in an orderly manner.”
“Meaning they weren’t run out of town…” Jerl mused to himself. “I don’t like that. Why would Civorage just up and abandon a half-built Circle?”
Harad shrugged. “I see two options. Either he needed the people elsewhere, or he knew we were coming here and has withdrawn them to lay an ambush.”
“Not an effective ambush if there’s a clear sign that they were here,” Jerl noted.
“Sometimes, leaving spoor to lure a tracker in is the perfect setup for ambush. What does Time tell you about the future?”
Jerl shook his head. “The future isn’t real,” he said. “It’s a series of ‘what-could-be’ that I glimpsed in its entirety, once, in the full flourish of the Word’s power, and promptly forgot to spare my sanity. When the Word tells me something, it’s really just me remembering the things I allowed myself to keep. And I think I was quite judicious with what I kept. I didn’t warn myself about the attack on the Thundering Hall, afte all…”
Harad gave him a furrowed brow. “You are an odd creature, Holten. You seem afraid of your own power.”
“Well, I have the example of elves to remind me why I should be.”
Harad’s lip twitched. Jerl couldn’t tell if he was stung, or amused.
“Besides,” Jerl added. “My head’s not big enough to contain all possible futures. I’d go mad, and then I’d be no good to anyone. Don’t worry, though: we can’t lose.”
“Hmmf! Musen Ordfey erenan, retratemha.”
“I bet they did, but they didn’t have Time on their side. They couldn’t undo their failures and mistakes…thank the Crowns.”
Harad grunted. “I will watch the skies,” he declared, and jogged up the gangplank without ceremony or preamble. Jerl was still shaking his head over the abrupt departure when an arm slipped through his.
“Hi.”
Jerl turned and gave Mouse a kiss. “You’re back!”
“Of course.” Mouse grinned at him, then nodded a head toward the wall. “Wanna hear about my adventures?”
Jerl pulled up a box and sat down attentively. He wasn’t worried about being overheard: Mouse would know if they were. “So what’s the verdict?”
Mouse perched opposite on a barrel. “I did some asking around. Turns out, some Yunei beyond the wall send shipments of basic food and supplies to exiled family members. It’s…’Improper,’ but not unforgivable among low-caste families.”
“Alright…” Jerl nodded, “But…how? If they’re forbidden from leaving, and the exiles are forbidden from returning…”
Mouse grinned. “There’s a weakness. You can’t see it from the air, but there’s a drain running under the wall, just like the aqueduct to Civorage’s palace back in Long Drop. Families in the empire drop a little boat made of rice straw in the water and it carries parcels to this side. In fact, there’s more than one drain. I counted four.”
“Oh, no. Not again?” Jerl shivered involuntarily at the memory of the wet, cold, claustrophobic experience that had been his last time traversing an underground water course.
Mouse chuckled. “Don’t worry, I already went in that way so you don’t have to. Let me tell you what I found…
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There was a peasant woman humming to herself as she packed bundles of rice and cloth into a woven straw boat. She looked up in surprise and alarm as Mouse emerged from the water, then—*Leave Me Alone—*she promptly went glassy-eyed and forgetful, and returned to her work and humming.
Mouse slipped away into the cover of a nearby alleyway, and concentrated. He’d spent time with Amir while the Queen was in flight, having found that Mind gave him a serious advantage when it came to learning magic. He could see and feel Amir’s understanding of the Art, and gain from it. And the navigator knew some very useful spells.
For example: one to force most of the water out of soaking clothes, and then evaporate the lingering dampness to steam. Once that was done, he stepped out of the alley and ambled quietly through the crowd of people going about their daily lives. He felt attention slip and slide off him like water off a duck, and nobody around him reacted to his presence in any way besides unconsciously moving aside as though he was just another face in the crowd.
No other thief could have done this, he reflected. Stealth wasn’t just a matter of moving quietly and staying out of sight, you had to belong. You couldn’t get lost in the crowd if you didn’t look like part of it, and Mouse stood more than head and shoulders above this crowd. Not to mention that he was blond of hair and clearly Garanese.
No, without the Word, this would have been over already, the moment that peasant woman saw him. Instead, he stepped aside and watched five soldiers pass. Their armor and weapons were unfamiliar, but the banter was universal. He didn’t speak their language, but thanks to Mind he still understood the thrust of ther exchange.
The sound of laughter followed them around the corner. None of them had even glanced in Mouse’s direction.
With such freedom, it wasn’t long before he found the compound marked on Prince Sayf’s map as the On family estate. He had to allow, what the map hadn’t conveyed was how well-protected it was. The garden walls had undulating backs designed to evoke Dragon’s legendary sinuosity, and the decorative tilework on top made for a tricky overhang with no good place to grip, and very possibly the tiles were supposed to slip off with a loud clatter should a climber try to hang from them. Mouse could see the sculpted tops of ornamental trees within the perimeter, but nothing stood outside the wall except for patrolling guards.
The front gate was a wide circle, large enough for a horse and carriage to fit through comfortably. There was an identical gate at the far side, when he explored that way, and also a wide square gate tucked close to one of the buildings. That, Mouse guessed, would be for servants and goods.
Three gates. This place wasn’t built to withstand a siege, but with even the kitchen entrance guarded it was certainly enough to keep out an ordinary cracksman or budge. And while the power to be ignored was useful, it was of no help here.
Civorage, he guessed, would have just dominated the guards’ minds and compelled them to open the way for him. But Mouse was resolute on one point above all others: he was not Civorage, and wasn’t going to use Mind that way.
Well. He’d completed his casing of the place, so far as he could right now. He retraced his steps to the drain, making careful note of not only the swiftest direct route, but also any opportunities along the way to lose a pursuit if somebody turned out to be immune to his powers. This time, an old man was loading a small basket full of mushrooms into one of the reed boats to float downstream. He ignored Mouse entirely as Mouse stooped, crawled into the drain, and started the slow, cramped crawl back to the far side of the walls.
Elbow and knee wrappings. Going to need those. Crawling was hard on joints.
He reached the Out-Town side, stood, reminded a staring civilian to forget he existed, and slipped away back toward the Queen.
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Jerl nodded as Mouse finished his report. “I don’t see how I’m gonna get in there with you. Not unless I fly the Queen over the walls, and that’d be kinda…”
“Unsubtle.” Mouse smirked. “Don’t bother. I can get the vault myself. I just need a dark, dry night and some of my tools.”
Jerl nodded. “And what do we do in the meantime?”
“You keep the ship ready to go. I can’t stop them from noticing their treasure’s missing, so we need to be ready to leave as soon as I get back.”
“Okay.” Jerl nodded and stood. “Tomorrow night, then. That’s the earliest we can be ready by.”
“Works for me. I gotta get ready anyway,” Mouse agreed.
“Do you need a distraction or anything…?” Jerl ventured.
Mouse chuckled. “Nope. What I need is for it to be an ordinary, boring, routine night on the job for the guards. You just relax and let me do what I do, okay?”
“…Okay.” Jerl nodded. “I just…I’m getting a foreboding.”
“Of what?”
“I don’t know yet. The Oneists packing up and leaving suddenly has me on edge. I keep wondering when they’ll come back.”
“All the more reason to get this done quick and quiet, as soon as possible.”
“Yeah. Just…be careful. Time isn’t giving me anything specific, but it still feels…unquiet, somehow.”
Mouse nodded, gave him a kiss, and trotted up the ramp. “I’m always careful,” he promised.
“I know.” Jerl watched him go, then sighed, rubbed his hands, and looked about. There was much still to prepare before the heist, and even with everything in place, there was always the chance of something going awry. What if Mouse met an obstacle he couldn’t pass immediately and needed a third infiltration to complete the job? Or a fourth? What if it rained tomorrow night and the drain wasn’t usable?
Ridiculous to worry. What would happen, would happen.
But somehow, he was certain it wouldn’t happen quite how they expected