Oh, spicy one today! Tempest abducts loyal vessels straight off the sea! The captain betrayed by his first mate!
Anybody know if a ship is tax deductible? Asking for a friend.
Stay tuned for more at the bell!
Spring 3
Just after dawn reached Ruhum, Alisandra admitted herself into The Mayor’s Dive with her spare key. She eased in, catching the doorbell before it rang, and locked the door. Then, safe, she swore softly for the dark tables.
“Rough night?” asked the mayor from the furthest booth, nursing a stiff coffee.
A slight twitch in her ring finger betrayed her surprise. No more. Alisandra Mishkan, Archangel and Tempest, power and principality, did not flinch from unexpected shadows.
Her halo still hummed with the night’s work, little flickers of honeyed light glittering across the tables.
“You should still be asleep, Oliver,” the angel remonstrated.
“No such luck,” he shrugged, sipping his brew.
“Lumia or more reminders of your time in Mirielle’s thrall?”
“Visitor.”
Alisandra glanced at the ceiling. “What have you dragged home now?”
“You can’t sense her yourself?” he teased.
“The drums of war are silent.”
Tipping back the cup, he asked, “Do you smell anything?”
She inhaled. There were the usuals: grease, metal, soap. Beneath, however, a whiff of jasmine and lavender that teased at her nose coyly.
Mirielle.
Oliver nodded. “An echo wouldn’t bother me. Her scent lingers, you know? This, however, comes right after I caught my visitor messing with Thea’s shell. Girl was bleeding like she wanted first prize!”
Crossing the restaurant, Alisandra helped herself to the seat across from him.
Yawning, he slid her cup across the table. “But before we face my problems, how are you?”
She considered her cup: a blue mug with the House Mishkan sigil across the front. She considered its place: waiting here for this rendezvous among Oliver’s larder.
In another world, he would not have to hide this cup in the back.
Aloud, she shrugged. “Spring begins.”
“As bad as last year?”
“Three tonight.”
Oliver whistled.
Three monsters in the span of as many hours. Yet there was more to the beasts than their threat to sailors.
Inside each, buried deep, a shard of the Wyrm.
“His seed has been sewn well and wide,” the angel muttered. “I scour the world for their taint, and yet they rise anew. Spring calls to them. Because it tis the season of life? Because we approach the anniversary? I cannot say. I cannot find them all.”
Unable to wrest answers from steam, she squeezed the cup harder.
“Don’t break another one,” Oliver chided. Rising, he stepped into the kitchen and rattled around.
Alisandra called after him, “For the thousandth time, Oshton, I do not require sustenance!”
“For the thousandth time, I ask the Archangel to respect the power inherent in cheese chips!” he shot back.
Sighing, she sank into the booth, drained her beverage in a shot, and watched the borough waken.
Dawn’s charm rendered the dying street quaint. The windows rattled as the morning trucks rumbled around the bend at top speed. Young men from the gang that dominated the southern half of the borough swaggered down the sidewalk, hopping potholes and offering the sailor’s salute to the Mayor’s Dive on their way.
Oliver returned with a heaping plate doused in cheese and shredded beef. He dropped it in the middle of the table, plopped down, and handed her a fork. “It’s a real pain. I still have Mirielle nightmares, you know.”
“Her receiving room?”
“Worse. Her accounting.”
The Archangel chuckled. “A bounty well-plundered there, Mister Oshton. The vultures set upon that corpse before the rubble could cool.”
Before we even counted the dead.
“The final salute for the richest House in history,” he agreed.
“So toasts the last Inventor in Ruhum?”
“A title even more out of fashion than your own, Lady Mishkan!”
“Then renounce it before the Conclave.”
“Grovel and wail about hubris and sin? How sorry I am that my greed brought ruin?”
“Give your fortune to the church,” she teased.
“I’m already doing charity!” he laughed, waving a hand at his abode. “I’m mayor of Mel’s linen closet!”
Another truck rumbled past, bearing goods meant for the Sevenborough warehouses that formed the only meaningful funding for this district of outcasts.
Its passage rattled the windows again, and their reflections wobbled along.
One, angel, her Blade bright as the dawn. The other, mayor, going to fat.
They finished the food in silence. Then, suitably coffee-warmed, Oliver launched into his story. By the time he finished answering Alisandra’s pointed questions, the eighth bell rang.
“…which brings us to the pertinent matter,” the mayor concluded. “What next?”
Alisandra tilted her head back to regard the apartment above. “Why should we not send her to Belle?”
“Hunted and Azure-touched, Ali. That’s a powder keg.”
“The next Donovan?”
They both grimaced.
Oliver pressed on. “I couldn’t find a strand of teal in her hair. Nor a brand. As far as I can tell, Lynne did not claim her in service. Yet I find myself drawn to a greater question: why is the angel of Oceans meddling in the Conclave’s veins?”
“Let her slumber in Reverie,” the Archangel answered.
“You could rouse her to ask.”
“We will let her rest.”
“Oh, now it’s ‘we’?” Oliver snapped.
Alisandra glowered. “Mind your manners, mayor.”
“Tell me what Lynne’s doing, angel.”
They could have glared at each other all morning, two rocks in a booth, while the Archangel debated with herself.
He stood with us at Lumia. Why should we hold the truth from him?
Yet what use is the burden? This is the domain of angels.
If I tell him nothing, he will pry on his own.
“You’re thinking about how to tell me the least possible,” he noted.
“You will not sleep any better for the knowing.”
He saluted with his coffee. “Probably not, no.”
Alisandra tapped the table with a nail. “Mother is the surgeon, and those veins the sutures.”
Oliver scowled. “It’s been fifteen years, Ali.”
“And the damage goes so much deeper than people realize.”
He snuffed out the sun, Oliver. Cast me down, through the earth, and out the other side. Lumia is a mere scab atop a greater wound.
Sensing a fragment of her worry, he paled. “Is there anything I can…never mind. Foolish question.”
“We will not rest until every damage is repaired,” she reassured. This is my oath on my name and station. That you might know reprieve from this burden.
“You won’t rest even then. When was the last time you ate?”
“Last time I was here.” Lunch, seven weeks ago, a quick hamburger in between meetings. They had barely spoken for the crush of patrons demanding the best ice cream in the borough. “I appreciate your worry, but we cannot afford to be caught flat-footed whether on the field of battle or the halls of the Conclave.”
“As you say, General Mishkan,” he drawled. “Back to the matter at hand. Should we ship Valkyrie to Waves?”
Straightening, Alisandra mulled his question. “If our objective is secrecy, no.”
Her mother’s temple served many purposes, but its gossip ran faster than even the radio. News of Valkyrie would reach the Ruhum embassy before Alisandra could remove her shoes.
“I don’t feel comfortable sending her home with this many loose ends.” He drummed his fingers. “Highbranch? With the Erudite sisters?”
“To train with the smugglers?” Alisandra snorted. “Belle would have your head.”
“Unless you have a finishing school in your back pocket, good Lady, we may not have the luxury of pleasing choices,” he grumbled. “Unless she leaves the country, she is in danger. What is your solution?”
Leaning back, Alisandra let her eyelids half-close and flipped through the library inside her skull. Perfect angelic memory and her voracious readings combined…
Ah, yes.
“Her sixteenth birthday this Spring forty-five,” Alisandra noted.
“Yes?”
“The boroughs still use rural law, and rural law states that a callow youth may repent of their misdeeds on their day of adulthood to be washed clean.”
With the help of a priest or magistrate, of course, but many such officials were keen to help the youth move on from minor mistakes for a small donation.
We’ll have to arrange quite the gift basket for this one, she noted, adding it to her mental list.
A list that never sank below fifty items.
“That’s the legal angle,” Oliver accepted. “However, what about the spiritual aspect? The girl stinks of angels!”
A scent that called to all manner of trouble. Mages always were.
Oliver popped his neck, gearing himself up to fall on this sword.
Alisandra spoke first. “Then she must stay at Woodhaven.”
Neighboring Sixborough had accepted a Conclave grant for development four years ago, trying to snare outer borough shoppers closer to home. Thus emerged Woodhaven, a mixed development plaza for drinking, dining, and shopping, flanked by two residential towers.
A sensible idea, but the developers demanded cheap land, and cheap land was only to be found in the outskirts. Woodhaven slept on the border between Six- and Sevenborough, half of its shops closed and the residential towers all but abandoned.
The only folk to make a profit at Woodhaven were the construction Guilds.
Having received its glowing press up front, the Conclave simply forgot the development existed.
Alisandra, meanwhile, used the top floor of the first tower to embrace the ancient maxim: never Work where you sleep.
“With Sebastian?!” Oliver scoffed.
“He will find it trivial to keep tabs on her activities.”
“That’s not my worry.”
“Then visit,” she invited. “You are well-equipped to recognize Mirielle’s influence, latent or otherwise. No other mortal could compare.”
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.
Though she meant a compliment, Oliver scowled. Shaking his head, he grabbed their dishes and dumped them into the sink.
Alisandra grimaced. I should not have called him a mortal.
Should not have highlighted the fundamental gulf that yawned between them.
Dusting his hands, he moved on. “It’s almost ninth bell. I’ve mayor’s work to do. If you mean Woodhaven, we should look now.”
Grateful to move on, she rose after him. “Who will supervise the girl in your absence?”
He whistled out the window and winked. “Only the best, Lady Mishkan.”
Indulging him, Alisandra smiled back.
As they stepped outside and locked up, he noted, “I gave Jimmy the day off to help his mother. We should have Valkyrie settled one way or another before he returns.”
“A pity. She might learn a valuable lesson from your cook.”
“You know how picky he is about the kitchen,” Oliver chuckled.
They started down Main and found their first interruption in only a handful of steps. Six trucks rumbled in place at the junction of Main and a warehouse road, the drivers loitering on the curb.
“Again?” Oliver muttered. “One moment, Ali.”
Behold! The mayor like a shepherd, tending his flock.
He ambled straight over and asked, “Who are you waiting for?”
The drivers recognized him, and one responded, “Kenneth.”
“And he wasn’t at the depot?”
“Depot’s backed up to the gate. Wouldn’t even get us in.” The driver waved to his idling vehicle as his proof.
Oliver swore. “That lout better not be drunk again. Your itinerary?”
“Textiles in Thirdborough by tenth bell.”
“Hold tight. I’ll grab the manager.” Hurrying back to the angel, he motioned her to pick up the pace. “We can take the back route. Excuse the divergence.”
“My ninth bell appointment is not critical.” Merely a meeting with a Guild representative to hear complaints on the selective enforcement of tariffs. “You seem overtaxed.”
“Some days it feels like I’m the only one who cares if the damn borough even survives,” he admitted, hurrying his step.
They broke from Main Street and cut into the warren of Sevensborough. Beyond the manufactured order of that street, all semblance of building codes dissolved. The neat alley devolved into a dirt footpath, pinned between tenements built with uneven floors and scavenged panels. Metal shacks grew out of old barns, paths erupted into sharecropper fields, and steam rose from unlicensed factories. Shanty town bridges crisscrossed above the narrowest alleys, lined with clothes on the line, and blind turns hosted every kind of loitering ne’er-do-well.
Taking a blind turn, they found a scoundrel watering his beer across a half dozen kegs. The man glanced up and said, “Top of the morning, Mishkan! See you got Mel’s dog on his leash.”
Nonplussed, Oliver asked, “Seen Kenneth?”
“Sold him some rotgut yesterday.”
“Hells. You could have told him no!”
“But his coin said yes,” the scoundrel countered.
“You’d sell opium to a ten-year-old,” the mayor growled.
“If they could pay,” agreed the scoundrel.
Both knew the mayor’s quandary. Constables knew better than to brave the warren, the scoundrel paid dues to the faction that ran this quarter. Oliver might hold the deed, but each faction within Sevensborough held the manpower.
In particular, this turn belonged to the Jungle, and the Jungle believed in freedom to sell rotgut to recovering alcoholics as long as the coin was solid. After all, what fault of this belonged to the merchant?
Sorry company for an honorable man, Alisandra thought. I will pry you from this hovel one day, Oliver. A short step to Highbranch, and you might spend your years shaping the future instead of playing nursemaid to these drunkards.
They left the scoundrel to his work, rounded another corner, and found the alley’s exit boarded over with panels of pitted wood.
“Shall I?” Alisandra offered, shaking her knuckles.
Stepping forward, he felt down the panels until he found the right seam. Then, with one tug, he slid the entire wall out of the way. “No need to pick at things. Let the warehouses have a little piece of mind.”
“The illusion of security,” the angel agreed.
They crossed the road, sparing a glance at the depot. It was the largest complex in the borough, six long warehouses and sixty trucks ringed by barbed fence and armed towers.
Quite the impressive edifice. A castle situated among the detritus.
Though Alisandra knew that the warehouses within suffered an astronomic rate of theft and loss – all from the employees. These days, those guards with guns spent as much time interrogating their workers as watching the borough slums outside.
Entering the next alley, they approached the edge of the borough. Oliver left Alisandra a moment at a faded gazebo, once the plaything of the House Erudite children. Despite the unchecked growth, this park remained. Flowers still proudly ringed the crushed stone path. Only one addition had been made by the new inhabitants, even after they peeled apart the Erudite manor for parts.
The gazebo was now painted a wild swirl of aqua, azure, turquoise and teal.
Beyond the park, the mayor shouted for the back-up depot manager.
In a strange way, this territory is mine, Alisandra thought, tracing her fingers over childish doodles on the steps. Their clumsy hands sketched out Stormmother, Tempest, and Maiden through the innocence of Grace: a warm mother and two big sisters.
Other images crowded the piece: cragbear and phoenix, serpent and sylph. Priests Verdant and Plateau. All crowded together, unified as these children were unified. After all, did they not scrimmage soccer against the Verdant boys? Did they not take their lessons from Plateau nannies?
Sevensborough was the dumping ground for the unwanted – a convenient pen for heretics – and yet here on gazebo steps she might witness the world as it could be.
An old woman poked her head out of the second-floor window of her leaning house. “Good Lady! You should have said you were coming!”
“Hello, Betha,” Alisandra called in return. Her eidetic memory served up reminders: Mother to four, two still alive; former floor manager at a textile factory in Lumia until the day of the Wyrm; born in Deepbloom but Azure faithful. Had built a sizeable retirement; all stolen in one form or another during the years after the calamity until she was reduced to her current position.
Alisandra wished Betha’s history was unique, but tens of thousands had suffered the same. The Conclave had wasted session after session finding people to censure for Lumia while Alisandra shouted otherwise.
They censured and confiscated and branded; set tariffs and restrictions; banned Aure’s very name; all that and gave no thought whatsoever to the funding of food kitchens and shelters.
Thousands had starved, and the Conclave had concerned itself only with the assets that could be seized in the name of punishment for the kin – real or imagined – of Charlotte Broadleaf.
“Don’t just stand there!” the woman bade. “Come in! Come in!”
A young man opened the front door for her. Hammers and grinding echoed from behind him, hint to the informal economy that sustained the borough.
Accepting the invitation, Alisandra followed the man into the house, past the bedrooms converted into workshops, and into the kitchen at the back. An electric burner fueled a massive pot of stew, enough for an army, and a little girl of about three years stared from her stirring seat at the stranger admitted into the kitchen.
“Mind the stew, little one,” Alisandra teased. “You will burn the potatoes.”
The child wrinkled her nose, chewing her thoughts, and finally asked, “You look like a mailman. Are you a mailman?”
“I have been known to deliver a message or two in my time.”
The girl stirred the potatoes three times, still staring.
“Yes?”
Finally making up her mind, the child jabbed the stirring stick at Alisandra’s halo. “Tempest!”
Such a simple word, but Alisandra’s halo throbbed with the power of it.
Like shifting her fighting stance.
Lady Mishkan receded, and the daughter of the Stormmother stood in this ramshackle house.
Betha bustled into the room a moment later, rubbing her hand along her crooked back. “Ah, let me give you a hug, good…”
Her eyes fogged only a heartbeat.
Most mortals never even noticed the hitch, especially not in a woman aged.
“Ah, Holy Tempest! How you bless our home!”
Behold the power of names, Alisandra marveled. Yet which is the truth? The Lady or the Fury?
She wondered too.
Taking the initiative, Alisandra stepped forward and squeezed Betha in a careful hug. She felt the age in this woman, frail as a bird, trembling before the inexorable click of Time’s gears. One day soon, there would be the final nudge that would return Betha to the Black Gate. A bad cough; a poor meal; a fall down the crooked stairs.
Patting Betha with one hand, Alisandra slipped a silver note into the grandmother’s apron with her other. Betha would protest charity to the gums…if she could remember its source when she found the note in a week.
“I feel the ocean in you!” the woman laughed. “Warm as the southern Spring, you are! What brings your majesty to our hovel?”
“Hardly a hovel, Betha,” Alisandra chided. “Take pride. You were given nothing and still built this.”
“Not sure which will topple over first!”
The angel nodded along. “And you have a new visitor, I see. Ah, but forgive my impropriety. What is your name, child?”
“Lethe. I’m turning four!”
“She’s a sweet one,” Betha added quickly. “Lethe dearest, you must refer to our guest as Holy One!”
Or any one of the popular invectives from the papers.
She was the loathsome Mishkan in the Conclave and the Tempest in the southern temple. Here, she straddled the gap between both, wondering what would happen on the day when that veil of Grace finally snapped.
Lethe blinked, processing yet more thoughts. Shy, slow, or preoccupied with her inner word, she ignored Betha’s gentle prodding to introduce herself properly. Then, gasping, she blurted out, “Oh, it’s today! Mommy! Mommy, the Tempest is here!”
It’s today? Alisandra wondered.
The little girl dropped her stick and charged away.
“Might I ask her situation?”
“I fear you will hear no surprises, Holy One. Neighbor ratted out that their family kept an imp; their house and assets were seized.”
“Which borough?”
“Third. They are working their way outwards,” growled Betha softly.
Lethe reappeared, dragging along her mother. The harried woman wore a shop apron covered in soot, pressed tight over her navy blue skirt, and she reacted to Alisandra in the usual manner: a sharp gasp and wobbling knees.
“Oh! Oh, great Tempest! We are not…we must…” the woman breathed.
“Please do not trouble yourself with hospitality,” Alisandra urged. “Our time is short.”
“I told you the Tempest comes today!” Lethe announced proudly.
Raking her hands through her hair, the woman nodded. “Y-yes, sweetie. Oh, but we must at least…oh, the shrine is in a terrible state!”
I have witnessed shrines enough for an eternity in these last fifteen years, Alisandra thought. Still, she nodded. The forms of courtesy brought comfort and structure to the visits of supposed divinity.
Better to humor such things. Better to walk with gentle steps.
Two men hauled in the portable shrine and laid the pieces across the dining table. On the left, a cutting of Verdandi’s wimba tree tended in a careful clay pot. On the right, a slim stick of turquoise planted straight down into an obsidian bowl.
“To the Holy One among us,” Betha prayed, leading the others. “To daughters returned to the bosom of the sea and the fury that laid low the Wyrm.”
Alisandra waited quietly, expression impassive, as the prayer covered the usual bases.
How I detest this sycophancy. Am I a rampaging cragbear to be appeased with honey?
But how else were mortals to interact with the supposedly divine? Ritual became the choreography to master the gulf, every step smothered in meaning.
Politics even among the gods. They assiduously include Verdandi lest they incur the wrath of Deepbloom, but set her cutting slightly to the back to imply my primacy. Do they fear that we would come to blows over the inches of the table?
Still, progress must be acknowledged. Twenty years ago, men would have come to blows over these two shrines in proximity. Slowly, slowly do our worlds unite.
Bored with the praying, Lethe wormed her hand up to grab Alisandra’s pinky. Her little fingers hummed with the trust of the young as she whispered, “How come you bang in my head?”
Her mother slipped away, confident the Tempest would babysit for a moment.
“My apologies,” Alisandra whispered back, patting the girl on the head. “We echo.”
Lethe frowned. “Why?”
Rather than explain her theories on the gravity of Will, the angel hummed, “Who knows?”
Betha cracked open an eye, noticed the two conversing, and sped up the tail end of the prayer. “…and Stormmother bless!”
“Stormmother bless,” Alisandra agreed. Slipping her hand free of Lethe, she looked to the door. “My apologies, but my day is quite full.”
“You are a goddess after all!” the grandmother cackled.
“I would impose in one matter. Please deliver a message to the Wavespeaker.”
Shifting to business, Betha nodded. “Easily done, Holy One!”
“Let her know that her daughter is in my–” Alisandra bit her lip. A careless slip! Thank the heavens for blind Grace, or I would be undone in a day! “–is in Lady Mishkan’s care. She will be keeping Valkyrie out of sight for the time being.”
The old woman smirked. “So little Valkyrie was the one they’re gabbing about on the radio…”
“I trust in your discretion on this matter.”
From the hallway, Lethe’s mother whispered, “Only a few more steps, dear.”
Alisandra bit off a sigh and steeled herself. This too was part of ritual. Part of her duty to shepherd this world as its morning star.
Turning, she met Lethe’s father. He was still young, handsome but for the maimed flesh and pockmarks scored across his brow and eyes. An inflamed hole in his sinus wheezed with every blind step, though he offered no complaint to be led by his wife’s hand.
“To heal is the gift of my sister the Maiden,” Alisandra apologized.
Lethe’s mother shook her head, persisting. “We have no money for the trip. No money for the line. The equipment failed; he stayed to save lives! The Sixborough managers laughed off his wounds and called him a drowned bastard! They–”
Alisandra raised her hand. “I hear your grievance.”
That the Conclave might censure the Azure faith on one hand – deny them the rights of livelihood and property – and yet with the next breath demand a full accounting of every imaginary asset before they might leave. Ransom by another name.
Punishment for the Stormmother’s part in Lumia for the faithful and a feeding frenzy of larceny for the enforcers.
“Please. We will pay! Only state your price!”
In gold and silver? Shall such trinkets seal the Wyrm in his restless Reverie, mortal?
Her bitter thought showed on her face, and the woman sagged. “F-forgive me. I demand too much.”
“T’was not for you I enjoined such fury,” Alisandra quickly reassured. Ever aware that her words might crush these poor folk with the same ease as her Blade, she reached out to take the woman’s hand.
The woman’s calluses were thick, her nails chipped. She was no older than Alisandra when the angel Bloomed, but such hands told a harsh story.
“Do you have family in Waves?”
“Yes, Holy One. Ah, but…but we lost contact. Our letters go unanswered. I fear they have moved.”
“Could you find them?” the angel asked her husband.
“If I could see,” he dared.
The adults in the room froze, awaiting the legendary Tempest fury, but Alisandra laughed. “I approve of such fire! Take my hand.”
Leading the maimed man, she returned to the courtyard and assessed the weather. The force of her teleporting step protected her against the normal variance of rain and snow, but she preferred to avoid stepping through a thunderstorm with mortal passengers.
Just in case.
She took for granted by now that she would know of a thunderstorm even over the horizon. In the moment of her step, she felt the totality of the journey, and she bent her path like the clever shot of a seasoned archer.
Behind them, Lethe whined. “Can I come too?!”
“When you are older,” Alisandra assured. And less likely to soil yourself mid-step.
She hefted the man into her arms, examined him, and asked for a shawl. Lethe’s mother provided, and she helped the man wrap it over his face.
“The wind of this journey is tumultuous,” she explained, making sure the shawl covered his exposed wounds. “Have you eaten today?”
“No.”
“That is usually for the best.”
She leaped, shaking the borough with her launch, and arced through the morning clouds into her wide, free sky.
Turning her practiced eye south, she felt the world part before her Will and stretched into the void towards distant Waves.
Here and there, together.
Crossing the miles in a single step easy as hopping a brook.
As they erupted into the sky above Waves, the husband released a strangled gurgle and clutched at her shoulders.
“Already here,” she reassured, breathing in the humid air.
Releasing her hold on the sky, she angled their descent for a wide stone plinth at the eastern edge of the Stormmother’s ever-swelling temple complex. Together, they landed among palm trees.
A priestess awaited her arrival, day or night, and prompted rose to sing, “Welcome home, Holy One!”
“A tribute for the Maiden,” the angel said, helping Lethe’s father to his feet again.
Thankfully, her priesthood was well experienced in all manner of strays and sudden requests. “Of course, Holy One.”
“Assist him in finding his family once healed. He should require no special accommodations.”
The priestess curtsied and took the man’s hand.
“Oh, and tell Esmerelda that I will almost certainly miss tonight’s play. Convey my apologies.”
Alisandra crossed back to Sevensborough in another heartbeat. Landing, she found Oliver waiting at the Erudite gazebo with Betha. The old woman stopped mid-sentence at her arrival, ceding the field.
“Keeping busy, I see,” Oliver noted.
“I would have preferred the man be able to travel the usual way,” she said, mostly addressing Betha.
“And I’d prefer the Conclave let him,” the mayor shot back.
You’re the noble Lady here!
Alisandra ignored that. Setting her heels in motion, she hurried for the next alley.
Oliver caught up, still seething. “I vouched for Kenneth, you know! ‘I just need a bit of stability!’ he said. I threw the man a rope, and he sold it for hooch. What am I supposed to do with that?!”
“Limit the damage.”
On that cheerful note, they fell silent until they emerged through another false fence on the cheerful cobblestone lane that separated the two boroughs. The lane was split by a small creek, sunk into a steep storm drain. When the rains came, that creek became the moat between the believers and the heretics, spanned only by a handful of pedestrian bridges.
Even on the Sixborough side, most the windows were dark and doors barred. Few wanted to reside facing into the slum, and only the truly desperate tolerated it.
In truth, the Sevensborough side were often richer. After all, the tax assessors were every bit as reticent to enter the outermost borough as the constables! A slim silver lining to the oppression, ignored by both the official and unofficial arms of state.
A war of poverty, and each might consider himself the victor. Behold, Sevensborough, hated but free. Behold, Sixborough, ground to the last grain – but at least not heretical!
Both of them twice as wise as the grand Conclave that would set this order upon heaven and earth.
Alisandra and Oliver strolled across the bridge and into Sixborough, their path set for the residential towers ahead.