Expect congestion along the Dragon as the Maiden will be heading north around tenth bell this morning. As usual, the river will be cleared for her passage. Normal traffic to resume by lunch.
Spring 8
Esmerelda Azure-touched hoped to make her trip to Iris quick and kept her entourage light. Her, three attendants, four bodyguards with elemental beasts, six doctors each towing a student or two, the hands for her vessel, a train of river birds eager for leftovers, and two crocodiles eyeing the birds.
“More grapes, Maiden?” asked one of her attendants.
“No, both my guests are full,” Esmie huffed. She jostled a serpent and a phoenix, each crowding half her lap and still nipping each other over the last stems.
“I’ll take them off your hands,” the attendant reassured. Motioning to her fellows, they bustled the elemental beasts away.
Well shaded on her yacht, Esmie tucked her legs up onto her divan and watched the Dragon pass. The river ran high this time of year, the river grasses mere tips peeking out from the banks. The wake from her vessel washed over them entirely, lapping against the thick foliage where the river creatures made their home.
Beyond the trees, she spotted the painted roof of a private villa.
Each year man claimed more of the river; she heard her rich visitors complain of the noise from motorized riverboats and industrial barges.
“If you have time to moon, you have time to study,” chided her attendant.
Esmie ignored her.
Undeterred, the attendant laid a tome of histories across the Maiden’s toes.
Glancing at the picture, she recited, “Two hundred and sixty-one years after the Covenant. The Lord of Peaks delivered the plinth to Deepbloom.”
“Very good!”
“I told you I’ve read this one.”
“The Maiden must be an expert on many things,” the woman agreed. “Maybe you would prefer a dance, sweetie?”
Smothering her real thoughts, Esmie asked, “How much longer to Iris?”
“Ten minutes. They have already cleared the dock.”
The Maiden slipped to her feet, smoothed her sarong, and pulled her leg up, stretching until she bent like a bow. “Okay! Let’s review.”
Straightening, she waved for the doctors.
The gaggle of old men glanced at her, conferred, and dispatched one among them to deal with this new distraction.
Doctor Caswell, a Ruhum-born rheumatologist, approached. Light-haired and sweating, he brought his interns to the edge of her umbrella and bowed. “Yes, Maiden?”
“I would review the cases,” she commanded, mimicking Ali’s firm tone.
“Of course.” His interns leaped to gather the notes, and he wiped at his brow with a handkerchief. Wiping away the sweat only revealed the sunburn beneath.
“Step into the shade,” she suggested.
“Most kind,” he praised, accepting. “I fear I will never conquer my weakness against this climate!”
“I can call for a fairy?” Esmie had not thought to bring one on a pleasantly warm day. Then again, she had apprenticed on the smoldering Plateau…
“No thank you. I will endure.”
Watching him perspire, she almost sidetracked on the mystery of tans. Why did some Ruhum and Moros folks never tan properly, no matter the sun? Why especially the blondes? Sometimes her waters stirred, and she caught glimpses of currents that ran through men; rivers that ran through generations to determine that this man should have a darker or lighter skin and this woman freckles or dimples..
When she tried to follow those rivers back, she floundered against the crushing pressure of millennia.
She caught her tongue just in time. Caswell was one of the nicer doctors – he would gush over theories until they docked. Most the others brushed her off.
The miracle Maiden might set a man’s bone with a touch, but what does she know of medicine?
Thankfully, the interns returned with all the assembled case notes.
“To business then!” Caswell launched into his lecture. “Iris is a semi-sovereign settlement under Waves, notable for its extreme socio-economic skew and…”
“I know the town,” Esmie asserted. “My family lives there.”
Or rather, her birth family. The mother that sold her to the temple, the brother that laughed the day she was sold, and the father that reappeared to the scent of money.
Sensing the danger in blood relatives of divinity, Ali had bought their silence with a generous stipend and an estate in Iris. While they kept their hands to themselves, they could spend the rest of their lives in pleasure and plenty as reward for their tangential relation.
Missing the grimaces from her attendants, Caswell nodded. “Perhaps we will have time for a visit!”
“The cases,” the girl growled.
“Right! Numerous complaints of upper respiratory infection, trouble breathing, nausea, fainting, et cetera. Reporting was complicated by prevalence of certain comorbidities …”
She translated: There’s enough drug and drink in Iris to kill an elder serpent.
“…but the cases seem credibly concentrated in families along the eastern edge of the town. Excluding the usual ailments, we have thirteen cases worth your notice. Overall, I would characterize the symptoms akin to pneumoconiosis – apologies, miner’s cough. This ailment is common on the Plateau and in Resting Dragon’s industrial sectors. However, such epidemiology is unusual in Iris, where–”
“Nobody who is anybody would be caught dead within ten paces of a forge?”
Caswell chuckled. “Correct. Pneumoconiosis has no cure, and I admit to professional curiosity on your approach to treatment.”
Which hit upon the real reason the doctors tagged along like seagulls after a sailboat.
Or like crocodiles after a raft.
Keep a close eye on the divine child. Figure out her tricks and make a proper use of it.
She wouldn’t mind; they could tackle the queue outside her temple doors.
How many would leap to such charity?
“Who are our patients?” She asked, browsing the pages for any updates.
“Ah, my apologies,” he bowed. Northerners apologized so much! “Two more have been added since…”
One by one, Esmie reviewed the candidates for her healing touch and wondered how respiratory symptoms could connect to that little boy three days ago. Where doctors hunted in rich waters, issues could always be found.
Her yacht reached the docks, and the Maiden slept-walked through a small ceremony. When the poems and flowers passed, she and her menagerie disembarked onto the wide, white-stone boulevard past palm trees and gardens. They passed the palaces of petite kings, circled the grand park, and set up camp under the shade of a large tent next to a pond.
“The manors here are so dull,” she admitted to her attendants. “All the same fancy facades and exotic trees. Even the servants have to fit in.”
“We have a uniform too, Holy Maiden,” one of her attendants drawled, gesturing to her blue sarong and white bandeau.
Esmie rolled her eyes. “Be daring. Wear red!”
“The Tempest would kill me!”
“She would not!” the Maiden gasped.
“Ah, the Maiden would have to revive me with a kiss,” dared the servant.
“Okay, maybe she would.”
Their laughter was cut short; the first patients arrived.
Not the ones she wanted. Instead, the first patient to demand her attention was the middle-aged wife of a man who claimed to be an Inventor.
“Just a sprain,” Esmie stated with a glance. “It will heal on its own.”
“A sprain?!” the woman sniffed. “I can barely walk.”
Annoyed, Esmie snapped, “Because you’ve already started on the wine for the day!”
The woman stomped away, muttering, and Esmie winced. In a day or two she’d hear that the woman’s husband was kicking up a fuss about taxes or permits or…
I hate Iris.
Her next patient was an old man, owner of a gold mine and too fat to fit in his own mines. “Maiden, I greatly hope to experience your healing touch.”
Esmie frowned. “You do not need a healing touch. You need to lose weight.”
He would have been less shocked if she suggested he eat his legs. “Does your touch rejuvenate or not?!”
Channeling her sister again, Esmie stated, “You are not sick. Move along.”
The man surged to his feet, and Esmie’s bodyguards stepped forward. Glaring, he retreated, but made sure to mumble loudly, “Waste of holy gifts!”
Squandered on street rats and beggars
“I want to see the actual patients,” the Maiden stated, rubbing her fingers up and down her brand. The tattoo sometimes itched as she warmed to her work.
“Of course, sweetie. Those two were just very insistent, you see…”
“The actual patients.”
Miraculously, her entourage complied! Twenty minutes later, Esmie sat down across from a young chef, servant to one of the manors. According to the reports, he suffered from a black cough usually seen in old blacksmiths – until this morning.
“Woke up feeling better,” the man admitted, rubbing at his head. “I hope I didn’t worry anybody…”
The doctors made annoyed notes for their reports, muttering about hysterics.
“Let me examine you anyways,” she said. A cough like that doesn’t vanish out of nowhere.
“Promise I’m fine! And I really can’t take the time; the old sir demands his lunch at the lunch bell on the dot come rain or shine!”
As he protested, his sleeve dropped, and Esmie spotted an angry red blotch under his right wrist. Frowning, she reached out and grabbed his arm. “What’s this?”
“Eh, just an itch.”
“When did it show up?”
“This morning, I guess.”
She pressed a finger to the rash. The water churns, biting like a cornered dog. And it's already so swollen…
Again, she felt a flicker of rot. Again, it dove away from her senses, racing along the veins for darker crevices.
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Esmie grabbed his elbow with her other hand and squeezed tight. “No, you don’t!”
That flicker of evasive rot fled along the vein and under her waiting fingers. Like a snake, she pounced…
…and the rot evaporated like soap bubbles on contact.
A disease that knows to hide from the Maiden.
Esmie released the chef’s arm and peppered him with questions. “Where do you live? Where do you eat? Do you have any roommates? Do any other servants have a cough or rashes?”
Her attendant laughed. “We’re surveying everyone, sweetie. Don’t worry. We won’t let anyone go sick.”
“This isn’t a sickness!”
“Take a deep breath. Shall we break for lunch?”
“No breaks. Not until we’ve found every last trace.”
Her attendant clapped her hands. “A bit of food will…”
Esmerelda hissed. “The Tempest requires immediate reports of any and all taint of the Wyrm.”
Her retinue froze, and her lead attendant coughed. “Ah…if…if the Tempest requires it, of course we will investigate!”
And if the Maiden asks it?
Her own voice accounted for nothing.
“Very well. Let us begin with…”
The Maiden sighed, slumping back into her chair. Surrounded by her ostensible subjects and adrift in a wicker chair…
What she would give for someone her own age; someone she could talk to!
***
Fresh off Conclave arguments with the members of her supposedly allied Houses, Alisandra hit boots to pavement in Iris amidst an argument in the public square.
“…and I’m telling you again, you are wasting your time arguing when you should be packing!” shouted an Azure official, a clipboard tucked under his arm.
“We are not picking up and moving for some unfounded fears of mine vapors!” the industrialist opposite him bellowed back. “We have rights!”
She started towards the argument, but one of her least favorite people piped up first.
“That’s right! Rights!” called Ezra, brother to the Maiden. He wore loosened workman’s pants and heavy stubble with the pretensions of the common man, though his palms were soft as Esmie’s. He jeered, “If there’s a threat, put the Tempest on it!”
“Speak of the devil, as they say,” Alisandra called.
The crowd shivered, and the Azure official sagged in relief. “Holy Tempest, I beseech you to speak some sense into these men!”
Alisandra weighed her words. All she knew was that Esmie requested her presence. “I will confer with the Maiden. Return to your homes and enjoy your dinners. We will update you presently.”
The industrialist scowled. “Confer if you must, but we can hardly uproot our lives in a day!”
Too weighed down by divans, Alisandra thought. She raised her hand in acknowledgement of his complaint and asked the Azure official, “Where is she now?”
“This way, holy Tempest.”
To her displeasure, Ezra decided to follow. As they hurried east, he fell into step beside them.
“To what do I owe this pleasure?”
“Cheque’s late.”
“Not according to my comptrollers.”
Ezra shook his head. “How are we supposed to maintain our obligations when the money doesn’t flow?”
“Your estate is free. You pay no taxes. Your stipend is generous. What obligations do you have?”
Though she knew well the issue here. Esmie’s birth family lived in Iris, but they couldn’t live like Iris.
She could try explaining the truth behind the glamour. How many of these aristocrats were broke, exactly like their House cousins to the north, spending their last copper to burnish the banister. Yet she doubted mere reason would penetrate Ezra’s head. After all, this was a man who turned his sister’s labor into his own profit with all the shame of a Visage party.
Ezra ignored her actual question. “Mother’s taken sick, you know.”
“With?”
“She misses her dau–”
Alisandra seized Ezra by the scruff. “Remember the terms of your idle pleasure, boy.”
Lifting him an inch off the ground by the suspenders.
You sold her twice, you vile slime. Once to the temple and once to me. How many more times would you turn her for a profit?
Ezra paled. “H-hey now, we’re practically fami–”
She lifted him higher.
“I mean, all of us!” he corrected in a hurry. “As a nation!”
Alisandra released her grip and watched as he dropped hard to his heels. He struggled not to cough, one hand rising to touch the frozen edge of his shirt.
“Lie about the payments again, and I will spare you their weight,” she stated. Motioning to the Azure official, she resumed her walk.
Ezra’s hateful gaze burning into her neck until they turned from view.
“May I confess something?” Alisandra asked the official, breathing deep of the Spring air to clear her thoughts.
“Oh? O-of course, Tempest!” he squeaked, deeply uncomfortable with the prospect.
“I do not understand the mind of a man like that. What feckless thoughts run through his mind with every lie? Does he imagine himself a strategist, feigning grand deceit to cover his taste for gambling, or is it pure animal cunning that spurs his tongue?”
The official ran his hands up and down his clipboard nervously. Finally, he ventured, “If you will forgive my idle speculation…”
“Of course.”
“Well, if you ask me, men like that lie because they can. I don’t know there’s a greater reason than that.”
“Like a vapor, then? Expanding until they encounter resistance?”
“Precisely!”
The notion intrigued Alisandra. She naturally assumed that lies formed a pattern because her own words were woven in service to greater goals. Yet what was the opposite extreme of her own meticulous nature?
Falsehoods and impulses serving the immediate whim; a life devoted to serving only thine own self in the current moment.
“Do they find it liberating to abandon the weight of self-reflection? Or perhaps such minds linger in the bliss of ignorance to their own nature.”
Beasts in all but soul
Alisandra spotted familiar servants at the next juncture. “I will handle the rest. Please resume your own duties.”
Leaving the official behind, she weaved her way through the Maiden’s attendants and under the shade of a heavy tent. There she found her little sister pale with exhaustion, holding the hand of an aged woman.
“A perfect bill of health,” the Maiden assured.
“Such warm hands you have!” the grandmother praised. “Truly you are Azure-blessed!”
“And you’re good to go.”
“Why, you remind me…”
Alisandra locked eyes with one of the attendants, drumming her fingers on the hilt of her Blade. My time is precious.
The Maiden’s servants dislodged the grandmother with polite efficiency, and Esmie rose to pop her back.
As she flexed, the brand shimmered across her spine with a faint inner Light.
Mother built the brand to grow with you, Alisandra thought. I look forward to the day your songbirds take flight.
“You overwork yourself,” she chided. Stepping forward, she laid her hand on Esmie’s back and let a fraction of her own inner warmth leech through her fingertips.
Esmie leaned back into her grasp, and for a moment they shared awareness of each other without words.
In that moment, Alisandra felt the quickening in Esmie’s blood – the tick-tock of Time’s patient demand.
Only slowed by the brand; only slowed.
“I’m not going to break with the breeze,” the girl sighed.
“No, just give yourself another fever,” the angel retorted.
Esmie stuck out her tongue.
She and Valkyrie are kin, full-cheeked with youth.
The seed of an idea sank into Alisandra’s mind. There it warred for space against the monsters, the Wyrm, the Conclave, and affairs of state. For the moment, it lost.
Color returning to her cheeks, Esmie popped free. “Much better!”
She motioned Alisandra close, and the two took seats together a polite distance from the ever-present crowd of their priestesses.
“What did you find?”
“It’s what I didn’t that worries me.”
“Tell me.”
Esmerelda described a lurking malaise, only glimpsed in the tail end of the persistent cough and the old rash. It lingered in the bowels of Iris, rich and poor alike, prowling like a panther through the underbrush. At the end, she shrugged in defeat.
“It flees me. I’ve seen everyone I could. I think we need to evacuate the town.”
“The effort has already met resistance.”
“Because they didn’t see the cat!”
“The cat?”
“The ailment nibbles on people, but the cat…it festered in this cat.”
A transmission mechanism? Alisandra glanced at Esmie’s attendants in alarm.
“The specimen was burned.”
“Good! What of other strays?”
“By this time, word had been sent for your council, Holy Tempest.”
You decided to let me handle it.
A rational position. Alisandra feared no disease. “Very well. We will hunt some strays.”
“Why was the cat twisted so much worse?” Esmie whispered. “Because it doesn’t have a soul?”
Alisandra nodded. “Animals belong to Malkuth.”
“If souls are supposed to protect people, they’re doing a crummy job! Allergic reactions can be deadly!”
The Archangel pursed her lips, searching for an answer.
Well, searching for a palatable one.
Mortal souls are sleeping seeds, an infinitesimal fraction of potential, bound by mortality, embraced by blind Grace. Alisandra grimaced, shaking her head against a fit of misanthropy. Surely, I can paint a more flattering picture of those we shepherd.
Sighing, Esmie let the matter drop. Instead, she asked her helpers, “How many more people would like to be seen?”
Dozens.
The Maiden grimaced. “And how many are actually sick…”
“Pace yourself,” Alisandra chided. “If they fake symptoms for your attention, charge them.”
“The Maiden does not charge!” Esmie snapped.
“Not to heal,” Alisandra smirked.
“Don’t be mean!”
Ruffling her sister’s hair, Alisandra gathered a few helpers and began a hunt for strays. The town guard fenced the river crocodiles from the streets, allowing a shocking number of dogs and cats to prowl the town. Most were treated better than the servants and fearless to human touch.
And angelic touch?
“Set food," the angel advised. "They will come.”
While the servants set food, Alisandra retreated. She waited while the semi-feral pets of Iris congregated to share left-overs; once enough gathered, she approached.
Two dozen cats all looked up at her, eyes fixated on the power and principality in their midst.
Then, deciding the food was more interesting, returned to their meals.
She walked to the next batch and met the same reaction. Though the animals sensed her nature, they tolerated her from a distance. Repeating the trick a third time, she wondered if this would be a dead end.
On the fourth and last gathering, one ragged dog flinched at the angel’s approach. He raised his snout, and his eyes flickered with more than the bestial instinct to avoid a powerful creature.
Recognition.
“Got you.” Alisandra burst into a sprint. She tore through the feeding circle, dogs yelping as they leaped aside, and the possessed dog bolted for the gardens ahead of her.
A chase!
She could have leaped to the air, but she instead concentrated the power of her stride into her legs. Accelerating to the speed of a car, she barreled through rows of neat ferns. Eyes locked onto the mangy tail, she pursued through sharp turns, heavy underbrush, gulleys and channels, and even straight through someone’s open house.
Later, she would tell herself she chose to chase on foot to avoid tearing holes through Iris with her step. In the moment, her pulse sang a simpler truth: hunter and prey.
For a moment, she breathed deep through her nose, enjoying the thundering crash of her heels upon the ground.
They raced onto a deer path, muddy and pitted, with the angel only a few paces behind the possessed dog. She could have mustered another burst of speed and set hands upon it, but instead she goaded it further.
Lead me to my work!
They crossed a rocky stream and emerged into the ragged clearing of a woven reed hut. Its door lay rotted off the hinges, revealing racks once meant for groundskeeper tools. The air of the clearing stank, and the sun overhead dimmed despite the clear weather.
Her real target.
Alisandra drew her Blade and lunged forward. One sweep of the arm, and she claimed the dog’s life. The Blade separated its flesh without resistance except for a tiny fragment in its deep belly.
Skidding to a stop, the angel flicked canine blood from the Hand of God. “Rest with God,” she muttered, stepping over its corpse.
Though what awaits a mere beast? She disliked the thought of cherished pets meeting oblivion on death, but what other answer was there? Flesh and rock were illusions before her Blade; only the soul’s Will gave its edge pause; and she felt no such resistance from animals.
Laying aside that mystery of the cosmos, Alisandra approached the hut with her Blade still unsheathed. It hissed against the air, sensing the same as her.
Inside the shadowed hut, she found a corpse, the remnants of a ritual, and a bundle of fist-sized black scale.
“Stormmother’s tit,” Alisandra muttered from the doorway. Careful now, she knelt to examine the remains of the ritual from ground level.
A circle of the owner’s blood; spikes of chipped obsidian driven into the five points; the scales at the center laid atop a wrapped scroll.
Was it vengeance or despair that claimed this man?
She rapped her hands on the walls, listening for the ringing of dormant Light. Hearing none, she stepped into the hut and to the edge of the circle. There she considered the black scales like a bomb.
Weighed the risk of defusal against the knowledge of the man’s exact ritual.
“What novelty will a penny-jungle mage offer?” she mused under her breath. Would I risk Iris for the pretensions of the magus?
Left-over runes of the old tongue; half-remembered prophecies of the Song; scattered laments for heaven. All usually interwoven with the lusts and longings of the sad men so devoted to such secrets.
“Always seeking the magic words that will command the world to dance to their command.”
Yet would they recognize the weight of the world they sought to hold?
Its demands, unceasing
From the lowest pauper to the highest prince
“The Wyrm reduced to the devil of maddened men. Why, Jörmungandr? What profit is this?”
Why do I find you in the gullet of every monster den?
The scales shimmered, and a wave of oppressive heat boiled out from the scales. A voice, deep and slow with slumber, slurred out its answer.
Education, Ali
The scales began to blur at the edges, grasping at each other to form a greater whole.
Alisandra darted forward. The ritual circle flashed and sizzled against her sleeves, but she snatched the seed and hurled it skyward.
As the woven hut exploded and the trees bent away, she leaped skyward after the seed.
Is it that time already? yawned the Wyrm’s echo. This scheme’s barely getting started. Haven’t even finished candidate selection!
Eyes locked on the glimmer as they entered the clouds, she settled both hands on her Blade and struck. She drove the Blade into the seed, and the sky erupted with fire brighter than the setting sun.
The shard holding fast against its furious edge of Light for an agonizing moment.
Alisandra roared, “Go back to your icy hell!”
Where else? laughed the shard.
Then the seed cracked, shattered, and collapsed into black mist.
She flew straight through the mist, and it whispered to her in passing.
See you soon
Archangel
Rising into colder clouds, she shivered.
A terrible fragment. Thrice the size of her largest find to date! What had possessed that foolish mortal to collect the damned things?!
Probably the same things as Charlotte Broadleaf.
The small scales echoed the Wyrm’s cunning; they knew the value of man’s petty greed.
Worse, such whispers would not stir the drums of war!
Even in Reverie, the Wyrm sought for blind spots. What if he slipped past her vigil?
She forced herself to breath. The air was thin and bitter cold, far removed from the scents of earth and life, and cleared her head like a dunk in a lake.
I have claimed the Hand of God from Time herself. I have struck down the Wyrm once. When I must, I will do so again.
She would be an Archangel worthy of her father’s trust.
Twisting midair, she stepped back to the treetops. Then she stepped several more times, seeking the clearing again. On her way, she passed over her servants only now reaching the deer path after her.
Slow. The chase was perhaps a mile. Perhaps I should institute morning calisthenics for the priestesses.
A duty that would last no longer than her attention. There would be street girls in priestess clothing registering attendance on behalf of a sponsor by the third day!
Rule by coercion extends only as far as your grip. What must I do to embed a better Song in the people’s heads?
Finally, she landed in the broken clearing. She prodded the dead dog with a toe, confirming no further surprises, and kicked aside the woven reed walls to fetch the man’s scroll. Tucking it away for later investigation, she dusted herself off and strode down the path to meet the servants.
“Burn everything,” she commanded half. “The hut, the corpses, the soil. Turn the clearing to ash and leave it for the wilds to reclaim.”
To the other half, she ordered, “Send word south. Iris goes into lockdown until I have personal satisfaction that this contagion goes no further.”
Candidate selection. Jörmungandr enjoyed his games, every word a tease.
Education. The Wyrm wanted her to see.
See you soon. They both knew the truth.
The Wyrm stirred in his uneasy bed.
“There will be complaints…” an official hazarded.
“I will hear them,” Alisandra promised.
Maybe it was the look in her eye; the tone of her voice; or the fact that bitter frost swirled around her…but her Azure contingent prostrated themselves at her feet.
Her halo pulsed in suppressed annoyance. Do you honestly think groveling would stay my hand if…
“To your feet. I have no use for beggars!” the angel snapped. “Inform the Maiden of our duty.”
Neither of the storm daughters would be out of Iris before dark today.