Post by Sire Halfblack on Aug 5, 2014 17:13:15 GMT
Noveas IM 1006
It was the smell that brought Compod into the hall. It was an old building, like most of those in the city it had a tradition, a history to it. They had occupied the same Guildhall years back and the most determined of them had lived in it between the days of charter. It had decayed and fallen apart in that time but the city had restored and repaired and brought back pride along with prestige. It was true that boldest of their members had been cut and killed in the Shedeff. They had been idiots anyway. The Guild was more than just they. It was the older men and women. They knew the ways, the traditions, the observances.
The hall was old and revered by the Guild and was made from the finest examples of what they had gathered over the years. In truth they were brigands, thieves, highwaymen even if they needed romance to blunt reality. This bothered no one. Like all the Hundred Guilds they descended from one single person who had done to some degree what they did now.
It was the last thought Compod enjoyed.
Outside and in the curling streets of the Heights, oddly stacked upon one another, sparks started to fly. With a sudden and savage woosh the Lumber Jackers crackled into life as fire rippled through the Guild. There had been no rain for weeks and the old wood was as dry as yesterdays kindling. The alarm went up quickly and waking from their beds citizens hurried to the bucket pole, only to find it crushed and ruined also. The Guild was burning fiercely now and worse, those that made the Guild were dying too.
Sparks rose and fell. The nearest houses went up, though sluggishly for the rock of the quarter was their core and though repaired and made good in recent years the ancient heart of Deci was as hard as iron. Sparks were beaten out but the Guild burned too fiercely for any to approach and when its roof fell in it also slid out to hit the winding street below. The fire hit other structures but many of them did not catch before its own members reached the small fires. Only the Mercers caught, but its members were already out and running about with everyone else. Bales of cloth and linen went up and shirt sleeved locals dragged down the Mercers that sought to throw themselves into the blaze, to fight it with their bare hands. Their Guild could be rebuilt.
Now the Lumber Jackers was falling in itself and other Guildsmen were arriving. The Masters of the Great Guilds lived in the Quarter, even if their Guld did not, and the Conveyers forced the burning Guild down, cracking timbers and breaking joists with heavy sweeps of their hands. The fire roared savagely, it streaked the buildings above as far as the Spire with black soot and then seemed to flicker, to cringe. It sought to escape one again but by now the Nightsoil had arrived, carts full of piss were hurled onto the remnants of the Lumber Jackers. The people had reacted fast and probably to the astonishment of even the Council had worked together. They may be hard hearted but Deci shat initiative and the fire was fought before anyone even considered looting the Quarter. No one robbed one another, no one made an opportunity of the disaster and the fire did not spread, was crushed and then defeated as great clouds of urine stinking steam gusted out into the Quarter.
But the Lumber Jackers were no more.
Later and looming in the same Quarter the smoggy filth that hung over the city curled about those that stood or hunched within it. Apart from the Mocker Lord neither of the participants was entirely perceptible other than as the most indistinct shape to the other. They stood upon the upper reaches of the Citadel but they might well have been on some hellish plane far removed for all the sights and sounds of the city that came to them. There were others out there, Kallah and certain Guildsmen that had been brought as witness for one side at least saw no reason why the meat of this parley should be kept in the shadows.
The Mocker was not a tall man. Indeed, he looked to be nothing special at all. His long white hair hung across his face and under a stained brown hood. He sat happily enough above the city, as well he might. The meeting had been arranged through him and he was therefore give to make sure that each side did not use the even as an excuse to butchery.
“There should not be war between us.” The young Baron began.
“But there is.” The voice was cracked. The throat that gave the words was dry and touched his speech accordingly. “A war you began.”
“Not I.”
“True. But others did. It was a grand day out was it not? Culling our cubs. A gathering of minds and knives? Ho, ho, ho – silly gang seek to show us disrespect? Kill them, eh?”
The Baron shook his head. “What Argoth did was wrong. He is no longer part of the Council.”
There was a stirring in the smog ahead but the Mocker Lord pointed sharply in that direction. There was a yelp, then a whine. “You know the rules. No fighting.” The chastised was told. “Now then. What do you say to that? The Baron wants to make amends. Surely a worthy desire?”
In the smog the whining died down to be replaced by a growl. “What of the others? What of Majius? He is now the Governor. Blood lies on his hands also? What of Anath? Of Fade? What of all the rest? The thing called Marius? That Jagged one? The Slinking one? They were all there. They and more.”
“Indeed, I see.” It was a tricky point. “We still wish to put this behind us. Tell us what you need and we will build it?” The Mocker Lord looked sharply at the Baron. “Or not,” he continued, “for why would you place yourselves where we can find you? The Deci Hunt will not seek your kin. We should live in peace.”
“So that’s it? Just forget all about it, eh?” The wolf spat. There was an uncomfortable silence for several minutes before the creature spoke again. “I can speak for those that follow me. We will take wergild. Rather apt a description wouldn’t you say? You owe my pack much. Since you have publicly disowned Argoth then there might be room for negotiation. But of course he will hunt us down still. But then I do not speak for all the wolves of Deci. We are not one nation with a Prince that commands us. You understand this? There are those that will fight still, just as there are those of yours that will also. The wergild will narrow the lines of conflict. You and yours do not take part in what comes and they will be no part of it. We will step back also. Let the rogues amongst us both fight. I’m sure your Anath will see this as reasonable… after all, it lets him out of it all.”
“It is a start.” The Baron admitted.
“Aye. It is that. Let the bastards fight amongst themselves. You are yours, Council all, step back. If you and yours interfere then that is an end to it and all are fair game in the hunt. But wergild. Bring it to the Kallah and hope it is sufficient.”
The Baron nodded and turned away. He did not hurry. He showed no emotion at all and soon the city had swallowed him and he was gone.
*
He knew their manner well and to the greater extent sympathised with their plight. They sat in their Chambers, most with their arms crossed and not a few offering sharp glares to their visitor. They were not fools, not in the area concerned and had not liked being made scapegoats for simply following the lead given to them by those amongst the great and mighty of the city. Their pale faces were almost luminescent in the candle each had by his table.
“Gentlemen, we need your help.” Anath explained the problem to which the scribes looked at one another with a mixture of looks. There had earlier been a flurry amongst them willing to take advancement but Anath knew that most simply did not have the skills to match their ambition. The problem lay in that some of their best, be it high or low in the hierarchy, had been criminalized. Many had been beaten, other fined, not a few had been branded and exiled. The city had crushed them for their corruption, when they had been following the lead of the powerful. Like many in Deci they thought it all well and funny when others were beaten, struck, ritually seen-to or even killed but it simply was not the case when it was done to them. Deci could be intensely childish at times, Anath well knew.
It was no great secret where the exiled had gone and what a hard time they were having of it. The single, quickest way to get what Anath wanted lay in restoring the talent the city had lost and that meant restoring those that had been exiled. Treasure, in this case, might not be enough. He would need to send someone to Inkly.
He nodded at the fellows gathered there, catching the more antagonistic by the eye, each in turn until one by one they looked down.
*
The people here loved him.
Cheapside was the Old City. That which lay without had been built up in more recent centuries but in the hearts of the people Cheapside was the real Deci. The Citadel loomed over the Quarter, outside it but ever present and that was as it should be, over the years and the hundred or so changes of ruler it had changed, been built on, fell down, changed but it had ever been there everyone supposed. If the city’s loyalty was to Deci then it was to the old Deci, the real Deci. Not the come-lately riches that had been made beyond and about it.
The people were poor and life was harsh but they had their pride. Of course gangs fought and sought dominion. They did not mind that an Orc would doubtless sweep his opposition aside at the end of the year, that was what was meant to happen. In the old days he would have taken an odd title of his own devising and then watched as the gangs rose anew. He would either try and crush them and fall, or just get rich for a few years, vanish and often start again with a new face. It was all about the Cheapside way after all.
So they loved the King. He was a reminder of the old ways that few there were actually old enough to remember before bloody Amora had conquered and changed everything. But he hadn’t changed Cheapside.
The King was a curious figure. He was filthy and he was one of them and many thought he was probably a bit dead. But that was all right, they liked odd rulers. He certainly had the bearing of a King. He roamed the lanes and alleys and kept funny hours but he had a bearing. A presence that made even the nastiest cut-throat want to slick down his hair and offer a bow. He was what they wanted. He was a proper-toff. He was a bastard too but that was by the by for the gangs had done nothing against him, which said it all really.
In the bottom of their souls, in the quiet little depths of their spiky little minds, most had held out hopes that Majius or Argoth would have put the city in its proper place. Declared himself King, or Prince, or Grand Lord Bastard or something. They had tried out ‘Empire’ and it was probably all very well for the hoity-toity outside of Cheapside. But it wasn’t for them. Majius was being all Imperial. Argoth had been outlawed and taken it for all they knew. Fade had been killed by Argoth they all knew. Some had a lot of hope for Taleth, they looked forward to the point he killed Troy and took over like a proper little Nobleman. Anath did not even enter into their thoughts. He was a skulking little shadow that pulled the strings. And good on him. But he was no figurehead. No leader.
The King was often to be seen, but rarely in the same place. He stopped to pass a word with every thief, outfitter, hungry labourer, cripple, sleeper and fearful worker. He walked alone but for two that went everywhere with him, one of them only recently. The first was a woman in a silver mask who just seemed to watch, to walk a pace behind King Arken. The second was a stuttering beggar that leered at everyone and scratched himself continually and worryingly.
People stopped when he appeared and cheered when he vanished.
A proper King.
*
“There is to be a marriage.” Lord Majius announced to the assembled Nobles of Deci. There were representatives there from all the Houses that had influence, all apart from Duff who had land but was rarely in the city. Indeed, he was not a proper Deci Noble at all and no one there missed his presence at all. “A marriage between I and Berina, come the Final Dawn. You are all invited, naturally. Indeed, I will extend the invitation far and wide, to let all Nobles of the Blood know of the delightful day to come.”
The Nobles clapped politely, with a fine round of ‘hear hear’ and ‘well done Majius’. The servants made to close the doors and those present touched sword, knife or sigil. Just in case. It would not be the first time their most prominent thought to kill all those that might pretend to his chair. Motive was never such a common beast in Deci as elsewhere, after all.
*
The rain came through the city’s smog without disturbing it other than to gather up sot and smog and filthy so that when it struck the ground it was blacker than a Nobleman’s heart. It was not that it was so heavy, the drops were long and thin, but it was persistent and there was a lot of it. The city might have improved such housing as the scribes might perceive but even that had been cracked and worn by Deci’s nature. The sound of a hundred thousand pans, plates and helmets rang about the city as they were propped under the numberless leaks, smothering the clangs and cracks of local industry and the maddened laughter of the night’s stalkers both.
The rain gathered and pooled and danced as its kin thrashed it lively. It had to go somewhere and within days the middle of the large roads were six inches deep in a dirty flow that gushed towards the Spittle. All there was well, rivers could take being more wet after all but in Hightown there was always somewhere lower to go and increasing numbers of deep drow and the very scum of the city’s depths began to emerge. The sort to make the common citizens look fine and lordly indeed, they were chased away from Hightown itself and the sensibilities of the properly rich.
Outside the city and it was as if the people that had restored Inkly knew a great deal about what form a house should take, without any real acceptance of the vagaries of force, nature of material. It had been raining hard for the last week and each of the huts stood in a foot of water that emerged from within. Every angle was exact, every line was square to the other but given that there were no straight lines in nature the walls had gaps and the roofs fitted not at all. Rushes had been used for the roofing, laid out precisely in rows from the front and so offered no protection whatsoever. There was one large fire in the villages centre that the inhabitants were forced to either feed, or stamp out when it diminished or grew beyond the proscribed limits for such a blaze. Everyone had a fearsome beard and such tools as they had bought from peddlers were broken. Or at least, just sat in the mud positively refusing to dance about and do the work even when such had been described to them on scraps of bark using burnt feathers.
Three of them berated a chicken for not fulfilling its egg quota.
Perhaps two thirds of the exiled scribes lived here and they were a sickly, hungry example of their kind. The land was thin, rocky and devoid of life. Beside the stream they had dug a well, so even their water was muddy.
When the coach clattered along the rough lane everyone ran away to hide in their huts, where they became even wetter. Most peered out from windows glazed in wet, slightly burned sand. Every eye was wild, every forehead was roughly branded. Stepping from his carriage Anath was horrified at what he saw. Things had become very bad in a very short space of time. He had heard that those with any initiative were living in the nearest woods, living off pig and occasionally raiding the village for clean bark and burnt sticks.
Not many people could live in rural Deci. The scribes did not number amongst them. It was immediately clear that they would not survive the common Season. Keeping the dismay from his face Anath had a chest brought from the back of his carriage, opening it himself even as the coachman began to tip sacks of black bread and awful Deci cheese onto the muddy ground.
In one’s and two’s the scribes crept forward. They sniffed the air, they trembled at the sight of what had been brought for them. Then the dam broke and they ran forward with yelps of desperate glee. The food they ignored as from the chest they snatched up crisp quills, creamy parchment, gleaming bottles of ink…
Anath climbed aboard the carriage and holding out a copy of the most set of city scrolls had the coachman set off very slowly for the city. The scribes capered and gibbered and tried to snatch at the information, but it was ever just out of reach and in such a way the miles back to the city slowly shrunk…
*
It was just horrible.
Mo had forgotten how terrible Deci was and though he had gotten used to the ripe stink of sprawling Scarlene there at least there had been the sea wind to combat the cramming filth of so many thousands of people. He had almost gagged when he come within sight of the city, and it had not improved as they days had gone by. He had been overseeing the widening and levelling of the city streets, a matter that had become frustrated by the creeping back of the settlements nature as each day passed. A street he had thought fair, a gutter forged, had vanished as darkness fell. It reminded him of some terrible forest where paths vanished and trees crowded, snatched and seemed to claw at a passer by. The city simply would not give up. The cobbles they had laid were already rucked up in place where the slums had crept back, the fine lines were crooked once more, and if the sun ever shone here then it was not doing so at the moment.
In all, the city was as lumpen and crowded as it had been when they had started. The smog that hid the sky was as thick as ever and Mo had tried really hard to use all he knew, and had done great things, but it simply was not like it was back home. He was a kind and helpful soul but even his fine feelings were abrading here.
Deci stank. He had done his best, helping and healing the people. But in truth his thoughts on the material hindered more than helped and the cost had grown as cobblestones were misplaced. He just found his usual problems with communicating with men and women for whom a spirit was about as much part of their lives were if anything worse here.
He did not mind the rain. If fell through him anyway but it took a while to pick his way to the city’s curiosity shops. Crowded, narrow and somewhat scary he entered and pushed passed tottering piles of mouldering parchment, cages holding snapping little beasts, the odd head, a vat of hands, jars holding… Mo did not look too closely. The shop was probably quite large, but in the gloom and the cramped surroundings this was not immediately obvious.
“Hello?” He called out.
An eye turned to peer at Mo from amongst what he had taken to be a pile of old armour, tattered robes and tarnished jewellery. A zombie’s rotten countenance revealed its face. Mo took a step back, fearing for a moment that this was some trap of Anath’s. The horror coughed and scratched its nose with a brown nail.
“Yassir?”
“You are… mortal?”
“Takin’apiss?”
“You are a man?”
“Yar takin’apiss!”
“No, no. Sorry, my apologies. I was looking for scriven scrolls that would enable me to heal others. I have a mark from Anath.”
The fellow looked at it. “Ar’yon’a’council..?”
“I’m not on the council as such, no.”
“Y’over ther.” The man waved in the direction of a chest on top of a stuffed halfling that the moths, and Mo hoped fervently it had been moths, had been at. Snakes hissed at him from every shadow. There were a lot of snakes. Carefully he dug through useless charts, indecipherable scrolls and maps of places made up or long lost. At length he found two that looked promising and took them to where the man was now equipping himself with trollskin gloves and a heavy helmet of battered brass. He looked the two over.
“Three hundred that’a’one. Two-thirty that’other.”
“Oh, I’m not sure I have enough.” Mo confessed.
The man sighed. It was not a commodity he dealt in much and he needed to feed the shops beast before it went roaming again. “Howa’much av’yer got, eh?”
Mo beamed. He was feeling quite mercantile. He checked his robe for grulls and frowned. “I’m sure I had more.” He muttered. “Ahhh, seventy-four centuries?”
“Norr’a’nuff.”
“I had more. I seem to have lost it. Perhaps those people that helped me build the roads will know? Mind, they couldn’t remember my name, they just called me ‘Mark’.”
The fellow sighed. “That’un, seventy-four. G’way now.”
Mo took up his scroll and left happily. All the way back to Anath’s fine house he looked on the ground in case he had dropped the rest of Gysmo’s treasure.
*
He was so close to the Eartholme territories that he could reach the pass that divided them through the Forgotten Hills with a thrown rock. It was a desolate place, hard stone and nothing resembled even a shrub across hills whose vegetation had long since been killed off by centuries of mines and foundries and worse. Jander rubbed a rock between his hands and the pitted stone crumbled like so much stale bread. As stone went it was poor stuff.
It was raining and had done ever since he had left the city, the sort of downpour that soaked a traveller to his loincloth and it ran from Jander’s hood like the gables of a badly built house. He was cold and he was wet and what he wanted most of all was a good blackstone fire and a bar of virgin bronze to work with. He had journeyed through the weather and camped out wherever he found even the meanest of forges. He had quickly realised that if there was one place that was damper, colder and less pleasant than the city then it was the land that surrounded it.
He had come seeking Blackstone and this was the only place he had found. In the good old days there had been no Eartholme and there all of the ore was to be had, all but that which sulked far into the cliff on which he now stood. It would need to be tunnelled into if it was to be shipped to the city and there would never be a great mine here, it could be built, improved once he thought but more than that and it would tap out in a month or two more. Jander had inspected most of the city’s mines and had similarly decided on their limits. There was a lot of ore in the land of the two cities here, ore that had to be harvested, or even herded, properly. As long as a mine did not tap out during the year it was refreshed hereabouts with each passing Final Dawn. Primus seemed to have a sense of what should be where and material reality did not come into it.
Weeks ago he had been in the Majius Lands. Considering where they were to be found they were rather fine. If the estate had been in the Heartlands, even the southerly part of the Empire it would have raked somewhere below ‘worth abandoning’, but this was Deci and they were cursed by their land. It was fortunate that food was brought in from afar by traders who had just gotten into the habit and route of it.
Picking his way down the cliff, Jander came to the narrow pass and walked a mile or so along its much longer length. There was a cave the peddlers used and he found it easily enough, pushing aside the dead vines and bushes that hid its entrance – the only vegetation for miles around…
“Evenin’.” A voice called sleepily from the darkness inside and then went back to snoring. It was not alone.
Jander shoved aside an interested donkey and hunkered down by the embers of a fire. He stirred it to life once more with his finger, taking a little in his hand to warm him against the damp chill of the cave. He reached inside his tunic for a leather bag, slipping out the bar of silver Troy had asked him to look at. It bathed his face in pale light, his fingers stroked its buttery smoothness and revelled in the cold from a metal, one that was here slightly less than that all about him.
“New Moon Silver.” He purred. It was southern stuff, rare and precious. Like Star Silver it had come from the heavens, crashing into the ground when, according to the tribes, all the metal in the land had been gifted them in a hail that had last the turning of a full moon. Star Silver was just the raw stuff that could be dug up from swamp and fen rather than mined like proper ore was. This was something else again.
Pure and soft, the silver actually gave a little to the pressure of his thumb. He had heard of the material in his studies into the Mountain Lore. It was something preferred in the making since those material rites that used it as their component, whether in armour, arrow head or boot nail did not decay, did not fall away. A bar such as this would keep a rite of the simplest level intact beyond any Final Dawn, if that rite was of the Mountain Lore. There was not very much of it, not enough to make even a single sword or more than a score of arrowheads but it was beautiful.
Jander placed it against his face and smiled in the soft light it seemed to make. It was a worthy gift from Troy and something so precious was clearly meant for the Forge. He sighed, forgetting the cold and wet, content only to be inside good rock and in such fine company as this silver represented.
*
What he had learned did not concern the beggar. It made for possibilities he supposed and he supposed that at least it made for a local matter. The Guilds were hardly tame, and indeed the ore powerful they were the more they thought of themselves. This was not how the Council might see it, but then Deci was a hypocritical sort of place.
He followed the King and pushed away those that came too close. Arken stopped when he came to a victim of one brutal robbery or another. The crowd frowned, expecting some sort of charity or help but laughed when the King helped himself to the victim’s boots. The crowd was growing, people were happy and even though they were soaked to the depths of their souls there was a warmth to be had about the King.
It felt right. Arken was a jocular figure, a little cruel of course but he did it with a wink and a smile. The people liked him, they followed him.
So the beggar took two of his knives and crossing them like shears snipped at the air above the King’s head. Arken fell. He tumbled to the ground and lay splayed there like some toy so that the crowd froze in their shock, unmoving even when the beggar took out a third knife and stabbed it hard into the King’s chest. He twitched and was still. There was a brief clatter behind the scene where Mr. Song fell upon the woman in the silver mask but the beggar did not feel it worth his attention.
He shed his skin, straightened up, grew a little to the people. It was not that he became taller, but rather as if he came closer to everyone there, their eyes ached as the perspective of it scarred their minds. The Don curled his lip and replaced his three knives. Slowly he shook his head and though his vice was low it carried to everyone there.
My foolish children, there is only one King of Deci and this is me.
People trembled, some began to weep and more than a few looked at the dead King mournfully. Those that remained stared at Argoth in open horror.
Do you think that if I am not seen, I am not in the city? I see all! I hear your mutterings about the Empire. Do you see them? No, you see me standing tall. Remember me and the city for we are as one. The Empire is nothing, you should not care about them, for surely they care nothing for you.
People looked away. Most cuffed away their tears and about their boots their recent happiness pooled and drained away. Several nodded. The crowd was big enough to pack each street that ran from the crossroads Argoth had chosen. He stared at the nearest, one eyebrow raised.
Mr. Song, hooded and bloody grabbed the nearest. “Cheer you bastard…”
The man did. Soon the whole crowd was raising its voice in congratulation to the Don, but the intent of the sound never reached their eyes. Argoth waved a hand imperiously and then was gone.
In his wake the crowd broke up and people began to return to their wretched little lives. They knew their place. The Don had made it clear he was the King and so doubtless the Majius would be toppled at the Final Dawn, Argoth would declare himself ruler and that would be that. At least they would know where they stood, at least they would be rid of the Empire.
The rain fell upon the recumbent body of King Arken and it began to foam, to crumble and fall away into the cobbles.
*
It had certainly been crowded at the Stab In The Back and amidst the rising fog of steam that came from their cloaks the great and the not-so-good (and Mo) had discussed the city. Each had enjoyed either a high back chair used for the hanging of knives, or the low, overstuffed bench. Much had been discussed as locals came and went and quite loudly as the floor had been creeping alarmingly for the last hour. The sounds of Mrs. Berry, the Master’s foul harridan of a wife, had eventually driven them all out as she wailed and screeched at the doubtless filthy pleasures inflicted upon her by the city’s most prominent goblin.
The Lord Majius certainly did not want to listen to such any longer. It was to be his wedding soon and he wanted it to be a fine one. He was suffering quite alarming head aches of late, doubtless the strain of leadership and already he was receiving replies concerning the invites he had dispatched to those Noble Houses he wished to attend. Many confirmed receipt only, and the day would show who would actually come but it was a long way for many and three things seemed to be preventing most from confirming their acceptance.
The first was the timing. The Final Dawn was an important time for the Nobility and being in Deci was not something that seemed conducive to such. Secondly, the local Nobility suggested that many of the Nobles would doubtless believe it was a trap.
“Come to Deci at the Final Dawn, it’s been a year since the murderous Argoth killed his own City Spirit.” Claugh had mocked his siblings in other cities. Majius certainly did not intend to see them killed in some big ritual, but that did not mean that the outlaw power in his city did not.
Thirdly, and this was relatively recent, word was coming from travellers and the odd trader that since Deci had just declared ritual war on Eartholme, a city where many of the Nobles had family, interests, even the Empress in the Academy, the politics of coming to Deci might be somewhat tricky. Lord Majius had confessed that such a war was news to him, but it certainly seemed as if that was the case.
He turned towards the Silversmiths and almost collided with a narrow faced fellow. The man apologised and asked if he was speaking to Governor Majius, Lord of the House of that name? Troy confirmed that this was indeed so. The man introduced himself as a factor for the Merchant, Sire Slice.
“Yes? I am rather busy you know.” Troy looked down his nose at the fellow.
“Aha, yes.” The factor fawned. “Then might I ask that the House Majius settles what it owes?” For it seemed that Troy had borrowed the sum of three thousand centuries from Sire Slice, and was due to pay three hundred in return for this and the following eleven months. “I realise you are a busy man and the Entropy you will acquire for forgetting to pay will of course be purely a business matter. ” The man beamed, tipped his hat and walked briskly into the rain.
*
He walked at the head of the small mob, a cloak heavy with the rain still stirring in his wake as he passed through lanes and alleyway. There seemed to be a crowd at the far end of one street but it was too far away through the downpour to be of any real concern to him. The gangs saw his approach and decided to stay where they were, the people hurried into their hovels and slammed shut their doors. Children were gathered in, baskets and bundles abandoned. It was as if the Baron Throttle pushed life before him so that he walked empty streets.
Behind him strode the Deci thugs and amongst them chuckled Hanot and soon they came to a certain square, spreading out to seal lanes and alleyways. Despite the weather sheets and tunics, stockings and dresses hung on long lines that filled the square. They were pale grey, even faded yellow or white in colour for the most part, clothing that had been washed, cleaned, enough to show that the black favoured by the citizens was one of inherited soot, dirt and blood.
The very idea caused the Baron to snarl.
He pointed at a certain door, the shop front of the washers and it was booted in by the thugs. There were screams as men and women ran in, dragged out the poor workers therein and kicked them half senseless. Hanot went in after them, and then two fellows from the Diviners and the Conveyers respectively. There were sounds of crashing timber, of fracturing stone. Of passages being revealed, of run throughs being discovered.
The Baron ignored it all, for all the world more concerned it seemed with the state of one of the rings on his uncalloused fingers. When all was finally still he looked up and seemed almost surprised to see the prisoners pinned to the ground before him. Their clothes were cut free and their hair was roughly shorn before they were made to lie in the filthy puddles made by the city’s sooty rain.
“Good morning to you, I hope this is not an inconvenient time to call?” Talath asked. Nobles liked to be polite.
There was a cracking sound as one of the thugs clouted the nearest prisoner. “Baron asked yer question, scum!”
The prisoners stammered that there could be no better time for such a visit.
“Jolly good. ” Talath beamed. “I do so hope you can help us? Can you? Help us I mean?”
“Please, Lord…” One stammered.
“Baron. I am a Baron. I ask you see because in case it escaped your attention some poor soul came to Hightown and…” He coughed and shrugged almost apologetically, “…burned down our fecking Lumber Jackers!”
The rain fell and the Guildsmen came out of the battered shop front. One nodded to Talath Majius the Baron Throttle. He smiled faintly.
B Alan Morgan (CI9V1)