Post by Sire Halfblack on Oct 28, 2014 20:54:14 GMT
Deathly IM 1009: The Final Dawn ~ A New Governor
The bang of sheet metal was softened by the sleet where here he sat and nursed his only drink. Vanc had made it to Forgetown just short of the storm and saw it out now on the end of a very crowded bench in the taproom of the Cart & Hammer. Most there (and there were many) sang, led by a pair of women ill dressed for the season that pulled up one of the many sheltering to dance, to twirl and raise their tankards again. The smell was appalling and battened down against the world outside the air a fug of pipe leaf, sweat and bad Deci breath. Most of those here were prospectors, traders and out of Held spearmen but the atmosphere if it was redolent of a poor man’s hell, was jolly. People laughed, many played instruments and Vanc had made a little with his banjo that at least had seen him eat cheaply in the Ishmaic lanes behind the Inn and sleep in rude shelter in a crowded room close to the wagon pitches. The fire under the Inn’s crowded cauldrons could have been extinguished if set there only for heat, for the bodies of so many were more than adequate to the purpose.
“This’d better break soon.” Studge said. Vanc agreed though the other man had done nothing but moan in the hour they had been crammed alongside one another. The snow was not settling outside because it was smothered by the sleet. Visibility was down to but yards nonetheless, horribly cold and with the land it seemed one soupy and thoroughly dirty puddle. Here on this long table the spearmen as were had made their pitch, most of them old hands and many locals gone out from the city and failed at making a life in the filth of the city’s rural territory. “Fecking place.” He cursed Deci. All very well if a man wanted to aspire to the Hundred and the back sniping, lies and blame that saw to a fellow’s progress therein. Besides which Studge could not abide the mysticism of the Guilds, the little smiles and the eternal bloody cleverness of everyone therein. Deci did not make hard men, it bred sly ones. A face up fight even with the death cults gone was still what happened when you turned over the body. No one there disagreed. Not a one was without a new gap in their mouth, a black eye or a split lip. They had met over the last day or two mostly through fighting one another – and Vanc was by no means the exception in this.
“Weather breaks, I’m gone.” Said Vanc.
“Where?”
But Vanc at first only answered with a shrug. When those at his table pitched in with what they had to share a few jugs he tossed in the last of his own. A pot boy appeared at the rustle of the grulls and jugs of the local tarry nastiness banged down between them. Only after half that was seen to did Vanc raise the matter of making a Held. There was war to be had and the Warlord had a fine reputation for paying the spears – when their Masters actually remembered to claim such. “Nowhere this cold though. I’m thinking about helping the Templars?”
That caused a round of discussion. Demon fighting was generally safe. Or rather not the fighting but it was not usually a bone of any contention. On top of which as Vanc pointed out the thing about demons was, they liked the cold less than anyone. Cold was very much the motivator here. That and getting away from Deci.
“How’s the loot?”
Vanc chose his words carefully. There was nothing so much as the prospect of loot to make the eyes look up amongst spearmen. The peace between the Empire and the Baronies had robbed them of much chance of a fat city to take. “There’s got to be some hasn’t there?”
“What about a bit of flesh?” The youngest of those there leered.
“Not much of a shortage there.” Vanc said truthfully. “Hell, even if they’re still fighting in Alguz you know what they say about religious women.”
No one did but similarly no one wanted to admit to such. Vanc’s presence was enough to take the lead in the conversation so he let their thoughts linger on the possibilities. He needed a Held to get some treasure, and half the time a man needed treasure to get a Held. Seizing the moment he raised his cup. “To war – long may it be warm, rich and panting!”
The table cheered.
A table over and several men and a dirty woman or two looked up from where they had been playing with a pack six cards short and twelve cards made up. Their leader peered at where his cup had been knocked. Three sips perhaps had been spilt. He dabbed the table with his thumb and sucked it clean, repeating the motion until all had been saved. Then taking up the jug Rex topped up his cup, hefted the half full jug that remained and threw it hard enough at the back of the nearby spearman’s head to break clay and skull alike. The spearmen on that table jumped to their feet and within moments the shouting grew intolerable for those others nearby. Vanc when shoved broke his banjo over the nearest man’s head. Tables went over, fists went in and infectious the brawl ran over the Cart and Hammer.
Already standing by the barrels Wild Rex Randall stole a fresh jug for himself. He shook his head. Just once he would have liked a night out where it did not end in a fight. A damned liar as he was he even fibbed to himself.
*
The light was cinnamon sweet mingled with the smell of hot metal. There were no windows in the hall though the surrounding corridor boasted several, each of the same thick green glass that was of a lesser quality than the lead that held it. Still there were men and women arriving, and still too one of the servants more used to pumping a bellows or pulling wire through the blank swept up the wet that was left by the door as each entered, dripping and rubbing their hands together. It was a foul sort of season but Jander had heard, astonishingly, that the worst of it had been caught by the Braekens and the Forgotten Hills. He did not want to imagine what the ‘worst of it’ looked like. Here and the important, the aspirant and the skilled of the Warsmith’s gathered by the four fireplaces in each of which a whole hog was being turned by more apprentices pressed to the duties of servant-for-the-evening. Looking about the room Jander noted the chains of worked Deci ore, the jewels, the expensive leathers. One wore one’s wealth in the Hundred. The warsmiths in this were no different though still it was some hours before the raising of the new Sire – he again in this case.
The execution of the Guild Sires and Masters had not hampered the Hundred materially. It was a time of change anyway. But rather it had soiled the usual smooth transition of power. The decision as to who would follow where elsewhere each Guild took a new leader was usually resolved months before then tempered by the outgoing Master or Sire. A balance, and a very precise one. In the Diviners certainly and in more still beside Jander knew whilst materially the work of the Hundred had barely coughed, behind the scenes and many of those now coming to power were enjoying the new feeling of doing so with fewer checks and divisions over their status. There was something in it all that he was missing, something subtle. The wolves could hardly have not known what affect they would or would not have had on the Guilds. They were Deci through and through. Jander threw his hands in the air with a wearisome sigh – he was seeing plots everywhere. Most likely the wolves had just killed symbolically. At least he had not heard of any of his fellow councillors openly decrying the action. That would have looked bad. The day one of his black hearted companions whined about execution was the day the city would bury them. For a city so reputedly vile, Deci had little time for hypocrites. If you had the big ones to flash them about in Deci, if you gave it out – you had better take it on the chin in return. Which outwardly at least the King and Council had. Perhaps that had been the wolves plan. “Enough!” Jander snapped at himself, shaking his head at those nearest that having turned at the noise thought he had been addressing them.
But it was not enough. It troubled him. The leading lights for the year in certain Guilds were his to be troubled over. The miners were an enormous and many halled Guild, and their new Sire was to be Carad Born now, not gruff old Yud. And Born was one step up from a scribe that had barely worked a mine in his life. In the Lumber Jackers sly, aging Steerning was in and Steerning whilst he put on a good show Jander knew had actually fled into the city some years before two steps ahead of Siren. Of course, if one rooted out anyone with a history of being a brigand from that Guild, there would be no Guild. Otherwise in his preserve all was to be expected. Nonetheless it was a symptom – and there he was musing darkly again.
“Once more, Sire?” Master Quirt said. The man would have been Sire if not for Jander. He did not have Jander’s advantage of Primal recognition of course, but he was a hard worker, well liked if not imaginative. A good man all told, if only by Deci standards.
“Once more, indeed.” Jander tucked his hands behind his back, forcing himself to be polite. He liked Quirt well enough and the man though put aside by the Sunstar never made trouble or politicked about it in Jander’s absence. In truth he ran the Guild anyway.
They spoke of the dullest Guild business. Of the ever present need for more and ever more wastrel. Of secure markets, of produce and anvil - of tradition and otherwise. And outside for a moment Jander wondered how Master Dust was doing. The weather was just awful, the land wide and the Blades not the local lads they could be if they had to spend the time out there. Rather they than he Jander caught himself thinking uncharitably.
*
Battered by the filthy storm only the weight of knight and horse prevented at times the tossing of iron and flesh across the city where the old street made chimneys for the wind. Where the sleet fell through the poison smog it dragged some of that with it so that the rooftops were cursed by sooty streamers. The wind at street level was worse than across the rooftops and people went about their business in bursts so that whilst before the Guild bells had rung there had been anchorage in numbers now the Black Knight might have been riding through some empty ghost of Deci. Evening, the sun still in the sky had long since deserted the city so that the Knight came to the Spire along the winding road of the Highing alone.
The gates stood opened to him and within the sudden shelter was a shock. There whilst others had been sent away ten of the Spire Guard stood in their new armour. That was ridged, plated and girded black on black under open robes lined red. No servant came to tend to the knight’s horse. No shutter was opened and the only light came from torches held by two of those that had received him. It was a night for dark tradition and oaths of blood and those in Deci now had survived too much to willingly involve themselves in more.
The Spire Guard went to one knee, sword-hand on heart. The Black Knight paused only a moment before indicating they should lead and then whilst the Season screamed at the Spire where it swayed slightly overhead here and in the light they carried with them the small gathering crossed to and entered a certain door. Here in the Spire where the great, the sly and the mighty went up they took the winding steps that went instead down.
*
Snow lay lightly on rooftops no two alike in shape, height or design. Yet early the horizon glowed silver as if it was the setting of the moon rather than the rising of the sun that heralded the new day. The city was silent, so much so indeed that the sound made by a falling drop from one of the icicles that rimed the overhang of the balcony here caused him to start. His host waited face towards that city and back to his visitor. On a table set for four simple fare had been laid. Bread, a little cheese, the meat of some pinkish fowl.
“So.”
“Shall I be mother?”
*
The Bladders were a right tangled ball of string - of lanes, alleys and bridges where the Quarter had risen over the water. Stinking like all the city Cheapside was a privy where a substantial portion of the rank water had grown a crust and despite the cold steamed under the low ceiling of the city’s poison fog. Cheapside more so than ever lay on many levels and a map if one could have even been attempted would have had to be made of many laid atop one another and outdated by the end of the week. In the Bladders there had been brewers and if that was many years ago still when the Quarter had been burned what had been revealed had been conical oast houses, brown-orange still towers and former sweat farms. Solid, confusing and rubble within for the most part it was the territory of the Two Tall Drinks. The gang was not one of protection, it had a turf and it worked that turf and several interests further afield. It had some ties with the Conveyers and in the last year had swallowed up a number of local gangs. And they absolutely did not have anything to do with Sire Fecking Berry who as everyone knew even if few spoke about it had been the whispering voice playing both sides against one another when the Grate Black Orc had been in charge. That figure in death had as much (if not more) respect than he had in life. Sire Berry was a goblin whose ambition was taller than his hat, and the Two Tall Drinks were not the only ones to think so. If he declared himself King of Cheapside then well, that was one thing. But the sneaky little feck – ask anyone in The Bladders – could not say any such thing as he had King Troy’s tadger stuck where the words came out.
Which was all just the sort of thing to add sauce to Sire Berry’s thoughts who like many things born under a rock and everyone that killed on the adventuring trail, they said round here, was obsessed with ‘respect’. Which meant something demanded, not earned. The people here respected Troy, they respected Anath. They did not like either. But they respected them. But snotty the goblin? He did not have their respect. Snotty could go boil his nose for all they cared, it might get rid of the brown stain it had gained from the hated Spire. So at least it was said in The Bladders.
All this one of them said. One of the lads therein answered Sire Berry’s messenger when the rat had been sent to arrange a meet. Only one of the stepsons would have been able to repeat it and leave the discussion with his ‘Pa’ with a fair chance of seeing the following evening. Berry’s expression on the news was surprisingly sanguine. “Nice.” Had been his curt reply.
There then they left him. There were times to cheer and times to tread carefully and this was the last. Alone in the room where he had taken the news Trundelberry mused by the light of the fire in the small grate and when that unstirred died to embers, then ash – then he sat still chin on hands in first the gloom and then the darkness. All the while he waited, all the while ears were stretched and eyes opened wide.
*
“Where’s f*genel?” Rex shouted. The noise of the Season where it banged across the town was too great to do anything else and here they had roped down their wagons to great iron pegs a yard long driven into the ground. Drunk he had sent his young wife on an errand and two doxies were laughing now as Rex had his horrid crew break the ice on a water butt with the face of a peddler. That man was held there till just short of drowning before being dragged upright again to gasps and protests. The peddler had long since filled his britches but any shame he might have felt was a long way from the fear he knew now.
“Who?” He managed to answer.
“f*ganel! Prospector – don’t make out you don’t know...”
“Who? Who!”
“Who, who, who.” Rex mimicked. “What are you - an owl? f*genel.” It was news up and down the main drag and doubtless now in the drinking holes, lanes and even temple. No one seemed to know who f*ganel was or rather as Rex decided if they did were keeping it to themselves. For there was a story that a man called f*ganel had been paid in free magic, ritual all bound and plenty of it for some tablet he had found deep beside some crappy river north of the city. Rex was not a man without ambition and anything that could be considered power was grulls and goblins to him. Nor was he so high and mighty to think anything not worth his interest. “S’all over the town nuts-for-breath – and the way I hear it you’ve got a brother by that name.” Which was as it happened, true. “Feck it. Cut his nose off, feed him his balls, strip the skin from his feet to make a drum and make him play it down the ‘Drag.”
The ruffians gathered there laughed. The peddler seeing this broke. Rex was no great hand at torture. No feast of titbits did he have to pick at. But Rex was happy to take a bite of the meaty bits and toss the rest to the dogs. Or kill someone if they did not cough, either way. He listened to what the peddler had to say and had the little man tossed back out into the wind and the storm. His thugs laughed, most catching Rex’s mood to know when to stop. All but one who laughed too long and that man only stopped when Rex turned on him angrily. Here and everyone knew best what to do when someone was singled out. Everyone shuffled about to edge laughing boy into the peddlers place. “What?”
“You laughing?” Rex said.
“Aye, well. Rex, you’re a funny man.”
“Funny? Funny how? I amuse you?” Rex said. “What am I, a fool? You think me a fool?”
“No, sheesh. Goldenballs.” The man swore. “Just funny...”
*
He felt cheated somehow. The new Governor of Deci was no stranger to the city. He had been born here. He had run with the gangs here. He had left, returned, taken a title, worked the land and served on the council. Now he was the Governor and no one seemed to care.
It was not that Selgard actually wanted to be given the Ruatha treatment. Nor that he intended to spend his time like the former Governor quietly patching the holes from the shelter of a boat, inland, sharing stories with the rare and thus widely regarded as dangerous old people of the city. There was not even a badge that came with the job. Actually, there was not much of a job. Determined not to be simply a figurehead he had assessed the entirety of city government and rapidly with his skills determined where the hidden and probably secretive rulers of the city congregated. The Spire, obviously – the seat of power for the King. Then more deeply where the orders came from. Changing in location daily. Ever on the move. Where the scribes were to be found. Where the Hundred came together. And everywhere he had gone, there had been Anath. Mostly a very busy Anath. Selgard had accused Anath in the round-about way a Governor in Deci did that Anath was some sort of over-the-shoulder-vizier. Anath had been most offended that he was anywhere near anyone’s shoulder. He might get in the way of the knife.
“Wotcha Selgard.” One of the nightsoil touched his cap with two fingers still stiff with the dead. Honey worker by the smell, the hour and most especially the patch he wore on one shoulder just in case it was time for the city to enact its twice yearly drive on crime and hang lots of people in order to fight murder.
“That’s Governor Selgard!” The carrier of the can shouted after the fellow. He was no lackey, nor figurehead. He was here to rule the city. Assuming of course he suspected rather strongly no one else on the Council wanted to do something else. No one tried to mug him though Talthar only knew he had tried to be mugged. Who mugged adventurers if not other adventurers? Besides which, he was Selgard. You know – Selgard - nne of the lads, one of the locals. And now Selgard had gone to where it had been suggested he might want to check out the Citadel. The seat of power. The beating heart of the city.
Most of it had been stolen by Blackjack. What remained rising up from the frozen ice of the square where battle had once been done was a narrow castle, a castle with turrets, parapets, flags and stone doves. As a fortification it made for a very nice statue, a sort-of Castle where though obviously and most likely belonging to the city, the bit of the city it belonged to was Dirk. Outside the gate – one large enough to admit a mounted knight at full gallop – a metal tent had been set up. Young men with shiny knees and what seemed to be iron shorts and stout poles were sat about a small fire frying sausages. Considering the proximity to Cheapside the twenty odd youths seemed rather more earnest than was probably safe.
Iron shorts? Really?
Deci was a conundrum that Selgard had ever really accepted without delving into too greatly. Few did who lived here. Whilst Anath freely and of his own hard work produced for the city such as scribes did elsewhere Selgard had a sharp instinct where some things were concerned. The city was loyal it seemed. Albeit as it was understood here, to Deci. That as so apparently perceived was to the city, which meant what remained was to the Empire. But the years that had seen the city teeter on the brink of extinction, the vast numbers that had died compared to those apparently here ten years ago – from murder cults, crime and Blackjack – that had burned out the will for just that. Deci might well talk a good rebellion but ultimately it did not want to actually, like, rebel any more. Deci people were many things. Pale, skinny, nasty eyed and with the poison smog overhead and a proclivity for nightwork – spotty, but they were not stupid. Nowadays and so many were in Guilds, albeit the ‘Hundred’ or worked for the Guilds that the idea of going it alone would have appalled most. Or more precisely they would have cheered on any such rebellion in principle so long as that did not mean they had to actually do any rebelling themselves. Cheapside might be different because Cheapside was always different. But then Cheapside rebellion was also against the city. Ultimately the people were loyal to a Deci that appeared in their folk songs – Blackjack was a folk hero after all since he had done the decent thing and died before everyone else had – and they had their King. So for most, they had rebelled. They had a King, not an Empress. They loved that. They would have liked a little more madness and silly cruelty – a bit of Troy appointing a fish to the post of Commisent or the like. They had their King, and if they were still part of the Empire then that was nothing to do with them. No sir, no ma’am and pass the sauce.
“I am the Governor.” Selgard snapped turning to face the city once more. “Of the Empire.” He added.
No one replied. The gloom that made a silhouette of anything two streets away even at noon seemed to mock him. ‘Good for you’ it seemed to say and went back to wondering where all the bloody grulls had gone nowadays?
*
The air if cold was clean. The clouds had rolled back to the north leaving even the Forgotten Hills silvery under the moon. Where snow had fallen the wetter slurry had washed it away so that dry stream and riverbeds were running again if slowly and without interrupting the land. Across the sweep of the uneven plain the ground bristled with thorn bushes now several years old that had caught at the wash of the black earth of the land so that here at least if perhaps less so elsewhere in the territory nature was not a spirit of rock, ash and soil that blew in clouds on a windy day. Here those clouds when they settled seemed to stay. Night, it was not truly dark even without the benefit of his particular red eyes. The landscape washed in grey beneath that same moon so that the only moving thing were the cattle a mile or more distant.
It was inevitable that despite its reputation here in this previously dead land people would come. Perhaps it was because they were from the city, fled or exiled for one reason or other at the whim of King or Governor? Perhaps then they did not know what this place was, these long leagues that a man could not cross in three days hard walking. Deci did not have the largest territory in the Empire by any means, but that was comparative only – it was large enough to swallow whole towns, valleys and plains. Here where for a while had been Eartholme, in its territory at least and perhaps that also was why there was dirty and mud other than the sooty silt of Deci?
*
It had taken three of the larger wives and a crowbar to separate their preacher from his donkey. An evening of being propped by the fire with his hands still clawed to hold the reins and thereafter far too much soup and a new patchwork counterpane had at last seen Tirack by morning able to walk. In all he had managed two bundles, food and wool before the weather had closed in and still two leagues back there was a small cart stuck in a now ice solid if shallow river. The great piles of supplies from Anath had come as far as Forgetown where thereafter the passing traders, carters and mule skinners had decided to remain. Those that had not known of Don’t Go There had soon been enlightened and agreed that the name of the place was an excellent one, an instruction indeed. A favour was a favour and a debt a debt but getting stuck in plague valley till the Pestilence Season came by sounded like a damn fool’s errand. Only then had the damn fool gone and now returned scowled at their weak and worrisome hearts.
If he had been a darker soul he might have cursed them all more spiritually so as it was he contented himself with insults. Tirack muttered as he bent at the iron jemmy set into Gideon’s here rare and precious window. As a kidnapper he made a very dirty fighter and here the sounds were all of a dozen women trying hard to not make too much sound at all. Whilst the town called further out, here the silence buzzed under a sky blessedly clear for once after the last weeks constant slurry fall. The ground rutted for months by all the wagons and boots in the world was a frozen swamp of dirty ice. The window he worked upon opened so suddenly the preacher man fell back with a start.
“A robbery!” Minnow screamed. She stared at the preacher as Tirack scrambled to his feet only for his legs to whip out from under him once again. She vanished for a moment only to reappear outside and from the far side of the shop now holding a ceremonial axe. Tirack scrambled away only for Minnow to fall atop him whereon in order to save the soul and flesh of his friend’s wife - he head butted her. Surprised as much as hurt Minnow fell only to be swarmed by the wives who plucked the woman from the ground, bashed her with an iron pan and stuffed her into a sack. Loudly calling on the power of god and goddess both they hurried off in the direction of Tirack’s place leaving him to use the wall of the nearest building to regain his feet. There was a lot more to this thievery and kidnapping lark that he would have warranted.
“Nice gang.” A voice drunk and suggestive called out. Leaning against the same wall Rex puffed on a fat young cigar of his own crop.
“I do the work of the Goddess!”
“Only, see, I have this wife and if you’re in the market with the old sack-and-run...” Rex let the remainder hang in the air between them.
Tirack straightened his robes. Strictly speaking he was doing the work of Tirack since the Goddess was not listening. She had viewed it as sour work to strike down an enemy with the occasionally dreaded touch of death, albeit his own. “The wives of this damned town come to me and work their good souls pure again.”
“I get you, I get you. Nice scam. The religious thing? Nice, nice.” Rex nodded honestly appreciative.
“I assure you it is no scam.”
“You can restore life to the fallen?” Already Rex thought on matters of profit.
“I...”
Rex laughed. “Have a cigar?” He offered.
But Tirack was gone. Hurrying after his loyal followers. He was leeching the evil of Forgetown one soul at a time. It could well be his life’s work. It was just such an idle, warm sort of evil.
*
The hand that stood uppermost from the pit was stiff as a prospector two minutes after selling his find in Forgetown. That it possessed an owner was not in doubt, but that owner was buried under perhaps two tonnes of grulls, neatly bound and bonded. He whose treasure it was tapped his chin with a finger freshly scrubbed from a good inking. In his shadow the lugubrious face of his servant peered at the intruder without much of expression.
“There seems to be someone in the treasury?”
“Indeed, Master.”
“For why, Sneertwice? For why?”
“A thief? Perhaps a tax payer more eager than most. It is the fashion, Master. Greed seems to have been his undoing.”
Anath shuddered at the very idea. “Are you saying a man might die from having too much treasure, Sneertwice?”
“I might venture that he did, Master.”
They toasted one another with the best wine the Empire had to offer before returning to the bonus-and-nibbles party Anath was throwing in the townhouse he had come into for the current week. Outside and there were no grand processions, but well Anath knew the Guilds were (with certain loans deferred for the moment) doing similar. Those there doing much as Anath now. The Invisible Quarter without was quiet by the dawn’s weak light, that brief pause between the night work and the day’s endeavours. Indeed, and the more so of late and likely so again in the months to come. Deci had ever been a night city, but the smog made less of a division and the people purged, changed or with more direction so that in truth and already it was becoming a city where life and business continued at all hours. The Guilds enlarged had been forced to move in their work more quickly, with more people. And so just as adventurers at times referred to rapid motion or transportation as ‘shifting’ so too did the Guilds now work what they called ‘shifts’. Albeit here different bodies that come to work at different times.
Still though and especially outside the land and weather were terrible. Anath having assembled a wagon here and a cart there without committing city resources had managed to send out a somewhat smaller caravan to Don’t Go There – although so far no word had come as to its arrival. Certainly they had headed initially towards Forgetown.
“Master?” Sneertwice took the quill from where it had risen to hang by Anath’s hand.
“Just a little work on the markets.”
“Done Master. You should eat. The eels fished from the undercity are very fine.” As they should be. There seemed now to be any amount of eels, crabs and stranger things down in that dank horror of enclosing water and darkness. Deci was still in darkness and where the light did not come and the location nasty then there would its life flourish – albeit even now and even the twitch-noses of the citizens were only beginning to see to exploit such. That surprised Anath. He would have laid hard grull on the spirit of exploitation – but then he admitted to himself, so far the consideration had not occurred to he either. But then everything he had done with Deci had been to make something of nothing, or rather use the bad things as a raw material. He made a note before being hustled back to the gathering.
*
He had sent out for food. Forced to tie her to the altar for her own good Minnow was snarling at the congregation, spitting and swearing at the preacher man though he had called down the power of the very gods themselves and revealed in his rhetoric the fate of brimstone that awaited them all.
Well, not all. But worth keeping in mind anyway, he reminded them.
The congregation had swooned, cried aloud and at one point danced in the aisles but Minnow had remained if anything even more devilish than before. That she was possessed was without doubt. He had not the ritual to cast it out however and had to think about where there might be a place where such might be freed from all who came there. Ritual was nasty work. In Deci that was found in the hands of the Majius and the King’s Wizard and though the most charitable of men Tirack was having trouble imagining how they might be able to help. Anath was widely known not to have ritual – firstly because his work precluded such study but mostly because it was expensive. Minnow swore, strained at her ropes and then much to the horror of the weary congregation one strand snapped! In a trice she was free, her eyes aglow and the doorway crowded with the screaming masses. Tirack pointed a finger at her – only for the woman to run at the shuttered window and burst through to the world beyond. A moment later and the doorway clogged still further as those outside fought now to return within!
*
He felt for the next slate without making the assumption that despite its appearance it was as age hardened and moss slick as it looked. Cheapside was not a place he liked to be. Wolves were not people to be intruding upon when in recent memory he had been responsible for the hanging of so many of those touched by or thought to be associated with them. Nor too was this a Quarter for the Nobles to idly pass within. They liked that there was a King. They had no objections to their being another. Caught here and if he was not quick his escape would be a dramatic affair with hundreds, more, chasing him down. He licked his lips, the slate held and in such a manner he made another hundred yards before daybreak. Patience was all. There amongst a half dozen chimneys whose soot was inches thick and lead soft and solid he let the shadows made by the weak and watery sun cloak him from the city.
*
She shivered in the new light of the land reborn. About her the black and bloody bile that had been expunged the moment the year had turned was hard frozen. The last few months were a tattered net but here in the Deathly then if not for her hardy heritage she would surely have died naked in the cold. Minnow rose unsteadily. She recognised where she was, but a long half mile from her home in Gideon’s shop. She turned sharply when for a moment she thought she spied an imp once more but saw only a man with a cigar in a quilted jacket leaning against the tin sides of the storehouse in whose shadow she had lain.
Rex waggled his eyebrows at the weak and naked woman. “Someone needs a drink I think?” He produced a tarred leather jack of his own hearty brew. He smiled.
By Alan Morgan