Post by Sire Halfblack on Nov 23, 2014 18:44:25 GMT
Harvest IM 1012
The high noon sun only made the land more barren. Without a cloud in the sky nor a puddle on the ground even the warm, leathery water that remained to them was precious. Brown, cracked ground ran on for miles. Here and there a sudden finger of rock, made it seemed of slabs each a foot thick, pointed to the wide and yawning sky. To the south an ash devil whirled by. Alendari looked at a snake and just dared it to have a go. It was late in the year for damn hot but Deci always had to be different didn’t it?
He did not ask where his warband had left their armour. Probably in a market somewhere and he hoped it was doing someone some good. It was Harvest season and the only thing that grew out here were creosote thorns and a sort of flat, spongy fungus that ate lizards. The people in the city thought it was always dark. That was all very well if one slept the day away under poison smog so thick goblins had taken to poking it with sticks. The city walls weren’t there to keep an enemy out - they were there so that the people of Deci didn’t even have to pretend there was anything better outside. Where he was now Alendari had to admit they were probably right. He could spy where his sticks having spread out across the land now gathered. Their distant figures rippled in the heat haze.
He knew it was here; just not right where it ought to be. The Waives he had learned (whilst having the Guild turn the silver from the rocks into chains that he then had later taken to the Warsmiths) were a twilight place, a place between. Alendari had asked if one of them might guide him there, and subsequent to which there was at least one lowly Guildsman that would only be laughing again in a higher pitch. A mile back from his best guess around where what ought to be here (but was not) his followers in knots, patrols and sticks passed the word that they waited. If someone was indeed somewhere that was not, then Alendari would bloody well have them if they left...
*
It was not that the Invisible Quarter was quiet. It was never quiet for it was mostly market and in Deci there was not much that wasn’t sold. But Troy had been here many times before and it had certainly been louder then. He supposed it might be the unwelcome heat, even at this time of the day. He knew that the Deci idea of a central market was one of pure convenience. The scribes saw anything bundle-shaped (or thereabouts) not sold in open market as smuggling but Deci got by a lot better if people were just allowed to buy and sell wherever they walked into it. Everything could be a deal in Deci. And Deci was probably the only place where smuggling could, and was, done in the markets. Somehow. Troy did not understand it and given that any explanation from Anath would have sent him to sleep he decided to let the wonder remain until he next had toothache.
Yet there were definitely people missing. He could walk in a straight line for example without having to have people put to death in order to make room. Not that he ever had of course, but he could, and he might, and that was the important thing. He turned to one of the splendid fellows from the Spire that always followed him about and asked to have someone brought to him for questioning.
“Where is everyone?” shortly thereafter Troy demanded to know.
“Where is..?” the man looked around. He had a sleepy look to him as if not long awake. He blinked. He swore. He said, “Where’s Halfblack?”
“Where’s Halfblack..?”
The man visibly shrank. “I mean, would your highness perhaps know where I might find his kind and notable vizier, Lord King?”
“Better,” said Troy somewhat testily. He was not having the best of days. There was powerful ritual upon his family that the silver masters had been adamant was best to ignore. He was not long in the city having gathered almost everybody, hurrying to the city from his estate where he had worked ritual. He had from that ritual gained answers. It was a wonder he had never thought of it before. Normally they just asked Anath, and Anath could spend an hour explaining how although he did not know, how he might do after all. Ritual on the other hand gave splendid upright answers. The only real mystery was in having called upon the faith that derived from himself Troy was still wondering who the bloody hell had answered? Nonetheless, he had gained some names, in some places, albeit one short by his count. And typically the place not featuring in the answer had been the very place he had set aside for himself.
Of course.
Thinking of Anath, Troy said, “I think he said something about a grandmother dying? Or was that another time?”
The man turned white; whiter anyway. For a city so abidingly, proudly dark, most people who lived there had the complexion of boiled fish. The man swore. “It’s not true?”
“I assure you it is.”
The man fled. The word that had already spread now spread that much further. Bad news was like a cup of wine in Deci. You were always astonished at how far it went once it had been dropped. And it could be a sod to clean up.
*
There were buildings and yards all over the city that bore the mark but this was the biggest of them. A hub in the Invisible Quarter where trade and tally found their home it was as big as any Guild in the city even if much of the ground floor were wagon stalls. Burly wastrel hurried to and fro, even the Guildsmen with their patches were straighter-backed than the citizens that passed by the always open gates. There was a sense of purpose here, and at the moment concerning a caravan just returned from Halgar. Carters took tally sticks to where Guildsmen waited, their wagons were rolled into workshops and all the time stinking water was being carried from the river since right now there weren’t enough wells in the city.
The Guild was for the city. Easily half the carters were direct followers of the ‘King Wagoneer’ with the numbers made up for bigger convoys by smaller bodies on the rolls and if in town always happy to take the Guild grull. But those in the Guild itself only carried what the Guild said, and to where the Craftenguilder decided. There was no independence to it, but it was settled and mostly the older hands were Guilded.
“Help you?” one woman called across to Orion who was stood watching it all from just inside the gates. She knew a carter when she saw one. It was in the hands, in the gait; but mostly in the smell. A man might wear the hat of a Diviner and pass as one but not when it came to Divining with the Guild. The carters weren’t as mystical as most Guilds but they knew one of their own when they saw one. “There’s no freeloading at the moment,” meaning a major caravan needing such independents as he.
“I was wondering how I joined?”
“The Guild? You resident in the city, pay taxes?”
“Close to, and...”
“That’s all right. Look, we take on city born and bred. Most of us are born to it. Most of us ran with the gang. We live here, we pay our tithes. Local Guild for local people.”
“Aren’t they all?”
“Welcome to the big city, friend,” she winked at him but had to leave Orion there when a lump of conveyors here to look to the upkeep got in the way of the last of the Halgar returnees easing through the gates after the long trundle from the city gate.
*
Old Mrs Bag had seven sons that had survived to grow into boys any mother would have been proud of. Three had died scrapping, two had been proper murder cultists that had done their bit and tried to do in their old mum only to find out why that had been a bad idea. One was something proper killing for the Empire, and had wings now. The youngest had stood proud and snide with the hero Blackjack only to get killed by Jander just for getting in the way. Her daughters were scum, and rightly so, who she wouldn’t give the time of night to. She was a nice little old lady that carried a foot long needle up her sleeve and a length of cheese wire in her hat. It was a very nice hat, decorated with silk roses. It had been her ma’s hat. She had drowned her ma in the soup. Argoth had approved she was sure.
“You’re a lovely boy,” she told Andre. “It’s nice to see a bit of proper black-hearted killing back in the Quarter. First there was that Watch fellow who was all grace and rightness. Then there was all the pigs. Now there’s all this tribes. Rubbish I call them.”
“Now are you sure there’s no one else we can help you with?” Andre stood with his followers towering about him. Deci was Deci, but mum’s were mum’s. That was important to recognise on the street.
She stabbed him in the leg. Carefully he took the needle off her. “Die for Argoth, deary!” she said sternly.
“There there, there’s some cake in the tin and I disagreeociate Nosey will made sure you get home safely.”
*
Flame flared from spouts to turn the soot and filth to rolling orange as from foundry and workshop, of city, Guilds and private concern the work of the Slurries went on. The night warm (and the worse so beneath the smog that roofed the city) in the Slurries it was nearly unbearable. Tar dripped from roofs to make puddles in the line of the cobbles and the flags on the larger streets. Even the lead of the roofs had grown soft so that they sagged. With so much in the city made from metal it was hard not to touch anything that did not burn. Here and even the dark night seemed to wave in the heat. There were demons from fiery hells that would have looked for a cool drink of water – and there was none of that here. The best were the barrels being fetched from the river by those wastrel without Guild work, or who preferred their own. They toured the workplaces selling it by the cup. The snakes moved like cats, tripping and getting underfoot or crushed by wagon wheel so that here and there one sizzled where it had been split or tossed. The noise was deafening, the great crash of hammers, the clink of chains and the shouts of endless short tempers.
Twirl who saw it all but felt none of it came upon (where by the gate) a number of Guildsmen had been forced to cut the oxen traces of their wagon. The normally inured-to-everything beast maddened by the heat and eyes-rolling at the flame had gone mad and had to be put down with an axe. Jack Stoves shouted at two of his men who took it out on the hired labour.
“Stoves!” said Twirl.
The man looked about to see a horror. Ragged, ghostly, a terrifying spectre he swore loudly and ran for it.
“No, wait,” said Twirl. “I mean... oh, Twilight thingys!” he slipped like oil over the street and after the fleeing Guild Master.
*
The spears had been taking turns to stand watch or sleep all day but as the sun had spread out over the horizon they had all woken to stand ready. Dusk and dawn were times everyone stood ready. It was habit, but a necessary one and as the twilight messed with the senses a shout went up.
Alendari jumped up from where he had been crouched with a handful of his spears. Across the mile, two mile circle they had made everyone was running inwards. Shouts and calls and then parched and bloody irritated from the dust-be-damned land he shouted louder so that only those with anything to say would bloody well say it. He sprinted when shouts to the west continued. Everyone ran towards them, tightening the noose. Alendari was already shouting for information before he could hear the reply, but could see silhouetted red from the horizon figures pointing.
“Someone... that way... shimmered...”
“Get the feck after it!”
It took only a short time to gather and less time to spread out again. This was what they were good at. Alendari had no dispute with the quality of a good shield wall but it was bugger all use now. He snapped orders and the Held well used to splitting and chasing jogged off in a widening line. It would not matter if the fox turned aside or made a false trail, he was setting his dogs out in a very long leash.
*
“I’ve never heard of her,” admitted Davian.
“I have,” said Talath.
They were in Hightown, which Talath regarded as being very much his patch. They had a name and that would have to do. Talath had means others did not but they took time, and time was a currency right now at an exchange rate that did not favours theirs. Davian out of the city for so long felt both pressed-in by the quarter and giddy when between roadways and streets he saw only a yawing abyss well below. Talath took them, without error or seeming confusion, through the lanes that ran between townhouse and row and often covered in the rock that made the quarter. This quarter went up, streets on streets and house on house to be topped by the Spire now high above.
“Spare a grull, master...” a voice pitifully called. It was sheltered here with the house above roofing the lanes they hurried through. There were others close by, they had ropes and bags and a chain.
“Talath...” warned Davian. He could make out the ugly little bastards with his eyes now grown used to a dragon’s darkness. If they hadn’t been dressed and upright he would have sworn they were goblins. He knew what he saw. They had all grown up in Deci where as boys they had not so much been warned about snatcher gangs as kicked out to bloody well experience and avoid them. There were a lot of young Majius no one talked about that had not made it to their first bad moustache.
But Talath was holding out a fold of grulls to the beggar, and not a proper beggar either. The sort of beggar that was lucky to have ears given what the city beggars thought of people that took the piss and, more pertinently, their trade. The wretch bobbed and bowed and hurried away. Talath said, “Mopsy’s not home, which is probably for the best. Her father would never have let us take her.”
“Would that have stopped us?”
“Let’s just say it’s probably best if we avoid any Imperial entanglements.” He set a faster pace, darting over a wall and into a garden replete with tended toadstools. Across another and with Davian hurrying to keep up as a door was opened to a knock. The pair dashed through a rather neat house Talath apologising to the family taking a meal and then tipping the servant on the door as they emerged down and elsewhere in Hightown.
“I hope you know where you’re going.”
“I do.”
“What’s this Mopsy like?”
“very *friendly* personty...”
“Nice!”
Talath gave Davian an amused look. He said, “No, not really.”
*
There were about the fringes a lot of old cultists here, many for whom that, quite unlikely as that seemed, ran in the family. You could live out in the north quarter for practically nothing and keep out of the way. You had to steal and frankly that meant that what with all the cracking down and killing people for theft that had happened a lot of people were going to starve to death. They might have begged but there was little charity – the beggars didn’t like it.
“Please tell the Sleek to stop us robbing stuff...” the first of the old men begged Andre. “...I ain’t eat proper in days.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” said Andre. Up here and probably elsewhere a good amount of robbery probably meant that in Deci people got by. It was not that he really cared, so much that he had decided he had probably better start to.
He had been all over the quarter in recent days. His temper had been fraying ever since he had learned that the place he and his had taken to flopping in had been visited by a lot of wolves and trashed. He was thinking just this when from round several corners a mob arrived. As mobs went they clearly had not quite gotten the guidelines right since no one chanted, there were no brands and most of them weren’t shoving the rest to the front. Indeed the mob looked a lot like several hundred tribal warriors, the biggest of which dripped with iron rings and carried swords. They would have been a scarred lot had scars never taken to their rudely healthy and ever recovering muscles.
“There he is!” the same shrieking pregnant dog that they had faced before shouted out.
“I’ll handle this,” Andre heard Nichal say.
“You? You couldn’t handle half a pint of Tickler’s XXX. You couldn’t handle what’s in your britches, there’s still piss all over your boots!”
“Bloody hell Zen, not in front of the war hirds.”
Andre looked at the small army that had arrived. Just to help him out with the sums a voice said behind him, “Master, we’re really bloody outnumbered here...”
“And you,” Zen shouted at Andre, “You can sling your bloody hook!”
“Listen, you really don’t want to mess with me. This isn’t helping any of us,” Andre glowered at the pair. “Before bad things start to happen you want to...”
But Nichal turned on him. “No, it’s this simple. Get the feck out of dog town. We see any of your boys around here, they’ll be trouble. Take this as warning. Get out, stay out. You want a war? You’ll lose. It’ll be real short.”
“Kill them you big girl!” Zen kicked Nichal.
“Please, not now,” he snarled at the girl. Then to Andre, “Are you still here?”
Strong hands caught on Andre’s shoulders as his followers tried to drag him away. He shook them off. He said, “As it happens I have business elsewhere.”
“Aye? Good, make sure it takes a long time.”
The street gang were already walking and one of the hirds followed them all the way to Cross Crabs where the Quarter ended. There and to make the point they caught hold of the lot of them and gave everyone a kicking so that it took each a long time to crawl out of dog town leaving a long smear of blood where they managed to at all. Each was told in no uncertain terms that next time they were dead; all of them.
*
Mother Claridger ran a very select house. It could hardly have been a better address, or it could but not by much and property above them in Hightown could be ruinously expensive. Beside which she was accepted here as a necessity and a local institution but if it was important to be local then not so much that spouse or rival would not see her door from their window.
It had once been a merchant’s house. One that had done well and then rather better with the arrival of the Empire, a merchant that had become a Sire, and the first (she believed) to have been given a Cerus Marque. Indeed because of it so many others had wanted one, but the former owner had been a friend of the first (and only proper) Emperor and had had certain advantages.
It was a house that rose four storeys and thus three streets, yet was not quite close enough to a particular bridge or crossing lane so that from certain of the windows – real glass, known of your Guild-blown rubbish found elsewhere – it was entirely possible to stare down right into the black heart of the city’s abyss. Not so long ago a great threat had come from there and adventurers had fought and banished it. She had watched them, and had made sure that seats had likewise been available to several of her more celebrated customers.
Mother Claridger was a Madame. She made no particular bones about it. She was also a drowe, but three decades of decent city living had made her considerably more matronly than the starved, gaunt sticks most were used to. Mother Claridger was a woman of substance in every sense and the constant despair of her corsetiere and stay-maker. Her house was luxurious in a manner long out of fashion with the Nobility who had gone towards the sparse and the black in recent years. Everything about her house was opulent, old, rather grand in contrast to many of those that she protected, cared for, and of course pimped out to those with the wealth to enjoy them. She had standards. Even Puke the harpy in room twelve was an outcast amongst her own people for the complete lack of nuts and dangle. Also, it was Pukinda here.
“My Lord, and my Lord,” she greeted them. Davian had followed Talath here at a run only to find the other man calm and with the aid of a small brush seeing to his appearance when he had caught up. They had broken in through no windows nor passed through not a single wall. Talath had rung the bell. The servant had shown them here dressed primly from the front and not at all from the back. A rare Halgar wine was served them.
Theirs was a private little room. “How might we service you?” Mother Claridger asked.
“I am afraid we are on the King’s business,” admitted Talath.
“Troy, such a nice young man, we haven’t seen him for some time?” said Mother Claridger.
“Nor would you say if you had,” smiled Talath. “I assure you the last thing we wish to do is make trouble.”
“Is it?” said Davian.
“Most certainly,” said Talath firmly. It was all very well for Davian to stir up the natives and then go back to his muddy estate but Talath had to live here. Besides which people like Claridger were what kept someone like Talath knowing the sort of things he did. Also and she had servants here that could eject a small god that made trouble, albeit only from this house. He had seen it. “But it is very important.”
“Very?”
“I assure you I do not bandy a word about like ‘very’ without strict ritual advice. All we need to do is speak with Mopsy. We might have to escort her elsewhere.”
“She is working... can you wait?”
“No,” said Davian.
“Yes,” said Talath. An array of delights was brought. A string quartet quietly entered to entertain them. In time the door opened once again and a thin girl in the severe black of a Noblewomen entered adjusting her top. She simpered.
“She’s pretty,” whispered Davian. “And very *friendly* personty you say?”
“Also possessed of the sort of tackle to make a troll sore,” said Talath firmly. He rose and told Moptel Lostenlay that (ahem) she was to come with them to the Spire, and then perhaps elsewhere. That it was no use protesting, but rather that if they all worked very hard together then there was just a small chance that everything would turn out for the best for everyone, and with little need for knives. She agreed.
*
In the dry heat the body had become man-jerky.
Chained to a rock where they were closer together here, those same fingers pointed up now to a darker sky and sickly moon. They were well off anywhere anybody had real business to be. It might have been settled once this land but Alendari doubted it. Mines perhaps, but little else, and the body looked like orc-work to him. Set to warn perhaps, season more likely. There was no point in creeping about. Whatever had done that knew the area far better than they did, and he doubted they expected trouble such as Alendari had brought.
“Press on, keep going, swiftly so,” he said and ran on with his warband with him. They ran down dips as the land broke up. In places now the crappy little canyons they entered were naturally bridged, and now they saw sign – bones, broken weapons but mostly prospector camps going back months perhaps.
They darted out into a wide canyon bowl and he had been right, there was a mine entrance, there an old spoil heap, a rusted shack and a cracked water butt. There too was a troll and a mess of quite the most awful looking orcs Alendari could remember seeing. These orcs made other orcs look proud, noble. They were scarred. The faces that turned on him ugly as a market deal with Anath. They had a prisoner, a meal, and Alendari just ran at them with his warband screaming too. The orcs ran, one limping, leaving the troll confused and then rapidly knocked down and even more quickly dead. Limpy squealed when he too was caught and killed but the rest of the orcs made the mine and Alendari called out for his spears to stop. He bent over the captive, noted the blood and the great lump on his head. He snapped on the manacles he had had made.
“Is that him?” said one of the spears.
“Only fool out here,” Alendari said and heaved him up on one shoulder. “Let’s go, can’t get paid if we aren’t in the city to claim it and somewhere there’s a trader with brandy that isn’t made from tar.”
*
Twirl had lost him in the smelters somewhere, dancing between great vats of molten metal and then into the larger sheds where practically anyone with a lump of ore could come and take their turn for a few grulls. Other cities had bakeries. Bakeries with ovens where a house or home with decent means might have a stove but where the baker after the early bread let the streets put in their crocks for the evening meal. In Deci bread was brown and always slang, whereas nigh on everyone rich enough to own shoes dabbled a little in metal. And through those great sheds Stoves had run and Twirl dashing after him had set up shouts and screams and complaints about the shocking lack of heroes to be had outside the weekend.
Twirl cursed the world and Stoves in particular. He couldn’t help the way he looked, not since he had chosen to look that way. He might have slipped quietly out of the city then had not a well-dressed fellow in cloak and knife not pointed to the gather at the end of the street. Twirl looked at the man who just pointed again before turning away. Suspecting a trap but willing to trigger it Twirl ducked under the doorway and learned that some smells went right into the incorporeal.
The hall was lopsided and had been decorated by people that, whilst they had understood the idea, had never grasped the intent. There were rugs and chairs, tables and picture frames. There were many mugs, sthingys and an enormous basket of socks from which it seemed one might help oneself but nothing (not one thing) that matched. The light was tallow but the smell of that had long since been reduced to tears because the air, green and brown, was a broth of every bad thing that had ever visited the city – and since Twirl was one of them he knew of what he thought.
There were probably ghouls, goblins, orcs, cripples, the occasional gnoll and a story-teller or two – the absolute dregs of society. Probably because they were alike buttoned to the eyes in tarred coats and with gloves like an undead-ogres wrinkled hands holding their cups. They drank privately, turning aside to unbutton briefly. There were cauldrons on the fire that looked full and extremely meaty. What meat that might be was probably not worth the investigation. It probably did not know itself. They had been talking quietly in the loud hum of the hive, the voices of those that worked when others slept, or in places where people did not want to disturb whatever the hell had come to live there.
This was the Honey Gather and Twirl promised himself on a stack of imaginary artefacts so-high that he would never, not ever, come here again.
“I didn’t do it!” Master Stoves shouted.
Twirl was glad he had since frankly he had been about to leave. He said, “I don’t care, we don’t care, we don’t care what you did...”
“Or didn’t!”
“Or didn’t do,” Twirl hastily corrected himself. “But the King wants to speak with you.”
*
Most of the lanes seemed to be made up of cellars. Windows and doors were either bricked up or in most cases blocked by the aging, mouldering detritus of the quarter. It was not so very long since most of Cheapside was under water to somewhere just above her head. The people had taken to just moving up a storey and still there were statues, iron bars and other improvised walkways that crossed overhead. Compared to dog town Cheapside was a lot better off in wealth, people and reputation. Something Zen suspected would annoy most of those she saw now walking about and over head. It was late enough at night to be early morning but still dark and a lot of people were returning home. Most she knew worked wastrel for the Guilds. Many were related to those in the Guilds and the streets, lanes and confusing rat runs tended to be home to people in specific Guilds. Guilds were big in Cheapside, most of the gangs claimed Guild colours.
The highest point from the dipping bowl of the squalid quarter was the road that led from the city, and along a bend in that road was a row of little shops. Each was tiny, particular, and had neat paintwork and intact roofs. One of them with its windows bulging into the road was clearly for an alchemist. It had ancient, precious pain windows that showed greenly a selection of common potions. Hung upon the door was a sign. On the roof were rats, one of whom let herself down now. There were blades everywhere about that rat, including one on the tail
Zen felt rather vulnerable of a sudden. She was well off her turf here. Nonetheless she had grown up in Cheapside, almost all the late-wolves had. She had allowed herself to forget what it was like. It had seemed very distant of late as if those days had been in another city, far away. She nodded to the rat and asker her name.
The rat surprised by the question said, “Mix.”
“You’re one of Trundleberry’s Stepsons aren’t you?”
“Might be.”
“That’s all right. Nichal likes Trundleberry. You lot didn’t kill wolves.”
“Still time...” said Mix, but people going by were looking at them now and she thought above them both some of her companions were laughing also.
“What does the sign say?”
“Can’t read,” said Mix. “Been told it says that there’s a new alchemist, that Gideon.”
“Not Ulis?”
“Dunno about that.”
“I want to speak with Ulis. Is he not here? Do you know where I can find him?” then a thought. “If he’s the city spirit can he actually leave Deci?”
“Dunno. Don’t think anyone would tell him not to. No one mucks with Mr Tamary,” she said the name with emphasis, clearly disapproving of Zen’s familiarity.
“Can I leave a message?”
“Dunno, can you?”
“I can’t write much. I can probably do a picture? Where should I leave it?”
Mix fidgeted. “Spirit Well? Kallah’d take it for you...”
That seemed like sound good sense and Zen thanked Mix before walking away. Now she had to find the Spirit Well. She could see at the end of the row and near to the gates the tavern they called the Braided Fox. It was to her mind a den of humanity, of slyness, the very pit of all that was wrong with this city. She thanked her gods that at least it wasn’t in dog town. The wolves were going far too native already.
She knew Cheapside well enough. It was different since the fire, and then the floods, and it was a painful place for her since the slaughter of the wolves; of her family. But she thought she remembered where the spirit well was. Most of the beggars were there begging off the more important beggars that had to frequent the place.
*
It was entirely possible that the shop had not been there the night before. It had certainly taken some finding. The King’s Bazaar boasted rows of shops but more importantly the rigging that made them, the lanes and alleyways, and in one Davian pushed open the doorway of just what he sought. It was like everything hereabouts a specialist affair. It was not unusual that it dealt in magic and ritual. There were a dozen just like it within range of most spells and half of those crowded about what might once have been a square but which time and the establishment of the bazaar had pushed and squashed into more of a crushed octagon.
“Baden Wig?”
There was not so much a counter as a lectern, and not so much a proprietor as something that wanted to look like a man but whose tongue, forked, had been caught licking the last of (what Davian hoped) was mayonnaise from a jar. It coughed, blinked, and the slitted eyes vanished to be replaced by glassy, more normal ones. The shop, small, was crowded. There were dirty cases holding trinkets and round tanks that held snakes. There was only a little light and that unhappy to be there. Wig said, “I might be, sir.”
“If you are then I am looking for a particular thing. A tome I believe, put together by the Princess Sleek?”
“Sir is mistaken. Sir would suggest that such as I would deal in such things? This is an honest shop, a memory of one former person. Sir has surely taken a wrong turning. For sir to suggest that I would possess such a thing, such a dark and unhealthy book, is for sir to wound me deeply. What sort of person would even know of such a thing?”
“Grudamagh sent me...”
That at least elicited a widening of the very unblinking eyes. “Nonetheless sir, what sort of person would, even if it existed, even consider such a thing? Such a dark think, such an evil thing..?”
“My name of Lord Davian, and I am of House Majius.”
A grimoire hit the lectern with a bang. “Six thousand centuries and it’s yours squire.”
“Six thou...? How much?”
“Look squire, we know the sort of prices you lot charge one another. You think I was hatched yesterday?” said Wig.
“Hatched?”
“Born, hatched; you want it or not?”
“I might have to come back...”
*
They had been given a task, each of them and in those areas in which they were strongest. For Sire Berry that meant Cheapside where he had to through all his power, expertise, the long bought and fought for reputation in the Quarter, and his own native cunning to find his mate Slat Henry.
“Wossit all about, Hat?”
“Da king reckons you been got by the got-monster and we gotta be careful ‘case you blows up the city,” said Sire Berry where he shared the steps of the Spirit Well with a dozen Kallah and their Quarter-Lord. “So I gotta find yer by some means and get you ter come with me. I puzzled long an ‘ard about it. What’chu reckon?”
Slat Henry did not look too impressed with the idea. He said, “Thing is, Hat – what’s to stop them cutting me up with sharp things? You know what that lot are like. Their idea of looking into things is when it’s all pinned down on a velvet-covered board.”
That was true, or true enough to matter. Sire Berry took his alliances seriously. He was all for Troy being the King. It was no skin off his nose (and he had quite a big nose so that would have been a lot of skin). But mates were mates. That was one of the things that people took seriously in Cheapside; family, gang, street, mates, quarter. You had to look out for one another and you had to stick by your mates. Even had Sire Berry considered hanging Henry outside of Troy’s window on a spring made out rusty wire no one would ever have been his friend again. And if they didn’t like him in Cheapside they would have to fear him. That was a bit Blackjack for Sire Berry. He said, “That ain’t gonna ‘appen. Trust me, boy. If they try’s to cut yer, or think to kill yer, I’ll get yer out’ve there. Dere’s people in the Empire what can get rid’ve ritual crap. Nobs and stuff. I’ll pay ‘em, or owe ‘em, but I’ll get it done.”
“You say so, Hat.”
“I says so, Slat ‘Enry.”
“So we gotta go to the King then?” he stood, resigned and to the suddenly much-less indolent looks of the beggars of Cheapside. In the course of the conversation quite a lot more had drifted over, just in case. Henry shook his head but had made sure they had all heard where he was going.
Sire Berry stood too. “Nah, first we go and ‘ave tea with me missus.”
They were must leaving when a wolf girl came up with a scrap of old scroll daubed with scribbly pictures. She asked where she could leave a message for Mr Tamary? Slat Henry took it and passed it to one of his followers to pop into the Well. It would get there and if the city spirit had a reply then it would reach her in its own good time.
*
The heat from the forge was constant here in his land where all was as he would have it. It was a heat that permeated the workshops and here at its heart Jander cracked a vulture egg onto a square of metal set close to the heat where it instantly crisped (as all good eggs were meant to). He scraped it onto the hard white Alguz bread that went soft in the middle from runny yolk. It was a proper egg banjo and Jander for one could live off the things. It was shame then that bread was in short supply.
Since he had made the silver road little grew in the badlands. They were dead as a land could be, nature as a force did not come even for holidays. There were no groves to nature, no hidden pools. He thought Tirack might make a very particular shrine in Forgetown because Tirack was the preacher man but it wouldn’t be any good for ritual and Tirack was a preacher who whilst he had one goddess could still be heard there by many.
In truth the Deci territory had long been like that. It had been kicked and bloody long before Jander had come here. The city had sucked at it, still did, a parasite that thrived on the ore that grew in the ground, the ore that was where elsewhere could be found trees and flowers. Jander did not mind trees and flowers. He looked at the gold ingots and rolled iron nearby; perhaps he might make some.
He banged out more eggs and made more banjos as people came to eat and pour from the big kettle that sat where it always sat, to make skinny little roll-ups from the rope of leaves that traders brought by. And that was the thing - whilst Deci was for trade then trade would bring food. Doubtless they’d go short again, as they had before but this was a land of rock and metal and they’d planted that particular flag too deep and too long to plant anything else.
People sat and ate, and it had not rained so the usual steam was absent.
The badlands gathered at town and village. Orcs and others might make homes in the old mines but few others could, or did – and that was not entirely true he knew. There were scattered little settlings, usually by a good well. They ate lizards and there were some plants out there, spiny and hard skinned that could be eaten if one had the knack and the knowing – but they didn’t travel, salt would make them powder and vinegar a puddle. Hard men and women that made do and mended, that had nothing to do with the city and that having lived so far into the badlands already long dead knew no different now that the whole of it was the same. It was damn hot now, and Jander that had passed back from Alguz had looked back and seen how the rain had literally fallen away in the space of a short half mile.
He fetched up a bottle kept in a covered water trough and handed it round. This was what the Sunstar liked, sometimes to just be Jander, or boss as they called him. The people here were miners and tinkers, some from the city, some from the land. They didn’t care much for gods and worshipped with their sweat to a walking god that was just the boss and who when you called upon his spirits it came in a jug and was good for polishing metal. They liked to work. They kept themselves to themselves, in some ways like the stoic people of Eartholme had once been. Not entirely surprising, Jander thought. They liked a nod and a word and they liked donkeys (with whom they shared a lot in common). They didn’t want to know about the world whose problems were contagious. They didn’t much like strangers unless they came to settle and with something to offer. They liked the peace though they would fight if someone made to take that, if only here. They had Masters and Reeves, there was the Boss. They liked such rank and order, but that ended when the pit whistle blew. They liked to eat and that was stretching thin, but there were ways out here. Vulture eggs had to be sought, which was a pain. Most easily it came from traders but that did not suit their solitary ways. They wouldn’t eat mushrooms which grew on rot and decay - and anything like that was badly made. They’d eat snake if it was properly in a pie but they’d turn on a man that thought a donkey was for food.
They liked their luxuries in jugs and jars. They needed their tools (and there were always better tools). And surprisingly despite their reserve they liked a good concert. Not with funny mummers or odd coves in wide checks – but the sort they put on themselves, or some did. They didn’t like to gamble but they did like to play games of skill where a winner was a winner because he had won (not because he had taken a meal from his children’s bellies). And they liked to earn, even if not spend. To have something put by, just in case, or just because it meant it was there if they needed it. They liked industry, and even painting and knitting was industry. It was all something made.
And they liked to sit, worn from a proper hard day, and pass a jug and cuff yolk from their beards.
Here in the warm glow of a good forge with the satisfaction that came from a job well done.
*
The militia, or what was sent out to tackle threats as posed by the commissent, had turned back. Frankly Selgard did not blame them. Almost the sum total of the fighting force of Deci inside the city was that which had more or less invaded it. There was the Spire Guard of course but they were there to guard... well, it was in the name. Alendari was out in the wilds because that’s what Helds did, and if the Black Hat actually had as powerful a band of killers as he claimed pay for then it seemed to be the case that what happened outside of Cheapside, stayed outside of Cheapside.
There were people living in the quarter that weren’t wolves. But the best of them lived amongst the wolves. The rest were for the most part so black hearted and foul in the pit of their horrid little souls that Selgard would have been happier showing them what a knife felt like from the other side than listening to their whining. But here he was in dog town again, and if some might have considered that he had drawn the short wire then he did not mind it. He had an estate and it was nowhere near Deci whilst still being just about inside the territory. Half his people were tribal and the other half might as well have been. Out in the wilds that meant they didn’t wait for the magic iron rocks to suddenly just appear in the foundries, nor to ask what tree it was that grew charcoal. In the case of the latter then nowadays it was pretty much all of them (or any of them) but mostly from the Majius lands whose heaps probably painted a fair picture of hell. Actually Selgard had been to hell, more precisely several. They had been pretty bad places obviously; but House Majius hadn’t lived there. Having said that, and from he knew about the Majius liking for land, it was only a matter of time.
“Wotcha Selgard,” said a pack of hairy men and women. They were panting in the city heat. Unlike the streets Selgard had passed through to get here a number hereabouts weren’t sleeping. He couldn’t remember especially meeting any of the dogs before now but then he was a noted figure, the Governor!
“Oh, hello,” he rocked on his heels, ready for trouble. None was forthcoming. He was here on a mission requiring some delicacy. He had a name and he hoped the wolves knew it. None of the horrible people had, the scraps of refuse that lingered by the cathedral, none of the... citizens, he sighed at the thought.
“Looking for someone?” said a wolf-woman fanning her open shirt.
“Yes, as it happens. I don’t want to pick through your minds, seems a bit rude,” also he had had a sack full of filth already and his poor head needed a break.
“Does it involve us doing anything?”
“Well, no...”
“G’wan then.”
“No really,” Selgard could do without memories of bottom sniffing, uncooked food and probably discovering fire. “There’s one of your lot, called Graywain? Probably not much help...”
“Next Square over I think?”
“Lovely!”
*
The fight had been a bad one but over before the mayor got there. It was a truism that anything that happened in Forgetown got seen by someone, and usually many, most often the wives old and young - many of whom stayed here whilst their husbands were out beating the trail, the land, or the ox.
It might have been the bloody heat. It might have been the drink, but it was probably just too many people, too little privacy, and all too close to Deci. Folk might fight dirty in Forgetown. Even the founding fathers knew the quality of knees, elbows and a tray of drinks, but they didn’t tend to draw iron. But someone had and that someone fresh here from the city had stuck a man dead and was still protesting that he had done nothing wrong.
That might have escalated. Gideon could well have gotten here to find him measured and with a chain about his neck but instead it was to find the youth tied by the thumbs and his victim covered in empty sacks. Stood over the murderer was a man taller than Gideon, probably taller than most folk and with a moustache one step away from having its own druid. That man was chewing on the stub of a cigar. He was a stranger.
“What happened?” Gideon demanded to know, though he could see it clearly enough. There had been a fight about a girl. Or rather a punch followed by a knife. The youth still protested that he had done nothing wrong, had been attacked and fought back. Just like on the streets. Gideon snapped at him to be silent. They had one street here and mostly folk didn’t get killed on it. “And who are you?” he said to the stranger.
“He done dusted it, mayor!” the dwarf Mordecry piped up. Mordecrey helped out in the cemetery, good digger. He had his own teeth, three of them, and was as dirty as the spoil he dug. He didn’t get paid for it but found enough gold and iron in the dug graves to keep him happy - civic prospecting.
“Did he? And who asked you to do that stranger?”
The stranger chewed on his cigar before spitting from the other side of his mouth. He said, “Seems to me if we’d waited for asking we’d have needed more sacks.” Even in the Cart and Hammer his eyes were narrow from the sun.
“You some kind of hero, stranger?” said Gideon. He squared up to the man.
“Once, no longer.”
“Take the law into your own hands regular?”
Again the stranger did not reply for a long moment. He eyed up Gideon. Where he was quiet the whole taproom was sucked into the silence. Eventually he nodded, “Seems to me that the law is something good men do, and not what bad men wait for.”
“Something in that,” admitted Gideon. He considered the matter. “I can’t say that you did much wrong. Tell me, you need work?”
“Got some grulls from digging up a stump out by a settling half a day to the west, but I won’t say as how I’m rich.”
“Stranger got hisself a hoss!” Mordecry piped up, “Seen him ride in this mornin’.”
“A horse? Pretty rich to me stranger, but the offer still stands. Least I can do is offer you a drink?”
The stranger nodded. “I’ll drink with you, mayor.”
*
Ma Berry was a witch. Not just a witch, but a crone. A proper old fashioned hag with gruesome features and a hooked nose she had for a long time lived in the haunted wilds and given rise to a lot of the stories that still went around the city when small children acted as small children will. Her rooms were neat, there were many ornaments. There was a sense of the doily even about the chairs. She and Trundelberry were very happy together.
There was tea, there was cake, and Slat Henry was hardly a stranger. He had to think hard on what he had been told but amongst friends he scrambled in what remained of his memory to think of anything that might help.
*
Pleased as a snake with two heads, eight fangs and a good rock to lie under Tirack welcomed those that had come to Forgetown. The wagon parks were crammed, oxen had had to be left to water at the lowering river outside the looping wall and ditch, and off the main drag there were fields of sailcloth where people pitched and jostling made what they could of the homes that they did not have (since anything with walls had long been taken). The town burned and the main drag was a crowded throng where only the blistering metal either side (good for rain, hell for heat) was avoided. A lot of people were going to be joined. A lot of them had not known it but here they were and that was what happened here, and now, and if the Preacher Man had anything to say about it. Which he did, heck yes!
A lot of folk had come from the city. A lot of folk coming from the city had arrived in worn shoes and blistered heads. Even now more were bathing in the river after the long walk. It seemed that Anath’s granny had suffered another unfortunate relapse from life and a lot of folk that would normally never have left his all too visible Invisible Quarter had come here. Marriage wasn’t a big thing in the big city. Sure as eggs were eggs it would be soon. Praise the Goddess and pass the prayer book.
“Names on the plaques, names of the plagues,” said Tirack. It was a burning day and his fine shrine and hitchin’ post was cool. On every wall were the metal rectangles that marked a joyous union. Folk delirious from the badlands were healing up fine, and many now married. Some folk even to other folk they’d known in the big city. It was good work, righteous work, he was the Preacher Man and Shaehan looked upon them. His woman was a peaceful woman, a woman that loved and looked down on them and loved them all alike. She didn’t have no truck with violent ways. And if folk thought otherwise then Tirack felt ashamed to think of the women, the wives, his followers he wouldn’t call a warband. Of the posse that might spring up. Heck, there might even be a militia for all he knew. Worse and this was trader town, and traders fought like heroes. But not now, not with the word on the street!
It was a joyous time and Tirack as ever gathered folk about him even as flies numbering to Majius levels seemed too to hearken to his words. He walked and where he went the preaching went with him. Here now where folk had been playing a jig. They waited for his words and the words were the words of the Goddess and all the angels with a hankering for some down-to-Primus thinking.
Tirack raised a hand. He said, “Well I heard about the feller you’ve been dancing with, all over the neighbourhood.” The wives and would-be-wives aha’d and called out for him to tell it like it was. People didn’t need to hide their urgings. There weren’t no sin in it. Just as long as they did it with joy, and he knew about joy, and this was a joyful time. A time for them to know that the festival was about sharing, and joining, and no shame at all, and for folk to know they could come to him if they wanted a proper weddin’. “So why didn’t you ask me people? Or didn’t you think I could?”
Like angels come to earth he wanted them happy, he wanted them joyous. He cheered and people waiting for a sermon instead jumped up. The music struck up in time. Tirack raised his hands and a cloud of doves flew across him and the crowd. Like doves too they would be, pure and free and right as they should be. Marriage meant freedom, heck yes! He bobbed his head, showing it was fine to have fun, good to be together. It weren’t no time for solemnity. “Let me see you shake your tail feather!” these were good folk, or if they weren’t all so good then they were happy folk.
And happy folk rarely did bad things, less they were evil and heck, they had folk could do things about that. Heck, yes!
*
Even here in the square that had, not so very many years before, seen the beginning of a restoration that (as sometimes happened) died when it did not happen all at once - Selgard drew little notice. Wolves lolled about in the shade, mostly with two legs still because fur was simply out of season right now, and having been jeered at the last time he was here no one cared to any more.
Nichal was there in company with a pair of other brutes and to them Selgard walked, humming, and thinking about a colour other than black to wear.
“What do you want?” said Nichal. He was not exactly aggressive about it, but neither was he exactly the spirit of welcome. “You bring further threats from the city?”
“Cut the crap, Ogder,” the heat had finally got even to Selgard. “I don’t want to be here. I’ve a nice estate all made up of trees and rivers. Most of my people are tribesmen as you know. It’s you that’s living in the slums. I’ve got a nice thunder box that get’s cleaned out regular. You,” he pointed, “just crapped in a bucket.”
There was indeed a tar-thick pail. Nichal looked at it frankly. He had never much liked flies, which was a shame as he certainly seemed to have a lot of them. He yawned, “Fair enough. Go on then, what do you want?”
“There’s trouble.”
“’Course there is. That’s us, we’re trouble. Capital ‘t’... rubble.”
“I’m looking for Graywain?”
One of those there, older than any of them, looked up. Everyone looked at him. Everyone then looked at Selgard. Nichal said, “Chief Graywain, champion and leader of one of me Hirds?”
“Of course he is,” Selgard sighed. “Look I’ll explain and he can say if it means anything to him. But it’s hot. Let me buy you both a drink.”
Nichal turned to Boryd, “Zen about?”
“She’s pissed off for a bit, chief.”
Nichal nodded. “All right then, but two drinks!”
*
“Twist it,” Mayor Gideon said to explain how to break the lead seal. He made a show of keeping his thumb on what would then be a loosened seal. “Shake it, shake it, shake it - shake it.” He mimed what to do what the bottle then, one of many that had been stacked up in a low wall around the gnoll. They were not alone, he, Sloppy, and the gnoll. There were in the room a dozen others from amongst the local Ishmaics. There was a cry hurriedly shushed by the simple expedient all mothers have at their disposal - and that being very flexible feeding times.
“Baby,” apologised Sloppy. He couldn’t quite get the music out of his head. There had been a lot of dancing in the street. A lot of his family were out hunting snakes since with so many people in the town they were selling out within an hour of opening. People weren’t starving by any means. This was Forgetown, which meant that it had a lot to do with trade and a little bit to do with hammering metal. Here and if there was a need traders would be on it like the flies that were on everything else. The prices might be steep but then many of the people that had come here from the city had come with a lot of the folding stuff, scarce though he had heard that was becoming. They would return in a few days and probably well equipped with anything that might make that easier. The more well-to-do were already paying well to ride on top of a wagoneer’s load when they planned to go home.
“Keep an eye on the bloody thing,” said Gideon. “Try the potions if it starts swelling. I’m working on something more precise.”
“Okay, pasha.”
*
Either side of the main drag, the stone and dust had given way for fifty long yards. Too many people, the constant wagon traffic and the damn dry heat did what a ritualist might have plotted but here simply had not. It was a miracle that no one was hurt and Tirack was still waving away the cloud it had made when amongst others he was the first down there. The slope was gradual and there was not enough spoil to make it worse. Already there were some down there picking up those that had fallen, were dazed, but otherwise unhurt.
Not so far away one of the carters, Orion, had been one of those to fall in. He was one of those souls that proliferated here. He passed through like a lot of the carters and had taken to making a little on the side by organising a place amongst the wagon park. Tirack had seen him around and was grateful to see him heave up the last of those that had fallen in.
The Empire was a worm farm of caves and caverns and unknown to the founding fathers there were some under their town too. Those few under the wall had been firmly blocked as such were with even the meanest fortification. Here now those caverns were revealed so that under the drag they made a series of crude arches. Orion was tapping one now but told Tirack he reckoned they were safe enough.
“You know caves?”
Orion admitted he did, as well as anyone. He was a carter now though, he told Tirack (who already knowing that only nodded). The dust was settling and people were calling down. The Preacher Man had his holy work to be about.
“You want me to make sure folk don’t come down here?” said Orion.
Tirack nodded. He had too much to do and the arches would probably be occupied by the end of the day. That was the Forgetown spirit. “Do your best.”
*
The Braided Fox made it neutral territory. Also it was cool, there was proper ale, and they could talk here without too many people overhearing. Nichal had accepted it because Trundleberry ran things hereabouts, if not the Fox itself. Selgard liked it because it wasn’t dog town. Graywain did not like it at all. He was a mountain wolf, for a long time a loner. He didn’t trust food he had not killed for himself and was especially suspicious of sausages.
Selgard explained the situation. He wouldn’t say the source of his information but swore it was good. More drinks were brought over.
Nichal shrugged, “You might as well tell him it’s all arse, ‘Wain.”
*
The gathered as they did every third Starsday to polish up the iron work. Each was married, and therefore very proper. Here in Forgetown it was the very thing, and if the house was a tin shack then it was neat as a new knife and scrubbed to within the very inch. It was also far too hot and they in their stiff and sober clothing sweltered. Each polished at the trinkets and buckles, the sthingys and even shoes that stood on a neat little fold out table. The table being metal too they would polish that last, or at least other than the small wire brushes with which they would so polish. There was not much that was not made of metal in Forgetown. As the celebrations went on and people talked about the ratfink the more disreputable were frying snake bacon on the walkways.
They gossiped because that was what they did, that and keeping an eye out for strangers. Here where people had made their homes, here where they sat on cherry-red porches to watch the great balls of old wire wool tumble along the main drag, the wives had eyes.
Milly Shrimp had been killed only hours before and already the wives were discussing it. Milly Shrimp had certainly not deserved the killing, newly married and so transformed from that tearaway Milly Mudlark into the suddenly more acceptable Mrs Shrimp. It had been murder pure and simple. Not much that could be done about murder. Theft and assassination, then yes, everyone saw that a short mile away. But murder, all passion and violence and no good reason at all (no matter that the city was distant then still assassination was done for a good reason, everyone had to make a living) was different.
A large man in a small hat went by. None of the ladies passed mention of him. Not sneaking about, all very innocent they thought.
Milly had not been the first and she would not be the last. People got drunk, they argued. Fist fights were sometimes dirty. People carried weapons, or worked with hammers and pickaxes which when it came to being hit in the head pretty much served the same purpose. But of late there had been more brutal, quiet affairs. Some were seething at what had been done. No one doubted it was an outsider. Of which in Forgetown there were no few. Indeed, most people were, just than many outsiders came and went and many got married so they weren’t too far outside.
*
The King looked over his Deci. So high above it the city was a land of poisonous hills through which the many Guilds and larger buildings rose through the smog to mark for him what lay beneath. It was a fine view and one he fixed in his mind. Just in case bits of it were no longer there to see in the coming months.
By Alan Morgan