Post by Sire Halfblack on Apr 30, 2015 1:43:08 GMT
Storm IM 1014: Final Dawn
The fells gave only glimpses of the barony below, where passing through the cloying trees on the slopes Selgard paused when briefly that was possible. It was not that the trunks were so large they required navigating, so much as that the trees grew so close together. Undeterred by the season the canopy of needles above deadened the air. It seemed to him that the land held its breath, perhaps hoping he would not hear it. And like some adversary badly hiding where he stared openly at it it remained still in the hope he had not. Yet it was no adversary, only unsure of him, and assuming the worst. Deep in the trees of the fells even the mountains were hidden. He might have passed from one world to the next, something of which he was not inexperienced. And that made him ponder.
His barony was a lot older than the status that made it that. Like anything that was a barony, once at least it had been a place of fighting; or at least holding. Often a barony had been an outpost, just as likely somewhere to be watched, or to be ruled. But it had been somewhere before it had been made a barony. Selgard did not in this context consider everywhere to be somewhere, a lot of places had simply been nowhere.
Strictly speaking he was not in the Empire at all now. Though where he paused in this break on a stone balding to look back the way he had walked, and at his home well below, that felt irrelevant. Back there had always been somewhere. Up here and he sensed nothing that made this other than nowhere. And once upon a time, as stories might often begin, this had been nowhere at all. And back there, even then, had been somewhere.
He was thinking too tribally. He rubbed his face. No, he decided. Right now there no such thing as too tribally. He was a lord of land and the Governor of Deci. He had grown in those streets without shoes but with a knife. What dirt there had been had been clay, with the solid centuries of ash and the city as had been upon it. Really, he couldn’t have been more city had Anath ordered a guild built on his head and asked him not to poke about in his new hat. Yet of everyone, he had never had any real trouble with the tribes, or those tribes here. They even called him lord now, not even chief. And that was something. It certainly wasn’t nothing. He was some thing, far beyond a no thing. Selgard sighed at the thoughts. This must be what it was to be a certain type of shaman. “Interesting,” he said aloud.
*
They had already prepared a certain sort of list, and perhaps with a rewarding predictability he might well have expected all was… in order. Anath liked order. Order paid its taxes. He certainly did, and so did everyone of heroic spirit that walked the city in a fine pair of boots. Anath would have said that mattered. Anath was right. That sort of thing was well known. Scribes gossiped. Here they gossiped precisely, and with great forethought. When it came to the great scrolls that vaguely ordered a city into near tallies, scribery, no one understood that better than Anath. He tried not to think about how much a certain someone was apparently paying their new retainers. And that person being so important it meant that everyone else’s was therefore being paid, suddenly, a pittance.
“I am not surprised,” said Anath, who was, but he had a reputation to pet.
“They are guilty.”
“Yes, I can see that, and very particular too. Very… Hundred. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this was exactly the sort of thing the city would enjoy seeing very much. Because, of course, I am never surprised,” sometimes it was enough to pay attention to something to find it had been done, when if he hadn’t it might not have. Quite often simply being in the room meant a naughty child behaved, whether one told it not to or otherwise.
*
For some years now Fiable had been working the kitchens. In a guild as important as this one that should have been a position attendant to some status. But they didn’t eat much here, and moistly what they did eat was very thin soup. This was not a guild that dealt in worldly matters. It did not approve of sleep, food, or sleep. Sleep was mentioned twice often; everyone was a bit tired.
“Yet,” said Drabble, “once you were the Master here?”
“Oh,” Fiable waved away the gossip. He had also once been a pretty nifty wizard for a street kid. They had called him ‘fire ball’. But his da, and his da, and his da before him had been in the guild, so when the guild had returned off he had been sent. When the guild had put aside the common stink of petty ritual he hadn’t much liked where it had gone. He had gone to the kitchens, he hadn’t much liked that either.
“Might I suggest that you might earn a colossal sum elsewhere?” said Drabbins. “Also, that word of your little habit of…” he whispered. The sculleries and spitboys tried to hear what was said, but only caught the last of the suggestion, “Need never be mentioned again?”
*
It had required leaving the city, and for the estate known as the Thorns. Since his kinsman was the lord there he had been able to assuage the concern of the carts that plied the long route. The Thorns lay in the shadow of the mountains that cut the Empire dead, in a horseshoe of extending hills whose open side was walled. It had taken a moment to assure them of who he was, which was as well for it was quite the thriving town inside and many that stood to watch Xanion walk by were armed.
It was not that they were overtly hostile, so much that they were wary. He might have been any of the Majius; and some of the Majius might not have been welcome. The hanging kind, presumably. For a big, wet bag of commoners they had the scars and eyes of people not always given to tilling the land. That he had come to speak with the dragon made sense to them. In the absence of their lord it meant that they both had to make no decision of their own, and that if Xanion meant any real mischief then Gruldamagh would doubtless eat him.
“In here?” asked Xanion of the entrance to what looked to be a rather old mine.
*
“I don’t,” admitted Sire Brass, “Actually know all the Majius lands across this fine Empire of ours.”
The silver throne waited. The king adjusted his face mask. “Well, whatever lies on the edge of my estate. But not Wells, someone else has dibs on that.”
Brass framed what he said very carefully, “It is rather a good address, my lord king. I had expected something a big better than just a scrap of the Badlands. Something like a village, with people? Or failing that, an estate elsewhere? I don’t claim to know all the House possessions but I don’t doubt there are estates littering the Empire that Majius has. You could perhaps name one, and then if it exceeds the house I might lease it from you?” he smiled, “Everyone benefits.”
*
A crowd of apprentices spotted with older minds kicked at their captive as they dragged him from the cart. There were a number more still to be attended to, beaten and bound whilst the latest had a rope thrust about his neck. With a roar from the small mob the drow was dragged into the air, to dance and die. Brands sputtered and died. Momentarily there was a faltering sweep of darkness and then there was only the rope swinging empty and a puff of elemental darkness that too frayed and was gone.
This was not the first such scene the Sleek had seen of such revenge being meted out to the drow in the city. These were most likely not part of the attack at all, but that didn’t matter. Talath was not about to intercede, he would have been considered too an enemy. There was a mood in parts of Deci that the bloody drow had gone too bloody far. The days of their villainy were long over; this was not their city now, no matter what they thought.
People were angry. To be a drow was to be a fiend, and not one of the local swaggering fiends. Talath tilted his head. He nodded, though no one had spoken to him directly. In a moment he was gone, heading north amongst the irregular rooftops of Deci in the gullies and sharp little canyons beneath the poison smog.
*
Away for a year and her clothes now, for one with an eye for such things, still showed the wrinkles from having been put in a bag too long. She had whitened her face too so as not to stand out. Anath was reading down a scroll of certain of his properties whilst waiting for Lonely to return. Lonely might not know all things, but he knew about the King’s Bazaar. There would always be someone there who knew the worth of something wholesale. Anath looked up. He hadn’t expected her to return, he checked, for a little while longer. On the other hand she clearly knew her business and the reliability of messengers. In this event it seemed the most reliable was her own good self.
“I will need further funds,” she said shortly.
“I see, to acquire more?”
“No, Sire Halfblack. To repay funds I took in good faith from one of your peers in the big city. The opportunity was there. To have asked you would have been to delay that opportunity.”
“Quite so, quite so,” he said and put aside the tallies for the moment. Sitting back within the wings of his chair he indicated that she should continue with the words, “How many of them did you acquire?”
“All of them.”
“That’s the opportunity?”
“Other than those in the hands of heroes, of course. The price fell alarmingly since flooding the city they were little more than pretties for bawds. When it comes to acquiring a future market share then what proportion of any good would the Sire ideally enjoy?”
Anath nodded, “All, or as greatly all as is reasonably possible,” then, “How much?”
*
Once again the Serpent had been attacked. It was as if someone had, of all the possibilities of the Empire, taken some great exception to their cathedral. Dog Town usually the quietest quarter of Deci was not now. Talath thought it would probably amuse Troy to see how something like this could unite people so well, for just as there were people of many kinds in the crowd, one of those kinds was most definitely hairy.
People had heard of the occupation, and many that rarely (if ever) came here had likewise come to where trouble waited. No one was going to form some levy on the Sleek’s say-so. He was, in Deci, less popular than the pox. Deadlier too. He didn’t mind that they hated him, because they feared him. If he had wanted to be liked then he, Talath, would have been Selgard. He shuddered at the very presumption of the thought! Selgard could have marched them into the cathedral, doubtless even more so that bickering little wolf Zenaida.
Talath took the time to see it from the perspective of the drow inside the cathedral. If he were they, he would leave. Unless they thought killing a portion of a rampaging mob worth their own one-lifetimes. A half decent held in here would be swelled by the city once word got around. He looked with satisfaction to see that there were those here and there talking, quietly, seeing what he saw. They had a very odd sort of militia in Deci, people didn’t see much of it for a start. Talath saw a lot of things. Talath thought blinking a weakness.
*
Taller than he the man’s pointed face was framed by a scaled hood. The chamber glittered so it was difficult to tell its size in the darkness for the only light came from a ball of fierce fire that hung a little below one shoulder. The fire intense, the size of a fist, its silently roaring nimbus stretched in dark flames far above them both.
“So then what is it that you seek here, kin of the Lord of Thorns?”
*
“Guilty,” he said. It was the hundred-and-twelfth case brought to him and since the first… many (he had long lost count) had been presented with such a finality of witness then he was becoming insensate to the whole affair. The Guilds were actually doing a more thorough job of it than was entirely necessary. There was scarce a peon in the Empire that even dreamed, all the less expected, hearings and evidence, considered quandaries as to truth and justice. And no one at all in Deci. Had the city possessed a proper magistrate he could have said ‘guilty’ a lot. But for now there was not. Or there was, or rather… he shook his head. “What did he do again?”
“Upon being attacked by our rivals failed to give account of his self,” said the guild master.
“Reputations could suffer!” The king agreed. “Guilty,” the crowd was if anything thicker than at the start, and it called out for a hand (for the man clearly had no use for it). He nodded, waved towards the bin wherein other hands lay, and called for the next petition to be brought him.
“A matter,” a new master announced, “of apprentices setting upon a rival guildsman.”
“Is that wrong?”
“The guildsman having failed to give account of his self, their victim lived.”
“Terrible, terrible,” he tutted the crowd, “You’re all going soft!” and the city, chided, managed to look about itself in such a way that a thousand eyes never caught another.
*
There was Bobcat, Queen Skin, The Mayor, Rambling Rose, and Leather Mask. They were not hidden, for they took no pains to be so. Unusually they were together, and whether in hides, fragrance and torn lace, gold chains, hooped skirts and stockings, or apron and crinkled hood they stood or sat and watched as the wagons wove their way through the streets.
*
“Banjo brandy?”
It was a bottle of the very best. And the very best in Deci didn’t come easy, or if it did only comparatively. Perhaps the reason so many born to Deci flowered into heroes was because of all the myths and legends they heard as children it was not only the tavern, but this ‘ale’ that featured so prominently. Bingo Cartwright had got the stuff for Jander, albeit by having a word with the tapman of the Braided Fox where they had every drop drunk there brought by the barrel from somewhere else. Bildteve had better beer, and that didn’t seem right. Not for miners, nor the warsmiths. This had offended Jander so much on thinking about it that he had even considered how to rectify that. The easiest method seemed to be doing like the Fox, and importing it.
The warsmiths were not working. They were a guild and today, and for more either side, they had better things to do. For weeks storms had swept over Deci, but that also weeks ago now. Today, certainly beneath the dense ceiling of the city smog, it was unseasonably hot. Jander waved the bottle, “It’s made from eggs,” he cracked the top. “Smells like eggs too. Just think, it must have been fermented from egg wine. You can do anything with an egg.”
*
It did not matter quite how much the vizier slithered he could not quite get a position subtle enough to whisper in the king’s ear. Troy upon his great silver throne smiled within the mask that was expected of him. “What was that, my dear Halfblack?”
Stood to one side and slightly behind the great, portable throne Anath did not scowl. It was to those with the wit to see it a face utterly devoid of a scowl. Nonetheless stood about a construction absolutely made not to allow anyone to stand behind Troy, Anath remained nonetheless more definitely not before him than anyone else. He said, “There is another, my lord King Troy the Faceless.”
In chains and with iron bands about him, his face concealed within a mask cruder than Troy’s, a miscreant was thrown forward. Though his captivity would have conspired anyone to have appeared helpless still there was a weakness, a cast of age about what little could be seen of the figure. Troy leaned forward slightly, and in utter harmony so too did the by-now packed crowd. The great procession of the Guilds was but three streets away. Troy nodded. He had half expected someone like this. Anath’s stressing of the subject only confirmed it. Troy said, “It seems we have a genuine villain amongst us?”
The crowd hissed, many pointed.
“No,” said Troy, “not our much loved vizier, without whom you would all be wearing tin clogs, food to vile rats…”
A big hat coughed loudly.
“…Not all rats,” Troy corrected himself. Then, “That,” he raised a hand so as to turn it down upon the captive. “What punishment is suited for one brought in such chains before me?” he waited as an alarming (and admittedly inventive) cloud of ideas was voiced. He raised his hand again, now for silence. “These are all fine suggestions, but not a one of them would be enough. Therefore I order, and with the utmost care, for the villain to suffer all of them!”
The crowd cheered!
*
Two spell lengths tall it led the procession. Though like most of the puppets it was noticeably baggy about the robes the head bore a very good resemblance. All in all he was rather flattered. Not many smiled in Deci, but there he was and didn’t he look like the lovely fellow? “That’s me, isn’t it?” said Selgard.
“It is!”
The Governor didn’t look at the man that stood a little to one side. Having directed Selgard to the tin podium the puppeteer was more than content to let him enjoy the view. They were all there, stalking over the wagons used by the guilds. Many had sturdy awnings and other coverings just in case, for example, a star fell out of the sky.
Now came, upon a great throne, the king. This puppet had been dressed in silver, foil rattled in the wind that the chimney of the streets made. The great mask that was a head was beautiful, with cheekbones that could have sliced an old cheese. It didn’t look a lot like Troy to Selgard’s mind, but he could hardly fault the guild for an eye to their own longevity. Selgard said, “What is that upon the king’s shoulder?” for there along the line of Selgard’s pointing finger something small fluttered. By some means of the puppeteers the wind, funnelled through it, seemed to whisper.
“Sire Halfblack,” said the guildsman.
“I thought you all liked Anath?”
The guildsman blinked. They did. The governor should see the earlier designs.
*
It was a grand day out for Cheapside. Sire Berry amongst his own, and especially the Throttlers, was enjoying it all immensely. Where the black hat sat upon the narrow wagon that held very few (but was followed by so very many) and all pulled by a single, enormous pig. The days of the Hundred growing in Cheapside were not entirely past, but many now had homes in professed better quarters, and there was a whole generation of little guildsmen growing without the hard eyes, and the dagger-calloused thumb.
Even beneath the smog it didn’t feel so very cold, and contrary to the downpours of recent years there hadn’t been a spot of rain in weeks. The big black hat waved a hand at the crowds.
*
It was always worthwhile, to see the festival, the parade as the Hundred called it since they took themselves so very seriously, and festivity smacked nowadays of frolics, and foolishness. The Hundred had no time for chaos, and considered evil the decadent platitudes of the simple-minded. Anath could see the… parade, with many eyes. He saw amongst the procession order, and order had made Deci prosper, where the Hundred would have it that it had brought stagnation to other cities. For the most part the quietly-mighty of the Hundred would only achieve immortality by their deeds. They had one life, and life was only precious in a city where it was notoriously cheap when it was made to have had value.
*
A number of his faithful had undertaken the long journey to the city. They stood and watched as the moderate cart of the miners went by, oddly satisfied at its simplicity. Some of the Hundred had been considerably more extravagant, but those had been the pinchy sort of guilds; not the working guilds like they. Indeed, as they drank from the tankards they kept their thoughts to themselves, happier amongst the filthy workers from the Slurries than they could ever have been with the sly coves of the Invisible, or the narrow-eyed guildsmen that had, to their mind, taken over the city. There weren’t many Slurry workers here. Most still had to work.
*
Four drunk apprentices had barricaded themselves into Mrs. Tibbs Fine Two Toes and weren’t coming out. Here and there about the streets a pair of assassins, several beggars, and quite large numbers of oafs that had been bribed to run around the place were choking still, though it had been an hour for some since they had been throttled. For the practise Sire Berry himself had been the ball. It wouldn’t do when it came to a proper scrap, but this was practise. “Think dis black ‘at needs more brutes,” he decided. He had twenty lads and lasses conversant enough with the great game but needed more. Especially since he really wanted to give Deci’s Halfblacks a right royal stabbing.
He had reminded himself about the game, knew he had the broad backs or stabbers there to recruit. He probably needed to decide what sort of thing they would do, they couldn’t all be stabs or he’d never get the gobbal to where it counted. He would also, definitely, need a game plan.
That didn’t matter much right now. People were interested. Everyone in the city would know about the coming match and Sire Berry knew he had one great advantage over Anath; he, Sire Berry, had nothing in particular else to do. Anath could be tied up, put in a sack, in a chest, in an empty room, with no door; and still be too busy to really pay attention to anything like this. “Crackin’, feckin’ shame,” the great and mighty Hat chuckled.
*
Earl Hail was a man of importance in Deci, and in the eyes of the nobility only second perhaps to the king. He stood now in company with a number of his family, and a far larger number of the sort of blank, forgettable and entirely faithful retainers that any House of Deci might well be wise to possess. The crowd about the king had thinned for the procession but here where it had ended there had been cheers, especially at the dangling dead and the barrels of severed hands. It was not the case that everyone in Deci knew who was worth the dealing with, and this not being Halgar justice was not a goddess to whom they often gave worship. But everyone that had been judged had been known to someone, and there was nothing like a crowd to spread news. They expected the Sleek to deal with the bad ‘uns, but that didn’t mean they liked it. The king now? That was different, all on his big silver throne after all.
“You have something to say, my lord Earl?” Troy observed the niceties.
“On this day when you are so very much the king, my lord king?” Hail waved off the very suggestion.
*
“All the trouble makers are in one place then?” the Sleek pointed out. The lopsided square that fronted the Spire was empty. The statue to Charming Billy served well enough as a prop against which to lean, and which Talath did, arms crossed not at all worried as to whether that made him a target. The drow were quite welcome to come and get him. It saved on his boot leather.
There were a few others here and there, and all within easy reach of his thoughts. Personally, and now he actually came to stand here, what he really saw was that all the really dangerous drow had taken it upon themselves to sit in a big tower that mostly, after all, went up. It wasn’t known for its doors. If they had taken over half a quarter he might have been worried; but where were they logically going to go now? And what with the servants not exactly regularly going out for food and the like anymore how much could they have laid in? It didn’t seem especially bright to him. For once he, the Sleek, was absolutely certain where real, genuine, actual villains that troubled his city were. He and others like him, heroes, could sneak in there and enjoy any amount of mayhem. Then a held could go in and enjoy their selves too. It wasn’t that Deci had the greatest army in the land, but they had Alendari, and they had Sire Berry. And weren’t both absolutely grand when it came to having street fighting horrible helds?
It could have been, Taleth decided, considerably worse. “I might have a quick poke about,” he decided and left the statue of a hated werewolf to whatever thoughts it doubtless enjoyed. Musing over its failure, he fervently hoped.
*
“Let them,” the governor picked at the scrappy runes painted on the wall, “As does know evil, know the judgement of Talthar.” He scratched his chin. Talthar with an ‘f’, he noted. There were a dozen bodies and each of which had lost its head. The Slurries was noisy still, most here were not guilded and so Hundred Day or not they had still toiled at their labour. The bodies would have gone to the honey and the paint scrubbed free had Selgard not heard about it. He said, “I thought you didn’t know who had done this? Don’t you read?”
The worried looking worker shook his head, of course not; most didn’t. Selgard on the other hand had heard of the culprits before seeing the daubs because at the moment, if the whisper was quiet, it was still noisy enough for the story that people were being murdered. That wasn’t even news in Deci. What was however, was that the church of Alguz was behind it. The tale had gone faster than anyone that could have read… this.
Oh dear. He said, “It’s a put up job.”
“Is it?”
“Of course.”
“Only this lot were snake worshippers.”
“Serpent, cathedral?”
“Aye, but lots of cults. This lot worship snakes, or did. Not nice people at all. Good workers, mind,” the fellow added. He wasn’t worried at being implicated just that he didn’t much like being noticed at all. The Slurries workers kept themselves away from the attention of the rulers of Deci. Selgard might be alright, but he still waltzed about being a Deci-boy. In addition ‘not nice’ in Deci meant pretty bloody awful.
“Best not spread this about…”
The workers were still cuffing tears from their eyes a minute or two after Selgard had gone. Their laughter at his request echoed still despite the noise of the smeltery.
*
It took considerable hard work over the course of a whole day for Jander to rid his nostrils of the smell of the city. He had never noticed that stench when he had spent so long there, but these briefer visits left him longing for the cleaner purity of Forgeholm. His own folk had had their celebrations and likewise had returned to their toil.
By Alan Morgan