Dread and nausea, already present in the pit of Lamp’s stomach, climb his throat on a rapid tide of burning sickness. He fights it down, struggling to maintain outward composure as his thoughts spiral into frightened confusion.
The pain inside his skull batters his senses from within, dulling his sight and pushing the world into a disconnected remove. His pulse quickens. Blood floods his extremities, pounding through his head and face with every beat. Cold sweat beads against his burning skin as a deep chill penetrates his overheated body.
His breath comes fast and ragged, and his legs grow weak. He stumbles away from the cliff edge, suddenly afraid of losing his balance and tumbling to his death.
“Help me.”
He struggles to enunciate in his own language, clutching at once-familiar words like a blinded man stumbling through his own home. Something is deeply wrong. He feels torn open. His mind aches. He barely notices his own palms pressed against his head, his own fingers tugging at his hair.
“Help me!” His throat, already ragged, sears with fresh agony as he calls. “Please!”
Falling to his knees, Lamp focuses his entire willpower on holding back a sob. He feels a hand land on his shoulder a moment later, but he can’t open his eyes to see who came for him. Someone is there; that’s all that matters.
The wounded scholar collapses into himself while his rescuer gently slips the backpack off his shoulders and pulls him onto his side, easing him into a reclined position. A voice tells him to breathe slowly, so he does. Someone asks him questions, so he tries to speak.
The words come out wrong. Lamp’s tongue trips over itself, trying either to say three things at once or the same thing in three incompatible ways. The boundaries of language blur and collapse as he desperately struggles to resolve and rebuild even a basic level of command.
Why can’t they just understand him?
But they do. They did. His companions came to his side when he called, and they stay with him now. Two voices speak comforting platitudes. A hand wipes sweat from Lamp’s brow before it falls into his eyes. Another wraps around his fingers and gently squeezes. They help him, like he asked, even if he can’t remember whether he chose the proper words.
Slowly, painfully, and with protracted struggle, the scholar begins to recover. After several minutes of fumbling, his tongue finally manages to settle back into a language of his conscious choosing. He tells the others he’s fine and tries to sit upright, but a dizzy spell forces his head back onto Blackwing’s lap. Ashti tightens her grip on his hand and tells him to lie still. He obeys.
Another minute passes, during which time the pounding in his skull subsides but never fully abates. Commensurately, the burning in his eyes reduces to a dull sting, and his vision clears as tears he hadn’t realized he was crying finally run dry. Swallowing with a parched throat, he laments the loss of water.
“Do your people make any teas?” He hoarsely asks in the old language.
Ashti assures him that they do, and further promises to procure their finest brew for him after they reach the palace. He thanks her with a nod and attempts to sign his appreciation to spare his voice, but that effort only uncovers a new problem.
When he frees his hand from Ashti’s gentle hold and directs his fingers into the pattern she’d taught him for gratitude, they disobey. Driven by the same confusion of language which hobbled his tongue, his grafts adopt a shape the outlander never taught him. The strange configuration of splayed and twisted digits tests the limits of his dexterity. Worse, his fingers seem to stick there somehow, fighting to hold their alien pose against his will.
Lamp shakes his hands at the wrist, forcing them to flop limply. After that reset, he’s able to sign what he intended to the girl. Then, in an immediate and foolish experiment, he tries to reset his hands back into the unknown sign. They slip against it this time, no longer able to assume the proper shapes and angles. His best attempt at reconstruction looks more like two mirrored glyphs of greeting, the salutations facing each other as if he’s offering glad tidings to himself.
Giving up on that maddening pursuit, Lamp makes his second attempt to sit upright, and this time he manages the feat without losing his sense of balance. Blackwing keeps a supporting hand on his shoulder all the same. His companions allow him a moment further to collect himself before their questions commence.
At Blackwing’s gentle prompting, Lamp softly explains what he experienced: the breeze, the flower, the trance, the acquisition of knowledge, the pain, and the confusion. After the others hear his account, they agree to indulge the scholar while he tries to puzzle out the identity of his new language. He tries speaking familiar phrases aloud in the foreign tongue, and the words come to him naturally.
Some of its vocabulary and most of its grammar feels familiar, but much of it doesn’t. After a minute of fumbling, Lamp eventually recognizes the language as a mature pidgin partially formed from a blending of the old tongue and the new. Although, from testing random words, he bumps up against the rough imprints of at least three other donors. The scholar might have stuck to that investigation for hours- lost in childlike wonder- if not for the pained look he catches on Ashti’s face before she manages to hide it.
“Ah.” He mumbles abashedly. “We have pressing business, don’t we? Something about rescuing a princess…”
Forcing himself to his feet with a tired grunt, Lamp casts about for the backpack filled with grafts. Blackwing beats him to the punch, securing the bag over his own shoulders while shooting the scholar a stern look to prevent him from objecting.
“Are you well enough to walk?” His employer asks with a tone that brooks no fibbing.
“Yes. I think so.” Lamp lies anyway.
He still feels shaken, but his pain and confusion have subsided a fair measure, and he doesn’t want to hold the others back any longer than he has already. Wobbling a little on his feet but managing to remain upright, the scholar sets off down the hill. He hears rasping footfalls as the other two fall in behind him.
Together, they reach the base of the limestone hill and follow Ashti’s guidance toward a break in the stone teeth. The handmaiden leads them through the splintered maze with a surety she attributes to one half-remembered conversation between her mother and a friend whose father had repeatedly completed the hike to reach this point. The basic rule- such as she recalls- was simple: don’t walk where it looks like you shouldn’t.
Her method works well enough for the three outbound travelers as they wind away from the lifeless plaza. Following a narrow path of mostly level stone, they reach the far edge before too long, and Ashti leads them to the start of a narrow pilgrims’ path carved into the mountainside. There, the two caldera-natives stop to appreciate their first real view of a foreign polis.
Baghdokhtaran-proper spans between four and five times larger than its diminutive neighbor across the mountain, which is still a rather unimpressive size by Lamp’s inflated standards. The city’s footprint barely extends twice the length of Trembleheel’s Landing, although their dissimilar shapes no doubt decrease the accuracy of his rough estimation.
The city’s most interesting trait is its outline. Something between a semi-oval and a triangle, the sharp parabola clings to the mountain at its base and narrows as it pulls away. The profile reminds Lamp of a sundial’s shadow, and that idle comparison enlightens him on its origin: every home in the city was positioned to keep Clearheart’s sacred mountain between itself and the distant glow of Manslaughter’s domain. No one wants that murderous red light falling upon them in their dreams or daily lives, it seems.
Looking closer at individual buildings, Lamp spots houses stacked five or six times atop each other to avoid sprawling outwards, creating towers of a height rarely attained by residential structures in his homeland. Assessing the frequency of such domiciles, he revises his population figure significantly upwards. This city still doesn’t compare to the scale of New Carcosa, but it’s of a good size.
In another point of similarity, light sources seem to congregate along specific streets while wider swaths of the metropolis languish in the gloom afforded to them by Growth’s green stars. In particular, the avenue linking the mountain’s base with a massive stone complex at the city’s center shines just as brightly as any night market back home. It obviously sports fewer colors, but he tries not to judge the locals for that. These magically-impoverished folk can’t be expected to replicate the beautiful graft-light mosaics to which he’s accustomed.
Movement at his side draws Lamp’s eyes to Ashti. He finds her pointing downwards into the metropolis, so he follows the line drawn by her finger to the same stone structure he’d just started to inspect. Looking closer, he confirms that the compound mirrors the shape of the two temples they had examined during their ascent. However, this new collection of buildings stretches wider than both of its cousins combined. Its walls seem elevated as well, rising to a greater height so as to make itself visible among the surrounding architecture.
“That is the temple of Growth.” Ashti states what Lamp had already surmised. “Lady Jaleh resides and governs therein. Our princess inhabits a separate palace dug into the mountain’s face. We will find Her Highness within one of those two locations, depending on her schedule for the day.”
The handmaiden chews her lip before deciding. “I suspect her palace is more likely, given the hour. Lady Jaleh prefers to schedule appointments early in the morning. Although… with Manslaughter’s recent upset… No, enough time has passed that both of them would have returned to normal activities.”
A faint smile plays across Ashti’s lips before she murmurs. “I might even be expected. So, then, to the palace we embark. Lord Blackwing, if you would.”
She turns to Lamp’s employer and holds out a hand. The merchant takes her meaning without needing to wait for translation. After accepting her arm, he turns to the scholar and offers his other elbow. Lamp steps close and takes hold, at which point Blackwing pauses to deliver a word of caution.
“Given all the eyes in this city, we’ll be spotted before we reach the base. Darkness or no.” He turns towards the girl as Lamp repeats his words at low volume. “Will you notice when we’re noticed?”
Ashti draws in a slow breath as she contemplates the question. At length, she shakes her head. “I have not yet managed to determine the precise limits of my graft, but I have repeatedly struggled to absorb the attention of any observer far enough away that distance obscures the features of their face. Perhaps a great intensity of focus or the combined awareness of a large congregation would trigger my senses. However, if isolated watchers scattered throughout the city detect us, I likely would not realize it for quite some time.”
Blackwing nods. “Should we drop quickly?”
The girl closes her eyes to think for a moment before disagreeing. “Our clothes and skin should blend against the stone, and your graft is thin enough to escape notice at sufficient range. I doubt they would spot us before we descend halfway, if even then. That said, I expect you possess more relevant experience in such matters, so I will defer to your judgment if it differs from my own.”
“No.” The merchant offers her the barest smile. “This is the closing hour of your quest. I will follow your direction. In this case, I find it sound.”
She grins back at him with gratitude and renewed confidence. “Slowly, then. For the first half mile.”
With that agreement reached, Blackwing steals their weight away and steps forward, carrying them over the edge. Their bodies fall lazily, dropping like leaves towards the first path in a series of narrow switchbacks winding down the mountain. As Blackwing lowers the group one floating step at a time, Ashti turns her head to glance at both of them in turn.
Finally settling her gaze on the scholar, she asks. “Lamp, when we encounter nobility, may I introduce you as a former priest? We should establish your credentials so no one mistakes you for a low servant.”
“Ha.” He weakly laughs. “No. Not if you want to be accurate. I was never ordained. I just got close to it.”
She nods. “A learned man with the training of a priest, then. I will leave the distinction vague.”
“Fine by me. And if we’re making use of my mysterious past, should we also pretend I learned your people’s hand signs from our central cult, or should I simply hide my knowledge of the language?”
“Ah, right. I overlooked that wrinkle.” Ashti sheepishly turns away. “I would prefer not to raise the subject during our initial meeting. It can be handled later. Please pretend ignorance during today’s interactions.”
“Sure.”
Lamp double checks that decision with Blackwing since the duplicity could affect them both. Nodding, the man simply adds. “See what you can learn before they know you understand.”
“Am I your spy now?” The scholar quips before sighing. “Don’t answer.”
He returns his attention to the outlander, prompting a nod before she resumes. “We should cover a few matters so neither of you are surprised by local custom when we make contact. If I happen to have mentioned any of these subjects previously, or if you encountered them in your own experiences before we met, please allow me to refresh your memory.
“Firstly, members of the Select communicate with commoners through the service of an interpreter. Those who hold such positions are called a ‘voice,” and are typically sourced from among the low nobility. I intend to present you after the same fashion. Is that agreeable?”
“Yes.”
With that agreement reached, they spend the next few minutes of their gradual descent reviewing matters of etiquette and local politics. A few subjects present interesting tangents, but the handmaiden doggedly prevents Lamp from pursuing such diversions.
Ashti’s voice quiets as they approach the mountain’s halfway point, then halts altogether when they cross to the bottom third. Here, she asks Blackwing to stop with a forestalling wave of her hand. He understands that gesture, or perhaps recognizes the word, and sets the trio down gently on an empty path. Releasing the man’s arms, his passengers step forward to the edge.
Lamp recognizes a problem immediately.
While the city below them isn’t exactly awash with light, it does produce sufficient illumination to threaten the secrecy of their approach from here onward. Worse, the location they’re targeting lies at the end of its busiest and brightest street. When they descend below their current elevation, the glow creeping upwards from below will heighten their risk of detection with every drop.
A decision has to be made as to the speed and route of their approach. Judging by his sweeping gaze and tight frown, the merchant already seems to be mulling his options. Ashti, meanwhile, has her eyes fixed on their target.
Crouching low and leaning dangerously far over the edge, the girl peers down at an exterior portion of the palace complex situated below them. Frowning with concentration, she lays both hands on the ground and dips a few inches further forward, prompting Blackwing to gently grab her shoulder with his graft.
“What do you see?” The merchant asks flatly.
Ashti mutters a worried and distracted response. “Her Highness’s favorite palanquin is missing from its station. It might simply be out for repairs, but the likelier explanation is that she rode it into the city.”
“She stores those outside?” Blackwing asks with polite skepticism.
An explanation occurs to Lamp as he completes his translation, so he swaps back to his own language to blurt it out. “Of course. Why wouldn’t she? These people don’t have rain, wind, or sun damage to worry about. Their entire world-tile is effectively indoors. I suppose they only build walls for security and privacy.”
The merchant nods in consideration while Ashti slowly raises her head, ignoring them both. The girl squints towards Jaleh’s palace, seeking any indication that her princess might be in residence. A moment later, she gasps in shock and jabs a finger forwards.
“Look!” She hisses at Lamp. “Do you see soot on the side of that building?”
Lamp follows her finger to a large, rectangular stone structure adjacent to the temple of Growth. Only the simplicity of its design and an absence of ornamentation set it apart from the complex it adjoins. Narrowing his eyes, the scholar searches its exterior for a dark patch that might indicate fire damage.
Failing to find the soot itself, he does at least notice when a jet of water rises from street level to crash into the building’s entrance. Focusing on that area, his eyes resolve a dark stain clinging to a pair of columns and the grand aperture behind them.
“Keen eyes.” He murmurs to his young companion.
Nodding in recognition of his compliment, the girl scootches back from the edge and regains her feet. Then, gesturing towards the ash-marked building with a troubled frown, she explains. “That warehouse stores and distributes our produce for the other cities. If a fire started inside it, Her Highness would have gone to deal with the situation. I expect she would remain there until she retires for the evening.”
Blackwing, calmly panning his eyes over the rest of the city, opines. “Your people seem at ease. I might expect pandemonium in response to the burning of food stock.”
Ashti shrugs. “No one in Baghdokhtaran is ever at risk of starvation. The icon will replenish anything we consume, so few here bother to store much food. Other cities would be more impacted by a disruption within Growth’s temple, but even that shortage can be replenished within days.
“Beyond that, I saw no damage to the surrounding buildings, and the granary’s roof seems unharmed, so hopefully this fire was contained to a few rooms near its entrance. We shall see, and until then we shall remain optimistic.”
The merchant nods. “Very well. Are we changing course to Lady Jaleh’s manor?”
“Yes. I think we must at this point.”
Blackwing points a claw on his left hand towards a darkened district well-removed from the radiance of Baghdokhtaran’s main thoroughfare. Then he traces a path across connected and adjacent rooftops extending through the lightly-trafficked neighborhoods. Ashti takes a moment to assess his route before voicing her approval.
The merchant lifts his head and meets her eyes with a level stare. “I give us poor chances of reaching the temple unnoticed, and I expect entering without invitation would be unwise. We will make contact with your people soon.”
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
The girl bobs her head, seeming resolved. “We will travel as close as we can first, and I will attempt to persuade our way inside when the time comes. Our objective is to reach Her Highness before Lady Jaleh intercepts us.”
“Understood.” He offers an arm each to his companions. They take hold, and the trio resumes its descent.
After considering her foreign guests for a moment, Ashti whispers. “Your faces would only seem unusual to someone standing particularly close. Our clothing is a more conspicuous discrepancy, though I suspect few in the darker sections of the city could recognize its true origins. Both of those factors might escape suspicion. Our grafts, however, will certainly mark us out.”
Blackwing smiles tightly. “Anyone who spots us commuting by rooftop will have suspicions already. I would not worry over other details.”
“Sensible.” She falls silent.
Just in case, Lamp tucks his free hand beneath his cloak so it at least won’t reflect any of the diffuse light from below. His comrades, meanwhile, don’t have much of anything they can do to hide their own peculiar traits.
Veering sideways with every step, Blackwing transports them away from the bright main avenue which links the city’s two palaces. When they close within a hundred feet of the ground, Ashti’s head swivels towards a random street corner near the mountain’s base. A moment later, she mutters under her breath that someone almost spotted them but she handled it.
Soon afterwards, the trio touches down on the roof of a sturdy building in a dark section of the city. Stray lights spill from scattered windows, but nothing save the stars illuminates the streets.
Blackwing allows the others to continue hanging on his arms while he flits over delicate thatch roofs and leaps across narrow lanes. The average building in this section only reaches three stories high, though two and four story structures intermingle. The merchant avoids all of the former and ascends to the latter when he can.
Ashti’s face scrunches in concentration as she tries to absorb every bit of notice they attract. From her increasingly stressed expression, Lamp deduces that she isn’t managing to grab all of it. Still, he hears no cries of alarm rising in their wake, so their stealth seems to be holding well enough.
Skulking atop the walls of back alleys, Lamp observes the city from its shadows. He overhears arguments, conversations, and songs. They pass above a group of six boys heatedly debating the rules of a game. One street over, three young women brazenly gossip about a fourth. Two lanes farther along, a quatrain of drunken men stumble out from a tavern and jokingly insult the establishment as they depart.
What Lamp doesn’t hear, however, is the call of street vendors hawking their wares or the activity of workshops busily crafting goods and tools. In fact, aside from businesses distributing food, he spots no local commerce at all. Even the storefronts offering bread and ale seem only half-complete; none of their structures evidence an attached bakery or brew house.
In a strange way, the city seems at once both full of life yet not alive. People live and pass through here, but they don’t make, and they barely trade. Or at least, neither of those activities occur in the same neighborhoods where they reside. That absence twists the spirit of this gloomy district into a form the scholar hardly recognizes as communal.
Lamp is driven from his contemplations when Ashti softly swears on Blackwing’s other arm. Both men glance at her with concern, to which she responds by bitterly reporting that her graft has filled. She can still sample the attention brushing against them, however, and she feels a growing awareness spreading through the upper floor of a building they just traversed.
“We must look like thieves.” She mutters. “Someone will run to fetch the Select. None of the high noble families live nearby, but there might be one on patrol. Our period of anonymity is running short.”
Blackwing increases his pace in response, but he’d already been running about as fast as he could manage given the constraints of middle age and his two aerodynamically-problematic hangers on. The merchant could certainly push himself faster if he abused his trick of falling forwards, but he’d scarcely employed that method since touching down. He relies, whenever possible, on the mere consumption of weight.
To Lamp, that choice indicates a desire to hold strength in reserve, though why the man thinks he needs it isn’t clear. Soon enough, however, the scholar wishes he possessed that same prodigious reserve. His only warning of the coming altercation is Ashti’s momentary flinch.
“HALT!”
The word slams into his mind like a punch to the forehead. More accurately, it feels like a fist inside his skull trying to punch its way out. His body responds automatically to the command, releasing his grip on Blackwing’s arm even as the merchant takes another step forward.
The scholar’s weight returns immediately, and he stumbles in place, barely able to right himself against the influence of instincts screaming at him to hold still. Once stable, he tries to turn around, but his feet and neck both refuse to move.
Flicking his eyes to the side, he finds both of his companions halted next to him. Ashti had also released her grip on Blackwing’s arm and seems worryingly distressed. The merchant himself stands more relaxed, appearing unrestrained by the psychic force which binds his fellows. All the same, Lamp still detects a certain tension in his posture.
“YOU SHOULD HAVE FLED THE CITY.” An imperious, feminine voice reprimands from behind their backs. A pair of shoe taps signal her arrival on the same rooftop.
As the woman’s castigation reverberates in Lamp’s mind, he belatedly realizes that it never passed through his ears. He’d received her intentions directly, without the filters of sound or even language. To a degree, he feels her intent as well. An imposed sense of guilt simmers through him in the wake of her authority, inviting shame for whichever crime she wrongly deems him guilty.
Blackwing, seemingly unaffected, replies in a soothing tone while continuing to face forward. “We have no quarrel. Release my companions.”
He glances aside at Lamp, hoping to receive a translation, but instead finds his employee straining uselessly to produce a single sound. Absorbing this development, the merchant retains a calm expression as he completes a rightward half turn towards the obvious Select standing behind them.
Desperately wanting to witness whatever happens next, Lamp braces his resolve against the pure daylight stored in his left hand. Touching the energy dwelling inside his graft without releasing it, he finds the mental strength to glance over his shoulder.
Behind him, he sees a faceless noblewoman dressed in a flowing tunic and loose trousers. The finely embroidered garments pop with color, contrasting against her pale skin. Though she bears no expression, her posture conveys refinement and confidence while her regard communicates disdain.
A detailed painting of a cluttered library occupies the front of her head from hairline to chin, replacing the contours of her brow, cheekbones, nose, and mouth with a flat porcelain pane. A wooden mask gripped securely in her right hand depicts a face of mature beauty. The inscription borne on its forehead is illegible to him at his current angle, though as he inspects the object, its lifelike eyes seem to meet Lamp’s own in a glower.
The lady takes an incautious step forward and pans her gaze across the three figures apparently restrained before her. When the scholar returns his gaze to her soulmask, he feels her emotions radiating out from it. Unguarded sentiments brush against his mind with far less subtlety than the mental magic of his homeland, but he’ll grant that the Select’s broad strokes are painted with an impressively broad palette of colors. What her psychic manipulation lacks in finesse, it rectifies with dynamism.
Lamp imagines she could compel him to share in any feeling she herself experiences. At present, the Select outputs a mixture of victorious pride and patronizing scorn, neither of which waver as Ashti grits out a single, pained sentence.
“You… know… me.”
“SILENCE. DO NOT STRAIN YOURSELVES PETITIONING MY MERCY. YOU WILL WALK BEFORE ME TO THE NEAREST JAIL, SUBMIT YOURSELVES TO QUESTIONING, AND WAIT FOR THE ELDERS TO DECIDE YOUR FATE AT THEIR LEISURE.”
Undeterred, the handmaiden struggles to enunciate a name, one presumably belonging to their would-be captor. In immediate reprimand, the pressure impacting their minds redoubles. Lamp begins to sweat in fear, now struggling to breathe, but the merchant standing at his side merely sighs in resignation.
Behind their backs, the proud Select continues her lecture. “WHILE I DO NOT KNOW WHAT METHODS YOU TAUGHT YOURSELVES TO ENABLE THIS MEAGER RESISTANCE, WE WILL HAVE NO MORE OF IT. HOLD YOUR TOUNGES, DROP ALL YOU CARRY, AND-”
Finally losing patience, Blackwing flares his authority.
His skin flashes to ebony, rapidly changing color like a squid’s. The tone deepens far beyond its natural value, transitioning his body from bone white to darker than ink in the blink of an eye.
At the same instant, the merchant’s cloak billows up into the air around him, rising to his shoulders and fully exposing his inhuman left arm. The fabric suspends around him as if drifting in water as he completes his turn and steps back the other way.
That change alone was enough to shock the Select into silence. Perhaps this small display would have sufficed to reset their conversation with her, but Blackwing seems yet dissatisfied. The roof beneath his feet creeks under a sudden increase in weight. Advancing another step, he begins to recite the greeting Ashti taught him in her native tongue.
“I am Lord Blackwing of the Golden Spear.”
The merchant takes a thunderous step forward, warping the crossbeams beneath his foot as they groan in protest. The comparatively diminutive Select steps back in a panicked reflex, glancing at the sagging wood with astonishment. Blackwing continues speaking as he advances another stride towards her.
“I have come to meet with Lady Jaleh of House Caution.”
His next footfall produces an even louder boom. The force of impact vibrates through the building, shaking the ground beneath Lamp’s feet and causing him to worry about its structural integrity.
A brief moment of confusion resolves as he comprehends the merchant’s technique. These rumbles aren’t the result of Blackwing simply increasing his own weight and walking forward; his body doesn’t have the strength to move under that load. Instead, what the man’s really doing is transferring his magic into the building itself and hammering downwards in time with every step.
The damn show-off might actually collapse the roof beneath them while he’s at it.
But of course, Blackwing pays those tremblings no visible heed. He simply thunders forward again to close with the Select. To her credit, the woman bravely stands her ground against his final approach, canting her neck upwards to meet his gaze. He stops mere feet away from her, close enough to touch, and speaks with a stern voice of unquestionable authority.
“I request your hospitality.”
With these final words, the merchant releases the bulk of his magic. His obsidian skin quickly bleaches back to white while his cloak flutters down to conceal the obvious battle scars displayed across his human arm and torso. Although Lamp can’t see the Select’s expression, he notices a bead of sweat rolling down her neck.
Before replying, she lifts her painted mask to her face and ties it in place with a strap that loops behind her head. The mental pressure battering Lamp and Ashti immediately abates, allowing both of them to sag in place.
After fidgeting with her falsemask for a moment longer, the Select lowers her hands and signs. “Excuse me, sir. I did not recognize you.”
Ashti reads her apology aloud, and Lamp waits for the girl to finish before translating those same words to Blackwing. The merchant nods in response and steps away. Waving downwards at the roof, he replies in a congenial tone.
“Please see that my apologies are forwarded to the owners of this building. I will finance all repairs.”
“Of course.”
They stand in uncertain silence for a moment before Ashti inhales deeply and steps forward. With confidence, she declares. “I am Lady Ashti of House Wit, second child to the head family and duly appointed handmaiden to the princess of House Sacrifice. I have returned from my travels abroad with esteemed guests deserving of our city’s finest treatment. They desire to acquaint themselves with our local governance. Where might we find Her Royal Highness and Lady Jaleh? We were previously en route to the temple of Growth.”
Painted eyes on the Select’s wooden falsemask seem to subtly widen in shock as the girl speaks. Despite Blackwing’s presence suggesting at the handmaiden’s return, their waylayer still seems astounded by Ashti’s introduction.
Somewhat meekly, she signs. “Hello, Ashti. We all thought you died.”
That admission prompts a laugh. “Well, I did not. If you held a funeral for me, it was premature.”
The noblewoman shakes her head. “Your parents decided to delay until the next conjoining. I thought they were holding out hope without cause, but it seems I was wrong… Welcome home.”
“Thank you.” Ashti’s voice turns hopeful. “Do you know whether Her Highness has appointed a new handmaiden yet?”
“She announced a postponement under the same rationale, though you will likely find her with a gaggle of aspirants in attendance.” The lady hesitates before adding. “I have no stake in this matter, but I would not expect you to retain that position without a soulmask. At the very least, your family will face an uphill struggle.”
“I understand, and I appreciate your candor.” Ashti affirms. “Speaking of the princess, do you happen to know where she is presently?”
“Not at present, though I imagine she will find you once made aware of your arrival.” Dropping that matter, the Select turns her face to Lamp. “I know the other man by reputation, but who is this?”
Per his recent agreement with Ashti, Lamp pretends not to understand the lady’s hand signs until his ‘translator’ conveys them verbally. He uses the extra time to improvise his response. Remembering their earlier conversation, Lamp recognizes his first opportunity to carve out a new social rank.
If he behaves like a ‘low’ servant, he will be treated as such. Conversely, if he puts on airs, his presumptions will be received as evidence of status. All of this, in turn, will shape society’s opinion of Blackwing. Tact, refinement, and intellect will make the difference between a pair of dangerous barbarians and a duo of formidable gentlemen. So, straightening his posture, the scholar imitates Ashti’s careful speech patterns while making no attempt to disguise his accent.
“I am Lord Blackwing’s voice, historian, and spiritual advisor.” Lamp fabricates shamelessly. “I will attend him in all meetings as he accustoms himself to your norms. We apologize for our unconventional entrance to your holy city and thank you for receiving us.”
Briefly taken aback at Lamp’s mastery of her language, the noblewoman offers him a respectful nod when he falls silent. He returns the gesture with a professional mien, internally glad his answer seemed convincing. Ashti retakes the conversational lead at that point, quickly extracting an agreement from the Select to escort the trio to Jaleh’s manor at the heart of the city.
She won’t, however, attempt to lead them directly to the princess, and she also won’t conscience any further running about on rooftops. When Blackwing agrees to travel at street level without protest, the lady seems to take his acquiescence as a moral victory.
With a plan decided, the Select briefly lifts her falsemask so that a floating ladder can detach from the painting underneath and drift into physical reality. It rapidly expands in size during the first few seconds after manifestation then stops at sensible, mundane dimensions.
The Select lowers her conjured implement down the side of their building and magically extends its length so that its feet touch the ground. Then she sits upon the top rung in a dainty fashion and begins to decrease the ladder’s height, riding it down to street level as it shrinks. The scholar shakes his head in disbelief while Blackwing grabs him and Ashti by the arms and walks off the edge in pursuit.
As they descend from the building, Lamp whispers in his own language. “I introduced myself as your spiritual advisor, among other, truer things. I hope that’s alright.”
“Sure.” The merchant chuckles. “Maybe you should be, after what happened on the mountain…”
“Ha. On that matter, I could do with an advisor myself.”
“Do you want to ask the locals?” His employer offers evenly. “Someone might have records of similar phenomena.”
Lamp considers for a moment before shaking his head. “Not now. We have more pressing matters to resolve.”
“As you wish.”
Setting down on a bare-stone street, the trio separates again to walk in single file behind their erstwhile guide. The Select quickly leads them from their dusky side street onto a wider thoroughfare. Orange candlelight spills from roughly half the buildings through their open doorways and windows. In this slightly brighter environment, the deep green hue of the noblewoman’s tunic stands out all the more starkly against the whites and grays of passersby.
As for the townspeople, they part for their Select like minnows clearing space around a shark. The trio has no difficulty trailing in her wake and seems not to attract much notice from the disrupted pedestrians at first glance. It’s only after their leader passes that onlookers pay any attention to the three people strolling behind her.
Their eyes widen as they notice the silver feather pattern on Ashti’s face and the gleaming metal of her irises and sclera. Their mouths gape when they spot the three monstrous claws dangling at the end of Blackwing’s long left arm. They swear when they see the bones suspended inside Lamp’s transparent hands.
The scholar even hears a few whispers specifically mentioning the dramatic red stain running through his right graft. A few people make signs warding against evil, though he’s not sure whether any of those gestures are directed at him specifically since no one seems interested in meeting his gaze.
At any rate, they continue unmolested until they reach the city’s largest and brightest avenue. There, the four of them are forced to pause while they wait for a train of heavily laden wagons packed with all manner of produce to trundle past. Most are hauled by burly men, but two strange creatures hitched to the leading vehicle pull it forward with an unearthly grace.
Great curved horns sprout from either side of their long heads, splaying horizontally for a handspan before turning forward, tilting up, and narrowing to lethal points. Cloven hooves clomp heavily against the stone pavement as their powerful muscles heave beneath short-haired pelts. Thin tails with small tufts of fur at their tips flick intermittently, swishing through the air as if to disturb a nonexistent swarm of flies.
After a few moments of suspicious observation, Lamp confirms that neither of the bizarre beasts seem to breathe. They must be jinn, then. He’s surprised to see the mystical creatures occupied with manual labor, for all that neither of them seem to mind their lot.
While Lamp busies himself with idle curiosity, Ashti sidles up to their masked guide and poses a question. “We saw soot marks on the side of the granary. Do you know what happened?”
The Select glances over with a sudden tension in her shoulders. Her painted, wooden features turn from neutral to unhappy with a subtlety that might be mistaken for a trick of the light. She answers the girl using stiff motions.
“A blaze was started deliberately through the use of an accelerant. The sabotage was executed while our city was in a state of panic over Manslaughter’s storm.” She glances over her shoulder at Lamp and Blackwing before turning back to her former peer. “Am I correct in assigning responsibility for that latter event to the three of you?”
“Yes.” Ashti answers a touch defensively. “We encountered a spot of trouble along the way.”
“A spot of trouble. With the icon of bloody rampage.”
“Quite so.”
The lady shakes her head and drops her hands. Ashti hesitates, clearly considering whether she should leave the other woman alone, before some internal resolution straightens her spine.
“Who would burn food?” She asks, perplexed.
“A traitor.” The Select’s forceful gestures convey abiding fury.
That unhappy response convinces Ashti to leave the matter be, and they wordlessly cross the street as soon as the final wagon rolls past. Moving one row over from that busy avenue, they turn towards Jaleh’s manor and make quick progress to the temple of Growth.
They arrive before Lamp has time to properly gain his bearings, marching up to the grand building with unbroken strides. Their hurried pace affords little opportunity for gawking as they trot between grand columns and pass into the spacious interior plaza.
Here, Lamp finally witnesses the vibrant activity of commerce which had been missing from the residential streets they’d passed along the way. An open, orderly market flush with merchant stations- all neatly sorted into obvious categories- fills the temple’s main room. Here and there, well-dressed vendors display fine wares atop cramped tables, but most sellers lay out their goods on thick carpets spread across the floor.
Interestingly, none of the items on offer appear to be consumable. While the temple’s interior plaza possesses an impressively expansive floor space, it doesn’t span anywhere near wide enough to accommodate an entire city’s produce and libations combined with every other type of merchandise. Recalling the taverns they passed in route to this location, Lamp presumes that food and beer must receive partial exceptions to the government’s policy of mercantile centralization, although that leaves open the question of where those products are made.
The captivated scholar’s heart breaks as they turn away from the bustling sight and hurry towards a side hall. He notes that Blackwing’s assessing eyes also linger on the diversity of purchasable items; the man will surely return here later on.
With his head turned sideways to absorb what novelties he can, Lamp examines the busy shoppers and meets quite a few gazes staring back at him and his companions. He waves to the spectators and forms the sign of greeting. A smattering of them return it. Most simply tap their less attentive neighbors on the shoulder and point towards the obvious alien presence.
Distracted by that spreading wave of scrutiny, the scholar almost doesn’t notice when their guide briefly stops. Forced to backtrack slightly, he waits and watches while the lady presses a waylaid servant into service as a messenger. Judging by the attendant’s fine clothing and his ability to read hand signs, Lamp presumes he must belong to a relatively high elevation of the inferior rank. Their Select sends this learned man running off with clear instructions to find Lady Jaleh and inform her of Blackwing’s arrival. No mention is made of the princess.
With that errand seen to, the noblewoman promises to deposit her guests in stately rooms while they await their meeting. She does not know what matters occupy the city’s governess at present, so she cannot predict the urgency with which she will arrive. After delivering that update to Blackwing, she turns away. Neither she nor any other member of their group seems to notice Ashti veering off immediately afterwards.
Lamp himself doesn’t realize the girl had stepped away until he hears her shouting at peak volume from her perch atop a nearby merchant stall.
“Attention!” The outlander’s fully-charged graft flares at what must be its maximum throughput, expressing magic of unignorable potency. Conversation ceases throughout the market as heads swivel and eyes track toward the girl. With shoulders back and head held high, she announces. “I am Ashti of House Wit, handmaiden to the princess of House Sacrifice. I vanished from our realm eighteen days hence and have returned from my mission victorious!”
Drawing a quick breath as her magic begins to relax, she politely calls to the great room. “Does anyone know whether Her Highness is currently in residence? I would appreciate instructions on where to find her.”
