Weeds Among Stone (Jura City Book 1)

by Douglas Milewski

  Not knowing where Groppekunta Street was, Maran asked some of the street vendors. At first, the vendors spoke to her politely, but when she asked for Groppekunta Street, they grew confused. “I’m looking for Altyn,” she amended, relieving the seller’s confusion. The woman nodded, then pointed. Whoever this Altyn was, she seemed well respected.

  When Maran finally arrived at Groppekunta Street, she understood everyone’s confusion. Built along the back wall of the Ironmonger’s steelworks, Groppekunta Street was where the women-for-hire lived. The dwarven language did not have a good word for this profession, as wealth and sex always went together. If you wanted sons, you gave your woman gold. If you wanted daughters, you gave your woman gems. That was the way that the world worked. That money was the child price. When the child was grown you used it to buy an apprenticeship. Going to someone who was not your wife and giving her gold to bear no children simply made no sense to the dwarven mind.

  Maran found number 27 Groppekunta Street across from one such brothel. Halfway through the day, the neighborhood’s topless women looked barely awake while hanging their laundry out the windows. One of the women noted her. “Yea,” she shouted down, “That’s Altyn’s place. Just whack away at the board. She might not come. You have to be double loud.”

  Still unsure of herself, Maran knocked on the door, then waited. After some time, a cold-eyed drifter cracked open the door. She stared deeply at Maran, neither smiling nor frowning.

  Maran spoke up, “Osei sent me. Do you have room?”

  Altyn eyed Maran deeply before she opened her door wides. In an exacting accent, speaking quite precisely, she stated, “You may enter. Come in.”

  Maran entered the cold foyer.

  Altyn’s house was one of those places that had stayed exactly the same for too long. Looking closer revealed only more wear. The wallpaper yellowed and peeled from the walls. The cracked and broken ceilings revealed the floorboards above. Threadbare carpets covered warped floorboards. All throughout the house were pieces of furniture arranged in haphazard fashion, with other objects inside of them piled and stacked in no apparent order. Every surface that could hold items did hold items. Yet, these were not valuable items. These were everyday items that could be useful, but sometimes were not. The only rooms of any practical use were the parlor and the kitchen.

  Altyn gave her hand to Maran. This was a human custom. “My name is Altyn Tag,” she informed Maran in her musical but authoritarian voice, “I usually have a supper of scones and tea. We have other meals if we can scrape up the food. I will need your ration book for grocery day. Do you have any useful skills?”

  “I can cook and clean.”

  “Good. Then cook and clean. I detest the work. Also, please remind me to eat. I sometimes forget. Come, follow me.”

  As the woman walked up the steps, Maran did her best to identify the petite drifter before her. She was not a Gelt or a Rhakotian, because Maran had met those types of humans, and they did not quite look like her. Nor did she look like the river drifters, nor did she look like a Charyastan.

  “I know that the house is chill,” Altyn commented, “My coal allotment was smaller again this year, even with bribery. Cooking wood is also in short supply. Mind your usage.”

  Altyn led Maran up two stories to the garret, a place even colder than the rooms below. The catastrophically narrow stairs creaked and cracked badly with each step. Entering the garret through a broken door revealed an exotic space. Altyn had turned the attic into a different world. Old mismatched carpets and tapestries were nailed to the rafters to keep out the wind and keep in the heat. Some carpet pieces were sewed in to cover holes in other pieces. Several bowls marked where rain dripped through, their locations circled in chalk. What little light there was came from two dirty dormers covered by lace and gauze curtains.

  The bed was a mass of sheets and threadbare blankets piled one atop the other. A worktable was nothing but a door atop two sawhorses. On the worktable sat a variety of obscure glass items and equipment, laid out with precise care. Beside this equipment sat a pillow with pins and thread and bobbins midway through making lace. To one side of the bed was a vanity with one broken leg, but otherwise in excellent condition. A board was nailed in place to make it stand. Maran marveled at the size of the mirror on the vanity. Even broken, that glass should have cost a considerable sum.

  Altyn pointed. “You get the left side. I have the right. You may claim space to put your things. Do not touch my table.”

  “How much to rent this?” asked Maran, not sure if it would be too much or too little.

  “One standard per day.”

  Maran gasped at the price. “How does it cost so much?”

  “In this world, there are many things more precious than gold and all of them are expensive.”

  Maran felt she needed to warn Altyn. “Ma’am. I hope to be traveling soon. I should only be here a few days.”

  Altyn’s gaze piercing her soul. “I warn you, young dwarf, that Jura City ensnares you like a beast with many heads. Escaping her clutches is no easy task. You will NOT be leaving soon.”

  With those parting words, Altyn glided from the room, quite proud in her own correctness. She drifted down the stairs, as if the stairs were a mere formality.

  Sitting in the room for some minutes, among those strange contraptions, Maran grew increasingly uncomfortable. She felt as if she were an intruder. This was not her home. The whole place felt new and odd. Feeling as if she were trespassing, Maran quietly walked out of the room and crept down the stairs.

  That afternoon, Maran made a light supper. She grabbed what she could from the larder, improvising something edible. When they sat down to eat, Altyn reacted to supper with utter surprise.

  “This is excellent. Astonishingly excellent. I must compliment you on your skills. You could work for a general or a high civil official.”

  “Of course I could. My family once cooked for the Griffin Emperor and received his compliments. Grandmother is quite proud of that. We used to cook all over the place, before the new rules. Every proper high household had a Loam cook.”

  “And they won’t let you cook any more? Dwarves are an unfathomable people.”

  “It’s a long story, ma’am.”

  Following supper, Maran cleaned the kitchen throughly, swept all over the house, washed the floors, and generally straitened up, working until the Altyn was asleep. The day completed, Maran banked the fires, prepped the hearth, and put herself to sleep, crawling gingerly into Altyn's bed.

  It felt weird crawling into someone else's bed.

  In her dreams, Kirim fell again, just as he always fell. He opened his mouth in a baleful scream, like a vast, deep trumpet. Maran awoke with a start, expecting silence, but hoarse screaming still filled her ears, real screaming. After a few moments, she oriented towards the sound. Someone screamed words outside, much like a raven sings.

  The sound paused. A few moments later, from outside the window, the voice exclaimed:

  Iron hearts and dragon bones.

  Stand and be accounted purveyors of burning coal and burning souls.

  The soul hounds howl in the streets, foretelling your doom,

  for they smell beyond your dreaming soul and know your dragon’s heart.

  Your loans have come due.

  Your debts must be paid.

  You know this truth, yet you do not heed.

  One eye opened, one-eye blind,

  You expect poetry from a mime.

  The forges ringing in your ears like shrieks of the dead

  Hidden you are, but you have no silence.

  Death comes with red flowers.

  Maran padded over to the window, looking down to see a drunken figure standing upon a crate, screaming out something akin to nonsense to a crowd that never assembled and refused to listen.

  He screamed out new invectives:

  Gold. Scales. Steel teeth.

  The Mother of Storms take you.

  You are
the dragons that plague the land,

  reaping ... reaping ...

  The figure stopped at that point to drink. Having forgotten what he was yelling, and in his inebriation, stumbled away. The moment of passion gone, the street girls went back to walking about, staving off the spring chill.

  The street fell to silence.

  Expecting to sleep again, Maran slipped back into bed.

  Altyn muttered, “Sometimes he screams like that for hours. Mercy upon my soul, how I hate his imagery.”

  “What was all that about?”

  “That was Zebra. He is a poet and a Transgressor. The details don’t really matter to him. He believes that if he yells enough, something will happen, everyone will spontaneously rise up and kill the dwarves, and everything will be set wrong.”

  “He’s crazy?”

  “No, not crazy. Incomprehensible. He just insists on proselytizing with poetry. It’s an elf thing.”

  “That was poetry?”

  “Some poetry is ugly, some poets have no talent, and a rare few have successfully combined both.”

  “People allow this?”

  “Allow this? You can’t stop a Transgressor. They decide to do what they shouldn’t do, then they make a religion out of it.”

  As much as Maran expected more midnight screaming, Zebra did not return, and she soon drifted back to dreamy slumber where cats are good at word puzzles.

  In the morning, Maran awoke before dawn. She slipped from the bed without awaking Altyn, dressing and creeping down the stairs.

  In the faint light of predawn, Maran found a stranger sleeping on the kitchen table. On further inspection, she recognized the elf from the night before. That Zebra was an elf awed Maran. She had heard of elves her whole life, but had never actually seen one. Elven drifters avoided Jura City with good reason: the longstanding enmity between the races sometimes boiled into genocide. On closer inspection, Zebra did not look like any elf that she expected. His skin shone like copper. His hair appeared pale green. His eyelids revealed the faintest red glow. His well-made clothing appeared worn and torn, but in places it was exactingly mended, each stitch precisely placed. The stitching looked like dwarven work.

  What kind of elf was he? Despite her best attempts to identify him, Maran had no idea. Then again, aside from long gone elves of Glittering Vale, she didn’t really know anything about elves.

  Thinking it best to ignore him, Maran started the morning’s fire, put some water on, then went outside to the garden.

  The garden itself was a garden in name only, as it was functionally a junkyard consumed by weeds. The yard was dominated by a single, sickly forsythia refusing to bloom. Maran took out her caning knife and hacked the old bush down, clearing the ground for new growth.

  Once the plot was ready, Maran waded down into the soil, the cold dirt pleasing on her legs. She waded back and forth through the ground, loosening up the plot. Bit by bit, she rotated and aired all the beds. This would be her cook’s garden for the next few days. With a little work, she could make this plot produce quickly and consistently.

  Needing seeds, Maran dug through the compost pile, finding what she could. She had brought some seeds with her, but she valued them too highly for a temporary garden. She would hoard those until she settled herself down into a better place. If she did her job right, she would be collecting the first herbs in two days and vegetables in three. Of primary importance were peppers, tomatoes, and onions, as they were among the easiest vegetables to grow fast.

  For today, the most important plants were the poppies. She would need flowers to lay in sacrifice to the White Lady. Maran planted the tiny seeds, helping them to reach for sun. They would be ready by the time she left.

  With the planting done, Maran knelt in the dirt and prayed her thanks to the White Lady. “Hello, White Lady. I’m in Jura City now. I’ve planted a garden. Would you bless it? Please excuse the problems. No one has done a proper job of weeding for a while. That forsythia really did a bad job on this place. I don’t know how I’m going to get this cleaned up, but I’ll manage it somehow. Please forgive me for haste, but I have a client to feed. You understand. Thank you for everything.”

  When Maran returned to the kitchen, Zebra was gone, leaving nothing but ashes, coal oil bottles, and a cigar butt behind. Maran cleaned off the table and started into breakfast. Even given a meager pantry, Maran worked out something.

  When Altyn awoke, she seemed unsurprised to find Maran busy. She sat in her chair, which she kept by the stove, letting herself warm up.

  Maran spoke up. “Ma’am, I can’t find much on the shelves. You're missing a lot.”

  “That’s all that I have. If you are concerned, then you may rectify the situation.”

  “This morning, I found that strange elf sleeping on your table.”

  “He does that sometimes. The word for him is ‘vexatious.’ He will soon teach you the true meaning of that word.”

  “Do you allow him sleeping there?”

  “I tolerate that. He is quiet when he sleeps. I suggest that you tolerate him as well. He may be a vexation, but he is a useful vexation.”

  Maran had no idea what to make of this arrangement, so she served Altyn her breakfast. “If you don’t mind, ma’am, I need to head into the city. I have something important to do. I should be back for tea.”

  Workshop of the World

  Jura City built her fortune on coke and iron; stone and jade; smoke and sweat. She stood as the workshop of the world. Her history is dwarven history, from the ancient world to the modern. She saw the great empires rise and supplicated herself to the great Emperor Thule. She saw his empire split, his three sons locked forever in warfare. She saw the Griffin Emperor fall, then saw the end of Fera Nea. Through all that, the city stood.

  Maran stopped at Lord Cason’s Gate. Her father said that the doors were visible from twenty miles away. Should she really cross that threshold? Aside from King Oro, no Loam had passed through those gates in twenty years. What would happen? Would someone stop her? Would the people inside lynch her? Would the Kommissars arrest her or kill her? Maran had no idea.

  If sneaking in were possible, Maran would do it, but no one snuck into Jura City. The walls themselves were constructed by an Earth Lord, rising ten stories high. The only practical way in was through the front gate, and that was protected by the Company of the Gate. The company lined the tunnel leading into the city, bayonets affixed to rifles, ready to meet any threat that assailed that passage. Rumor said that the company could shoot four shots per minute, which Maran imagined was enough to hold an entire army at bay indefinitely.

  No one reacted to her standing there.

  Feeling a little more sure of herself, Maran walked up the great rampart, almost to the gate itself, then turned around to look behind her, across the expanse of the outer city. When she was little, much of that expanse was still farmland. Now, buildings of all sorts filled those fields. Some were proper buildings of stone, and some of wood, but most were ramshackle affairs built from scrap wood, tar paper, and cloth. Tents were as common as buildings, with some places so crowded with tents that they appeared as vast, undifferentiated creatures undulating at the approaching rain.

  Most of those drifters came to Jura City seeking food and safety. If there was any unity to the people that she saw, it was hunger. It was only with the ration system that there was any fairness. Perhaps, if she could turn the clock back twenty years, today would be different and people would be better housed and better fed.

  Maran turned and looked at the gate towering above her, tall as the glass tower in her dreams. Her destination lay through that intimidating portal. After a moment of hesitation, her feet moved, taking her through the great portal and down that long tunnel. To her relief, the Company of the Gate took no notice of her. They all stood there like statues adorned in ancient armor, staring forward, rarely blinking. Maran emerged from the dark tunnel into the light of the Assembly Square, elated that she was now inside. She
was now in Jura City! To get in, all she had to do was to walk in the front door.

  A silly grin covered her face as she looked up and around. Memories flooded back. For a moment, she felt like that little girl running across the Assembly Square chasing the pigeons and dragging her grandfather along. Instinctively, she knew which way went where. She remembered the way home.

  Before Maran traveled upward, she walked over to the great relief of Emperor Thule. Inscribed in many languages upon the rock, his great words said, “I give the Union dominion over all dwarves.” With those ancient words, the Great Dwarven Union was born. The Emperor sent word to all lands so that all would hear. The Loam heard and sent their representative, respectful of their new Emperor. On their arrival, the Hadeans rejecting the Loam. The idea of a farming dwarf struck the dwarven mind as elvish.

  The Loam discussed that rejection for a long time, and after a decade of discussion they decided to live among the Hadeans until they were counted as equals. They sent their first settlers forward, mostly widows and widowers, calling them wayfarers. They learned the long road and prepared new farms at the other end. One family at a time, the Loam made that long trek, moving their entire civilization to Jura City.

  The Union was furious, as they had named the Loam 'agslavit,' unwelcome. Despite Union’s best efforts, both peaceful and violent, the Loam held firm, asserting that the lands surrounding Jura City were Imperial lands, not subject to the Union's rule. Seeking to settle the matter and avoid further bloodshed, the Union appealed to the Emperor Thule, who replied, “I care not for your stupid, hardheaded, and obstinate politics. You asked for dominion over all dwarves and I gave that to you. Now you want to give it back because you don't like what you got. I will not hear it. Hear this: I myself give those Loam that land, in perpetuity, because they have more courage than your whole city, and you will go back to that brawl you call your lawmakers and give those Loam a seat.”