by William Ray
A young woman in an apron came by to describe their offerings and looked disappointed when Dorna only asked for a cheap wine and a bit of stew. The woman then asked one of the quiet fellows at a table nearby, but he just waved her off and looked annoyed at the interruption of his quiet reflection. The furtive man at the farthest table sent the girl away with a glare before she got too close, then returned to his hushed conversation.
Something about that suddenly sat uneasily, and Dorna took another look at the people around her. They were all well-dressed, certainly more neatly kept men than the bulk of the patronage in this place and of higher quality than the few at the bar she had taken for locals. She surreptitiously studied the man by himself who had just waved off the barmaid. As she did, he nodded, seemingly to himself, and reached into his pocket.
A stack of papers exchanged hands at the furtive man’s corner table, and the man receiving them laid them out in front of him, examining them carefully while the furtive man from the street anxiously gauged his reaction.
“Hold it right there—you are under arrest!” said a man’s voice from behind her, one of the quiet, well-dressed ones she’d barely paid attention to. Dorna froze, her hands clenching at the edge of her table. The man across from her leapt to his feet, producing handcuffs from his pocket, and in an instant, the better-dressed men from the tables all around her lurched to their feet in unison.
If she flipped the table over, she might make some space and have time to bolt to the door, but with Edward Phand abandoned upstairs, her mission ….
They roughly rousted up the furtive man from the corner table and clipped his hands together with the cuffs. One of the men making the arrest smiled and held some papers up over his head, waving them so that the whole room could see them, whatever they were. They weren’t here for her at all.
Dorna shuddered at the sudden wave of relief, then slouched back in her chair, trembling. She felt suddenly out of breath and really wished the girl had been faster about bringing that wine she’d ordered. The man waving the papers was announcing something about certificates to the room, but Dorna’s heart was pounding so hard she couldn’t focus on it.
He suddenly turned to her and, holding the papers towards Dorna, the closest person still seated, he asked, “You saw that man pass these papers over to me, right?” The whole pub fell quiet, staring at the two of them.
She frowned and nodded, feeling every pair of eyes upon her and an icy fear of looming failure. More than anything, she wanted to recite her words but could hardly chant in Elven with the whole room watching.
“Perfect. I’ll need your name and address, and we’ll have you sign a quick statement to that effect.”
The man seemed quite pleased with himself, holding his stack of what appeared to be rail certificates in various amounts. Taking a deep breath to calm herself, she stared him down and responded with a stiff and authoritative, “No.”
Taken aback, he looked ready to argue a moment but instead hurried over to the next nearest table, making the same pronouncement. The men there all nodded, and Dorna sighed in relief.
She wasn’t sure if these men could arrest her for refusing to be a witness, but with others able to step in, maybe it wouldn’t be worth their time to do it. The bartender looked nearly as shaken as she was. While most eyes were elsewhere, he moved to the small bogey statue and filled the small cup at its feet with whatever alcohol he had on hand, an offering to the local mountain spirits. The Master had once confided in her that the custom was a foolish human superstition going back to ancient times when the Duer lived in these mountains.
Though a forgotten people now, the Master had shown her their ancient carvings, and she could see a vague resemblance in the small bearded spirit the innkeeper now plied with alcohol. It would do nothing for him, of course, but the police seemed to have little interest in arresting the man, so whatever his crimes, he would no doubt credit the bogeys for that forbearance and continue to spill booze on their behalf as needs arose.
Nervous about attracting any further attention, Dorna forced herself to wait for her dinner to arrive. Once it did, she found her appetite had totally vanished but methodically forced herself to finish it before heading back upstairs.
Edward Phand was still deeply asleep, so she took slow breaths to settle herself for the night, determined to wake early and leave at first light. She recited the Elven words again and again, feeling them slowly drain away her anxiety and replace it with faith. Perhaps the Master had foreseen even this.
Soothed by the words, she slept and woke in the early gray before dawn, with Edward Phand groaning softly as he struggled back towards consciousness. Groaning meant she had slept past the appointed morning dose, and he would be coming to more quickly than expected, so she hurriedly fetched the Elven flask and poured more of the thick syrup down his throat, sending him tumbling back into his artificial coma.
He was still breathing, but she checked for his heartbeat anyway, just as she had been taught, and then packed her things. She dressed again, looking forward to returning home and changing into the plainer clothes she normally wore and lamenting once again how they would have been far more suited to travel than the flimsy, lace-strewn stuff with which she had been provided.
Descending the stair, she found an older woman running things, probably the proprietor’s wife, and the common room of the public house empty but for the two of them. The woman offered breakfast, but Dorna refused and instead enlisted her aid in dragging Edward Phand downstairs before she paid the amount agreed upon for the room and stables.
She wished she had time for breakfast, but if they were not down from the mountain by sundown, it would be very cold. Dorna had a heavier coat for herself, but Edward Phand still wore the clothes he had dressed in for the theater in Gemmen. As she set the horses in motion, it struck her as odd that the Master had not thought he might need one, and she wondered if Terry had been instructed to provide one and simply forgotten.
Outside the boarded-up buildings on Duros’ main street, shabby merchants set up little stands along the streets, selling their goods from makeshift stalls while perfectly suitable empty buildings decayed behind them. She supposed the landlords, likely living in comfort in some far-off city, had apparently set the rents too high for anyone left in Duros to afford. Now, instead of the landlords making less money than they’d hoped, they made none and slowly strangled what little remained of a once vibrant border town. A few of the street merchants hawked their goods at her as she passed, but she would not stop for them.
The Great Restoration would help them more than the few coins from her custom.
Once free of Duros, she pulled out a hard bit of bread Terry had packed in case they were trapped in the mountains. It was difficult to chew, but it quieted her hunger for the moment. Per the Master’s instructions, she checked Edward Phand’s pulse again, and it was slow but steady. The timing of the next few doses was critical—she needed him to arrive just awake enough for her to guide him through the Oblivion.
Up they went, the horses slowly pulling them over the mountains, away from the ancestral lands of men and into Aelfua.
~
“Statue of Sir Cornell Tabble Unveiled”
Yesterday the Princess of Whitby unveiled the memorial statue of Sir Cornell Tabble at Bridgton, by the western edge of the Winged Bridge and overlooking the bustling port town he founded. Her Royal Highness was there met by the Mayor of Bridgton and the Marshall of Aelfua. An enormous public crowd was drawn, who journeyed there from throughout the region to witness the dedication.
An address was presented to Her Royal Highness reciting the benefits to the country that had resulted from the labours of Sir Cornell Tabble in compliance with the Mayor’s request, after which Her Royal Highness pulled a cord that allowed the covering of the statue to fall—a proceeding which was greeted with cordial applause by all in attendance. The statue is bronze upon a granite pedestal. It depicts Sir Cor
nell Tabble in his military dress, a hand shading his eyes as he overlooks the bay below. The Marshall, who had accompanied Sir Cornell Tabble upon the occasion commemorated, remarked upon the expertise with which the likeness of the moment had been caught.
– Khanom Daily Converser, 12 Tal. 389
~
- CHAPTER 14 -
After passing over the mountains, the train wound through Aelfua’s western forests, the view occasionally broken by farms or pastures and, once, several acres of stumps.
The first human settlements in Aelfua had been built where villages had stood for millennia until the Elves emptied their lands. The colonies replacing those ancient villages developed quickly, with white tiled roads already laid out and leading to lands already cleared. With that head start, the settlements had grown quickly beyond what the Elves had left them in the forested western half of Aelfua.
Gus could see why naturalists might look upon that wide swath of stumps as desolate and sad, but with their orderly alignment and scarce undergrowth, the Aelfuan forests had always looked decidedly unnatural to him. They seemed more like swept rows of trees awaiting the return of their immortal orchardists. Seeing them cleared away made the land feel more human. Occasionally that effect was spoiled by some stray monument the Elves had left behind, but those were few.
The rails turned south, and the mountains loomed in and out of view as the train wound over rolling hills and across wide valleys. Aelfua had always been known for its magnificent landscapes.
Eventually the train emerged from yet another forest into steeper hills, and Khanom rose above it all like a great citadel overseeing the lands below. Their path snaked along the hillsides, the train’s route circuitous as it followed the land upwards towards the looming mountain range south of the city. In the shadow of Uhnjal Peak, atop a wide plateau skirted in gray cloud, stood Gus’s destination.
Khanom’s residents always seemed intent on convincing everyone that they had built one of the greatest cities in the world, and laying eyes upon it, Gus began to agree. Though the city lacked Gemmen’s endless sprawl, it fought to make up for it in modern grandeur. Gleaming towers of concrete and glass shone gold as they reflected the light of the waning sun. They stretched high atop the hill, many easily twenty stories tall, and four that were probably thirty.
Gemmen’s tallest was the twenty-five story RFTB tower, which loomed ten stories above anything else in the city. Mansil, in Garren, supposedly had a temple dedicated to Phaeton with a spire nearly fifty stories high, but Gus had never seen it. Judging by the number of people on the train pressed to the windows and breathlessly ogling the view, he was clearly not the only one awed by it.
The locals feigned at disinterest or pretended to sleep, and not wanting to look like an easy mark, Gus sat back and did his best to look more blasé. He plucked out a catchy song about some town on the Pylian shore, whose words and title he could never quite recall, and turned his eyes from the spectacle of the city’s center.
They rolled past huge pastures leading into the city’s immense series of stockyards where animals were driven to be processed for sale and slaughter. Gus chuckled as he saw the familiar Thomas’s logo painted atop one such building, welcoming visitors to Khanom with the promise of canned sausages.
The logo sped by quickly, hidden behind wave after wave of great factories positioned around the base of the plateau, their chimneys spewing smoke into the air. The visitors aboard the train gradually fell back from the windows as the gleaming towers were obscured by the gray foulness that filled the air just below the plateau.
Factory buildings abutted ancient Elven roads that had been laid out in gleaming white stone tiles that had now faded under an oppressive coat of soot fallen from smokestacks and passing trains. It was late in the day, and Gus caught glimpses of exhausted factory workers in shabby uniform as they marched slowly out in long lines. The early spring here was cooler than Gemmen’s, but few of them had coats to wear atop their work suits, so they just hugged themselves as they walked, all apparently headed to some single destination.
The train wound up the steep side of the plateau and eventually rose above the gray that skirted the city, emerging dramatically at the base of Khanom’s dazzling towers. Up close, they seemed little different than any other building unless one craned their neck upwards, as many of his fellow passengers did. Given the ubiquity of theft while traveling, Gus decided to keep his gaze a bit more level.
Here in the center of the city, the white tiled streets left behind by the Elves were clean, and people strolled about in finer clothes, catching cabs, or being picked up by liveried drivers in hacks of their own. The buildings were bedecked in signage at their base proudly cataloging the businesses within—architects, petitioners, various unspecified partnerships, and more banks than seemed necessary.
Occasionally a building would be dedicated to one company alone, and there would be some elaborate Modernist sculpture out front into which was worked its name and some symbolic indication of the business’s function. The offices of Eastern Railways had a particularly ornate marble frontispiece of swirls that trailed behind flying women soaring over fields and forests that struck Gus as a better advertisement for witchcraft than rail travel, but then the last trial for witchcraft had been over a century ago.
People in Gemmen scoffed at the uncultured ‘settlements’ in Aelfua and Rakhasin, but here in Khanom the burgeoning wealth was palpable, and to Gus’s eye, their finery looked no less elaborate or ostentatious than that back home.
The rail circled the northern edge of the plateau but did not venture inside the city itself. Khanom’s main hub was the first stop, and as the train pulled to a halt there, it became quickly obvious it had been designed as a showpiece entrance for the city. Most hubs saved ostentation for the terminal buildings, but here even the platform was bedecked in elaborate white granite swirls in faux-Elven style and ringed in elegantly matched wrought iron fixtures that would have probably horrified the Elves had any remained to see it.
Gus rose from his seat and reclaimed his bag, somewhat surprised to see few others rising at this stop, but once he debarked, it became apparent that was because he had ridden in the cheaper car. Well-attired men and women emptied from the pricier rail stock in greater numbers, accompanied by servants bearing their things and quickly intercepted by an army of railway porters eager to share the burden in exchange for tips.
Looking down the track, Gus saw that it wound its way back down through the gray clouds into the factory districts only after making a few stops along the plateau. Apparently, the route had been designed to get Khanom’s elite quickly to their destinations, forcing the lesser sort to pass twice through the sooty layer between, returned to the dingy town below only after they were shown the opulence of their ‘betters’.
After two days on the train, having spent most of that time seated, Gus’s injured leg was reluctant to cooperate at first. He struggled forward with his bag, apparently seen by astute railway porters as an unlikely source of gratuity. Limping after the crowd, he was able to find his way inside the equally gaudy terminal building of Khanom’s opulent hub.
Amid the bustle inside, he saw a red-liveried ballyhoo employed by the city to welcome newcomers, complete with a tall shako designed to draw attention the man, just in case anyone might miss his vividly colored uniform.
Unlike a porter, a ballyhoo was employed to stand in one spot and be helpful, so he could not evade a poor tipper simply by rushing to the aide of someone who looked more generous. This one was an older man, his hair faded to gray, but he didn’t look hard-lived enough to have been a miner or one of the early frontiersmen who settled the city. At a guess, Gus placed him as a failed speculator.
Hobbling over, Gus stopped in front of the man and let his bag fall to the floor, taking a moment to stand stork-like on his good leg while he bent the left back and forth to loosen it up. Finally, after the socially awkward delay while Gus grimaced
and flexed, he looked to the ballyhoo and said, “I need a hotel. Nothing too pricey though.”
The city’s man looked thoughtful as he sized him up, and then replied, “There are a few cheap flophouses back down below, but if you want something here above, perhaps Rondel’s on 3rd?”
When Gus looked at him quizzically, the ballyhoo hastened to add, “Everything up here is a bit … lavish, sir, but in preparation for the Exposition, they’ve opened numerous new hotels, so the market is very competitive. Push the clerk a bit, and you should be able to get a decent rate. It will probably still be expensive, but it’s your least expensive option without going down below.”
The way he said ‘down below’ had the ring of classist specificity to it, and Gus wondered which side of the city’s murky gray divide the ballyhoo dwelt on. It wasn’t the sort of advice one gave on hotel commission though, and ignoring the protests from Emily in the back of his mind, Gus decided the ballyhoo had earned a decent gratuity. Digging into his pockets, he found six pennies and gratefully slipped them to the man before picking up his bag and lumbering towards the exit.
Outside, a row of cabs waited, and as he drew nearer, Gus stared at the horses a moment, trying to understand the bizarre contraption they were attached with, and then laughed as he realized it was to catch their droppings. It seemed the white streets of Khanom were not to be sullied, although woe to the cabmen whose day-long perches would be continually perfumed by the equine offal.
