As Sijan had been a city of the dead, it had been consumed with a respectful stillness. Like a graveyard, the most prevalent terrors there would have been the imaginary creations of visitors. Residents had learned to still their imaginations or gone insane. Lookshy was a city of the living. The entire city struck me at once as a temple to action. The air was full of smoke from the foundries below, the natural byproducts of a thousand people doing things involving fire and iron. Bridges connected the north and south sides of the Yanaze River that people might cross, and cross again, bearing with them whatever end results their actions had produced. Further up stream the river became the Meander, which I had followed and left some months ago on the way to Sijan. Bright mailed soldiers strode about, intruding on the business of the civilians, and everything outside the gates a jumble of chaotic interactions that must have been placid compared to the raucous tumult of human life going on with the massive walls. The first bridge I came to required a toll I couldn't afford, so I slipped my blade Elsewhere and swam the river.
There were two lines to get through the gates of Lookshy. The first wrapped and twisted before the towering walls like a petrified snake, immobilized during the climax of a self-contorting seizure. The second required a donation in silver of value directly depending on the extent of the pythonic queue beside it. Staring at the back of the first line by my lack of funds, I felt a powerful temptation to let magic and a hypnotic tongue get me through the ordeal quickly. This was not the first time this temptation had tried to seduce me. Toll plazas and traffic jams may consume my soul yet. Still, I held resolute and endured the waiting. The day after I entered the queue I entered the city. The guards were at least able to give me easy instructions to the domains of Gens Haid, and I entered the vortex that is Lookshy's infrastructure.
Eventually the cataract that was the Boulevard of Heroes deposited me in the reception area before a nice estate of marble and blue coral. Vaulted arches supported towering ceilings, none less than twenty feet from the floor, frescoed with simple patterns of azure and white. All around this color scheme was repeated. The floor was made to represent beating waves, and they marched up the walls until metamorphing into a cloudy sky above. A blue jacketed servant took my scroll of introduction and lead me to a small antechamber. Not long later Haid himself appeared.
Somewhat taller than average, he had piercing blue eyes the color of cloudless skies. His hair was pale white like sea foam on the deep oceans, an impression furthered by being naturally curly. It barely reached below his ears, but still managed to convey the impression of shrouding a head just emerged from the deeps. Haid wore a simple tunic of spider silk, but from his belt hung a saber of jade, inlaid with sapphires. On one of his fingers was a fat ring with an ornate square head, most likely a family crest. In that hand was a rolled parchment. With him came two men who stood at his shoulders, bracketing him formally. Both had the same complexion, but wore their hair much shorter. They reeked of the military. The short, gladius swords on their hips confirmed the impression.
"Good morning, sir. Welcome to my home," he said simply.
"Good morning, Lord Haid. My name is Stark Vision of Inevitability. I come to you from Sijan, where I attempted to contact a deceased historian of the name Yvores Alson. When his ghost did not appear to me, the estimable Wood Elm directed me to you, mentioning that several members of your house spoke to the ghost regularly for historical information. I'd like to talk to them. Wood Elm provided me with this letter of introduction," I finished, handing him the scroll. Haid took it with a nod, and cracked the seal. He read it quickly. Afterwards he replaced it in the case and returned it to me.
"That seems very reasonable," he said simply. "Hrack will take you to the western library, where my uncles do their work. They are the ones you want to speak with. I hope they can assist you."
"Thank you," I replied, trying to be gracious.
"But before you meet them, would you like to be taken to a room to eat and refresh yourself?" Haid offered solicitously. "You have the dirt of the road on you, and Sijan is many leagues away. Please accept the hospitality of my house, while you are here."
"That would be very kind," I added, happily. I hadn't eaten in a couple days now, and while one gets used to ignoring hunger when convenient, satisfying it is always more pleasant.
"Excellent. Hrack, to the Dawn Cove suite with him. Stark Vision of Inevitability, go with my nephew and refresh yourself."
"Your hospitality is most welcome, Lord Haid. I am deeply in your debt," I replied, bowing slightly.
Haid nodded and left, while Hrack gestured me to follow him. Hrack seemed to be of the opinion he should be seen and not heard, which combined with his errand-boy status confirmed for me his apparent youth. One learned never to take these things at face value with Dragon-Bloods. Haid himself could pass for his early twenties, and I doubted he was within a hundred years of being as young as I.
Hrack left me at the door to my rooms. While I was glancing around a maid appeared with lunch on a tray. She was pretty and said little before leaving. She did that very quickly, which seemed somewhat strange. I noted it. I took the tray into the attached bathroom and ran hot water into the tub. It was a bronze affair with feet that looked like dolphin tails. Then I divested myself of clothes, left them on the bed so someone could wash them, and sat down to eat and soak. My meal lasted slightly over two minutes.
Armed men kicked the doors open while I was assembling a sandwich and charged into the room. Half a dozen leveled spears at me, stabbing them almost into the water. I dropped the half-complete sandwich into my mouth as they barked orders. A moment later Haid arrived, bringing his two minions with him, and they considered me from the doorway.
"This is really good stuff," I told him truthfully, gesturing with my coffee cup. "Join me for a cup?"
"No, but I hope you enjoyed it. It will be the last you ever have."
"What if I assured you that you don't need to get in the bathtub?" I asked. "Sometimes my friends and I all jump in together, but if you'd rather drink from there, that's fine. I don't mind."
"You are under arrest, clod, for conspiring to murder members of my family, the murder of Wood Elm, and the annihilation of the ghost of Yvores Alson, a rare source of information from the age of the Shogunate and posthumous hero of the Seventh Legion!" he snapped. His attempt to outdo me in urbanity failed completely when his face purpled with anger.
So Wood Elm had not been a bad guy after all. I felt better about respecting his cognitive privacy. Still, it was a tragedy his death was necessary to prove that.
In the room were the six mortal soldiers, all of whom were in a half circle around the bath tub. They had short spears, not more than four feet long, haft and head, leveled at me. They had functional armor, breastplates, arm and shin greaves, but no helmets. Behind them, stood Haid and his two minions, unchanged from when I last saw them minutes ago.
"What about either of you?" I offered. "Join me for a cup?"
"Get him!" snarled Haid.
I dropped the tray, heaved myself sideways from the tub and landed sideways across the spears. With my back hand I snatched the tub from the floor and swung it overhead to smash into the guards chests. The impact hurled four of them backwards as the thousand pounds of metal bathtub drove their armored bodies through the interior wall. I tumbled to the ground as the sudsy bathwater crashed through the air above me, filling the room with obscuring bubbles. Guard feet were above my head. I rolled right and let mis-aimed lunges strike marble harmlessly before snatching at armored feet. Pulling hard enough that the man was hurled bodily forward, I flung him at the other standing mortal, and let the recoil slide me across the slick floor to the opposing wall. Rolling onto my feet put me upright as Haid and his two henchmen charged me, weapons drawn.
I hurled the sink at them. Haid's saber flashed and shattered it, but fragments of marble scored his allies' faces. I chucked the mirror after, which Haid ducked, and punched through the wall to sever the hot water pipes within. Sprays of near boiling water exploded from the walls, scalded my noble hosts, and forced them to hurl themselves backwards. It was that or lunge blindly at me through the cloud of steam. I put my head down, charged the thin wall beside me, and crashed through slate.
In the next room, the four guards were groaning under the tub. Those were incredible breastplates. I jumped over them, yanked the tub off, and threw it back into the room whence I'd come. It crumpled one of the metal supports in the opposing wall, and part of the ceiling started to come down. I exited the room without opening the door I traversed and glanced down the short hallway in either direction. Bunches of servants, minor nobles, and members of the soldiery stared at me in shock.
Naked, soaking wet, and breaking walls, that was to be expected. I picked a direction at random and ran away. When people weren't getting out of my way fast enough I grabbed a porcelain vase and dumped the water lilies out of it. It was about a foot and a half tall, with an opening wide enough to allow my hand to pass. I reached in, grabbed my blade from Elsewhere, and yanked the large weapon out, shattering the diminutive vase as I did. Now people dove out of my way. Wet, naked, and crazy is one thing, but wet, naked, crazy, and armed gets results.
For no particular reasons I screamed pro-Realm slogans as I fled through the mansion, wantonly breaking valuables as I searched for a way out. Occasionally I stole things. Lookshy and the Realm were ancient rivals, and most citizens of one considered the continued breathing of the others a personal insult. The three Terrestrials were on my tail soon enough, gathering their allies as they chased me through twisting corridors. House Haid must have been designed by a frustrated labyrinth architect for the corridors twisted back on themselves, and once I'd set a few on fire, it was nearly impossible to tell them apart. Ultimately I found a stairway and went up until only a ceiling stopped my continued ascent. A lack of stairs helped. I jumped upwards, cut a hole in the slate roof, and pulled myself through.
I was standing near the center of the sweeping manse. It covered several acres of prime, inner city property. The roof rose and fell around me, smoke billowing from various windows, and beyond that were the modest grounds that abutted the estate's walls. Temporarily concealed by the billowing smoke, I raced to the edge of the building, hurled myself from the rooftop, and sailed over the wall into the bushes of a flower garden.
It was a rose garden. I was still naked.
That felt like you would expect. I darted across the yard, hopped that fence, and got to the rooftops. Once I'd put some distance between myself and the plume of smoke that marked my last location, I went looking for an alley. I still had a bag of miscellaneous shiny things I'd stolen from Haid, and needed an unscrupulous type to exchange them for clothing. When I found one, he was in the act of divesting someone else of their own shiny things. Once I put him to sleep, I stripped his clothes off. The victim of the mugging was beginning to come to at this point.
Fortunately, I was fully clad by the time she finished waking up. My blade had vanished back into Elsewhere, where it would not encumber me or draw attention. Seeing opportunity, I took her by the arm and assisted her upright and into the street. She insisted a few times that she was fine without my help, but her words proved empty of meaning. A large purple bruise was rising behind her ear, roughly the size of a fist-sized rock. Her balance was gone, and only with help could she remain upright.
"I'm fine; you don't need to help me," she insisted again.
"Ma'am, I've been hit in the head like that a few times," I told her. "Trust me, you aren't fine. Please, let me help you. I'd feel better about it."
"Ugh. My mother will never believe I can take care of myself if I need a stranger to help me home," she complained.
"I'd say the first step to avoiding that is not getting clubbed with a rock," I told her calmly. Several police rushed past, heading north towards the richer districts. I watched them from my peripheral vision. "Once you've messed up that step, I think the battle is more or less lost."
She thought about that for a second. Her wits were visibly returning to her in the wake of the sudden flirtation with violent unconsciousness. Her demeanor calmed, and she lost the agitation she'd had before. It was entirely possible she had a concussion, but I couldn't tell.
"Well, that's true," she admitted. "Thank you, by the way. For your help."
"You're welcome," I demurred. I wanted to dismiss the thanks, but I gathered she didn't like being helped to begin with. Besides, my motives were certainly ulterior. It felt cheap to take credit for them.
Along the way I learned her name was Salatian and that she worked as a clockmaker. She was somewhere between poor and middle class, in the region of junior enlisted soldiers and school teachers. Perhaps five and a half feet tall, with black hair that went just below her shoulders, she was as southern as the desert sun. Her skin was the color of burnished copper, and her eyes were very dark brown. Her fingers were tiny and given to gesturing as she talked. She wore brown divided skirts with a leather apron over a white cotton top. It was indistinguishable from the worker's clothing of half the city.
She explained to me that she had been picking up metal gears from a bronze smith who made them for her. The tiny pieces looked like coins from a distance and could easily be confused for gold from a cursory glance. They also clinked like money. Salatian explained she'd often worried that someone would misconstrue their nature and try to rob her for the faux gold. This had simply been the day she'd been dreading.
"I hope none of them are broken. The little metal work is expensive," she explained as we walked. "Some of the smaller gears aren't solid, being nothing but toothed rings with spokes to the central hub. Those will bend even when manipulated by tweezers." As she talked she pantomimed both gears and their bending. I had an arm around her back to her waist, and she unconsciously drew away from me. However her balance had not returned to the point where she could walk unaided, and a slight irregularity in the cobblestone road tipped her so she fell against my side. Again she reluctantly accepted my aid and walked the rest of the way leaning on me.
"Can they be fixed?" I asked. "Or do you need to return to the smith?"
"Once they're cast, I can modify them as necessary. The problem is the casting. It isn't difficult, but the molds are terribly expensive, and until business gets much busier, there's no point in doing it myself," she explained.
I nodded. More soldiers rushed past. No one glanced at us. I kept asking open ended questions to keep her talking while I looked around. That also gave me a chance to make sure she remained coherent. By the time we got to a small, iron bound door, I was certain she didn't have any cranial trauma sleeping wouldn't cure. Here the road was named Weft Street, and it had many small workshops. The houses leaned forward as if to jump at each other over the sidewalk.
"This is where I live," she said at the door. "My shop is downstairs, and my mother lives upstairs. My dad used to work with me, but his heart gave out last year."
That seemed an oddly personal detail, and I doubted she would have let it drop except for the recent head wound. That does make some people talkative.
"Thank you for seeing me home. Is there anything I can do for you?" she implored me.
There was no concealing the urgency of the request. She really wanted to do something so she hadn't been totally at the mercy of a random stranger. More soldiers were coming down the street. I didn't want to be seen by them.
"Lunch?" I asked.
She smiled. "Certainly. Come in," she paused. "Oh, I'm sorry, what was your name?"
"Crimson," I lied. "Crimson Wing."
"What an odd name," she said, tactlessly. "You're not from around here, are you?"
"Miss Salatian, I'm from a very long way away."