Contrary to expectation, the ferry did not go into the city, instead it stopped at a large dock set along the water. The first thing Neia noticed about this was that there were several such docks, and the string of ferries broke up and went to different ones, leaving only Tinamoc's merchant caravan at this location. As soon as she saw this, she approached him and asked, "Why are we docking here, or perhaps I should ask, why is everybody docking in different locations?"

Tinamoc was kneeling down and rifling through a satchel of documents when she asked, and he paused to look up at her and answer. "Its the way the city works. Wenmark is like nowhere else in the Roble Holy Kingdom, North or South. They've never had a royal governor, only a 'royal adviser' whose real role is mostly for show, the only important task he does is ensure that noble titles are held by the council members and reports to the crown what the city is able to provide in goods and tribute. The council they've got is made up of the wealthiest and most important members of each class, so this city is as a result...very class conscious. Merchants marry merchants, industrial craft families marry into others of the same, fishers marry fishers, and so on. Because they're so class conscious here, even the docks are split up by class." He pointed across the lake to a small dock, "That one is for visitors, people passing through, pilgrims and the like." He pointed to another, "That one is for fishers only. I suppose the higher classes could use them if they wanted to, but they wouldn't becaught dead there." He pointed to another, closer to himself, "That one is for industrialists, they mostly take in raw materials and ship out finished goods, and of course we're at the one for merchants."

Neia frowned as she thought that through. "You're the only merchant here...though..."

Tinamoc nodded. "Yes. I am. The city maintains its security by strict protectionist controls over what outsiders are allowed to trade inside the city, all others..." He pointed to a series of warehouses..."all others store goods there, pay for their own security, and must sell outside the city. I managed to get a license to trade inside the city because my father is the brother of one of the merchants on the council, which would make that one my uncle. I got a 'favored merchant status' which lets me have a license for next to nothing, and so I can sell my goods below the normal cost normally paid by other merchants, meaning I turn a higher profit at a lower point of sale price."

Neia frowned.

"Doesn't sound fair." She said.

"It isn't." Tinamoc readily agreed. "But it isn't meant to be. It is all set up to keep the correct people in power and the money flowing in the right direction."

"And you're...OK with that?" Neia said in surprise and disapproval.

Tinamoc was silent for a moment, then as he found the papers he needed, he closed his satchel and stood up. He gave Neia a very serious look, and spoke with a tone Neia had never heard before out of him, it wasn't happy, it wasn't sad, it wasn't cruel or kind, it wasn't foreboding or warning, it wasn't angry, it sounded...tired. "Neia Baraja...you know how I think about your ideals, your goals, I respect them, to a degree, I even share them, as much as any of my men at arms." He paused, and looked uncertain for a moment...it was a look Neia did not think suited the normally decisive and intelligent merchant. "Let me tell you a story..." he said, "A long time ago, before you were born, there was a young man on fire to make everything better, he thought he could be a King one day, and then he could fix everything...only to learn that to do that he'd have to make everything worse first, and he would have very little chance of making things better after that even if he were successful. Then he thought he could drive off the monsters and free up more land for people...only to find he was completely lacking in martial ability. Then he thought if he had wealth, he could buy a better world, and he found that he had a gift for making coin, turning bronze into gold, such as it were. He worked hard, he scraped enough money together to buy a cart and made his first deal, he bought a second cart, and did better, he did a lot with little. But time ate at him, he married, and doing best for everyone changed to doing best for his wife and his house, he grew tired, he never really lost his wish for things to be better, but as he made gold, he found that all it did was buy him access to make more, he couldn't buy the change he wanted because the people he relied on for the security of any system, profited only from the system not changing. In short, he couldn't even bribe people to do the right thing because the wrong thing was how everybody was getting richer, they had no reason to change. Eventually, he lost hope of changing the system, not because he loved the system, but because he was part of the system, and it was larger than he was, and any attempt at change was only going to destroy him and whatever little good he could do on his own." Tinamoc let out a tired sigh.

"So what happened to the man?" Neia asked.

"He told you that story just now." Tinamoc said with a tired smile. "But you know, as horrible as Jaldabaoth's invasion was, maybe he...in a twisted way, gave us an opportunity to do better. You have power I only dreamed of, and a backer who can impose change on the most recalcitrant subject, he bends emperors to his will and slays demons like a cat does a mouse. I won't say I don't profit from this, because I do, though I'm as fair as I can be, but don't mistake my inability to effect change, with a fondness for the status quo. I don't even particularly like that uncle." He said with a disgruntled snort. "If you can effect a change in there, do so, but fuck if I know how you'll do that."

"Where there is a will, there is a way." Neia said, and then she took off her visor and turned her savage eyes on the city ahead, and though he could not see it from where he stood, Tinamoc could feel a predatory grin forming on her face, "And if there isn't a way, we'll carve one out ourselves." She said, bringing her hand to the pommel of her sword and giving it a tight grip.

Tinamoc did not ask who she meant by 'We'. Perhaps she meant Black Justice, perhaps she meant Skana and herself, perhaps she meant her god and herself, perhaps she meant all of those and more besides, he thought better than to ask, he only looked out over the calm water as the ferries finished docking, and when a wirey man in an expensive looking coat approached, walking over the wood like he was born with a stick up his ass approached and demanded "Papers." imperiously holding out his hand and looking very impatient, Tinamoc didn't say anything. He simply handed over the documents he'd sought out, and waited as the little man went through them one by one and marked off items with an ink quill. "Everything seems to be in order, we will take the taxed portion of goods, and then you may enter the city." He said in his nasal voice, and Tinamoc simply nodded in response.

His behavior seemed very 'off', to Neia, and as soon as the nasal voiced man was gone, she leaned in close to Tinamoc and asked, "You're not acting like yourself. What is it that I need to know?" She whispered softly, her eyes scanning the area suspiciously.

When the man was out of sight, Tinamoc said, "Its this city itself, I mean its 'clean' as any city goes, its not crime riddled, but, it has a miasma of oppression around it, it gets to me a little. I'm the most powerful merchant in the entire country, I have the ear of the King himself, my own uncle works here, but the law is like a weight on your shoulders, its very easy to get into trouble here, and very difficult to get out of it. A few years ago a merchant violated a local law, I don't recall what it was, something minor though, and he ended up not seeing the light of day for several years. His goods weren't confiscated, but they took a large part of them for the 'expense' of securing those goods for him while he was in prison."

Neia frowned. "Should we be here at all?"

Tinamoc shrugged, "If I could avoid it, I would, but their guilds control many of the outlying mines, if I snubbed the city I'd find myself locked out of buying metal or even metal works for miles around." He said in a frustrated voice.

Neia turned to look the city over, its great high walls seemed to change in her mind, from a promise of safety, to the walls of a prison. She crossed her arms in front of her and said softly to Tinamoc, "I take back my question. I'm glad we're here."

Going in to the city was easy from there, the great wide gates allowed the caravan easy entry, and when she rode her horse through the gate, her eyes took in the sights with practiced ease. The buildings were unusual, they went up two stories in height, but rather than stop there, they top acted as a juncture, with one or more rooms cropping out from the sides, sometimes up against another building to which they connected for stability, sometimes they were secured to pillars that jutted up from the ground. The avenues were wide, easily enough for six carriages to pass abreast, and yet except to cross a street, nobody walked through it, instead she only saw people riding on horses or moving carriages, the public street seemed closed to anyone who had nothing to ride, it was frankly bizarre. Those on foot walked on much smaller elevated wooden pathways, these 'sidewalks' were elevated roughly the vertical height of a hand with its fingers spread out as far as they could go, and were wide enough for two or three to pass abreast.

The shops were plentiful, but the boisterous sound of men hawking wares was somewhat lacking, with only a few shouting for attention for their goods. It grew only more bizarre when Neia saw the chains. There were many people in chains walking around, most of them were chained together in pairs, a few were alone, but the chains varied in style, some were painted green, some were painted white, some were painted yellow, and some were left black. It took a lot of looking before she realized what else was really wrong to her...the ones who had ears cut off or mutilated...they weren't humans...they were elves.

She turned to Tinamoc..."OK, I need an explanation...now. This is...all very different."

"Fair enough." He said, "Reports just don't quite convey things like seeing them does." He swept his hand over the view of the odd buildings, "Taxes are higher on taller buildings, but not on wider ones, so as a result, architects had an incentive to build 'around' a primary location instead of 'up'. What is more, because the walkways or 'side walks' are the only place to walk, various alleys had to be maintained to allow people to get from place to place, so instead of a building that is four wide, its one wide then one over on the second floor, thus allowing for numerous side paths for people to follow to get from place to place without being beside the main road. Since the former construction is so common, a lot of these alleyways are nearly pitch black. Candle makers do great business here as a result."

"And...the silence?" She asked, "Only a few sellers are loudly hawking their wares, everybody else is very subdued." She asked curiously.

"Noise restrictions. You have to have a license to yell to call attention to your business. You also have to have a license to hire bards to play music three candle bars after sunset." He said, and her face twisted in confusion.

"What the..." She began, and he raised a finger to pause her in mid question.

He reached into his pack and pulled out a candle that alternated between black and red bands and held it out to her, she took it and looked it up and down. "Each of those bars takes about an hour and a half to burn down, so when the sun sets, one of these gets lit wherever the bard is playing, if the business doesn't have a license for longer playing hours, the bard has to stop playing when the third one is finished."

"And these licenses are..." She began.

"Very expensive and restricted in number, yes. They're issued by the merchant's guild with input from the industrialists who base their recommendations, supposedly, on how many of their workers are thought to be out late at night.

"If a bard goes over the third bar limit on the candle, beyond what it takes to finish whatever song he's playing, he can lose his license to play anywhere in the city, or be fined that night's wages." Tinamoc said seriously.

"And...all those chained people?" Neia asked gravely. "I didn't see anything about slavery in my reports."

"Technically they're not slaves." Tinamoc said, and as Neia was about to explode, he put up his hands and gestured for her to calm down. "Hear me out. Each color chain represents something different. Green are for minor offenses, like public intoxication, they're sentenced to a week of 'public service', red is for more serious offences, violent crime, they can be in chains for years, a lot of those end up in the mines outside of town or working on boats on the lake. White represents debt service, they owed money they couldn't pay back, so the city pays the debt in exchange for public service work until the work is done, in theory this gets somebody out of debt, in practice, often their debts include money for food, borrowing for healing, inability to pay taxes, and so on, the city then sells 'their labor' rather than...technically, them, at auctions in the public squares, to others. Of course they can avoid that fate if someone else pays their debts for them, but such an action is very rare. Yellow chains represent blasphemy or crimes against the faith or the gods, slandering the temples, and so on. These trials are actually conducted by the temples themselves, and then they sell the labor of the convicted if they don't have a use for the person themselves. They also have the option of confiscating a person's property if the person is found guilty, but for most people there isn't even enough to take to make that worthwhile. The black chains...those are life sentences."

"All the ones I see in black chains are elves..." Neia said. "Are they all murderers from the elf Kingdom?"

"NO." He said emphatically. "They're...from the Slane Theocracy." He said slowly.

Neia paused as it sank in...and she thought, "Slane Theocracy...they don't have elf citizens they..." And it slowly dawned on her.

Tinamoc saw her face go from confusion to shock and outrage. "Yes." Tinamoc said. "They were all taken by the Slane Theocracy. From what I've heard, in order to sell these elves as slaves here, when they have a captive and then put him or her up for auction, they mutilate their ears, for the enjoyment of the viewing audience. If the winning bidder is from Wenmark, the auctioneer in the Slane Theocracy then promises the elf can go free if they can best some skilled fighter, and then they drug the elf so that the poor soul can't put up a fight, then they charge the elf with attempted murder when they're beaten into submission. They keep a 'judge' on hand to pronounce sentence in a show trial, and the sentence is always life in 'public service' and the beaten and battered elf is chained and transported here. Now they're considered dangerous would be murderers, and they're left in black chains till they die. The females go to the brothels or are sold to the senior city officials as personal menials, concubines frankly, and most of the males end up in the mines, with some of the older ones ending up doing the public street work."

Neia had a profoundly angry expression on her face. "Tinamoc...?" She began.

"Yes?" He asked, looking around the city and not really noticing her expression.

"Have you ever dealt in...this form of trade?" She asked with utter politeness while her knuckles shook and turned white inside her gloves from the power of her grip on the pommel of her saddle.

"No." He said flatly.

"Good." She replied.

"I'm a little insulted that you asked me that question." He said evenly.

"I'm sorry." She replied evenly, but with evident sincerity in her voice.

"My uncle has." He said.

"Would you miss him?" She asked.

"No." He replied.

"Good." She gave a small nod, and they drifted into silence, neither really feeling like talking as the faces of misery caught their eyes, along the way as they passed through several public squares, Neia noticed a number of oddly placed posts, they looked very familiar, but it was difficult for her to say just why. It tickled at her brain all the way to the warehouse district, though she didn't break silence to ask, she could feel the answer close, like it was just out of reach. They were seven feet high and spaced roughly ten feet apart, they looked like unusually large hitching posts, with iron rings at various heights going up near to the top facing the fountains at the center.

It was puzzling, and it picked at her so persistently that she barely noticed the entire unloading process, and Tinamoc had to touch her shoulder to get her attention. "We're done here, I'll show you where we'll be staying, and then you can brief your people and we can call it a day.

Neia nodded numbly, and the now unencumbered band of merchants, Black Justice, hired guards, and laborers, all made their way to another district, unencumbered, it was not a long trip, and Neia found that the building they were at was unusually large, it was several stories tall and much wider than the others around it. Made of red brick in an overlapping pattern rather than the cheap wood of other nearby structures, it was shaped like a horse shoe, with a large courtyard in front. "This is the Golden Roan, the largest hotel in the city." Tinamoc said. "My uncle thinks it is undignified for anyone related to a member of the government to stay in a cheaper location, so he rents rooms for myself and my entourage once a year."

"He's generous to you." Neia said.

"To me yes, but not for me." Tinamoc replied, "This is all about his own sense of importance, and when I tried to refuse, he offered to pay for my entire caravan to stay here, all I have to do is present myself to the council so he can strut about his connections to the royal court. Not that he fucking earned any of that." Tinamoc's voice turned unusually vicious, so much so that Neia gave him a sideways glance, he didn't break his gaze as he looked over the beautifully made hotel as their followers formed up behind them. "My uncle was the older brother, he inherited everything, my father inherited nothing, which meant I inherited slightly more than nothing, I had to build my mercantile enterprise up by myself, it wasn't until I started gaining a name for myself that he so much as sent a letter to me, then once I was useful, he was happy to call me his nephew. I had to grin and bear it because family strife makes people nervous about investing in someone's name, and...I'd be lying if I said it offered no benefits to me. But if you want the truth, I revile him for what he did do, what he chose not to do, and for what he does."

Tinamoc relaxed when that came out of him, and he spurred his horse forward at a slow canter, "Come on, lets get checked in, you'll need to give your people a rundown of what to do and not do here, and that means I'll have to go over some things with you first." Neia spurred her horse forward, and when they reached the front entrance, they dismounted and handed the reins to a little elf boy with mutilated ears. He was clean and well dressed, wearing fine formal clothing suitable for a noble, but his hands had the same chains as other elves who were 'life sentences'. Neia felt the urge to retch, and only just bit it back, she did not want to draw attention to herself...not yet, and so she didn't glance at the youth, following Tinamoc's lead in seeming blindness when it came to seeing the laborers.

The interior of the hotel was no less impressive than the immaculate grounds outside it, the chained servants were also plentiful, all of them were elves, most of them were female. Neia ground her teeth but kept her face as impassive as she could. The entry of the large body of travelers seems to have given the lobby pause, and for that she was grateful, she was fairly certain she'd have seen some ugly behavior towards the chained elves, behavior she couldn't ignore, if they hadn't been startled by the mass entry of uniformly dressed Black Justice fighters armed to the teeth and wearing faces as severe as if they'd been carved out of stone. The one eyed Skana drew particular notice, as she broke from the group and began to pace the lobby, seeming to study the artwork on display.

Neia quickly gave instructions that they had one hour to eat following checkin, and then were to form up on the grounds outside, and as each one was given money to spend, she cautioned them one by one to go nowhere else but the hotel restaurant, their rooms, and outside. This drew confused looks, but nobody argued.

When all that was done, Neia and Tinamoc went off together, as Skana headed towards the savory smell of a well managed restaurant, along with most of the other members of Black Justice.

At Tinamoc's room, Neia closed the door and sat down at a table, Tinamoc sat opposite her.

"You've already guessed a lot about this city I expect." He said sadly.

"Enough that I'm starting to miss Yanana." She said.

"This city is unique, not only in its labor practices, which is just slavery with extra steps, but also in that it is strongly tied to the Slane Theocracy, far more so than any city in the Holy Kingdom." He said with a hint of disgust in his voice.

"See when the Holy Kingdom was founded, a lot of those founders split off, and this was one of the first cities they built, well this, and the capitol, and the ones who built this city, most strongly favored retaining ties to the Slane Theocracy. They modeled their government on that of the Slane Theocracy, maintained independent trade ties with their former country, they even kept an informal envoy of the Slane Theocracy here for generations, almost as if they were a different country from the rest of the Holy Kingdom. They might as well have been, Slane Theocracy citizens often come here to settle, carrying their culture with them and keeping ties to their homes over the sea. When Jaldabaoth invaded and you went North to the Sorcerer King, according to my uncle, they sent their own envoy West over the sea to appeal to the Slane Theocracy for support from the scriptures. Whether they had authorization from anyone to do that, I don't know, but I doubt they'd have cared what the North thought, it was in no position to complain, without even a King or Queen at the time."

He shook his head and spread his hands open on the table as if apologetic for bringing her to Wenmark, and he leaned back in his chair. "I saw your face when you saw the way those elf women were carrying themselves in the lobby, I know what you were thinking, and you were correct. Expensive hotels cater to the wants of their clients, and elves are relatively cheap thanks to the Theocracy's success, a lot happens that...well...shouldn't. I'll just put it that way."

Neia's fists clenched tight, and she kept them rooted to the top of the table instead of striking it, out of sheer force of will. "Don't the women of the city care even a little, at least about those activities?" She asked.

"No. The elf women aren't a threat, they can't inherit, only be inherited, and offspring are just going to be 'convicted' of a crime themselves when they get old enough and sentenced to life as well, after some public breaking in the manner of the Slane Theocracy's methods." Tinamoc said.

The thing tickling at Neia's brain suddenly became clear. "Those posts I saw at every square..." She said in a hushed voice.

"Yes, similar to the Pillars of Discipline in Yanana, only many more of them scattered around the city." He said.

"And the rings at various heights?" She asked.

"For prisoners of...various heights." He said.

"But...some of those were low enough to have been for..." She began, and the memory of what almost happened to her came rushing back, she barely made it to a waste bucket in time for her to retch in disgust. She vomited for almost a minute, sickened and disgusted. Tinamoc didn't say a word in all that time, he sat, and waited patiently as Neia started to shake as if she were having a small seizure, she cleaned her face off with a cloth from the bathroom, and unsteadily returned to the table.

"I'm sorry..." she said as she slowly suppressed the rush of emotions, fear from her memory, disgust at what she'd learned, still warred in her but she gradually regained control over herself.

"No need to apologize." He said. "I don't blame you."

"Did...the Queen know about all this?" She asked softly.

"Maybe in a sort of, fourth hand removed sort of way, I doubt she ever knew the full details of how things worked here, I met her majesty a number of times, and speaking frankly...she was true to her ideals, but she was also rather naive, assuming people shared them, who very much did not." Tinamoc answered, "Even if she'd heard, I doubt she would have known just how bad it was to be the wrong person in this Wenmark."

Neia gave a very small nod of acknowledgement, and for the better part of the next hour, Tinamoc filled her in on the justice system, laws, customs, and practices of Wenmark, none of which made her like the city much, and in the end it was enough that Neia knew what she needed to say to her people.

When she went down to the lobby, she found Skana and CZ waiting for her, seated in comfortable chairs next to one another. "Are the others already outside?" She asked.

"They are." CZ answered.

"Please wait here, I want to talk to you both afterwards, privately." Neia said.

She didn't wait for acknowledgement, and went outside and saw her formation on the grass in front of the hotel. She did not waste time, she approached and began to speak.

"I will make this simple. This is not going to be the fun vacation that you had in Yanana. We are in the heart of darkness. You will remain on guard here. You will remain vigilant, you will not be permitted any alcohol beyond a single glass of wine or mug of beer at dinner. You will not venture outside of the hotel except in groups of five, not four, not three, not two, not one. I expect if one of you is going somewhere, you will go fully armed, fully armored, and you will go with four of your companions and you will be working in the lobby in shifts of two hours each, the one on shift in the lobby will have a sign out sheet, and you will notify that person of where you and your companions are going, and when you plan on being back. You are not to engage in violence except to buy yourselves time to withdraw, and if you must withdraw, your withdrawal point will be back to Yanana where you will go to the adventurer's guild and send word to us here, do not allow yourselves to be taken. Every morning everybody checks in for accountability at sunrise, and everybody is to be returned to the hotel within five hours of sunset." She took a deep breath, "You've no doubt noticed the elf slaves around the city, they're hard to miss. Any body part of yours that touches them in any way, you'd better be prepared to lose." She said. "With you I don't think I need to say that, but I'd rather say it and not need to, than need to and not say it. They're all off limits, this includes those in brothels. It doesn't matter if they appear to want you and say you're the most attractive stud ever, keep your hands and other appendages to yourself."

There were serious looks given to Neia as she spoke, but she didn't let up. "If you see something you cannot bear to watch, you are authorized to use your own money to pay for a halt to whatever you're seeing, but if you choose to 'buy' one of the prisoners as if they were property, it had better be so that you can free them, and you'd better report it to myself at the next assembly or earlier. Questions?" She asked.

There were none, though there were a lot of dark expressions on faces of men and women alike.

"You are dismissed."

Unlike the previous stay in Yanana, this spreading out of the group did not see anyone with a kick in their step, nobody moved with an air of happy purpose, most of them were acutely on guard, and almost all of them went straight back to the hotel, Neia was no different in that regard, when she walked in she immediately walked past Skana and CZ and said sharply, "We need privacy, come with me." The two shared a glance, but quickly followed after, going up the stairs with her and down the hall until Neia found her room. She entered, waited until her two companions had joined her, then she closed and locked the door.

"Please, sit." She said.

Even as they had started to take their seats Neia said it bluntly, "I want this city to burn."

Skana and CZ looked at each other blankly, and CZ spoke for them both when she said, "That was fast."

AN: So, I hope you liked this chapter, I'm settling in to a new setting, and it took a little longer than it usual did because I needed some inspiration from history on some practices from the past and I wanted to get the details right before writing them down, things in government, religion, trade, and so on, but things are going to heat up here. Remember awhile back the way Prart fell in a single chapter? Originally that was going to take three chapters, but the way it flowed in writing was such that the momentum carried it forward against my original intention, and it made more sense if it was a swift fall. Wenmark is different, it is neither Prart nor Yanana, and it will be handled differently as such. I hope you're looking for foreshadowing and hints, and the occasional literary, pop culture, or historical reference, because I scatter them about like sprinkles on cupcakes. :)

If you like this story, please leave a review, if you have suggestions, please PM them to me directly so it doesn't ruin it for anyone else if I incorporate your idea (You'll still be given author note credit for the idea). If there is just something you'd like to see in the city, say so and I may explore that.

If you have a question or two...well since I've been asked a few questions, I do plan to do a Q&A chapter as a kind of an 'intermission' along the way, probably before chapter 30 or right after that. And of course once again, thanks for reading!