The Walled City of Tremallan looks like a silvered barnacle on the northwestern coast of Bertaèyn – a monument of grey stone against the black basalt, often seen gleaming in the sun after a passing rain.
It is a city of corsairs, fiercely independent of the central authority in Renn-e-loc, and perfectly placed to spread a web of reavers across the straits of the Inner Isles. Over the last few centuries, as their wealth increased, the scavengers and pirates who docked there settled and turned merchants themselves. The town became one of the major trading ports in the Inner Isles, and a political player in its own right.
Its fabled walls are low – barely more than a storey high – but very thick, and enchanted with the names of the ancient Sea Lords. All around the rocky promontory it is built on, the city is surrounded by sand flats, and it has been often besieged. Thus enclosed, the city had no way to grow but up – the buildings stretching ever taller until they all but spilled out and over the walls which became barely visible in their shadow.
In some parts, however, they built downwards.
In a round plaza in the west of the city, there stands a statue of a mythic prince, loyal sea bird gazing up at him. All the gold leaf had long since been picked off, leaving the Golden Prince a largely ironic title. Behind him, three narrow alleys slope downward, and continue to descend all the way to the Western wall, until the sky is reduced to a thin line, far above. The roofs stand at the same height as the surrounding sectors of Tremallan. But if you were to wander into it unawares, you would see that the buildings on the surface were stacked on top of other buildings cut into the underlying rock itself.
In this warren of absurd angles and unlikely proportions, rope ladders and the thicker clotheslines are often the only means of access to the living spaces. Those tenement buildings which lead from the lowest layer of the district to the top – and still have functional stairwells – have been abandoned as vertical thoroughfares which the locals call straedoù. Flea markets tend to spring up in the hollowed out floors, and pawn shops and fences could often be found in the rooms that remained.
At the top of one such straedoù stood a wooden shack. The easiest way to get there was to scale the top few (wholly abandoned) floors of the building from the outside, where fallen stones make a path of stable hand-and-footholds for those who know exactly where to look.
The shack was full of bric-a-brac not quite valuable enough to fence. In the middle of the floor, there was a large hole into the top storey of the tenement. On this top storey, all the walls had been brought down, leaving it as a larger version of the shack above: even messier, and filled with large, looming piles of discarded objects, lit only by a few soot-encrusted lanterns and the sunlight slinking through the hole above.
And it was in this top story of the straedoù beneath the bric-a-brac shack that, unbeknownst to the rest of the city, the Skylarks gang of pickpockets, petty thieves, and manse burglars made their primary hideout. On this particular afternoon, one could just about make out three figures in the gloom – two of whom were involved in a civil but increasingly tense disagreement.
“I’m not going to say you shouldn’t have done it.”
“It sounds an awful lot like that’s exactly what you’re going to say.”
Mistress raised her hand to adjust a stray strand of hair and loop it elegantly behind her ear. “I’m just saying that we should have held a vote on it beforehand.”
The tall, thin youth she was talking to scratched his head. “Would you have asked Butcher to vote against it?”
“Yes.”
“Would you have strong-armed Oneface into voting against it?”
“I strongly object to your use of the term ‘strong-arm’. It makes me sound like some sort of brute.”
“I apologise for the phrasing. But you do admit you’d make him do it.”
“I would have made the advantages of seeing things my way very clear.”
“Then the vote would have fallen 3 to 1 against me. Maybe 3 to 2 if you count Winky. Isn’t that exactly the same as saying I shouldn’t have done it?”
If anyone had been around to parse the mumble issuing from one corner of the room, they would have heard: “So that’s the problem here, Tentpole? Not the fact that Mistress openly admitted she was going to bully me?”
“I’m just reminding you of the proper procedure,” Mistress purred. “You may of course take any lesson you wish from your failure to follow it.”
“They were offering 10,000 déniers, though. Solid. A fifth of it upfront.”
“What ever happened to ‘We’re all family here!’, Tentpole?” The mumble from the corner of the room rumbled along. “ ‘We look after each other, no matter what!’, huh Tentpole?”
Mistress froze in the act of turning away. Not a muscle of her back twitched, and yet her whole demeanour seemed to have changed abruptly.
“They offered… how much?”
“10,000 déniers. Plus expenses. Plus a blanket amnesty on everything Butcher has stolen from them over the years.”
“So that’s it, huh Tentpole? You’re really just gonna let it slide,” Oneface mumbled semi-audibly.
Mistress turned around very slowly, an innocently interested expression on her aristocratic face. She never got a chance to inquire further, though – because, at that very moment, the sound of a door slamming and the whole rickety wooden shack shaking came down from the roof above.
“Hey! You lot! Look at what I nabbed on the way back here!”
The swordsman Mikka swooped down through the hole in the roof.
“We’re kind of in the middle of something, Mikka.”
“Nevermind that, Missy! Check this out!”
He swung his right leg up, holding it straight above his head for one hanging second, before dropping it down to one of the low-lying tables dotted around the room and, with one sweep of his leg, clearing all of its contents onto the floor.
Mistress furrowed an eyebrow at the mess he was making. Tentpole raised an eyebrow appreciatively at his hip flexibility. Mikka’s left hand emerged from under his blue cloak and plopped a drawstring sack onto the cleared space of the table. When that elicited no clear reaction, he opened it, smoothed it out, and laid on it a round and heavy object.
It was just a little larger than a human head, and looked rather like a rolled-up pill bug – if a pill bug had an ornate, metallic exoskeleton, in the junctures of which a black-velvet underbody could be seen.
Mistress and Tentpole leaned in to examine it. Even One-face looked up from his little pile of squeaking, spinning cogs. Mikka stood there beaming, fists on hips, feet spread wide in a heroic pose.
“Part of me hates indulging you by asking the obvious question. But, well, what is it?
“So glad you asked, Tentpole!”
Mistress continued examining the unidentified object, her expression intent and serious. Oneface hovered behind her, fingers itching. Tentpole stared at Mikka – at first expectantly, then with an increasingly deflated expression. Mikka stared right back at Tentpole. At first beaming, and then, a minute later, very much still beaming that exact same, unwavering smile.
“You don’t know what it is, do you Mikka?”
“Absolutely no idea! That’s why I was so glad you asked. I thought you lot would enjoy figuring it out! All I know is that it’s very, very important.”
“Why?”
“Absolutely no idea!”
“Mikka, you–”
Tentpole gawped at Mikka in disbelief, mouth hanging open, desperately trying to induce a single ounce of shame into his mentor. Mistress repositioned herself now and then, examining the object from various angles.
“These markings…” she muttered under her breath. “They clearly… but then, why…”
An absent-minded mumble drifted over from somewhere behind her shoulder.
“It’s so the contents don’t escape but you can stick your fingers in and bend the carapace to play around with it.”
“…what was that?”
A bit louder this time:
“Oh, just that you can handle the contents withou—ah.”
Oneface looked up, met Mistress’ gaze, realised it was her who was asking, and noticed how fixedly she was staring at him.
“Oh dear.” he announced to himself.
“Onefaaaace. Why don’t come a little closer, so I can hear you better?”
“…nonononono, I’m busy,” he said, trying to scurry back to his workspace in the corner.
“Busy with what?
“Busy with the last ten things you told me to do!”
“Well, as a matter of fact,” Mistress purred, positively looming over him now. “It doesn’t look like you’ve been doing any of the things I’ve asked you to do. It very much looks like you’re playing with your little trinkets again.”
“It’s not a trinket, it’s an diving su–hey! Alright, listen, I was just taking a short break, to–ouch-…when Mikka is being so distracting, it’s hard to focus, so I–ouch–Tentpole! Will you please keep your girlfriend from–OUCH—Tentpole she’ll twist my ear off she’ll twist my mmffffffff–”
While Mistress stuffed a cloth into One-face’s mouth and dragged him over to the table in the centre of the room, Tentpole persevered in his attempt to get a single muscle to twitch on Mikka’s face.
It had been a year since Mikka had picked him off the market floor where he was desperately looking for dock work. A day less than that since he turned up at their meeting place with Mistress in tow. More than eleven months since he’d fished Oneface out of somewhere. Which would make it ten months since Butcher had wandered into their hideout, screwed in two meat hooks, and set up a hammock. And in all that time, Tentpole still hadn’t figured out who Mikka really was: what he wanted from them, what he was doing here, and where we went when he was away. Mikka had scouted out their first burglaries for them, but never asked for any of the spoils. He taught Tentpole things he’d never imagined possible, but disappeared an eyeblink later. He was the person Tentpole owed his life to. The person he most admired – most wanted to be like. And, unfortunately, sometimes he was the person Tentpole least wanted to be like, too.
Having completely failed to unearth Mikka’s sense of shame, Tentpole finally gave up trying, and was forced to resort to spelling it out for him.
“Mikka. Where did you get this thing from?”
The swordsman’s features immediately fell into a blank poker face. He would hardly have looked more suspicious if he had started whistling and twiddling his thumbs.
“Why aren’t you saying anything?” Tentpole asked slowly, as if speaking to a child.
“…I don’t wanna,” Mikka replied.
“What kind of runes are these, One-face?” Mistress hissed.
“Mfff….Mmmmmffff…MMMFFFFF!!!!!” Oneface replied.
“Why don’t you wanna, Mikka?”
“Welllll…”
Mistress extracted the cloth from One-face’s mouth.
“Tentpole! Tentpole help, she–mmmMMMFFfffff…”
“Yes, Mikka?”
“Weeelllllllllllllll….”
Mistress held One-face firmly in front of the object and whispered into his ear. He suddenly went very tense and then quite limp.
“You’ll get mad,” Mikka admitted.
“Yes Mikka, I almost certainly will. But I still want to hear you say it first.”
With one last whisper and a telling glare, Mistress pulled the cloth from her captive’s mouth once more. Oneface looked forlornly towards Tentpole for a moment, before stating in a grudging mumble:
“They look like Twilight Runes.”
“But that means–” Mistress’ eyes went wide, and they all said it in unison.
“–it’s from the Sunset Sect.”
“You know, from the Sunset Sect.”
“Was it the Sunset Sect, Mikka?”
“It’s from the Sun–…oh. You all knew already?”
There was a stunned silence before the room erupted in shouts.
“You couldn’t have,” Tentpole stuttered, going pale. “Not actually for real. You wouldn’t. Would you, Mikka?”
“You!” Mistress heaved. “Surely even you wouldn’t be so absolutely flummoxingly hare-brained deathwish-stupid to have…”
Oneface poked at the object with a thin wrench and mumbled, “But the inner material is strange. It should be some form of textile, but it’s almost more like a liquid…”
Backing up to the wall, Mikka held his hands out placatingly.
“No, no, look. Don’t worry, you two. Everything’s perfectly alright.”
Tentpole and Mistress stopped in their tracks, glaring at him expectantly.
“I shook off the pursuers before I even made it out of the foothills. I slapped this scary-looking lady with the river and she made her fish explode and there was this biiiiiig ball of steam.” He held his arms out wide. “A mile in each direction. And I used that to escape. Took a path through the trees I’d prepared months before. I waited around Pyra’s Cove for a few hours and everything. No one came flying over to kill me. So, you see – I made a clean get-away!”
There was a moment’s silence, as Mistress and Tentpole processed the fact that Sunset Sect sorcerers not only knew something had been stolen, but knew Mikka had done it, and chased him halfway across the island.
As the shouting erupted again, much louder than before, a semi-transparent eel slipped unnoticed through the slats of the roof and secreted itself between the rafters.
David Leon 