by William Ray
Terry seemed dimmer now, like so many others of his kind who had joined their ranks over the years. So many men came to the Wardens, thinking themselves great, and then lost their edge in the face of the Master’s truths.
Since he had nothing left to say, Dorna simply nodded and led the way back to the street, where Dougal waited with the carriage. Unlike Terry, Dougal had not seemed to dim in his time with the Master, either because of his humbler devotion or perhaps simply because he had never been that bright to begin with.
Given how much money she had spent on the Master’s gift, Dorna insisted on a simple stew at one of the pubs nearer the empty storefront the Master had arranged for them in the Tanner District. Dougal seemed friendly enough in social situations but said little and, thankfully, drank little. Whenever the big man did drink, a dangerous glint grew in his eyes, and Dorna always worried what Dougal might do with but a bit more liquor in him.
Just a few beers were enough to send Terry reeling, however. She had to endure his declarations of devoted friendship as she helped Dougal carry him back to their headquarters. They dumped Terry unceremoniously atop the pallet he had been sleeping on for the past week, and Dorna went back to her own alcove in the shop.
It was to be their last night sleeping here, and she would not miss the place. It had been empty for some time and somehow smelled of both dust and mold. The economic decay that left so many shops empty was symbolic of the cultural malaise that afflicted her race—there were always an arrogant few with too much wealth and power but lacking patience and wisdom. The human vanity of that privileged handful had carelessly ruined so many others in one foolish greedy gambit after another.
After their brief journey back to the shop, the dangerous glimmer had faded from behind Dougal’s eyes, and he was quietly tending to some bit of maintenance with his luggage. In truth, she wondered if he ever slept. Though his demeanor was generally placid, he was seldom idle. He seldom read, but could often be found meticulously cleaning his knives or carefully checking over the carriage they kept behind the shop as he did at the moment. If it was his way of dealing with the same nervous energy Dorna felt the night before their mission, Dougal’s bland expression gave no hint of it.
With little else to do and unable to sleep, Dorna stripped out of her upper-class finery and into a more utilitarian outfit. In Khanom, women who found themselves trapped in work at the factories or the mines often wore baggy pants and kept their skirts rolled up around their waist. It was originally intended to be rolled back down when away from their labors, but few bothered with that now.
The women in Gemmen’s factories maintained their city’s conservative style, and if they wore something more practical at their labors, they changed out of it before emerging back onto the streets. Even with a notional skirt, pants would attract too much attention here, and Dorna was too practical to risk that attention just to make a petty point, so she dressed in something plain that she knew wouldn’t draw any attention.
Their deception would be done soon, and she accepted that it was luxury enough to be able to wear her familiar work boots—they were all she had left of her father, and wearing them always made her feel more resolute. Feeling their weight as she stepped out into the alley behind the shop soothed her nerves, not yet enough that she could sleep, but she thought perhaps a stroll might settle things.
Dougal stared at her as she emerged, a bit of grin across his broad face that she guessed was the result of some lascivious imagining, and she worried he might be less sober than she had thought. She pointedly ignored him at first as her rank in their secret society afforded her some degree of safety from whatever predations he might otherwise consider. None had ever dared defy the Master by assaulting a fellow Warden, and despite her recent failure, she was still one of his favorites.
Dorna took a moment to look up and down the alleyway, as if she had not yet noticed him, and then looked back in his direction. She narrowed her eyes and frowned, letting him know she knew exactly what he was thinking. He shrank back a little from that glare and tried to recover his manners by focusing again on his maintenance of their carriage. Satisfied with his reaction, Dorna pronounced, “I’m going out for a walk.”
Dougal bobbed his head and muttered some servile acquiescence as she wandered out into the evening alone. It was dangerously uncouth for a woman to wander off alone after dark—even more so in Gemmen than in other places. The revolutionaries among the Tuls loudly promised to reform all sorts of things, but with their government in the fumbling hands of uneducated peasantry, Dorna doubted freeing women locked up in the terems had even crossed their minds.
A nighttime stroll alone was considered the sort of brazen behavior that encouraged urban predators and the type of thing never done by the type of women who wore the sort of finery Terry had picked out for her. Dorna was dressed more plainly now though, and something about her often made people uneasy; she felt the combination of those two things would make her an unappealing target for even Gemmen’s notorious criminal underbelly.
There was a small park a few blocks away, and she hoped a bit of greenery would help her relax enough to get some sleep. At home, the mountains were always on the horizon and the forests always in view, even if distant. Here though, the Verin capital left her only with views of ugly buildings, which in this part of town were all in bleak disrepair—their paint faded and cracking, their wood rotting, their metal rusting, and even their brickwork crumbling away.
She had spied the park through their carriage window a few times in passing, but seen up close, it was a disappointment. It was trimmed but seemed otherwise ill-tended, even for the season. There were trees and other plants, some of which might bloom in a few months’ time, but they were all planted in neat rows, boxed in, squared off, and rather than being sheltered to grow proudly amidst urban blight, they were instead cut down to conform to the city’s crudely blunt aesthetic.
In truth, it was a crudely human aesthetic—the Master had once sadly confessed to her that even with humanity’s advances in architecture, to more cultured eyes their boldest efforts in concrete and steel were still nothing more than sturdy huts. As disappointing as she found all this, surely he would find it offensive. Elves had ceded these lands to humanity thousands of years ago, but no doubt the sight of what had become of them was still shocking to immortal eyes.
Within the park, far enough back from the confining walls, she could see the stepped peak of the RFTB. It was Gemmen’s newest and tallest building, dedicated to the exploitation of far-off colonies, and it loomed over the rest of the city rather than lifting all of it upward. It was a utilitarian sentinel tower from which the city’s distant masters could oversee the toiling below. It was a perch from which to watch the destruction they wrought without being soiled by stepping through it themselves.
Rather than help her relax, the sights from the park just made her angry and even more restless. She left and began walking through the city instead, staring out at the towering factory chimneys across the river, stilled for the night. She stepped over homeless children sleeping in the streets and was propositioned by several men staggering out of pubs along the avenue. One of them had to be warded off with her knife, but for the rest a stern glance was enough.
The filth of the city clung to her boots, and she scraped them off on the curb. Looking up, she realized she had been making her way down the infamous Nettle Lane. They had been staying in their shop in the Tanner District, and she had known Nettle Lane was there as well, but she had never before ventured there.
It was everything the papers had described in such lurid detail last summer when the dismembered bodies began washing ashore. There were rows of grimy pubs split by the darkness of unlit alleyways, and prostitutes plied on every corner. Dorna supposed the women who still sold themselves in this district must be particularly desperate, for the police had never found the culprit, and many worried that the horror of Nettle Lane was only hibernating for th
e winter.
The prostitutes scowled at Dorna as she passed through their territories, not welcoming any potential competitors on whatever marketplace they had staked out as their own. They called out to the other passersby since, at this time of night, nearly all were men, and their huckstering mixed with the raucous sounds spilling from the pubs to spoil the evening’s quiet.
Ahead of her, she saw the olive and gold uniform of a stiffly starched policeman as he ambled onto the street along his nightly rounds. Dorna watched as the women fell into dutiful silence as he passed by, his beat pausing only to collect money from a few men and women along the way.
A group of suspiciously well-dressed partiers spilled out of one of the pubs. Their clothes seemed too fine for the neighborhood but also for those wearing them. There were two men in overlarge dinner jackets and a young woman wrapped in an elegant fur and wearing jewels ill-matched to a wearied face that spoke of a life of common toils. Thieves most likely, and though Dorna understood they must be driven to crime by the failings of the human system enslaving them, she also noted that the excess of their masters was being put to no better use once stolen away.
The policeman, seeing the trio flaunt their obvious lucre, trundled over, pointed his truncheon, and asked pointed questions. One of the tuxedoed men, looking somewhat less drunk than the other two, smiled and handed the officer something. After taking a moment to count it, the corrupt policeman smiled, tipped his hat to them, and resumed his rounds.
Eventually Dorna reached a small temple set in amidst the city’s corruption. It shared Gemmen’s architectural theme of orthogonal decay, but hoping some solace of the gods might settle her nerves, she decided to step in to offer them their due respect. Despite its boxy exterior, the inside was still traditionally round, with a dais at the front from which a devotee might deliver sermons and rows of pews for their listeners. The walls were dark wood, but the ceiling arching above them was once mostly white, now faded to a yellowish brown.
Painted across the faux dome of the ceiling, Caerleon’s Trinity of Light shone symbolically down upon the faithful who bowed at prayer. Most of those gathered here were ragged, desperate wretches—likely people who had found no luck in begging on the streets tonight and now sought divine aid to ease their hunger, their sickness, and their weakness. The human world had failed to succor them, and with no one else to turn to, they were forced to appeal to the gods directly.
Alcoves lined the walls, holding small shrines where followers of the Trinity could pay homage to the other gods. Circling the edge of the temple, she found the shrine dedicated to the Holy Mother, goddess of the Elves. At home, the Master’s own shrine had beautiful and elaborate depictions of her, but Nettle Lane’s temple bore only abstract symbols and a scattering of dried flower petals someone had left in respectful offering.
Bowing her head, Dorna murmured the prayer the Master had taught her. Even in this horrible place, she felt the warmth of it settle over her. The love of the goddess was a power undimmed by the filth of mortal men. The disruption of the ley lines, the world wrapped in iron, and the horrifying carelessness and greed that threatened to consume everything and plunge them into a new age of darkness—all those outrages faded at the sweet touch of grace. Dorna closed her eyes, breathing deeply as she felt the Holy Mother’s love wrapped around her.
The cheap incense of the temple gradually pulled her from her reverie, and she felt better. Reaffirmed. Reinvigorated. The Master’s plan would go perfectly, and she had faith in his wisdom and judgment. She merely had to play her part in it as he had already decided she could and would.
Stepping outside, Dorna hailed a cab, which were ubiquitous even here, and returned to the empty shop, wandering around the block to enter from the back. Dougal was softly snoring, and she went to the alcove that had served as her bed since they came to Gemmen. Whatever goods had once sat upon its shelves were long gone, and now it was just another dusty corner in another empty storefront.
And yet men and women still slept rough on the streets tonight. That was the way of the human world. She murmured the Elven words once more, wrapping them around herself like another blanket as she thought of how the Great Restoration would soon set things right.
She lay awake a while longer, pondering her part in their venture in the next night to come. She had to be flawless. All Wardens hoped their efforts now would earn their place in the new Elven-led society after the Great Restoration, but Dorna felt few of them had done so. If she did this with near-Elven perfection, the Master would be proud of her, and when the Elven queen strode the world once more, Dorna intended to be recognized as someone whose loyalty had made a difference.
Morning came, and their cabbie rolled into the alleyway behind their empty storefront. He’d brought the clothes and necessaries he might need to remain here with them for the next week, as instructed. He’d been paid half up front, and Dorna hoped he had left the money with his family.
Dougal smiled and welcomed him in a chummy accord that neither Dorna nor Terry had the heart to emulate. The cabbie knew the route to their destination well enough, but the Master’s instructions were to practice the route a few times, so Dougal and the cabman would spend the day riding through the city from their empty store to the Palace District and back again several times.
As soon as they were gone, Dorna wrapped the rich green cloak of the Wardens around her, leaving the hood off for now. It was a too early to dress for the evening’s events, but she was eager to move on. At home, she kept it in a trunk of cedar, and that rich woody smell clung to the green fabric. She breathed deep, eager for any smell other than the rotten stench of Gemmen’s decay. Closing her eyes, she thought of the high mountains outside Khanom.
The Master’s description of the world that was, before mankind brought everything to ruin, rang in her thoughts as she remembered their long walks into the mountains together when she was a girl. Aelfua was the last to fall, but before humanity turned on its leaders, the world had been full of beautiful palaces, lives lived in harmony with nature. He had seen it, and through his stories, so had she. Their world had equality in government, civility among the people, prosperity for all, and none hungry. No more abandoned children left to starve.
Dorna and Terry spent their morning cleaning up the store, removing all trace of who had been here. The stove had been needed for warmth, and the Master had told them there was little use in trying to disguise that. She marveled at his foresight in knowing that they would need it, that it would be difficult to clean, yet those spent ashes would be unimportant to their task.
Their instructions were full of minute details like that, and she felt reassured that the Master had indeed thought of everything. When they were finished, someone looking carefully for such signs might notice that people had been living here, but Dorna felt confident they would have no trail to tell them who, how many were here, or for how long.
With that done, she and Terry had little else to do but check and recheck their supplies. She packed her belongings into their carriage and made sure the Master’s concoctions were carefully stored. Terry lazed about reading through an old copy of the Standard and raised his hands in humble submission when she reminded him they could leave nothing behind that might suggest when they were here.
Dougal and their driver finally returned in the afternoon and brought in a mix of sausages fried with onions and bread. It was not a dish she was familiar with, but it was hearty, filling, and thankfully plain. It would be their last dinner together as a group, but any reflections on their trip together so far were muted by the presence of the cabbie. They had only been traveling together for two weeks, but it felt infinitely longer.
Dougal chatted amiably with the man, discussing the driver’s family and his plans for after their job was done. Terry made a few half-hearted attempts at geniality but faltered into stretches of awkward silence that Dougal was forced to fill. Dorna kept silent, too uncomfortable at dining with the cabb
ie to worry if the man found her rude.
Her stomach roiled with stress as she worried about the evening ahead, but Dorna forced herself to methodically eat as much as she could handle—the Master had instructed them to get their fill before their mission, in case something went wrong and they could not risk stopping for food after. When she finished, Dorna demanded the cabman show her their vehicle, so she could inspect whether the door had been properly oiled. It was a ruse—Dougal had purchased two roundtrip train tickets to Khanom and handed one to Terry while Dorna occupied the driver.
True to his genius, the Master thought of everything. His plans were perfect, and Dorna knew if anything went wrong tonight, it would be her failure. For this mission, the timing of their meals, the clothes they would wear beneath their robes, and at critical times like these, even the schedule of their leavings had been set out by him. Sometimes when she had not seen him in a while, she began to question the necessity of such minute control.
She had no doubt much of her anxiety over their mission stemmed from her absence from his presence. For thoughts like that, she repeated the words she had been taught and felt it strengthen her resolve. She spent much of the afternoon pacing back and forth while the boys played cards with the cabman, happy to finally have a third to join their usual games.
The street lamps hissed to life across the city, and they filed out, cloaked in their Warden robes. The cabbie chuckled quietly at the sight of them but did not seem surprised, which made Dorna wondered what Dougal had told him they would be doing. All three wore their hoods, but they kept the face-covering veil lifted back as they rode and simply lowered the shades to prevent anyone from seeing them inside.
Terry and Dougal took the back-facing bench, leaving Dorna with the other side to herself. She peeked out through a sliver of window and watched as they pushed through the city’s night-time bustle, so many people blithely unaware of the important errand their cab was on. All the horribles of the night before were gathering again as the sun set, loitering alongside the streets the cab passed on their way out of the district.