by Andrew Smith
The hall was housed in the United States Library of Congress. The Library had appeared there many years ago, along with all its contents. They were quickly stolen by the hired muscle of the Alexandria Library in Egypt. They didn’t like competition. (In fact, when the Alexandria, Virginia, municipal library had appeared some years earlier, the leadership of the old Alexandria Library had gotten rather irate and burned the building to the ground.)
So the city records moved in. There weren’t nearly enough to fill the building, as government here was really more of a suggestion and the bureaucracy was comprised entirely of people who had a lot of free time and a borderline-obsessive need for organization.
One thing they should have, the dark-eyed woman guessed, was the set of rules for becoming mayor. She checked in at the desk, where a smallish fellow with thick glasses and a bow-tie sat, shuffling a sheaf of papers and trying to decide which corner of the desk was the best home for his spider plant.
She followed the signs to the records room, which was much larger than it honestly needed to be. The woman guessed she could fit most of them in her basement.
She found the correct filing cabinet, and rifled through. A charter, written in old English, possibly when someone thought they could make this city like other cities. There had been a string of short-lived administrations, and by 1680, people had given up on trying to control the place as if it were a normal-world civilization. She waded slowly through a bog of Old English and some older languages she couldn’t even recognize. The results were not encouraging. The woman muttered something un-ladylike and exited. Other projects required her more immediate attention.
* * * *
Along the way, Leila’s feet began urging her to run, and she listened, gaining speed for three straight blocks. There were a lot of people in the city, but the streets were rarely crowded. She cut centerwise for many centuries, then back out as Mme. Rumella’s was in the opposite quarter from the Hagia Sophia, then finally clockwise, along the curving streets that marked the separation of time, most of them well into night now. She ran headlong towards the door, realizing too late that it opened outwards.
“Ow,” Leila remarked as her cheek peeled away from the glass. As she fell over, Mme. Rumella, Jason Oblivion, and Mary all rushed out to help her.
She sat slightly dazed upon the sidewalk as Mme. Rumella commenced to fuss. “Oh, pet, what have you done?”
“Well, I have some news. And I wanted to share it. And I, uh, forgot which way the door opened, so... So, yeah...Ground....”
“Up you come,” said Mme. Rumella as she and Jason raised her to her feet and led her inside. They led her to one of the comfortable chairs by the fire and sat her back down. Mme. Rumella examined Leila’s face and pronounced she would have some slight bruising, but was otherwise fine.
After bringing a soothing cup of jasmine tea, Mme. Rumella asked what Leila had come so urgently to tell them. She sipped at her tea: “Ooh, honey.”
“Yes, pet,” said Mme. Rumella, a little impatiently
“I went to the Hall of Apocrypha. You won’t believe the amount of stuff in that place, I’ll tell you. It took me for-ever to find it...”
“You haven’t been home, have you?” Mme. Rumella accused
“No, but-”
“Leila, it’s not healthy. You need sleep. You can’t keep having forty-eight hour days!”
“Now that you mention it, I am really tired.”
“Then I won’t make you walk home. You can stay in one of the spare rooms upstairs.”
“Oh good,” said Leila absently.
A moment passed.
“And what did you find there at the Hall?” Mme. Rumella prompted.
“Um... Darkness,” she said, and explained her experience. “It’s probably all in my head, though,” she concluded
“Never a safe assumption here, pet.”
“Anyway, I found out about the Standard. The city of Ur was founded in 2850 BC, and Uruk in 3500 BC, though both were settled in the fifth millennium BC. They were two of the earliest neighborhoods in the city.”
“Right,” Mary commented. “They’re all in clusters of buildings on the edges of town, instead of single buildings like most of the city.”
“So, the neighborhoods were in competition with each other over the pride of their cities. It never really manifested in the normal world until much later when Ur finally conquered Uruk,” Leila said, brushing hair out of her eyes, “but here, it got pretty brutal. Ur had their Standard in the normal world, but I believe the Uruk community’s sorcerous version predates it by almost nine hundred years. It was right around the time Uruk passed the threshold into civilization in the real world. You know, civilization as a matter of scale. Ur got cranky, things escalated, and the Standard was crafted with some mysterious power. I wasn’t exactly sure what its power was though, the tablets didn’t say, only that the Standard was meant to secure the power and prestige of the Uruk community here in the city.” She paused and looked to Mme. Rumella. “Are there any of them left we could talk to about it?”
Mme. Rumella shook her head. “People last a long time in this city, pet, but seven thousand years is a pretty tall order.”
“Maybe their descendents?” Mary suggested. “The area is mostly abandoned now, but there’s bound to be someone.”
“That’s as may be, but someone along the line sent the thing away, so long ago that no-one we’ve talked to yet has heard of it,” Mme. Rumella reasoned. “The odds are against us on this one.”
“Since when do the odds mean anything here?” Mary countered
“True enough,” said Mme. Rumella.
She had just risen to show Leila to her room, when Delilah Runestone, Dark Sorceress, blew into the room without touching the door. There was an accompanying rush of cold night air. The spectacle was all the more impressive since the door opened out.
Mary crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow. “What,” she asked, “no crack of lightning?”
“I was thinking about it,” Delilah replied
There was a moment of silence as Delilah crossed the room. She went to the shelf of stainless mugs with the words ‘Mme. Rumella’s Tea Shop’ emblazoned on them and began fiddling calculatingly. “I just dropped by,” she said in a casual tone that fooled no-one, “to give you a friendly shout.” She put down the mug and put on a smile. “This whole Standard of Uruk business,” she paused so the rest could look at each other meaningfully. “It’s really not something you ought to be involved with. If you have any survival instinct to share between the lot of you,” she glanced at Leila and Jason and then back at the mugs, “you’ll stop trying to help the Crusader
“Trust me,” she added condescendingly; “it’s in your best interests.”
Then Delilah Runestone turned and swaggered out of the room, the door swinging slowly shut behind her. “Are she and Tina Virtue related?” Mary had to ask upon seeing the swagger
“I don’t know what she thinks she’s doing,” muttered Leila sullenly. She yawned and Mme. Rumella led her upstairs. She promised to talk to her colleagues tomorrow now that they had more information. Mme. Rumella said if she saw Leila awake in less than nine hours, she would drug her.
The Standard of Ur
Leila awoke the next morning feeling if not refreshed, then at least passably awake. She rose and attempted to make up the bed for Mme. Rumella. When she was done she commented to no-one, “Not exactly hospital corners.”
Downstairs, it was Mme. Rumella’s peak time, though she kept the shop open all day. Mr. Markab had just exited with his size medium earl gray, no milk, no sugar. A flock of new and returning customers stood between Tina Virtue and her hot chocolate. Mary had just returned after her customary six-and-a-half hours of sleep. She was just about to join the queue when she pinpointed Leila on the stairs.
“Wow,” the archaeologist commented
“So, what’s the plan?” Mary asked as she joined Leila on the staircase.
&nbs
p; “Oh. Well, I was just about to head back to the museum. They’re probably wondering where I am.”
“Naturally: you haven’t been in in... hours,” Mary remarked
“You’re starting to sound like Mme. Rumella,” Leila accused.
“Worse people to sound like,” said Mary ungrammatically.
Leila shrugged and exited with a wave to Mme. Rumella, who wasn’t too preoccupied to notice. Her hands were full, but she returned the wave with a smile.
Leila hurried across the cobblestone street, and began making the rounds. She climbed to the top of the building and began asking questions
“Thanks anyway, Deng,” she told one colleague as she exited his office. A dozen offices and no luck as yet. The news on the Standard hadn’t refreshed anyone’s memory. She continued down the hallway. A few of the doors were locked. She found an open one, the light of the desk lamp spilling out into the hallway. She knocked quickly and popped her head into the next office down they way
“Hey, Margo, got a minute?”
Margo, an older woman with uncooperative gray hair arranged like atmospheric strata around her head, set down her reading glasses and spun her chair to face Leila. “What is it?”
“I’ve been looking into this artifact called the Standard of Uruk and-”
“Are you certain you don’t mean the Standard of Ur?” Margo, like everyone else in the building had asked
“No, I really, really don’t. It’s an artifact from the old Uruk neighborhood, here in the city.”
“Oh. I’m afraid I can’t help you with that.”
Leila sighed resignedly. “Alright,” she said, and made to exit
“But there is one thing,” Margo hastened to add
“What?”
“On the chance that the two Standards are related, that is...”
“Go on,” Leila prompted, a little impatiently
“The Standard of Ur was stolen, two nights ago, from the normal British Museum. It was in one of the red rooms, so we never had it here.” She reached over a copy of an internal report from the normal Museum.
“I can’t believe nobody else knew about this.”
Margo sniffed imperiously. “Nobody else bothers to keep up with the normal Museum. We really ought to make more of an effort.”
Leila muttered something about supposing so, and thank you, and wandered absently down the corridor.
* * * *
A cadre of bodyguards surrounded Miguel Suerte as he walked downtown. All the newest buildings of the city were here. Set up as it was for shopping, the Denver International Airport had become, in essence, a mall. Inside it was relatively crowded. On the runways, there were only Suerte and his people.
And a podium. On a raised platform. The bodyguards flanked the place, ready. Miguel Suerte smoothed his moustache, stepped behind the podium and began his speech.
It was the same speech. That was all it needed to be.
In the distance, a few people spotted the scene through panes of glass, and pointed it out to other passers-by. Suerte saw that they saw. He quickly rapped up his speech. He and his cadre exited to another point on the campaign trail. The podium remained. ‘Suerte for Mayor,’ it said
* * * *
Hunter Blue was not a nice man. For the last several centuries, he had lived alone in the primeval forests around the city. And as anyone would say, the forests were not the safest of places. The sprites were most likely the nicest of the creatures within. There were things in there a lot bigger, and a lot meaner. Hunter liked to shoot them.
Hunter Blue emerged from the forests. The citizens may not know what was happening in the forest, but the forest knew many things. Knowledge was ambient. That, and the sprites were incorrigible chatterboxes. Upon her return from the city, Hunter had overheard one sprite speaking of the new mayoral candidate. Miguel Suerte. He started for the edge of the forest at once.
He walked through the outskirts of town, mainly comprised of desert areas. Cities long since passed to dust passed him by as he headed centerwise. As he came into the more populous areas, people went on about their business in the same way they had upon seeing the Crusader in their midst. If, perhaps, their movements were a bit stiffer, or their shoulders suddenly held more tension than they had, Hunter chose not to be offended.
Hunter had not been in the city for some time now, and there where are a lot of people who preferred it that way. Hunter was the only man in this world who carried a gun. He had come here with it, and he planned to go out with it. As an actual gun, it was next to useless here, but he had made it his Focus. A gorgeous arquebus in such perfect condition that it would be almost priceless in the real world, slung over his back. After three wasted centuries, his quary had not only returned to the city, but made himself suddenly public. Thus, after years of anonymity so complete even Hunter, who had killed a fair few people looking, could find no more then whispers. He would kill Suerte next, after he screwed with him for a while.
* * * *
Mme. Rumella was relaxing with a hot mug of tea. The morning had passed with an even greater amount of activity than usual. Mme. Rumella’s register was chock full of doubloons, cubes of silver, vials of smoke and more of a liquid in an unidentifiable shade of blue. The only people left in the shop were herself, crashed into one of the comfortable couches, and Jason, opposite her. He tended to stay around for long periods, rather than chance finding his way home.
She inhaled the rising vapors of her cup and enjoyed a moment of peace.
Then the door opened. In came Leila Lanstrom, with a manila envelope
“Guess what I heard,” she said
“Something interesting, I hope,” said a weary Mme. Rumella.
“It’s about the Standard of Ur,” Leila said, seating herself by Mme. Rumella and leaning in urgently.
“Don’t you mean-”
Mme. Rumella was interrupted by the opening of the door. In walked a woman in a black dress, blond hair dropping out from beneath the low brim of her fedora. The woman didn’t go to the counter, but to the shelves of mugs and other such merchandise Mme. Rumella sold on the side. Mme. Rumella regarded her suspiciously.
“Go on pet, but quietly,” she whispered to Leila
Leila leaned in a bit closer, and Jason, apparently intrigued, leaned in. “The Standard of Ur was stolen in the normal world a few days ago. The police have no leads. They said the thieves must have used some sort of complex electronic device, which the police hadn’t heard of yet, to short out the entire security system.”
Mme. Rumella nodded thoughtfully. In her time in the city, she had heard of many cases like this. Magic would work in the normal world if one brought a Focus, but only for about an hour, depending on various factors of location, etc. After that time, the effect of the sorcery would be undone, with no apparent explanation. When something like this happened, it usually meant the thieves absconded with their bounty to the Woven City.
“I mean, I don’t know why,” Leila continued, “someone would steal the Standard of Ur, since it’s not an artifact of this world. Maybe there was a clerical error, maybe they wanted a matching set, whatever, I don’t know, but” she paused, “if we could track them while the trail is still hot...” She trailed off, being unable to land on the proper heist-movie slang.
“What does it look like?” Jason asked
It was often disconcerting when Jason asked questions. They were often coherent. Leila and Mme. Rumella jumped a little.
“Well,” Leila attempted to describe the artifact simply, “it’s a big box with lots of pictures on it.” She was trying to keep the jargon in her everyday language to a minimum. It constantly surprised her how often she had found ways to use ‘lapis lazuli’ in casual conversation.
Jason made a thoughtful ‘hmm’ noise, and said, “You know, I’m not at all certain that I didn’t see them.”
Leila looked to Mme. Rumella for translation “That’s good,” she explained. She laughed. “That’s very good!”
She looked to Jason. “When wasn’t it, lamb?”
“Later, on my way home.”
“Could you lead us to where you saw them?’
“Not really.”
“Brilliant! Off we go!”
She and Jason rose, with Leila following a moment later. “What’s going on?”
“Go and find the Crusader, he’s a block anti-clockwise and round the corner. I’ll catch you up.”
“Alright,” said Leila, still nonplussed. She led Jason out of the store as Mme. Rumella walked up to the woman
“You could at the very least have worn a different dress, Delilah,” she said accusingly
“Delilah? I do not know what you are talking about,” said the woman, in a slightly over-the-top French accent
Mme. Rumella just raised an eyebrow and waited.
“Oh, alright,” said Delilah irritably. She ripped the hat and blond wig off her head. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you. We all know your reputation, Madam, but this is one caper you don’t want to get involved in!”
“Thanks again for the advice, Delilah. Is there anything I can get you before you leave.”
Delilah paused. Then, “A cappuccino would be nice, actually.”
“Of course,” said Mme. Rumella.
Down the street Leila had collected the Crusader, and was getting rather impatient. “Come on,” she ordered and started back to the tea shop
As they tracked up the curving street, the shop came into view. Mme. Rumella exited and came towards them. Another woman carrying a coffee and whistling innocently exited immediately thereafter, and turned in the opposite direction. Mme. Rumella was wisely carrying three umbrellas. You never knew when it might be raining over a building or two.
“Was that that Delilah woman?” Lelila asked
“You’re not the most observant for an archaeologist, are you pet?” Mme. Rumella joked good-naturedly. She distributed the umbrellas and asked Jason to point the way. Or rather, didn’t