Mordew

by Alex Pheby

  Bacon

  A salted and cured meat made from the flesh of the pig by the company Beaumont and Sons. Its consumption is ubiquitous in the Merchant City, fried, and its particular odour can be detected throughout Mordew. The slum-dwellers rarely eat it, but only because they cannot afford it.

  Ballard’s Bow

  It is customary to give magic items names lest they be mistaken for mundane items of the same type. Ballard’s Bow is named after the boy warrior Ballard from the third Iberian War. The facts of who Ballard was and why he conducted his war are lost to time, but the bow allows anyone who makes a sacrifice of a loved one to loose a single arrow and have it strike a fatal blow on the target of their choice, regardless of range. It may not then be used again, except by someone else and under the same conditions.

  Balloon(s)

  Floating air contained in an impossibly thin and flexible membrane. It is an indication of the decadence and wastefulness of the city of Malarkoi that the discovery of a material strong enough to resist a tenfold expansion in size, light enough to remain effortlessly airborne, and manipulable easily even by a child, has been used only for decorative effect. These balloons can be seen in every imaginable colour, tethered by string, depending from all the dwelling places of the city. It has been hypothesised that a balloon of enormous size might lift a man, but no-one in Malarkoi has troubled to try.

  Beaumont and Sons

  The name given to a company that produces pigs on an industrial scale. The proper place for a pig is outside in the mud, or snuffling through a forest, and while the pig no doubt enjoys environs of this sort, it is much more efficient to take them at birth and barrack them together in pens where they may be fed until they are grown without the need to chase about after them. Also, meat is easier to cut when it is free of muscle, and as muscle is made by moving, better meat is made when the animals remain still (as they do in a pen). It is possible to make excellent bacon in large quantities by placing a piglet in a pen and feeding it for only a few months; Beaumont’s has perfected this process. Clearly, if the pigs had any say in it, they would not remain in the pens, so pens must be made sturdy. It is unfortunate that pigs are clever beasts, because a pig man will suspect that his creatures know they are suffering, but on the other hand, do we all not suffer? And why should pigs not suffer when the pig man does suffer, since he must work most of the day in the pens alongside his charges? And for very little pay, since the market for bacon will not stand high prices. It is not uncommon for a pig to get a sly jab from a passing pig man, especially when his shift drags, and the pigs seem to him to dream of the day when they will be free and repay their keepers’ unkindnesses. That day will never come, the pig man thinks.

  Bellows

  The name given to the Master of Mordew’s chief factotum. Bellows is a magical mutated boy-child taken into service in his youth. The Master realised he had a highly developed sense of smell and a fierce loyalty, and because the Master abhors wasted effort and it is easier to change what one has in front of one than it is to start everything afresh, he modified Bellows with the intention of using him in some minor function (the location of truffles, for example). Later, circumstances changed, and Bellows was charged with sniffing out the oestrus of female persons. The rationale given was that women and girls had a detrimental effect on the Master’s magic (through, perhaps, their facility with folk magic brought on by inherited coincidences with the weft), but some have wondered whether it was not a form of anxious protection against the invasion of the Manse by the Mistress and her female agents.

  Blacking (one’s) eyes

  It is hard to make a living in the slums of Mordew, and there are those in the Merchant City who find it equally difficult, in that more civilised environment, to satisfy their base cravings. There are always people willing to exchange coin for sexual services and vice versa, and since there are no prohibitions in the slums against behaviour of any kind (and no one to police them if there were), sex work is common. Just as the witch-women dress alike and the Fetches have their bells, so sellers of sex black their eyes to identify themselves to their customers. There is no kohl in the slums, nor ink, nor a history of tattooing, so mostly this is done with charcoal taken from the embers of a fire.

  Those who have blacked their eyes may work in the community of a brothel and pay commission to a madam, or they may accept callers to what passes for their homes and keep all that they earn. Some customers prefer comfort in their surroundings, but there are others who prefer squalor, and both systems have their advocates.

  Bones

  See: Anaximander.

  Bonfire(s)

  Brine mist is thrown up by the collision of waves against the Sea Wall, there is near constant rain, wind comes down from the mountains, and ramshackle lean-tos are rarely well insulated. Consequently, it is always cold in the slums of Mordew. In order to counter the chill, slum-dwellers make communal bonfires from whatever they can find and encourage them to burn with copious application of accelerants – cooking fat and firebird feathers being the most readily available. Once they are lit, everyone sits around in a circle and, because there is nothing else to occupy them, they talk. Conversation turns to who they should blame for their plight. The Master’s Manse stands oppressive above them and it is as if he hears their every word, so while they might make glances up the hill, it is the Mistress they blame openly. Womb-born children, those that are wanted, like to please their parents, so they make totems in the image of the Mistress and burn them, hoping to curry favour by expressing anger at the common enemy. The young are naïve enough to think that what is said is the limit of what is thought, but many in Mordew know the true source of their oppression, even if they do not name him openly.

  Book(s)

  A womb-born baby is a person, there are few who would deny it, but until they come to use words, are they really much different from the lower animals? They feed, they evacuate, they sleep, much like a dog does, and should they never learn to speak can they be said to have reached their potential? They cannot, and this is because words are what a person’s being consists of. Even inside his head a person can think and understand nothing without words, and this means that words make up the world for them. Books, then, being full of words to the exclusion of all else (except those with illustrations), are like little worlds, and since the world is where life exists, then life exists also in books.

  It is important to learn to read, and when one can read one need never again be trapped in an unsatisfactory world because one need only read a book written by another that contains a more enjoyable place to be and one is transported there. If there are no books that offer a world more acceptable to the spirit of a person than the dire world in which they find themselves, then they can write a world of their own and thenceforth live in that.

  How much more so, then, are magic books to be valued, since they can work with the weft to make of the material realm the ideal world the reader desires, and should one ever find such a book one should count oneself unsurpassably lucky and treasure it as one would treasure a firstborn (more so if that child is unwelcome).

  Brass

  A coin with low value.

  Breastplate

  Part of a suit of armour – specifically the bit at the front of the chest.

  Broom-handler(s)

  The Living Mud (and, by association, flukes and dead-life), though magical things, primarily have effects that the people of Mordew associate closely with vulgar matters. The Living Mud gives rise to flukes and children, just as sexual intercourse does, and as all civilised people find sexual intercourse shameful, so the people of the Merchant City find the Living Mud shameful. The Merchants cobble their streets to reduce the presence of mud of any kind and hire workers to sweep what Living Mud that does generate (and similarly any dead-life or fluke that is found) down into the slums. It is not true to say that slum-dwellers do not feel shame – they very much do – but their low estate means they must bear it. Indeed, there is
much shameful that takes place in the slums which must be borne, and the Merchants are drawn down into that territory when there are shameful things they wish to do, thereby keeping their own places free of it. This is why one finds so many brothels in the slums, and why it is possible to make a living (of sorts) from blacking one’s eyes.

  Captain Penthenny

  The name of the Captain of the Muirchú, the sailor who found and raised the fish which powers her ship. She reluctantly accepts work from the Master, but for how much longer? She and her crew despise Mordew and its waters and would leave if they could. They feel they must stay, but what if it proves intolerable? Then hard decisions must be made and the lesser of two evils chosen.

  Caretaker

  The name given to a servant of the Master of Mordew responsible for small repairs in the private wing of the Manse. It is just like the Master of Mordew to name a person after their work, and while one so named might, in another position, call himself by his original name and will even insist on being called it by his associates, the very moment he was so addressed by the Master, Caretaker forgot his previous name entirely and now knows himself only as his employer knows him. Such is the power a manipulator of the weft has on the world around him.

  Carrot(s)

  In the Northfields root vegetables are grown for the tables of the Merchant City, and the carrot is a species of these. They are conical, orange, sweet and much prized for their flavour (which complements all manner of other foods). It would be wasteful if someone were to give a carrot to an animal, since an animal would be satisfied with the lowest type of food and does not have the intelligence to discriminate between two flavours, let alone have anything one might sensibly call a palate. Also, a carrot is expensive, while grass, for example, is very cheap. So, if anyone were to buy carrots and then feed them to, say, a horse (or horses), this would be an indication of some mental aberration, or perhaps a fetish.

  Caryatid(s)

  A type of architectural column in the form of a statue of a woman.

  Cat(s)

  An animal with a tail, whiskers and large ears and eyes. It skulks in the dark and inveigles its way into the affections of its betters. Useful for deterring the presence of vermin and dead-life in a property, it should be encouraged only inasmuch as it can prove this usefulness. Any illusion of positive emotion – love, for example – is just that: an illusion. The sceptical can test this for themselves by offering one of the creatures affection: while it may accept it for a while, it will eventually turn and bite you. It will also tease to death any small living thing it encounters.

  Cats are recognisable by their form and are consequently easy to draw: images of them, often from behind, are carved by inattentive pupils on the wood of their desks.

  Catalysis

  A process or thing that enhances an effect or reaction. If something is inhibited, then a catalyst can remove the inhibition. If something is not inhibited, then a catalyst can provoke a thing to heights dreamed impossible in its absence. Imagine blowing on an ember – the fire in that ember will grow bright in the presence of the breath and thereby ignite a flame in surrounding wood.

  The material realm, by its very definition, is an inhibition of the weft, and should a catalysing spell or object be found that can reduce this effect, then it is possible, almost, to bring all the native power of the weft into the material realm (manifested as the Spark), though chaos will likely ensue.

  (The) Char Cloth

  When referred to with the indefinite article, it is any thing that has been dried out so that it will catch fire when it meets a spark. It is often kept in a tinderbox.

  The Char Cloth, though, is the magically condensed and converted body of a Spark inheritor, transformed through pyrolysis into pure weft-stuff, and the kindling with which the Tinderbox does its dangerous work.

  Chemistry

  An ancient body of knowledge now made almost redundant by an understanding of the weft, which outlines the way in which things combine. It is primarily to be seen in unopened books in forgotten libraries, but only by those who stumble upon such things.

  The Circus

  A roughly circular area in the Southern Slums, where the Living Mud pools more deeply than it does elsewhere. The reason for this depth is wondered at, but it is a rule in everything that the more of something there is in one spot, the more like that thing the place becomes because of it. More salt in a soup makes a soup saltier, the more persons of good cheer in a room the more cheerful it is, and the more wealth there is in a city the wealthier it becomes. The Circus is a place in which the Living Mud expresses itself more forcefully than almost anywhere else because of this rule – flukes rise, dead-life flourishes, unnatural events occur – and since flukes and oddities are a resource and slum-dwellers accumulate where any resource may be found, so around the Circus gather those with nothing so that they might at least have something.

  Clarissa Delacroix

  The name given to Nathan Treeves’s mother, though he only knows her as ‘Mum’. Her full name is Princess Clarissa Anne Judith Peter de Morgan-Anstruther Delphine Treeves Delacroix, Empress-in-Waiting. Scholars of etymology and heraldry might be able to derive knowledge from her family name as to who she is and what she wants in the world, but there are few now (if any) who have the leisure required to study these fields, and the necessary reference texts have, anyway, been lost. Consequently, she must be judged by her actions, but these are strange, and she is cryptic because of it. All things, though, become obvious in time, and the impatient must occupy themselves with less obscure questions until they receive their answer.

  (The) Club House

  All organisations must have a place to gather, and the occult tontine responsible for the death of God made for themselves an underground dwelling place accessible only by the sewers of the city once known as Paris. This they thought was suitable, since there was an idea, incorrect though it was proved, that there was such an organism as the Devil and that the Devil was in opposition to God, and that the abode of this Devil was beneath the ground, so this is where they went. Even when it became clear that there was only the weftling and that the weft and the immaterial realm were coexistent with the material and intermediate realms and that the notions ‘above’ and ‘below’ were irrelevant to the matter of the proper dwelling place of God (or of demons), the tontine still met in the same place. They extended it and placed magical protections on it so that, even when Paris was razed in the God-killing, the Club House survived. Now it is below the Master’s city, Mordew. In it are many answers to questions of origins, but who has time for those when one lives a perilous existence always fearing starvation and death and longing for power and glory?

  (The) Colonnades

  The womenfolk of the Merchant City who do not occupy themselves with trade or domestic matters find that it is good to associate with others like them, so they have their litter-bearers bring them to the Colonnades. Here they may nibble fancies and sip nectars and exchange by whispers news of a sensitive nature, or shout out information of general concern, and at the very least they feel like they have been out of the house.

  It would be wrong to think that everything in the Colonnades is trivial, since there is much in what transpires there that goes on to have an influence in the world, but that is not its primary purpose, since letters are an equally efficient means of exchanging information and it is much easier to carry a letter about the city than it is to transport an entire person.

  (The) Commodious Hour

  A restaurant operated by Mr Padge in the Merchant City, serving imported meat, vegetables from the Northfields, and fermented grape juices. While it caters to the wealthiest and most respectable members of society, it is run by criminals, and is a front for illicit activity throughout Mordew. Its name was originally The Melodious Hour, after a theatrical showboat of legend, but Mr Padge changed the name as a private joke, finding the innocuous surface meaning – a convenient place to spend an hour – nicely hid ano
ther meaning (predicated on an archaic usage of the word ‘commode’ which had fallen out of currency amongst his clientele). To be openly insulting of his patrons’ intelligence without them knowing is something Mr Padge prizes enormously.

  (The) Compendium of Minor Trickeries

  A book of spells containing the kind of magic that a child might find amusing and that will brighten a dull afternoon – bangs, flashes, simple transformations. Which is not to say that there isn’t use in it. As is often the case, children can be introduced to important concepts and weighty matters by giving them to them in a palatable form, and compendia such as these are used in places less gloomy than Mordew to both entertain and educate children in the use of magic. Each spell is discrete and, used individually, innocuous, but there are combinations that can be dangerous. A spell which gives pretty light can be used with a spell that twists and a spell that causes a thing to grow to create a large image of, say, a lion. Should this image of a lion be given mass by casting on it a spell that gives weight to something, then an effective lion can be created. Then one only need irritate it with another spell and it might rampage, so children should be taught to use the book as directed.