Chapter 11: Ch. 10

The Union Hall was located near Rosecrest’s central business district Kirkcasing, in the midtown area: at the opposite end of the city from Origin Walk but not directly along the outer district. In truth there was only roughly a half mile distance between the temples of Origin Walk and Kirkcasing, as Rosecrest was a city that was never so much sprawling as it was impossibly dense, with an almost pathological need to economise as much space as possible. That sort of architecture did strange things to sound: breathing it into its gaping maw and thoroughly chewing it up into unrecognisable little pieces, little shards of voices and music and wailing cats and grinding axles of passing carts.

Sago leant out to close the window, not before catching the latest fractured aural offering of the city: the Ystarrus bell, ringing to announce the end of curfew. Looking at the sky it was still dark, only 4 o’clock in the morning yet, but it would ring again in another hour to mark the opening of the markets.

He sighed, closing the windows and blocking out the city before it had the chance to really get loud. He looked down at the small desk he’d pushed against the window weeks ago to have once better enjoyed the sensation of the human city, closing the book he’d been making steady headway through: HISTORIE DAEMONIA emblazoned in chipped gilding on the front shimmered in lamplight, incomplete words filled in by dark silhouettes of the not-yet faded portions of the binding.

He stretched and then lazily loosened the hair piled on top of his head, allowing it to fall in waves to his feet until it formed bundled piles on the floorboards beneath him. He habitually bound it around his body, encasing himself in a close-fitting protective suit that advantageously added an extra layer of defence beneath his Union uniform while keeping it short, avoiding the question of “where did all of that come from then”.

With hands that were once clumsy in the task but had grown nimbler with practice, he proceeded to don the staff uniform with alacrity.

Still not fast enough. There was a rap at the door before he’d even finished pulling on his boots.

“Coming.” He called, crossing the small dorm room and opening the door to Douglas’s sleepy face. Sago paused, considering for a moment, then covered his mouth as he acted out a silent yawn. He then threw in a few blinks for good measure.

“Too nervous to sleep?” Douglas gave a small smile, stepping out and leading Sago down the corridor.

“Why would I be?”

“It’s your first errand.” The taller boy reminded him. “If you offend the client, best case scenario you’ll be struck from the Union in disgrace and left unemployed, haunting the streets as a waif as everyone refuses to take you in because your reputation is poisoned and you’re left begging for scraps, slowly starving to death until one day the man who drives the night soil cart comes across your dead emaciated body lying in a gutter and throws you in with the, well, you know, to dump your body in some pit outside the walls where no one will ever know or mourn you, nothing more than a rotting footnote in history. Less than that really. A full stop maybe.”

“Uhuh. ‘Best’ case. So what would the worst case scenario be?”

“You aren’t struck from the Union and instead have to continue working here whilst everyone knows what you did and how badly you messed up, but won’t bring it up out of social propriety, but you’ll know they know, and the anxiety and embarrassment of it will slowly consume you for the rest of your life until years from now you will lie awake at night staring at the ceiling reliving your moment of endless shame wondering what the point of it all is, realising that the living with it is the true Hel.”

“Your use of language is truly evocative. You should’ve been a bard.”

Douglas held open the door to the mess, flashing a subtle smile. “But I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

Sago gave him a puzzled glance as he passed him by, picking up breakfast wrap from the pile. A thin soft flat bread wrapped around sausages and overfried eggs with either too much or too little grease and sauce, depending on your luck. All cleverly conceived to allow Union staff to bypass the leisurely sitting breakfast and get to work as soon as possible.

“Why shouldn’t I be? It’s merely delivering a parcel.”

Chay caught up with them by the pile of lukewarm luncheon delights, half-tackling Douglas in the process of throwing her arms around his shoulders. She helped herself to the wrap Douglas had been reaching for, scoffing loudly as she interjected herself as neatly into their conversation as she had their meal.

“Right. Merely delivering a parcel to the Hanging Tower. I mean, it’s not like I’ve worked here for five years and I’ve never done deliveries to the Tower.”

“Ah.” Sago nodded sagely, expertly translating the subtleties of conversational undertone going on. “This is jealousy.”

“God no! I meant that as a good thing!” Chay was visibly horrified, though that didn’t stop her from pulling down the grease paper from the wrap and shovelling half of it into her mouth. Between barely-chewed sausage and egg, she insisted, “If Fera afk’ me t’run an ewwan’ t’fuh Tower I’g qufit on fuh fpot.If Vera asked me to run an errand to the Tower, I’d quit on the spot.”

“It’s a school.”

Douglas corrected softly, “It’s an arcane scholarium.”

Chay swallowed, rolling her eyes, “As in: a place for people to learn magic. As in: a place where people know enough about magic to do magic, but not nearly enough to be allowed out into the wild unsupervised. As in: the big place made out of reinforced stone they were told to build outside the city for a reason.”

Douglas inhaled his replacement breakfast with the kind of casual vulgarity that only a teenage boy in the thrusts of puberty could achieve, then daintily dusted off his hands with a handkerchief in order to keep his spotless white uniform exactly so. He agreed in flat tones, “You drew the short straw, is what we’re saying. I’d be nervous. I might even die of nervousness.”

“You don’t strike me as the nervous type.”

“Doug’s extremely nervous. He’s basically just a big ol’ ball of nervousness inside a human skin, propelling his little flesh puppet body through sheer power of unchecked anxiety.” Chay corrected.

Sago squinted, trying to read their facial expressions but drawing up very little results. He despaired if he’d ever get a handle on sardonicism.

He settled on shaking his head. “There’s really nothing about them that makes me worry. I’m certain I’m more adept at magic than any person or thing within that place.”

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“That’s the spirit! Bull-headed stupidity and bravado is the adventurers’ code!” Chay slapped him on the shoulder heartily, furtively rubbing grease stains into his capelet in the process. Douglas’ mouth twitched and he gently took out his handkerchief, dabbing the fabric clean to the best of his ability with a gentle concentration.

Sago allowed them both to administer to his clothing for a few more minutes before estimating the requirement for healthy human social interaction had been met and excusing himself.

Vera met him at the back door that opened onto the rear courtyard, holding a small wooden crate already packed carefully into the courier sling in one hand and a hat in the other. Looking him up and down, she straightened the creases his colleagues had worked into his uniform, then placed the courier sling over his neck before setting the hat on his head. She took a moment to painstakingly arrange it on his head, even adjusting the small ribbon hanging on the back.

“When you step outside these premises in that uniform, you represent the Adventurers’ Union. Your words, actions, even your gestures are the words, actions, and gestures of the Adventurers’ Union.” She reminded him solemnly.

“I understand.”

“That means to be on your best behaviour.”

“I understand.”

“No, scratch that. Be on my best behaviour. Your best behaviour is…” She gave him a dubious look.

“…I understand.”

She reminded him again in painstaking detail of the directions he was to take, that he could not make stops or detours, that he could not pick fights or eat things he found randomly, that he should not follow strangers especially ones that led him toward dark alleys or offered him food (which he, again, should not wantonly eat—there had become a misunderstanding about what sort of things Sago would casually place in his mouth), and above all to not act with arrogance or in any way that would bring shame upon the Union.

“I understand, and anyway,” he insisted for the umpteenth time, patting the wooden crate through the soft leather of the courier sling, “these aren’t perishable, are they?”

“Not exactly, but ‘the sooner the better’ was the directive.” Vera sighed, clearly unable to shake her worry. “Are you sure you don’t need a chaperone? You’ve never gone out on your rest day before, I’m sure you barely know the city.”

“I have an impeccable sense of direction.”

Well that was a facial expression he could clearly read. He grimaced, insisting he’d be fine, then took advantage of her moment of weakness to power walk across the courtyard and duck out the double wide service door.

The door opened on a backstreet, the kind of narrow slipspace that was never designed but merely happened by chance when the building plans failed to match reality. There was barely enough room for a single work cart to drive through, like the kind parked just by the doors at that moment in the process of unloading supply goods. The workmen were startled by the small boy in the crisp white uniform, but quickly doffed their battered leather flat caps in greeting.

“Don’t mind us, sir.”

Sago nodded uncertainly before pattering off down the street. To adventurers, he and other staff were interactive furniture they were forced to interact with for payment. But to those outside the Union, a simple uniform was enough to be a “sir”. Yet adventurers themselves could be considered a class below those very workmen: vagrants who were citizens unto only the Union.

Rather than a straightforward strata of social power, it was a strange, seesawing web of relations that tilted on the wind according to circumstance.

The road to the gate out of town passed through the craftsmens district, an area of the city half in exile from the rest due to the persistent stench it embodied. There was a minor toll gate—three farthings one way or a penny for return—that cut the line between the business district and the craftsmens district, built from what had once been a wall and outer gate. The infrastructure had remained after the city had inevitably expanded, and so they made full use of it.

The craftsmens district had once been half a shanty town and a sprawling free-for-all of real estate outside the walls of civilisation; a gathering place of travelling artisans come to seek a better life and a shop to call their own. Outside the boundaries of Rosecrest they were exempt from land and citizen taxes, which had been considered outrageous by local government who had ever so cunningly set about building a series of walls around the area until the poor sods woke up one day and found out they had been assimilated. Still, it had never quite shaken its roots of being a workers commune rather than a city borough, and there was a distinctly chaotic harmony to walking through it.

Most of the workshops weren’t buildings per se, but more work spaces with attached sheds that had been constructed, and stretched oilskin tarpaulins to keep the weather out. It was a point of pride and principle at this point rather than a lack of planning.

There was also the stink.

There was no clear division between this craft and that craft. It had a pedigree of people arriving and picking a spot, then getting to work. Tanners next to coopers next to smiths next to carpenters next to chandlers next to wheelwrights next to joiners next to masons. Probably the only reliable reason to the rhyme was that craftsmen such as tanners had politely positioned themselves downriver by trend. But they were still everywhere. Dye vats for weavers and tanning vats next to furnaces for smiths that kicked up a scorching stink. Cacophonies of senses: sound, smell, sight, heat, even the taste in the air of sweat and chemicals.

Sago had to admit he was intrigued. He could tell from the faces of many milling about the district, trying to track down the right craftsman for their work, that most found the sensory blowout unpleasant. He didn’t. It wasn’t at all bad, merely interesting. The sour acrid smells and the sharp clanging sounds were equally new to him. Plus, the people were interesting too.

Here, a glover and a girdler were involved in a furious argument over a mismanagement of supplies that led to one possibly having used the leather of another. There, a goldsmith was arguing with a customer over the cut and arrangement of stones within an ornamental pendant. Over there, a brewer and a cooper were nearly at fisticuffs over an argument over oak type—

He’d spotted a pattern.

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