It is easy to find water in Ce Raedhil, obviously, but finding drinkable water requires a coin of one sort or another. At first I thought this was a terribly clever commentary on the City, but after some reflection I was forced to concede that it is merely a meaningless, unpleasant fact stemming from civic negligence and unscrupulous merchants. Ironically, that process of uninteresting and petty reality stomping on my attempts at wit turns out to be a far more apt metaphor for the place.

- Tasjadre Ra Novo, Jesa Sagoja: Zhetam Asade

They pulled off the road while they were still some distance from the city. Fields ringed it like a vast firebreak, and the only hope they had of cover for the truck was in the remaining wooded outskirts that ringed the farthest farms. Few people were within sight of the road as they trundled along, and those they did encounter seemed studiously determined to keep their distance. It was not healthy, Tasja explained wryly, for common folk to be swept up in the affairs of those who rode chariots.

After some searching they identified an isolated hollow that was shielded from casual inspection yet accessible enough to drive the truck into. It sat at the periphery of a rambling, weedy field that had been left to fall fallow with tangled vines twining up and over the crumbling wall at its border. The only sign of life nearby was a cluster of muddy tari footprints that rambled to and fro along the southern slope of the hollow.

“I hate to admit it, but this is perfect,” Mark said grudgingly as he peered around the close-in tangle of brush. “I bet you can’t see the truck if you walk thirty feet back towards the road.”

Jackie looked around with a sour expression on her face. “A bit of a hike to the city, though,” she said, peering at the skyscrapers looming hazily in the distance. “It’s late enough that we’ll be lucky to make it before nightfall.”

“I think we may be fine,” Arjun said cheerfully. “I’m still appreciating the difference a twenty-eight hour day makes. The sun may be behind the mountains when we arrive, but we’ll have a good long twilight.”

Gusje scowled at them, her eyes flicking back and forth as they spoke. “Use words we can all understand,” she grumbled.

“Sorry!" Jackie said, grinning in a decidedly unapologetic manner. “My talking is not best. Not best yet,” she amended. “Gusje and Tasja learn maybe English, then can talk both.”

“I couldn’t speak In-” Gusje paused. “In gu lizh,” she said frustratedly, “if I tried. Obviously. Your words have all these humming and spitting noises, all tangled and chopped up.”

“Could try other talking, we have many,” she teased. “Peut-être français? Je pense que c'est-” She broke off laughing as Mark threw a backpack at her.

“Stop annoying the locals,” he said dryly, although he stuck to Ceiqa in deference to Gusje’s complaint. “It’s going to be a long enough walk without you two going at it the whole way.”

Jackie stuck her tongue out at him but began loading her backpack from the truck, and within a handful of minutes the group was walking in a rough line away from the hidden hollow. Jesse stopped at several points between the hollow and the road to wedge scraps of blue tarp under rocks and against tree roots, providing markers for their eventual return.

They traveled lightly, carrying only basic supplies and their meagre cache of qim and utelym. After careful consideration they decided to take the sword and gauntlet along with them as a concession to Mark, who was adamant that if they were leaving the truck behind then they should be well-armed enough to fight their way back if it came to that.

It didn’t take them long to reach the populated outskirts of the city. The road took them through fields and pens, then through well-kept shacks with carefully manicured gardens. It was pleasant enough, now that the afternoon’s heat was beginning to fade, although there was still a persistent humidity that clung to the basin around the port. They began to see people in greater numbers, and absent the warding influence of the truck many of them were gawking unabashedly at the tall, foreign travelers. Most of the men were shirtless with loose pale leggings, while the women favored a sari-like wrap bound with thin strips of colorful cloth.

The scrutiny passed mostly unnoticed by the travelers, however, as their party only had eyes for the towers of Ce Raedhil gleaming gold in the sunlight that filtered through the clouds. Against the foreground of rough wattle-and-daub construction set with wooden beams, the shining facades of the Pillars lent their walk a surreal, dreamlike quality.

“Tasja, how were those two broken?" Arjun asked, indicating the twisted metal adorning the tops of the two shortest towers.

“Ah, hm,” Tasja said, flushed and breathless from their long walk. Even without a pack the scribe’s sedentary habits left him flagging behind the others. “There are conflicting accounts,” he answered. “Some say there was a war, some say that it was a particularly dangerous saon drai recovered from the broken cities - many different explanations exist, and I’m sure I haven’t read them all.”

Arjun nodded, considering. “A very long time ago, then?" he asked.

Tasja grunted a confirmation, mopping sweat from his brow. “There’s no agreement on which king’s reign saw them broken,” he said. “Most of the chroniclers blame it on one of the cevaceiqan kings like Qavazhe Vae or Lysvaru Vae, but none of them really explain it past saying ‘the towers tall and shining were struck once and once again as a mark of wickedness for the unworthy kings’ and such.” His hand gestured dramatically to match the flowery prose, although the effect was somewhat diminished by his sweaty, rumpled appearance.

Jesse frowned. “Cevaceiqan,” he said slowly. “Haven’t heard that one before. Something about lying? Liars?”

Tasja nodded. “Lying about what cannot be false,” he confirmed. “In their case, defaming Maja.”

“Oh, huh,” Jesse said, blinking. He looked up at the others, who were giving him curious looks. “Blasphemy,” he explained. “The kings he’s talking about committed blasphemy.”

“That’s a thing here?” Mark asked, looking mildly concerned. “Are we talking ‘faux pas’ blasphemy or ‘death by stoning’ blasphemy? We’re not really familiar with the local customs, so…” He shrugged. “I don’t want to end up as a cautionary tale in some history book.”

Tasja blinked in confusion at Mark’s unintelligible idioms, his pace faltering for a moment while he scanned their faces. “Do you not revere your vinesavai in Gadhun Draat?" he asked incredulously.

Mark scratched his head awkwardly. “Things are very different where we come from,” he said after a pause. “We don’t have a… whatever that is. People worship stuff but it’s not-” He coughed. “Well, it’s complicated. Just pretend we don’t know anything about anything and explain it to us from the basics.”

“Wow, all right,” Tasja said, taken aback. “Give me a moment to think about how to say this.” They walked forward for a few moments, the packed dirt of the road scratching beneath their boots. “Maja makes the fields green, makes the rains gentle. All the land from the ocean to the two walls is His, and He makes it plentiful for us.”

The travelers exchanged a significant glance. “All right,” Mark said, “that bit sounds familiar enough, at least. So are we going to get locked up for blasphemy if we don’t worship Maja?”

Tasja gave him a bemused look. “No, of course not,” he said. “You’re not Sjocelym. People will expect you to hold your own vinesavai over ours, although I’d avoid mentioning that you don’t have one. It’s not bad that you don’t have one, it’s just…” He shook his head and shrugged. “Very strange. I wouldn’t talk about it. Given what happened to the Aesvain there are some who will see the lack as something like, uh.” He contemplated for a second. “Something like a moral failing, neglecting your duty to protect it.”

“Wait,” Jesse said, surprised. “You protect Maja? Not the other way around?”

Tasja looked back at him in deepening confusion. “It’s the first duty of the king, before even protecting the people. The garrison abbey at Draatyn Asidram has more soldiers than the Raedhilym palace. How would He protect us? You can’t defend a wall with good soil and regular rainfall.” He shrugged. “The king protects and Maja provides. He’s the reason Tinem Sjocel isn’t just more desert,” Tasja said. “Without Him we couldn’t grow food or collect enough water to live. Gusje’s people protect their cerein, don’t they?”

Gusje shot him an icy glare and stomped ahead, easily outpacing the group. Tasja looked after her in confusion until Arjun fell back to lay a hand on his shoulder. “Not a good thing to talk about now,” he said gently, “since they have to leave their cerein.”

Tasja groaned and covered his face in his hands. “Jaa tseve, I’m an idiot,” he swore. “I’ll go apologize-” He lengthened his stride to try and catch up with Gusje, but shortly fell back wheezing for breath. Jackie gave him a sympathetic look.

“Is fine,” she said. “She is angry, not at you. Just needs time.”

He shook his head morosely and kept walking. Gusje fell back to their side before long, although the conversation remained dead for some time afterward. The lots grew smaller as they advanced, the small fields and gardens around each house contracting until they pressed against each other and began to gain ramshackle second stories.

The road was thronging with people, and while there was no hope of them blending into any crowd they were at least no longer the focus of everyone’s attention. Barkers and merchants called high, melodic cries from stalls on the side of the road, beggars mumbled pleas for alms and fleets of porters with handcarts shouted and jockeyed for a clear path forward.

That last was not a problem for them, at least. People practically fled from their path as they walked along the thoroughfare. Even the beggars left them alone, although a few times they spotted particularly entrepreneurial individuals relieving distracted gawkers of their purses.

Jackie fell into step beside Arjun. “So much for going in under the radar,” she muttered.

He chuckled. “That was almost certainly not in the cards,” he replied. “You and I alone would be passable, if remarkably tall, but Mark and Jesse make everyone here look like children.” He nodded his head towards the two. “Besides, they’re both acting oddly enough that they’d stand out despite their height.”

She couldn’t disagree. At a glance Mark was walking forward calmly, but here and there a person would wander too close or stare just a bit too long and his eyes would dart toward them with sudden manic focus. Nervous energy radiated from his every twitch, and one hand was resting on his gun at all times.

If Mark was on edge, Jesse was nearly catatonic. The big man was practically melting under the relentless observation of the passers-by, and at present he seemed like he wanted nothing more than for the earth to open up and swallow him whole.

Fortunately for both men, the closer they came to the city walls the less of a stir their passage caused. As the sun dipped lower they passed into a section of the outskirts that more resembled the central neighborhoods of Sjan Saal, with pale plaster facades and sturdy (if uninspired) construction that swept away the timber chaos of the outlying neighborhoods. They were no less exotic for being in this wealthier neighborhood, but its inhabitants and patrons were at least more circumspect about their attention.

Less circumspect were the guards that monitored them watchfully from alleys and alcoves, their shining armor glinting from beneath loose wraps of sky blue and dull silver draped across their shoulders to ward against the infrequent sun. These made no secret of their interest in the travelers, although none did more than watch as they walked on.

“I feel like they’re about to tell me there’s a dress code,” Mark said, nodding fractionally to a stone-faced fireplug of a guard leaning on a slender halberd. The man’s face didn’t change in the slightest to acknowledge the gesture. “And here’s me fresh out of formalwear.”

“You should try to relax,” Jackie admonished him. “Whatever you feel like, you look like you’re expecting them to rush you.”

Mark turned to look back at her. “I am,” he replied.

“Well, stop,” she retorted, scowling. “You’re making them nervous, acting all jumpy.”

Mark dropped back to walk beside her, lowering the volume of his voice - if not its intensity. “What do you want me to do?" he hissed. “Not keep tabs on the surroundings? I’m not being jumpy, it’s called situational awareness.”

“So you can do what, fight them?" she scoffed. “If that happens there was no point in coming here. We want to avoid notice, not respond to it. Just look like you’re about to be five minutes late for something unimportant,” she advised. “I used to pretend I was late for a dinner reservation whenever I had to be out in one of those countries where it’s not particularly healthy to be a westerner or a woman. Focused enough not to bother, boring enough not to care. Just walk.”

They pressed on until, abruptly, the buildings stopped and they stood ahead of several dozen meters of clear space between them and the city wall. The brush had been hewn short to remove any obstructions in a wide ring around the stocky fortifications, leaving the field a muddy wasteland of bare dirt and mulched vegetation.

The gate itself stood open, albeit with a cadre of blue and argent guards standing athwart the opening. Any who approached were stopped, inspected and passed through after a conversation of varying length with a guard.

Wordlessly they joined the queue ahead of the wide archway. It was long, stretching nearly halfway across the clear area before the wall, but the guards seemed to know their business and they found themselves at the head of the line within minutes. Mark stepped forward to speak only to stop short as the guard raised his hand before he could say a word.

“E vaa,” he said wearily, shaking his head. “You six go right to the qatima. Go on, to the side.” He pointed towards a small door built into the gatehouse. Their group wavered uncertainly at the abrupt dismissal, but after a moment they filed towards the door. Inside they found a cramped but serviceable office with a single occupant wearing impeccably polished armor and a rather glorious salt-and-pepper mustache.

The man’s armor and clothing were of better make than the guards’ equipment outside, and the silver on his mantle glittered in a way that suggested it was more than mere cloth. He was in the midst of composing a message when they walked in and their entry did not spur him to raise his head - he wrote for several seconds more, the silky rasp of his pen against the page seeming to echo in the room before he finally returned it to its rest, raised his head and looked at them with eyes so deep a brown that they appeared nearly black.

“I am Sigu Qa,” he said without preamble. “Explain your presence.”

The group was silent for a moment after he spoke, but when it became obvious that was all the man intended to say Mark cleared his throat. “We came to visit the Guild of the Scriptsmiths,” he said, matching the man’s directness.

Sigu grunted wordlessly, lifting his pen again to write a neat line of text on a clipboard in front of him. “Where are you from?" he asked, not elaborating on Mark’s reply further.

“Gadhun Draat,” Mark said.

“All of you?" Sigu countered, unfazed by the outlandish claim.

“Four of us,” he replied. “The others are Cereinem and Sjan Saalym.” Mark met the man’s eyes and quirked an eyebrow. “Should we go around, or can you guess who’s who?”

The guard gave him a long, cool look before returning his attention to his notes, writing a few more lines of cramped text before spinning it around to face them. “Your names, below,” he said. “One per line.”

Mark’s sudden and uncomfortable realization of his own illiteracy lasted just a moment before Arjun nudged Tasja forward. The young scribe looked briefly confused before realizing Mark’s dilemma and nodding. Delight lit his face as he picked up Sigu’s pen with a nod towards the qatima. Tasja turned it over lovingly in his fingers once before writing in a flowing, practiced hand in the indicated space. Finished, he rotated the pad back towards Sigu with a self-satisfied look.

The qatima glanced down at the scribe’s neat handwriting and nodded once, grunting what might have been a quiet noise of approval before looking back to Mark. “Twelve qim,” he said, holding out his hand.

Arjun stepped forward with their bag of mostly ill-gotten currency, his hand fishing in it for a dozen of the dull, coppery coins and placing them in Sigu’s outstretched palm. Sigu inspected each of the coins briefly, then withdrew a number of curious circular medallions on lanyards from his desk. Each had two clear windows in the front covered by a transparent crystalline glass. With practiced motions, the qatima separated the discs and slotted two qim in each before locking them back together and withdrawing a slip of metal from the reverse side of the medallion. Immediately, one of the two qim began to glow with warm light through the glass.

“Wear it openly, not concealed,” Sigu said, placing the medallion in front of Mark and starting on a second disc. “Two days. Leave through this gate before it fades.”

“Neat,” Mark said, slipping it around his neck. “Just out of curiosity, what happens if it fades before we leave?”

“You stay,” he replied, handing over a second medallion and looking Mark in the eyes once more. “I will say this once, Gadhun Draatim: the Guard is order in The City. We watched you approach, we will watch you within, and assuming you can follow simple instructions we will watch you leave. Stray from the path I have given and we have another prepared. Each of you will now say ‘I understand.’” His eyes narrowed, and he crossed his arms expectantly.

Mark bristled inwardly at the man’s tone, but nodded slowly. “Ajhed telahi,” he grated out. Sigu looked at each of the others in turn, and they each repeated the words. When all six were wearing their medallions he stood from his desk and smiled toothily at them, the expression not reaching his eyes.

“The City welcomes you,” he said. “Enjoy your stay.”

“Well, he was a charmer,” Jackie said breezily, craning her neck to look up at the buildings around her. Inside the walls, the buildings had shifted from reasonable, plain construction to outlandish spires and towers that loomed over the roadway. It was obvious that the larger Pillars set the trend for architecture within the walls, although none of the pale imitations they had passed could be seriously compared to the looming monstrosities that rose up from the urban chaos in the distance.

Mark coughed and shook his head, adjusting his backpack. “I’ve seen the type before,” he said. “He’s in charge and he wants everyone to know it. Some folks just like the power.”

“I don’t know,” Arjun replied distractedly, his attention captured by a cadre of arguing men wearing robes in eye-searing primary colors. “I didn’t get the impression he had let the power go to his head, more of… fanaticism, if that’s the word. Impatience for extraneous things. He was a bit harsh, it’s true, but he didn’t make us do anything arbitrary or attempt to extort us.”

“Yeah, you’ve got a point,” Mark admitted. “When we handed over the qim I thought we were bribing him, not accessorizing.” He tilted his medallion up and tapped his finger on its glassy surface. The lit coin burned brightly under the covering, securely locked between the merged halves. He showed it to Tasja with an inquiring glance.

“They are asum je ahetivat,” Tasja said, studying his own. “We had a few in the Scriptorium’s care back in Sjan Saal. We gave them to certain… important guests,” he said, looking aside when Jackie focused on him.

“So what, this is a VIP badge?" she asked, giving up on finding the Ceiqa words. “Is it just because we’re from out of town? We left the truck and everything.”

“More like an ankle bracelet,” Jesse said, a rare wry note in his voice. “Asu je ahetivat would translate to something like ‘watchful eye.’”

“Oh,” she said, looking askance at the medallion. “Okay, so, same question. Why?”

“I assume it’s because we’re trouble,” Mark said, directing his gaze to Tasja and receiving a hesitant nod in response.

“They’ll be able to find us wherever we are in the city,” Tasja confirmed. “Our own guard in Sjan Saal had means to do so, but since it wasn’t in the scriptorium’s custody I couldn’t tell you much about the particulars.”

“Father mentioned something about being watched closely when he visited Ce Raedhil,” Gusje said, holding up her own medallion to examine it. “This may be what he was referring to.”

“Don’t tell me we’re getting put on a leash just because Tesvaji had some wild party while he was visiting,” Mark groaned. “Gusje, I think your dad is a great guy, but sometimes…”

She snorted, letting her amulet fall back against her chest. “You’re more than enough trouble on your own,” she needled. “My father never burned down any buildings… that I know of.” She shook her head. “Besides, it was quite a while ago that he visited Ce Raedhil, I think they even had a different king. I doubt any of this is because of something he and my uncle got up to when they visited. They may just be distrustful of outsiders.”

Mark gave her a skeptical look in response but let the matter drop as they pressed further into the city proper. Given the security at the door they had expected the crowds in the city to be sparse, but if anything they teemed larger than the raucous masses outside.

The crowds wore white, for the most part, swathing themselves in multiple layers of a linen-like fabric bound tightly against their upper body and loose below. As with the masses outside the women wore thin colored strips of cloth woven through the folds of their wraps, although those inside the wall had noticeably more quantity and variety in their dress. The men went unadorned save for a decoration they had not seen outside the wall: a necklace consisting of a thick metal ring threaded through a coin.

Jesse recognized them as sajamyn, like the hearth-coin that Rusve had shown them in the mountain camp. Unlike the old man’s plain ring of pitted metal, however, the men here had richly decorated rings that practically dripped with gleaming precious metals and jewels. Each pendant was a riot of color on the plain white field of their tunics, as varied as the cloth decorations the women wore.

This meant that despite the relative courtesy and calm of those they passed, the group of travelers could not possibly stand out more. If Gusje’s desert-drab traveling clothes and Tasja’s dull red scribe’s uniform were like splashes of paint on a seething white canvas, the others’ green-brown riot of camouflage and dirt-stained salvage was a blazing sartorial beacon.

The subtle pressure of the crowd built around them as they threaded their way towards the shoreline. There was no wayfinding that they could spot, neither street signs nor other directions, but Tasja was reasonably certain of his identifications when it came to the pillars.

“That near one, that’s Stonesails,” he said excitedly, jabbing a finger at one of the broken towers that seemed to be festooned with a million tiny banners and strips of cloth. They waved idly in the sea breeze, hypnotically rippling across the tower’s sides like a field of tall grass in a storm. “One of the books I’ve read claims that one quarter of the city’s population lives in Stonesails, more people in one building than live in any city but Utine.” He shook his head. “I thought he was exaggerating, but looking at it…”

There was a short intake of breath from Arjun as the scale of the building became apparent. The cloth banners were the same white wrap that was omnipresent on the streets around them, each cluster of gently swaying “grass” a family’s wash hanging from endless rows of bare black stone balconies that lined the intact portions of the tower.

Beyond that lay the loose triangle of towers holding government offices - the Sheaf, the Spear and the Ministerium. The first two were named well, with the Spear tapering to a narrow, gleaming pinnacle while the Sheaf’s broken top seemed to hold a bushel of parallel beams rising skeletally from behind the boxy stone exterior. Compared to their striking contrast the Ministerium was nearly forgettable but for its sheer size - the tallest of any tower in the city by far, a massive stone block with only a thin tracery of windows along the top to mar the flawless obsidian exterior.

“The top holds the formal court,” Tasja said, pointing at the barely visible glitter of glass adorning the tower’s heights. “Only used for coronations or particularly significant events, since it’s so hard to walk all the way up.”

“I bet,” Jackie said, craning her neck. “Hey, Arjun, you’re not about to tell us you had a short but informative career as an elevator repairman in your youth, are you?”

He chuckled softly, shaking his head. “Alas, no,” he said wryly. “And I’m quite sure whatever I might have picked up would translate poorly to the lifts there, if they exist.”

“Sucks,” Jackie observed, grinning at him before scanning the other Pillars looming ever-larger around them. “We could have been rich. I’m betting that one’s the… Lighthouse?" she said, using the Ceiqa name with a mote of pride. “On account of the top being on fire.”

Tasja nodded, squinting up at the golden light flickering through the haze that clung around the most seaward of the Pillars. “Not actually fire, though,” he said. “An extremely large and powerful saon drai, unique among all in the kingdom. It’s like a qi in some ways, in the same way a raindrop is like the ocean. It glows when the wind flows around the tower and turns the air around it freezing cold. It’s not very bright right now because the sea breeze is calm, but I’ve read that during bad storms it’s too bright to look at and lights the city as if it were day.”

Mark nodded, shifting his attention to the Pillar standing in their path. “Nifty,” he remarked. “So that leaves this last one as the Archive.”

The building in question was almost unassuming compared to the assorted grandeur and character of the other Pillars, but as they drew closer several things distinguished themselves about the dull grey block of the Archive. For one, it sat alone at the south end of the city, quite removed from the sprawl choking its sisters. Quite to the contrary, it sat in the center of an extravagantly large clear area that was full of neatly trimmed grasses and shrubs arranged in patterns that looped and whorled around the central edifice.

The surface was not merely a flat face, but a gently undulating wave that seemed to shift color as clouds drifted in varying intensity over Ce Raedhil. The sudden stillness, the calm open space and the oddly dynamic monolith before them combined to create an eerie ambiance that quieted their conversation and eventually brought them to a quiet, contemplative halt ahead of their journey’s end.

“Well,” Mark said after a moment. “No time like the present.”

They began walking once more, their steps echoing oddly from ahead.