Chapter 57

Torvid hated his job. This by itself didn't mean anything, because no matter what job he did, he hated doing it. As far back as he could remember, he hated his job. All the way from childhood, picking rags, dredging for clams, hauling cargo from the ships at harbor; all of it, none of it interested him. He hated it. He'd be wresting a barrel or a crate along the docks, or struggling under a bundle of cloth, and he'd look up, and he'd see the Grand Cathedral, the heart of Darnell, richly and lavishly ornate. As if in competition, the Noble Quarter gleamed and reflected the sunlight as if to mock him. They could sit on their thumbs and do fuck-all, and never have to worry where their next meal might come from. No matter what job it was he found himself in, it was the same: Hard work for a grubby fistful of coins; then the tax, and every week at church the collection plate went 'round and of course he was supposed - expected- to do his share.

As a child he hated work; as a teen he hated work, and it was only through sheer luck of the worst kind that he'd found himself, a spear thrust into his hand, warding off a pirate raid. The raid had failed, the cutthroats spitted on the ends of swords and spears and dockmen's axes and belaying pins, and he'd been sworn in as a member of the city militia. It went unspoken that despite regular pay, he hated the job as much as any other job- perhaps more, besides- because he had to share living space with his supposed comrades-in-arms, and they hated Torvid just as much as he hated his job.

After a horribly embarrassing weekend furlough that ended up with him getting dragged out of some woman's bed by his screaming, red-faced commander, things had taken a decidedly horrible turn for the worst.

That was the start of a truly legendary hangover that had left him with a ponderous headache, trembly in the knees and loose in the bowels for three days, and this was aside from the inhuman and brutal thrashing his commanding officer had meted out. The way he acted, it was as if he'd slept with the commander's wife.

A series of decidedly one-sided hearings and Low Court tribunals landed him lighthouse duty. His responsibility was to report on the ships that were scheduled to arrive in Darnell and depart for parts unknown, but as far as he could tell, that was handled already by Port Authority, so there was literally nothing for him to do except walk around the gallery outside and stare at the waves, and scratch at his crotch, which had begun to worry him. Had that slattern given him something vile? He could go to the healers in the temple, he supposed, but that was embarrassing. Days stretched into weeks, into months.

He strolled over to the telescope and gave it a peek, absently scratching himself. He scanned the horizon indifferently, thoughts of his meager lunch on his mind, when a flicker of white caught his eye.

"Probably nothing." He reasoned to nobody. He scanned back, and raised an eyebrow. There was a ship making for the harbor at a pretty good clip.

"Now who the fuck are you?" He complained, and adjusted his pants and zoomed in for a flag.

The ship carried no flag, which was against the regs. Likely the captain would get a fine when they pulled in.

"No flag." he mused. "Just who the bloody fuck are you?" He asked, but nobody was around to answer him. "You're humping right along, too." he observed. The ship was slicing through the waves like a blade, its sails hard curved edges, taut with the wind.

He glanced down on the milled brass and noted the degrees and direction, then signaled the other tower with the mirror.

They immediately signalled back- send again- and he cursed, and signalled again. Again, frustratingly, the same return: send again.

"I swear to the Golden Lady Herself, if you don't get it this time I'm going to run my warty cock down your stupid throat, my friend." He sneered, and then in a moment of inspiration checked the front of the mirror and spat in disgust and frustration. He'd left it shrouded. Of course he would. Why shouldn't he? There was nothing to fucking do here.

He snatched the cloth off, and signalled again, and after a moment, added his threat. There was no response from the other tower. He nodded grimly at that.

There was a furious pounding at the door on the floor below. He jolted, and dashed down the staircase and flung open the door.

"Torvid you asshole, didn't you see the mirror?" The lighthouse guard from the other tower shouted in his face. His face was slick with sweat and he was gasping for breath; he must have run all the way across from the other tower.

"The fuck you talking about?" Torvid asked, baffled. He pointed across the bridge. "Your mirror-" He began, and the other guard grabbed him by the nape of his neck and ran him to the edge of the bridge with such urgency for a moment Torvid thought he was going to be pitched over the side. The guard pointed down near the water's edge. A smaller mirror was flashing urgently.

"No, you sheep-fucker, that one!" The guard yelled furiously.

"Huh." He managed, after the other guard released him. "Didn't know about that one." He replied with a shrug, and the guard threw up his hands in frustration.

"You dumb shit, when you see a flagless ship, you're supposed to run out the organ guns!" The other guard shouted at him. "It's fucking procedure! What if they're fucking pirates? Demons?" The man shouted, getting even redder by the minute. Torvid put his hand over the other guard's face and shoved.

"Fuck off, I wasn't trained." He complained sulkily, but headed back into the tower and pulled the cord that rang the bell down on the lower floors and shouted into the tube.

"Flagless ship coming in fast!"

He went back up to the catwalk and located the ship again.

A gleam of gold flashed from the deck, freezing his heart in his chest. What was that? He zoomed in and his heart constricted in his chest and his mouth dried.

Standing on deck was a beautiful woman, one hand gripping a taut line, the other firmly holding her hat on her head, though several golden locks whipped about in the breeze.

Torvid was an indifferent attendee at the local chapel's services. He'd had his fill of "live righteously, with temperance and compassion for all" followed immediately by the greedy hands of a deacon with a collection plate. Frankly, there were times when he wondered if there actually was a Golden Lady, a Goddess of Spring, Teaching, and Defense of the weak.

So why was it when he saw the woman's regal face he was suddenly transported back to his early boyhood, gazing up at the Triptych with her assembled Saints below, heart aching with reverential awe and worship?

"Oh my Goddess." He whispered, hand clenching over his heart as his body wracked with sudden pain.

The other guard was hammering on him, yelling at him to get up, but he couldn't do anything but kneel on the catwalk and cry, begging the Goddess for mercy for his tired, jaundiced soul.

The harbor gate of Darnell was a massive edifice, straining hundreds of feet to the sky to impossible heights. Decades ago hundreds, perhaps thousands of mages skilled in construction had hewn the living bedrock and block by massive block built a massive, protected harbor out of an unassuming beach.

The gates themselves, two broad sweeping wings of yellow-white granite, were so large that six ships could pass through simultaneously, and the bridge breaching the walls so broad that three double-team coaches could ride side-by-side without their traces brushing each other.

The walls were carved in elegant relief sculptures of the Holy Saints on either side, hundreds of feet tall, all reaching out and up towards the centerpoint of the bridge.

Hanging from the center of the bridge was a carving of the Living Saint Celestine, her wings done in flowing golden marble. Wings outstretched, her legendary sword Galatine at her waist, arms wide, she seemed to smile beatifically at all who sailed beneath her.

Katarina had come up on deck at the first call, maintaining her balance against the swell of waves with one tight fist around a rigging cord. In her mind she replayed conversations, revisited memories, and struggled to fill the holes in her memory. Things had gone missing.

Elizabeth and Ollara had been uncharacteristically distant since the fall of the flying war-castle. Katarina could understand that academically, even if she no longer had the capability to understand herself. She just wished someone would fill the holes in her memory.

Regardless, she loved Ollara with all the love she could allow herself. The giantess had informally adopted the Witch Hunter, considering her but a child, in need of constant pampering. She allowed that, too. Not only was Ollara beautiful, she had a kind and generous mothering nature, quite the opposite of her own strict and acerbic matriarch. She missed the giantess, too. There was no conceivable way for Katarina to bring her to the continent of Hesperia, and even if she could, what would be the point? Ollara would forever be alone. They had parted company in Rothgar, but the loss still hurt.

The tiara on her brow, the fine mithral vines and lilies twisting through her hair was slim and delicate, and hid itself well under the mammoth hat she wore. The armband sat comfortably just above her bicep. The sword was another matter. One could not simply and easily conceal a sword. She wore it in place of her old, battered saber, left behind in an ancient city of madness.

Where was the sword she had made? She wondered, the blade of fulgurite, lightning glass, streaked with gold and strange metals.

This is not for you.

She railed against that indifferently. She had made that blade herself. She couldn't remember how or why she'd made it, let alone when, but that didn't change the essential feeling of losing something she'd made herself.

Where was the sword? What had happened with the flying city? Had there even been a flying city? She seemed to remember a riverbank, of all things, standing in knee-deep water. But there was no provenence that came with the memory. It was a fragment among fragments, disconnected, with nothing to tie it to anything else.

Things had happened to her, and she couldn't quite remember them. Changes, too. There were things she could do now, that she couldn't do before.

She hadn't seen this side of the harbor in decades, not since she was a child. She caught a sequence of mirror flashes from the towers that braced the harbor gate in communication with each other, but her attention was focused inwards. Once again, she replayed the sequence of events leading up to the gap in her memory, trying to find a trigger, a clue.

In her mind she stood in an ancient, shattered city as magical power thundered and snapped about her like lightning. The city had developed a marked cant as the magics holding it aloft were disrupted by her presence. She couldn't remember what had happened next. Had she prayed to the Golden Lady as the floating city had crumpled against the cliffside? Had she laughed, daring the mortal consequences? She couldn't remember anything beyond the growing tilt of the floor. The city floated hundreds, perhaps thousands of feet in the air, propelled by sorceries and screaming sacrifices fed to blasphemous things that squittered and slithered about underfoot.

Her memory shifted, and she was walking down a long, broad corridor, deep in the mountains, deep underground, massive statues of angels in green stone threatening with ancient stone swords, wings flared. At the end of the corridor was a hexagonal room with massive emerald plinths that were dozens of feet wide, hundreds of feet tall, scrawled over and over with richly glowing gold script.

Wait... did that ancient hallway happen before or after the flying castle? She couldn't remember.

There was the fire, a great, searing conflagration that burned ceaselessly in the golden brazier, the flames surging outward and upward in a scintillating inferno, feeding off itself, collapsing inward in a spiraling vortex only to surge up again, a pillar of flame that throbbed and pulsed in time with her own heartbeat, yet never extinguishing.

She remembered a jumble of skeletal bones, their essence somehow transmuted to emerald, the sacred gem of the Golden Lady, the Lady of Spring, the Goddess of the Dawn. She remembered conversations with women she couldn't remember, but most of all, she remembered without remembering a conversation held with a voice that was all-consuming, all powerful, a still small voice that thrummed in her body and threatened to blast the flesh from her bones.

She would do as she was told. She would listen. She would wait. She would watch. She would obey. But why did Ollara and Elizabeth give her sidelong glances when they thought she wasn't aware of them? What had happened with the flying city?

Miriam was a woman that felt at times beleaguered, set upon all sides. The Church of the Golden Lady demanded precision and exactness, and she too, preferred to live that way. Everything had a particular place, a spot, a designation, and everything should fit into those compartments, neatly labeled. She'd excelled at being a clerk in the chapel where she'd grown up; when her family moved to Darnell, she thought she'd excel here, too. Instead, they shuffled her off to Port Authority with the charge of taking accurate counts of cargoes and manifests.

However, most of the captains and crews she was responsible for couldn't read, let alone count. How many crates of seeds? How many barrels of salt pork? How many casks of ale? Weapons? Fabrics?

"A right good haul, missy, an' nivver you mind!" was the usual answer, punctuated with a spray of beery laughter and a meaty backslap.

She would scarcely finish her job and drag herself home before her parents would pounce. Had she found a man? Were they about to become grandparents? What sort of nonsense was that? How was she expected to find a husband, racing up and down the docks to find someone capable of counting higher than ten?

And now, this: A ship flying no flag had cruised into the harbor as nimble and as adroit as you please, all gleaming lines and delicate, curved edges. How they'd made it past the organ guns was a mystery. She imagined that some hungover guard would likely stand to get his neck stretched.

The boat slid into an unoccupied berth, and Miriam was already hurrying over, her maroon skirts flapping, her ceremonial short sword banging against her legs. She really, really hoped she wouldn't have to actually use the thing.

A figure leapt from the foredeck to the dock, and Miriam let out a shout.

"You! You there!" She shrieked, aware her voice cracked. "Don't move from that spot!" She shouted frantically, her writing-board clutched to her chest as she hustled over. Where were the guards? She wondered. She really, really wished the guards would show up. With swords. A lot of them.

The figure turned as Miriam approached and Miriam blinked. A woman? Wearing trousers? Miriam barked a wordless shout of surprise as she skidded to a stop.

The woman was dressed bizarrely. A man's silk shirt, a vest of rich brocaded blue silk, leather pants that clung obscenely to her hips. She wore a rich purple sash, covered in the fluer-de-lys of the Church about her hips. There were rich golden tassels that hung from the ends of the fabric, fully the size of a baby's fist.

On her head was a cattleman's hat, but sized for a man with a broad brim that drooped nearly to the woman's shoulders, and on her shoulders like a cloak was a leather drover's coat that barely scraped the ground.

Miriam met the woman's smiling gaze and her knees nearly buckled. The woman was radiant, practically glowing.

"Hi there." The woman greeted companionably enough. Her voice was melodious and smooth.

"Are you with Port Authority?" She asked, and Miriam stammered, arrested by the woman's green eyes.

"Wh-Who are you?" Miriam demanded, her heart thundering in her chest from her knock-kneed run across the docks.

"Boiyar Katarina lon Pavlenko." The woman replied evenly. "Can you see to my ship? I'm actually not sure if we're supposed to berth here." She advised with a conspiratory wink.

"You're not!" Miriam shouted, and the woman calling herself Katarina took a step back from the woman's vehemence.

"You didn't fly a flag!" Miriam exclaimed. "You should have been blasted to splinters!"

"The Goddess watches over us all." The woman replied calmly. "Can we berth here?" She repeated, and Miriam gave her a wild-eyed, baffled look.

"Of course you can't! You haven't paid the fee!" Miriam blurted senselessly. Who was this woman?

"All right." the woman replied calmly. "How much?" She asked, and waved at a figure on the deck of the ship. Miriam goggled at the woman. She'd jumped down from all the way up there?

The figure tossed down several satchels, and the woman moved to catch them all. She rummaged in them as a gangplank thudded down on the docks closer to the water's edge. The woman was joined by a scruffy-looking man with dark hair and flashing eyes as she pulled out a coin pouch that bulged appreciably.

"So can we berth here?" He asked Katarina, who gestured at Miriam.

"We're about to find out." She replied.

"Fine, but first I want to return these to you." He replied. "I was... kind of a puckered asshole to you in Einsamkeit, and you never did nothing but right by us." He saluted, fist across his heart. "Honor to serve." He counted out ten steel talents into the woman's hands, and flashed Miriam a saucy smile.

They turned to Miriam and smiled down at her.

"Well? Can we berth here?"

Miriam sighed. "Can either of you write?" She asked in a weary voice, already guessing the answer. Both of them nodded and Miriam's eyebrows went up in shock.

"Wonderful." Miriam breathed, near tears. "Simply wonderful." She affirmed. "Ten silver and you can berth here for a week." She advised.

Katarina turned to the man. "You'll keep the arrangement?" she asked, "It's your call, Captain." She added. He chuckled.

"Of course I'll stay. 'Said so before, right? You haven't done but right with us. I need to resupply before we head out again, but a deal's a deal."

Katarina nodded, and the two of them clasped wrists like warriors, and then he gave them a wave as he strolled across the docks.

"Guess that leaves me to pay the fee." Katarina murmured sardonically, and counted out the coin and signed the form with a flourish.

Miriam caught a twinkle of gold at the woman's throat.

"Excuse me, but.. Is that-?" She inquired, gesturing. Katarina reached into her shirt and displayed her holy symbol.

Miriam sighed. "Are you a Lady of the Church?" She asked listlessly. Katarina nodded. "I didn't mention earlier?" She wondered.

Miriam let out a despondent sigh. "I can't charge you." She replied. "Ranked members of the church receive dispensation."

The woman frowned down at her. "Fuck that." She replied, and Miriam clapped her hands over her mouth, dropping her writing board in the process. She scrambled for her writing board a scant second afterward.

"You can charge me." The woman replied easily, and hoisted her satchels, one of which looked to be a pair of bulging saddlebags, of all things, and strolled down the docks.

"What- Where-?" Miriam asked, trailing after the woman, trying to make sense of what had just happened.

"I need to arrange for a crane with a sling to pull a couple horses from the hold of the ship I just came in on." The woman explained, striding along like a man, spurs jingling.

"Horses?" Miriam asked, and the woman nodded. "That's right. I need to get up to the Alstroemeria."

"Let me arrange the crane for you!" Miriam urged. "It's my responsibility, anyway." She gestured to the prominent stone building near the docks.

The woman eyed Miriam with a scrutiny that was unsettling. Her eyes were an unusually deep and vibrant shade of green.

"What's your name?" She asked.

"Miriam." She replied, and the woman smiled at her. "Now we're introduced." She replied simply.