Gamila IX

PA 2 – July

It was the day after they first arrived in the city that Gamila made her first move.

While Kaiden was out talking with King Cui, she changed out of her armor, donning the same sort of airy skirts and tops that the locals were fond of. The clothes were ripped and old, having been bought from one of the locals back when they had been passing through the old Song territories, and would work well enough as a disguise for today.

Today she was just a girl from the countryside, coming into town for the first time, her father off bartering his goods while she went out exploring on her own.

It wasn’t like she’d be missed—Kaiden had been sent up with a surplus of guards specifically for this purpose. They cycled through them over the course of the day, shifting from one to the next while the rest got to spend the day doing whatever. And if no one knew what she was doing today—well, it wasn’t like she knew what they were doing either.

As she made her way throughout the Oasis, she took in everything, cataloguing everything she could and storing it in the back of her mind to be used for later.

The city itself was nothing special—the homes made of the cheap and easy mudbricks that everyone else used, the walls thick and well manned, the palace big and gaudy. Just like the Song, the Getoralaind, Napoli, etc.

If she had to pick one thing that most set it apart from any other city, it wouldn’t be the palace—she’d seen at least one of such grandiose buildings in every major city she’d been in, to the point where Sun’s Rest’s lack of a palace was the outlier—but instead the colors. Most of the buildings in the city were painted some shade of green, with greys and browns mixed in. They made geometric patterns along the walls of the buildings, giving the city and subdued, earthy tone. It contrasted sharply with the bright oranges and reds of Sun’s Rest.

She preferred the latter, though she could admit she was biased.

Eventually she came up to her first stop of the day, the marketplace. A big open square off to one side of the palace, where people local and not came together to barter and trade goods and services with each other. In most other larger cities she’d been to, the marketplace was generally the most lively part of the city.

In this city, it was surprisingly empty.

That was an issue for her. Immediately tossing her first plan of blending into the crowd away, she instead boldly walked up to the first person she saw, a man sitting bored on a woven rug, surrounded by barrels of fruits.

“Excuse me? Sir?” she asked walking up to him. “Would you be willing to trade some of figs?”

They were in a strictly barter economy—the concept of money didn’t even exist yet—which meant if she wanted to buy anything she needed something to trade.

Luckily, she hadn’t come emptyhanded. Her ‘allowance’ from her ‘father’ sat in a bag wrapped around her waist, a few small clay pots filled with salt.

The salt itself was middling quality—the whole point of this was not to draw attention, after all—but still good enough to buy her at least two of the man’s barrels alone.

She opened up one of the jars, showing him what was inside.

“Hmph,” the man grunted, eying the container. “Where’d a girl like you get all this?”

“My father gave me it,” she smiled innocently at him. “Why do you ask?”

“Your father someone important? Ah, never mind, never mind. How many do you want, girl?”

“Ah,” she hummed, tapping her chin thoughtfully. “How about… four? Oh, no, six! I’d like six figs, please!”

“Six figs are quite a bit, especially these days,” the man tapped the side of the jar. “How ‘bout this. You give me this whole jar o’ salt, and I’ll throw in two extra dates for free.”

Gamila smiled brilliantly at him, knowing damn well she was being ripped off. “Are you sure, mister? That seems like a lot.”

“Of course!” the merchant smiled at her, his eyes sharp. “Think of it as a gift, for a first-time customer. Surely you can’t say no to such a gift, right?”

“Oh, thank you mister!” she smiled at him, giving him the jar of salt in exchange for the fruit. “I’m sure my father will love them!”

“I’m sure he will be as well,” the man chuckled, looking for the slightest moment uneasy.

Good. Maybe next time you won’t rip off someone just because they look a little naïve.

But as she placed the fruits in her bag, the merchant spoke up once more, his smile fixed, but his eyes serious.

“Ah, and a word of advice, from this weary old man. You don’t look like you’re from around here, so listen well,” the man’s smile fell into a more serious look. “Avoid the palace, if you can. You seem like a nice young lady, but the King… well. You wouldn’t want to get involved in that mess.”

“Mess?”

“Aye,” the merchant glanced back and forth, as though worried someone else was listening in. But there were only his fellow merchants, wrapped up in their own transactions or sitting bored with their products. “We once had two Kings, you know. But recently… recently we’ve only had one. But which one is your King, well… that’s a matter of opinion, you get me?”

Gamila nodded at him slowly, her eyes wide with projected innocence, while her mind worked overdrive working out what was going on.

“Good,” he nodded sharply. Then the smile was back on his face, and he waved her off. “Good! Now. If that’s all, why don’t you head on, eh little lady? I’ve got some more customers waiting, you know?”

He did not, but she didn’t bother pointing that out. Instead she merely smiled at him, thanking him for his time, and left, off to gather more information.

And as she did she felt something clench in her gut, an understanding that even her own Merchants were woefully uninformed on what had been going on up here.

‘Oh, Cui, Aniruddha,’ she sighed mentally, rubbing her eyes tiredly. ‘What the hell are you two doing up here?’

--

Three days later saw her change up her disguise. She’d gained all the information she could in her ‘innocent young lady’ persona, and so she dropped it, switching up to something a bit less conspicuous.

Or perhaps more conspicuous, depending on how you saw drunkards.

There was only one bar in the city, a relatively nice place midway between the palace and the eastern gates. It only served shitty beer—being that it was the only alcohol they knew how to brew—and water, and because of that gave off less the impression of a classy modern bar and more the impression of a much smaller, slightly cleaner Tatooine bar.

Gamila was sat in the back of said bar, slumped in a corner surrounded by a pile of empty mugs, her hair pulled haphazardly over her eyes to give the impression she was passed out. The bartender had been giving her the stink-eye for a while now, but the jar of salt she’d slipped him for ‘endless drinks tonight held his tongue.

Ah, to have unlimited funding.

But her purpose here wasn’t to drink, it was instead to gather information. And so as the night progressed she began drinking more and more mugs of beer, wobbling back and forth every time she went for a refill and slurring her words until, eventually, she passed out.

Not that any of that was actually real, of course. Her immortal constitution made it impossible for her to get drunk (unfortunately) and the rest was just her copying how the other soldiers acted when they got a bit to lost in their cups.

She’d be staying here for the rest of the night—or until the bartender finally got sick of her and kicked her out—listening to the conversations around her, lining up what she was hearing with the information she had already gathered the past few days.

And the picture that was painting wasn’t a good one.

“The King’s setting up another feast tomorrow,” one man, a soldier most likely, groaned, taking a long swig of his mug.

“Another one!?” his (companion? Lover? Drinking buddy?) exclaimed, her voice incredulous. “That’s the fourth one this week!”

“Aye. Apparently he plans to throw a feast for every meal he holds with the southerners.”

“Gods, really?” she groaned. “I wish they’d just damn leave already, then. I swear, we’re not at war anymore—why are we still rationing our food? Surly we have enough at this point, right?”

“You’d think, you’d think…”

Gamila bit her cheek to stop herself from frowning. The fact that Cui was rationing food was worrying—the fact that he hadn’t asked them for help with that even more so.

“…Ah, but did you hear? Nephali’s having a child soon!” the woman continued, her face brightening significantly.

“No, I didn’t. Who’s the father?”

“I dunno,” she shrugged. “But I heard…”

Gamila stopped listening to that conversation at that point, figuring that was the most information she’d get out of them. Instead she glanced surreptitiously across the bar, finding someone else to eavesdrop on. It wasn’t hard, given how packed it was—perks of being the only bar, she supposed—and eventually her gaze landed on a trio of young men sitting at the bar. They were farmers, by the looks of it, though they must have lived close to the city if they could be out in the bar so late at night.

“…I don’t get it, why’d she leave me!?” Farmer number one waved his mug in the air wildly, having obviously had a few too many to drink already. “I mean, I’m gonna inherit my old man’s farm! I’ve got land, and wealth, and the ass of a god! What did she see in that bastard that I don’t have!?”

“Yeah yeah,” Farmer number two rolled his eyes. “We’ve heard it all before. Can’t we talk about something different, for one night?”

“Not until you can tell me why she left me!”

“Maybe it’s ‘cause you can’t hold your drink!” Farmer number three smiled cheekily, before yelping as he dodged a fist from his friend. Things might have devolved further from there, but the bartender took a moment away from giving Gamila the stink eye to glare the three young men into submission.

“Look, if this is all we’re doing tonight, then I’m just gonna head out,” Farmer number two groaned, standing up from the bar. “I’ve got shit to do early tomorrow morning.”

Farmer number one just grumbled into his mug. Gamila was about to turn her attention away, but Farmer number three suddenly spoke up.

“Hey, have you met up with the desert people yet?”

“Aren’t we desert people?”

“No, no, the desert people! Y’know, the nomads? They ride around on their big yellow beasts and trade you salt for practically nothing!”

“Never heard of them,” number two grunted, sitting back down. “But what’s this about cheap salt?”

“Yeah, it’s crazy—you’re not going to believe this, but you can just sell them fruits or bread or beer or whatever, and they just give you salt for it! My pa got a whole barrel’s worth of salt just for a little over a quarter of his crop!”

“You’re right, I don’t believe it.”

“No, they’re legit, I’m telling you! In fact, I heard from my uncle that he met one of them the other day—she gave him a jar of salt this big for just a basket of figs. He practically had to force her to take more so that he wouldn’t be cheating her.”

The bartender, who was also listening into their conversation, glanced back over at Gamila thoughtfully.

Gamila herself didn’t quite know what to think about that, but hey, if it gave her an alibi.

“If they have so much salt, wouldn’t we be seeing more of it? And, hey, if there was that much salt in the world, it certainly wouldn’t be as valuable, right?”

“That’s the thing, right? I was talking with one of them while they were trading with my pa, and the guy told me that he was apparently from the far west. But he had to move east, after his tribe got conquered by some new King or whatever.”

“Wait, what? A new King? Isn’t that something you shouldn’t brush off so easily!?”

“It’s fine, the guy was from, way out west—he said there was an ocean from where he came from!”

“What’s an ocean?”

“I dunno, man—But it’s not like it’s important anyway. Just trust me on this, all we need to do to get rich quick is we’ve got to find ourselves some of those desert people, and bam! Salt forever!”

“Do you think if I had more salt she’d come back to me?”

“By the gods won’t you ever shut up!?”

Gamila tuned them out as their conversation descended into squabbling again. Instead, she considered these ‘desert people.’

As a high ranking official in the Sunset Kingdom, she was aware of the many polities surrounding them. Therefore, she was pretty sure that these ‘desert people’ were the nomads to the west, the nomadic tribes that wandered the desert, occasionally stepping into civilization to trade goods.

The idea of them being united by a King was worrying—beyond just how that might already be disrupting trade and shifting demographics, that ‘King’ could very easily be a ‘God-King.’

And the last thing they wanted was a new God-King to have to deal with after they’d just stabilized their own home region.

She wondered if this new King was part of the problems going on up here. They apparently didn’t have enough food on hand—were more people immigrating in from the west? That would certainly explain some things.

Though it would also make Cui and Aniruddha’s split up even more strange. Surely they’d want to display a united front, if that was the case?

Gamila bit her lip, beginning to feel annoyed. She’d set up a fairly robust spy network so far, but it only stretched along the river, where trade and movement were easy and words flowed like water.

She had thought, with their enemies based around the river, that was all she needed. But apparently she’d need to start keeping just as close an eye on their allies as well. Maybe it was time her Merchants to diversify.

She’d get to the bottom of what was going on up here. One way, or the other.

9,863 God-Kings Remain