Episode Two

Central Jalkin, they say, is a beast which had a short life, died and was resurrected. As an entirely different creature but equally, perhaps more, alive.
Its first life started in the early eleventh century. When Jalkin was built almost from nothing, as was Forgar, and Yaleth was expanded. The greatest construction project ever inflicted upon a weary world which, in only a few decades, created the Triple Cities. The brand new capital of a brand new country, Christoté. Although it wasn't, then, really a country as such. It was instead seven rather old counties welded together into an uneasy federation. It was trying to become a proper country, however, and by creating this brand new capital it could at least project the image of one.
The Triple Cities created a fine illusion too. Central Jalkin especially; streets such as Jakks Way and Federation Road were refine avenues lined with stately mansions. A place of parks and statues, an elegant home for the new rulers of this proto-nation. Mistletoe Square, a diamond-shaped plaza where Federation Road and Jakks Way meet, encapsulated the spirit of central Jalkin. Two impressive statues stood there. One of Tars Tukas, the legendary founder of Christoté; the other an opaque and allegorical sculpture representing Freedom, Dignity, Labour and any other virtue which Tukas' new toy was trying to epitomise.
Christoté worked a little too well, however. Agriculture, trade and industry soon flourished. As they did, the Triple Cities grew and grew. It attracted a great many people who were emphatically not the rulers of any country. The residents of Jakks Way noticed that their streets were getting choked with wagons, their houses were ringed by workshops and taverns, everything was becoming noisy and everything was starting to smell. Eventually they fled to the north-west corner of Jalkin, and made sure this quarter would stay refined and wouldn't become surrounded again. What happened to central Jalkin was like a sedate, slow-motion Storming Of The Palace. The impoverished new immigrants flooded in. The mansions were either razed and rebuilt as tenement blocks or simply partitioned into a thousand flats. The avenues ceased being avenues; their trees quickly fell victim to the incessant need for fuel. An equally strong taste for convenient dressed stone also gulped up most of the statues. By the start of the 1200's nothing remained of the allegory in Mistletoe Square save a single leg. Tars Tukas was deemed a little too sacred to be demolished so thoroughly. But even he had lost his sword arm, and the charger he rode was a strange beast with two legs and no tail.
Some claim the end of the wrecking of the central Jalkin statues marked the birth of true civic pride. The 1200's saw government programs lift areas like Jakks Way out of real poverty. Though remaining poor they were no longer slum districts, and the residents could acquire other priorities beyond simple survival. A distinct culture started to emerge, a sense of dignity and belonging. Jakks Way started to feel like a real home, a place both unique and connected to the rest of the Triple Cities. And so the wholescale demolition of this home was no longer encouraged. Other writers simply argue that better barges, better waterways and better quarries meant the hunger for stone could be sated more easily elsewhere. Whatever, the same structures which stood in Mistletoe Square in 1200 still watched the plaza in 1334. A disabled Tars Tukas astride a crippled stallion; a single leg somehow containing all mankind's greatest virtues.
They watched the square become even noisier, even dirtier and even more alive; a place to gossip and laugh and greet friendly faces and continue comfortable vendettas. They also watched it, with the inevitability of a dip in the ground during a storm, fill up with traders and stalls. The exotic ones during carnival times; the card trick artists profiting from mankind's invincible optimism, the sequinned old women forecasting unlikely futures, the self-proclaimed wizards peddling gold-painted amulets and strange beakers full of dyed water. But proper stalls the rest of the year, selling the basic goods which allowed Jakks Way to function. Always damn stalls, Tars Tukas may have groaned, and the damn traders with their monotone calls. He could also have noted that Mistletoe Square only had a license to hold a market once a week, and that Guardsmen would stroll unconcerned between the stalls on the other six days. And if Tars Tukas was weary of traders in general, one face he must have been particularly tired of was Golting's.
Golting was a rarity amongst the Mistletoe Square traders. Golting, in fact, was an aristocrat to them. He had a permanent pitch. The craters he assembled his wares up on were crude and decaying the banner announcing Golting's Groceries had enjoyed better decades; though, thanks to the crudity of the needlework, not enjoyed them greatly. But Golting could arrive each morning knowing no rival businessman would be allowed to steal his spot. They had, at best, set up stall next door and try to steal his customers. Golting had been coming to Mistletoe Square with this security for twenty five years. His banner announced that the Goltings had been trading in Jalkin for two centuries. If this was true it was a happy coincidence, for he had invented the fact one evening. He was nonetheless an established part of the local scenery, as fixed as the buildings and more secure than many of them.
Mainly he sold, as his alliterative banner announced, fruit and vegetables. Basic produce bought from the surrounding farms; maybe some more exotic wares from the caravans if he was feeling ambitious. Few Cities traders only peddle one type of goods, however. Golting always had a few trinkets, cheap and flashy pieces to attract any impulsive housewives. A few toys as well, in case any had children they wanted to quieten down. And Golting could, on request, get hold of many other items; more expensive ones, though generally sold far below their standard retail price. Legally? He would shrug happily if asked. He could honestly claim that he had never stolen himself, nor sold an item he had seen been stolen. His conscience thus appeased, he could indulge the pastime much loved by street traders – passing judgement on others.
"Both looked like they'd be right at home in a bar fight, Mr Delpess said," he claimed happily, weighing out a small bag of carrots. "Wouldn't turn his back on either of them for a second, he claimed."
Morran snorted. "Aye, well, I wouldn't turn my back on Mr Delpess in a hurry. Not if I'd owt in my purse."
"An' he said they were from East Zabrial?" Mrs Cobson demanded.
"Just the lass. Black as your boots by all accounts. The lad's from these parts, least, that's the story. Now, anything else for you today, love?" Golting asked Zesheyek. She was his only actual customer at that moment. Yet the only time he spoke to her, rather than the other two women, was to conduct business. Not through hostility, for he rather cared for Zesheyek. She was simply very easy to overlook. Small, young and very dark, she was quite pretty in a meek sort of way and haggard in an understated style. She looked at the ground a great deal and moved in rapid bursts. When people did notice her they tended to only see her belly, which was being turned rotund by the child inside it, and completely overlook the lady attached.
"Half a pound of swedes, please," she said in her usual semi-whisper.
"Place is filling up with them Zabric," Mrs Cobson sniffed. "Soon be no room for the rest of us. An' they'll bring trouble, you watch and see. These new ones are in your building, Morran. What d'you reckon to 'em?"
"Ain't seen 'em yet. If they held a house warming, I never got the invite."
"You must've seen 'em moving in."
"Nope. Reckon they slipped in right in the middle of the night."
Mrs Cobson snorted. "Well, I call that mighty suspicious. What's that about?"
"Probably didn't want nosy cows like us gawping at their privates," Morran said happily. Zesheyek looked foreign and out of place. Morran and Mrs Cobson were both natives and carried all the corresponding confidence in their stature. They looked, in fact, like caricatures of Triple Cities women at different stages of life. Morran was just entering middle age, somewhat stout, a little battered, but retaining some traces of a vivacious girl. Mrs Cobson was elderly , bent, almost spherical, her once-brown skin now silver and her skin the texture of a walnut. Maybe there really was no difference except age. And over time Morran's genial air would shrivel into Mrs Cobson's aura of suspicious pessimism.
"And that Mr Delpess didn't trust 'em?" the latter asked Golting.
"Nope. That all, love? That'll be, let's see, one brass, two copper, one harcopper altogether. Thank you very much. Nope, said they seemed a friendly enough couple but he wouldn't be surprised if they've got half a million Guards warrants out on 'em."
"Didn't stop him renting the flat out to 'em, I note," Mrs Cobson said grimly.
"Bloke's got to earn a living, I suppose."
This time the elderly woman snorted. "I recall when this were a respectable district. You knew everyone. You knew their families an' where they all came from. Now there's all sorts coming in, strangers from all over. An' you know where part of the problem lies? Landlords like that Mr Delpess renting out without asking the whys an' hows."
Morran glanced at Zesheyek and sighed heavily. "We're starting again are we, Mrs Cobson?"
"You laugh if you want. The way things are going, it won't be long before true locals like me an' you stand out. Won't be long before we're pushed out. There's folks arriving each day by the bucketful from East Zabrial. From Erenland. From… from everywhere. They all bring problems with 'em. You tell me that they don't. Getting so we can hardly tell we're in the Cities anymore."
"Bye, Mr Golting," Zesheyek said abruptly and strode off. Morran repeated the farewell and hurried after her friend; although she, like Zesheyek, didn't actually know if Golting was his first or second name."
"Bye, ladies," he called after them. "See you again. You both have a fine day. Now that wasn't too diplomatic," he said to Mrs Cobson in the closest he came to a low voice and a critical tone. "You know that young Zesheyek's from Notruf herself."
"Hm. Well, I do believe this is the land of free speech. An' it's gonna stay that way, least till the Notrufans an' the Zabric take over completely."
"Still, maybe show a bit more grace to a different skin an' a different face? That Zesheyek, now, she's as well-mannered a young lass as you could wish to meet. No stink on her husband either."
"I guess," Mrs Cobson said reluctantly. "If you can trust 'em… But that new couple, now, they sound like they'll be some trouble. Mr Delpess knows that an' still he lands 'em on us. It's typical. You know, Golting, I recall the time when landlords behaved with a bit of responsibility.""Then you can remember a lot further back than me," Golting said cheerfully. "Oh boy, you've got one hell of a memory indeed."

Episode One

"… and you'll feel how lovely and cool the bedroom is too, even on a day like today," the landlord continued in his cracked but relentless voice. "Windows a bit small there, many sorrows for that, but in a climate like we have you want shade more than you want sunshine indoors, isn't that so? But for the winter months, you've doubtless noted the size of the range out here in the living room. Get a fire burning here and it heat the whole apartment up something lovely. It's not more than ten years old, this place, barely a draft or a leak anywhere. Only one previous set of occupants and, as you'll be seeing, they've left the place looking lovely."
"Yeah, you mentioned that," Yaxi Tanson remarked. She and her husband Radav were gazing around the apartment with the same expression. The main room was low but generous in floor space. The range was as large as the landlord remarked and looked impressively functional. At the end of the room was a wall cut into by an impressive arch, behind which was a nook which appeared to have no purpose other than to be something behind the impressive arch. All the walls had basic but vivid murals of lilac and scarlet flowers. Even the condition of the room, the whole apartment, justified the boasts. There were a few chips, a few stains but very few; and the bare boards of the living room even looked as if they had been recently polished. The expression of both Tansons was: impressed, covetous, but determined not to let this show. "You never quite told us what happened to those guys," Yaxi said.
"Onwards and upwards, good lady, onwards and upwards," the landlord replied triumphantly. "Moved to a lovely little house in Yaleth, I'm led to believe. She was blessed with her third child, he gifted with another promotion and they told me, Mr Delpess, we couldn't be happier here but it's time to move on."
Radav, meanwhile, had opened another door from the living room and was staring inside dubiously. "Not the largest of rooms, I know," Mr Delpess said as he scuttled up. "But ideal quarters for a child or perhaps a servant. Do you have either?"
"A definite no to the first," Yaxi said, limping across to join them. "We've not really decided on the second yet."
"Thought we had," Radav told her.
"No, hon, if you remember that's sort of one of the many things still on the debating table."
"Oh aye, that's right. Keep losing track of 'em all."
"And if you decide to take the lease," Mr Delpess ventured, "For how long might you be… that is, what is your intended length of occupancy?"
"Well, you work on six month contracts and we'll be happy to sign one of those," Yaxi told him calmly. "Beyond that, the seers are kind of silent."
"Of course, of course. Flexibility, so important in today's day and age." He studied Yaxi; tried studying both of them but Radav was already moving across to the front windows. "And you, if I may say, seem the sort of folk a bit more flexible than most. You young lady, are not from the Triple Cities, are you?" His eyes were on Yaxi's skin. Both his and Radav's were the colour of oak bark but Yaxi was even darker, a brown which almost shaded into black. Her sable hair was done in a foreign style too, thick strings knotted together and tied halfway down her back by bright beads.
"Well, the husband isn't either, actually," she smiled. "He just pretends he is, to cover up coming from a wheat silo in the middle of the Central Plains."
"Hey," Radav called out. "Stop knocking the home."
"Your home's lovely, hon, just that if you park a cart on the outskirts, you've pretty much doubled the size of it. We're from all over the place really," Yaxi told Mr Delpess. "But I was born in East Zabrial."
"Ah. Of course. The City of Mermaids."
"Yeah, that's one of our nicknames. Though we've kind of picked up a lot of not so nice ones lately. I'm not limping because I'm slowly growing a tail, by the way." She tapped her crooked left leg with her walking stick. "I've just, you know, mashed up my leg a fair bit."
"Ah. A wound picked up on your…. heh, travels, Mrs Tanson?"
"We-e-e-e-ell. You might say that. Specifically, the bit where I tried to travel through a gateway before it fell on me."
"Indeed? Most upsetting, most upsetting. And what happened, may I ask?
"I didn't travel fast enough."
Yaxi limped back across the room to her husband. Radav was surveying the view from the front of the second storey flat. A typical Triple Cities street ostensibly, a dirty, noisy melange of bright clothes and billowing dust. Handcarts stacked high with gyrating piles of produce were being dragged across the cobbles, weaving around donkey wagons and single-horse gigs. Noisy gangs of children played in the gutters, their high voices competing with the low bellows of the traders. Some of the buildings were like the one Radav was stood in, modern, pale and functional tenement blocks some five stories high. Some were older and taller, unstable looking minarets corkscrewing into the sky. Some were squat white towers, some modest cottages, some customised, dilapidated old mansion houses. They all crowded together with no discrimination and no sense of a plan.
"Don't know Jakks Way," Radav commented on the scene. "Don't know the neighbourhood too well either."
"Which is also called Jakks Way, right?" his wife asked.
"Jakks Way, Jakks Way, so nice they say it twice," Mr Delpess sang happily. "Oh, it's a lively district, always plenty to see and do. See Mistletoe Square there, at the far eastern end? A permanent market there, buy any sort of goods you want. Get your wrestling booths setting up there near the carnivals, your fortune tellers and some such, and always plenty of liveliness at all times of the year. And at the other end-" he pointed down the road, where a large half-timbered house was just visible- "The Last Drop Inn, brews up the finest quart of ale you ever will taste. A nice little gambling table in the back room too, and always a few nice stabbings going on every Saturday night."
"Uh huh," Yaxi grunted.
"Oh, there's plenty of action around here. Don't like the ale at the Last Drop? There's five backroom stills on this street alone and that's just the official count. We've got fences and forgers and lots of others to supply whatever you might require. Got the street gangs of kiddie hoodlums always scrapping with each other. Got the serious gangs too – Jakks Way is on the boundary of some five different ones, no-one can ever get complete control but does that ever stop them trying? Hear a crunch when you walk down an alley, sir and madam, just carry on by and don't look what you've just trodden on. We've got a lovely mix of folks here too. There's the old timers like myself, the real Cities folk you might say, no offence, always free with our opinions and our opportunities. Got the big, scary Torgun worshippers just across the western border. Got your settlers coming in from Erenland, often as not bring their feuds with them and fighting them out right here on our streets. Got your arrivals from Zabrial, no offence meant either, ma'am, but slitting your throat if you look at them crooked. Got your-"
"OK, OK, we get the picture," Yaxi laughed. "You know, I like the honesty around here. We were looking at a flat in Brekklinside earlier and asked about the district's bad reputation, the landlord said that was all in the past. And we could, you know, see at least two pools of blood from the window. We never even knew Jakks Way had a reputation until you just told us it."
Mr Delpess gave the couple another careful assessment. They weren't excessively large but still emanated an aura of great power. Yaxi was built like a strong youth; small breasts, wide shoulders, thin hips and remarkably thick forearms. All of Radav was broad, but the contours of his tight tunic and trousers revealed this to be caused by muscle, not fat. They were both handsome in their own way, the landlord conceded, and seemed amiable enough. But the skin of each face alone carried half a dozen scars and had been hardened by a demanding life. Whether moving or standing, there was an alert tension inside their bodies. Neither was carrying a weapon and they seemed almost naked, if no less dangerous, without one. "Well, I'm reckoning, sir and madam, you won't be put off by any such perils. Think they might be an attraction, hm?"
"Not put off, as such. But we've come to the Cities to relax for a while. Get kind of soft and corrupt in the fleshpots. That's the plan, isn't it?" she asked Radav.
"Aye. Fleshpots. Definite."
"Of course, of course. And if you don't look for trouble here, chances are it'll never find you. Take myself. Lived in Jakks Way for near twenty five years now, hardly any bother at all. Course," he added with a grin, "The folks around here know what sort of folks I know. And they know it won't benefit them to upset some of Mr Delpess' friends."
After a few seconds Yaxi said, "You mentioned there was a sort of balcony."
"Oh yes, at the back. I'll show you now. Nice place to sit, it is, nice and peaceful. Catches a lovely bit of sun on a summer evening."
The balcony only overlooked a lot of small, ugly back yards. It was in shade and looked like it always would be, the sky swallowed by the tall buildings around. The peace was real, however, the street noises still audible but seemingly trapped behind a sheet of thick glass. Radav leant over the side, looking with approval at the weeds trying to push through the paving stones.
"Heard a lot of these balconies come detached," he said neutrally.
"Only, I assure you-"
"I ain't having the wife falling off an' doing her other leg in. She whinges enough as it is."
Yaxi laughed. "Oh, the priceless comfort that is a supportive husband."
"The problem, I assure you, is confined to the older buildings," Mr Delpess said smoothly. "The structures is perfectly sound on this property – on all my properties."
"Aye, well, we'll have a check. A bit of a jump up an' down. An' a chat."
"That's your cue to sort of fade into the background, Mr Delpess," Yaxi said. After shutting the door to the balcony she joined her husband at the rail. They glanced around thoughtfully for a few minutes. Eventually she said, "Well, I want it."
"Aye. Me too." His face creased in contempt. "'Don't mess with Mr Delpess and his friends?'"
"I know, I know. Oh, was it ever an effort keeping a straight face just then."
"What did he think he was bloody… We agree not to do business with blokes who're either crooks or outright loonies?"
"Thing is, hon, if we made that pact we wouldn't find a great many people to do business with."
"True. Still, with him as a landlord, I ain't ever keeping more than ten gold in the flat."
"Oh, please tell me you weren't thinking of doing that anyway."
Another short silence. Then Yaxi said, "You know, I'd kind of feel better if we let Zokou look at it first. 'Cause she's going to end up in that wardrobe laughably called a second bedroom and then, boy, is she going to moan."
"You know her. She ain't a moaner."
"She ought to moan about that. I'm still trying to remember why we're hiding her away right now and smuggling her in with the swords and the bows."
"We agreed to that," Radav said uncomfortably. "She agreed to it an' all."
"Er, yeah, but were any of us, you know, right? It's not like we can keep her locked away in the flat the whole time."
"We're breaking her in slowly."
"Breaking her in to what, exactly? Oh yeah, I've remembered. We've not worked that bit out yet. That's why it's got to happen slowly." Yaxi sighed and glanced over her shoulder towards the patiently waiting Mr Delpess. "And we've got the nerve, we've got the cheek to think he's ludicrous."
"Let's just sign the contract or whatever to get this bloody circus started."