The dead are coming to Kingsbane.
Kingsbane? It isn't an ugly city, but it's not a beautiful one either. If you had to rate it on a scale of one to ten, you'd probably waver for a while and then eventually settle on a seven.
Seven-ish.
Even so, it'll be a shame to see the Returned King and his army of the dead clamber over its walls, rip down the black-and-white flag, and tear it to dust.
While refugees from Queen's Country flood into the city for protection and the locals make their homes dead-proof, you have decided to go for a walk. If the defences fail it won't matter what you do, so you might as well take the chance to say goodbye to the city you've made your home.
The sun is up and it's another hot day, with a bit of the mugginess in the air that suggests there might be rain later. [[Where do your feet take you?]]
To the churches of mid-sized gods and the ecumenical council of good-aligned deities in the [[The Temple Fifth]]?
To the docklands of [[Oddington]] and the Street of Sundry Establishments, where you can listen in on the conversations of cityfolk?
To [[The Palace Fifth]], to boggle at the buildings and perhaps brush shoulders with nobility?
Or to the [[markets]], for a spot of shopping?
Oddington Fifth is not a nice-smelling district at the best of times. Even people who live there call it 'Odourton', which says something about the typical Kingsbane citizen's sense of civic pride.
There's the fishy stink that comes off Boundary Street, the reek of cooking traitors from Burnam Hill, the smells of booze, desperation, and for some reason cheese that permeate [[the Street of Sundry Establishments]], the smell of money that wafts down from [[Bastard Hill]] -- but there is also a new smell today, a rank mix of [[river mud and death]].
When Market Fifth was walled off after the incident, the Royal Exchange was opened in response -- an open-air marketplace in the middle of Whitecliff Square.
You step to one side as a camelrider passes, her beast spitting a luxurious wad of phlegm at your feet.
The market stalls of the Royal Exchange are often busy but today they are especially hectic, with shoppers hurrying about in a frenzy. Admittedly, it's the same kind of frenzy that happens around any holiday when everyone races to stock up on milk, but today people are stocking up in preparation for the siege. Prices are as high as the demand.
You push your way through the sweaty hug of people moving from one row of stalls to the next, passing drapers selling ready-made clothes and starch to keep ruffs fashionably buoyant. Food stalls hawk mermaid caviar and griffon pie, while a pastry-seller with a tray of goods strapped to his waist extols the virtues of his beef pies. Based on the smell their meat content is only slightly less mythical.
A couple dressed in the true black of wealth shoulder past you, and you realise just how many aristos are in the Exchange today. Normally it's a place for commoners to shop but the distinct expensive shade of black made from blending every dye in the store is all around you, and they're haggling as hard as anyone. The siege will come to rich and poor alike, you suppose.
Suddenly the muggy heat is broken by a smither of rain, and you rush to the shelter of an overhang outside the library that edges Whitecliff Square. Everyone flees and the stall-owners rush to cover their stock. As you lean against the wall you see expensive dye washed right off the cloth flowing into the gutters and mingling with the mess.
Soon the rain passes and the muggy heat of Kingsbane before a shower is replaced by the muggy heat of Kingsbane after a shower.
From here you can return to [[where you began->Where do your feet take you?]], or push on to [[Boatbridge]].
Kingsbane has plenty of pubs and the kind of gentlemen's clubs no gentleman would enter, and most of them are on the Street of Sundry Establishments. It's a street that comes to life on the weekend and then spends most of the week being scrubbed clean of broken glass and vomit.
The street is quiet today, however, with most sundry establishments closed in preparation for the siege. Even the High Queen's Head is shut, and the publican -- a balding man who takes more pride in his trouser-straps than his business -- is nailing shut the grimy windows.
He sees you approach.
"Sorry I can't offer you a final drink before closing. When them zombies come they'll have been in the dirt for years and I reckon they'll be thirsty. Everyone's afraid of being et, but I reckon they'll want a drink to wash us down with. I'm sealing this place up proper."
You aren't missing much. Though it used to be a nice place under its former owners, the High Queen's Head now mostly sells watered wine and other refreshments of a healthful nature -- since the physicians proved water to be bad for the humours when drunk on its own and milk suitable only for babies, clearly alcohol is the safest of substances. A kind of medicine, really.
"The thirsty dead won't get at my //cab sav//," the publican says, nailing in another nail.
From here you can return to greater [[Oddington]], cross [[Boatbridge]] to the other half of the city, or head [[somewhere else->Where do your feet take you?]] on this side of the river.
The River Od has been diverted to fill a defensive moat around the walls, but when the water went away every piece of garbage at the bottom of the river was revealed. Among the junk there were bodies.
Two bulls -- members of the city watch, not actual male cows -- are wading through the grey river mud. The younger of the two awkwardly lugs a pole with a watch-lamp on the end while writing down the details of the dead and slinging their carcasses in a cart.
Somebody has weighted and dumped a lot of bodies off the Boundary Docks over the years; probably one of the dockside gangs. This patch is as crowded as the tenements. Several unsolved cases are about to be tidied up and a few new ones opened.
You sit down on the pier, close enough to hear them but not so close that the smell overwhelms you.
The older bull kicks at some bones in the mud. "So that's what happened to Willy the Hook," he says.
"How can you tell who it is, Sergeant?" asks the younger.
The sergeant prods at an arm bone that ends not in a hand, but in a large and rusty docker's hook. "That," he says. "Write him down and chuck him in. And Terry the Trivet here, too."
"What’s a trivet, Sarge?"
The sergeant uses his muddy boot to prod at another arm that ends with a utensil instead of a hand.
"It holds your kettle over the flame when you're boiling it. Anyone can gut you with a hook, see. Using a trivet, that showed Terry had class. Not enough class to keep him alive, though."
After Terry the Trivet is dumped in the cart they move on and so do you.
From here you can return to greater [[Oddington]], cross [[Boatbridge]] to the other half of the city, or head [[somewhere else->Where do your feet take you?]] on this side of the river.
The streets of Oddington rise in both angle and property values. As you walk uphill the taverns gave way to tavernas, the pie shops to cafes, the bakeries to patisseries, and the hovels to houses. The streets widen and gain gutters to funnel the filth away and the cobblestones smooth over and shine. The odours become aromas.
The name is slangy but no one likes to use the official one, which is Posh Bastard Hill. Kingsbane has been blessed with a succession of literal-minded town planners over the years, which is why it has Wide Street, Narrow Street, Long Street, Short Street, the Street of Sundry Establishments, and Grabwhore Lane. Over the years Posh Bastard Hill became plain Bastard Hill just like Burn 'Em All Hill became Burnam Hill.
(Grabwhore Lane became Pleasant Street in a move that owed less to linguistic drift and more to an aggrieved resident with a paintbrush and a sense of determination.)
Eventually you come to Satisfaction House, a massive gothic fantasy with gables all the way to buggery and back, and stone grotesques leering from every windowledge. It has the kind of opulent ugliness that obscene amounts of money can buy.
The gates are open and streams of servants ferry bags, boxes, and crates from wagons parked in the street up to the house. Two private guards block the gate -- their helmets shining, their tabards a rich shade of black, and extravagant pistols hanging at their sides.
As a wave of servants stream past there is an opportunity for you to join them and sneak into the house. Do you enter [[Satisfaction House]]? Or retrace your steps and return to greater [[Oddington]]?
Joining the stream of servants, you sneak through the front doors into a check-floored expanse bigger than any house you have ever lived in. And this is only the entrance.
The stream splits and flows around tables and filigreed marble columns. At one table, too wide to spit across, they stop and add boxes and crates to piles of boxes and crates. A man in a dark dressing gown with a curled moustache is opening some of the boxes and showing off their contents to his guests.
"Brandy. Pinot noir. Chocolate so sweet you'll stop considering people who swear it's better than sex to be the dullest of nincompoops. Porpoise pies. Caviar harvested from the sirens themselves by handsome sailors made deaf for just such a purpose, or at least that's what it says on the tin. More brandy, because you can never have too much of the good stuff. Miscellaneous sweetmeats, treats and boozery to last a mansion full of gloriously fat lords and ladies the full length of a siege.
"They don’t call it Satisfaction House for nothing, you know. We intend to wait out the siege in style with the doors locked and the windows barred and the musicians playing up a storm to drown out the screams of the poor people. Oh dear, I haven’t offended you, have I?" he says in the oozing tones of someone who dearly hopes he has.
A wave of servants breaks upon the shore and washes back, and you join them in leaving Satisfaction House. Do you return to greater [[Oddington]], push on over [[Boatbridge]] to the other half of Kingsbane, or go [[somewhere else->Where do your feet take you?]] on this side of the river?
Within the sprawling gardens of natural science a forest grows where the treetrunks are the stalks of gigantic flowers. A canopy of white petals filters the sun and as you walk along the forest floor a breeze disrupts a haze of pollen. Each of the slowly descending grains is the size of your hand.
Above you hear the buzzing of monstrous bees and hurry onwards to the Gardens Of Delight.
In this orchard the trees are far more ordinary, though their fruit is not. The flying fruit grows wings as it ripens and then takes to the air, landing and seeding far from its original home and avoiding the need for birds or other animals entirely.
You snatch a firm flying peach out of the air as it passes and bite into it. The tart juice fills your mouth as the soft feathers beat frantically against your cheeks.
From here you can cross over to the [[The Gardens Of Physic]] or leave the gardens for [[The Children's Fifth]]. Alternatively, you can push past the city walls into [[Liberty Valley]].
The Children's Fifth is one enclave of the city where you cannot go, but you climb the stairs to the top of the wall surrounding it and walk its edge anyway. Only children are allowed in the Children's Fifth.
The story goes that a magician living in what was then the Market Fifth worked an enchantment to protect his children's innocence, but worked it a little too well. Children within the area stopped ageing at all, though adults carried on growing older. When the effect was eventually discovered the magician was executed, but unusually the enchantment persisted beyond his death and cannot be undone.
Fearing other side effects many left the area, and the remaining inhabitants were paid to move away by the city as the wall was erected around it. But not everyone left -- when the enclave's orphanage was closed some of the orphans escaped, including the magician's children.
This gang of urchins took over, establishing a fiefdom and declaring, via scrawls graffitied atop the wall, that any child who dared climb it would be welcome. Adults, however, would be killed on sight.
A patrol sent into the Fifth to root out the rebels found the streets rigged with traps that drenched them in dung and oil, and were then surrounded by children with matches. They escaped with a message -- that the children's ambassador was willing to negotiate.
Not interested in declaring war on 10-year-olds, Queen Juliet met with the ambassador. Precisely what was discussed is unknown, but terms were agreed to and a peace negotiated. The ambassador is the only child who ever leaves the district, and even he only steps beyond the wall to trade very briefly, lest puberty occur in the periods when time is allowed to affect him.
From the wall you see the shadowed and rundown streets of the Fifth. Mango trees grow out of the cobbles and street-turkey nests dominate the rooftops. In the distance, you think you hear a nursery rhyme being chanted, but you can't be sure.
From here you can walk to [[The Gardens Of Delight]] or [[The Gardens Of Physic]], or to [[Liberty Valley]], beyond the city's walls.
Pipio, strutting lord of pigeons, is worshipped by an unpopular priesthood in a temple loft built on high stilts. The loft itself is a large cage within which the priests tend to the nests of their charges. They train pigeons to serve as messengers-for-hire, which is the main reason Pipio's unkempt priests are tolerated, though it creates rivalry with the orphan messengers of the Calls.
Kingsbane's pigeons are infamous for the acidity of their droppings, which have eaten away at the rooftops of many of its buildings. Falconers are often hired to drive away the birds by those who can afford them, but they rarely let their charges kill the pigeons. Instead, they call their falcons back from the hunt with tasty scraps of street-turkey. The falconer's guild have a deal going with Pipio's priests that is mutually beneficial. Without the pigeons they'd be out of work.
The city's tanners are the only other citizens who appreciate Pipio, as pigeon crap's acidity is perfect for tanning hides and gives Kingsbane leather its famous softness.
Not in the mood to climb the swaying rope ladder that leads into a cage full of cooing pigeons and priests in filthy robes, you look up into the bustling hive of activity from below. A dribble of pigeon poop tumbles to the ground beside you, sizzling on the stone.
From here you can explore the rest of [[The Temple Fifth]], retrace your steps to [[where you began->Where do your feet take you?]] or push on to [[Boatbridge]] and the other half of Kingsbane.
"Technically, it's a ship," Kingsbane's boors always say.
Kingsbane is a short enough distance from the coast that the River Od is deep enough for oceangoing vessels. The HMS Wet Rat found the River Od deep enough for a galleon of her stature but unfortunately not as accomodating in width. Upon turning to leave she became irrevocably wedged between Tank Street and Library Point. The ship's captain blamed the city for insufficiently signposting the narrowing river and her legalists won the case, demanding that officials pay her the cost of the ship.
They did so gladly, realising it would be cheaper than building another bridge. Removing most of the lower section of the ship's hull and fashioning the rest into attractive arches, they created Boatbridge.
The ship's timbers creak under your feet as you step off the ramp that takes you from street-level up to her deck. The stalls are closed today but normally you can buy a broadsheet on the poop deck and a decent pastry at a stall that hangs from the mizzenmast.
Looking over the side you see only dry mud, the diverted River Od now filling the city moat. Normally at this point where the river narrows it would flow quickly, speeding up so much that young bloods ride kayaks through the Boatbridge arches at high speed. Today you seen only dark mud and the fin of what might be a dead rivershark.
Where to now?
To [[The Gardens Of Delight]] or [[The Gardens Of Physic]]? Or to [[The Children's Fifth]], where adults are not allowed?
The rule of City Law extends to the walls and no further. Beyond them only rules of State Law apply. Hovels and ramshacks and fancy illegalities are clustered against the wall in Liberty Valley. Gunsmiths, gambling dens, theatre houses, music halls, tanneries -- any distasteful trade can operate free from restrictions here.
One of Kingsbane’s overpriced camelcarriage drivers takes your drachmas and drives you through the gate and into the Liberties. You pass a soap-and-glue factory that stinks of animal fat and bones being rendered down in vats, a theatre, and a prison. It is all very exciting and smelly.
The camelcarriage lets you out at a popular spot on the very edge of town. From here you have two choices, which is the smallest number you can have while still having any choice at all. You can visit [[the Cemetery]] or [[Righty's New-Fashioned Music Hall]].
The Temple Fifth is home to many mid-sized gods. The nicer windlords and animal gods all have homes here, and the streets around them are full of stalls where theurgists hawk holy trinkets.
It's a busy time in the Temple Fifth. With fear gripping the city many turn to the gods for help, and you see a theurgist doing a brisk trade in cravats supposedly blessed to protect against the teeth of the dead. Refugee families from Queen's Country are filing into the monastery of Spoleto, god of finding things that are lost, while armoured soldiers of the God Squad, anonymous behind their white masks, keep things orderly.
You overhear a worried refugee heading into the monastery say, "If they run out of room here, I hear they can put us up in Jaggard's temple."
"The spider god?" another replies. "She eats people!"
"Don't be ridiculous," says the first. "She just lays her eggs in them."
You decide to skip Jaggard's temple. Which of the others would you like to visit?
[[The Pigeon God's Temple]]?
[[The Scaled Lady's Temple]]?
You walk up stone stairs and through the fanged mouth of Lacerta, goddess of serpents and justice. It's cold and quiet in her temple, a place of repose dedicated to the goddess who expended so much effort creating the dragons that she's been asleep ever since. Her priests in shimmering robes ignore you as they tend to their sleeping princesses.
Lining the high-ceilinged central hall are glass sarcophagi in which noble women with conical hats stand frozen. Once upon a time princes would have rescued princesses from dragons, or at least that's how the stories go. Now princesses are available for the cost of an endowment to Lacerta's priesthood, which wakes them surely as a kiss. Where they find all these comatose noble ladies is secret holy business.
You pass to the end of the hall where an ancient frieze dominates the wall, depicting Lacerta coiled around the mountains in her slumber. Beneath her closed eyes, caricatures of sinners steal and lie and murder and disrespect their elders. It seems to say, "Of course the world's unfair. The goddess of justice is asleep."
From here you can explore the rest of [[The Temple Fifth]], retrace your steps to [[where you began->Where do your feet take you?]] or push on to [[Boatbridge]] and the other half of Kingsbane.
The sun shines down with incongruous brightness on the tombstones spilling out of this cemetery's hills.
Robed priests and theurgists walk said hills, waving talismans and reciting blessings over the graves. A gravedigger leans on her shovel, smoking a thin cigarillo. "Best to leave them to it," she says.
"They're doing rites of internment. Supposed to keep the dead in their holes where they belong so they don't rise up to join their mates when they arrive. Don't know if it works, but fingers crossed."
You hope that it does. It would be nice if the dead army wasn't joined by your grandparents, or anybody else's.
"Thing is though, there's a lot of bodies aren't buried here. There's an atheist's cemetery down the road, and then there's all the bodies in people's homes."
Wait. How many dead bodies are there in people's homes?
"Lot of folks worry about anatomists digging up granny to practise on, so they keep her in the front room for a week before they bury her. If she's a bit rotten already the surgeons won't want her, see? But she sure deso stink when she finally gets here."
The gravedigger drops her cigarillo on the grass and twists it dead with her shoe. "Anyway, back to work."
The hills of this cemetery have have grown taller over the years as the dirt around them fills with bodies, till the shrine at its centre looks like it's sinking into the earth. There are a lot of dead people beneath a city of this size, of any size, and the thought of them coming back is an unsettling one. But if they do come back, will they really want to rend flesh and gnaw bones? Or will they just want one last drink at the pub and another chance to complain about how everything has changed from the way it used to be when they were young?
You hope for the latter as you leave the cemetery and head for home.
There are enough hills in Kingsbane for the old joke about it being uphill both ways to basically be true. Palace Fifth sits on a rare patch of flat ground, though you still have to walk uphill both ways to get there.
While the inner palace is inaccessible to the public, the outer court is open to all, so that its pomp and show is visible to the common folk who might be impressed into subservience by it.
You walk through an open gate and into a courtyard ringed by buildings covered with expensive glass, more window than wall. Unlike the houses of the lesser gentry the glass goes all the way round, rather than being replaced by cheap shutters round the back where passersby won't notice.
A fountain decorated with statues of mermaids splashes and sprays where a statue of the King once stood.
Soldiers practise in the courtyard. Units of country militia in mismatched helmets drill with their spears while a heavily armoured troop of the God Squad in white masks stomps past. Drums beat, and the ceremonial changing of the guard begins.
A fresh set of the Queen's Guard assemble in their black-and-white uniforms, feathers in their helms and shields on their backs, and their captain steps forward in time with the drumbeats. The captain of the unit being replaced stands alone, facing her. As the drums stop, they present the scrolls bearing their password with a theatrical flourish. All being well, the replacements split and spiral off to take their positions.
You realise that someone has been standing at a high window of one of the buildings edging the courtyard to watch this ceremony, just like you have. She wears an aristo dress, with artful slashes in it to show another equally expensive dress worn underneath. Even their clothes have windows.
She twitches the curtain back, and you move on.
From here you can return to [[where you began->Where do your feet take you?]], or push on to [[Boatbridge]] and the other half of Kingsbane.
Normally the Righty's crowd don't show till after dark, like vampires -- vampires who drink apple-flavoured spirits and cold beer. Today is different. Today is a day for celebration, for raising a glass and saying "tomorrow we may die" only this time meaning it.
You swing open the door and music washes over you from a consort of fiddlers and pipers on the stage at the far end of the room. A singer with a glass in his hand stamps solid boots in time with the music, then finishes his drink, smashes it on the floor and strikes a defiant pose at the climax. The dancers applaud.
To your right is a bar, crowded with drinkers and harried servers. To your left are tables, also crowded with drinkers. You push through the bustle, your feet sticking to the floor, as the musicians strike up another song.
Underneath a camel head mounted on the wall, stairs lead up to a balcony where things are quieter. People lean against the railing to look down at the dancers and players, or kiss in a corner. Behind them a door you discovered on a previous visit leads to an even more secluded spot.
A smaller bar decorated in a nautical theme is tucked away here, several drinkers in its booths and a bartender performing feats of mixomancy beneath a wooden sailing ship. The walls are decorated with paintings of seascapes, creatures of the deep, mermaids and pirates, as well as a ship's wheel and a collection of seashells someone thought pretty.
The muffled sound of music and clapping in time buzzes up through the floor and into your feet, but the only other sounds in here are clinking cups, quiet conversations, and the tiny toy cannon on the ship firing a volley every 15 minutes on the dot.
As cannonfire smoke drifts across the room you count the drachmas in your pocket and think about a drink. The Queen's face looks out from the coins and you wonder what she and the people who run the city are doing right now to prepare. It's an idle thought. Today will be a day for enjoyment and life, and the problems of tomorrow, whether hangovers or armies of the dead, can wait their turn.
The Gardens Of Physic are less showy than the Gardens Of Delight, their purpose purely practical. A dirt path leads you through a copse of tea trees, and you smell the sharp, acrid oil they secrete, which has a variety of medicinal uses. Spiny leafed aloe vera plants huddle at their bases. White willows grow on the edge of a marsh, their bark showing scars from where herbalists and headache-sufferers have peeled it away.
The raised dirt path leads on through the marsh, and the breathing-tube roots of mangrove trees stick out of the mud and water alongside it. They whisper secrets if you lean down close enough, but unfortunately only the kind of secrets trees know, which are mostly rubbish ones.
Further in it gets swampier, and there are marigold flowers and milk thistles. Finally, at the humid and close-aired end of the garden, you find the marsh-mallows. As you lean down to pick one of the sweet white fruits hanging among the pale flowers, a mangrove speaks up. "Change is not the same as death," it whispers, putting you off your treat somewhat.
From here you can cross over to the [[The Gardens Of Delight]] or leave the gardens for [[The Children's Fifth]]. Alternatively, you can push past the city walls into [[Liberty Valley]].