Chapter IV: Making Introductions

We were on that train for another day, though this stretch had substantially less risk of death. The door to my room still hung open, which would have been really annoying if anyone came back to the car where I was staying. There were still dents in the floor and walls as well, bits of shattered wood where Rook had hit home. I stepped in them a couple of times, but mostly learned to avoid it.

I spent most of my time in the forward compartments, Anna and Unity taking shifts to stand near me and look unnecessarily anxious, reading a book and using the ambient sounds of the train like a white noise machine. When night fell yet again, I retreated to the bedroom and suffered through two hours of insomnia. There were no interruptions, though I almost wished there had been.

Waking up on that second day was awful. I was sore, I was tired, and my night had been wracked with nightmares of shattering bone and spilling blood. The only consolation was that, looking out the window, the scenery had changed; gone was the empty prairie, replaced with dense temperate forest. And off in the distance, just barely visible over the canopy, were the shining towers of a city. 

Frantic to do… just about anything, I got dressed and rushed to the front of the train. There were only a couple of people up, including Miss Rook of course. Carefully avoiding her, I made my way to the least-exhausted looking of the servants and asked what the situation was, where we were going, what that city was, etc. 

“Who are… oh, yes. Miss Farrier. Forgive me, I have only just awakened.”

“There’s no need to apologize,” I said, recoiling a bit. “I’m just curious.”

“And I am very tired. Get up at 5:30 in the morning and I’m already assisting with unpacking today’s breakfast.” The servant girl stared out the window, wistfully. “As for your question, my understanding is that in a little over an hour the train will be stopping for the day at Grantval. We’ve more passengers to pick up.”

I grinned, the grin of a woman — man, sorry, I was definitely a man — with an attention disorder who’d been cooped up in a train for nearly two days. Grantval was a city I’d heard about. It is a lot of things; but if you had to distill it down, Grantval is the Bluerose equivalent of New York City and the Bluerose equivalent of Jerusalem, all rolled up into one. The largest city in the country by population, and the center of finance and business, and something of a holy city for Vesselism. Anna would probably lose her mind, at least a little. 

When, about seventy minutes later, the train pulled into the station, I was the first to jump off, notebook in my pocket and entire body nearly shaking with pent-up energy. I dashed off the train and immediately got myself embroiled in the business of being completely lost. 

Now, in some sense, most of the major cities of Bluerose are the same; the mixture of Jaleran brick and Cassandran ribbed-steel in the outer districts, with the cyclopean towers and arched bridges making up the center. But, from what little time I had spent in Amrinval, I could already feel a different tone in Grantval. Even the less built-up business districts around the train station were constantly bustling, the walls pasted over with flamboyant posters advertising businesses and products. There were also people out and about, even in the morning. 

Pilgrims walked the streets in groups of twenty or thirty, visiting various sites which, in huge brass placards, proclaimed to have been visited by Miranda God-Vessel during her time on Selene. That was the one thing that separated Grantval from, say, Chicago on a busy day. The religious aspects were everywhere. Every street corner had a little shrine on it, complete with small bowls of blessing water and an icon of Miranda. As I looked around, I passed more than a few doomsayers, slightly unhinged women in loose, ragged dresses, proclaiming the sinfulness of Bluerose or the danger of Nahajite infiltration. And, of course, if you looked from the right angle, you could always see the huge green stone dome of the Viridian Sepulchre in the distance, though it was still dwarfed by those steel towers. 

After the fourth or fifth time someone tried to drag me into having a conversation, which was the last thing I wanted to do, I realized that it would probably be best if I settled down. I meandered my way to one of the larger town squares, distinguished from the two other squares I’d passed by the fact that there was some kind of ceremonial dance thing going on because there was a holiday. Or something. At this point I had no idea and was too afraid to ask. There I found a cafe with tea that didn’t make me want to throw up and which only cost half a dinar, planted my fat ass on a seat near the window, and set about relaxing.

That plan fell apart about three minutes later when Lady Halflance waltzed in through the doors of the cafe. For a second I tried to make myself look even smaller and hoped that she wouldn’t notice my presence. Then, with a facial expression like a great white shark, she locked in on me, crossed the room in half a dozen steps, and sat down across from me.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, exasperated. “How did you even find me?”

“I’ve been following you for the last hour. Decided we should talk.”

I took a sip of tea. “Okay, revising my question. Why in the hell are you following me?”

“Because I know you. And I know that if I didn’t keep track of you, you’d get lost and it would take hours, and we’d have to waste eight hours looking for you.”

My jaw tightened. “Have some faith in me. I wouldn’t get lost like that.”

Lady Halflance raised one eyebrow. “Point me the direction to the train station, if you would?”

The memory came back to me in an instant, and I knew the direction I’d been walking the whole time. I pointed out the window and a little behind me.

“That’s the Viridian Sepulchre,” said Lady Halflance. “The train is that way.” She pointed over her shoulder, pretty much perpendicular to where I had pointed.

“Ahh,” I said, suddenly feeling warm. “Well. I could have been further off, I guess. Thanks for keeping an eye on me.”

Halflance sighed. “You’re welcome.”

We both settled into our seats. A server came around not long after, nearly knocking my teacup over with the width of her hoop skirt and taking Halflance’s order. Meanwhile, the dancers outside continued their dance. It was a slow, fluid dance, shifting and swaying, reminding me of a ballet. That this was a religious ritual was also clear; all of the women involved were wearing heavy ceremonial robes, pale blue with strips of cloth covering the face, and yet they were barefoot. One person, a girl who couldn’t have been older than sixteen, was standing to the side and singing, though I couldn’t hear the words. 

“What’s all this about, anyway?”

Lady Halflance hadn’t been paying attention to the dance, even though she’d been looking in the same general direction. “Hmm? Oh, the spirit play? It’s… a sort of a retelling of one of the stories of Miranda’s life, albeit in a highly abstract and metaphorical sense.”

“A highly abstract and metaphorical… dance?”

Halflance nodded. “Utterly boring. The sort of thing your mother forces you to sit through. I always preferred the cloud plays.”

I waited for an explanation. “Cloud plays, which are…”

“Similar to spirit plays, except without the metaphor. Sometimes they can even be quite funny; Miranda, you see, was apparently known for her wit as well as her wisdom.”

I nodded, finishing off the last of my tea. For the next minute, my thoughts were mostly consumed by a desire for more tea, as well as annoyance that the waitress wasn’t coming to ask me if I wanted any more. Then I remembered a conversation I’d had with Anna, weeks and weeks earlier.

“Do you worship the Archopolids?” I asked.

Halflance froze for a moment. “What?”

“You aren’t a Vesselite, right?” I said “I heard that your faith worships the Archopolids. It must have been difficult to fight them…”

She leaned back. “And where did you hear that?”

I shrugged. “Anna told me about it. Same conversation where she told me about Vesselism, actually.”

“Which is why you should never listen to someone when they’re talking about someone else’s faith,” Halflance said. Just then, the server arrived with her tea, and I asked for a second cup of mine. Halflance took a sip, then continued, “The Archopolids are nothing more than a cunning arrangement of metal and glass. Those who made the Archopolids might be demigods, depending on whom you ask.”

“So what is your religion about, then?” I said, wishing I had some more tea. 

“Don’t expect me to give a sermon in the middle of a hostile faith’s holy city,” said Lady Halflance, taking a sip of her tea and making me very envious.  “Besides, I was never much of a philosopher. That was more Sarah’s liking.”

“I mean, you have to know a little,” I said. “You don’t just convert for no reason.”

“Religion is complicated,” said Halflance. “There are… levels of being. Related to oneness with the self and ability to flow with the chaos and roughness of the universe.”

“Go on…”

“We… you… engage in contemplation and physical exercise to refine your own… body-soul complex. And the overall, the overall goal is to re-achieve the heights of previous, well…” Halflance paused, head sagging. “I am terrible at explaining this.”

“I noticed.”

Halflance straightened up, and this momentary crack in the stone wall that is her personality slammed shut. Reaching into a side pocket of her coat, she pulled out a small iron pocket watch. “We need to go.”

“What? What are you talking about? My tea hasn’t even arrived yet!”

Halflance glared at me. “While there may be room for sightseeing, this is not a vacation, Emma. We have arranged meetings in the heart of the city. If we leave right away, we probably won’t be late.”

“Does it really matter if we’re late?” I said, looking around. “After all that time spent on the train, I could really use just a touch more relaxation time.”

“Hmph. You did choose to go on this expedition, you know. You were very insistent.”

I pressed my lips together. “Alright, fine. But you have to pay.”

Lady Halflance rifled through her pockets for a moment, then slammed a few dinars down on the table, probably massively overpaying for our drinks. “Let’s go, then.”

We both walked out of the cafe, leaving behind the chance for some excellent tea. I can say with some regret that I never had the chance to have another cup of tea quite that good ever again. Halflance knew the city much better than I did, though the occasional stops to check the names on the street signs told me that she didn’t know it all that well. With businesslike speed we made our way to a cable car station, and from there we crossed half of the city in record time.

The towers of Grantval were eerily similar to the ones in Amrinval, despite how different the towns were that clustered around them. They were made from the same shining steel, with the same grandiose arches and imposing walls, soaring into the sky higher than any building I’d ever seen on Earth. 

There was, though, one difference from the towers in Amrinval. These ones bore scars. Once I started looking more carefully, instead of letting the awe take me, there wasn’t a single one of the towers that didn’t have old wounds. Chunks had been torn out of their sides, huge tears ripped into the metal of their outer walls. A few of the huge arcing bridges that connected the towers had even been destroyed entirely, leaving a pair of jagged stubs sticking out of the sides of the opposing building walls. 

I was suddenly reminded of something I’d read in a history book, back in Halflance manor; Grantval’s size and importance also made it a target. During the Second Secession War, this city had faced more bloodshed than possibly any other city on Selene. We arrived at the bottom of one of the towers, giving me a moment to wait while the huge steel double-doors creaked open. The whole city seemed too busy for one that had been devastated less than two decades earlier. Or maybe I just had no sense of scale. 

The inside of the tower looked, again, much like the ones in Amrinval. Which, in this case, meant that it looked extremely fucking sinister. Though, again, that might just have been me. After all, the last time I’d set foot in one of those towers, I’d been forced into a judicial duel which ended when I accidentally murdered a woman. The color of the inside of the tower, a yellowish sodium color coming from the artificial electric lights that illuminated the chambers and corridors, made me suddenly ill. 

Halflance rushed me through the steel corridors to the elevator, where she gave a perfunctory greeting to the operator girl before snapping at her to hit the control lever already. The elevator doors accordioned shut and the old machine slowly lurched to life. It took a solid minute at least before we reached our destination on the 141st floor. 

The elevator doors opened to a completely different view than the sterile steel that had made up the first floor of the tower. For one thing, it was all decorated in marble, shining, warm marble the color of cooked salmon, lit by candles and oil lamps, giving the whole place a sunset aura. The other difference was that this floor had people in it. In fact, it had a lot of people in it, given that the elevator opened directly into a huge ballroom. In my opinion, this was a bad architectural choice, if only because I nearly had a heart attack when the doors opened. 

Pretty much everyone from the train was there, and a bunch of people who I was sure hadn’t been on the train as well. Sir Margaret was dressed to the nines, conversing with Amina Charcharias. She raised a glass of something orange in acknowledgement of our arrival. Rook was against the far wall, in a position where she could see the entire room, wearing a semi-formal jacket that was obviously struggling to contain her biceps. 

We had hardly stepped out of the elevator before we were practically ambushed by someone I’d never met before. It was a woman about the same age as Lady Halflance with ear-length blonde hair, messily cut but impeccably clean, and a huge pair of thick glasses over her big green eyes. She was dressed a bit more casually than seemed to be the median for the room, in a beige outdoorsy outfit with vest and long pants, the type of thing that you expect on a fox hunting trip. 

“I must apologize for my lateness, my ward has been —”

The new person interrupted Lady Halflance, apparently not caring about her excuses. Instead, she clapped her hands together and loudly said, “Halflance! You’re perfectly on time, no need to worry. It’s good to see you, you old hound, how has it been?”

Halflance sighed. “Much as usual, I would think. Emma, this is Dr. Meredith Ironseed. Dr. Ironseed, this is Emma Farrier, my ward.”

Ironseed looked at me curiously, then back to Halflance, then back to me. “A ward? I didn’t think you were much for charity, Halflance!”

“It was my wife’s idea,” she responded. “Though I did agree to it. You see, we found this poor thing about two months ago, suffering from a brain fever, and took her in.”

Oh yeah, the brain fever. It was bullshit, of course; a dumb little story that the Halflances used to explain why I didn’t have any memories of living on Selene before my arrival. The whole charade was endlessly annoying, but it was also necessary to avoid having to explain things constantly to everyone I met. At least we had stopped telling people that my memories of Earth were a bizarre hallucination.

Ironseed furrowed her brow, frowning with concern. “Eugh, brain fever. It’s a terrible disease, very unpleasant. You know, your wife and I were just talking about a scientist from Zander who’s trying to cure brain fevers with a sort of a saline serum, derived from salts near the Great Waste.”

“Fascinating,” said Lady Halflance, sounding about as far from fascinated as it is possible for a person to be.

“I’m not exactly convinced that these plans are going to go anywhere,” Ironseed continued, “but you never really know. Besides, it’s nice to have something to talk about.”

“Hold on,” I said. “How would saline cure a brain fever, exactly?”

Ironseed froze for a second, as if she hadn’t been expecting me to say anything. “It isn’t random salt, it’s a very specific compound. We don’t fully know its effects, yet, but my understanding is that it cools down the body temperature when consumed.”

I shook my head. “That doesn’t make any sense. The fever isn’t what causes the damage, the fever is just a side effect. The real problem is an infection in your brain, so cooling isn’t going to do anything unless you plan on refrigerating your patient.”

“And that’s exactly why I don’t think it’ll work. Say, Halflance, you have quite an intelligent ward here!” Ironseed said with a cocky grin.

Halflance wasn’t paying attention to Ironseed, instead scanning the room. She was looking for someone, I could tell. 

“Of course, we might both be wrong,” Ironseed continued. “I am not that kind of doctor, and I don’t imagine you are either.”

“Then what kind of doctor are you?”

“Archaeology!” Ironseed announced, with a wave of her hand. “With a minor in anthropology. I study all the many cultures of Selene, be they living or dead.”

That actually sounded incredibly interesting, and I was about to express that when Halflance grabbed me by the shoulder and pulled me close to her. I nearly tripped over, but before I could collect myself enough to ask what was going on, another person was talking to me. 

“Halflance,” she said, as if that word were a curse. “I’m glad to see that you have deigned to make an appearance. I was concerned that you would be too busy getting to know Grantval’s streetwalker population to speak to me.”

She was clutching a glass of wine like a weapon, dressed all in black to a degree that even Halflance would consider taking it too far. Her jet black hair was perfectly shiny and clean, cut into an iron-lady bob to match the pure marble-white of her skin. She was tall, though with how tiny I am, “tall” is a relative term, and bone-thin. She surveyed the scene with an impersonal gaze, stopping at each woman involved to give them a judgmental glance. 

“Go to hell yourself, Burnardor,” responded Halflance. 

“Me? To hell? Lady Halflance, I am not the polygamist heretic here. The sin of lust is still strong within you, from the look of it…” she said, looking to me.

I folded my arms. “Excuse me, but who the fuck are you?”

Burnardor grimaced, exposing her polished pearly fangs. “I could ask the same of you, girl.”

“I’m twenty-four!” I snapped. 

Halflance gave me a quick look of shut-up-or-so-help-me, then said, in the calmest tone possible, “Emma, this is Lady Genesis Burnardor. She is my equal and opposite in the majority party. Burnardor, this is my ward, Emma Farrier. I’m sure you’ve heard about her through the grapevine.”

Burnardor raised an eyebrow in my general direction. “Ward? I didn’t know that’s what they were calling it nowadays. At least you could be open about it and call her a cour—”

Ironseed stepped in between the two of us. This was a good thing, because I was about ready to start punching Burnardor, pacifism be damned. “You know, it’s really a wonderful thing, seeing the sheer variety of opinions that are going to be represented on this expedition. Truly this is a triumph of cooperation. A show of the unity of the Bluerose state.”

Burnardor and Halflance slackened, if only a little bit. If nothing else, they seemed more likely to continue their feud with snide comments and veiled insults rather than telling each other to go to hell. “Thank you, Dr. Ironseed,” said Halflance. “Your contribution to this expedition is greatly valued.”

Burnardor nodded. “Indeed. I only wish that I had been on the subcommittee responsible for this… allowance.”

“So Dr. Ironseed is going with us?” I asked. “I thought this was a diplomatic mission?”

“It is,” said Burnardor and Halflance, perfectly in unison. They both realized that they’d spoken at the same time and proceeded to glare at one another.

“That I am, that I am,” Ironseed said with a shrug. “The Urcos plateau is typically very difficult to reach due to the isolationism of the Durkahni people who inhabit it. I just had to come with you all on this once in a lifetime opportunity.”

“A once in a lifetime opportunity to, what, exactly?” asked Burnardor.  “Experience the smell of goat? I’m not certain what value there is in that pitiful thing the Durkahni’s call a culture.”

Dr. Ironseed’s jaw clenched slightly, but she had more patience for Burnardor than Halflance or I did. “I could certainly tell you what there is to be gained, though I’m afraid it might bore you. Perhaps we could go take for ourselves another glass of wine, and I could tell you about the latest discoveries from the Grantval library?”

“Very well.” Burnardor gave Halflance one last hateful glance, then returned to Ironseed with a smile. “Educate me.”

“And I shall take my ward to the brunch table. For brunch. Be seeing you at the sending-off, Genesis.”

Burnardor didn’t respond as she left.

Halflance turned to the brunch table in the back of the room and started walking, forcing me to catch up to her. 

“I could see you going for the hilt of your saber,” I said, as quietly as possible. “How many times have you and Burnardor dueled?”

“Fourteen,” hissed Halflance. “We’re tied seven to seven. Let’s have brunch.”

SaffronDragon

For those of you who don't know, my normal schedule when uploading chapters is to do so once every other week. For Selene, this has always been on Thursdays, which I will continue to do for Snows. If I have a good period writing and have an extra chapter, I might release one on the Thursday in between. With that out of the way, thank you all so much for reading the chapter, and I hope you all enjoyed it! Remember to favorite, leave comments, leave a rating or a review if you haven’t already, because those are the things that motivate me to keep writing more and keep writing well! If you want to support the author, read several chapters ahead in all of my stories, as well as gain access to a discord community where you can speak to me personally and read several exclusive short stories, subscribe to my Patreon at patreon.com/saffrondragon