Our Little Gods 1: RABATEA, the first World of the Daughters.

Chapter 15.

Sekk, the city that had belonged to three emperors of Rabatea and four kings of Ziom. So often has it been besieged and taken, so often has it been pillaged and burned during the Sorority Wars, that its death has been heralded many times and yet it stands still, the walls rebuilt, the markets thronged. Since the twelve Celerin families have started administering it at the end of the war, they have cleared the ruins of the imperial barracks and built at the heart of the city the fortified borough of the Lozenge. Walled city within a walled city the Lozenge gather in its midst both the political and legal soul of Sekk. Outside its sleek pale walls the ancient boroughs grew, some thrived with elegance and refinement, other festered like a malignant boil permanently on the verge of bursting. The esthetes and gentlefolk of some parts would only rub shoulders with the scoundrels and crooks of the others in the four markets of the seething city which has been stuck between its walls for so long that some parts have boiled over, filling them almost to the brim. At time, splendid in its architectural refinement, it more often than not looks like the constructions have been piled one upon the other in the spur of the moment with a complete disregard for safety or aesthetics. The oldest parts of the Grimmik and most of Fairfields Island are so deep under the accumulation of buildings that they never see the light of day. In the permanent night of these alleys, things are sold that should not be and deals are made that can never be undone. Once lost there you can never be found.

The external boroughs beyond the moats have fared a little better and their population, swollen after the Cataclysm by the sudden flux of refugees has little to do with the old Sekkian families from between the walls. Yet each morning, when the fortified gates open, the bridges fill with the crowd of those hopeful enough to want in and those desperate enough to need out.

Baalbek's yacht had been hauled up river past Fairfield Island and along the tall walls of the Rising side of the city, all the way to the external borough of the Lockeries. Above the last corner of the city walls, rose the fort of the Locks. The impressive and grim looking towers of the former imperial prison now were home to the Celerin cavaliers in charge of policing the city. Their efficient brutality ensured that the borough of the Lock was one of the quietest of the city outside of the Lozenge.

The Ferollian safe house possessed its own private dock where they moored the bright yellow yacht. It was surrounded with a high wall separating it from the busy streets. Baalbek made arrangements for the ship to be kept there until they would be back and released his sailors on pay after cautioning them of the risks of such a city.

One of the aide de camp of the general had been born here, in the borough of Bitwal on the Setting side of the Lozenge inside the walls. Artonis had only been made a man three years ago, his family had left a precarious life in the ancient city for the fairer shores of Feroll when he had been ten years old, but coming back to his ancient turf the young man had felt sentimental enough to indulge the boys with stories of his epic childhood in and out of the seedier parts of town. The consequence of the evocation unfortunately was that they all wanted to explore the parts Limero and Baalbek would have have them avoid.

The negotiation was tensed, threats were made on both sides, doors were banged and voices raised until a fragile agreement was found that turned Artonis in the guide of a troop of teenagers each escorted by one of Baalbek's sergeants with the addition of the Thiriik maid for the protection of Maasil.

At first Grimmik had been a disappointment, the parts closest to the Lozenge fortifications were neat residential avenues where the clerks and civil servants lived. It was proper, tidy and boring, but Artonis took them through the smooth shaded streets all the way to the New Walls. The tall clean cut stone fortification was blandly forbidding almost as if it was daring, even the inhabitants it protected, to attempt scaling it. It had been built five hundred years ago, Artonis had told them one evening aboard the Yacht, around the ruins of the Balà ghetto that used to stand there and cover the ground all the way down to the riverside and the older fortification. They used one of the small covert doors cut into the thickness of the new wall to allow smugglers and tax avoiders to do their business unchallenged by the Lozenge city troops.

Odd was the instantaneous shift in their mood as they filed one after the other inside the small dark tunnel, as if the passage embodied the clear bascule from the light banter and giddy excitement that had been accompanied by Terrey and Farenn playful flirting to the hushed and subdued silent procession that emerged on the shame stained floor of history incarnate.

The dusty streets lined by houses hollowed out by fire so long ago, the empty squares overgrown with weeds and malign trees, the rubble, uncleared obstructing alleys and side streets, the dry fountains and collapsed shops and finally the unkept defensive wall and its mutilated bridge over the river Dazza, all spoke with the unheard voice of the tragedy of how communities of men had failed. In silence, the young and the adults walked light footed, at times whispering to each others, following Artonis closely as he retold the horrors of the massacre of the Balà community of Sekk and how the crime had been so momentous that the authorities in the Lozenge had decided to build fortifications around the bloodied streets rather than clearing them and rebuilding; for fear that the blood soaked foundations would bear the curse of the slaughtered neighbors and friends who had, but the day before, drunk their wine and eaten their food and shared in their hopes and fears for either business or family endeavors.

Some claim that at night, the shades of the people slaughtered wander the streets as they did so long ago when they were alive and that would they encounter a living Sekkian they would rob him of his mind as punishment for disturbing their peace. It was midday when they sneaked out of the New Wall enclosure back into Grimmik and the air felt lighter and the light brighter, they soon realized that they were starving and Artonis took them to a tavern called Nagwar's Head where they took a table on the first floor from where they could see one of the many bridges crossing Dazza to the small riverside town of Meriabridge from which one could cross back into the isle of Targs. Indeed the island had had such a sulfurous reputation since almost the times of the foundation of the Lozenge that the Celerin's had always refused that bridges be built to cross from the city directly onto the isle. It was to be the last leg of their adventure, the great market of Krieb where legend had it an emperor had bought his queen and a Natab lord sold his unworthy sons.

As they wandered the busy streets of the multileveled market place looking very much the little countryside boys they were, as they gaped in shock or confusion at the wares on display, one of them had his mind set on something completely different. Oneg, had fallen in step with the laconic Thiriik maid and was struggling to maintain a conversation to which she participated mostly via monosyllabic answers. But the young man beamed as if he could not have been happier.