Purity of Mind

Chapter 7: The Outlander's Quarter

I managed an entire day in the outlander's quarter before I made up my mind to break into the city.

Chankota wasn't quite out of the desert and, as such, most of the caravan still hadn't transitioned back into a day shift. The caravan was respectably sized and I'd been hoping that I'd be able to get to know more of my fellow travelers as a way to spend the time. Aside from some overly optimistic merchants who'd set up shop in a desperate attempt to sell to people who hated them, there were few people to meet.

The Chankotans themselves certainly weren't friendly. We'd been visited by perhaps a dozen people total, and all of them were either guards or officials of some kind. They were there to intimidate, take bribes disguised as fees, and ruefully arrange transport of some essential items so their town wouldn't starve to death. There was a single translator among them, and he was the only one who spoke to us.

The only reason the translator was on speaking terms with us was that he was getting paid to be: That was literally the first thing I heard him say. He spent quite some time after that going over the rules of the city, nearly all of which were "Don't go anywhere near the city." He described, in far more vivid detail than required, the fate of the last "outlander spy" to try to sneak in. That might have dismayed other people; it just made me angry I'd never met my predecessor, but he'd apparently been well respected in the organization. That they'd not only done away with him but were celebrating that fact grated on me.

Even then, I wouldn't have been tempted to repeat the original Bishop's mistake. He'd been an agent for over a decade longer than I had, he was experienced, and he could probably hide his thoughts better than I could. They'd still caught him. But the question had occurred to me: Why had he gone into the city? Its citizens had proven violent and hateful, but they seemed to leave everyone who stayed in the outlander's quarter alone. What had he known, that he'd forsake its comparative safety?

Even that wasn't enough to convince me to try to break into the city, really, because I'd just get caught the same way he had. But it did make me wonder what had happened to him and - more importantly - his effects. The Queen believed that he'd come back early from his mission because he'd found important information. While the safest way to carry that information would be to simply memorize it, everyone in the organization knew at least a few ciphers in case we needed to write anything down.

Over the course of the day, I struck up a very one-sided friendship with the translator. He tolerated my presence because he was getting paid to (another fact he explicitly told me), and I acted the part of the naive bumpkin that just wanted to talk to the exotic Empire man. I even managed to have my surface thoughts reflect this, since what I actually wanted was information about the city and what happened to those that dare enter it uninvited.

At least he was willing to give plenty of information about the latter: Taunting outsiders with their fates should they transgress seemed to be the only part of his job that he liked. I wondered out loud what happened to all the criminal's stuff. If one of our merchants were to go inside, it seemed they'd be able to take all of his wares without paying. The translator had told me that that was in fact the case - trespasser's property became property of the city, likely to be auctioned off or more likely to be auctioned off to other travelers because nobody in Chankota wanted outsider wares if they could help it. The Sheriff of the town - and that was not the right word, but he didn't care to explain how - was the one who would hold auctions and keep tabs on the property until one could happen. No such auctions were forthcoming, though; they'd either sold the old Bishop's stuff or simply weren't ready to get rid of it.

I decided to bet on the latter. I hung around the translator the rest of the day until his shift was either over or he simply couldn't stand my presence anymore. He left to go back to the city, and I left to find which of our merchants who was still open. I'd need concealing clothing for what I had in mind, preferably a light robe. I also needed a very specific set of clothes that I doubted any one merchant had all of, but I could make do. It'd be dark, after all.