There is no night in the Everburning City. There can never be.
Night meant your home was safe enough to let you rest. That you had security enough to set aside the vigil and trust that the world would survive without you for a night. That your community, your world, was safe enough that it could be left alone.
That if you chose to sleep, no one would come with metal-plated gloves to pound on your door.
"Stop trying to break your hand! I'm on my way!" Tabitha a'Loria called out, grating her teeth as she wiped her hair, and a little ink from her face. In front of her, on her desk, a sketch of her newest project was badly smeared from what was likely her face.
She considered, for just a moment, making whoever it was on the other side of her apartment door wait.
She unlatched the heavy metal door, and yanked it open. She looked down, and saw a wide-eyed teenager in a soldier's uniform standing at attention, with his fist over his chest. "Madam Crafter. Are you Tabitha a'Loria?" He asked, stuttering a little when he reached her last name.
Despite being inside for most of the day, Tabitha remembered she was still wearing her rust-red Crafter's coat. While the cut and style was the choice of each Crafter who earned one, the colour was uniform, and easily recognized by every citizen of the City.
"I am." She answered, simply. In addition to his uniform, she noticed the young soldier wore an arm band around his left arm, just above the elbow. The band marked him as a military courier; charged with delivering messages of varying degrees of urgency. The darker the colour, the more urgent the message.
Brown. Tabitha cringed. The boy was about to ruin her evening.
"You've been summoned to the Foundry, ma'am. A tram-line has been closed off to assist your haste."
She almost, out of reflex, demanded more information. Summoning a Crafter in the dead of night was not something anyone, not even the Bureau Chiefs or the Lord Captain, did lightly. If this was at all frivolous, she might light someone on fire.
But it wouldn't be frivolous. Abyss below, she wished it would be.
"Lead on." She said, as she stepped through the heavy door and turned to shut it.
The boy lead her at a stuttering jog, and looked back frequently as if he wanted her to hurry. She scowled at him as she started down a flight of stairs, and kept her pace to a brisk walk. She was not willing to run to this summons.
The messenger boy might see it as callous indifference. But whatever was waiting for her in the dead of night, she did not want to arrive tired.
"Where are we headed?" She asked, as they exited the building she lived in. Thirty-seven stories tall, each unit a little larger than most citizens were allotted, and deep in the heart of Central. The small difference in size was a sign of formidable status in the City,
"A cold-stone production facility in the Foundry, ma'am. An Evaluator will meet us at Withering Evergreen station." He recited from memory.
"Smoke and ash." She cursed, gritting her teeth.
"Ma'am?"
"Has anyone else been summoned?"
"I don't know, ma'am. We received the order by telegraph." The boy explained.
"So you have no idea what you're sending me into." Tabitha said, and held up her hand to stop the fool boy from mistaking that as a question. She wasn't going to learn anything more from him, and was too distracted to offer him polite small-talk.
It was only a ten minute walk, but the soldiers attending the station were waiting with crossed arms, stony faces, and an officer who looked like she had recently been shouting. "Reeves! Quickly does not mean stop for lunch. What in the flaming abyss took you so long?" The woman shouted, clearly annoyed.
Tabitha smirked; part of her liked seeing the messenger suffer for having ruined her day. But after a moment she suspected that this officer was going to assume she could order a Crafter around, and decided to stop that before it started,
"He didn't dictate our pace." Tabitha said, and even to her, her voice sounded quiet in the wake of the Captain's shouting. But it was heard, and every soldier turned to her.
"He should have, civilian. Brown isn't used casually." The Captain hissed, her left hand resting on the hilt of her sword, to swing the pommel into prominence. It wasn't necessary; Tabitha could feel the heat-devouring sword at the soldier's belt, but the gesture was telling.
New Captain. Eager to assert her authority, and cement her command over her troops. Proving able to reprimand a Crafter would certainly prove her mettle in the eyes of her soldiers.
Pity.
"Civilian?" Tabitha asked, quietly, as she extended her will.
Awareness flooded her suddenly expanded mind. The nearby street lamps, the Salamander rounds in the soldiers' guns, the fire distribution pipe a hundred yards beneath her feet were now hers. She could see through the street lamps, feel the heartbeats of the soldiers from the fire trapped in their ammo, and hear the distant roar of the Spire itself from the pipe channeling its fires.
A burst of hot air hit the soldiers, and all of them instinctively moved to cover, and away from their Captain, who was now clutching the hilt of her sword and stepping backwards.
"If you plan on using that, Captain, you're walking the wrong way." Tabitha said, scorn and malice turning her speech into a harsh rasp. She could see the Captain's hand shaking on the hilt, and idly wondered if the fool woman would be able to even draw it.
She smirked, turned away, and started walking towards the tram.
"Reeves!" Tabitha said, her shout punctuated by the street lamps flaring up for a moment.
"Madam?" Came the timid question from the messenger.
"With me." She said, as she started up the short flight of stairs.
People are often spiteful. The Captain, unable to draw any satisfactory revenge for the humiliation she just experienced, might take it out on the messenger. The poor boy was polite, at least, and didn't deserve what would likely head his way if she left him to the Captain's vindictiveness. But if he didn't have the sense to follow her now, she wasn't lifting another finger to help him.
"Aye, ma'am." He replied, falling into step just behind her.
Smart boy.
The train was impeccably clean, it's metal seats and glass windows shimmered in the firelight. Tabitha realized, as she stepped through the open doors and sat down, that it had likely been cleaned within the last hour. Maintenance crews were thorough about keeping the trams pristine, especially the ones their bosses would ride the next day.
A nervous looking, middle-aged woman was waiting at the end of the car, and nodded politely as Tabitha caught her gaze.
"We're it, ma'am." The messenger, Reeves, said to the conductor, who smiled at the young boy before shutting the tram doors.
"We're twenty-five minutes from Withering Evergreen station, Madam Crafter." The conductor announced, and as Tabitha's eyes widened at the news, added "it's a much shorter trip when you've been told you'll be sacked if there's anything left in the reservoirs when we arrive."
Tabitha smiled appreciatively. "Thank you. And tell them I topped off the reservoirs, if anyone threatens your job."
"Thank you, Madam Crafter. But I'm still trying to get you there as fast as I can. I'm gong to empty at least a couple of them." The conductor replied.
Tabitha smiled. "You misunderstand me. I've already topped them up, and will continue to do so. You won't even need to change them."
"You can do that? From here?" The conductor asked, surprised. It was likely she dealt with Crafters before now, but only to fill reservoirs and repair broken welds. Very few people in the City ever witnessed what a Crafter was really capable of.
"I could do it from my apartment. But we should be going." Tabitha said, as she sat down. The messenger boy took a seat a few spots away from her, and seemed content to pretend the floor was an interesting sight.
The conductor nodded, a deeper nod that was halfway to a bow, and ducked through the doorway to the engine room. It only took a moments for the conductor to get the tram into motion, lurching its way into a steady pace.
She fixed her gaze on the messenger for a moment, thinking. The boy was a trusted military courier, which was a post usually given to the more promising recruits in the army. For the army, promising usually meant that he was good at paying attention, and only needed to be instructed once.
She might be testing that theory, soon. "Do you have a first name, Mister Reeves?"
"Harold, ma'am. Recruit Harold Reeves. I only enlisted a couple of months ago."
"Someone thinks highly of you, if you're running messages with a brown arm band." Tabitha replied. She smiled, and explained "I may need someone with a level head who will take this situation seriously. Have you figured out why I've been summoned?"
"No, ma'am." Harold replied.
"There aren't a lot of possibilities. How many institutions of the City are allowed to use military couriers with brown arm-bands?" Tabitha asked.
"The Military, civilian police chiefs, the Bureau of Civil Development, The Bureau of Resources, and the Bureau of Oversight." Harold said, counting with his fingers as he spoke.
Tabitha nodded, with a smile she didn't feel. She expected the boy to know his job, and normally wouldn't compliment someone on simply meeting her expectations. But this was not one of her apprentices, so she tried to keep her standards lower.
"And brown is only used if there is a serious problem that threatens hundreds of lives. Or more. Police chiefs don't ask for Crafters. Civil Planning does, so does Resources, but you'd see the smoke from that kind of emergency from here. And if the Military was calling on a Crafter, Golems would be kicking in the walls. So, why would the Bureau of Oversight need to use you?"
"It's a Crafter. A Crafter has gone, well....." Reeves began, but stumbled and looked back down to the floor apologetically.
Tabita smiled again, and meant it. The boy was careful about broaching the subject of scourging; the death of a Crafter's self. Each time the Craft, the power to command the flame, was used, it consumed something of the Crafter's self in turn. Eventually, inevitably, all that was left of a Crafter was the desire to burn.
The Bureau of Oversight was charged with ensuring that madness didn't kill anyone except the Crafter. Their agents, shadows, were assigned to Crafters as their potential executioner, and given wide discretion on when to exercise their authority.
"And if you've been sent for me, what does that mean?" Tabitha asked.
"A shadow failed to kill their Crafter, and they need help. Hellfire of the abyss, I should have stayed at the station." Harold muttered, gazing out the window.
Tabitha nodded, agreeing with the sentiment.
"Want to pretend you couldn't find me?" Tabitha asked, smiling with a humour even she found a little desperate.
"Can we?" Harold asked, his face lighting up as he turned to her. He was grinning, wryly, but his tone wide-eyes hinted at the fear. He was only half-kidding.
"I'm afraid not." Tabitha replied. "But if it's any comfort, remember you were sent for me, by name."