Chapter 6: High City, Stone City
Though the streets of the Stone City were wide and well-numbered, they were rarely straight and hardly ever flat, even up high in the centers of power. From the front gate of the Complex, it was a straight shot across a square to the next street, but that street twisted up and around, almost a switchback, on its way to the Guardhall at the top of the habitable part of the mountain. As Hendrik started up the hilly portion, the guards standing outside the Archive straightened up, then noticed he wasn’t a superior. They nodded, and he nodded back, wondering that the archive guard was considered an elite corps. Standing watch over a bunch of scribbling priests and expensive-but-pointless reams of paper seemed less than impressive. Maybe it had been, back before the archives had gone on lockdown, closed to the public forever. But probably not. It was probably even more boring then.
And yet, every one of those guards had come up through the Academy and had a charge of their own at one point. It was a rite of passage, a test of mettle, toughness, maturity, and capability that lasted almost an entire decade of their lives. If they could manage those years at the Complex, if their charge inherited smoothly and the priests were pleased, they could write their own ticket. It was one of the few merit-based professions in the City, giving a son or daughter accepted into the Academy the ability to elevate their entire family’s status and comfort in one single swoop.
Just as Hendrik had. Before he’d gone to the Academy, they’d lived below the Tavern District, in the Manufacture, where his father had worked as a middle-grade fabricator. He might’ve been able to afford a night out now and then in the Tavern District, if he’d grown up in the Manufacture, but Hendrik would never have seen the inside of the Red Lantern, to say the least.
All the Guardhall asked in return for this massive social and economic leap was the rest of Hen’s life. Yes, of course, he could settle down and take a lesser posting, as others had done before him, but what life was that for him?
What life was anything for him? That was the question he was trying not to ask himself, and the question no one else would shut up about.
The Guardhall appeared as he rounded the last corner of the switchback, looming over the entire mountain and casting its cold shadow across his face. Hen hadn’t been called in for at least a year, and even then it was for an award ceremony for model guards. Those whose commitment and belief in their duty was granite-solid. Unshakable, like the mountain itself.
Hendrik decided he’d burn the fancy ribbon they’d given him for his tabard that day. He never wore it anyhow because it seemed ridiculous. But now he knew why: He was not unshakable. He never had been. He just hadn’t known it yet.
Two guards stood at attention outside the limewashed facade. They relaxed when they saw Hendrik, one of them going so far as to wave.
“How’s Guardhall?” Hen asked once he was within speaking distance.
One of them, an older woman called Gala, rolled her eyes. “Same old.”
“But we’re honored to serve,” a man he didn’t know very well said, with a little laugh.
“Brecca’s waiting for you.” Gala gestured to the door. “Said to send you right in.”
Hen nodded and muttered something polite before pushing the ancient, creaking wooden door open with his shoulder. It swung on iron hinges, far more common than the wood, heavy as any stone. Did wood turn to stone when it got really old? This wood felt like it.
The gaping entryway of the Guardhall looked more like a palace, though it was hung with old swords and banners to commemorate the achievements of guards long past. The floor alternated black and white polished marble, a material Hen had never even seen until he was shipped off to the Academy. They said it came from the other side of the mountain, the wasteland side, so it was at a premium. And, of course, that meant anyone who could afford to live up here in High City wanted it.
His bootfalls echoed in the hall as he made his way to the side door, and then the gallery: pictures of mentors, captains, and other important guards, painted by nameless artisans the priests happened to have employed as their decorator that year. Some were grotesquely inhuman in their proportions, some spookily realistic. They made Hen uneasy, so he tried not to meet their painted gazes.
Brecca’s office was the tenth door down and had been as long as anyone could remember. Each guard was assigned a mentor when they left the Academy, and, if they were lucky, they kept that one for a long time. Hendrik had been lucky. Brecca was a solid, pale man somewhere in his mid-50s, which was old but not infirm, as far as Hen was concerned. Hen knocked on his door and then poked his head inside.
Brecca was already waving him in. “Close the door, boy. About time you got here.”
As well as wearing an unfashionable and prodigious beard for the last twenty years or so, Brecca was also infamous for his utter inability to understand time. He was notoriously either late or early for everything but it was always everyone else’s fault.
Hen hid his smile as best he could as he sat before Brecca’s desk obediently. “You wanted to see me, sir.”
“Yes, about this moon’s inheritance,” Brecca nodded.
Hen winced and tried to steel himself. He shouldn’t have expected to be eased into anything. This was Brecca.
“There will be six instead of two,” Brecca said.
Hen frowned. “That’s impossible. Six?”
Brecca nodded. “I know it’s earlier than we expected, but the masters tell me Kaspar is ready. Is this also your belief?”
Numbly, Hen nodded. Six? How could they give six Children of the Blood their inheritance at one time? Did it even work like that? They’d been taking two new Children of the Blood into the creche every moon as long as Hendrik had been a guard, but never more. They’d run out, if they kept this up. There were only so many births to blooded families in a given moon, usually in single digits. Would they have to start taking more of them? Older ones, even? Would they be able to inherit properly if they weren’t educated for it from infancy?
Fuck. Whatever was going on had to be bad.
“Good, good. Then let’s talk about you, Hendrik. Still hearing great things, excellent things, and we’re expecting a lot of you up here in the hall.”
Hen nodded again, mind still reeling. Six. Kass was the fifth in line. Or the sixth, maybe. That meant he’d inherit in weeks. Not moons. Not years.
Okay, years had been stretching it, as there had been at least two Children to inherit every moon for the decade. But six?
“I’m sorry sir,” Hen said suddenly.
Unaccustomed to being interrupted, no doubt, Brecca stopped mid-sentence, mouth open, bushy eyebrows high.
“Why six?” Hen asked. “That seems…excessive.”
Brecca eyed him suspiciously for a moment. “You haven’t heard, then?”
Hen remembered Piret saying something vague about the river but all he could recall about it was that he wasn’t supposed to have heard it from her. He shook his head.
“Trouble outside the walls. They’re poisoning the river, somehow, trying to get at our water sources. The only way to counteract that disordered dark forest magic is with light and order. And light and order only comes from—”
“The gods, yes,” Hen interrupted again, impatient.
This time Brecca blinked.
But Hen went on, “What about the gods that are already up there, though?”
Brecca frowned. “The priests say a fresh infusion is the only way to energize our defense. It’s worked in the past, apparently. But that’s not for us to judge, is it, guard?”
