Chapter 47 - The Farm in Irttat
Chapter 47: Flame in the Swamp 03
The continent of Orr had once been divided into three, occupied by three kingdoms respectively.
After Eaton's destruction, Kenting and Spring carved up its territory between them. Spring stretching across the far north, Kenting entrenched in the southeast.
The southwestern corner of the continent was a region of dense mountain forests that few people ventured into, dotted here and there with small towns and isolated tribes that stood apart from any kingdom, holding fast to their ancient customs and traditions.
Palmer came from these mountains.
The Esti Range lay at the continent's southernmost edge, bordered on the left by the southwestern highlands and on the right by Kenting's territory.
Its peaks were steep and its trails nearly untrodden. Few knew that a small town lay hidden there, along with the last remnants of the other races.
Kenting's railways had been joined to the old Eatonian tracks, and after years of patchwork repairs and extensions, a network now criss-crossed Kenting's territory and was beginning to take on real shape.
Steam trains had risen to prominence with astonishing speed in just twenty years. Thick smoke billowed from towering chimneys, and the long cry of the whistle sounded over almost every major city at one hour or another, one of the most ordinary sights and sounds of everyday life.
A financial center like Grande, therefore, would certainly have trains calling there.
Stasia produced her map of the continent — somewhat out of date after ten years of change, but serviceable enough for now.
The cities Kelsey had passed through in Kenting traced a line running roughly north to south, and they marked them on the map with a quill: Dodona — Eris — Laconia Town — Pharos — Grande.
Trace it further back, and you crossed into Spring's territory.
They drove the carriage to the nearest town, left it temporarily at the posting inn — since trains could not reach every city, every town with a railway station offered some form of vehicle storage — and boarded a northbound train.
At each city they stopped and took stock of conditions, moving on to the next train only once they were satisfied nothing was amiss.
As an aside, before setting out, they had exchanged some of Irttat's silver coins for silver ingots at the town center, and after entering Kenting had traded these at a currency exchange for an adequate supply of the standard silver coins in use there.
The obverse of the standard coin bore the image of a crowned figure, some great king of Kenting from an earlier age, though Lucita wasn't sure which. The reverse displayed Kenting's emblem: a stylized cluster of violets.
Beyond currency, they had also brought along some black pepper, rosemary, and other spices, against unforeseen needs.
In Irttat, spices were simply spices, but out in the wider world, they were hard currency worth as much as gold.
In the human world, silver coins held considerable purchasing power in certain respects.
Even in cities where prices ran high, a single loaf of bread cost no more than one copper coin — and Irttat had no such thing as copper coins at all.
One silver coin was exchanged for ten coppers, meaning a single silver coin could buy ten white loaves of bread. In Irttat, this was simply unimaginable.
Clothing, too, was remarkably cheap.
Unlike Irttat, human dyeing techniques had advanced enormously. Cheap chemical dyes had begun appearing in large quantities, and the traditional plant- and mineral-based dyes, costly and prone to fading, had gradually retreated from the daily lives of the lower and middle classes. They had become, instead, a kind of “expensive” fashion that the upper echelons pursued with enthusiasm.
Industrialization had sharply driven down the price of ramie cloth and dye. An ordinary outer garment cost only five silver coins, and even refined, respectable clothing for the middle classes rarely exceeded ten.
On the other hand, fruit prices remained stubbornly high.
Outside the private gardens of the nobility, few farmers were willing to grow something as luxurious as fruit. Harvests came slowly, yields were uncertain, and production remained low.
A pear, for example, cost one silver coin for just two good ones, almost exactly on par with Irttat’s prices, and nearly equal to a seamstress’s full earnings from fourteen hours of continuous work.
In short, the penniless residents of Irttat found themselves, when traveling abroad, living in relative luxury.
The trouble was that no matter how full their purses were, the actual experience of living was another matter entirely.
With industry slowly reviving, sugar and salt were now supplied in reasonable quantities, and even ordinary middle-class households could afford sugar without much difficulty. Sweet breads, candies, and pastries had become regular fixtures on shop shelves.
But spices were desperately scarce.
Legend held that in the age before the Great Calamity, people had already sought out rare spices from deep within distant forests and mountain ranges, and through three centuries of cultivation had brought them to common tables, shifting them from pure luxury to a slightly pricier staple.
But now, the seeds of those spices had been nearly wiped out in the Great Calamity.
People could only search for new seeds in remote mountain ranges and scattered prehistoric ruins and begin the work of cultivation all over again.
Tragically, in the aftermath of the Calamity, the continent’s soil seemed poorly suited to most plants. Grain and vegetable yields had dropped sharply, and almost all arable land was devoted to staple crops. What remained was allocated to ramie, cotton, and oil plants, leaving almost no room for spice cultivation. Spices gradually became a luxury reserved for the nobility.
In other words, no matter how much money they carried, there was no chance of buying anything seasoned and flavorful on the train.
Sweet bread and salt-cured jerky were as good as it got. As for meats marinated in rosemary, fennel, and clove, or vegetable salads dressed with coriander, such things were not even worth dreaming about.
Stasia and Kelsey had both wandered the human world for years and accepted such food without complaint.
Lucita found it considerably harder to adjust. Her sense of taste had returned on the second day of travel, and since then had become acutely sensitive, the monotony of salt and sugar alone had left her tongue nearly numb.
For as long as she could remember she had lived surrounded by ample spices, and their sudden prolonged absence left her feeling vaguely listless and out of sorts.
Stasia said she was suffering from "a failure to acclimatize."
It took them a full week to reach Pharos, the stop before Grande.
The long stretch of uneventful calm that preceded it had left them somewhat relaxed, and it was only upon arriving in Pharos that they caught the first scattered whispers in a coffee shop near the station.
"I heard Grande… martial law…"
"…plague… I have a relative…"
The subject seemed to be burning on people's tongues. Even though those discussing it deliberately kept their voices low, so many hushed conversations meant fragments inevitably drifted to their ears.
The three exchanged a glance.
Kelsey pocketed a handful of silver coins and slipped out after a woman who had just finished her lunch.
Stasia and Lucita sat in the coffee shop, catching faint snatches of Kelsey's voice from outside: "Excuse me ma'am, might I ask you something…"
Before long, Kelsey returned with the latest news.
Grande was very nearly a dead city. The plague had radiated outward to the surrounding villages and towns, and over the past couple of days, similar symptoms had begun appearing in Pharos as well. But the municipal government had suppressed the information, and few people dared speak of it openly.
At present, Grande allowed entry but not exit. No one knew what the situation inside was like.
One of them was a half-blood immune to plague; the other two had already contracted and recovered from the illness. None of them were afraid to enter Grande.
The trouble came when they went to buy tickets, trains to Grande had already been suspended.
They deliberated briefly and decided to buy a carriage.
This was precisely where the spices brought from Irttat proved their worth.
Carriage rental was extraordinarily expensive, four silver coins for a single hour's hire, and purchasing one outright ran to several hundred gold coins.
Spices were priced at one pound of spice to one pound of gold, and one pound of gold could be minted into two hundred and fifty gold coins.
The buy-in price was naturally somewhat below the standard selling rate, but after trading just over two pounds of spice, they walked away with a battered, rickety old carriage and a lean horse to pull it.
Beyond that, entering a "dead city" required certain additional preparations.
Carrying food and water was simple enough for them, and spoilage was no concern, they stocked up generously in Pharos and stored everything in the space.
After Lucita's sense of taste had returned and sharpened, her mental strength had crossed another threshold, and her spatial abilities had grown considerably.
She had not yet had time to measure the duration of her space, but she knew that with some effort she could now open a stable space of half a cubic meter.
Storing supplies had accordingly become far more convenient.
Beyond food, they also each prepared an iron sword — kept in a long, custom-shaped space of Lucita's making.
Disaster, after all, has always fed on slaughter and chaos.
With everything ready, they set out that same afternoon.
A carriage was no match for a steam train in speed. What had been planned as an arrival by evening stretched instead until the dead of night before they drew anywhere near Grande.
They rested in the open that night.
The dew was heavy and the night deep, but fortunately it was summer, a couple of extra layers of clothing was enough to keep out the chill of the forest at night.
Kelsey had extensive experience with outdoor camps; she lit a fire to ward off any wolves, and parked the carriage a short distance away.
The flames crackled and spat, lighting up their faces, loose strands of hair swaying idly in the night wind.
In that firelight, even Kelsey's voice grew soft and blurred: "Are you still cold?"
Stasia held her hands near the flames and turned them over, then shook her head.
Into the warmth of that moment came an incongruously small and uncertain voice: "Um…… this fire…… it doesn't feel very hot?"
The two looked over in puzzlement, and found that Lucita had extended her finger directly into the flame. Her index finger had been singed black, the skin charred, yet her face showed not the slightest flicker of pain or discomfort.
The girl's hair drifted softly in the firelight, and the faintly bewildered expression on her face lent the whole scene a strange, unsettling quality.
Both women went very still. Neither spoke.
Lucita’s air of mystery was nothing new, but witnessing an unmistakably inhuman quality firsthand made a wary instinct rise between them: she’s not one of our kind.
Lucita looked down at her charred finger, and seemed to realize something. She drew her hand back, tucked it under her sleeve, and quietly used her healing art.
The skin rippled, and the finger was restored.
The rest of the night passed in silence.
In the early summer morning, before the mist had lifted, a carriage came to a stop before the long-silent gates of Grande.
Three women stepped down from the carriage: one who looked sixteen or seventeen, and two in their early thirties.
The soldiers on guard had been dozing. The sound of arrival startled them, and they leaned urgently over the wall to look down.
Kelsey sighed quietly: "When I passed through here not long ago, it was nothing like this."
Stasia, too, had seen Grande as it once was, people streaming in and out, carriages lined up all the way to the gate, the sound of whistles never ceasing.
Now it was a desolation that chilled the heart.
"The world changes without warning," she murmured.
Both of them had finished sighing before they noticed that Lucita had gone utterly still, staring up at the gate tower in silence.
"Lucita?"
Lucita lifted her eyes and gazed at the shape before her.
The sky dimmed abruptly. Enormous white bones jutted before her, half buried in the earth, the other half rising in interlocking spires, a grim and towering forest of them.
The bones had long since yellowed, covered in the deep cracks of age.
Vast webs stretched between them, and many spiders the height of a person moved along the threads, plucking at the silk. A sound rose from it, faint and chaotic, like discordant strings, or the low groaning of a ship's keel.
Then a blink, and silence again.
No light anywhere. As though a soundless, eternal night.
"Lucita?"
Lucita snapped awake with a start, meeting the puzzled eyes of Kelsey and Stasia, and rubbed her forehead.
"It's nothing. Let's go in."
The city gates stood wide open, like a great beast lurking in the dark, its vast jaws stretched wide.
The three led their carriage forward and disappeared through the gate.
The guard's shout still echoed behind them: “In you go! No coming out! Don’t say you weren’t warned!”
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