The Flames of Deception - A Horizon of Storms: Book 1 (4 page)

“
I
get the odd merchant. But it’s more locals coming in and out of the
city. Never ‘ad a lord before!”

Matthias smiled. “I’m not a lord, Jadin.”

“
You sure
look
like a lord!” the man called back as they turned
another street corner.

“
Looks can be deceiving,” Matthias replied. “As we
have already
discussed
.”

“
So
you ain’t going to tell me why yer really did come through my gate
then?” Jadin continued.

“
It wouldn’t be my
first
choice,” Matthias replied. “It’s...
complicated.”

“
We can’t have just anyone coming on in you know!”
he replied. “I could gets a bad reputation if I did! Especially
letting a
wizard
in.”

“
Then why
did
you let me in?” Matthias asked.

Jadin turned. “Because that kind of money
puts
food
on our plates,” he said. “And I would be a
fool
not to take up an
offer when it comes my way, wizard or not.” Matthias nodded again
thoughtfully. Jadin looked sombre. “I ain’t a sell - out, if that’s
what yer think,” he said. “I
loves
this kingdom.”

Matthias placed a hand on his shoulder. “I
understand,” Matthias said. “And I
told
you, I am here to try and
help
.”

Jadin nodded. “Alright. Maybe... maybe I
do
believes yer.” Then
he turned and plodded on. Finally, after a few more minutes’ walk,
they came to a stop by a tall archway, leading to a path built
under a wooden building on stilts.

“
Just through this path ‘ere and you come straight out into
the main courtyard. Can’t miss it.”

Matthias nodded. “Well I suppose this is where we part ways.”
He bowed his head to the gatekeeper and looked upon the short man
softly. “Thank you. You’re a good man, Jadin Spickett, and I am
pleased to have met you.”

Jadin shook his head. “I’ve been called many
things, but never that,” he laughed. “Ah, it was no bother,
really.” He held out his hand to Matthias, and his eyes narrowed.
“You know, despite what I first thought back there, yer seem a
decent kind as well. For a
wizard
.”

“
What made you change your mind?” Matthias asked.

Jadin shook his head. “I’ve seen yer people come
‘ere before. They come
barging
into Rina as if they owns the place! All these
guards and escorts. They’re stuck up, self-satisfied
snobs.”

“
My
people have been known for their arrogance, I’ll admit,” Matthias
said. “It’s a reputation well earned.”

Jadin nodded. “But yer don’t seems that way.
You
wear
those posh clothes, but yer don’t sit well in
‘em’”

“
Well I will have to tell my
tailor
,” Matthias joked.

Jadin shook his head. “You knows what I mean. Yer
seem different.” He sighed. “
Whatever
it is you is doing ‘ere, take care of
yerself.”

Matthias nodded. “Thank you,” he smiled.

“
If
you is needing any more guiding around town...” Jadin
proffered.

“
Then I know
exactly
who to call!”

The
squat man nodded and turned, walking back the way he had come.
Matthias watched him disappear around the corner, and then, ducking
his head down, made his way through the makeshift pathway beneath
the house on stilts, feeling around the damp, wooden, moss -
encrusted struts in the shadows and avoiding the drips that fell
from the rusting drain - pipes, until he emerged back into the
sunlight.

Matthias’s eyes constricted as he stepped out into the
morning sunshine that shone on the Everlyne Courtyard. He shielded
himself from the light and peered at the way before him. He had
emerged into a part of Rina that seemed to be bursting at the seams
with commotion. Despite the early hour, the expansive plaza heaved
with scurrying people going about their business, the floor tiled
with the emblem of Aralia almost entirely masked by the bustling
footfall and plenitude of wooden market stalls. He was right at the
city’s heart: a beating throng of people milling about the streets
and alleyways.

The
wizard turned a full circle to survey his surroundings. All around
the edges of the courtyard a multitude of buildings large and small
vied for space in the prominent yet cramped perimeter, jutting out
haphazardly like teeth in an overcrowded mouth. The Obsidian Hall
was an easy building to identify: an extravagant two-storey
structure of shiny black stone and golden leaf highlights, well
known as the trading centre for many of Rina’s unique wares that
had earned it an impressive reputation amongst merchants. By its
side there was the imposing King Metherill Municipal Courthouse,
where public trials were watched over by a public greedy for tales
of debauchery to brighten their own routine lives. As he continued
his survey, a large, curved building caught his eye. It was visibly
decaying, surprising for a building in its prominent position. The
plaster was crumbling from its walls in great chunks. He squinted
at the chiselled golden lettering above its doors, worn and
flaking: ‘The Oval Playhouse,’ it read. Its doors were sealed shut
by a thick, diagonal wooden plank, which had clearly been in place
a number of years by the wear it showed. Scrawled on it in big, red
handwriting was the word ‘unclean’. There must have been a reason
for the beautiful and elegant building to have fallen into such
disrepair. Matthias made a mental note to try and find out why,
when time allowed him to pursue such curiosities again. He had read
much about Rina on his journey, but some things still eluded him.
You couldn’t absorb seven hundred years of history in a few
weeks.

Sitting behind the large buildings, dotted about in all
directions, mounds of unusually different looking smaller buildings
stretched skyward, slumped over one another in a hotchpotch manner.
Rina ascended up on itself, hundreds of years of construction
defying gravity instead of more traditionally, and perhaps
sensibly, expanding outwards. The logic was that it ensured its
people were better protected this way, enclosed within the confines
of Rina’s famously thick and impenetrable stone wall. The downside
to the plan was that the city had literally piled buildings on top
of itself, one another, layer upon layer, seemingly with no plan or
design, until all around the skyline scaffolds of houses rose from
the ground in staggered tiers, stretching higher and higher until
they seemed to reach the clouds. And yet, somehow the chaos of its
ad-hoc structure produced a city that was a wonder to behold, with
no two houses alike, no roads the same and a world of discovery
waiting around every corner.

The more impressive looking establishments of the
nobility of Rina had found a way around the inherently eccentric
nature of its upward construction by building their own little
pathways, crafted from wooden beams that sat atop scaffold
supports, where they peered down on the world below then, held
together with an array of ropes, chains and cables. Who maintained
the scaffolds was anyone’s guess, but it all seemed to work,
including the precariously crafted plumbing and drainage system
that spiralled down to earth and filtered itself, rather
unceremoniously, into large, sulphurous ditches at points around
the edge of the city, where the pile-up was then gathered up onto
carts weekly and used as both a manure for fields and as an
unhealthy swill for pigs and the less
picky
of livestock.

Matthias had what he felt was a misfortune to have arrived on
one of the three weekly trading bazaars, and the sheer number of
people who crowded the area made it difficult to move. He picked
his way clumsily around a crowd of people who had gathered to see
one of Rina’s resident jesters flailing around on a hastily erected
plinth.

Do these people never sleep?
Matthias thought, as he glanced
up at sky, which was really only just beginning to colour with
daylight. It can’t have been later than seven, and yet it seemed
the entire population of Rina had spilled out on to the streets. As
he stared upward, his eye was drawn to the shape of a blackened
body, dangling from a bloodied beam outside a pub a few paces away.
The skin was a mix of dark hues, and a gaping hole sat where their
features should be. It had clearly been there a
while.

“
Excuse me,” Matthias said, stopping a middle-aged woman in
her tracks as she passed him. “Do you know what they were hung
for?”

She
smirked, and the dimples in her considerable cheeks stood out like
great potholes in her face. “You mean James Maston?” she answered,
indicating to the body. Matthias nodded. “He stole a loaf of
bread,” she said.

“
Was that
all?
” Matthias exclaimed.

“
That’s someone’s livelihood!” She frowned, shaking her head.
“That could feed a man for a week if he managed it right!” She
looked him up and down. “You aren’t from around here, are
you?”

Matthias smiled and shook his head. “It is
that
obvious?”

“
You have the tan of a foreigner alright,” she
said, as she looked back up at the hanging body. “Well, if I were
you, I’d stop asking questions like that. That boy warrants
no
pity. If you ask
me, he deserved every
second
of his strangling!” She nodded to him, and then
moved on her way.

“
A loaf of bread,” Matthias repeated. “And they
call
us
barbaric,” he whispered, shaking his head, before he set
off again through the crowds.

He
emerged into a gap in the throng, completely flustered, as the warm
sun beat through his thick coat upon his back. His eye caught the
glint of light on water from a large fountain bubbling away happily
ahead of him, and he made for it, dipping his hands in the cool
water that fell into the pool from marble amphora above, and
splashed his face gratefully. He stopped a moment to gather his
thoughts, and then as people began clambering atop the fountain's
rim for a better look at the jester, who was pulling more and more
people towards his display, he moved again, weaving his way again
until, eventually, he made his way out from the courtyard through a
vast archway carved with ceramic flowers and vines, dotted with
real wildflowers planted in pottery baskets. A plaque carved out of
stone read: ‘The Northern Habitual Quarter.’

He walked up a cobbled street filled with shops
and a lone inn, the ‘Rusty Bucket’, avoiding a cardsharp outside
its doors who tried to grab his arm and entice him into a game
of
Shove
Penny,
and
trotted down a thin line of steps into another
street.

As the sun disappeared beneath the canopy of a
scaffold structure above him, Matthias reached a dead-end, save for
a wooden ladder that reached up to the higher level. He looked up
at the underside of the wooden structure, where trailing ivy and
plant life hung limply. A thin mist of water sailed down on a
breeze from between the boards. With a shrug he grasped the ladder
and hoisted himself up. As he reached the top, the city opened out
in front of him yet again. Atop the platform sat elegant, half
–timber decorated houses, with chunky chimneys and stucco walls
and
beautiful
gardens. It was a floating island of tranquillity above the
chaos of the courtyard below. The people rose in prosperity like
the city itself; level upon level, with the Palace at the very top.
Climbing the social ladder in Rina could often be more than just a
saying. He stopped a man mid-stride in the street, and asked him
for directions to the city’s guardhouse. To his relief, he was only
a few minutes away.

Finally, a short while later, after climbing
another ladder to yet
another
level of the city, Matthias arrived at his
destination: a tall, three-storey building made of sandstone. He
made his way up its large wooden steps, to a set of solid, arched
doors. Two fine cloth tapestries hung to either side with the
King’s coat of arms emblazoned on each: a griffin and a phoenix,
intertwined around a pea-green shield decorated with
horizontally-placed depictions of swords. Above, chiselled into the
large keystone at the crown of the doorway, a motto was engraved in
an ancient script:

“
Evican Verdani Litani Militia
.” Matthias racked his brain
for a translation. It was an old Aralian dialect: ‘Into the
military, our lives we trust,’ if he wasn’t mistaken. Which
he
might
have been? It was hard enough learning the
current
languages, let
alone the ancient ones of civilisations long since passed. There
was only so much room in his head.