"Magic is what shapes Kyros's Empire. Archons do things no one understands - take the pain and injuries of an entire army into themself, devour the minds and memories of anyone they get alone, turn into a fifty-foot giant whose steps shake the mountains - and most leave behind a sigil of their name, which mages can learn and use to do studious magic. And Edicts are the weapon Kyros levels against anything those don't cow."

"Having power in the hands of people who build seems... nice. Especially if it means you have tools and clothing this fine."

"Jesus Christ, that sounds terrifying. What the hell have I gotten into? -Mmmh, the real flowering of industry has only been in the last century. Things were certainly getting better and better, on average anyway. Knowledge is power, yeah? But here I am without any serious tools, that's gonna be - bad. Uh, not saying anything against your hospitality or anything, but... I am feeling more doomed by the second, honestly."

For example, even as a poor orphan, she lived in a steam heated, brick-walled bunkhouse in a major city.

"Then you've been paying attention. I think, if you want safety, there are two paths. Stay out of the notice of the powerful, or pledge yourself to one of them to get their protection. I've done the first, but then, I was already retired before the Conquest of the Tiers started."

As they go inside, Waltana will see a main room which has a table, chairs, and a counter with wooden and bronze tools and bowls (and a few stone things like a mortar and pestle). There's some dried herbs and vegetables hanging from the rafters, and thin oiled-hide windows in some walls.

There's another room with a thin wooden door, ajar; it looks like a bedroom. And another one across from it, the same shape and size.

"And if you choose the wrong one. Or the right one and get unlucky enough the other side finds you... Off with your head anyway. Hiding feels wrong, especially if it means staying weak, but..."

Sigh.

"I'd need to find coal and iron at the very least, to get powerful myself. And build quite a few things. There'd be a delay. And here I am admitting it like an idiot..."

"Iron will be difficult. Almost all of it comes from a school of Kyros's mages, the Forge-Bound, and they move to exploit any source the Overlord's people find. The Tiers are mostly stuck with bronze."

"I will not work against you, or for you. I'd hate to see another young woman die or worse pointlessly, though, so I'll tell you what I know. And no one ever travels here, so I doubt I'll have trouble keeping secrets."

"I mean, iron's kind of everywhere, it's just really hard to get it out of most things. You know, iron is actually a key component of blood? Refining blood would be one hell of a pain though, you'd get like a fingertip's worth out of a cow. But a lot of different looking rocks have useful amounts of iron in them, really..."

-She blinks. "Sorry, I got distracted. Uhh, I did kind of expect you'd keep your nose out of it, and that's all I can really ask. Even then, I think I'd like to give you something in return - especially if you let me stay here and try to make a proper weapon for a day or two, but I won't insist if you don't permit it."

"I wouldn't turn you down. I have space, so if you'll help out cleaning you can stay a week."

She was vaguely hoping to sell some of the apparently-valuable steel, or make something, but eh. Beggars can't choose their gifts.

"If a bit of steel or something isn't needed? Very well, and thank you. I'll work hard."

"The forge-bound being a school of smelting and forging, I assume? Or something like a guild? Actually, how are we talking to each other, my voice sounds strange..."

"I don't recognize 'steel' - some other metal? Mostly, I haven't used the room in two years, and I don't have much time for idleness, farming is work as hard as soldiering. Help me clean it out and it shouldn't be much trouble to let you stay."

"You're speaking the usual trade-tongue; it's common across the Tiers and the official language of Kyros's Empire. Your accent sounds odd, but you're foreign, I expected that. Seeing how foreign you are - I suppose I ought to be more confused."

"Saying 'I'm confused' is not all that helpful by itself but it's a start. I oughta be dead. I oughta be home past that. Honestly giving one in ten this is some sort of... Deathbed fever dream or something." She shrugs. "Steel's mostly iron. Sorta like bronze to copper, except less dramatic a change, I think?" She raps a knuckle on the lantern. "Honestly if people are making iron they're probably also sometimes making steel, and just not recognizing it as meaningfully different. I can clear out a room. I can also try to wrack my brain for clever farm tools, we did it with big machines, though..."

"Mmmh. I doubt it is a dream, but I suppose your dreams would say that. Dreams don't make much sense, but they always seem to at the time."

"Just an iron hoe would make my life much easier, I think - they keep a much sharper edge than bronze, if you don't let them rust, which I would not."

"It's kinda hard to do something like that without a proper forge, cookfires just don't get hot enough... Maybe a dirt forge with some charcoal and some sort of accelerant, if it only needs to be used once, or maybe arc welding...?" She has opened the side of the lantern idly and is peering into it. "-Agh!" She rubs her head and delicately lets go. "I'll think about it for a bit. Crafting can get a bit - out of hand if I let it, if I'm walking around muttering and doing strange things you can shake me out of it by reminding me where I am. I know how to manage it for the most part, a blessing and a curse. Gets worse under stress. Sorry."

"I will keep an eye on it. I had to do similar with Sages, once or twice - I think their problem was intoxicants they found too useful to give up."

"Oh god, don't even get me started. I wish I had coffee - I made this emergency stim, but it knocks you right out once it wears off. More 'I'ma die in ten minutes if I don't run like a bear's chasing me' than 'I feel awful today'. Also I don't have it anymore."

She rubs her face.

"Focus. Trade-tongue, hmm? -What's an Archon, anyway, is that another name for a king, it sounds like something different."

"I think it's only called 'trade' because that's where it started; I mostly only used the old language of Apex for formal oaths of service and occasionally calling messages the other side might not recognize."

"An Archon is someone that Kyros has named as an Archon," Essa says wryly, "though we had an Archon of the Tides, Occulted Jade, who lived in the Tiers and claimed the title anyway. She was one of the first Five Wives who settled the Tiers four or five centuries ago, and she left with her School about ten years ago rather than fight Kyros. They rule much like kings, under Kyros, and they are all capable of doing magic without the usual sigils and chanting that normal mages need, usually things no one else can duplicate. Most of them live a very long time, and we heard their stories from the other end of the continent even before Kyros's armies arrived. They're given rights to rule their designated territory basically however they like, and are formally delegated Kyros's Right of Destruction over their subjects."

"The word 'magic' is really throwing me off... We don't have any, or at least nothing we call magic. Ah, I can work while I talk if you'll show me what to do?"

"Of course. Right over here."

As they air some things out and whatever else needs to be done...

"Magic is strange. Even the common kind. I think I would prefer a world without it."

She is visibly working hard and biting back complaints! You really can't be ungrateful in this kind of situation. Though she does seem like she's not been eating well for the past month or two.

"It's not even useful enough to be worth it, eh? Or only the powerful have it, perhaps? Too bad. Good solid steel and nice warm steam, that's home to me. And such wonders were for everyone, or at least for most. Even as a penniless orphan, I was warm at night and had something of an education... Not that you can't turn machinery to war, but just - famine was going to become a thing of the past. Plowing fields by hand? Or by... Cow? I think cows plow fields? Jesus Christ preserve me... Um, so there's three Archons here in the Tiers - Kohl, in the tower, and two others having a war with each other - how big are the Tiers, how long would it take you to walk one end to the other if you were a bit leisurely about it-"

"The ordinary mages were useful, but secretive and exclusive. They did make our lives easier - the School of Tides were very good for the sailors - but their first priority was themselves. Nothing to pull a plow better than a horse, or till a field better than a hoe, though they could heal many wounds and I was surely thankful for that every time we had a Sage who could do it. The bigger magic - that is just for the powerful, as you say."

"I'd say walking from the edge of the Bastard Tier to the sea would be - twelve day's march, most likely? Not in a straight line, you have to swerve to find the passes through the mountains and Oldwalls. If you could walk the gull's path straight south, probably nine days. From west to east, probably twelve days like a gull or eighteen on real legs. And in that space we have at least four Archons, perhaps seven. The armies are Archon of War Graven Ashe and his Disfavored, who have discipline and iron but not numbers; and Archon of Secrets Voices of Nerat and his Scarlet Chorus, which is a big horde of rabble, traitors, and scum. North in the Bastard City, there is Tunon, Archon of Justice, and his court of Fatebinders, which also includes the Archon of Shadows, Bleden Mark, who is officially Tunon's executioner and unofficially Kyros's assassin. Somewhere around is Sirin, Archon of Song, who bends minds and recruited masses for the Chorus in the earlier months. And then there is Cairn; the Edict is still shaking the land so he must not be dead yet. Fatebinder Kohl serves Tunon, but the village was full of talk about how long that will last now that he's lit up the Spire; he might be the seventh very soon."

"So that's... Two or three hundred miles wide, perhaps two fifty across? About the size of England. Maybe a bit smaller. And no industry to speak of, if the school of iron is a rare and prestigious institution." She snorts. "What I would like, and know that I'd be lucky to get, is somewhere I can avoid all of that and make things."

"I know how you feel. If there's a good hiding place rather than 'farm in obscurity', I wouldn't know about it. You could try the Oldwalls, if you don't mind risking your life for the privacy."

"What are the Oldwalls? Old walls? In the mountains? I know Hadrian's Wall is a real disappointment, so walls must vary, but the spire makes me reconsider my skepticism." A slight smile.

"Other than our Mountain Spire, almost all of the spires are connected by a network of walls, same materials, so everyone figures they were made at the same time. Not as tall, but they are still, oh, a hundred feet from base to top. They go under the mountains some places, over them others, they split up the world more than the actual mountain ranges. The Overlord forbids them pretty emphatically, but that's hardly necessary because they're enormous mazes and they're chock full of Bane. Which are like wild animals made of vapor, but they can cut you in half like your armor wasn't there at all."