When she wakes up, she's lying on dirt and stones, uncomfortably warm.

Not far in front of her, there's a small house - made of roughly-cut stone and clay, with old-fashioned thatch for a roof - and a small, orderly garden.

If she looks around, she'll see that she's in a mountainous valley. But probably her attention will instead point north, because there is an enormous stone tower looming over the landscape.

The Spire is taller than the mountains, and it's not close. It stands alone in what's probably the middle of the valley. It's like an Ancient Greek decorated column writ large, but it's not supporting anything - there's just a flared-out capital with nothing to connect to, a few spurs equally spaced pointing in all directions. There are also faint glowing runes in vertical lines along the spire's surface, but it's too far to make them out, even the ones close to the base.

....Uhhhhhhh.

Uh. 

Huh? What even? 

She remembers the lorry sliding, and panicking. Then... Nothing.

................Is this Heaven? It's warm. And the spire...

No, she still hurts. A bruise, and the lingering hunger of half rations.

First order of business, she takes off the heavy metal lantern device, then takes off the outer coat, and then a jacket and the long pants too. A sweater and light trousers is still pretty warm. It's way too hot to wear all that.

Then she gapes at the titanic spire some more.

It's pretty gape-worthy! Even people who've lived under its shadow their whole lives sometimes gape at it.

It will be pretty obvious, looking at it, that it is much more finely-built than that house she saw before she looked up. It's not one smooth piece of stone five hundred stories tall, but there look to be solid pieces five stories tall. And, you know, it's about ten times taller than the tallest building she's ever heard of.

That thing should be collapsing! The stones would have to be stronger than diamond, or lighter than air- No, it'd blow over in the wind - or actively supported somehow!

She tries to look for landmarks she can use to estimate the height and diameter. Because what even! She should have heard about this!

There are scattered low stratus clouds below the top of the Spire. Near the top, but solidly below it, probably 85% of its height.

She's far enough away that it's not easy to make out the structures at the base, though there are some - stone, mostly a lighter color that resembles the color of the nearby mountains more than the Spire does. It looks to have multiple concentric rings and a castle-like appearance.

Also if she looks past the mountains, she'll see, in the far distance, another one. Off to the north-east, probably five times as far away as this one.

A whole NETWORK perhaps! What are they for? Aerial ports? Semaphore? "God, how do you build that, this is giving me sparky feelings..."

"Kyros only knows. If that."

While she was distracted, the homeowner(?) has quietly walked around the corner and started observing her. (Removing her equipment made some noticeable clanking.)

"Who are you, traveler, who sits on my homestead and looks at a Spire like you've never heard of them?"

She jumps, turns around quickly, and scrambles over towards her lantern. More instinct than plan, she's not even sure what to do with it.

"-Ah. That would be because I've never seen it before? I am... Very lost. Waltana Hampson."

"You must be. They say there is no land in Terratus where you cannot see a Spire at noon. I'm Essa of River's Break in Vendrien's Well, formerly of the Queen's Royal Army of Vendrien, of Apex."

Essa looks about sixty if she's well-preserved - and she's in good physical shape despite her age - or fifty and less so - her teeth don't look great and she has a number of scars. Her clothes are homespun, and pretty crude homespun at that; faded green and orange leather, with more knots than fasteners, and the few metal pieces coppery.

Rock construction. Straw roof. Copper buttons and a rough sack of a shirt. Huh.

She's perhaps fifteen at most, herself. The clothes are machine-woven. Neat and tidy by comparison. And there's all sorts of iron on her. The lantern is still glowing with a bright filament behind glass. She flips it off when she notices.

"Then I guess I'm of... The Bristol Shipbuilders, of England. Have you happened to hear of a disastrous winter lasting a full year, with deadly storms that scour the whole world? Or of metal machines that burn coal to produce motive power? Oh, am I, uh, trespassing?"

"No, no, and yes but I'm not inclined to send you away."

"I imagine Kyros could arrange a worldwide Edict of Cold if he wished to, but thankfully he'd rather tax us. I have no idea how you'd turn fire into motion, though I know very little of what can be done with iron and spellcraft beyond 'crushing conquests'."

"Engineering is not sorcery. It's all just energy in the end." She frowns. "Kyros- God?"

"Might as well be, but no. The Overlord, ruler of the entire continent, and unless the sailor's fables about the Hidden Lands are true the entire world. He recently conquered the Tiers, this peninsula - Vendrien's Well is at the center of the Tiers, between the Bastard City and the other Younger Realms."

"...Yeah, extremely lost. That's not good. The last thing I remember was a probably lethal accident during our evacuation. Rockslide."

"Looking rather healthy for a lethal accident. I suppose I ought to doubt you, but your clothing looks like nothing I can imagine making and that light artifact is made with more iron than you can find in most houses. So I'm not sure it's actually more unbelievable."

"Speaking of houses, would you like to come in and sit on a chair instead of the dirt?"

"Uh- Hmm. Okay, I mean, sorry if I'm a bit rude thinking out loud here, but I don't know how paranoid I have to be? I would not attack someone who doesn't attack me first or otherwise do some sort of evil, that's just civil society and all, but I'm a stranger here so I might be in a kind of paranoid mood. I mean, as far as weapons, I..."

Bridging the contacts for a nicely deterring shock out of the lantern's battery should be easy, at the very least.

Oop, she's holding a screwdriver from her dropped toolbelt, the spark is trying to come up front. She'd better wait on that for now. She delicately puts the tool back.

"...Should not think about that right this second, possibly. I don't know the customs here, it's making me feel very cautious, I don't intend to be rude with it."

"I can lend you a knife, I'm not afraid of what you could do with it. But I'll need it back, I can't grow bronze in my garden. Customs are - changing. Kyros's Law is not our old law, and many old customs are now forbidden."

"Hell, I have a knife in here, it's just a work knife, for kindling and whittling, not a bloody sword." She sighs and stands. "Thank you for the welcoming offer. I think I'll take you up on it, just let me gather this up."

"I can take in the clothing, if you like. I wouldn't recommend traveling the roads without a proper weapon; there are bandits, if fewer than is usual after a war, and until you swear to Kyros's service you're not a citizen and not protected by law. But the valley is a civilized place, and the army occupying it are - bigoted bastards, but disciplined, and honorable after a fashion."

"Sure. Don't suppose you know a mountain climber who could use a very warm coat? And it sounds like I had better hear more about Kyros and his army and this valley, too. Does Kyros rule himself, or perhaps appoint lords to do it for him?"

No chance of any kind of Parliament, after all.

"No, and I suspect you'd get more rings selling it to a craftsman who could study it in any case. As I understand it, Kyros delegates primarily through his Archons. The Tiers are still unusual, though, because two Archons and their armies were sent to conquer us, and they are currently at war with each other because they both think the other is a scoundrel and a traitor. And then a third Archon's servant, the Fatebinder Kohl, was sent in to deliver an Edict, and then did something, and now controls the Spire itself, all the way to the top. Which is unprecedented, and I would have said impossible, except I saw the lines of energy spiral up the Spire's sides with my own eyes."

"Civil war. Joy and celebration. What do the Spires do? Edicts?"

She's gathered up the lantern and her toolbelt now.

Essa gathers the clothes, looking briefly surprised when she notices the amount of steel iron fasteners.

"People say a lot of things about Spires, little of it with any evidence to back it up. Edicts are something Kyros does to enforce his will. Off north-east, in what used to be Azure, he declared an Edict of Stone - one of the Fatebinders proclaimed it, not the same one as here. It was something like 'Any Archon who does not submit will be brought to Kyros's justice. Therefore, let the foundations of Azure be shattered and life drained from the land for as long as the traitor Archon of Stone draws breath.' And so they had massive earthquakes, and what used to be good farmland is now a broken hellscape of stone plateaus."

The jacket and long pants have plenty of sturdy buttons and latches, but the huge wooly overcoat has a metal gorget and a hard plate in the upper back. There's a hose attached to the suit's back, leading off to the lantern. Waltana twists the metal cap, twisting it off and revealing a small hole. It also feels like there are stiff tubes or wires inside the thick coat.

"...Lots of magic, it's sounding like? Or at least mighty powers nobody truly understands being thrown around? It's tragically much easier to destroy than to create. We didn't have Archons or Edicts- Geniuses of crafting and mighty war machines are the arbiters of power, to me." 

"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."

"Nooooo wonder people avoid them.

Uh, what kills Bane? Magic?"

"Spells are better, if you can get them. You can hurt Bane with normal weapons, and the small ones -'Wisps' - it's survivable. Like, you could fight a wolf naked, if you had a sword, and win. Right? So you can beat a Wisp with a sword. Better if the sword's at least a little bit magic, but a lot of old weapons are. The bigger ones, Scourges and Malices, well, I doubt you could beat a bear naked, or a boar, even with a really good spear. Or a pack of wolves. But people try anyway, sometimes."

"Well, I couldn't, I'm young. Unless it's a pretty small wolf. How about fire or lightning. Or acid. Hot steam... I'm going to need to figure out what magic is in my framework, eventually. Oh well, nothing for it now."

"Fire and lightning definitely work. ...Actually, I've only seen that as magic, not any other flames or a natural lightning strike. But they would probably work."

"Lightning's something we were getting decent at! Takes a lot of metal and work, though. Hmm... Can you tell me what kind of rocks are around here? I might recognize something I can make your plow with."

"I mostly only distinguish the slate and flint from the heavier, more solid stuff. But let's see, there's a lot of layered brown rock, some more bulgy gray rock..."

It transpires that there is a lot of sandstone and some granite nearby, and she remembers something recognizable as limestone that is off her land but closer than the nearest town.

"I can probably work with that if I, uh, get enough fresh wood to make charcoal with, to heat a really awful temporary forge... Good hard anthracite, hard black coal, would be wonderful but beggars can't be choosers right? Um. If you want to hear more about my home, feel free to ask, I know I'm just kind of - rambling."

"If I had suddenly landed on the other side of the world with no way of getting back, I doubt I'd want to dwell on the place I was missing."

"I don't think there's any coal deposits in Vendrien's Well, we'd probably have used it if there was. How much wood do you need? Half a cord*, three cords, twenty?"

*cord: a stack of firewood with pieces lined up end-to-end to approximately four feet long, stretching about eight feet long and four feet high, i.e. "about twice what you can line up along the back side of your house under the edge of the roof"

"...One cord ought to be plenty, and I can do - what you do is make charcoal, sort of cooking the wood instead of burning it, do you know charcoal? And then it can burn hot enough to work iron, which cookfires can't. Best you can do with cookfires is tin and maybe copper."

"Then I probably have enough already dry, and enough trees on the edge of the homestead to replace it, though I'll want some help chopping the new. I know charcoal, though I don't have regular use for it myself."

"I'll definitely help. As much as I can. It is a simple fact, where I'm from, that adults and men are physically stronger."

"You're, what, fifteen summers? I'm old enough to be worn down, you're in your prime years. I wouldn't put any big bets on which of us could cut more in an hour."

"Thereabouts. Like I said, I will work hard."

"Sure, I believe you. Do you want to go looking for useful rock now, or wait?"

"Need the ore before the charcoal. And maybe I'll recognize something better than sandstone. Tan rock, that is."

"Makes sense. I'll start cooking a meal while you're out, I think."

She picks a direction and walks for twenty minutes or until she finds an obvious boundary marker or good rocks, whichever comes first. Or signs of buried rocks for that matter, since it's mostly soil up top. A spiral pattern can come later if it seems called for.

Helooooo rocks, anything better than (blech!) sandstone?

There are some! Granite, here, though also there's a break in the woods and she can see some limestone-looking formations, probably another twenty minute's walk away.

There might be any iron in there, but she would really like some nice red hematite or shiny grey magnetite. Pleeeeease, universe? Please? Maybe some clumpy bog iron or the kind that forms weird bulges in rock faces she read about but can't remember the name of? Hm.

Well, exploring far around the wilderness of a war-torn bronze age magic kingdom is not a great idea, so she turns around. Limestone will be nice as an option later, though.

Hmm, that might be a little magnetite on one corner, actually.

Ooh! She takes a closer look.

Magnetite is magnetic. Her compass will act weird if she presses it right up close to the rock, if it's really magnetite.

...Her compass is on her lantern, which is back at the house. Well, she'll see if a piece is pick-up-able for now, and head back.

Good news: It's small enough that she can break it off from the granite. Bad news: It's small enough that she can break it off from the granite.

Rocks are heavy. Even little rocks she can break off from a boulder with a prybar and hammer (since she did bring her tool belt) are pretty heavy. She carries it back to the house anyway, a smile on her face.

"I'm ba~ack!"

Thump goes the rock, just outside.

"Sounds like a lucky search?", Essa calls. She pokes her head out. "Oh, that does look interesting. Not sure I remember where I've seen it, but there should be some around elsewhere."

"Most common iron ore in the world, according to the 1877 geological survey. My world, at least. I think we'd have noticed the Tiers, which is still extremely confusing but don'tthinkaboutittoohardorI'llfreakout ANYWAY. I feel like staying busy and not thinking about it! Chopping more wood?"

"We'd probably have noticed you as well. Definitely can use some more wood. Dinner isn't too far off, though, I'll probably call you in in, call it a half hour?"

"Sure." Pause. "I'm actually really hungry because we've been on thin rations for a while now. Also I don't actually know the right way to fell a tree without a power saw. Or where your axe is. I have a lot of things in this belt but not a whole axe."

She points to the axe, which is right by the door on the hinge's side.

"There's a few small trees off to the left of the garden, skinnier than you. For those, you'll be fine if you cut a wide wedge in one side, and then stand so that you're facing the tree with the wedge by your right hand; it won't fall on you, only to your right or - if you give it too much force - to your left. I'll show you the trickier parts another day."

"Cool. Right, time to be distracted."

She will take the axe and go punch chop wood. She works on taking the branches apart from each other after felling one, until dinner's called.

It's weird to be too warm. But kind of nice.

Dinner will make that worse, because it's a hot stew. Speaking of - "Stew's ready! Looks like you did alright with the wood, thank you."

There are some wooden bowls and implements on the table inside, with the chairs she already saw.

"I miss my machines," she grouses. "Steam saw could have done that in five minutes. But ugh, can't be ungrateful now. That smells delicious!"

"Really? I almost miss them myself, and I don't even know what they look like."

The specific vegetables in the stew aren't immediately recognizable, but it looks like there's some potato-ish tubers and maybe beets, and a little meat, smells gamey, maybe venison.

"I might not be able to make you power tools, but I am planning a plow. I'd offer a Prosthetic if you needed one- I'm real good at those."

"A - replacement arm, made of iron? Wouldn't that be a sight to see. When you find your feet, you must send me a bird so I can see it."

"Making things has the potential to be so good. I might try to teach. And I don't know how birds work but I'll remember. I could draw it, maybe."

"Oh, no, I meant a message bird. Do your people not use pigeons?"

"I'm sure someone does, but not me. We had the post. A courier guild, sort of. And, uh, lightning semaphore."

"We have couriers, but for distance you want pigeons. Faster than cavalry, and much cheaper."

"Well, that requires a person to run the whole way. Efficiency was an important word for us..." Sigh. "I want to look for a few more magnetite nodes, then start the charcoal burn. Tomorrow maybe."

"I think mostly it's birds between major towns or cities, and then either local couriers from there to the farms outside or the neighborhoods. Or local birds, sometimes."

"If you find some large pieces you need help bringing back, come get me. And I'll definitely want to watch part of the process, maybe help out."

"I certainly shall, Essa."

Well, after a hearty meal she can do more work, can't she? Digging to set up a proper charcoal pit is going to be just as tedious and annoying as chopping down a tree by hand... But at least she's getting sparky feelings about it, telling her to make the embankments in slightly different shapes or to pack it in this way, which makes time seem to pass faster.

 She can! It's getting late, but she has a lamp.

She does! She'll get the pit all prepared!

...And then debate with herself over setting the fire overnight, but she still has to stack wood and close it, and working late into the night is a recipe for injuries.

She goes and sleeps, fitfully, far too warm and with no comforting background buzz of machinery or groaning pipes to lull the senses.

In the morning she asks about Fatebinder Kohl- Are fatebinders like a judge, administering the law and resolving disputes? Are they magic, like archons, with the literal power to bind fates?

"Judges, not magic, though they may know their sigils. I think the 'fate' part is that there is no appeal. All judgments are final, and escaping a judgment is very hard."

"And reporting to Kyros, with the ability to judge even Archons, with caveats and restrictions or in specific domains in some way that is surely no less arcane than Parliament but I wouldn't understand without seeing it in action...?"

"They report to Tunon the Judicator, Archon of Justice; they say he's Kyros's most trusted vassal. He's been holding court in the Bastard City for four years now, since just after the Conquest of the Tiers started. You'd want to ask a Sage for the edge cases, or an actual Fatebinder, but I think they have the right to judge anything Tunon could. Even between Archons, in theory. In practice I expect a judgment delivered on an Archon gets sent back to Tunon for confirmation. Unless it's an Edict and just needs to be delivered, not decided. Then a Fatebinder is the mouthpiece."

"...Well, nothing I can do about that from here, is there? I'm hardly qualified to navigate backstabbery politics and rally armies. Better to get as much iron as I can and make something useful."

"Probably, though I should run through the basic laws with you some time before you leave. There aren't many, but they are, as I understand it, very strict."

"May as well do that now. I want to start the charcoal burn today and then go find more useful rocks... I'll think it over while working on the batch of steel."

"Sure. There are nine laws, as I understand them. The first and most important is Kyros's Peace: Everyone who serves Kyros and his hierarchy is guaranteed safety from violence and starvation. Doing violence to someone protected by the Peace is a death sentence. Then there's the Right of Destruction: The Overlord, and only the Overlord, may kill his subjects. He may delegate this to subordinates, mostly the Archons, and they also may delegate it. Suicide is illegal, though I don't know what the punishment is. Maybe they kill your family."

"...And yet two archons are having a war?"

"One of them's a traitor. Or maybe both. I only hear gossip, but what I heard was that they both accuse the other one of starting the war. I heard that before the Spire lit up, there was an 'Edict of Execution' that would have killed us all but also all of them, saying that they were either traitors or criminally incompetent and if they couldn't set aside their grudges and beat our idiot oathbreakers who rebelled only a year after surrendering, then Kyros washed his hands of the whole thing."

"Sounds about like an ancient king to me. Or maybe it's some way to get rid of an inconveniently ambitious person or two? I wouldn't know." Sigh.

"More inconveniently aggressive, probably, they are running out of wars to fight. I think Archons are all ambitious but most of them are happy to have their fiefdoms. That's another law, Archon's Privilege: Archons can and do rule in whatever way they see fit within their granted territory or organizations. Limited by the other laws, but not very limited."

Kyros's Peace, Overlord's Destruction, Archon's Privilege. Very feudal. Peasants serve warriors serve archons serve Kyros. The only real way to run things, as you are."

"Entirely. Oh, and the Archon of Justice's role is another law: Right of Adjudication. Sworn vassals can resolve it amicably, but if they can't, then the Overlord has sole authority to resolve it. Which is delegated to Tunon, but no appeals, not even by going back up the delegation chain."

"Well, that's simpler than the felt-like-twenty different layers and jurisdictions of courts we had, at least."

"Twenty? How big was your empire?"

"It was said that the sun never sets on the British Empire, for its colonies and outposts spread across the entire world. Which is a sphere I dunno what your astronomy knowledge is like or if it works the same here. But also it was old and that added - tradition and cruft over time. Twenty is probably an exaggeration."

"Huh. I'd heard the world was round, it's hard to miss with the amount of sailors we have here, but no one's ever found land beyond the continent and a few islands nearby; I don't think spreading that wide is possible even for Kyros. I suppose Occulted Jade and her school - the Tidecasters - are across the sea looking for some, and if anyone could survive to find it, they can. But - let's see, other laws."

"Probably the easiest one to avoid, if you know about it, is Slander of the Name: "The Overlord's name is not yours to use." Don't swear by Kyros's name unless you're willing to die for breaking the oath. Don't claim luck is 'Kyros's Favor' or anything like that. Don't name any product, or person, or place, after Kyros. I've joked about naming a hog Kyros the Overpig, but that's a death sentence if someone catches you at it."

"Styling himself a god? 'Thou shalt have no other gods before me' and 'thou shalt not take the Lord's name in vain' are two of the Commandments..."

"Believing in gods is illegal. Also talking about them, knowing what gods people used to believe in, what superstitions people used to have, what they said the constellations were, and a lot of similar things. The law is Forbidden Knowledge: "Kyros sets the standards of what can and cannot be known." It also covers some history - probably history that makes the Overlord look bad - and a lot of magical knowledge. And lots of things I don't know about because the Overlord is pretty good at enforcing his laws."

"...I feel like I ought to be offended and affronted, but, actually, I was pretty doubtful of the bloody Church anyway. The other things are more worrying. History was - important to the empire. Though admittedly, history of its glorious deeds first and foremost... Thought control, you know? If you don't even know a thing is possible, if it doesn't exist as an option, that's a chain more unbreakable than iron."

"I see the principle, and the Sages care very much about it, and that's why the Vellum Citadel got turned into the Burning Library. Kyros is quite serious about it. Your technology might be declared Forbidden Knowledge, if it's enough of a problem and you can't use it to get leverage yourself."

"Fucking-" She rubs her temples. "Yes. I get it. I'm going to go on a rant about the wastefulness of stupid destructive wars and how people are idiots at this rate, which will not be useful. Obviously if you are in charge you want to stay that way. Shutting up now."

"That does seem to be the point of most of the laws. What else... Magician's Folly: Magic may only be worked by those who are part of sanctioned guilds of mages or some Archon's designated subordinates who work magic on their behalf.  The 'Folly' part is that for licensed mages, collateral damage of magic done for Kyros's cause is innocent in law. I think because magic is unpredictable even to experts. Your technology might also be judged magic, since it does look like it, even if that's not true for those who understand it better. Hard to know in advance. And the Oldwalls Ban: The Oldwalls are forbidden, as is anything that comes from them, everything that lives inside, and depicting their interior. I forget the justification for that, something like tempting people to explore."

"So I'm illegal from the start, because finding a sanctioned guild that would let me make stuff sounds, well, impossible. Honestly, some of the stuff I've pulled off is magic even to trained engineers... Okay, summarizing, Kyros's Peace, Overlord's Destruction - tad redundant with the peace- Archons are Boss, Adjucation, Name in Vain, Censorship, Don't Do Magic, Don't Touch The Walls. That's eight?"

"Yes, one more. Not likely to come up for you too quickly, but probably the most important for society. The Division of Harvest: Kyros has the right to allocate all food and production of any goods as he sees fit. Trade requires annual licenses and can change what you are allowed to sell at the local magistrate's whim. Taxes are a higher proportion the richer your harvest is. And a dozen other provisions about how goods are made, sold, distributed, everything. Trading with your local village is usually exempt but I don't push it, just in case."

"That one is actually relatively sensible and definitely important. I read about economic planning some, it's... Well, sidetracks. Though one imagines it ends up in corruption inevitably."

"Is it corruption if it's how it's supposed to work? I think a lot of it gets handled by Tunon's people, and they have a pretty good reputation for being hard to bribe. But I've tried to just be self-sufficient and not interact with it, I don't want to learn a whole new set of rules for tax and dole in my old age."

"I... Suppose not. Though I would consider some things that were entirely legal corruption, it's debatable sometimes.

Okay. Let me write all this down."

She has a pencil and a tiny, three inch notepad in her toolbelt. It's going to be precious and irreplaceable and she hates herself for doodling in it before she came here.

"I guess I don't have a sense for where the holes and cracks in the system are. I don't think it's viable for me to just obey the law. I refuse to live a dirt farmer's life, I probably actually cannot just mind my own business without the spark going wild eventually. There's a drive to build. I know you won't help me once I'm gone still. Are some archons and fatebinders - reasonable? Will being 'foreign' give me slack if I submit once discovered? Probably you don't already know, do you..."

"I don't. There are definitely cracks and edge cases, but you'd need to ask a Fatebinder, or maybe a Sage, what they are. You could probably do worse than Fatebinder Kohl; before the Spire, we called him the Peacebinder. He kept the deaths much lower than they might have been, with a long parley that ended in negotiated surrender. But who knows what power does to a man? He might not be reasonable anymore."

"Mmmh. Peacebinder sounds pretty good, honestly? Finding the least bad option and all..."

"Which my daughter and many other idiots went and threw in his face. But yes. Might not be a good man but he's not an awful one."

"There's a temptation to just look for what's best for me. I... Don't want to be that person. It feels bad to hurt people, in the way that some call the natural good in humanity, and some call weakness. Stupid awful wars, stupid awful bigotry and hatred, rich taking advantage of the poor and swindlers and thieves of everyone, there has to be a better way. A kinder way, that makes the future brighter. But - I don't know what that way is, and if I try to create a better way- Well, that's defying Kyros, isn't it, probably won't end well."

"Hasn't for anyone so far. I wish you the best of luck if you try it, but I learned my lesson about teaching young women to fight for their beliefs when it left my second bedroom empty."

She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath.

"Alright, I think I'm going to start the charcoal burn, then go look for more iron ore, then keep chopping wood to replace what I use. If I can keep having nice, filling meals I'll get stronger instead of weaker, so again - thank you for the hospitality."

"Of course! You're very welcome to it."

And then it will be evening, and it will be morning.

She's exhausted and miserable.

But warm. And not hungry. She'll take it.

She has charcoal. She has a few more chunks of plausible iron ore. She looks for rocks to build a terrible improvised forge with. And spends all day hauling rocks around, with little more than an improvised sledge sort of thing made by taking apart her heat suit's mechanisms.

"I think that'll work. I can take it apart after too, so nobody recognizes it as a forge, if you like. Anything else iron you might want, while I'm at it? Anything iron that sells particularly well - and unsuspiciously?"

"Oh, if you can make more easily, then absolutely, make some rings. They're currency, the biggest type we use. Mostly people stick to bronze and copper, but a fistful of iron rings can buy - a full set of armor old enough to have a name and a bit of magic. I have two iron in my hidden storage I can fetch, rings aren't too regular."

"I can do that! Probably have forty, fifty pounds of metal - almost half my weight - if I'm very careful. Unless your iron is not the iron I know, that seems - much more valuable than I was expecting, I should look carefully at them. I assume this violates the Division of the Harvest somehow...?"

"You know, I'm not sure?," she says, then disappears for a few minutes to fetch the examples. They're pretty bulky, a tight bracelet an inch or so wide. There might be enough for a hoe if she had twice this many. "We made our own bronze and copper rings, and I think we still do. I never heard legal complaints about it. But iron's come from the North and East for as long as we've known it was possible to forge, and not just use star-iron."

"...So they're as valuable as the metal itself is, I think. Not fiat- Not valuable because Kyros says so. Do you mind if I, uh, try some things, tapping, seeing how it takes lightning and magnetism... I can get something like fifteen or twenty rings out of that ore. Four to go into your plow."

"Shouldn't damage them if they're good iron? Then sure, test- this one," she says, picking the one she judges slightly smaller.

She fusses with it. Poking it with the magnets in her lantern and with her compass, carefully completing a circuit with it. Scratching and pressing on it and tapping and listening. Heating it to see how quickly it heats and how quickly it cools again.

Is it just ordinary iron? Probably either wrought or cast, but those are subtly different. Probably wrought if it's meteoric iron pounded into shape, probably cast if it was made using a mold and brittle.

It's... basically wrought iron. It's weird in roughly the same way that Damascus steel is weird, though in a different direction. You probably can't tell, but that's because this iron never went through a bloomery; it was essentially put into a normal oxygen-fed forge fire and then a Forge-Bound smith reached in and manually separated the slag from the good iron. (Not with their hands. The Forge-Bound are mages; it isn't flashy, but they can do amazing things with their tools. And not just on metal.)

Anyway, it's ultimately ordinary, if by premodern standards absurdly high-quality, iron.

At length she passes them back and says, "Huh, those mage-priests of the forge have got something going for them, don't they? I'm impressed! I wonder how, it's not like they'd necessarily have the tools I'm thinking about to replicate it... I can make something similar but they would theoretically be distinguishable if someone really good looked at them carefully. Different source rocks, different method..."

"I've heard a little, but they say they're just really good at using the tools. And they make their own forges and they're really persnickety about it."

"I don't really know which way to be impressed without seeing them work, which isn't going to fly." She shrugs. "Mine is going to be a barely acceptable piece of trash, honestly, because I don't want to be here a month building a proper one people will ask you inconvenient questions about."

"I'll happily take it all the same."

"If you like!"

Sigh.

"That sounds like time to get back to work, to me. I'd be more excited if I wasn't working from raw materials..."

"Bronze-making never looked as interesting as smithing it to me, either. Well, tell me if there's a step where extra hands would be particularly helpful?"

"...Some copper rings wouldn't necessarily be amiss, come to think of it. Or bronze and brass - do you have brass? - If they're so much more common than iron that's a good trade from my perspective, I do need copper and bronze can do like four-fifths of what steel can if you're careful, it'll be a pain and a half to draw them into wire, but you can never have too much copper wire..."

"Sure, I can give you some copper. Ten times the mass of one of those iron seem alright? I think I've heard of brass being used, maybe on ship's keels? But it isn't common, I don't have any around."

"Sure! Right, time to get to work..."

It's another few days for her to assemble a stone forge, load it with charcoal, dig a trough and fill it with water for quenching, make some crude forging tools with the left-over remains of her torn up snow suit, purify the iron ore into some rings and some bar stock, melt down the copper and reshape it into a few small fittings and a lot of wire, and then FINALLY work on a proper weapon of sorts.

"I have three ideas bouncing around in my head. One, a steam bow of sorts - to fire arrows or small copper balls at deadly speed. Two, a lightning sword. It wouldn't have sparks flying off it, but it would discharge energy into whatever it strikes. Three, also lightning, but on a long spear-like prod. More reach. And maybe I make some armor too. I don't really know how to fight with, uh, any of it, though, or what makes good armor, necessarily. What do you think?"

Essa looks in periodically, and looks steadily more impressed with her as it goes on. When it comes to advice on weapons...

"A spear seems better than a sword, especially if you're new to fighting hand to hand. A powered bow... hard to say. Archers need some way to pick their battles; either you fight from a wall or cliff, or you have some spearmen screening for you while you pick your shots. Switching to a sword and shield when they close is an option, if you can carry them easily; spear and bow are harder to keep together in your field kit."

"If your armor doesn't use fancy not-magic then probably just buy some plate you're sure you can march in. Iron no one can pierce but which leaves you too exhausted to dodge can be worse than padded cloth that lets you run away. Even the best armor has weak points, and if you can't move, those will be easy targets. To say nothing of your ability to fight back when tired. There's more, but that's the main thing."

"-Well, I could make an armor that moves on its own eventually, but uh. That would be a serious and intense piece of work. I extremely much appreciate having a veteran's advice on this sort of thing, by the way. What if the bow can fire multiple times very quickly? No, it'll still run out eventually."

...Several more days with Waltana growing increasingly agitated and complaining about not having tools more and more often, she uses her bar stock and some of the wood pieces to make a plow. It's a nice plow, biting cleanly into the dirt and parting it with relative ease, and she claims it's an alloy that oughtn't rust easily, but still just a plow in the end. She turns the rest of the leftover iron into a long, steel-shafted spear with a cloth handle and two separated sturdy steel tips, wickedly curved and closing to a small gap. An arm-sized device with cords leading off it (worn as a sort of backpack) connects to the base of the shaft, and when she depresses a small switch, an electric arc sizzles and crackles in the gap at the tip of the weapon.

"Kind of wasteful to do it that way actually, but wicked intimidation factor, yeah?"

"Several shots helps, especially if they're fast enough to hit someone charging you enough to send them to their knees. But ultimately you want to be able to block something coming at your head from short range, and I haven't seen a bow that could do that well, even if it was tough as iron."

"It certainly is," says a clearly intimidated Essa, "And intimidation is never wasteful. The safest victory is always the one where you didn't have to fight at all. Even a really good swordswoman still risks a crippling every time she fights."

"Mmhm, good. I don't really want to actually fight... I'm torn between trying to join up with Kohl, and making for somewhere nearish an Oldwall I can work in privacy. Point against the first, he'll probably want me to fight. Violence is everywhere around here. Point against the second, I don't know how to grow food. Or build a house the slow and hard way. I'm sure I could figure it out, but it would not be fun or risk free."

"I think this is where I stop having useful advice. If you stayed here a year you'd have enough of the basics of growing food, and more of the muscle you'd need to do it yourself, but I doubt you really want that. Or me, for that matter. If this was what you're like working with few resources, I'm not optimistic about you hiding all that long when you have more, but also you might not need to. You have a good head on your shoulders; I think you'll guess better than me."

"Yeah, I wouldn't inflict my presence on you for that long... Though that brings up something, you know, I don't always feel like it's me doing the work. There's something inside me, or connected to me, have you noticed the mania, the focus? I don't entirely feel normal, when I'm like that. So is it really me doing it, or am I just wielding some tool I don't really understand?"

"I did notice. It got a little unnerving when you stayed like that for hours at a stretch, I admit. But... maybe I'm just used to it, but magic is much less understood than that. You would explain yourself, and I don't understand the explanations but it's clear that you do. That's a lot better than I expect for the amount of power you have to wield."

"Mm... Well, if one happens to have power, one had better find a good use for it, I s'pose. I think I'll be ready to leave tomorrow morning, where might I find Fatebinder Kohl do you think?"

"Ask at the Spire? Or look for bigger towns and listen for rumors, I can't imagine his next trick is going to be quiet after the last one."

She sighs.

"...By the horns. The spire. Thank you one last time for letting me stay. Use that plow well, yeah?"

She takes it easy for the remainder of the day. She'll be off at sunrise.

"I will. It was a pleasure, Waltana." And, with a slightly sad look leaking into her eyes, "You take care of yourself, girl."

At the crack of dawn the next morning, Waltana will start walking towards the spire, pack on back, boots on feet, and spear on shoulder.

The trail from Essa's homestead to the proper road is short, and soon she's on the proper road (for values of 'proper' which include being packed earth with substantial ruts, no paving or even gravel), which in a winding way heads north and west to Ascension Hall and the Mountain Spire. (This is the opposite way she'd turn to go into town, but she knows where she's headed.)

A minute or two after the turning, she passes a small, mismatched group of warriors headed the opposite way. There's a dark-skinned man leading them wearing heavy armor, mostly iron, with a spear and shield strapped to his back and a sword sheathed at his waist. His helm is a distinctive yellow bronze with black stripes and a ruff of green feathers.

A woman is one step behind him, looking around like she's scouting the path. She's in leather armor painted with blood-red patterns, with a line of brighter red feathers tied into her thin strip of hair, two vicious-looking swords on her belt.

She's absolutely furious, in a cold way, and you can tell in a second of meeting her gaze. Not that she holds her eyes on Walta for long; she glances over the soft pale skin of someone who is just starting to get a proper tan from working outside and, despite the spear, dismisses her as a non-threat, probably a merchant.

The two behind them have white hair, though the woman looks too young for it. She's younger than Essa, though probably by less than a decade, and most of her clothes look like they were assembled from blue-dyed sailcloth and heavy ship's sheets ropes. She has a knife on her belt, but the thing she grasps like a weapon is her spear-staff, a dark rod of wood with a white point flanked by a pair of crescents. It sparkles with a faint purple-white buzz even when she's not focused on it. Her expression is slightly but grimly displeased.

The man, however, looks to have earned his white hair honestly. He is dressed like a librarian, at first glance, though an old-fashioned one with rough robes rather than patched tweed. At second glance, that robe is reinforced with boiled leather, there are three colors of tattoos on what shows of his arms and some on the legs, his walking-stick has a faint brown glow at its curved head, the pen at his side is actually a knife, and his eyes rest on Walta for longer and his body language tenses slightly when he does.

Notable things about this traveler: Pale and thin and walking with an uncertain gait, like one who isn't used to outside work or fighting, or hasn't eaten well for much of her life. Looking around in something like wonder at all this frankly ordinary wilderness and the spire in the distance. Holding her spear like she barely knows how to use it, but also respecting it and holding it more carefully than the average recruit. No shield, for some reason.

And her equipment...

Clothes in a foreign design with very careful stitching. The boots are black and strangely textured, with rubber soles, synthetic coverings, and steel fasteners. Her long pants are thick and rubbery, her leather belt seems to have a number of small iron tools attached to it, and several iron rings hanging off it besides. A greatcoat with steel buttons and a shiny symbol pinned to the collar, but it's no armor. A pair of heavy goggles made of leather and glass and bronze. Leather messenger bag along with a large, boxy backpack that clanks slightly as she walks. Steel buttons on the bag and pack. Steel belt buckle. Painted steel canteen. And the spear is all steel, just wrapped with more of the rubbery cloth her pants are made of, with a rubber cord attached near the base that leads into her backpack.

She stops in surprise and watches them as they approach for a moment. Then asks, "...Would you happen to be the Fatebinder Kohl, the Peacebinder?"

Well, that gets them to stop and look at her. And notice all the ways in which she's out of place.

"I am," Kohl says, "Though most people around here call me 'Lord of the Mountain Spire', now. I don't recognize the heraldry," he says, gesturing to her collar, "Who, or whose, are you?"

She had a strategy for this. Or well, not a strategy, just a guess that being fully open would be best, the standards of what can and cannot be known be damned.

"Waltana Hampson, of the Bristol Shipbuilders and Ironworkers Union. Bristol being outside of Kyros's domain entirely, so far as I can surmise. Having found myself here to my surprise, I thought I would seek out the most reasonable sounding person in the Tiers- You."

"I try," he says, a little wryly, "and sometimes even succeed. You look foreign enough, and I know nothing of Bristol." He looks over to the older man, who shakes his head. "Nor does Lantry. What brings you to Vendrien's Well?"

"Some whim of magic? I did not choose to come here. I don't really see any way I could have gotten here. And yet, here I am." She shrugs and grimaces. "We play the game with the cards that we are dealt."

"So we all do," he says, and both of the older ones nod sympathetically. "Why were you selecting someone to seek out?"

"For now, pragmatism and hoping for the best. I'm a foreigner, not sworn to Kyros - yet, perhaps - not sworn to anyone here. I don't know the area. I don't know the history. This place is foreign and terrifying, frankly."

She - slowly, so as not to alarm them - holds her spear out to the side and depresses the switch for a few seconds. A crackling arc dances up the spear, a Jacob's Ladder. She rests it against her shoulder again, after.

"Making things like this, requires resources. Much as I would be tempted to find some unclaimed patch of woods and try to drudge out a field and a hut, that seems like a terrible and boring life, frankly. And while that feels like a safer option than seeking someone reliable to work for, I suspect it would not actually be so. The final plan to cross my mind, leaving this place for somewhere else- Where would I even go?"

"I know the feeling," he says while she's hoisting the spear. After she demonstrates...

"What magic is that? The Forge-Bound say weapons can't be made magic straight from the forge."

"It's not magic. Not from what I understand magic to be, at least. I'm magic, I think, to make something like this. I know how to make things."

"Lantry?", he says, skeptically.

The old man nods eagerly, and sketches a large sigil in the air, the lines shimmering slightly and then brighter once he finishes the pattern. "Would you mind pressing whatever that was that make that crackle again, young lady?" He's pulled a piece of parchment from his pack, and is already scratching shorthand onto it.

She holds down the switch. 

"What is lightning, exactly? The fury of a storm? The separation between sky and earth? Sparks of it can accumulate on wool, too. When you truly know what lightning is, you can make it do your bidding."

"Remarkable," he mutters, tracing some lines along a quick sketch of the spear, "Her claim seems accurate. Magic is reacting, but largely in the way it reacts to flowing water, not so much like the Spire. You don't seem to be actively magic either", he says as well, this time directed toward her, "Though I think I would like to see if that changes next time you're creating something of this sophistication. Did you make the iron as well?"

"Don't be so pushy, ink-thief," says the older woman, familiarly and not affectionately, "Those are her secrets, not yours."

"Peace, Eb."

"Trading work for protection is the predictable option. Flight would be naval, long, and probably futile. Someone less noble-soft might prefer farming. But what would you do, with these marvels? Equip armies? Buy the favor of Archons? Become famous yourself?"

Verse is antsy, and can tell this isn't going to be quick. She strips a vertical strip of bark off a tree and leans against it, her eyes closed.

"...Funny to be called noble-soft. I was a fucking orphan. Bristol is just... Rich, in comparison. I want to be safe. I want to help people. I want to make the world richer. Though I think I should learn more about 'the standards of what can and cannot be known'."

He tilts his head. "That must be wealthy indeed, if an orphan without a patron still spends their days indoors, far away from toil. And if you can make spears of pure iron, let alone ones full of lightning."

"I like you. I try to help people, too, though Kyros and those who prefer death to his service do not make it easy. And I think the rich world you could make is a sight worth seeing."

Eb snorts derisively.

"You, like Eb, are free to doubt me on that."

She nods solemnly. "I doubt the practical reality of it more than anything else. And that the - incentives - that make the world brutal, can be overcome... But I would still like to try, whether that's sincere or just words. I'm glad."

"Incentives do matter, but they can be defied. ...I think this will be a long conversation. Best had at a table, maybe in the town back the way you came."

"Yes, that makes sense. Though I haven't come from a town - shall I follow you all, or go somewhere to wait if you're in some sort of errand-?"

"Verse doesn't care about many people. But one of the few, her killer used to live near here." He doesn't look too happy about it; the calm smile fades to a faint frown.

"We'll see what her sister says. She took my sister."

It's Essa, isn't it. She was trying not to call down trouble for Essa.

Well, technically, they were coming this way anyway.

"-Ah. Hmm."

"You got a problem with that, tiny?"

"I'm not going to get in your way. You were headed for her anyway so it's not like I led you there." 

This is really not a very good battle to pick even if she were much more sure Essa didn't deserve it than she actually is.

"I promised Verse this," he says, levelly, "and I won't renege simply because she was kind to someone useful."

"And I'm not asking you to."

It just hurts anyway. So many people gone, and more every day.

"We understand each other," he says with a nod. "Verse, lead the way."

She stands back up and onto the road, then resumes stalking along the path toward Essa's door.

"Come on," she says to Walta, "better along than alone."

"Or I could close my eyes and hope it goes away," she mutters, before shaking her head and following along.

Eb pats her on the shoulder. "I doubt it will go better if the ones who might care about her stay away," she says quietly.

"I'm not a soldier. Feels different than the great frost doing it. More personal."

Or the wasting disease. Different than that, too. Her mother. That, she could not do anything but pray about.

"The good thing about personal, is there's a personality you can argue with. Most people you can even change their mind sometimes."

She is quiet the rest of the way there.

They turn at the path to Essa's. Their steps are heavy, their voices silent.

She hears.

She pulls a stool out into the sunlight and waits for them to climb the low ridge.

"Well. Fatebinder Kohl, are you?"

"I am. I, and my lieutenant here, are looking for a woman named Clea."

She

Stands a few feet away from the group. Not quite separate, not quite together.

"My youngest daughter. Dead in the second defense of Ascension Hall. Why did you want her?"

"Because I couldn't find Irissa soon enough to punish her for what she did."

Essa's mask of calm slips. "Well. You going to take it out on me? Find some crime for the Fatebinder to sentence? Make that nice young lady watch?"

Verse stares, cold anger wavering.

"Should I, Verse? Your dance."

"Shit, I don't know."

"I'll have you keep a civil tongue in your head, girl. Since you're on my land." For the moment.

She looks taken aback. "Sorry, ma'am," she says, then blinks, surprised she said it.

Kohl looks over, surprised.

"Well... No, Fatebinder. It doesn't seem right. A sister for a sister? Sure. But this doesn't balance the scales."

"We leave with blades dry?"

"I... think so. Maybe we can ask some questions first. Can't satisfy Three Whispers, but maybe Red Geyser."

"Can I ask you one first? How'd Irissa die?"

"Fighting with the Unbroken in the Blade Grave, about four span ago. Against Kyros's armies."

"They didn't listen, damn them. Of all the damn fool things I told them, the only thing they didn't hear was what mattered." She shudders out a sigh. "It's my fault. I raised those girls on the romance of war, on tales of bloodying the Bastard Tier and pushing back Azure."

"You taught them to fight?"

She nods. "And to fight damn well, too. Unfortunately. How was I to know the war coming would be yours? Iron in whole phalanxes, half the scum of Terratus in a horde bearing down on us, and a man of stone who could step clean over a curtain wall?"

"Kyros is mighty. The best we can do is limit the damage as the conquest rolls. And look for opportunities to make things right."

"I told them so. Fine girls, very fine, but they couldn't stand against the Overlord that calls earthquakes and volcanoes from a scrap of vellum. But they listened to too much patriotic claptrap when they were young, so when I told them the better wisdom they wouldn't take it. With Clea I tried twice, but she threw your peace back into their faces."

"I may have killed her myself. I'm sorry."

"No, she died in the courtyard breach." In the enormous fireball, she doesn't say, because that is an ugly way to die and Essa doesn't need to hear it.

"One thing doesn't fit. You sound like you taught them all honor and soldiering, but a mercenary named Krokus told us that Irissa hunted people for sport. That she displayed their heads on spikes. And wanted to do it to my sister-Furies."

"Krokus? I ain't never heard the name-" She pauses, recognition flickering behind her eyes. "Bald, bearded man? Skin the color of bronze and thick as a Beastman? I knew him by a different name."

She nods.

"Right lazy bastard by my reckoning. Only thing he put much effort into was lying his way into a meal and a thong of rings. What justice is there if a man like him lives while my Irissa's met the void?"

"Justice was delivered. Quick enough, too. Was he married?"

"I doubt it. Not before the Conquest, at least."

"Told you it should have been slow."

He nods, acknowledging the point.

"Do you know anything about the third fighter with them? Catorius, a Sage?"

"I remember him. An older gentleman. Smarter than most, like he had the whole Vellum Citadel bouncing around in his head. A tad 'off' in that way magicians so often are. Eyes as hungry as a flame."

"'Old' doesn't help us single him out much," says the old Sage.

"Neither does 'arrogant and a little mad'," says the Sage-hater.

"Done, Verse?"

She waves him off a bit, "So, Irissa... she killed one of my sisters. I thought I needed to avenge them, to make it right, because I'd failed them. But actually talking to you... it's cleared some stuff up. I guess what I'm saying is I miss my sisters, and you miss your daughters, and that's just the way of things."

She nods.

"Then I guess we'll leave you to your farm, ma'am."

"My apologies for intruding," he says, turning to go and gesturing for the others to follow.

"Peacebinder!", she calls, and waits for him to turn back. "You want 'opportunities to make things right'?"

"I truly do."

"You found one. Don't make her regret it. Or me regret suggesting you."

He straightens, and gives a big smile. "I will do my best, ma'am."

And then he's back turning to go.

What a relief! She nods and smiles one last time at Essa before walking after them, anxiety spiking hard in her belly.

She doesn't know these people. Verse is just ... intense, like that one airship pilot. Lantry reminds her of Engels, affable yet secretive. Eb is a cynic, but sort of still trying. All of them - intimidate her, yes, confront that feeling and understand it, how it's affecting you and how that might not be for the best. She never will know them, if she doesn't poke them.

...She comes close to Kohl after a bit of walking. "Chief McAllen, chief of the Guard and promoted to sort of like a Fatebinder of Bristol when the great frost came, would have said it would not be justice to find a crime to make what you want to do easier."

"She'd do it anyway. Better an execution, for a crime truly committed, than a murder sanctioned by an officer of Justice. Not to say your chief's standards are wrong."

"I see. I don't know this place," she acknowledges again, shaking her head. "And more talk can wait for a table like you said."

"Did Madam Essa tell you much about Kyros's Law? It's much more absolute than how most Tiersmen handled it before the Conquest. I can't imagine how Bristol did."

"The nine laws, in generalities - or in summary, at least." Here is a tough leather notebook. "...Peace, Destruction, Archons, Adjucation, Name in Vain, what cannot be known, no unsanctioned magic, stay the hell away from the Oldwalls, economic regulation."

"Good on her. The thing about Kyros's Justice is that it is very capricious if someone with power wants it to be. And I have to assume this is how he likes it, because otherwise he could change it. If a judgement is bad, the only recourse is the punishment of the judge. Knowing you've not touched a hair on the head of anyone protected by the Peace, I could nonetheless sentence you to death for violating it, and that would stand. I would be executed if Tunon learned of it, certainly. But even assuming I didn't carry out the sentence myself immediately, as is my right, you would still be legally sentenced to death, and any agent of the Court who met you would be obligated to carry it out in my stead. Violating the Law is forbidden, but executing it faithfully even in the most perverse cases of technicality is sacrosanct."

"Fortunately, making verdicts perversely lax is equally possible, or my job would be much more frustrating."

She scowls. "Absolute and capricious indeed. Not that our laws couldn't be so, but I think they were designed to - resist that, to an extent. Appeals and limits and discretion. If only because the powerful wanted technicalities to abuse and Victoria cannot issue Edicts to stop them from rebelling."

"Better, I imagine. Perhaps I will try it myself. An advisor I've been exchanging letters with thinks I soon will have the opportunity."

"...I have no idea what you're talking about and also that sounds like it will make important people very mad at you."

"Fatebinder Myothis, who has been accumulating lore for decades and contemplating it in retirement for at least one, has been exchanging letters with me. She thinks I am on the path to being an Archon. And Archon's Privilege extends to internal adjudication."

"As for whether it will make important people mad at me... Archons do feud. But Tunon disapproves. So they feud - from a distance. Recent events excepted."

"I guess I should have expected something like that." She glances around at the others. "What I said before remains true, though I'll use a new metaphor and call you the most stable looking piece of flotsam in the storm."

"A naval metaphor! You'll fit in as a Tierswoman yet."

"Bristol Ironworkers and Shipbuilders. Though I personally only helped with... A dozen or two actually when it all fell down, come to think. I'm not a seasoned sailor any more than a soldier."

"We're at least five day's walk from the sea, here, and everyone still talks like a sailor. Their whole culture goes back to the sailors who landed centuries back. It's probably Eb's fault."

"Hey, just because the School of Tides taught a lot of noble brats how to sail doesn't mean we're-"

He gives her a sarcastic look.

"-right. Joke. There's been a lot of mean ones at our expense."

...She had been about to espouse the wonders of the steam engine. Better watch that and keep some cards close to her chest, until there's some actual benefit to speaking it aloud.

Not that she'll care about this reasonable and sensible decision when she's in the heat of a Spark fugue later.

"I did read a lot of different books, while I could, but it's no substitute for actually doing, for many things. And yes, even orphans could get an education. At least in the cities. Though part of that is charity being fashionable."

"The Sages took in a surprising number of orphans and taught them, though in fairness I think most were stuck doing boring scribal work for several decades and it was rarely any of those ones who got taught the magical parts of the curriculum. That's all up in flames, naturally."

"Of course it is. Why wouldn't it be? How many people know how to read? We'd gotten up to four in five..."

"In the Tiers, I think we were up to two in five at last attempt to check, that would be, oh, eight years back. In the Northern Empire, our nearest neighbors, it's about one in fifteen. With the Vellum Citadel turned to the Burning Library - I think we'll be down to one in ten in a generation. Where it goes from there depends which Archon rules the Tiers and how they feel about education. Present company excepted, I'm not optimistic."

"Printing press. Though you need quite a lot of paper and iron to make it practical, hmm..."

"Vellum's always scarce, there's a reason I take notes on myself. Well, other than the fun psychoactives. How does a 'press' speed up writing?"

He flips over a sheet of vellum to its blank back, to devote it entirely to this concept.

"Vellum? You want paper, made from wood chips... Rows and rows of stamps in the shape of letters, arranged in a tray. Lower it into ink. Lower it into paper. Lower it into ink. Lower it into paper. Do this a thousand more times. Then arrange the stamps for the next page, and do that a thousand more times. Before you know it you have a thousand of the same book. That's the simple and easy and cheap version."

"Just wood? I imagine we've tried it, though it sounds like that would rot in a decade or two. But - like a woodcut, but split up - oh, that could work, that would be marvelous. Conveniently, we've got several scripts around, but they use the same basic glyphs - probably Sage's doing - that could be worth it. And if you can do that volume - yes, paper would make sense. Oh, this is marvelous! My favorite idea since 'not dying in a fire to Kyros'."

"Books are really good actually! ...There's lots of ways to treat and preserve paper, variously expensive. Making things cheap is the principal goal of modern engineering, though, and I'm less good at that than at building weird outlandish one-of-a-kind things. Details, I'd need to see what you have to work with around here and try things."

"The School of Ink and Quill - 'Sages' - are - well, were, mostly - about collecting and preserving knowledge, so I imagine even if this kind of thing was common there would still have been heavily-preserved vellum copies which would last for centuries even without preservation magic. But for spreading knowledge, oh yes, excellent. That was always the part of our alleged philosophy we weren't very good at."

"They were always very happy to steal everyone else's secrets. Not so happy with anyone trying to get theirs."

"Luckily the only ill use for a printing press I can think of is propaganda, and it's not like Kyros or Archons can't do that already."

"You'd be surprised," Kohl says thoughtfully, “That could entrench the hierarchy."

"It could also make people more educated and more free to spread ideas, unless there is somehow only one. But there's never only one of something like this, not forever."

"Myothis has been very educational. She posits that the power of an Archon comes from reputation. They gain strength and magic from being feared, loved, and hated. They seem to believe it. Lantry's theory of Edict strength is suggestive, too."

"That's observation, not theory. Edicts gain strength with age, but very slowly if they aren't talked about and gaining notoriety. I admit, it suggests something fundamental. Artifacts, too, gain power with age and reputation. Oh dear, I can't imagine this knowledge not being forbidden."

"That..... Is not really how things are supposed to work. If anything things break down when they age. For us, at least."

"What magic do you have? Just the invention and creation effect?"

"Nothing we call magic that wasn't eventually revealed to be - fake, wishful thinking, or only incidental to something else, like willow bark for pain. Or watching the stars for signs- We think now that the stars only have meaning because we think they do, so people panic about what mercury or virgo are doing, and then point at the selfsame panic in hindsight and say 'astrology is real', look, mercury gave a sign of war and there was a war! Stupid. We don't even call the Spark magic- It's not fashionable to call things magic, but it's not measured and understood either. Perhaps it should have been."

"I shall reserve judgement until I see it in action, and if it works here, where we definitively do have magic of a distinctly different kind, that may suggest it is not - but it does seem interesting. Much of our magic can be understood and - sloppily - measured, but we do still draw lines separating it from craft and technology - though the Forge-Bound foul that up royally, of course..."

"He'll go on like this for an hour if you let him," Kohl interjects, "So please interrupt if you'd rather he not."

"Oh, no, this is fine. So, what makes magic, magic? Mentally controlling it? Only some people being able to do it? A certain kind of energy?"

"Well, there are classes of magic. They all manipulate the same energies, as best as we can tell; Archons rarely consent to detailed inspection, so for most of their capabilities we're merely generalizing from a handful of examples. But Edicts and sigil magic - and the Spires - affect the same field of energy. Edicts can only be originated by Kyros, though they can be passed to another - possibly only a vassal, we don't know - to read and execute. Archons all have unique magic, which seems to be entirely intuitive and idiosyncratic. And extremely varied. But sigil magic, while its limits are poorly understood, can be used by everyone, and the basic structure has been charted. It does have a mental component - anyone can trace the correct shape, but it only produces magical effects if you know enough of the associated Archon's history and achievements to hold appropriate concepts in mind as you do it. A bronze-smith doesn't need to understand the properties of his copper and tin to work them together, so long as he properly does the things he was taught as an apprentice; a sigil mage needs to think correctly, not just act correctly."

"...Then yes, according to that framework, we don't have any magic except perhaps the Spark. Nothing that explicitly needs you to think correctly- Except some tricks of psychology, I guess. Never heard of any mentally responding energy."

"Do you have anything like the Spires? The Oldwalls? The obvious point of origin of magic is the Archons - and many of my colleagues conjectured that Kyros is in some sense just the greatest of Archons, the Archon of Edicts - but the magical effects of the Older Realms construction can't be denied, and they predate even Kyros, probably by many centuries."

"Definitely not. They look like someone's ancient, overbuilt infrastructure project, though."

"Hard to argue with that. Only this span have we gotten the first clue what they are for - Once Kohl had awakened multiple Spires, it became possible to transport from one to another in - well less than an hour. So perhaps they were a transport network, for whatever people ruled Terratus long before Kyros. Wildly, wildly overbuilt, though, no question. Then again, perhaps they only work because they loom large in the minds of the populace - ah, pun intended, my apologies - and if they were merely taller than any ordinary building they wouldn't concentrate enough magic to work. We know so little."

"It's really something... And the only response is to try to know more, isn't it? My home could have ended up like that. Ancient wonders, never to be understood or recovered? It feels humbling."

"I'd hope that if something destroyed Kyros and our civilization with him - and you could hardly do less and have it sitick - some of our Chronicle would survive to be found by our successors. Then again, perhaps their histories are written on the inner walls of the Oldwalls - I'm told glyphs are common. What was bringing your people to that point? With the knowledge and capabilities your tools imply..."

"We're just calling it the Great Frost, or the Last Autumn, or the Long Winter. Something like an edict of winter across the whole world, with many guesses and no certainty as to why. They say... Everyone is going to die. There were evacuation efforts, scrambling to build new cities in places that could survive. It was honestly amazing, how much we could get done in a season if we really had to but... Probably not enough, news totally broke down, Bristol certainly didn't get its evacuation done cleanly and who knows about the rest of England, let alone the rest of the world. And then I ended up here, somehow, instead of in an evacuation vehicle."

"I hesitate to say anything is beyond Kyros, but that does sound like it might be. Not that he would - 'Kyros doesn't want to rule a wastelend' and I can't imagine you could feed even a tenth of your people, in those circumstances. Up north one of the domains belongs to the Archons of Frost, and it is not a populous place. And that's with someone mostly benign controlling the winter."

"Actually, the hothouses were only the fifth or sixth worst part..." She scowls. "Lots of bad feelings there still. Don't want to talk about it too much."

"Understood. I'll resist the urge to write secondhand history of it," he says, lapsing into silence a little like a shushed puppy.

"How did your people - England? - fight wars?," Kohl asks.

If he's risking making an enemy, he needs to know the risk. And if he's contemplating asking for an ally against another enemy, then doubly so.

"-The. Oh. Hmm. Cannons and guns, for the most part. I an somewhat sure there's no real way to find them, though. And it's England yes, or alternately the British Empire."

"I don't recognize either. Unsurprisingly."

"Do you have...... Bombs? Essentially, bomb powered bows and ballistae and catapults? Long iron tubes, explosive powder. Also, ships with engines to move against the wind."

"Ah. Ours are usually magic, but I think I see."

"I'm guessing the ships aren't using the currents, either?"

"No, heat can be converted to force to motion. Her majesty's ship Meteor could run at twenty knots. I can build steam engines. Though probably only with fairly ruinous amounts of metal..."

Eb whistles. "I've hit twelve with a lateen rigging with fair wind, but there were three of us Tidecasters speeding its way and we were trying to set a record."

"Airships have almost no range - a hundred miles, two hundred one way - but I've seen one go fifty, across a small bay. Mail ship."

"Damn. I have no idea what an airship - like an artificial bird? - would look like, but, still, damn."

"I can sketch it later, maybe."

Sheeeee should keep things back more, keep to generalities until- Some sort of promise or place is assured. Knowledge is valuable. Even if it's nice to teach and be excited about things.

These guys are barely in the Iron Age, there's not going to be much they'll be able to replicate without help. But, you know, the printing press might be doable, so fair to be a little worried.

In any case, they're in sight of the town.

Eb's been here fairly recently and knows a good place - tavern with a back room.

So soon they can be sitting down at a table, with bread, cheese, and weak beer.

(She frowns unhappily at the beer and mutters something about filters, but will drink it.)

"So I suppose we'll need some formalization about how I'm to work with you all, if you'll have me."

"Yes. The two main options I see are swearing to my service with some promises made on my side beforehand, and agreeing to an alliance of some kind.
The drawback of the first is that by Kyros's Law, it is difficult to hold me to my word.
The drawback of the second is that, not being an indirect vassal of Kyros, you receive no protection from the law at all."

"...If you become my enemy, nowhere Kyros touches is safe for me. I suppose breaking your word is different than pronouncing something horrible to me, for your reputation..."

"Fatebinders usually hold to their word pretty strictly, though many are known to parse the letter of the promises pretty finely. I think Tunon would enforce honesty on them if he could. For whatever comfort that offers."

"I was his enemy until he took the Spire, and knelt to beg for my life. My expectations were very low, Peacebinder or not. But he's treated me like an ally, not a servant. For whatever that's worth."

Verse snorts and turns her head away.

"I have tried to behave, since the beginning of the Conquest, as someone Tiersmen could approach and be dealt with fairly, and someone who would make their lives better for my involvement, if I could. You are both much more dangerous and much more useful than they."

"To betray you more than them would be foolish."

"...Boys all know how to say such nice things, but don't give them what they want unless put a ring on your finger," she sing-songs.

And then shakes her head. "No, just no. The safety of being valuable is an unnerving sort of safety, isn't it? I'll kill myself before being made to work at swordpoint, by the way. What would swearing to your service consist of? What sorts of trouble are likely to find me if I don't?"

Verse tries to smother a laugh, but doesn't quite succeed. It doesn't seem like it's at Walta, oddly. Maybe at the Fatebinder.

"I'm not cut out for this negotiation shit, Kohl. I think I'll just wait outside." She stands up and leaves without waiting for acknowledgement.

Kohl blinks. "What was that about? Never mind."

"The main problem would be the Scarlet Chorus. They consider me their enemy in this civil war that's going - Verse excepted - and aren't good at keeping their people in line even when they're theoretically allies - which is part of why we have a civil war. If I claimed you as an ally and helped the Disfavored more formally than I have been, I could keep them off. Well, as long as you were around here and not in the Blade Grave where they've set up their main camp. If the Chorus got wind that you were my ally but not formally a vassal of Kyros, they'd try to kill or capture you to spite me even if they didn't understand your potential. And the Archon of Secrets should be assumed to understand... most things."

"Suicide is preferable to being alone in a room with the Voices of Nerat. In the event that comes up."

That gets a pair of...

...emphatic nods.

"If you're my vassal, that gets you Kyros's Peace, and I won't claim there's no chance of Nerat trying to poach you but it's a much-reduced risk."

"Of course, that also makes you a subject of Kyros. Which you may not want yourself to be."

"...I may even agree with that."

...???

Well, not her problem. Her problem is: Being a vassal of Kohl rubs the smoldering (not burning, but still there) spirit of Liberty in her heart the wrong way. And it may or may not give him and Kyros some sort of weird magic power over her that merely acknowledging that they are powerful does not. And she needs to remain fucking calm and take this seriously because this is, the rest of her life here, everything's on the line.

"I wasn't planning to go sight-seeing, and I very much want to buy armor, a shield, whatever protective talismans there are... Make some sort of escape system... I'll probably need to sleep on it, though I do understand that not choosing is also a choice. Being sworn to you, a vassal, pretty much involves swearing to do whatever you say, at least formally speaking, no matter the practical reality?"

"Right, yes, I meant to say. Yes, formally speaking it does. It would also put you under Tunon, Archon of Justice, though many people say that there's nothing left under his mask but Kyros's Law, interpreted as literally as possible, and if that's not strictly true it's pretty close. I'd be willing to commit to promising an escape clause - say, that I swear that if you ever want to leave, you promise not to make weapons or teach others to, and then you go free and I never give you another order or try to compel you unless and until you break that promise."

"That would be very reassuring. Another thing I would want is a portion of materials or money for my own use, in addition to building things for you. And if I am merely an ally at first, nothing stops me swearing to you later, no?"

"I could easily agree to that. Half and half, perhaps. But before we work out details, there is another question, which for unfamiliar reasons is at least as important. How personally visible do you want to be?"

"If you let your devices travel but the woman behind them is anonymous, you are safer. But if you take credit for them, you are likely an Archon."

Yeaaaaah that is going to be... Tricky. When the Spark acts up.

"...I would actually like to be secret but it might be impossible. I get a bit drunk on the Spark. A bit mad. Manic, blind to consequences when I'm building the really good stuff. Seems to be just. How it works, if the stories about Tesla are true."

"I asked for advice, when I claimed the Spire. I learned several things, but in terms of advice, the crux was this: 'You have been thrust into the arena of the mighty. Your options are: a retreat into obscurity, suicide, or rising to the occasion.' I have chosen the third option."

"Sure. Words are easy."

"Know what you're choosing: Graven Ashe was once a skilled commander of a militia. Then he held back the Archon of War for months with great disadvantages, and could take away the fear and distraction from his soldiers. Then he killed Blood Echo, and now he takes on all the pain of his army. Tunon was once merely an excellent bureaucrat who saw that the ascendance of Kyros was inevitable and changed the local code of law to make assimilation easy; now it is unclear there is a human mind present at all. Even the Voices of Nerat was once a human being; now he's a monster of green fire and madness."

"Being an Archon means you are empowered by your reputation, and changed by it. This will happen to me. It will happen to you."

"Know what you're choosing."

Her head rests in her hands and grips her hair. She wants to tear it out. She wants to rage and scream and cry for everyone.

Stop feeling. Think.

The enormity of this place. They're practically tribal savages, in some ways, the Zulu waving sticks at each other. Not only is that deeply uncharitable, it's wrong. This is an empire. They have advanced, unknown technology. They have armies, and laws that are actually enforced. There is order. There is, apparently, peace- At least where the boot has stomped down enough.

...God, if you exist? FUCK YOU! DIE IN THE SUN, you murderer! Sadist! If paradise is not a lie, send the message more clearly! She's had it out for Yahweh, who doesn't exist, for years and years- And when she's really troubled, it always comes back up. God doesn't exist. At best, his churches are clinging to something that tries to make people work together, and often fails.

Stop- No, don't stop feeling. Acknowledge the feelings. Pick them apart. Yes, she is extremely angry. And sad. And anxious. Almost everyone she ever knew is dead and she's in a realm where she has no stability or power - yet, perhaps - so that's pretty understandable. She may as well be dead, too, as far as the evacuation's remnants are concerned.

Now, that's interesting. Is she dead? Sent to the Tiers as some sort of purgatory?

She's angry. She's sad. She's furious at the Church and their blind devotion, for all that they were trying their best. She's furious at corrupt nobles and ineffective Parliament, for all that having law and order is better than roving bandit hordes. Because that is what it feels like she's fallen into, here, a bunch of tribal warlords who are all going to murder each other inside of five years. She should have nothing to do with it. The first thing Kohl would have her build is weapons.

Is that what Kyros is doing? Imposing some sort of order through force of arms, for the benefit of all? Doubtful, not impossible. It's probably a dozen commingled things, plus the odd thing where your reputation changes you - not just because of what people expect affecting your thoughts and actions, but magically so, it seems? Thinking the best of everyone would be wishful thinking and moral platitude, lying to herself to feel better.

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Who said that? She doesn't remember exactly, just those words and the ring of truth to them. Cynical, but inescapable. Yes. Exactly. She doesn't want to be corrupted. She doesn't want to become the monster she sees in the clergy, in Kyros, in the East India Company. She- Can obviate power, and thus avoid becoming someone who has to do bad things.

Didn't she chafe so, in the orphanage? Just another young brat, another washer-woman fit to be married off on some farm somewhere or work grey dreary days in a factory? Didn't she escape that, in those heady days of the evacuation?

If everyone was kind and cooperative, the world would be a fine place indeed. But they're not. They're never going to be. It's not a good strategy to be selfless, to be harmless. Someone who isn't will step on you. So don't be harmless, don't be selfless. Take power, and be, what, better than the other option? Kill only murderers and rebels, to deter further murder and rebellion? There's a yawning pit of terror at that. She's screwed up before- Hurt people by mistake, or deliberately, and regretted it. Petty, stupid, childish things.

It's not, actually, different, to 'accidentally' burn her annoying bunkmate Jessie's sausage, than to happen to cause someone she's never heard of and will never meet to miss a meal. It feels different, but it shouldn't. Why should her own squeamishness stop her? It doesn't matter, not at the scales that are at play here. One person for a dozen would be worth it already, if it were just that, a sure trade. She... Has no idea how things will end up, but she can probably save a life or give some thousands one cumulative life's worth of ease and joy and peace, if she tries.

Not choosing is also a choice.

Put it like that, the answer is obvious.

"If you truly think I have the potential to become an archon, somehow, then I have a duty to do it, and be- The kind of archon I wish there were more of. And even if not, if all I can be is a mechanic of small renown, I have a duty to do that too."

He smiles, a big, honest smile like he gave Essa.

"Good answer."

"Which leaves the other question. As two future Archons. Two who are not much fond of Kyros."

"Archon sworn to Archon has precedent; Kyros gifted Nerat the Archon of Song, Bleden Mark is at Tunon's disposal, Cairn was placed in Ashe's command. But it is not a stable situation. So I suggest a second escape clause: when Kyros names you Archon, or you are proclaimed it by the people in the corners of every Tier, the vassal's oath is done and void."

"Hmmm."

She wants to cringe away from this, to flinch awkwardly at the notion of contemplating something she doesn't 'deserve', to grab at power and acclaim. But the choice has been made, hasn't it? It's no longer a question of 'deserve' but of - decisiveness versus dithering. And decisiveness wins.

If her reputation is to become her, in this strange land, she's going to need to deeply understand these people, and to be visible and public about it. She'll need a symbol- Will the engineer's sigil do well enough, or does she want something else? Some part of her responds: A flower. A lotus in profile, in red, perhaps? Fire, but beautiful, not destructive... Something to think about.

"...I want to build things. Walls, wealth, food, peace, tools, art and wonder. I want that to be my reputation, if I must have one. It's very easy to destroy, not so to build. Of course, the politics of things you still understand far better than I do at the moment, having lived your life here. It does seem unbalanced to have an archon sworn to an archon, though I think we're likely to always be - allies, people with similar outlook, unless things devolve beyond my imagination."