Bostkirk

Bostkirk was enough to overwhelm the Bilius brain into near-submission. A city of a hundred thousand people straddled a bend in the Sunglaze river, crossing it with enough wide bridges for the city's lifeblood of goods and people to flow. The highway slowed as it entered city limits, and became a major thoroughfare for city carriages, people riding a variety of beasts, and at least one vehicle powered entirely by magic. Cargo wagons trundled carefully on the innermost lane, piled high with all the stuff that kept the city running, drawn by huge beasts he'd never seen before: pachyderms, equines, reptiles, avians, and canines.

The people were mostly human, but he saw plenty of arcs, dwarves, and many kinds of beastkin. He even saw a few elves, tall and several shades of green, moving as a group. They were mounted on dappled horses with arched necks, graceful legs, and a single horn on their heads. Taylor laughed out loud, causing Jane to look up from her reading. Elves on unicorns! It was like something out of a story from Earth.

The buildings along the broad avenue were generally four stories, made of stone, and decorated with facades of wooden trim and siding painted in pleasant browns, beiges, and greens. Underneath, Taylor detected the bones of his own home: plain stone rectangles with small windows, welded together with magic and little imagination, as if swaths of the city were erected in a hurry and later generations tried to make up for it with paint and decorative trim.

None of that prepared him for Qumurong Station. It was a grander thing than he expected from the world of Aarden, even in a major city. Gordia had a rail system connecting every provincial capital and major city in the empire, and two lines converged in Bostkirk, each with a pair of tracks for bi-directional travel. Qumurong Station sheltered the rail system, fast coaches, city carriages, and cargo transfer under a single, vast expanse of green-tinted glass with enough space left over for restaurants, souvenir stands, food carts, and two hotels offering rooms by the hour.

Their poultry-pulled coach had to slow as they entered the station's dense flow of traffic. Signal golems flashed black-and-red signs at intersections to keep separate the flows of pedestrians and machines. Taylor could see over the heads of the people on foot to the tracks where the trains pulled in.

The different lines were known by the animals that pulled them, like the Blue Dragonid Express, hauled by a dozen lizards almost as tall as the trains they pulled. The trains he could see didn't have many cars, six at most, but they disgorged far more people and cargo than their natural volume could account for. As he watched, about five hundred people disembarked from the Blue Dragonid's three passenger cars. When the trains moved, they floated just above the mithril-laced rails. The front-most draft beasts wore magic wind-breaking shields, and the trains had sleek aerodynamic lines, like aircraft. The driver sat in the nose of the train, behind an open window enchanted to keep out the weather, and held reins engraved with taming spells.

The rail lines were imperial resources, owned and controlled entirely by the Gordian government. Interfering with the rail was a capital crime, and Taylor could see why: everything about it was incredibly expensive, yet absolutely necessary to keep the empire stitched together. The fact that Taylor could get a letter from his mansion in the hinterland across the empire and into Father's hands in a week was a major accomplishment in a world without mechanical or electrical engines.

Whether Father read the letters or not was a separate problem.

"We really do live out in the sticks, don't we?"

"We do."

"Don't you think that," he started, but wasn't sure how to finish his question without sounding critical of Jane's stewardship of Mourne.

"Go on."

"We could, you know, modernize a bit?"

"That requires capital."

"What's forty percent of all the wyvern skin and a big sack of crystal?"

"Enough to do a few interesting things, but not enough to bring Mourne fully into the modern age. For that, we'd have to attract significant talent, classed people. They would want significant pay and opportunities."

"Which we can't provide without increasing production, which requires investment and class talent."

"Class Capital is the current term."

"So, pray for another bumper crop of classes at next year's selection?" He could feel a warning, tangible across the partition between them. She knew. She didn't know how he'd done it, but she knew he was responsible for the classes handed out after the last selection. And she had never asked about it, which meant there were major issues with the topic.

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"If it were only Mourne, or if Arcaics received classes, then the level of attention would be severe. The church could declare the entire town heretical. It's happened before. There were purges, mostly Arcaics who received classes."

"What if it were every township in Estfold?"

There was a long pause on the other side of the screen.

"It could cause a revolution. Not that a dark lord would let a little thing like that stop him."

"I keep telling you, I'm not a dark lord. I don't want to rule anybody."

"Then I advise you not to break things you won't take responsibility for." There was another long silence as their coach maneuvered into its designated platform and started to unload passengers. "Try to remember that the rest of us have to live with your consequences, too."

They had a short walk to the line of city carriages waiting for passengers. The two of them, with Taylor's single bag and fishing pole and Jane's blocky bookbag, fit easily into the cab. The problem was his screen, which was too long to fit inside the luggage compartment. The cab's magically expanded boot could hold the volume of his screen, but couldn't handle the dimensions. They had to lash it to the roof.

The journey from Qumurong Station to the Governor's Palace was entirely along the wide avenue known as The Green Field, for its wide park-like median. Statues of Estfold kings and heroes used to stand at intervals on the median, until a petty emperor ordered them all destroyed. A few of the old statues survived and were displayed in the provincial museum. Now, the old plinths and pedestals were places for people to rest and enjoy the grass and trees. They passed a pack of dog-kin who had taken up a whole block of the median-park, and were throwing balls at each other. They ran and jumped and chased as if they were having the best day of their lives.

"Huh. So it isn't just a stereotype. I thought Ophelia was kidding."

"Some dogkin are ball-happy," said his mentor, "but it's rude to assume. Just like some catkin will roll all day in the sun, while others are strictly nocturnal. Most rabbitkin, on the other hand, are nothing like their namesakes."

Taylor was about to respond, when he saw something far more important.

"Wait! Stop the coach!"

"Why?"

"Bookstore!" he said, and pointed at a fine storefront with new books filling the windows. Two other stores nearby also had books on display, and there was a stationer's as well. Who knew what wonders lurked in the capital's stationers?

"You have meetings this evening, and you're a mess. There isn't time."

"But … the books! They're right there." As the carriage passed down the road, Taylor turned to see out the back window, as the stores got farther and farther away.

"They'll still be there tomorrow."

"But, my library," he moaned softly. "I need them."

"I have never seen a more pathetic display. There will be time for books later. You haven't finished the ones I gave you to read."

"But they're all governance and law," he tried not to whine. "I'm grateful for the guided study. I truly am. But not even legates can live by dry text alone! And we're so close to them! Just have the driver turn around!"

"No." Was that a trace of pain he saw around her eyes? Jane was a scholar, after all. Surely she understood! The curator sighed. "If we get through this visit in one piece, then we'll make time to visit a bookstore."

When Estfold was a kingdom, the palace was home to its king, his extended family, several ministers, and guests. It wasn't a single palace, but a complex of the central palace, auxiliary mansions, barracks, facilities, and gardens. The complex had a dedicated protective force and was surrounded by a high wall. These days, the mansions around the palace served as offices of government, or places for guests to stay if they weren't important enough, or trusted enough, to live in the main building.

When they checked in at the palace's outer gate, their names were read from a list, their guild cards were verified, and they had to change to palace transportation, a cab identical to the one they hired but with a large palace symbol on the doors.

They were driven to the Red Jade Mansion, more generally known as 'Legate Hotel'. It was very much like a hotel, with a front desk, registration, concierge service, and various amenities. Jane checked them in and spent several minutes with the concierge team making special arrangements.

As soon as Jane and Taylor were shown to their suite (three bedrooms and a parlor), they visited that most important amenity: the bath. They agreed to meet for dinner in two hours and went their separate ways.

The bath was everything Taylor hoped it would be. Plenty of hot, clean water, good soap, and someone to scrub his back for him. He had to keep his mask on, and watch his distance from the few other bathers, but immersing himself entirely in hot water was a fantastic luxury. At home, the only hot water he had was what came off of Cook's stove. He could warm a tub of water with magic but, just as conjured rocks didn't stay real for very long, conjured heat cooled too soon.

Thanks to the size of the baths, which let him keep a considerable distance from everyone else, it took half an hour to get his first disgusted look from a fellow bather, who complained about strange boys in masks who were possibly up to no good. But that was plenty of time, and he left without regrets. He arrived in his room to find food in the parlor and a message for Jane. The tradesmen would arrive after dinner. The "hotel specialists" would see them in the morning.

The tradesmen. Taylor was looking forward to that. He was supposed to take delivery of some wyvern parts, and had asked to buy a few things. Not just anyone could enter the palace complex, so whoever Jane had found would have at least a modicum of respect from the governor's people. As for the 'hotel specialists', he didn't have a clue. Maybe Jane wanted to change her hair before their important meetings.

He surprised himself by scarfing down a weird yellow fruit he'd never seen before and a row of tiny sandwiches, then falling asleep on a couch under the salon's window, still wrapped in his bathrobe. It was sunny there, and warm, and the light didn't bother him if he threw one robed arm over his face.

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