Catt Zago used to be a thief– now she is trying to make a fresh start in a new city. She didn’t plan on stealing a monarch… but she didn’t plan on falling in love either.
City
Catt Zago climbed up on the roof of a shack next to the Caravan Depot and surveyed her new surroundings.
It was a beautiful morning in the cursed city of Great Bakak. The rising sun cast striking shadows on the mountains behind the city, and the sky above the vast desert was clear and crisp.
She could see big marble temples and palaces on the foothills. To the west she could see geometric patches of green, the vibrant contrast to the reds and browns of the desert were a welcome sight, althoug...
A cobble-paved road led towards the heart of the city from the Caravan Depot. It was lined with signs welcoming visitors.
"Welcome To Great Bakak"
"Sacred Jewel of Flal-Shom"
"Keep Our Capital Clean"
"Shop Outer Bakak Fine Meats & Sausages"
Catt stopped in front of a large sign labelled "Know Our Laws". It was adorned by a blue crest featuring an axe above a crown. Catt grinned as she read it. The sign s...
High Priest Lemmy struck the lead barbarian in the face with the Flail of Destiny. He then struck each of the other two barbarians in the faces one after the other.
Although Lemmy had swung the Flail of Destiny with the full strength of his diminutive arms, none of the barbarians looked noticeably injured.
Tears trickled from the eyes of the barbarian leader, vanishing into his beard. “Thank you, your holiness!” he exclaimed, thickly accented voice cracking. “It has been so ...
Catt tucked the book into her pack. She had come here simply because the flier advertising the Polypantheonic Temple seemed like a fun and interesting scam, and she had been curious what sort of grifter was behind it. Now that she had met him, Catt liked the sincere little lizard-man who called himself a High Priest. She wasn't so sure anymore that this "Temple" was a grift.
"Thank you," she said. "I suppose you have to get ready for that festival now?"
Catt surveyed the table to see if there was anything she wanted more of. She felt pretty full already.
Catt watched some musicians setting up three large stringed instruments just inside the palace doors behind the King's table. The other larger band in the square was still audible.
Catt looked around to see if there was anyone interesting looking nearby for her to strike up a conversation with. The two people sitting closest to her seemed to be in the middle of an argument about the comparat...
Segna rose. She felt as if this was a dream. She began walking around the table towards the coronation dancers.
The crowd was cheering and singing her name. People were jumping up on their chairs, and flinging their hats into the air.
As she was almost to the coronation cloth, Segna glanced back to look for Catt Zago, that strange brash flirtatious woman whose advances she had been entertaining. She was no longer visible among the throngs of brightly-dressed revelers and falling hats. Segna f...
As the winner of the Royal Lots approached the coronation cloth, Senior Executioner Crocken tapped his partner on the shoulder.
"Let's go," Crocken growled. "She doesn't need to be looking at us right now."
He and Jantos moved towards the palace, skirting around the musicians. They took up station in the shadows of one of the huge ornate columns that decorated the front of the building. Here they would be out of sight, out of mind, but still close enough to listen, and to keep an eye on the r...
The Reaper sat motionless in a wooden chair in the armory of the guild-hall. The walls were covered with row upon row of axes. Alcoves contained tools for sharpening and repairing.
One small magic lamp simply illuminated the area with a dull green luminescence.
The Reaper was waiting for Senior Executioner Crocken– or more precisely, the item he would be carrying.
After a long silent while, the lock turned and the door opened.
The masked person that the Reaper recognized as ...
Five days had passed since the Regicide Feast. Lemmy had been very busy. Most religions had their own calendars that started at different times, but still, enough of them were synchronized with the city's official calendar that the first few days of the year tended to be a very active time for someone in the priest-of-all-gods trade.
When a messenger stopped by the Polypantheonic Temple that morning bearing a terse note requesting his immediate presence at the High Courthouse, Lemmy presumed that i...
Catt Zago was having a very bad time. She remembered getting very drunk at the festival, and arguing angrily with various people about whether or not it was okay to behead beautiful Kings. An infuriating number of them had supported the position that it was fine. It must have come to fist-fighting at some point, but she couldn't quite remember that part clearly.
After waking up in the small cell, and waiting for the hangover to wear off, she was moderately proud to note that the bruises on her knuc...
Speak politely to the Judge, and you'll be just fine, miss," advised the huge executioner as Catt was led up a flight of stairs to a well-lit hallway. "It'll be the third door on the right."
Catt took a few uncertain steps down the hall. She was completely unbound. No chains, no manacles. Sunlight was streaming into the door-lined hallway from an open window at the far end.
Catt glanced back at the executioner.
The massive ogre inclined its masked head slightly, and waved a clawed hand...
Exiting the courthouse, Catt found herself again in the square. There were the rows of trees, there was the raised terrace, there was the palace with the mountains behind it. It looked very different than it had the night of the festival. It was all wide empty spaces, and smooth stone surfaces shining in the sun. There were relatively few people moving about in the large space, and all of them were either finely dressed like ladies and lords, or else in various professional uniforms, white robes, clerica...
An hour later, Catt was an acolyte. She didn't feel any different, and she wasn't dressed any different, but she was carrying a long wooden plank over one shoulder, and following the tiny face of a sleeping baby through the streets of the city.
The baby was swaddled into a sling on its father's back. The baby was so young that its face still had a wrinkled look to it. The baby's tiny eyelids were shut, but every so often they would open and Catt would catch a glimpse of shiny black eyes. Tiny fists...
Later, after they had parted ways with the grateful parents and returned to the Polypantheonic Temple, Catt asked Lemmy, "How much are these coins actually worth?"
She had leaned the plank up against the wall in the back of the Temple, and was now counting the coins. There were the three silver ones the judge had given her, and now she had seven of the small copper coins.
Lemmy gave Catt another silver coin. "These are Shmouds," he said. "The smaller ones are Thorbs. Twenty Thorbs adds up to ...
As a professor, Segna Ur-Segna knew that very little in the way of academics would get done in the first week of a new semester. It was an orientation week. The first week was a time to make sure the students understood the scope of the class, and the difficulty and dangers of the magic they would be learning. It was a time for lesson plans and outlines, and assessments, and rushing off to buy that book or reagent that had been on the syllabus when one enrolled in the class, but that one had forgotten to...
That afternoon, after an interminable luncheon with representatives of the Farmer's Guild and the Quarrymaster's Guild, each of whom were advocating subtly different amendments to a proposed royal decree regarding new aqueduct construction, King Segna decided she needed some time to herself.
The Visor of Protocol and the Chief Admonisher were hovering about, even when she returned to her personal quarters, so she drove them away by declaring that she wished to make use of the royal bathing pool.
Catt carried the empty bucket down the stairs, four flights. On the ground floor, Catt saw that the Landlady's door was open. Light spilled out from a small candle. This apartment building was far enough from the city's center that it was outside the range of the mysterious Unburning curse, so fire was possible here. Fire was also illegal here, but apparently that particular law was not enforced very strictly.
Catt could see the old woman asleep in a rocking chair. Her wrinkled hands were folded ar...
Senior Executioner Crocken walked briskly along Sausage Row in the pre-dawn light.
Sausage Row was the major street that cut in a straight line through the Poor Quarter, connecting Marketday to the Smokefields. Even though it was early, there was already plenty of traffic, animal-drawn carts in the road, porters with baskets, vendors pushing wheeled carts. Sausage Row was the artery by which hot breakfast made its way from the kitchens of the Smokefields to the hungry soon-to-be-waking citizens of ...
Catt stared at the Executioner who was crouching on his hands and knees at the side of the street. He was doing something interesting with a piece of chalk and a bit of string. There were a lot of chalk marks on the stones, almost as if he was playing some sort of child's game.
Other people on the street hardly seemed to notice him, and Catt wondered at that too.
Suddenly he looked up, right at her. Catt's heart thumped, but she kept her cool and pretended to be adjusting the sacrifice she wa...
Catt's blood was still pounding in her ears from the altercation. She had reached the sign marking the kitchen complex of the Outer Bakak Fine Meats And Sausages Company. She stood for a moment to calm herself and to survey her surroundings. The complex was dominated by one colossal smoke-blackened tent as high as a three story building. Catt could see the skeletal shapes of inner support beams as the gentle breeze caught the tent's canvas like it was the sail of a battleship. She could see distort...
Catt lay sprawled on a wooden pew in the Polypantheonic Temple. She was resting after a busy day of blessings, religious sing-alongs, and one funeral for an old man who had, in life, worshiped the twin beer-brewing gods of the distant Odok Barrens.
Catt was not drunk, but she was light-headed. It had been a really good funeral.
Catt was not just resting, and she was not just waiting for her head to clear. She was also reading– studying. A few weeks ago, when she had returned from meetin...
As the most important honorary guest to the Rain Festival, King Segna Ur-Segna was the last to be seated. She entered the Grand Sanctuary of the Unchurch Against the Nameless Rain-god from a side-gallery, following behind her advisors.
The Unchurch had set up a gilded throne for her on the right side of the sanctuary. She mounted the three steps, raised her chin towards the Anti-bishop, as protocol dictated, and seated herself. She smoothed her shimmering blue gown over her knees, and tugging at a ...
Catt and Lemmy had sat in a corner of the Great Sanctuary, among the other invited guests from the smaller temples of the city. Catt had enjoyed the show. The sermon was a lot more negative than anything Lemmy ever delivered, but it was still interesting.
Catt had taken special interest in the collection of alms. She didn't believe for an instant that all that money would end up in the hands of the poor, but she was intrigued by the execution of the scam. She was sure they would have switched the h...
Catt knocked loudly on her Landlady's half-open door. She couldn't see the old woman through the gap, but the knock elicited a response from deeper in the apartment.
"Coming, coming."
The old woman's face appeared, framed by her snowy hair and crowned by her velvety antlers.
"Hello, Ms Bethen," Catt said. "I brought you the rent."
"Ms Zago! Please come in dearie! Take some tea with me."
Catt entered, and gave Ms Bethen the coins for this week.
Catt peered into the closet. It contained three big wooden trunks, stacked one on top of the other. They took up almost the whole width of the closet. In the space above the highest one was a rod for hanging clothes, but it was empty.
"Coat hangers disagree with me," explained Ms Bethen, gently touching a prong of her antlers with one hand.
Catt hefted one of the trunks out of the closet and onto the floor. Ms Bethen opened the latch.
The back of the palace nestled right up to the craggy foothills of the mountains. Zig-zagging staircases were cut into the stones, some leading upwards to terraces in the foothills where there were other buildings, much smaller than the palace, but by the look of them they were still mansions for nobles and lords.
One broad staircase led to what appeared to be a servant's entrance on the rearmost wall of the palace. Catt could see people moving up and down it, carrying things, going about palace bu...
Catt turned randomly down side streets, unsure if she was being pursued. After a few minutes, she spotted a shop on a corner with two open doors, one facing each street. She stepped inside. This would be a good place to wait. If the man caught up with her, it would be difficult for him to corner her.
The shop seemed to sell every sort of woven thing from tapestries to hammocks. Catt pretended to be browsing the wares. She had rolled up the shirt and wrapped it in a knot around her wrist.
The dining hall of King Segna's palace was spacious, but it only contained one table.
Functionally it was just one table, but it was modular, being extended by pushing together numerous triangular table segments, and concealing the seams between their smooth stone tops with an overlapping mosaic of multiple vibrant tablecloths.
The table sometimes seemed to Segna as if it was an amorphous living thing, changing in size and shape each time she saw it, ever-changing in spite of its stony solidi...
Catt Zago ate dinner with the King. It seemed surreal, but it was happening.
After the momentary squabble with the Visor, the advisors largely left them alone. The other important-looking people at the table, whoever they were, gawked at them at first, but Catt found them increasingly easy to ignore as she focused her attention on Segna.
They talked about the food, and how good it was, and complemented one another on their wardrobes, and spent some moments in comfortable silence, simply savor...
Catt followed Segna up a spiral of green marble stairs. She was carrying two small dessert plates laden with large slices of honey carob cake.
They reached a higher floor, passed through a few archways, and stopped in front of a pair of double doors opposite a balcony. Segna put her hands on the handles and pushed.
Inside were three more steps up. Catt's eyes were on Segna as she climbed them. She followed, butterfly wings in her stomach.
The room was wide and rounded. Half of it was a ...
It took some time for her senses to untangle waking from dreaming.
The morning light was dim and strange. The surface beneath her was too soft. There was pressure and warmth at her side. A weight was nestled into her shoulder. The soft sound of breathing.
Segna was asleep.
Catt understood where she was. Her senses continued to grow clearer.
She could make out the shape of the room in the dim light. The open archway to the next room admitting red morning ...
You look happy this morning, dearie!" declared Ms Bethen. She was sitting on the front steps of the apartment house, an embroidery hoop in her hands.
"I feel happy, Ms Bethen," Catt said, blushing in spite of herself. She had not told her Landlady whom she was seeing, but the old woman had taken notice of Catt's early-morning arrivals every few days for the past two weeks.
"Do stop by for tea when you have time," said Ms Bethen.
High Priest Lemmy walked up the steep winding switchbacks that led up to the highest hill in the Temple Hill district. This was the eponymous "Hill" that the district was named for. The foundations of the old temple still stood, supporting the newer architecture of the Immutable Library which rose above them.
Lemmy's legs ached with exhaustion, and he was silently saying prayers to Rotosk, god of a thousand spinal columns to stave off the same pain in his back. He had already been tired after offic...
Catt was back in the elevator. The attendant looked at her, as if expecting more conversation, but Catt's mind was elsewhere, counting days. Two months? She wasn't certain, but she thought that was how long she had been living in Great Bakak. How had she not realized there were only five months in a year?
Catt passed through the library lobby. The brightness seemed a blur now. The air smelled cloying. A sense of urgency had gripped her. She had only three months left, not the ten months she had ima...
Segna had come to the conclusion that she could not afford to put her faith in the Seneschal of Delays. The Seneschal had encyclopedic knowledge of the implementation delays that would be imposed on every possible royal decree she could make, but she could not trust the Seneschal to keep track of what she had actually decreed or when each delayed decree was to go into effect. Those things she would have to keep track of herself if she wanted to have any hope of checking and verifying that a decree had ac...
Catt woke from a dream. She had been on the deck of a ship, pitching in the waves, but instead of the pirates she remembered from her childhood, the deck had been full of people from Great Bakak. The captain had been shouting that a storm was coming, and Catt had been seized by the terror of knowing what was coming, while the others had been dancing and celebrating the promise of rain. "A storm! A storm!" the captain had bellowed menacingly. "A storm! A storm!" Lemmy had sung joyously.<...
Catt had been back to the Immutable Library already. She had found the floors where the non-magical books were kept, and had located the shelves devoted to local histories.
She had found a fair number of books about the history of Great Bakak's kings, but they had all been dry essays, lists of royal statistics, and a few biographies of some of the more noteworthy kings.
What she had failed to find was any details about the "faithless" kings. They were nothing more than footnotes and appendice...
Pulp Scribe was a small shop wedged between a fashionable bar and a tattoo parlor in the east end of Marketday.
The shelves were packed with periodicals, pamphlets, and thin cheaply bound books. Almost everything seemed to be printed on the same cheap paper stock, and the whole place smelled of ink. From the back room came the continuous tapping of several chisels, and the occasional clack and groan of a movable type press, but the front of the shop was otherwise quiet.
Catt sat near the window of her little apartment intending to read through the whole dreadful thing. She didn't dare take it with her where Segna might see it. It would be upsetting to her.
Catt had to be honest with herself. She was upset by it too. The tales were exaggerated and quite possibly they were just the product of the author's vivid imagination, but in a few ways they were very consistent. The executioners were ruthless and persistent, and the faithles...
So, tell me, where are the best places to drink in Great Bakak?"
The parishioner's bloodshot eyes lit up. "Oh ho ho! There are so many!" he said, barely slurring his words. He was a devout of The Merry Twins, and Catt was walking him home after a fete of fermented drink at the Polypantheonic Temple.
"Well, what if you had to pick the best?" Catt asked.
"We're going the wrong way," he said, jerking unsteadily against her arm. "The best ones are all back in Temple Hill."
You didn't have to be an executioner to drink at the Hidden Smile, but you did have to wear a mask.
Catt was wearing a red felt mask stiffened with wires that she had found at a shop earlier that week. She sat at a table in the corner of the Hidden Smile, picking at her dinner and sipping at her drink. All the food served here was cut into small pieces to be easy to slip under a mask or through a mouth-hole. All the drinks were served with long waxed-paper straws for the same reason. In spite of th...
Catt and the Executioner were walking through the streets of Marketday and the Poor Quarter, and chatting as if they were old friends. Catt had the feeling that her mark really wanted to talk.
As they got deeper into the Poor Quarter, the executioner stopped and said, "I guess my shift is over, and I shouldn't really go in like this," she looked around as if checking to see if anyone other than Catt was watching. Then she reached up and removed her mask.
There was an enterprising person with some kegs of beer on a cart in the corner of the ruins.
Catt bought a couple drinks, and she and Fullbrite sat and listened to the music.
After the fiddler finished, a big lad with dark green skin and a square jaw full of sharp teeth took up position by the fire. He had a pipe flute that he held delicately and played expertly. The small instrument seemed incongruous in contrast to his beefy arms, but he coaxed music out of it so naturally that it seemed t...
Catt's first foray into the Guild Hall of the Executioners was nerve-wracking but uneventful.
The Guild Hall was a large rectangular building at the edge between Old Bakak and Granary Hill. It had no windows, and was built of dull whitish stone. The front doors were wide enough to drive a cart through, and seemed perpetually propped open. On either side of the doors was a flanking pair of stone flowerboxes, filled with a bristle of well-maintained decorative flowering cactuses. The beautiful greens...
There was an envelope on the desk. It was sealed with a small blob of black wax.
Senior Executioner Crocken understood that it was for him, although nothing was written on the exterior of the envelope. The mere fact that it was here on his desk was self-evident proof.
The Reaper often communicated this way. Mask to mask meetings they reserved for only the most important matters.
Crocken leaned his axe against the side of the desk and sat down. His chair creaked comfortably.
The records room was a large meandering irregular space on the second floor. Records only needed to be kept for twelve years before they were destroyed, but the city itself had grown over time, and so also had the record room, with walls being knocked down and adjacent spaces being repurposed.
Crocken added his reports to the piles on the "In" desk. Junior Executioners were moving around the room doing the tedious work of filing things away and updating the cross-indexes.
Catt had been keeping a busy schedule. All day she would work with Lemmy at the Polypantheonic Temple. As soon as she finished there she would fetch her stolen executioner's disguise and make her way into the Executioner's Guild Hall and blend in with the small army of Junior Executioners working in the records room. She would spend hours pretending to file reports while reading as much as she could, and learning a great deal about how the guild conducted policing business. She had learned enough to carr...
She had already finished her dinner, and her dessert, and her nightly note-taking. She was waiting for Catt to arrive.
Catt had come to see her every night since the night she had climbed over the balcony. They had not spoken again of the idea of "saving" her, but Segna surmised that Catt was probably still thinking about it, and was just keeping her promise not to let it come between them.
An extra dessert pastry was cooling on a plate on the little table, jus...
Catt was awakened by the chattering of her own teeth. She had no idea how long she had been asleep there under the shelf of shields, but the cold stone floor had sapped away all the warmth in her body.
Catt clambered out from her hiding place. The terror that had kept her there was momentarily forgotten.
The armory seemed darker than before. Whatever magical lamps had illuminated it before were dimmed now.
Hugging her arms around herself and shivering, Catt made her way back to the door...
Segna's stomach had felt sour all day. She had tried to rush through her meetings. She had lost her temper with her advisors and argued with them. She had left dinner early, even though doing so had probably offended the Ambassador from Succour.
Not even resting submerged in the pool in the royal bath-house made her feel better. It just made her feel even more alone. Maybe she was despairing for nothing. Maybe Catt would come tonight, with some story of whatever mischief had kept her away last nigh...
Crocken stood looming over Ex-Junior Executioner Fullbrite.
Fullbrite's father had offered him a chair, but Crocken had declined to sit in it.
Fullbrite cowered on the middle of a floral-patterned sofa. Her knees were tucked up against her chest, and her right hand, the one with the bandages, was clenched by her heart. Her maskless face seemed full of anger and determination, but did not make eye contact..
Crocken held two axes, one in each hand. His own, and Fullbrite's.
Catt returned to the palace after a few hours of helping Lemmy with temple work. She wished she could say something to prepare him for the fact that she would be vanishing at the end of the year. She loved being an acolyte, and she respected the example of priesthood and service that Lemmy had shown to her. She would miss the Polypantheonic Temple, certainly, but when she weighed it on the scale of her heart against a life with Segna, there was no contest. She would have to disappear suddenly, and tellin...
Catt woke up on the big chair. Segna was gone. She had convinced Segna to finish eating, and then Segna had meditated until they had both fallen asleep. Now it was night, Catt wasn't sure how late it was.
Catt got up, and went to the book closet. Segna was there. She had relocated some of the lamps they had taken down from the bedroom, and laid them out on the floor. The wand was there, and the strips of vellum were on the floor. Segna was poised over one of them with a magnifying glass.
Segna startled. It sounded considerably more forceful than the way the servants knocked.
Catt said, "You hide the wand, I'll see who it is."
"Yes," Segna nodded. She began rapidly but carefully re-rolling the vellums and putting them back into the wand. It would be nothing, she told herself, but her hands still shook as she worked.
She finished screwing the gold end-cap back on, and was about to stuff the wand deep into one of the boxes, w...
Catt felt a burgeoning unreal prickle, much stronger than the hands of the executioner grasping at her.
Everything except Segna went blindingly black as the two of them were sucked into a spaceless void. There was a confusing shapeless sensation of tumbling. Catt couldn't breathe.
Then suddenly the world rushed back again, and with a jolting whump, Catt felt her body flop onto a smooth flat stone floor.
It was dark, but this was only an ordinary darkness, like being in a cave with no ca...
Something dark and insubstantial was pressing itself against the inside of the sphere. It seemed to have big eyes. They seemed to blink. It was impossible to tell what it was. It was bigger than a person, but it did not fill the whole space inside the cage.
"What are you?" asked Catt.
The part of it that seemed like eyes became even more eye-like, focusing on her. Nothing like a mout...
The narrow staircase twisted upwards. It seemed to go on forever. Catt and Segna kept holding hands. Segna led with her free hand outstretched, lighting the way. Catt followed, ready to catch Segna if she stumbled. The winding stair was just a little too narrow for them to walk side-by-side.
Suddenly the stair ended. There was thick multi-coloured fabric blocking the way.
They stopped. The muscles in Catt's legs burned from the climb. She could see that Segna was breathing hard.
Catt followed Segna down the last few steps on the spiral stair and back into the strange subterranean hall where they had seen the spherical cage and its mysterious occupant.
Catt wasn't sure what Segna had in mind– it seemed that they were fleeing in the wrong direction, but Segna seemed filled with purpose, and Catt trusted her. Segna was carrying the wand gripped in her outstretched hand as if she was simultaneously afraid to let go of it, and unwilling to be too close to it.
Catt and Segna emerged from the main door of the Executioner's Guild Hall. They were both wearing masks, which Segna had consented to when they had gotten up to the armory again.
They had no idea whether Crocken was pursuing them or not.
They had gotten strange looks from a few executioners in the halls, but nobody had stopped them, and now here they were, outside, and seemingly safe for the moment.
The streets were muddy. It looked as if a strong downpour had slurried up all the dry du...
The sky was vibrant blue. Yesterday's puddles had been soaked up by the thirsty earth, but there was a hint of it remaining. The city of Great Bakak still smelled like rain.
It had been the biggest rain that anyone alive could remember. It logically followed that the Unchurch Against The Nameless Rain God would have to throw the biggest Rain Festival party ever. People were flocking to the Unchurch.
Against this backdrop, the procession led by High Priest Lemmy of the Polypantheonic ...
The year was coming to an end, and the people of Great Bakak were gathered in the square in front of the royal palace for the Regicide Festival.
Some things had changed, and some things were the same.
An orchestra was playing. The long tables were set up on the terraces. People wore brightly colored clothes, and hats ranging from the dazzling to the absurd, but this year there were a lot of colorful umbrellas in the crowd, after all, it might rain!
A fruit tree is growing in the alleyway next to a five story apartment in the Poor Quarter. Its roots push aside flagstones and twist around the rusty water pump, unneeded and forgotten.
The tree had grown from a sprouted seed pit that fell from the window of the top floor. A Priest Of Many Gods and a Retired King live there. It is a humble place for such important women, but the tree is not concerned with them.
It just drinks the sunlight, and drinks the rain water that soaks into the stony ...
