I regained consciousness, and immediately knew something wasn't right. I was on the road, in the middle of nowhere, with Coda to protect and nothing but my own power to my name, and yet beneath me, I felt a nice, fluffy bed.
Suppressing any hint of a reaction, I cracked open an eye, and reality caught up with me.
I was in a compact yet comfortable cabin, the light of dawn shining in through a lacy curtain. The architecture was tight and efficient, but it looked like it had been designed for someone roughly twice my size, so it was roomy nonetheless. Wooden trim and walls gave it a homey feel, and a rough, no-slip metal floor gave it a utilitarian edge, and my bed even had a canopy for a helping of luxury, though I had been too tired last night to bother closing the drapes around me.
Right. I was in Puddles' ship. The mysterious Black Knight, whom I roundly bested in combat only to discover was a doppelganger of Kitty. And Coda was sitting entombed in ice near the door to my room, right where I left her.
It seemed Puddles was trustworthy enough not to take Coda and run the moment my eyes were closed. A very low bar, but given how my life had turned out so far, I'd take what I could get.
I rolled out of my bed, eyes bleary from sleep, completely naked save for my bracelet. Right... I had ditched my armor and clothes last night while taking a shower, and didn't feel up to the task of cleaning them at the time.
Well, one thing at a time.
Yawning so hard that the tips of my ears touched, I strolled out into the ship's central hallway, getting the feeling that we weren't moving. The bridge was empty, and on the way there I passed an open door, behind which was Puddles, flat on her back in a bed with her legs in the air, snoring loudly. Drooling, too.
I couldn't remember if I had ever seen Kitty sleep, but if I had, it would probably look exactly like that.
Yesterday, I hadn't pressed the issue of why they looked the same, especially when Puddles had a history with windigoes. But sometime I'd have to change that. This mare had to know something about...
My train of thought trailed off, unable to get going, and I knew exactly why: for the moment, everything was fine. For the last week, nothing at all had been fine. I needed a break, I deserved a break, and my body and brain had together decided to take one.
Well, that was fine. If I could put off freezing up and shutting down until I was somewhere safe, that was infinitely better than doing it in the middle of a fight. In fact, now I remembered Puddles talking about needing to stay up to pilot the ship until nearly dawn, so she'd be sleeping in, so...
I didn't bother finishing that thought. Instead, I turned around and went back to bed.
The next time I woke, I felt much better, though I probably could have gone on for several hours more if not for my stomach and my nose. The former needed assistance, and the latter told me assistance was close at hoof.
I followed it to the rear of the ship. After the cabins were the bathroom and the exit, and between those and the hold was a kitchen and a dining area, where I found Puddles tending a steaming stovetop.
"Pancakes and jam?" she offered, hearing me come in. "All I know how to make is bachelorette food, but it's hot!"
I flopped myself down at the table, and soon was eating, too hungry to take breaks for conversation. Fortunately - and also like Kitty - Puddles didn't consider this a breach of manners at all, and for a moment we devoured in silence, until after three stacks I was finally sated.
"So," Puddles said when I was done and she was done as well. "Had any brain blasts over the night?"
"Eh?" I raised an ear.
"Thoughts about what you'll be doing next," she explained, waving a hoof. "Last night, it seemed like a tomorrow problem. Well, guess what: it's tomorrow!" She grinned a wide, wide grin. "My offers still stand: you can stay here for a while, or if you have somewhere in the Empire you need to be, I can give you a ride as soon as it's convenient. We haven't talked much about who your other friends are, or where that might be."
I crossed my forehooves nervously. "...Right. I don't remember how much I said yesterday, but I kind of came to the Empire on my own to track down Coda. There's something I'd like to do in Izvaldi before I leave, but other than that, I don't have a lot of reasons to stay on this continent. And if leaving would put some distance between me and Rhodallis, I have a very good reason to leave."
"Hmm," Puddles mused. "Well, the good news is, Izvaldi is right in the center of the Empire, so it's quick to get there from just about anywhere. The bad news is, I've got too much going on around these lands to easily give you a ride farther away, and the other bad news is Rhodallis' stomping grounds run from here to Yakyakistan. So if you want him off your tail, heading west isn't going to cut it."
"Great." I sighed. "Well, that's how things usually go for me. But I've just had a pretty harrowing week or so. So if you're offering free hospitality for a while, and if this place is more or less safe from him, I wouldn't mind taking at least a few more days here to think."
Puddles nodded along.
"Where are we, anyway?" I asked, glancing at the window, though from this position I couldn't see much on the other side. "You said we were going to Wilderwind?"
"Yep," Puddles said. "Got some business here to take care of. You're welcome to come along, or stay here with the ship, or go off exploring on your own. I assume you wouldn't have been in Gyre if you didn't know a thing or two about how to take care of yourself."
"What kind of business?" I asked warily. "Anything political? That I might regret getting mixed up in?"
Puddles giggled heartily. "Political? Absolutely. Regret getting mixed up in?" She gave me a far-off look. "Depends what your goals are and what you want to make of your life. But there's certainly no harm in just looking around."
"Depends on what my goals are?" I leaned in with a frown. "Well, what are your goals? Why are you doing... Actually, what are you doing here?"
"It would be far easier to show you," Puddles said. "And if you're worried about getting accidentally dragged into something... I've been banging on the door, trying to become a part of something for more than a decade. This continent's future isn't something that likes meddlers. Society has its own idea of where it wants to go, and anyone who wants a say in that and doesn't already have one gets the door slammed in their face. Around here, you have to try persistently and actively to even hope of becoming a part of something."
Oh? A place that actually wouldn't foist random things on me merely for blinking in the wrong direction? It didn't feel polite to say, but that sounded like a paradise compared to Ironridge. I was already sold.
"Well, sure," I said, nodding back. "If that's how it is, I'll come take a look around. Though... my clothes and armor are filthy, and I'd rather not go around with nothing at all."
Puddles brightened. "I know a thing or two about armor maintenance, believe it or not! And I'm not in a hurry. Let's see if we can tackle that together."
Moments later, the two of us were looking over my soiled gear in the bathroom. Puddles frowned, nodded, and started pulling the pile apart, separating it into individual pieces.
"Here, you deal with these," she said, tossing the boots my way. "Feel free to use the tub, we've got plenty of water since we're at port. Now let's see about this armor..."
Puddles spent nearly three hours tending to my armor and gear, which had the upside of giving my boots time to dry. From her constant mutterings, I got the feeling not all of its wear was my fault, and Rhodallis just didn't take very good care of his armory.
"And this," she said, finally turning to my greatsword. "What was this used for, trying to cut metal? Its edge is ruined."
On second thought, maybe all this was my fault.
"Fighting revenants," I said, considering the possibility that all the damage to the armor had come from me, all the blood staining it was my own, and what I would look like right now without my regenerative changeling queen powers, none of which she needed to know about.
Puddles shook her head and sighed. "Right. I saw you in the ziggurat, I don't know why I even asked." She hoofed the sword back to me. "I can sharpen this, but we'll probably want to take it to a blacksmith first to get the edge professionally straightened. Otherwise you'll be left with structural weaknesses that you won't be able to fix without wearing down the blade significantly through more sharpening. In the future, if you go back to that city, I strongly recommend a war hammer, maul, morningstar or similar heavy and blunt weapon. This worked because of its weight, but it was the wrong tool for the job."
I nodded, absorbing this information. "In my defense, I didn't know what we were going to be fighting when he took me to the armory and told me to arm myself."
"In that case," Puddles said, "I suppose you could have done much, much worse. At the end of the day, survival is what matters, and the cost of fixing and replacing your gear is secondary to that."
She turned back to my armor, and pushed it towards me as well. "Now, this should serve you in a pinch, it's certainly better than nothing, and at the very least you'll look like a seasoned veteran. But there's a lot we can do to improve it, or we could just get you something new and better, so try not to pick any major fights that you have the option of putting off. Actually... be careful picking any fights in general, okay?"
I tilted my head. "Lotta strong fighters in Wilderwind?"
"Well, yes," Puddles admitted. "But it's more than that. When you turn to violence to solve a problem, someone always loses. It's an important tool, and sometimes there's someone who needs to lose at any cost. But whatever your reason for fighting someone, they've got a reason for fighting you, too. And your reasons will rarely have to do with figuring out who's stronger. This isn't a fair way to solve conflicts, only a necessary one. So before you get in a fight, always stop to think about whether the ends justify the means."
I looked away. "Is that what you were thinking when you challenged me over Coda, in Gyre?"
Puddles looked slightly uncomfortable. "Yes, but my ends were less straightforward than you think. I can learn a lot about someone from fighting them. I challenged you not to stop you, but to find out if you had a sincere conviction behind your words."
"So it was like a lie detector?" I asked. "A lie detector through combat."
"One can sincerely believe in the necessity of telling a lie," Puddles said. "In fact, it was somewhat a hopeless gambit because the defining trait of Rhodallis' crew is that they believe they, and no one else, are in the right. Every one of them has some fanatically powerful belief they would discard a lawful life and everything else for so that it could remain unchallenged. But Rhodallis doesn't see Coda as a person, I'm certain of it. If his crew thought of her as a pawn in a scheme rather than something they would lay down their life to protect, I thought I would be able to tell."
"And could you tell?" I pressed.
Puddles nodded. "Absolutely. Now get suited up if you're coming. And remember, my identity is something of an open secret among anyone who cares to find out, but I do have appearances to keep up. While we're in public, I'm the Black Knight, not Puddles."
"Got it." I nodded, lifting my armor and heading back to get my boots.
Fully armored and equipped, ready for anything and confident that Coda was safe in my room, I stepped out into the evening light, and got my first good look at Wilderwind.
Sprawling out against a backdrop of rocky black desert was a city that strongly invoked Dead Herman, with ramshackle setups built atop each other, bright lights and lively traffic both on hoof and in the sky. Like the skyport above Dead Herman, this city as well seemed to be built from the ruins of something gigantic, but what that something had been was impossible to identify.
The one thing I knew for sure was that it had been tall, and designed predominately for fliers. Roads seemed to have been added as an afterthought, huge plates of metal thrown down to cover the ground without too much care taken to make them perfectly level. In fact, everything seemed lopsided to some degree, as if all the architects were drunk and none of their tools were properly calibrated.
And yet, this was no shanty town. I could tell that instantly from all the advertisements: flashing signs and high-flying billboards, selling things no impoverished slum could ever afford to be bothered with, from fancy perfumes to theater performances to jewelry and musical instruments. What was going on here? Had the Empire's cultural elite packed up their trappings and accepted a place with no sound architecture if it also meant no riffraff? No, Puddles and myself certainly looked like riffraff, and yet we didn't seem to stand out at all.
I looked across the buildings again, largely metal and fortified with scrap, and it suddenly hit me: this must have been built from stuff scavenged from the wasteland in Gyre. And for the mountain of buildings not to collapse under its own weight, even if the outer facade was built from whatever could be hauled in, it had to have a solid, well-designed structural core.
Ahead, Puddles had returned to her stoic, impassive Black Knight demeanor, but now that I had figured out this much, I had to ask. "Where did this place come from? Who built it?"
"It used to be a flying city," Puddles said, "carried by clouds enchanted by Garsheeva's power. When she disappeared, the enchantments gradually came undone. So they landed what was left of the city by a river, and have been building it out ever since."
I looked at the buildings again. Wouldn't have thought of that.
It did make sense, though. I had no idea how cloud could become a building material, but this place did look a lot like a city that had been picked up, jostled a little, and put back down. If that was simply the result of its foundation crumbling and setting it on the ground...
We passed hawkers and criers, and enough pedestrians for me to start getting a feel of the city's pulse. No one truly destitute crossed my path, but there were still two distinct classes of civilians: an upper crust not quite haughty enough not to mingle with their inferiors, and another class not quite so poorly off that they didn't attempt to mimic their superiors' styles of dress and speaking. Their differences were subtle enough to make me suspect I wasn't seeing the full picture: if everyone was flaunting what wealth they had in the same way, why weren't the rich flaunting harder?
The answer, I suspected, had something to do with how closely correlated the difference between the groups was with who did and didn't have wings.
It was the griffons and the pegasi who walked like they were better, like they knew they didn't have to be here and were doing everyone else a favor by using their feet. And towards the center, the city was quite tall, growing too steeply for any roads. That was where the real flexing of wealth would take place.
"And remind me why everyone here is so rich?" I whispered, striding closer to Puddles.
"Mercenaries," Puddles grunted. "Prior to the monarchy's collapse, the other provinces fought endlessly, but no one invaded Wilderwind because no one wanted their territory. So their soldiers sold their services instead to the highest bidder. They were always well off in this city, but having a monopoly on the industry allowed them to concentrate most of the continent's remaining wealth right here after the fall, as rich nobles found themselves suddenly vulnerable in a threatening world."
"Profiting off of civilization's collapse," I said.
"Or putting their lives at risk to protect those beyond their own borders," Puddles replied. "Is it despicable, or noble? Whatever you think of it, you'll find many who disagree."
I wanted to point out that someone could easily hire mercenaries in a lawless world to try to conquer their neighbors or strong-arm their way to more than their fair share, but I let that protest die on my tongue. What would it achieve?
I didn't have a goal here. I was just a tourist, passing through and trying to stay beneath the notice of anyone important. And there probably were plenty of people, both who lived here and came here looking to hire, who were just trying to survive. Wasn't any of my business, sticking my nose in that.
We rounded a corner, winding our way upwards, and a huge billboard tempted me to stick my nose back in anyway.
"Who's that?" I asked, pointing up at the illuminated display. Rather than any discernible product, it simply had the likeness of a lithe, snow-white griffon with a long, sharp black crest sticking down from beneath a white fedora. His thin, dark eyes and polite, satisfied smile couldn't possibly mean good news, and in broad text beneath him, the billboard read Hail Gottlieb.
Puddles' demeanor darkened. "My enemy," she said, and kept walking.
I pressed once, but she had nothing more to say on the subject. Or, more likely, she had so much to say on the subject that she didn't want to do it in public, from within a suit of armor.
We drew closer and closer to the central tower that made up the city's structurally solid core, eventually reaching a wide plaza at its gates. Lit neon at its edges, the plaza was roughly circular, half of it cutting into an alcove in the tower wall and half of it creating a balcony that looked out over the lower city, the highest place you could reach without either going indoors or flying. Two fountains were built into the balcony rim, sporting streams of water that gushed from mechanized nozzles, moving them about in ever-shifting patterns like a slow dance of ribbons.
Looking out, I saw a quick, clean break between the lower suburbs and the craggy terrain, the city reluctant to expand past the footprint it must have held in its skyward days. I didn't see the river Puddles had mentioned; presumably it was to the north, as the plaza faced due south. And the more I looked, the more I felt the plaza was ever so slightly off-balance.
This high up, the city was much more cohesive and intentionally designed, scrap metal mostly used to fill the holes where cloud might once have gone. But the entire tower, and the plaza connected to it, were tilted by a fraction of a degree.
To the city planners, that had to be infuriating.
"My business is this way," Puddles said, walking toward the glass revolving doors into the tower lobby. "There's security, so you won't be able to catch up if you fall behind. Come, or don't. Your choice."
I felt like seeing the inside of the tower. Along I came.
The lobby was brightly lit and warmly polished, striking a sharp contrast with the lobby of the Gyre ziggurat I had explored only days before. While both were similar in layout, capacity and function, this one had the air of a VIP chauffeur, like a courtly bowing butler who didn't need to waste time verifying the identities of anyone who walked in because the clients who were supposed to be here paid him enough to have courtesy to spare for those who didn't. The lobby felt like an open letter to the public, a free sample and reminder of the luxury that being in high society could give.
Work hard, it seemed to say. Sweat. Bleed. Rise to the top, and claim the place where you belong.
It was also probably lying. But, enveloped in that sudden atmosphere, a very real griffon in a tuxedo greeting us with a courtly bow, it was a very motivational lie.
I wonder if we'll find any honor here, Faye said in my mind. Everything about this feels like it's intended to distract people from the way things are, with the way things could be if they won the lottery.
Yeah. I nodded.
If this is where the leaders of mercenary companies gather, though... Faye mused. Whoever lives and works here probably has a substantial amount of sway over the direction of the continent. I bet this is where all the power brokers are. At least outside of the ones loyal to those consuls from Everlaste.
Instinctively, I glanced around the room to see if there might be any consuls here, hanging around near the levers of power. None crossed my gaze... though I did spot a unicorn wearing the distinctive garb of the Night's Boon.
Apparently, that group had a presence here, as well.
Puddles ignored the reception desks, walking to a spacious elevator hall presided over by several pegasi and griffons wearing skimpy neon uniforms. They looked more like guides than guards, despite the fact that each one wielded an ornate rapier shaped like a long-stemmed rose, and several seemed to recognize Puddles at a distance.
"My lady," said a lipsticked pegasus mare who couldn't have been older than I was, dropping into an elaborately practiced bow. "Will you be visiting Battalionlord Geirskogul again today?"
"I will," Puddles said, leaning on her Black Knight mannerism, formal and curt.
"Then please, follow me," the mare said, guiding her into an elevator. She glanced back at me. "Friend of yours?"
"Yes," Puddles said. "She goes where I go."
I almost felt like the pegasus put on a show of how much it wasn't her job to question such things, so gracefully did she beckon me into the elevator as well. Once I was in, she pressed a button to close the doors, then ignored the normal control panel, drawing her rapier and inserting the tip to a small hole like a key.
The lighting on the control panel changed, and she pressed a button. As much as the lobby felt like a VIP area, it was clear the real VIP area was slightly harder to reach than that.
Gravity doubled as the elevator began its ascent, floors flashing by through its glass doors. When it finally stopped, high enough that we had to be near the very top of the tower, the doors slid open to a completely different vision of austere opulence.
Black marble with white veins made up the floor and the support pillars, gold trim lining small channels of water at the edges. The ceiling was a material that might have been terracotta, vaulted and barreled and lit from below, clearly chosen for its pliability and receptivity to ornamental carvings of rose buds. It almost reminded me of the upper reaches of Cold Karma; I wondered if the north's rich and powerful all contracted the same architects to build their lairs.
The pegasus with the rapier guided us down a short hallway which opened into a small waiting room, the world's best-paid secretary lurking behind a desk covered in a pane of glass that had luminescent mana conduits etched into its surface, forming a glowing teal rose.
I was beginning to feel like Wilderwind's highest circles had a motif.
"Hello, dearie," the secretary said to Puddles in a tone that could have made Chrysalis herself take a seat and wait her turn. "Here for your usual unannounced and unscheduled appointment, I take it."
"I go where I go," Puddles said, unshaken. Her helmet tilted almost imperceptibly in my direction. "She's with me."
The secretary looked at me through the rims of her glasses, lifting her head and letting the bottom of the frame touch the edges of her pupils for emphasis. "Don't see many of your kind around these days. I imagine you must be tough to have survived this long."
Mentally, I took a breath. "I see no reason to put that to the test."
"She's with me," Puddles simply repeated, moving to take a seat. "Tell us when Geirskogul is ready."
The secretary clicked her tongue, wrote something with a gigantic fountain quill, and went back to perusing whatever was out of sight on the lower part of her desk.
For minutes on end, we sat. I couldn't make small talk with Puddles; she was exuding an impenetrable wall of stoicism. At the opposite extreme, the rapier pegasus seemed to be daring me to make small talk with her, and I couldn't tell if this was a legitimate invitation or some sort of test, trying to goad me into breaking a cultural taboo. I didn't want trouble, so I kept my mouth shut.
There was a clock, with glowing hands that ticked in slow, slow circles. There was no window. And there was one other rapier-wearing valet, ostensibly waiting for whoever was currently in the next room with this Battalionlord Geirskogul.
Finally, the door at the opposite end of the room opened.
Out stepped Rhodallis.
Puddles instantly turned to him, as did the other rapier valet. He was accompanied by another pirate I didn't recognize, and gave us a huge, I-know-where-you-live grin.
"How did I know you would be here?" Rhodallis chuckled, slowing as he passed us. "Crazy coincidence, right?"
Puddles stared him down.
Rhodallis didn't stop, but as he passed, he reached out a huge wing and patted me on the back. "Keep up the good work, kid. This job's already paying dividends."
And then he strolled onward to the elevator, entourage in tow, the doors closing smoothly behind him.
I sat, stunned. Had he known where I would be? Or did he just serendipitously discover my new location? Should I have been more paranoid, worn a disguise that would cover my face as well?
Was Coda safe, alone on the ship? What did Puddles even think of this? Was she now suspicious I was-
"Battalionlord Geirskogul will see you now," the secretary droned, her voice reminding me of a beehive. "Get on with your bad selves."
Without a word, Puddles rose, motioning for me to follow her into the next chamber.
I found myself in an executive suite with an excellent window overlooking the city, offering a view to the west of a river that reflected the setting sun. To the right, the terrain rose gradually into foothills, and far in the distance, I saw a line of silver that might have been the sea.
At the room's lone desk sat a small, compact griffoness with a scraggly gray crest and bottle-green plumage. She wore an eyepatch, and numerous chips in her beak had been sealed over with a material not quite the same shade of yellow. I pegged her age at seventy, or perhaps a little more, and yet her remaining eye held a ferocity that could see several lifetimes of combat still before it would be extinguished.
She pressed a button on her desk, and the door closed behind us of its own accord.
"You have interesting timing," she said in a scratchy voice, her vocal chords ruined by decades of shouting. "I know your history with my previous client."
"I finished the objectives you gave me," Puddles said. "Rhodallis is someone I try to deal with on my own time."
The griffoness sniffed. "At least the masses haven't taken to plastering his head on billboards in the streets. For all your tremendous efforts, we continue to be swimming up a waterfall, Puddles." She turned to me. "Who is this?"
Puddles pulled off her helmet, tossing her mane to get it out of her eyes. "A new associate of mine. On the run from Rhodallis. I think she crossed him, but I haven't pressed for the full story. She's not looking to get involved, but she's new to the Empire, and I wanted her to see what's going on here with her own eyes."
"Young and innocent, eh?" The griffoness looked me slowly up and down. "Former associate of Rhodallis? What was your title?"
"I didn't have one," I said, which was technically untrue... though Moneymaker Halcyon meant nothing beyond the random whim of one crewmate. "All I was trying to do was rescue my friend. Now that I've got her back, we've acrimoniously parted ways." I glanced up at Puddles, still trying to gauge her reaction to what Rhodallis had said to me in the waiting room. "She'll be safe alone on the ship, right?"
"Rhodallis knows better than to break the laws of Wilderwind," the griffoness told me. "A pirate is worthless without a place to do business at the end of the day. Now, you..."
Without warning, she lunged at me from behind her desk, moving so fast my eyes couldn't even track her. My heartbeat spiked, but before I could so much as twitch she had the tip of a rapier resting on my nose.
Think. Focus. Calm.
"If you're trying to test my fighting," I slowly told her, "I'm more of the heavy bruiser type. Now please put that away."
She withdrew her sword, walking back to her desk and pacing. "Reaction time around point two seconds. It's clear you've never been trained, but you've seen enough not to cry bloody murder, either."
"For your information," I told her, "I spent two years training with military yaks. It's just a very different kind of training."
The griffoness nodded appreciatively. "That does make sense, yes. Beastly in a fight, yaks are. But you're still fresh and green. No agent of Rhodallis, at least not one who's been around him long enough to seriously comprehend what you've gotten yourself into. Definitely not someone who sought to join his crew on purpose."
"That was my conclusion as well," Puddles said. "I assume your meeting with him went poorly? On his way out, he made a spontaneous, petty attempt to convince me she was still on his side."
"Poorly for him, perhaps." The griffoness tapped her desk, opened a drawer, and pulled out a sheaf of papers, offering it to Puddles. "Here's my latest research on potential new targets for you to strike. I haven't had as much time to trim it down as usual. It's been a bad month for work. But I at least have time enough for an old friend."
She walked to the window and sighed deeply. "You. Sarosian. Do you know who I am? Have you felt this country's blood?"
"Battalionlord Geirskogul?" I guessed, feeling like there were few possible ways I could be wrong.
"That's what they call me," Geirskogul said, looking out at the sunset. "But you're in the company of this mare, and she tells me you're 'new to the Empire' and 'don't want to get involved'."
I swallowed. That sounded an awful lot like the start of a recruitment pitch...
And, perhaps, like the start of a story.