Prologue
The last of the trees parted before Eli like the opening curtains of a mummer’s theatre, and he saw the city. Layman-upon-Waters glittered with warm, orange lamplight in the moonlit dark of night. At the foot of this final rise, the open plains of grass, awaiting the coming spring when the young people would dance away the winter’s chill. Beyond, the scattered homes and businesses of the new Low Town, the city’s early fronds of urban growth beyond her ancient walls. The echoes of laughter, the sharp strings of passionate voices.
Then the wall, and then Layman herself. Her stone roads, made flat by the processional passage of soldiers, cut between the brickwork domiciles of the residential districts. The merchant houses, the inns and eateries, the municipal stables. Then up, up the hill to where the Castle Road met the eastern King’s Road, the bridge-laden Water Road. The beautiful, white stone of the noble district with its grand manors and gilded boutiques.
And at the highest point, surrounded by the ring of roads, the Castle. Castle Layman as it was called in this age, its true name lost to time. The charge of the king’s castellan, and in intent the westernmost edge of man’s military strength on the continent. In truth, the castellan’s garrison was sparse, his walls mostly unguarded. Eli spied only a handful of bannered spears manning the battlements tonight. Layman had seen no conflict in decades, even during the chaos of the Demon Lord’s War. And there was no evidence to suggest that would ever change, not with the protective wilds of the forest so close.
For long moments, Eli breathed in the crisp air and allowed the vista of his home to suffuse him. The breeze tugged at his thick hair, a rich brown with deep wings of grey, and the tangle of his beard. His hazel eyes glittered with the unfettered starlight, his dry lips curving at their corners in obeisance to the jovial atmosphere rippling across the city.
They burst apart as another cough rattled up from his chest. Eli curled his body around the bundle in his arms, desperate to not disturb the baby’s slumber with his hacking. But when the cough descended into a long, painful wheeze, he realised his efforts were in vain. As he straightened himself with the weight of his rucksack, Eli looked down into the bundle of swaddling and met another pair of eyes. Blue eyes, touched with a luxurious sea-green, the unrealised lustre of uncut topaz. And he smiled.
“Sorry, little one. You were so peaceful. How are you feeling?”
The baby yawned, wriggling against his cloth confines, and Eli laughed.
“May I show you something?”
He tilted the bundle upright so the baby’s lovely eyes could witness the splendour of Layman-upon-Waters. At this young age, it was unlikely he could see anything at such a distance. Still, the baby silently stared. He drank in the vista, just as his father had done.
“This is your home, Elliot,” said Eli. “This is your home.”
Chapter 1 – The Succubus
Elliot cast his eyes upwards and met the gaze of his father. The tall painting was the only image of Eli of Layman, First Ambassador to the Elves, that he had ever seen in his life, and it matched only clumsily the hazy, half-remembered face in his dreams. The illustrated Eli stood with the stiff posture of one uncomfortable in his own body. His mahogany locks were styled into oily, unnatural order, and his beard had been combed with severe trenches of straightness. The fanciful dress uniform, the rich green of kingdom territorial office, was clearly not his own. It seemed to fit around someone else’s body.
And his eyes… It was the eyes that gave away the theatre of the painting, Elliot decided. Eli’s expression was a half-realised frown, his brow framing a pair of hazel orbs that shimmered with self-effacing mirth. As if he has been captured at the very moment of being surprised by the artist’s canvas, when surely he would have to have been standing still for quite some time.
Elliot tilted his head to one side, trying to catch a new perspective on his late father. The dichotomy of his grand purpose, his noble duty and his impeccable reputation, warring with this silly, surprised expression. A humble man thrust into the costume of a noble esquire. He had danced that line expertly until the day he died, Elliot has been told. If only he had left notes.
“I am sorry, have you been waiting long?”
He turned from his viewing into the narrow, kindly eyes of the castellan of Layman. Here was another man whom Elliot’s heart called ‘Father’, the man who had raised him from his infancy. The good sixty years of difference between the two of them hadn’t ever accounted for a second thought, even when Elliot’s peers had teased him in his early education.
Castellan Thaddeus stood straight and prim for an old man, and his wrinkled face was marked with the creases of a thousand smiles. Elliot noticed he was dressed for activity in flexible esenler escort cotton today, not the gold-and-green of his official uniform. Unlike Eli, Thaddeus ever wore his coat of office as if he had been born into it.
“No, not waiting long,” Elliot replied with a quick bow over one arm.
“Good, good.” Thaddeus turned to regard the painting of Elliot’s father, and he clapped a hand on the younger man’s shoulder. “He would be proud of you, I hope you know. Very proud.”
“Would he?” The familiar bitterness resurfaced. Elliot clamped his lips shut just shy of his unwise comment. And here, he had been distracting himself from his frustration so well.
Thaddeus’ hand tightened on his shoulder. “Yes, he would. Why? Do you think his opinion of you would be in any way diminished by today’s decision?”
“I have no idea,” said Elliot. “Since I’ve never met the man.”
A slap on his back, and the old man turned him, facing him down the castle corridor towards the stairs. “Walk with me.”
Castle Layman’s halls and stairwells whistled with the late afternoon breeze. Unlike a typical fort of the era, which Elliot believed to be sturdy boxes of thick, protective stone and iron, the Castle’s portals were mostly open to the wind or lined with glass to allow in the sunlight. At the foot of the main stairs, the Castle’s grand entrance hall, Elliot caught a glimpse of himself in the reflection of an iron-banded window. Eli’s rich, brown hair cut short and sensible, but clean shaven where his father had been bearded. A belted, woollen tunic in apprentice indigo, a shameful colour considering Elliot’s twenty years of age, wrapped about his soft, scholarly frame.
And a bright pair of eyes, baby blue with seams of teal. Those didn’t belong to his father. Their origins were yet unknown to Elliot, much as he had sought the answer.
“Need I ask your thoughts on your latest application?” the castellan asked as they stepped together into the late sunlight, the open square of painted stone. At their backs, the percussive clatter of two soldiers standing to attention at their lord’s passing.
“I have no thoughts,” said Elliot, eyes on his shoes as they brushed through a scattering of fallen leaves. “I applied myself again to succeeding, the very best of my efforts, and yet my path remains closed. I have no idea what I shall have to do differently when I seek a place in the scrivener’s hall again next year.”
Elliot would never share his true opinion, that his written application and conversation skills had nothing to do with his being overlooked time after time for a position in Castle administration. He only had to acknowledge the narrow glares of the other apprentice scriveners, the young men and women he had failed to befriend, for the seeds of suspicion to take root in his heart. After all, Elliot was not like them. Son of a dead, lowborn man risen above his place by luck and happenstance. Then taken in by the lord of the city, unfairly gifted an esteemed position in his court. It was no wonder Elliot’s noble peers were ever selected for advancement by the castellan’s commissioners and legislators over him, when he was such an anomaly. His was a stacked deck. He just wished it did not feel so infantile of him to acknowledge it.
“I would remind you that your father became an ambassador when he was much older than you are,” said Thaddeus. “We do not know the encounters that await us in our future, nor the people who may alter our destinies in yet unseen ways.”
“Then your advice for me is to wait and see, Castellan?”
The old man’s dark eyes sparkled. “Not quite. It is my opinion that you have waited long enough. I am hoping to share one of those destined encounters with you today, instead.”
Elliot cast his adoptive father a critical glower, daring him to explain. When he did not, merely chuckling with the satisfaction of a secret yet maintained, Elliot looked over his shoulder. Castle Layman was disappearing over the hill of the city as the two of them descended the long, south-west Castle Road. The buildings framing their passage began to change from polished marble to rugged, red brick and thick oak.
“Aren’t we travelling quite a ways from the Castle?” he asked the old man striding beside him. Such a confident pace for one so old.
“What I have to show you is not there,” Thaddeus replied.
“And are you… safe? To be out unguarded like this?”
“Hm? And who would target an old man out for a walk?”
Elliot held tight to his shoulder strap. “If you’re certain, Castellan.”
The merchant district bustled with early evening commerce. Growing crowds outside the more upstanding pubs and taverns forced Elliot and Thaddeus back and forth across the wide, stone-paved road. One of the pair shrank below notice, and the other waved and grinned at the revellers like a proud cockerel. And Elliot’s apprehension only grew as they passed the final intersection of the city, bayrampaşa escort then advanced towards the ancient walls.
The soldiers on duty bowed for Thaddeus as he pressed through the shadows of the open gate. One retrieved a parchment record on a wooden writing board and noted the lord’s passage. Thaddeus paid them no mind. He stepped onto the mud-caked wooden beams that lined the new road without looking back. Elliot had no choice but to follow.
Dark-wood buildings, each a different shape and design, dominated the Low Town. The muddy paths twisted this way and that like a tangled growth of brambles. In the near distance, the sound of shattering glass, followed by a chorus of raucous laughter.
“Castellan!” Elliot hissed. “What are we doing here? We have left the city behind!”
“Actually, Layman’s Low Town still sits within her protectorate territory,” Thaddeus countered, pausing at a crossing of paths to choose their route. Never back, always onward, Elliot was dismayed to see. The castellan eyed his young charge out of the corner of one eye. “Whatever is the matter, Elliot?”
“This place… is not safe!”
“Is it not? Have you encountered some danger here in your past, to say such a thing?”
Elliot chewed his tongue. No, he had not. He’d never left the city walls before. Thaddeus knew that as well as he did.
“Do not let first impressions sour your opinion,” said the castellan. To Elliot’s horror, the old man waved a cheery greeting to a cluster of dark-dressed men loitering outside a hostel on one side of the road. The men nodded back. “The Low Town is a touch bedraggled, yes. Impoverished, you might say. It is my shame that this lifeline of our city has been so neglected. But its people are deserving of better. That is why-… Ah, here.”
Three streets out from the city walls stood a narrow building crammed into an acute space between merging parallel roads. The wooden construction had at one point been painted white, though mud from the rains had caked its skirting brown and left grey streaks on its mantle. The chimneystack was cold, and the windows on both storeys were murky with grime. Thaddeus strode to the door of the building, producing a key from inside his sleeve, then opened the way inside.
The interior was a little more heartening. The woodwork had been swept and polished, and a bookcase on one side of the long room was full of fresh sheets of parchment and bottles of ink. Elliot could smell that comforting, familiar mix from the entryway. Four desks, newly made if the glossy varnish was any indication, each had tall chairs waiting before and behind. A tiny, stone kitchen was hidden by a partition at the far end of the room, and a set of stairs across from the entrance led up to the second level.
“There is a bed up there, and a bath also,” said Thaddeus with a proud grin. “You can fill your stores of water from the well in the courtyard around the side. The door beyond the kitchen will lead straight there. It’s all very convenient, especially if you didn’t want to make the long trip home each evening.”
Elliot’s impatience reached boiling point. “Castellan, what is all this?”
“This is the Office of Municipal Integration, which opens in two days.” Thaddeus stretched out his arms as he walked the span of the room. When his hand brushed a hanging oil lantern, the castellan set himself to lighting it and casting back the gloom of encroaching evening.
“And I am…”
“To be its overseer, if you would like that.”
“O-Overseer?”
“Or to work here in the office, if you would prefer.” His lantern lit, the castellan turned and sat himself on the furthest of the desks. “Admittedly, you will need to perform both roles until you can fill these other seats with employed staff. I would not recommend taking the full burden alone for long.”
“Why?”
“It would be awfully tiring.”
“I-I mean… why me? I failed to enter the scrivener’s hall! I failed to demonstrate my ability! Is this a punishment, Castellan?”
“Certainly not!” said Thaddeus, rocking back on his seat in surprise.
“Then why not demand another do this? A… qualified administrator from the Castle?”
“A Castle administrator would do a poor job here, I have no doubt. Whereas you… You, Elliot of Layman, have the potential to make something grand of this humble office.”
“I ask again, Castellan – why?”
Thaddeus finally gave the question some thought. He folded his arms and examined the toes of his shoes. “The core responsibility of this office,” he said, “will be taking those who exist on the outskirts and bringing them in. Layman’s walls have not been tested in generations, yet they still represent separation. Distance. They demarcate between those who have the privilege of taking part in our city, and those who have not. I did petition to have the stone torn down, but a lovely young woman from the Accord of Regents informed me that ancient, royal decree arnavutköy escort prevented me from doing that. This is my next best solution.”
The castellan reached to the bookcase beside the desks and drew forth a sheaf of parchment. “To gain access to the walled city of Layman and the opportunities she holds, one must have a writ of residence, a guild membership, a signed trade agreement or a stamped signatory from the Accord Office of Travel. As of this office’s opening, I am adding one additional measure, and I am calling it a ‘certificate of aegis’. You can change the name, if you like.”
“Certificate of… aegis?”
“It means ‘protection’. You will meet with any residents of the Low Town with a desire to visit or work in the city and collect their information. You will also ask for an assurance that they are protected by a guarantor or inner-city employer. I have left a list of Low Town guarantors here for you, and I suggest getting to know them. They are lovely folk. I hope you see what I am seeking to achieve with this,” Thaddeus continued, turning his eyes on Elliot with a low brow. “The certificate grants anyone with a need to live and work in the city a means to do so, provided they are to be well looked after. A chance to take part in our culture without risking poverty or abuse. This would include refugees from our war-torn sister lands, foreign traders with limited understanding of our ways, travellers visiting from closer to home…”
Elliot’s fingers twitched. “Travellers…? You mean the elves?”
Thaddeus smiled. “I knew you would see it. Yes, we at present have no means of inviting visitors from Ilvarith and her forest into our city, save on a case-by-case basis. The Accord makes inter-cultural cooperation awfully difficult, even then. And you know the elves; they are a capricious and impatient people. They have no care for stringent bureaucracy. But there are many who would walk among us if we granted them that chance. I would love to see it. The Elf King’s ball is fast approaching. When we are invited into Ilvarith’s bosom, I would like to be able to say that we can reciprocate her hospitality.”
Elliot’s eyes dropped to the varnished floor. Of course, that was why he was being given this position. His father’s legendary affinity with the elves, his close friendship with the king’s daughter Miriham. But Elliot was not his father. He’d never even seen an elf before, not that he could recall. He opened his mouth to say so.
“And it is not just our forest neighbours who would cooperate with us,” Thaddeus said. “There are many other kin of humanity that I would invite to live and work within our walls. Kin who are traditionally denied access to the cities of mankind, forced to skulk about wearing glamorous illusions. I would have you ally yourself to these new friends, Elliot, and welcome them as members of our Layman culture. That we might set an example to the wider, supposedly civilised reaches of humanity.”
Elliot licked his lips, his mind spinning. His ears echoed with stories shared by his fellows in the Castle bunks after lights-out, of salivating creatures only pretending at humanity, hungry to make a meal of him. “You… have lost me, Castellan,” he said. “When you say ‘kin’…?”
A rap at the door startled him out of his fears. He spun out of the way of the open entrance, and Thaddeus rose to approach.
“Ah!” said the castellan. “Wonderful timing! Elliot, may I introduce you to Madam Lantern, one of our Low Town guarantors and a dear, personal friend. Madam, this is-…”
“Elliot of Layman, yes. I recognise him from your description.”
Elliot stepped back to allow the newcomer access, and he tried very hard not to stare. Madam Lantern was a woman in her forties, by his guess. Her dirty-blonde hair was pleasantly curled and fixed into a pretty knot at the back of her head, decorated with a white lily. Her big, brown eyes were highlighted with shadow, and her full, smiling lips shimmered with a layer of gloss. She was a heavy woman, round of cheek and thick of stature, and her gorgeous dress of black and red silk was expertly tailored to show off her impressive gravity. Puffed at the sleeves, flowing at the hips…
And her breasts! Elliot almost resorted to slamming his eyes shut to avoid staring at the curvaceous woman’s cleavage. But her dress drew his attention with its swooping, red-wreathed neckline. When Lantern bent forward in a graceful curtsey, Elliot was granted a deep look at the narrow shadows within her bodice, the freckling on her creamy skin. When she lifted the hem of her skirt, he saw that it was cut higher than the nobility of Layman would approve. But of course, she would need a shorter skirt to avoid trailing the fabric through the Low Town’s prevailing mud. Elliot could see tight, black boots beneath. Rider’s boots, or something similar.
Elliot bowed a stiff greeting over one arm in the Castle style, and his cheeks flushed when Lantern gifted him a husky chuckle.
“A noble boy through and through, Thaddeus,” she teased. “As much as I appreciate a young man with manners, I hope you properly introduced him to our Low Town culture before bringing him here.”
The castellan laughed. “You may need to induct him yourself, Madam, at least in the onset.”