Warsinger: Ch 35

4 Days later: Dalim, Dakhdir

As we came in over Dalim, the City of Bridges, I finally understood what Suri had meant when she'd told me the nobility of Dalim never walked on the ground. The city was a geometric artwork from the air, an intricate flower of white marble and brilliantly colored tile blooming out of the desert, surrounded in three directions by a patchwork quilt of awnings and adobe rowhouses and slums. It reminded me of Vegas, in the way that it was plunked down in the desert like a great gaudy middle finger held up to Mother Nature.

Suri and I stood together at the rails of the ship, listening to the distant ‘hyah!’ of Karalti’s shouts as she got in some last-minute training with Vash on the starboard stern of the Tellak, the Dakhari cargo ship carrying us in berth. We weren’t headed to Dalim as nobles. After a terse meeting with Ignas and Ebisa in Taltos, in which we discussed the assassination attempt and its implications, we unanimously decided it was too risky for Suri and I to travel as the Voivode and Voivodzina of Myszno on a Vlachian charter flight.

"You know, on Earth, it took millions of years for scorpions and cactuses to find ways to flourish in the desert. But somehow, humans just come along one day, vomit a city onto the sand, and somehow make it work." I remarked to Suri, watching the city grow closer from the deck of the airship. "Which is why I really believe we can beat the Drachan. There's nothing in this fucking universe scarier than human beings, Suri."

"Too right." She gazed out over the view with a complex expression: part longing, part loathing, part nervous anticipation.

The Sultir's golden palace sat at the heart of Dalim like a great starburst. The inner walls of the city unfolded around it like the petals of a massive, multilayered lotus. The city reminded me a bit of the old Final Fantasy 7 capital, Midgar. It was built off the ground and had different levels, with the palace and other major buildings connected to the rest of the city and each other by a network of graceful bridges. Hanging gardens waved in the hot desert wind. Artificial waterfalls tumbled into beautiful, clear mosaic canals that ran alongside or under the roads. But under the brightly colored paths and bronze-clad minarets, the ground level streets receded into shadow.

“It’s a beautiful city,” I said.

“Yeah.” Suri sighed. "Like a pretty mask clapped over a rotten mouth."

"If I'm reading this right, the upper castes literally live above everyone else?" I tried to followed a network of paths from the palace to a big domed complex I was pretty sure was a temple.

"Sure do." Suri sketched out into the air with a finger, marking the roads I was looking at. "They all live within the city walls on the uppermost level, which we called Meega Shahar', Cloud City. Under that is the Dappled City, named that because the whole place is shadowed from the city overhead. Most of the middling classes live there, merchants and townsfolk and whatnot. Now, what you can't see too clearly from here is that the Dappled city is also elevated off the ground, and beneath THAT is the Gadada Sha', the Undercity. The Undercity is the ground level, where all of the structural stuff that supports the rest of Dalim is mounted. One guess where the lower Castes and the Fireblooded live."

"If the whole thing's raised off the ground, surely that's not defensible?" I said. "You drop bombs on that from the air and the whole thing would come down."

"Rumor has it that Dalim can throw up some kind of magic shield around itself," Suri said. "Like the Caul of Souls, but just for one city. They - they being the guys I hung out with at the Tiger's Den - might have been talkin' out their arse about that, though. Dalim hasn't been assaulted in going on a thousand years."

"A city on stilts, rotting from the head down." Vash, who hadn't been at my elbow five seconds ago, suddenly remarked from my right side. Even with my crazy Trial of Marantha-vision, I hadn't seen him come up on us. By the way Suri jumped, neither had she.

“Jesus!” I scowled. “Don’t do that to me, man.”

“You need to pay more attention, Dragozin. If I was an assassin, I’d have been able to poke you right in the ribs.” He jabbed at me with one metal finger. “Right here.”

I grumbled, and swatted at his hand. “How’s Karalti doing?”

“Breaking planks. Not the planks to the deck, fortunately. She’s picking it up as quickly as I expected, though her lack of wisdom is proving to be an issue. The key ability of the Baru Path is Dark Focus, which she struggles with,” he said. “She struggles with focus in general, actually. Every seagull that passes by is of sudden and complete interest to her. It’s like trying to train a kitten into being a guard dog.”

“Sounds like my Tidbit,” I replied.

“She’s sheltered, Dragozin.” He gave me a sidelong look. “Somehow, you managed to emotionally shelter this awe-inspiring apex predator as thoroughly as a cloistered Kyrian nun. Don’t ask me how.”

“Not everyone has to be hard and bitter like we are.” I managed not to look at Suri. “How’s the arm treating you?” 

“This? It’s the tits.” He made a fist with it and gave it a little pump. The area around the graft was still bandaged, but he was able to move the mana-driven metal prosthetic just as well as a real arm. “Light, tough, strong enough to break a man’s jaw. Rin outdid herself.”

“She’s a kind person,” Suri said. “I worry we take her for granted, sometimes.”

“She likes to help out. We just have to keep checking in with her and make sure she’s happy with how much and how often,” I replied. "I take it we're headed to the Undercity?"

"Only place in Dalim I know," Suri said bitterly. "Only place I'm allowed. The Fireblooded don't even get to share the open spaces under there with the Lower Castes. I was lucky. Most Fireblooded born in Dalim never see the sky.

"Jeez." It was hard to imagine that kind of hidden squalor from up here, with the wind blowing the sweet aroma of jasmine to our noses. "Dangerous?"

"Yeah, for sure." Suri ran her fingers back through her hair and pulled her helmet on. "There's parts of Gadada Sha' that make Taltos' Cat Alley look like a luxury resort."

The beautiful, exotic parts of the city receded above us as the airship came in for landing. Unlike the open-air Taltos skyport, Dalim's was more like a grand central station, with paved platforms and cargo cranes and a control tower. The ship was seized by huge, magnet-like devices that guided it into its bay, and I saw for the first time how such a strict social hierarchy was maintained in a city of this size. The port was crawling with soldiers... and magitech. Guards in gold and white uniforms idled in groups of three or five, armed with sabers and muskets, but they were backed up by mechs: the kind of powered armor we used to call Striders in the Army. 

The artificed machines had a vaguely reptilian look about them, with lanky, prehensile legs and bladed arms clearly modeled on hookwings. They had open cockpits with crenellations on four sides and a small awning for shade. The pilots had plain old bows and arrows, and they rode in such a way that they could crouch and shoot in any direction. More puzzling were the lanterns: each strider had an oversized lantern hanging from a long, arched antenna that bobbed behind it. The lanterns cast a circle of vivid blue-violet light that caused bugs and bits of food to sizzle on the ground when it passed over it. The crowd bustling along the platforms gave the powered armor troops and their weird lamps a wide berth.

"The fuck are those things?" I hissed to Suri.

"Valusa," Suri muttered back. "Roughly translates to 'Sandstrider'. Those lamps destroy weak magical items. Wear a spellglove under one of those, and it’ll explode on your arm."

"I thought they hated magic in Dakhdir?"

"Yeah, they do. No one ever said the Sultir wasn't a huge fuckin' hypocrite."

Fireblooded weren't allowed in the port, but we'd made a simple-ish plan to get into the city. We were going to conceal our noble status in case things turned pear-shaped. I was now Jurchen Lurou, the Tuun foreman of a mine in Myszno. I’d come to broker a deal with the Iron Merchants Guild in Dalim, a powerful and respected guild with deep criminal connections. Vash and Karalti were my bodyguards, and Suri - with a hood on under her impassive full-plate armor - was our pet Artifact. We'd made a few cosmetic tweaks to her armor to make sure she didn't show any skin. Ebisa had forged us some permit papers showing that Suri had been built in Litvy, and had told us that the customs people would want to see the Maker's Mark and probably charge a tariff based on how much mana she needed to 'power' her. Rin's mark - a diamond made up of four smaller diamonds - was stamped on the inside of one of her pauldrons. It was stupid as hell, but Suri had assured me that, even if the guards saw her own markers of nobility, that they wouldn't let her into the city. The casteless stigma took priority over any title Ignas could give her. Either we snuck her in as cargo, or we weren't getting in.

"There's so many flies!" Karalti grumbled as she tagged along behind me, forming one point of a triangle. We'd traveled first class, so we near the front of the line, waiting for the gangplank to connect the hovering ship to the platform.

"I know!" Vash was on my left, regarding the scene ahead of us with childlike delight. "These little southron ones are adorable. Look at their fuzzy green butts!"

"Do I really have to like flies to be a Baru?" Karalti scowled, irritably - but gently - brushing one off her nose.

"Absolutely. Flies are the holiest of all creatures. They eat our garbage and prevent disease, they clean our wounds, they nourish the soil that grows our food." Vash nodded. "Flies, beetles, and bats are all Burna's creatures."

"I like bats. They smell stinky, but they taste good. And they have a funny texture! Kind of like eating lasagna noodles off a carpet."

I rubbed the bridge of my nose. "I don't know what's weirder: the image you just inserted into my brain, or the fact you know what lasagna is."

"Hector, you ate so much lasagna that I can recall the taste, texture, AND temperature. You liked the kind you were supposed to put in the oven, but you were impatient, so you put it in the magic heat box instead.”

I winced. I had, indeed, eaten a lot of microwaved oven-bake lasagna in my lifetime. “Hey now, don’t be judging.”

"I'm pretty sure it's delicious no matter what," Karalti said dreamily. "Now I want lasagna."

Suri, looming behind us, snerked tinnily inside of her helmet. "Still feeling hormonal, are we?" 

"Still made of meat, are you?" Karalti replied sweetly.

I watched as two burly porters heaved the gangplank into place. "Guys, cut it out. We're up." 

Karalti nodded, and put on her best bouncer face. Vash made a sound of delight as a fat bottlefly landed in his cupped hands and began to cootchie-cootchie-coo at it.

The porters idled by while a snotty-looking bureaucrat stepped forward. Like all the Dakhari in the port, he wore loose, brightly colored clothing, and - in the case of the men - a head scarf that swaddled his head, scooped under his chin, and could be pulled up over his mouth if needed. He spent a while messing with a clipboard and a magic-detecting wand, and when he was ready, a yellow objective beacon appeared around his feet. The porters moved forward, opened the fence along the gangplank, and we dutifully shuffled forward. 

"Name?" The [Customs Official] asked, not looking up from his list. 

"Jurchen Lurou of Myszno." I held my papers forward. "And entourage." 

The man didn't look at them, searching his list for our names. When he found them, he grunted and crossed them off. "Welcome to Dalim, the Flower of the Desert and the seat of his Eminence Yazid Khememmu the Fifth, glory be his name. What’s your reason for visiting Dakhdir today?”

"Trade."

"And how long will you be staying?"

"Three nights."

He grunted again, roughly sweeping a fly away from his face. I felt Vash tense. "If you are staying only three nights before returning to Vlachia aboard the Tellak, then you must leave your Artifact on the ship. Artifacts must be registered for thirty days."

"Uhh... what?" I nearly dropped the act for a moment. "Dude, no. I can't leave it behind."

"And why not, exactly?" The man glanced at us. "It is a machine, yes? Park it in cargo and take a claim ticket from the captain."

I gestured sharply back to Suri. "She's the mining tool we came to show the Iron Merchants. Seven feet tall! Made of the finest Mercurion steel! This bad boy can dual wield pickaxes and dig through a meter of rock in ten minutes! We can't leave it aboard, or do you expect us to bring the Guildmaster of the Iron Merchants here?"

Suri loomed.

[Bluff successful!]

The Customs Official blinked owlishly. He flicked a fly buzzing close to his face, and Vash's eye twitched. "Fine, fine... let me check it over. You will pay me a tariff after the reading, you understand?"

The way he said it - and the fact we were paying it here, rather than at the exit booth into the city - implied he was about to ask for a bribe. I grimaced and jogged from foot to foot, as if impatient. "Fine. Get it over with."

The official thumbed his glowstick on, and it hummed to life. I watched nervously as he waved it over Suri. It flared bright green.

"Humph. This is a very fine machine to be running off cheap greencrystal." He sounded disappointed.

"Do I look like I'm made of money?" I replied. "What's the tariff?"

He thought about it. As he did, he absently reached up and slapped a fly that had landed on his shoulder. Before anyone could react, least of all the porters, Vash punched him so hard that he spun over the gangplank rail and nearly fell over the side.

"There! See how you like it, you bureaucratic schlochdav!" he shouted. " How do you like being slapped to death? Ey?!"

"Hahaha, well, have a great day, gentlemen." I hooked my arm through Vash's elbow and pulled him past the two burly men as they desperately pulled the semi-conscious man back onto the gangplank, where he slumped and retched. "Come on kids, time to go!"

“You eat more shit than that fly ever did!” Vash shook his fist, lunging against my arm toward them.

"Wait! Where you think you going!?" One of the porters shouted after us.

Suri stopped, turned, and leaned over him. "Wherever we fuckin' want, you silly cunt."

Everyone behind us was so grateful to move forward in line without having to go through Bribey McBribeface that not a single person snitched on us as we vanished into the crowd and did our best to blend in. Getting through the gate was much easier than clearing the gangplank. The official behind the counter was efficient, pleasant and not obviously corrupt. All he wanted to do was see our papers and send us on our way.

"Vash, sweetie, I'm really going to need you not to try and murder everyone you see who squishes a bug around here," I said though gritted teeth once we were on the road. It was crowded and lively: vendors hawked fried snacks and plates of fried durian, curry, bread and doughnuts, incense and flowers and fruit. A number of idling NPCs had yellow rings with question marks around them, indicating they had quests to give. Children ran through the narrow alleys in ragged gangs, shrieking with laughter. Somewhere not too far away, we could hear bells and singing.

"Well, now that you asked me so nicely..." Vash was examining his surrounds with obvious interest, watching as lean, slow-eyed nomad traders guided their lumbering saurian herd animals - creatures something like a cross between an elephant, a stegosaurus and a camel - down the main street. "My apologies. Some people just have a face like a magnet, eh?"

“Your new arm doesn’t have any iron in it,” I said sourly.

Suri cleared her throat. "Look, if you blokes are done yakking, can we get moving and out of the sun? In case you forgot, I'm wearing about fifty pounds of fuckin' black steel plate, and I'm about to fry my tits off."

"Food! Nice smells! Flowers!" Karalti zipped over to the nearest food stand, pointed at the round stuffed breads at the front, and held up five fingers. Vash joined her, so Suri and I retreated to the shade.

"We need to orientate. You know how to get to undercity from here?" I asked her.

"Yeah." She pointed down the alleys. "All the streets on this layer of the city eventually connect to a pylon bridge. There's stairwells next to every pylon, with a maintenance gate for when workers have to go down to the undercity to fix shit."

I bought up my Map screen. Maps in Archemi automatically updated when you reached a new location, giving a rough GPS overview of the area and filling in details as you explored and identified locations. Because of the way Dalim was constructed, the map currently showed us the Dappled City level. I could flick between tabs to see the Cloud City map and the Undercity map, but the Undercity was currently just a greyish field of undefined dwellings.

"Look sharp, dog!" Vash threw something at me as he and Karalti bounced back over with arms full of pani-puri, an Indian style fried bread filled with spiced potatoes, cheese and spinach. I snatched it out of the air without looking over my shoulder, and he cackled.

"We got some for you too, Suri." Karalti had already almost finished her first one. "It's good! Spicy!"

"Cheers." Suri folded the food into her Inventory and patted Karalti on the head as the dragon stuffed her second pani-puri into her face. "Ready?"

Vash bowed and gave a little flourish toward the shaded entry of the street across from us, and Suri led the way.

A hush fell over us as we wove into the city proper. Unlike Taltos and Karhad, Dalim was very flat and completely paved. The streets were very narrow, and people lived almost exclusively in beautiful courthouse compounds ringed by small apartments. Ornate metalwork and carvings were everywhere. The adobe buildings were only washed white on the rooves: many of them were painted a brilliant ultramarine blue, while others were covered in glittering glass mosaics. It was like some blend of pre-War India and Final Fantasy’s Midgar, with less technology and more magic, but the same amount of totalitarian bullshit.

It got quieter, darker and danker the closer we got to the pylon. The buildings in this area weren't as colorful, and the courtyards were shabby, with dry fountains and spiked iron fences. Teenagers sitting on stoops regarded us suspiciously as we drew up on the enormous monolith, a steel-reinforced Roman concrete pillar set on an angle into a gloomy dark pit. Sure enough, there was a gated stairwell leading down.

"It'll be locked, but that never stopped anyone before," Suri said. "Expect trouble at the bottom."

"Trouble?" I pulled the Spear from my inventory, spun it around like a marching baton, and then slung the carry cord over my shoulder and hung onto it.

"The Undercity is run by gangs and syndicates, including my old faction, the Rose Knives." Suri went over to the gate and tested the handle. "Just because Fireblooded aren't allowed up here doesn't mean we don't come. There's money to be made doing jobs around the city, so the gangs let people go up for free, but charge them a commission on the way down for using 'their' stairs."

Vash cracked his knuckles. "That's no good now, is it? For them, I mean."

Suri looked back at him through the blackened visor of her helmet. "Don't start anything with the gangs if you don't have to, Vash. As soon as we're in Rose Knives territory, we're golden, but there's an ecosystem of sorts down here... if you kill or embarrass some little fish trying to shake you down for a couple of Dinar, the sharks'll be sniffing along right behind them. None of us are bad enough bastards to deal with the Slum Queens - not yet, at least."