The Dark Prognosticus

So there I was writing in a file called ‘7.txt’, and I thought to myself, hey! It sure would be nice to know how many words I’ve written total! Naturally I also have 1 through 6 .txt. Each file is a chapter, it’s a pretty simple system. I could have gotten a calculator or pasted all the files together or something, and that’d be fine now, but I’m sure I’ll want to count the words again. So I went looking for an app to do it. The best I found was a line counter, which is just close enough to what I want to be entirely useless.

Next best option? Write it! So I did, real quick in C++ with lots of invocations of boost. The app is at http://www.omnisu.com/files/wc.zip Inside, you’ll find ‘wc.exe’ and ‘WordCount.cpp’. If you don’t know C++, well, ignore WordCount.cpp – but the source is there, just in case you do know C++ and want to peek. The source is 140 words long!

The usage is pretty simple : wc <mask>, where <mask> is a regular-expression used to match filenames. If you don’t know regular expressions either, well, you might have some trouble using it. But this should help. If you want to count all the .txt files in a directory, use the command ‘wc .*\.txt’ For my files, I happened to use ‘wc [0-9]\.txt’

Oh look, the source is also here. D:!

#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
#include <string>
#include <boost/filesystem/operations.hpp>
#include <boost/filesystem/path.hpp>
#include <boost/regex.hpp> 

bool is_whitespace(char a)
{
	return (a == ' ' || a == '\t' || a == '\n' || a == '\r');
}

int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
	boost::filesystem::path dir_path( boost::filesystem::initial_path() );

	if ( argc <= 1 )
	{
		std::cout << "\nusage:   wordcount [mask]" << std::endl;
		return 0;
	}

	boost::regex expression(argv[1]);

	int word_count = 0;
	std::string word;

	boost::filesystem::directory_iterator end_iter;
	for ( boost::filesystem::directory_iterator dir_itr( dir_path ); dir_itr != end_iter;	++dir_itr )
	{
		std::string file_name = dir_itr->leaf();
		if (regex_match(file_name,expression))
		{
			std::cout << "Reading file " << file_name << std::endl;

			std::ifstream file(file_name.c_str());
			while ( file >> word) ++word_count;
		}
	}

	std::cout << word_count << std::endl;
	return 0;

}

Marri perched herself on the counter beside the till and cracked her father’s dusty copy of Myths and Histories open on her knees. Some strange banging had awakened her, she thought, but when she got up it had already passed, whatever it was. No one disturbed the silence this time of the morning, when the street lamps had burned out and the sun hadn’t come up. Marri couldn’t sleep, most nights, and the morning often found her on the counter, or tucked tight into a corner of the common room, reading by candlelight.
She had heard all the tales of the Delfaran War, about courageous Deyja and treacherous Mimora, of course, but Marri enjoyed reading them herself. She traced her fingers down the staves, to keep her place among the runes between them. Her father had brought this book from Karpanaken, after she had already read it in the language of Lochway. They wrote different in Karpanaken, but she could struggle through the strange spellings and odd prepositions because she already knew the tale.
So it was that Deja went into the forest of Loshwein, where Mimra waited in hiding, and did not know she had bewitched Omsu; and Omsu led Deja’s armies against him, and struck down the king.
The kitchen door creaked. Marri looked up at Thrad, standing shirtless in the doorway. His pants dripped onto the floor, dark with water from the knee down.
“Guests should use the stairs over there,” Marri said, and pointed into the common room.
“What is that?”
Marri lifted up the cover of the book so he could see the title carved into it.
“Bunch of lies,” Thrad said. “Mimora take it.” He stepped around the counter and through the front door. The door swung back with a thump.
Marri closed the book and slipped off the counter. She padded through the kitchen. Her feet found Thrad’s wet boot prints. She avoided them, where she could see them, and noticed that someone had disturbed the panel between the cabinets. She stopped and examined it in the dim candlelight that managed to penetrate all the way from the bar counter. Had she just not put it back properly? She couldn’t remember. Marri looked inside. Nothing seemed disturbed, everything was there.
She plucked the figurine out and rubbed her fingers over it. Her fingers warmed, but just barely. She pushed down the warmth, until her finger tips prickled and turned blue. She darted out the back door, the figurine clutched in her hand, and looked down the ally toward the starlit street. Puddles made glittering patches on the paving stones. It must have rained quick in the few moments Marri had slept.
A trail of misted breath hung in the air and mingled with the first bits of mist that would coat the city before the sun rose. It led from the front door of the inn, across the porch, to the stables.
Marri stuck close to the stable wall, and crept to the corner. She peeked around, and when she did not see Thrad she continued to the stable door. One side hung open. Marri hid behind it and peered into the stable.
Kit sprawled across a pile of hay in the corner. Thrad stood by a stall and patted the head of his horse, which stretched over the wall. He was a shadow against a shadow. Thrad turned toward the door, and his eyes shone in the dark, yellow like cat’s eyes. Marri jerked back under cover and hoped she didn’t jostle the door.
Just checking his horse, she told herself. Thrad appeared through the doorway. He paused in the street, and glanced back toward the stable. Marri pushed herself deeper into the angle between the door and the wall and held her breath.
Thrad didn’t close the door, he left it and returned to the inn.
Marri jumped around the door and pulled it shut behind herself. She ran across the floor to the corner where Kit lay. Fresh horse dung clotted in the air, mixed with the scent of wet hay. She hoped what sloshed between her toes was mud. “Kit, get up.”
Kit didn’t, so she kicked him until he did. “What?” he demanded. “Red?”
“Get up.”
“What do you want?”
“The knight was out here.”
Kit looked around the stables. Marri wondered how he could see anything.
“He’s not here now,” she said.
“You put it back, didn’t you?” Kit went to the door. He paused a moment in the muddy spot and said something to himself. Thatch, Marri thought she heard, and a swear word that reddened her cheeks whenever her mother was in a four block radius. Kit checked peeked out the door, then opened both sides all the way.
Mist rolled through the door and made swirls like waves crashing on a beach. The stars had faded and the sun splashed yellow across the eastern sky. The horses took notice and whickered softly at the dawn.
“I did. He was just checking his horse.”
Kit turned back toward her and stood framed in the dawn, on arm up against the door frame. “Why’d you kick me for?”
Marri clutched the figurine to her chest with both hands. “I wanted to check. I thought maybe he, what if he knew you took it, and. You know.” Her cheeks were red, she was sure.
“What’s that?”
Marri thrust the figurine toward him.
Kit took it and ran his fingers over it. “It looks like you.”
“No it doesn’t,” Marri said.
“The hair is red.”
“That’s just the color of the wood.” Marri snatched the figurine back. It grew hot in her hand. She felt the heat radiate up her arm, but barely noticed it against the heat in her cheeks.
“Where’d you get it?”
“I bought it.”
“With what?”
Marri worked the figuring around and around in her hand. Her arms blazed.
A grin crept onto Kit’s face and slowly exposed his teeth. “You stole it.”
“No!” Marri waved the figurine at him. “I bought it!”
“Thief thief thief!” Kit teased.
“No!” The heat in Marri’s arms burst from her fingers. Flames sprang around the figurine and her fingers. She gasped, she dropped it.
“Piss!” Kit shouted and stomped on the figurine. He ground it into the mud. Marri’s arms turned cold, her flesh pimpled. “You did that,” Kit said.
Marri looked away from his stare and shivered. Char drifted into the air. The figurine still smoldered, even buried in wet mud.
“You did it,” Kit said.
“You can’t tell. You mustn’t.”
“I won’t.” Kit bent and looked at the charred figurine. “Can you do whenever you want?”
Marri nodded.
“Can you show me?”
“Not here. Somewhere private.” Marri moved around him and darted for the door. She stopped and looked back at him. Thrad’s war horse stuck his head over the stall wall and whickered at them. Marri turned and ran for the inn.

“Mah-ree!” Sarah yelled. She stood at the back door of the inn looking tired and pouty. Water stained the knees of her dirty dress.
“I’m right here,” Marri said. “And that’s not my name.”
“Mahri mahri mahri,” Sarah spat. “I can’t turn the water.”
Marri pushed her out of the way. Sarah had a bucket crammed under the tap. She ran over in front of Marri and threw her weight onto the valve lever. It didn’t budge.
“See?”
“That’s because it’s already open.”
“But nothing comes out!”
Marri bent over and looked at the tap. A fired clay pipe stuck through the wall. It connected to a bronze valve with grease oozing from it’s seams. A stick or pole stuck in the top could turn it. Sarah had it all the way open already.
“Cause there’s no water, stupid.” Marri shoved open the kitchen door, already yelling “Mother!”
Mother stood over a table in the common room, attacking last night’s mess with a rag dirtier than the table. “There’s no water!” Marri shouted at her.
“Already? Summer’s barely started. Well take some jugs and your sister and go to the fountain in the square.”
“But..”
“Do it yourself then, I don’t care. Just do it.”
Marri let the kitchen door bounce against it’s frame. Sarah had her finger stuck up the tap. “You heard her, go get the jugs.” Marri kicked her to make her move, then she shut the tap. The pipes would start to stink in a day or so, with no water in them.
She mopped up the water on the floor while she waited for Sarah, glad for once that Sarah always took so long to do simple things. Sarah managed to spill everything, somehow. If the water hadn’t been out, Marri would have a real mess to clean up this time. The water didn’t want to come out of the crack between the floor and wall. Marri passed the mop along it again and again, but each time a bead of water seeped out. She stopped mopping and watched it as it slowly spread across the floor. How much water had Sarah spilled?
Marri pushed the panel between the cabinets aside. A inch of water pooled between the kitchen wall and the cistern. Light crept through a gaping hole in the wall of the cistern. Tar covered rocks piled under the hole, spread by the push of water.
Marri ran out to the stable. Kit shoveled hay out of a stall. Thrad’s horse stood outside it’s stall while Kit emptied it, and so did Thrad. Thrad buckled his saddle on himself. Marri watched him until he led the war horse out of the stable and swung up onto it.
“Knobs,” Marri said. She leaned into the stall and held her nose. “Come on.”
“What?”
“Come on.” Marri grabbed his elbow and dragged him out of the stall. She led him around the inn and into the kitchen. “There’s no water,” she said.
“So what?”
“So the cistern is empty! Look in there.”
Kit stuck his head through the panel. “There’s a hole in it.”
They climbed around the beams in the narrow space, and into the cistern itself. They stood in knee-deep water and stared up at the circle of sky four stories above them. Marri tried to count the pipes jutting from the walls, but lost her place less than a quarter of the way around the cistern.
A slab stuck out of the water near the wall. Marri sat on it and traced her fingers down the runes carved across it’s top. Green slime, still moist, clung to it. She recognized the symbols, but not the words.
Kit stood and looked at her, with his hands on his hips. “So you can do it anytime?”
“Yes,” Marri said.
“Do it now.”
Marri held out her hand. “It happens by itself sometimes. But I’ve never tried to before.” She wiggled her fingers.
“How does it work?” Kit leaned closer and peered at her fingers.
“My hands get warm. And then fire comes out.” Marri concentrated on the warmth. Her fingers tingled. “I always stop it, now. I never try to make it.”
Kit poked her finger. She giggled and fell back across the granite slab, and looked up at the sky. Drops fell from Kit’s feet as he climbed onto the rock and made trinkling noises where they hit the water. Marri held her hand up in front of her face and examined it against the sky.
She focused on her fingers. The tingling grew. It became heat. Her nails seemed to glow against the sky. Suddenly, a flame burst out between her fingers. She pulled the warmth back, the flame sputtered like a candle in the wind, but she kept it small and it didn’t burn.
“Knobs look!”
Kit rolled over and looked. He bounced up onto his knees and reached his finger toward the flame. It danced between Marri’s fingers.
“Careful it’s hot.”
Kit pinched the flame between his fingers. A tiny column of smoke erupted from it as it burned the oil of his fingers. The smoke clawed at their noses. Marri leaned forward on her hands, fingers splayed across the runes.
Kit waggled the flame on his finger and flicked it from finger to finger. The flame grew as it sucked fuel off his fingers, like a candle drawing up wax. “How do I put it out?”
“Stick it in the water I guess.”
Kit leaned over the side of the slab and lowered his hand toward the water. The flame spun around his fingers and licked up the back of his hand. He flicked it at the water. The flame tore up his bare arm and singed off his hair.
“Make it stop,” Kit said.
“I don’t know how to.”
The flame swirled around Kit’s arm. Kit flailed it in the air. “Make it stop!” His shout echoed back off the cistern walls. Kit dove forward off the slab and rolled in the water. The flames danced around him.
Marri leaned off the slab but jerked back away from the steam. Kit flailed in the water. The flames tore all around him and ate his flesh despite the water and steam. He screamed.
“I can’t! I can’t!” Marri shouted back, louder and louder to hear herself over the roar of fire and death. She reached for the flames, she flailed at them, and they danced just beyond her reach and laughed at her.
Kit lay on the bottom of the pool. The water boiled and churned above him. Steam rose around Marri. She dug her fingers into the runes on the slab. Flame danced in the steam as the fire consumed the water itself, then licked up the stone walls.
The fire swooped over Marri’s head like diving gulls.

Shen continued to hammer his heels against the crate even after his father told him to stop. Jamear drifted up and down the dock, bribing officials. Once he bribed one, he had to bribe them all, but that knight had been very clear. No one could open this crate.
“Better show up soon,” Jamear muttered as he passed close. “Could of slept in a bed last night instead of been out here throwing away my profit margin.”
“You’re going to sleep at the inn?”
“Of course I am.” Jamear stopped pacing to peer at him. “Don’t you start getting any ideas. You’re going there too.”
“She isn’t my mother.”
“You’re to treat Meredith like she is. And your sisters will be happy to see you.”
Shen looked at his feet instead. He knew his step mother only from a few faded memories and these brief visits, every three months or so. He knew the wenches in Pryley and Karpanaken better. He was eight when Jamear took him on the ship. Five years at sea had turned him into a man, if he would just grow some more. How old was Marri when he left? Four? Why should he care if she was happy?
The knight arrived. Shen recognized Sir Thrad. A few more tears in his mandilion let his chain mail show, and he had a sword instead of a hammer, but Shen couldn’t forget that unnatural skin, that let all Thrad’s veins out like rivers drawn on a map.
Thrad led his horse and two ponies onto the dock. Shen dropped off the crate to take the reigns, but Thrad put the reins from the ponies into the horse’s mouth instead. The horse worked his teeth around on the reins and actually stood there and held them.
Thrad stepped around the crate. He paused to run his hand over one spot, and examine a chip in the wood. Jamear stood off to the side.
“Open it,” Thrad said.
“What?” Jamear said. “You wanted it here untouched, it hasn’t been.”
“It’s here now, open it.”
Shen stared at the horse until Jamear jabbed him. “Wake up. Go get a crowbar.”
Shen darted down the dock to the sailors unloading cargo and snatched a pole from them. Jamear thrust it in the seam between the crate and it’s lid. The nails squeaked as they came out of the wood. They stuck, just before they popped, so that each nail sprang from the crate like a cork from a bottle.
The lid clattered onto the dock. Jamear tossed the pole down on top of it. Shen darted in, before they could tell him otherwise, to peer into the crate.
Straw, mostly wet now, filled it nearly to the brim. Thrad dug into it and heaved great handfuls out of the crate, heedless of where it landed. A stone tablet emerged, slowly, from the bottom. It was the size of Shen’s head and covered in runes. He recognized the alphabet, but not the words.
Thrad lifted the tablet out and turned it around in his hands. “Made it here in one piece. It’s been a pleasure, Captain.”
Jamear grunted. “You didn’t bring a wagon.”
“No need,” Thrad said. He stowed the tablet in his saddle bags. “It will be safe right here.”
Thrad walked off the dock, and his horse turned and followed him without being led.
“Lars!” Jamear shouted. Shen watched the knight go. The tone of Thrad’s boots changed as he crossed from wood to stone. “Lars! Keep her tight! No penetration, you understand? Come on Shen.”
“I’d..”
“No arguing. You’re going to the inn.”
Shen followed his father. He kept a few paces between them so maybe he could feel like he walked alone, if only for a moment. They followed the docks for a while, around the curve of the bay. The Basilica grew larger and grander until they came right up against it’s wall. Shen lost site of Thrad in the crowd as they passed through the square.
The merchants were inn, from the ships and the road, and stalls and tents squatted around the gallows forming a network of twining paths like the braided streams in a river delta. They setup every morning, except holidays, and packed up again every night. You couldn’t find the same stall two days in a row except by searching the entire square again.
“Don’t skulk,” Jamear said.
Shen grunted something just to appease his father. Why shouldn’t he skulk? He was the one being dragged from his home, the ship, to see his whore of a stepmother. Marri had the same limp red hair as they did, but that younger one, she had golden curls and not a freckle on her. Why couldn’t Jamear see that the little brat wasn’t his?
A strange smell creeped into his nostrils. Shen puckered his nose at it. He took his eyes off the cobbles. Thick smoke flowed over the city. “Fire!” someone shouted, not far away. Almost immediately they were pressed from all sides. Merchants hurried to pack their wares.
Jamear grabbed Shen’s arm and dragged him through the crowd. Elbows and knees buffeted him. Shouted names and orders and Fire! again and again all competed to be heard over the roar of flame. Suddenly they burst from the throng onto empty street.
The buildings around them bulged at their seams like a badly darned sail. Flame sputtered through their windows and lapped across brick and stone in search of fresh fuel. The heat sucked the moisture from the air, and the ash clawed at Shen’s throat until every breath was like swallowing sand.
“Go back to the ship!” Jamear ordered.
Shen didn’t heed him, but followed him up the street instead. Shen ran to keep up, with his arm held up to keep the soot out of his eyes. He saw something, a pattern in the flames, out of the corner of his eye, and had to look again to be sure. Flames crawled over the face of a row house. They swirled together in a tube. The tube kept it’s shape as it moved across the bricks, like a fire snake, except it had limbs. Shen kept moving as he watched the fire snake.
The snake paused. It clung to the frame of four different windows and looked straight at Shen. It’s head tracked him as he ran down the street, it’s swirling fire eyes never blinked. Shen could not pull his eyes away. He was drawn into the fire snake’s gaze, until suddenly something streaked across the space above them. A plume of flame leaped from the roof of a combination tavern and book store and arced across the street. Wings spread from the head of the plume and it opened a beak to shriek. The tone drove into Shen’s bones, and the fire bird dove into the snake, and both vanished into a tangle of flame.
Shen turned, spurred to new speed. He raced to catch up to Jamear who had gotten well ahead. He tried to ignore the giant cat that paralleled him along the roof tops. He glanced, once, in search of the source of the hoof beats pounding the cobbles behind him and did not look again. A horse and a stag ran abreast, each with a long tail of flame trailing behind them.
Fire bubbled from the top of the cistern like a pot boiling over and flowed down over the inn. Shen’s step mother stood in the street, with Sarah’s curly head pressed into her stomach. Both were covered in soot, with fainter patches where they had rubbed at their eyes. Shen heard them from farther away than he had expected, over the fire.
“Marri!” Meredith yelled. Tears traced lines in the soot on her cheeks.
Jamear ran to them, and grabbed Meredith’s arm and pulled her around. Meredith did not recognize him immediately, overwhelmed by the fire perhaps.
“Where is she?” Jamear asked.
Meredith stared, her mouth unmoving.
“Momma!” Shen heard, faint. And then again, “Momma!”
“Did you hear that? Jamear! Father!”
Jamear turned, surprised that Shen was there.
“She’s inside. I heard her.”
Jamear looked between Shen and the burning inn, then took his coat and held it over his face. “Keep them safe,” he told Shen, then plunged into the fire.
Shen waited, unable to do anything but fidget. Meredith came over to him, with Sarah still clutched against her, and put her hand on his shoulder. Shen leaned into her and caught Sarah looking up at him, wide eyed and tear streaked.
“Shen!” Jamear yelled in his command voice. It cut through the wood and the fire. Shen ran toward the inn. “Shen!” Jamear yelled again, and Marri flew from a second story window. Her arms wheeled in the air as she fell. Shen got under her and caught her, and they collapsed onto the hard cobbles with no hurts but a few bruises.
Jamear stood framed in the window for a moment, and then the inn crumbled. The third floor fell into the second, and the second into the first, and the entire inn into a pile of burning timbers on the ground. Embers sprang into the air and drifted around them like stars falling out of the sky. Shen felt them sizzle against his skin. The fire swelled over the inn, and Shen saw the fire snake crawling through the rubble consuming the wood, while the others watched and the fire bird wheeled in the air overhead.
Marri hugged him. “I can’t stop it,” she said. “I can’t stop it. Can’t stop it,” again and again.

On the matter of Internet assholes, few are more endearing than the hostile asshole. Under no occasions should this asshole be engaged in debate, though, you needn’t worry much about this as it is actually not possible to debate with this fool. This asshole is incapable of reasoned discourse. He is an arrogant, narrow-minded, pseudo-intellectual literalist with an inferiority complex. He is rude and belligerent. He will not respond to your attempts at engagement with rebuttals or reason, instead he will tell you how you like masturbating to telle-tubbies while puppies shit on your face. Which you don’t.

When called out, this asshole retreats behind the wall of his own assumed superiority. He dares not challenge you, because he’s only shooting blanks.

You got a critique. Now what? I have no idea at all how to start this article. So I think I’ll start it with the word funicular.

Funicular.

Know why you want a critique. If you just want praise, go ask your mother to read it. You get a critique to improve your writing. If you aren’t prepared to be told, in detail, exactly where you fail, don’t ask for a critique.

Definitely do not take a critique personally. They aren’t insulting you, they’re trying to help you. It’s a compliment that they even gave you the critique!

But do ask for clarification. If you don’t understand what they mean, ask them. Don’t be afraid of seeming defensive. The only people you will offend are the ones who’s critiques won’t help you.

And don’t be defensive. No one will critique you if you attack them.

Never challenge a critique. You don’t have to take their advice, it’s not an argument, winner take all. If you don’t agree, the best thing you can do is nothing.

But do consider every piece of advice. Don’t ignore someone just because you don’t like them, or think they are stupid. Even a fool can have an insight.

Just remember that a lone critique is worthless. If one person says something is wrong, one person doesn’t like it. If ten people say something is wrong, something is wrong. Look for patterns in your critiques first, and specifics second.

Always fix your mistakes before you ask for a critique. No matter how many times you say “I know about X”, someone will come along and say “X.” If you know about it, fix it before you ask!

And finally, write for yourself first. Write to be understood second. Write to be read third. Write for critics last. If you have time.

So what do I do with a critique? I go through a few simple steps in my head. First, I ask myself “Why does he think that?” A good critiquer won’t just tell me what, he’ll tell me why too. Next I ask myself “What if?” What if I took his advice? What if I made those changes? If I like the result, if I think it’s better, I’ll make changes. If I don’t, I won’t.

Getting a critique is an analytical process. Approach it with logic and reasoning, not emotion, and you’ll be able to pump every bit of self improvement out of the process.

I have a lot of old writing before the current draft. I’ve got a bunch of short stories and two previous drafts to draw from, and some of it is actually good, if entirely useless. It’s nice to see that I have, actually, improved.

Sprit squatted in the dirt outside his tent. The tent flaps waved in the steady west wind. It brought cold air and the promise of an early winter. Sprit rolled his bones around in his hand, enjoying the way they felt against his palm.
Sprit threw the bones in the dirt and studied how they fell. They were his best bones, his most powerful, his most accurate. They were the finger bones of a child. He threw them with his right hand, because his left had only two digits. He scowled at the bones. They made no pattern at all that he could see. No matter how many times he threw them, he saw nothing. Was the failing with him, or with his bones?
A shadow fell over the bones, and Sprit did not have to look up to know it belonged to his grandson. And why should he? He was old. Old enough to be named the right way, in the old tongue. Bomenisprit, it meant Speaks With Trees.
“Boy,” said Sprit, “Aren’t you going on your name quest soon?”
His grandson nodded. Sprit only saw the boy’s shadow move. He was fifteen, and still called boy. Or Hare, by the boys his age. But all those boys had already gone, when they were thirteen or fourteen, and now they also called him boy. Even the few who had names and were younger.
“And you have come to ask me to bless you?” Sprit asked. “A general spell of safety, perhaps?”
“It would make my mother happy.”
“And your father furious. And you too, I know.” Sprit gathered up the bones and threw them again. “Where will you go?”
Boy squatted down in the dirt. “The forest.” He continued, as if he had to justify the decision. “Father went there. And so did you.”
“The witch’s wood.”
“Yes,” Boy said. “Are you throwing bones for me?”
Sprit snatched up the bones and stuffed them into their gold embroidered bag. “Something troubles the witch.”
“The bones told you that?”
“No, stupid boy. She told me that.” Sprit pushed himself to his feet and moved to his stool where he could stretch his legs. “With the way the wolves have begun to howl the entire night, and with the wind that blows endlessly from the west, pushing winter on us. Let me tell you a story.”
“Is this going to be how you got your name again?” Boy asked.
“No,” Sprit said. “And I did more with that dryad than I ever told you. It’s about the witch.”
“How she steals children and gives them to Mimora?”
“Winan never did that. That’s her name, boy. If you’re going into her wood, that’s what you’ll call her. Don’t call her witch unless you want her to prove it to you.”

Jash lay awake, with his eyes tightly closed. The howling wind traced the contours of the inn. He could see it clearly, the inn, the cistern, and the aqueduct above it. Before he had lain down, he had taken a rag and wet the floor in the hallway, and all through the room he shared with Thrad. The knight snored, one hand dangling towards the floor. The other clutched his sword.
The water soaked into the wood, and when Marri stepped down the hall Jash felt it. Her footsteps were like ripples in a pond. She stopped, just outside the door. Jash shifted his focus. His heart thumped, it glowed brightly, seemed to float outside his chest. Thrad cast a fainter light, deep in sleep. A spot outside the door brightened, Marri’s blood betrayed her contour, like fire licking through her veins.
The door opened, just a crack, and Marri peered in. Jash did not move, he was sound asleep. Marri stepped silently into the room. Jash felt every touch of her bare feet against the floor. She stopped by the bed stand and opened the top drawer. The cold spot in her hand, that must be the purse. She lowered it half way into the drawer, then stopped and looked at it. She worked her fingers between the laces. Jash dared to peek.
Suddenly her hands blazed. Jash nearly leapt off his cot, his hands clentched on the sides to hold himself down. The fire raced up her arms. Jash could almost feel the heat leaping from her, and then it was replaced as quickly by cold. Marri shivered. She grabbed a coin from the top of the purse, and closed and dropped it in one motion, and fled from the room. She had the presence of mind to not slam the door.
Jash slipped off his cot and padded to the door. Marri remained clear in his mind. He waited until she vanished down the kitchen stairs then followed. Marri paused to pull on slippers then left the inn.
Salt hung heavy in the night air. Marri vanished from Jash’s senses as he let the distance between them lengthen. He focused instead on the coin clutched in her first. A gold Karpaneken crown. He would have Thrad change them for the local currency, if they planned on staying longer. Once he found it, it shone like a torch in his mind. He rubbed every coin they had, so he could track them. Not that he tuned to it, he could see everything he had touched. A glowing path led down the street, the same path he had ridden that morning.
He had not been in South Port long, so there was not much to distract him from the coin. Somewhere out at sea a faint spot glowed. It moved closer, sailing into the bay, Jash thought.
Marri stopped moving. Jash paused around the corner from her and peeked around it. She stood in front of a stall. The merchant’s good still sat on the counter, didn’t he sleep? Jash crept closer, avoiding the pockets of light cast by the street lamps.
Marri banged on the counter. Finally, the merchant responded. Jash could not yet hear them. The merchant grumped something, and lit a pipe. Marri brandished the coin at him.
“Well,” the merchant said. “Never let it be said Cromger doesn’t keep his word.”
Marri exchanged the coin for a little statue and a few copper pieces. Her fingers glowed when she touched it.
Jash followed her back to the inn. He had never seen a reaction so strong. First, when she touched the purse, again with the statue. He watched her hide it behind a panel in the kitchen, and after she went upstairs, presumably to bed, he pushed the panel aside. The statue sat among other artifacts of Marri’s childhood, off the floor in the corner of two beams.
Jash ran his fingers over it, but felt nothing. Nothing at all. It was just a piece of wood, as far as he could tell. If he reached deep enough, he could feel the person who carved it, but he could already tell that date was so far removed as to be irrelevant. Jash placed the statue back in Marri’s stash. He glanced up, past it, through the panel in the inn’s kitchen, at the cistern’s wall.

Jash brushed his fingers down Thrad’s arm. The knight was immediately awake, Jash saw his eyes move suddenly under their lids, and his knuckles tighten on his sword, but Thrad did nothing else to betray himself.
“There’s no danger, get up,” Jash said. He pulled items out of the saddle bags. Linen and charcoal, he put them in a pouch and tied it around his belly, under his shirt. A dirk he strapped to his thigh.
Thrad sat up and allowed himself the luxury of a stretch.
“I think I’ve found my way into the Basilica.”
Thrad grunted and rose. He picked up his sword belt.
“No, bring the hammer instead.”
Jash led the way downstairs, into the kitchen. He opened the panel, and crawled in. Thrad handed in his hammer, and squeezed through behind him.
A long curved hall waited for them on the other side. Support beams crossed it at irregular heights, forcing them to duck and twist through it. The chimneys from the inn’s kitchen took a chunk out of the space.
“When they built the cistern, they needed a way to get inside,” Jash said. “The ducts it drains into are too small. If they were any bigger there wouldn’t be enough water pressure.”
“What’s that have to do with crawling around behind walls?”
“They sealed these access holes up, obviously. And then they built things right up against it.”
“Except this inn, which was built four feet away.”
“Exactly,” Jash said. “Maybe they had to make repairs at one point, and the inn building here paid the price. When they rebuilt, they made sure there was access to the cistern.”
They came to a gap in the curving stone wall, where the stones didn’t match. Tar covered their joints. Extra support beams, angled into the ground, supported the wall all around the patch.
Thrad rested his hammer against the ground and rubbed his hands together, then positioned his grip on it. “This is going to flood the inn.”
“It’s built off the ground. The street, maybe. Worry about waking them first.”
Thrad hefted the hammer. “Stand back.” He swung, the hammer smacked against the stones and rang like a bell. The tar hid any damage. Thrad swung again, and water seeped around the stone he had hit. On the third swing, a jet of water shot across the space and struck the far wall.
Thrad’s fourth strike crumbled the wall on contact. Water poured out in a deafening torrent and surged around their feet, sweeping away the dust and rat droppings.
Jash climbed through the hall and splashed into the knee deep water on the other side. He looked up at the end of the aqueduct, now only a few feet above his head instead of twenty feet under the water. It curved suddenly before it joined the cistern. The pipe came in near the top, then dropped straight down, before bending again to flow into the cistern. Presumably to keep someone from doing what he was about to.
Green slime clung to the walls and panicked frogs darted around in the suddenly shallow water.
“Wait for me at the north gate,” Jash said. “We’ll have to leave quickly. And go by the docks and pick up the tablet.”
Thrad leaned through the hole and looked around. “The ship arrived?”
“It’s docking now.” Jash leapt and grabbed the edge of the pipe and pulled himself into it. He could crawl in it, but his back touched the top. “And get another pony.”
“For who?”
“The inn keeper’s daughter.”
“The little one or the red one?”
“Red. I’ve never felt a power that strong, and she was repressing it. I can’t imagine what she would be if she let it out. You can manage that, right? Just try and get her to come peacefully before you kidnap her.”
“Don’t keep me waiting,” Thrad grunted. He vanished into the passage between the cistern and the inn.

“Laterns out!” Jamear shouted from the stern.
Shen jumped. He had positioned himself by the bow, knowing that order would come. But then he nearly fell asleep, and instead of his lantern going out first it went out last. He rubbed at the dent the ship’s railing left in his cheek as darkness swept over the little ship.
The eight-man crew scurried around the ship, pulling down some sails and raising others with only starlight to guide them. Shen stayed out of their way, Jamear got right in among them. On a ship so small, the captain did as much work as any other crewman, and then some.
“Shen!” Jamear shouted.
Shen darted forward. His father walked a bit of a line. He was the captain, he couldn’t treat Shen different than any other crewman. But in the dark, with this crew of men that had sailed and fought together for years, Shen only got in the way.
“Shen!” Jamear shouted. “Up!” He pointed up the high mast, at the crow’s nest swaying over the deck.
Shen scrambled up the rope ladder. On the surface, the ship barely swayed at all. Up here, Shen whipped from side to side. He wrapped one arm tight around the mast and planted his feet wide on the platform. Shen hung far out over the ocean at each end of the arc.
The lighthouse on the end of Cape Kwal, invisible from the deck, shone over the waves. Shen pointed towards it, and held his arm stiff. His father would use his arm to steer. Sure enough the boat shifted and aimed to the right of the lighthouse. They had to cut close to avoid the chain of rocky islands that guarded the bay, but not so close that the ship struck the cape itself.
“Oars!” Jamear shouted.
Shen spared a moment to glance down, at the oars sliding out through the gun ports. The sailors sang to keep their rhythm.

The sea is where I’m meant to be,
I’ll dance with the kraken and like it too,
I’ve got a wife in every port,
and a bunch of mates with the same tattoo.

The sea is where I’m meant to be,
I’ll go on land for wine and girls,
But if I have to die I’d rather have
the sea than a girl between my knees.

The lighthouse slid past on their left, and the crew hushed. The oars cut through the water with barely a whisper. Jamear braced himself against the wheel. Now they passed from the rough sea into the churning between the cape and the rocks.
“All silent,” Jamear said. His voice, just a whisper, carried easily over the ship. They were in the most danger of discovery during these moments. The ship lurched in the twisted waves. Shen wrapped both arms around the mast as it shook him back and forth.
And just as quickly, it was over. The lighthouse receded behind them, and now Shen could see, with the blaring light gone, the city of South Port stretched around the bay. It shone like someone had taken the stars out of the sky and scattered them across the ground.
Shen scanned the docks. Each dock had a lantern on it’s end, and he could make out the ships by the lanterns on their sterns. He glanced down, and was aware of Jamear staring up at him. As they got closer, the water got smoother, and Jamear would be able to see for himself, but by then it would be much more difficult to change their course without being seen.
Shen found an empty dock and pointed, careful to keep his arm aimed straight towards it no matter how the ship twisted. The water turned smooth as a pond on a stagnant summer day. Two crewmen left their oars to lower the last of the sails, and the ship glided across the water with only the soft splash of the oars to betray it.
They hit the dock, just barely. It scraped down half the length of the hull before the sailors pushed the Marrigold off with their oars. Then Shen was the first onto the dock, sliding down a rope from the crow’s nest. He slung his rope around a pylon and pulled it tight before another man landed beside him.

The pipe closed around Jash. The bottom was slick, but the slope was negligible. A tiny ball of witch light floated in front of him and filled the pipe with a faint green hue, but there wasn’t anything for Jash to see. He let his senses float out around him, until Thrad burned in his consciousness. The faint spot from the sea, now sitting on a dock, converged with Thrad and both moved towards the inn.
From these references, he could tell where he was. The wind defined the Basilica, Thrad marked the level of the ground. Jash crawled for hours, though it could not have been more than half of one. The pipe ended abruptly in a sharp turn, three feet of vertical pipe, and open air. Jash snuffed the witch light between his fingers. It shattered into a thousand tiny stars that drifted down into the slime. Jash squirmed out of the pipe and onto the Basilican roof.
The roof sloped gently at the edges, then shot up in a dome. Stained glass panels in the dome glittered in the morning sun. A wood framed walkway surrounded the building, tucked behind stone battlements. Jash emerged half way between two towers. He picked one and darted towards it, frightening a group of gulls that wheeled away, screaming, into the air.
The tower door had no lock. Jash grabbed the door by the iron ring set level with his eyes and pulled it open just far enough to peer inside. Darkness, and a tiny streak of light, cast through an arrow slit. He found a dead torch, stuck in a bracket on the wall, and summoned a touch of fire to light it. Jash carried it into the bowels of the Basilica.
Jash had expected more resistance, but it seemed the Basilica was more palace than fortress now. The few guards he saw walking the halls were easily avoided. Jash stuck to the servant’s halls. He paid attention to the floor. He saw where scuffs vanished under walls, and he found the hidden doors the servants used to come and go so quickly. He abandoned the torch. Once he left the tower, the halls were well lit.
Jash stuck his head into a hallway. Two guards stood flanking a doorway. Gold lamps stood opposite them, atop a procession of polished marble stands. The guards wore full plate armor with gold trim, heavy and useless. Jash slipped silently into the hall and shut the hidden door behind himself. He pressed against the wall and wrapped light around himself. Just enough power, applied just the right way, to render him invisible if he didn’t move too fast. So long as the guards didn’t look straight at him.
They didn’t. The closest guard noticed him when Jash bumped against his elbow, but by then it was too late to stop Jash’s dirk from stabbing upward through his throat. The guard gurgled and blood filled his mouth and leaked between his lips. The second guard drew his sword, but all he saw was a blur killing his companion. He didn’t know where to strike and never did. Jash jabbed him between the joint of his armor at his groin, the cut of his scream by cutting his throat.
Jash pushed the doors they guarded open. This room had windows, tall stained glass windows that depicted a sword battle. Jash smirked when he recognized the figures. Mimora and Deyja, but Mimora never used a sword. A curtained bed squatted between the windows bathing in the morning sun. The figure silhouetted against the curtains shifted.
“So you’ve come to kill me at last,” the figure said.
“On the contrary,” Jash said. He stepped up to the bed and opened the curtains. The king of Lochway, Valan, lay before him, shrunken and decrepit, his body eaten by disease. “It is vitally important that you live.”
Valan laughed, then coughed.
“You’ve not lived up to your name very well, Valiant Valan.”
“If this is a ploy, boy, it has already failed. So long as my blood lives no Delfaran will be welcome in Lochway.”
“No ploy.” Jash leaned over Valan and touched his forehead, then felt his pulse. “Your daughter must not be Queen. She will reign over the unmaking of this world.”
“So kill us both.”
Jash summoned fire and laced it through Valan. Valan writhed and tangled his sheets, spittle flew from his mouth in fans. Finally he lay still, his chest heaved.
“You will live,” Jash said. “A little longer now than you would have.”
“What do you want, Magi?”
“From you?”
Valan grabbed Jash’s collar with his reinvigorated hand. “Magi don’t give gifts.”
Jash grabbed Valan’s arm. The old man pulled him closer. “I want the tablet,” Jash said. “The tome of Deyja, that your ancestors removed from his tomb.”
Valan released Jash and sagged back to his bed, all his energy expended in that brief burst. “He looks over me still.”
Jash lurched back away from the bed. His eyes darted around the room, until he spotted it. Words adorned the keystone of the arch above the door. The language of the ancients, the language of Delfara. Jash snatched his parchment from under his shirt. He yanked a dresser to the door with air, heedless of the glassware that scattered, tinkling, across the floor. Jash climbed the dresser and pressed the parchment against the stone, and passed his nugget of charcoal across it until he had a complete impression of the characters.
Then he felt the power. An outpouring of fire, somewhere within the city. And something else. Another element, but not one he recognized. Valan swung his legs from his bed. Already, his frame looked fuller. Jash could almost feel the heat on his skin. In that same moment, the Basilica bells began to ring. So loud in the city, they were deafening inside the Basilica itself.

Marri climbed from a window on the third floor of the Cistern’s Shadow. Marri had made this climb a dozen times, but the first moments still thrilled her. When she stood on the window sill with nothing behind her but air, and let go of the window frame to reach for the edge of the roof, only her own balance kept her from falling. She had to jump for it, and she had only one chance to grab it. Marri had missed it once and nearly fallen, but she was smaller then. She doubted she could catch herself now.
She jumped and didn’t miss, and pulled herself towards the roof. She threw a leg over the edge and kicked at the wood shingles on the side of the inn, until her toes found purchase and pushed up and over onto the tiles. The tiles were slick with morning mist and she crawled along them carefully, picking out the tight tiles and dodging the loose ones.
The inn’s namesake rose a full story above it. Marri pressed herself against the curved cistern wall and rose, walking her hands up the stones without letting go. She turned and grabbed the edges of the stones with her toes, and dug her fingers into the cracks, and scooted up the wall. The city lay out before her under a blanket of mist. The cistern made the air cool on her back, and it spewed it’s own mist that rolled down over the inn to meet the fog on the street. The tops of the city buildings poked out of the mist like islands.
The bells in the Basilica’s towers rang. Each was a different note, and when rung together they combined into a perfect mournful chord that filled the city. The sound rolled back twice, first off the city walls and again off the mountains that pimpled the eastern horizon. Marri could feel the sound in the stones of the cistern as well as she could hear them. She counted the rings as they flowed over her. Three rings, for three deaths. Marri had a clear view to the mist shrouded square, between the tavern and the shop on the corners, where a gallows poised in the center of its web.
Gaily color flags hung on poles around the perimeter of the square. Occasionally the wind took a break from playing on the bay and picked the flags up and fluttered them around for a bit, then dropped them to hang limp from their cords. Six shapes rose from the mist and climbed the gallows. Three guards for three prisoners.
One of those prisoners, the shorter one in the middle, had been Marri’s friend. The guards stood him on a barrel so the noose could reach his neck. A thread connected each prisoner to the beam above them, like spiders handing on silk.
The curve of the bay framed the Basilica. It’s grey stones seemed to vanish against the water and the horizon. Rain that fell on the Basilica’s roof flowed into aqueducts that radiated from it like spokes on a wheel. One loomed over the street and ended here, in the cistern behind the inn. A dozen other pipes fed the cistern, but none could rival the aqueduct. The entire old city had running water.
Marri had thought once that she could climb along that aqueduct all the way to the Basilica. But when she climbed to the top of the cistern and actually saw it, she found glass shards sticking from the mortar on the top, and the pipe, if she could even fit in it, was too far below the mirror-calm surface to reach.
Marri’s fingertips tingled against the stone. She fought the heat spreading in her palms. She clutched at the stone as the tingle ran up her arms and left a trail of fire behind it. Marri sucked the heat up. She dare not let it escape from her fingers. Goose pimples stood out on her flesh and she shivered.
The sun spilled over the square, finally, and chased the mist away. The mist tumbled over itself in its haste to escape. A magister in a white robe with the wheel and sicle of the Basicilia stood in the open space in front of the gallows and addressed an imaginary crowd. Marri couldn’t hear him, but she’d been there.
Two days ago she and her friend, tears squeezed from the corners of her eyes, had been in that square. They watched the ships come across the bay, sliding so effortlessly across the water with their sails full of wind and gulls swirling around them. Marri hoped to see the Marrigold, her father’s ship, slip between the barrier islands.
Her friend stole a loaf of bread and they tossed scraps to the gulls and laughed as they came wheeling out of the air to snatch the bread before it touched the ground. Marri threw one into a pack of birds and they descended on it in a huff, squacking and crying. One gull snatched the morsel and bounced away and it took a moment for the others to realize they fought over nothing.
Then the gulls chased the thief and attacked him, pecking and beating their wings against the air. Their victim screeched and dropped the bread, but the other birds didn’t let up. They pecked until feathers fluttered in the air.
Marri threw the whole loaf at them but it couldn’t distract them. A few smarter birds attacked the loaf instead, but the others seemed to like the taste of bird flesh better. Her friend summoned water. He was sitting beside Marri, then suddenly he was shooting water from his fingers in thick streams. They braided in the air and struck the attacking birds. The gulls leapt into the air with indignant cries.
He screamed as he did it, loud enough to summon a guard. Marri fought the heat rising in her arms and ran. She hardly saw the streets she ran down. She ran until her breath came in ragged gasps and pain stabbed at her side. She hadn’t seen her friend since, until he climbed the gallows.
The Basilica didn’t take chances with that sort of bad blood. The boy’s mother screamed and pleaded. Marri could only hear snatches of it, between the wind and the gulls. What she did hear was unintelligible. Then they dropped, and the noose cut off the woman’s pleading.
The magister climbed onto the gallows and checked the bodies, then the guards took them down. They didn’t cut the ropes, there was no point in wasting a noose.
Marri slid down the cistern wall to the slick tile roof. A tile clinked out of place and tumbled off the roof. A moment later it chinked against the street.
“Mah-ree!” her sister called from somewhere below. Her voice was faint through so many floors and the roof. Marri only heard it because it got so high and whiney when she yelled like that.
Marri lowered herself over the edge and hung there until she found the window with her feet. Marri swung and slipped through the window. She landed on the straw stuffed matress under the window and bounced to her feet.
“Mah-ree!”
Marri darted from the room. Her feet slapped against the floor boards as she ran down the hall to the back stairs.
Sarah’s voice got all tangled up echoing up the spiral stair. Sarah’s solution to finding Marri was to stand there and holler, probably right in mother’s ear. With a hand on each railing, Marri slid down the stair without touching a single step.
Sarah tried to mimic mother, with her hands on her hips and her head thrust forward, but it didn’t work at all with her curly hair.
“What?” Marri demanded. She imitated mother, too. But she was taller and could pull it off, at least on Sarah. It didn’t work so well when she had to crane her neck backwards.
Sarah rocked back on her heels. “Momma wants you to go get a wagon,” she said.
Meredith looked up from the pot of she had just hung over the fire. “Nitka hasn’t shown up,” she said. “You’ll have to go to market by yourself.”
“Mother,” Marri began.
“Do I have to explain everything to you? Find a farmer with a good load and have him drive his wagon here.” Meredith bent back to her pot. It smelled like porridge, and yesterday’s leavings. “Get now. Go.”
Marri went out the back door, into the narrow alley that ran around the cistern behind the stables next door. Every day, farmers from the country around South Port loaded wagons with their produce and drove them into the new city. They arrayed themselves in the market squares just inside the gates and presented their wares. All of them competed for the inns, but few of them had the variety.
Marri walked down the row of wagons, ignoring the ones that only had cabbage, or corn, or some other single crop. Representatives from the other inns beat her there and picked out the best wagons. They rolled away, one by one, leaving gaps in the line. Marri found one wagon with a wide enough assortment. Potatoes and corn and cabbage and even a melon, flat and yellow on one side.
At first the farmer didn’t believe her, but she convinced him to drive his wagon to the Cistern’s Shadow. He quickly out paced Marri and vanished through the gate into the old city. Marri looked up as she crossed the threshold from sunlight to shadow. The temperature dropped in that single step, from the blistering summer heat to the shade that was only cooler by comparison. The morning breezes died with the mist. Dust sprang up with every step and hung in the air, no wind came to blow it around.
Marri pressed herself against the stone wall, in the shade, out of the way of the steady traffic flowing in both directions. No point in rushing back, her mother would find something else for her to do. Basilican guards stood on both sides of the gate. The wall shaded the guards on the new city side, they stood a little straight. At the other end of the tunnel through the wall, the guards took off their helmets to avoid baking in their plate mail.
The wall ran along the river that had once been the boundary of the city, but had long ago been covered over. Marri could look down through the grates set in the road way and see the arched stonework over the river, and the water far below. A shape like an old log, barely visible in the dim river, swam below Marri, powered by a long tail that swept back and forth. They came from the bog north of the city, swam down the river and invaded the sewers.
The guards could seal the gates to the old city, and wait for an enemy to come into this tunnel, and then open the gates and dump them into the water to feed the bog logs.
Marri passed through the tunnel. The gates loomed over her inside the wall. They had iron bands at regular intervals, with great brass studs and wagon wheels on the bottom to make closing them easier, though Marri could not recall that they ever had been closed. Marri slipped around the gate, trying to stay on the edge of the street out of traffic. She could slip into the alleys here, between the row buildings and the wall, and not get home any quicker but at least with less chance of someone trying to pick her pocket. Everyone she saw in the back alleys was a thief, but at least she knew they were, and she could see them. In the crowds, any one might be trying to rob her or worse, and she would never know they had.
Except, shabby little stall blocked her path. With its torn fabric awning and sides of rotting wood, it looked like it had been there forever, but just a day before this had been a clear path behind the gate. The merchant had built his stall with the gate as one of its sides. If the gate closed, his stall would move with it. The gate, and the building, and the awning all combined to make the recesses of the stall invisible. A tendril of smoke curled out from it, wound around itself in the air, and didn’t vanish until it had trailed into the street. Marri covered her nose to keep the odor out.
Grass grew right up in front of the stall. A layer of dust clung to all the merchant’s wares, like he’d been there for ages. Marri glanced around, everything was familiar. She knew the old city, she knew every little street and shortcut. And she’d climbed up on the wall and looked, and seen enough of the new city even if she rarely strayed from the markets, that she thought she could find her way around pretty good. And this stall did not belong. Marri walked up to it. The stall filled the space entirely, from the gate to the wall.
Dusty bottles marched across the decayed counter in a thousand shapes and colors. Rings, necklaces, and combs hid among them, and wooden figurines stood here and there above the bottles, no two of them alike. Marri scanned over the merchandise, glad that the bottles were too murky to make out what floated in them. Round shapes, and one large jar she thought might hold a hand. Marri reached for the table. Her hand hovered in the air. She reached for nothing, her legs began to tingle.
She should turn away, go another way, find a different alley, but she didn’t. Her eyes settled on a figurine. A woman wrought in red wood. She wore nothing but her hair and flames. Her hair fanned around her, swirling to keep her decent. Tight braids dangled from her bangs, with feathers woven into the ends. Marri picked the figurine up. She ran her fingers over the fine details and couldn’t find a rough spot. The sculpture followed the grain of the wood, almost like the figurine hadn’t been carved but had grown. It felt warm, too, like it was still alive.
“Twenty pence.”
Marri jumped back and dropped the figurine. It clattered around among the bottles. The merchant loomed out of the darkness, his pipe stuck through the gap where his front teeth had been. He picked up the figurine and stood it back where it had been.
“I don’t have twenty pence,” Marri said.
The merchant took his pipe out of his mouth and tapped it out against the spotted back of his hand. “Sixteen, because you’re cute.”
“I don’t have sixteen.”
The merchant replaced his pipe. It clacked against his teeth when he talked. “You want it, you come back with sixteen. Anytime.” He vanished again, into the depths of his stall, only a fresh veil of smoke to show he was there. “Now get. Don’t block my stall.”
Marri glanced around. He didn’t have any other potential customers. She didn’t think he ever had. She turned back to the street, and stole glances backwards at the stall as she left. The figurine seemed to glow where it stood among the bottles, with an inner light, like it was about to burst into flames. Her arms tingled, and suddenly she shivered.

Sarah balanced on the rail in front of the Cistern’s Shadow. Her legs kicked in the air behind her. Marri heard her yelling from two blocks away.
“Mar-ree!”
A knight stood in front of the inn, his horse towered beside him. Mail shone through tears in his tunic. Sarah had stopped yelling, the knight took off his helmet and followed her gaze and found Marri, still half a block away. Mother would be unloading the wagon, so she sent Sarah out front to yell until Marri showed up to check the knight in.
Where the knight was so pale Marri could see the pattern of veins in his face, his squire had skin and hair the color of freshly turned earth. The boy appeared from behind the horse, standing beside the pony also hidden by the massive beast. He stared upwards, at the aqueduct. He glanced over at Marri, for just a moment. His eyes matched his skin, so dark the iris and the pupil blended into a solid black disc.
Sarah went back to her sand box. She smoothed the sand, and traced letters in it with the handle of a spoon.
The knight handed Marri the reigns to his horse. Marri hesitated at first, but the horse seemed passive enough. Perhaps it was merely huge, and not actually fearsome. It snorted when Marri pulled on the reigns, and bared its teeth, and didn’t move until the knight swatted it on the rear. The pony came more placidly, and Marri led both around the inn to the stables.
Kit waited with the doors wide open. Straw clung to his bronzed skin, he had probably been sleeping in it again.
“Did you see that knight?” he asked.
Marri handed him the reigns to the war horse. “Of course I saw him. I just took his horse, didn’t I?”
“Did you see his purse?”
“No.” Marri followed Kit into the dark stables, and waited for him to un-strap everything from the war horse.
“I bet it’s huge.”
Marri glanced back at the knight and his squire. They were only dark smudges now, after her eyes had adjusted. The knight stood with his hands on his hips and looked up where the squire pointed, at the aqueduct. “I don’t think so. He looks a little shabby.”
Kit pulled on a glove and ran his hand down the war horse’s black flank, where the saddle had been. “He has to be rich, to have a horse like this.”
“Horses all look the same to me. All smell the same too.”
“This is a fine horse.” Kit patted the horse. “Well trained, too. It could kill us, you know. Just like that.”
“What if the horse is all he has?”
Kit opened a stall. The horse walked in without being urged, and found the trough, and for a moment they stood there, with only the sound of the horse gulping down water. Kit put his hands on his hips, his right hand perfectly placed to cover the slave tattoo on his side. “I bet I could steal it.”
“I bet you shouldn’t.”
“I can, I’m sure of it. It won’t even be hard.”
Marri thrust the pony’s reigns at him. “You better not. What if he catches you?”
“He won’t.” Kit nodded.
Marri grabbed the knight’s saddlebags from the ground and hauled them out of the stable. They ground in the dirt and thumped up the stairs into the inn, but the neither the knight nor the squire moved to help her. They better not expect her to drag them upstairs too.
Marri dumped the saddle bags in front of the counter and stepped behind it. A racket in the kitchen told her mother was starting lunch. A few quests lingered in the common room. The fire smoldered, just embers in the bottom, buried in ash so they would stay hot.
Marri flipped the log book open, a quill marked the page. Sarah’s scrawl took up four lines, signing out a single guest. Marri picked up the quill, and found the ink.
The knight leaned on the counter. “Sir Thradiendul, of Karpaneken. And squire.”
The squire grinned with two rows of perfect white teeth. “Everyone just calls him Thrad.”
Marri wrote that down instead. Thrad scowled. He took the key Marri proffered and vanished upstairs without waiting to hear where the room was, his saddlebags slung over his shoulder. The squire stood in front of the counter and grinned at Marri, sagging under the weight of Thrad’s war hammer.
“Aren’t you a little young to be a barmaid?” he asked.
“I’m not a barmaid.”
The squire glanced around the common room, at the tables and chairs and dirty floor that Mother would be yelling at Marri to sweep soon enough. “This sure looks like a bar.”
“The girl mother hired last week didn’t show up, she’s the barmaid. I just live here.”
“I’m Jash.”
“Marri,” Marri said. Marri was taller than him by about half a head, which if he’d been from here would mean they were the same age. Marri was taller than all the boys her age, but she didn’t know where brown people came from. They might be shorter there. “Aren’t you a little skinny to be a squire?”
Jash screwed up his face to glare at her. “Becoming a knight takes years. I’ll get taller.”
“Marri!” her mother yelled from in the kitchen. “Marri!”
Marri glanced at Jash, and pushed through the door into the kitchen. Her mother presented her with a melon. Marri took it, and her hand on the back side, which she couldn’t see, sank into it. She dropped it with a start, and it’s rotten inside scattered across the stone floor with a wet plop.
“What do you think you’re doing, sending me a wagon with rotting melons?”
“I didn’t know,” Marri said.
“You mean you didn’t check. Clean it up. And then get the common room ready for lunch. And that knight will want a hot bath.”
Marri looked down at the mess on the floor, and the melon flesh still stuck to her hands. “Can’t you have Sarah…”
“Sarah is five,” Mother interrupted. “Go do it. Now.”
Marri scowled and darted out the back door. She would have to come back and clean up the mess on the floor, and mother would yell at her for slamming the door, but she still enjoyed the way it banged against its frame.
Kit stood just outside the door, leaning against the wall, and bouncing a fat purse in his hand. It jangled with every bump, dozens of coins jostling for position inside it. Kit grinned at her.
“Is that?”
“Surely is,” Kit said. “Want to go count it?”
“Did you take any out?”
“No. I haven’t even opened it yet.” Kit stopped bouncing it and loosened the strings.
“You can’t do that.”
“Why not? I stole it, fair and square.” Kit looked inside the purse. “He’s got to have twenty gold in here. And lots of copper pieces. Don’t look like pence, though. Something else.”
“Isn’t stealing how your father became a slave in the first place?”
“So? He was dumb. I’m Kit.”
Marri punched him in the eye. He lurched back against the wall and fell in a heap. Marri snatched the purse away from him. “You’re just a stupid little stable boy.” Marri stepped on his chest. “Where’d you get it from?”
“The bed stand,” Kit sputtered. “In his top drawer.”
“Fine. I’ll put it back tonight while they’re asleep, and maybe he won’t catch you.”

Experience with the internet inevitably leads to two conclusions. First, that people are stupid. This should be obvious to anyone, even the stupid. Indeed, this is a good litmus test for stupidity. If someone claims they are not stupid, they are stupid. If someone claims they are stupid, they are correct. Therefore everyone is stupid. Second, that everyone on the internet is an asshole. For those of you who are saying right now, “I’m not an asshole!”, shut up asshole. The following is a brief summary of the 12 kinds of internet assholes.

It is important to realize that motivation plays a larger part in classification than does behavior. An asshole can exhibit the behavior of a type that differs from their real type. In fact, many types do not have unique behaviors.

I use harsh language. I use racist terms. If you’re offended by these things, go be an asshole somewhere else. I don’t want to hear from you. Just keep in mind, before you complain, that I am an equal-opportunity asshole. As such, I make sure my wetbacks are balanced out by my chinks and honkies.

Type I : Oblivious
The oblivious asshole can display the behavior of any other kind of asshole, however, he does not realize he is an asshole. When confronted by his victims, he will often act innocent. This is not an act. It is, then, important to make this type of asshole aware of his behavior, so he may take control of his assholery and put it to some productive use. He usually has buck teeth and freckles.

Type II : Arrogant
This asshole thinks he God’s great gift to man. He is the man, as it were. Heaven forbid this asshole attain power, for you will tremble under his mighty ban hammer. Anything that this asshole perceives as a threat to his superiority will be attacked. Under no conditions should this asshole be engaged in debates, he’ll bust a cap in your ass so fast you’ll think you’re back in the hood with all your hos.

Type III : Expert
The expert read a book about something and now she thinks she knows everything there is to know about it. She is like a Nip on a banzai charge. So sure of herself, so terribly mistaken. These assholes should be mowed down. Or stabbed with their own bayonets.

Type IV : Sadistic
The sadistic asshole only wants to hurt you. He derives pleasure from your pain. He is the master, you are his nigger bitch, and he hates you. Tear down his systematic government oppression. Stand up for your rights, and assassinate this fucker like Lincoln in a theater.

Type V : Amused
This asshole often shows the behavior of other types of asshole. What is different about the amused asshole is that he is not an asshole to be mean or because of deep rooted psychological issues, such as a penis-size inferiority complex. He is an asshole because it’s funny. He likes to make other people laugh. If you’re his victim, don’t take it personally. He’ll probably end up liking you if you take it in stride. Sometimes, he’s the only one laughing. Throw him a pity chuckle now and then; he lives for it. But don’t let your guard down. If the amused asshole sees a chance, he will exploit it. He will turn on you in an instant, for the lulz.

Type VI : Pedantic
The pedantic asshole does not care what you said, just that you said it wrong. They know the difference between there they’re and their, and they aint fraid to tell you how fucked up your English is, never mind the fact that they couldn’t have corrected you if they hadn’t known what you meant anyway. This asshole is best ignored, as they add nothing to a conversation. Except assholery.

Type VII : Literalist
This asshole does not understand metaphor or abstraction or anything that makes life remotely fun. The deeper meanings of things are lost on this asshole, so don’t bother. Like a dirty Mexican, she’ll just say “Que?” every time you try and make a philosophical point. She does not engage in hypotheticals nor does she read Tolkien. Cause, like, elves aren’t real.

Type VIII : Apathetic
The apathetic asshole just doesn’t give a shit, so why should I give any of my shit about them?

Type IX : Emo
Waa waa waa. You’ve heard the emo asshole. They have problems, and they want your help, and no one has ever been dumped / had a cat die / been fucked by their father before, so wouldn’t you just shutup and pay attention to her, your brilliant solution to world hunger can wait. This asshole needs to go cry in a corner. They are usually teenage girls who wear too much makeup. And no one cares what teenage girls think until they turn 18, and then only if they’re thinking about my penis.

Type X : British
The British asshole is not necessarily British. British is just a handy label because British people happen to be particularly adept at their brand of assholery. The British asshole is a patriot to his core. Every country sucks but his, his society is the pinnacle of human achievement. The British asshole thinks French people smell and calls all Americans burger boys. Remember, Patriotism is the idea that your country is better because you were born in it. It’s not. It’s actually worse.

Type XI : Victim
Assault the victim at your own risk. He takes everything personally, and he’s probably friends with the admins. You could be having a normal discussion about midgets in clown makeup and he’ll barge in and tell you how awful you are because his mother was raped by a diseased midget and turned into a clown. How the fuck was I supposed to know that? Fuck you, now I’m going to pick on you even more because I know it’ll make you cry.

Type XII : Racist
The racist asshole is the worst kind of racist there is. This is not the kind of racist that goes to KKK meetings. This sort of racist silently accepts stereotypes. This is the suburban honkie kid who goes around flashing gang signs and saying Yo, or the Latino who waves Mexican flags while stealing jobs from Americans. This asshole thinks all the Nips look like Sulu. There’s not much you can do about this type of asshole except kick their ass. So get to it.