Chapter 348: City of First Ground

Lucian landed heavily on stone.

A thoroughfare stretched out before him and presented him with the prospect of a city. Wide and busy. Built from dark bricks, with some warmth imbibed in the touch. The passage hummed with the passage of trade, of disputes over measures, a laugh that spilled into the street from where someone near a portal had taken a drink or been surprised by a trick of passing passersby. Smoke curled from foodstalls in a fragrance that he could not identify, and one sharper scent that rose from the direction of the marketplace’s edge, curling into him like something in his nose might have been searching.

A city. And not a throne hall of empty cosmic garbage either.

A thoroughbred pause, to ensure that the landing was stable, and Lucian allowed Infinity to settle inside his skin, and Cael remained silent, for once.

A man with copper-browned skin and light blue eyes waited alongside his path and took a close look at Lucian.

"You lost?" he asked.

"New here," Lucian replied.

"Tracks. You have the face for it." He gestures with an impatient tip of his chin at a side alley. "If you stand in the middle of East Bend like a post, a cart will run you over. Move."

Lucian complied at the man’s insistence and followed a few cautious steps ahead. More curiosity than generosity as it were, it seemed. "Name’s Jor. You?"

"Lucian," he replied.

"Just Lucian?" Jor demanded.

"Yes."

Jor scoffed. "Travel light, then. Where’d you come from?"

"Outside," he replied.

"Everybody says that." Jor gestured at a low building with slitted panes of glass in the doorframe. "If you need food, that place doesn’t poison you on first visit." He gestured further along. "If you need work, try the yards by the river cut. If you need trouble, keep staring about as though everything is likely to snap you up."

"Thanks."

"Yup, here," gestured Jor him off, crossing the street as if to prove it.

Lucian traveled with the city pressing in around him from all sides, tall houses leaning inward along narrow alleys, bridges connecting the upper levels from one to the next, signs in tongues he could identify if only he looked long enough shifting to others just as he was about to identify them. Crowds, of all shapes and densities, wove themselves into the thoroughfare in a tangle of bodies, some resembling people more than others, some with extra limbs, or glowing beneath one’s skin. All of them conversing, all of them shopping, bartering, living, in the middle of it all as one of them might be.

None bowed.

None called out Lucian’s name or even seemed in any way to notice or recognize him.

He purchased a simple hard roll from a woman at a stall by the side of the street with a gesture from the palm of his hand of some coin, which she tested briefly before nodding and offering the roll to him without interest. Eating on the march, Lucian walked in the direction of the street, and a black-haired girl falling in along his path.

"You’re not from any of the local houses," she said without preamble.

Lucian raised a brow at her. "No."

"Huh," she sounded unimpressed. "Your walk is all wrong for the district." She paused a pace ahead of him, outstretched a hand. "Sera."

"Lucian," he shook it.

"You looking for someone or just drifting, then?" she asked.

"Drifting first," he replied

Smiling with half of her mouth, Sera gave a small nod. "Smart. People showing up demanding things get charged more for their information." She gestures ahead of her at the square ahead. "That’s Hold Market. Expenses there buy beds two streets over, but a black-roof inn has all manner of waking up poorer."

"Why the help?"

"You look like you can pay later if you survive." She paused. "And haven’t yet started a fight. That, too, means you’re better than half the outsiders we see around here."

She dismissed him at the corner, vanishing rapidly into the throng.

Lucian entered on foot the gates of Hold Market.

Stalls lined either side with goods, or sealed bottles and vials in glass, odd tools hanging under signs, tools that gave a small note under a cover of sound. Shouted price, a pair of women arguing over a contract tablet, a boy darting past with food stolen from another’s belt and laughter after his trail. An old place but one that used to serve. Used to be lived in, and Lucian felt a certain comfort in its level familiarity, its high scale of ordinariness.

A heavy-shouldered vendor noted Lucian’s lingering beside a stall.

"You need direction," he stated.

"I think I may," Lucian replied.

"Then ask clean. I do not do riddles here."

"You’re probably not the one I want to ask then," he nodded. Receiving another glance he inclined his face. "Who runs this city?"

"Depends on the street. Hold Market answers to Oren’s office, and the yards by the river to the work guilds. Upper Walk has already moved up the old bloodlines still pretending they matter here. You came in intending to climb in a measure then, leave."

"I’m not climbing."

"Good, then that could be you have a better chance at lasting the week. Name?" the vendor demanded after he’d wiped his hands together on his apron.

"Lucian," he replied.

"I’m Brast. You damage goods here, I can recall faces at a proper speed. You spend coin, I recall even better."

"Understood."

With little to no argument, Brast sold Lucian a low token for transport into the lower cities and dispatched him onward. In passing a passage that took him to a quiet place and Lucian saw an archway beyond that had washing hanging from above from a line. Men and women worked their trade in repair to a door, a woman singing while scrubbing where steps met a platform’s edge, a couple of children running each other into one of their own sticks nearly running Lucian down as they did.

"Sorry!" squealed one of them and went on running away.

It was Cael’s voice that finally pushed his mind into Lucian’s ears again, low and careful.

"You are being read."

"I know," he responded quietly.

"Not by Lords. By locals. That is better. That is also how reports start."

Lucian paused, and he did so at a rail above the river cut, watching as dark waters moved below him with a thin current that ran occasional threads of sparks of white within them. Across the river, cranes stood working, cargo from the barge lifted and shifted, and workers cried to each other.

"I start here," Lucian said.

"Yes," Cael agreed. "From the ground. Learn the streets before the courts learn you."

A woman in a gray coat approached the rail and paused beside him. Rather than to look at him straightaway, she looked over the river. "You stand like someone waiting for a war."

"Maybe I am," he replied.

"Then I suppose you picked a bad place to wait, then." Her head turned, and Lucian had the feeling of being read as well by her dark eyes, though she was not unkind about it. "I’m Captain Ryn of the Lower Watch. You’re new. That’s fine. New people come through. New people also come with problems. Which do you bring?"

"Still deciding."

"Amen, honestly," Ryn nearly smiled. "That’s rare. Now, keep your fights out of residential areas, and keep the power from your mouth quieter than you have so far. So long as you manage that sort I can keep this Watch bored." She touched her fingers to the side of the railing. "I have a name."

"Lucian," he replied. It was soon echoed back at him where she left it without hesitation before pushing away from the rail for real

With no bows of respect, no fear or recognition from the common folk. Only what use he might actually be considered practical.

Lucian waited by the river a little while longer. The city had rolled right past him, and so many places had he been told were worth visiting, and still, so far, not even once had Lucian either been asked if he was some kind of anomaly, or told something of the infinity beyond anything. At least not in any form, and that would change eventually. It always did.

With the tokens for the street, and the foodroll still in Lucian’s pocket, the boy turned from the rail and headed for the cheaper rooms Sera had mentioned, still on city footing and with an open mouth. The Primordial Expanse, it would appear, had a street level after all. Lucian was starting from there.