“They don’t,” said Vhortghast. “Mostly it’s marketing. Everyone’s claiming you patronize their establishment these days. You’re the newest way to advertise anything. And artists more than most need to eat.”
Caliph nodded with sudden wonderment. He hadn’t fully realized his fame. It was obvious that no one really knew what he looked like up close. Litho-slides would make their way into the papers fairly soon but in the meantime they could tell he had dark hair.
Crude renderings of his image had been plastered up in patisseries and clothiers. They looked nothing like him.
THE HIGH KING’S STYLE IS HERE! promised one poster in a barbershop window. LOOK LIKE THE KING!
Caliph’s jaw went slack.
“Pathetic isn’t it?” asked Vhortghast, “until you realize they’re just trying to survive.”
The carriage lurched out of Barrow Hill into North Fell, following King’s Road to the south.
“Where are we going?” asked Caliph.
“To get you a proper sword.”
“I have a sword.”
“No, my lord. You have a trusty blade. Obviously it fell on hard times while you were . . . traveling. In any case the monarch’s sword is his symbol. I don’t care what you wear, but we can’t have you carrying around that filthy thing.”
Vhortghast seemed so amiably in command as he made decisions that Caliph felt no need to challenge him.
Instead, he looked out at North Fell’s market where cheap summer clothing hung in bright racks beneath deeply shadowed arches. Faux jewelry dangled from wire-armed trees, glittering with inane narcissism.
Already the populace was out shopping. There were early vegetables and fruits piled up on tables and overflowing baskets, attracting files and customers. Fresh cuts of meat drizzled blood on the cobblestones and children in grungy dresses and threadbare pants darted through the throngs, pressing shopkeeps for coppers and scraps.
The carriage paused for the stately glide of a chemiostatic streetcar, looming out of a tunnel in the bulwark of ancient bricks to the west and clacking toward Bl
kton. It left a strange ozone smell in its wake.
“I remember them laying the rails when I lived in Candleshine,” murmured Caliph.
The carriage lurched forward and they trundled out of North Fell, rolling into Tin Crow where the buildings were thick as crates, overhung and ponderous with outthrust gables of stone and heavy timber.
Finally, the carriage bounced into Three Cats where the enormous sprawling market of Gunnymead Square hunkered beneath the awesome hulk of West Gate.
A vast haggler’s paradise, but there were certain things the determined buyer would have to go east for, into the warrens of Thief Town, Maruchine and (for the particularly adventuresome or perverse) Ghoul Court.
Above the raucous commerce rose the massive bulk of West Gate. Nearly as large as Isca Castle and three times as threatening, West Gate was more like four castles all mortared together with flying buttresses and parapets that bridged over and looked down with solemn warning on Isca’s busiest point of entry.
Caliph stared at a clutch of rotting pipes that burst forth from the inner bulk of the fortress and twisted down through bolted grates, ejecting foul sediment and dark gray geysers of foaming sewage.
Children gathered near the gouts, tossing pebbles into the torrent and threatening to push one another in. The carriage stopped.
Ngyumuh jumped down from his seat to open the door. Vhortghast exited first and eyed the crowd. Several soldiers shoved the masses back with poleaxes and truncheons while others clustered around the carriage, forming an impenetrable wall of armored flesh.
Caliph stepped out to the sound of cheers mixed with shouts and a few catcalls. Vhortghast bid him hurry and directed Caliph through a secured inner gate flanked by half a dozen men.
They traveled up a square staircase pierced by windows. The effect was that the immense thickness of the wall was perforated by breathing holes like a child might punch in a shoebox for insects.
“There’s going to be a short ceremony here. Just mumble something gracious and we’ll be on our way. They’re going to give you a sword.”
“Who?” Caliph asked.
Vhortghast threw open the final door at the staircase’s terminus.
“The military of course.” Both men exited onto a windy rooftop, over three hundred feet square and crenellated on all sides. Three stout watchtowers bordered it and thrust themselves even higher into the slowly bluing sky.
A great quantity of giant Nanemen in light armor stood in formation. Silent. Grim. Facial muscles tight and strained as though something crawled beneath their skin. They gripped heavy axes and wore claymores on their backs.
A guttural Naneman salute stunned the air, echoed momentarily. A ferocious shouting choir on the roof of West Gate as the High King came into view.
Caliph felt appalled.
There were a few civic leaders present as well. A handful of barristers and judges and more than half of the burgomasters.
Caliph took his position near the head of the army, following the subtle directions of Mr. Vhortghast. He shook hands and offered pleasantries before a horn sounded. It ripped the air and everyone’s attention across the rooftop to where, much to Caliph’s surprise, the Blue General marched out of what appeared to be a giant hangar that occupied one of the three towers. Yrisl was accompanied by a platoon of men, most of them much larger than he was.
Caliph could also see that Yrisl was carrying something.
It took over a minute for Yrisl and his platoon to cross the roof. Finally they halted in orderly fashion and Yrisl advanced, stopping just before the king. He knelt, holding a sheathed sword at shoulder level in his upturned hands.
Caliph noticed that many of the former Council were among the assemblage and they clapped with proper smiles as Caliph took the sword.
Some political drivel and an overwrought metaphor about Caliph both taking and becoming the Sword of the Duchy was delivered with halfhearted gusto through an echophone. Despite its volume, the speech seemed unheard by most of the crowd.
Caliph was just about to inspect his new weapon when something truly amazing drew his attention once again.
The vast hangar door through which Yrisl and his troops had come suddenly swelled with an enormous indistinct shape.
Something fierce and slender and huge was gliding from the darkness into the morning light, pulled on many ropes and heavy wheeled carts, drifting out above the rooftop.
The zeppelin was spherical but compressed so that it looked slim and dangerous from the side. Its internal framework protruded through the skin covering the gasbags, slipping out to form long imminent spines. They ringed its equator and flowed in menacing rows.
At least six such elliptical hoops armored the balloon, the longest of the barbs circling only the equator. The spines dwindled gradually toward the crown and undercarriage, looking more like serrated knives compared to the great spikes that sheltered its central girth.
Underneath the gasbag, but no less threatening, hung a cunning saucer-shaped structure like a lidded frying pan turned upside down. It was decorated with longitudinal bands of metal, oval widows and a bouquet of down-thrusting spikes, the longest of which jutted like an inverted steeple from the exact center to the thing’s belly.
There were ballistae mounted to its underside as well. Housed in well-greased oscillating turrets. The gasbag was perhaps one hundred fifty yards in diameter and twenty-five in height. Including the spines, the thing needed an inordinate amount of space to float out of the hangar and up above the battlement.
Caliph noticed a six-foot circle of metal riveted to the masonry of the roof. It was scooped out like a socket and fitted with couplings. The inverted steeple that jutted from the bottom of the zeppelin’s observation deck sank into this socket with a solid clunk and was secured momentarily by several dexterous men in dark uniforms.