“So where did Derwin take you?”
“I was curious about the stream Therian showed me and wanted to see it again. We took a look at the ford, where the rocks form a path across, and walked further down to where the stream is split by a large rock.”
“Yes, we sometimes go there for meditation and reflection. The pool above the rock is a useful focal point. It collects the out-fall from the stream and smoothes the flow before releasing it again. The rock can be seen as a choice, between one side or the other, though both courses are part of the same flow and go to the same destination.” The cities or city-states as they are more accurately described were physically nothing more than crumbling piles of archaeology located in strategically important places. New Destiny was by no means new, but had been found by audacious pioneers so long lost no one knew where the old Destiny was. But they had loved or hated the old city enough to consecrate their new home in it’s name. It stood at the entrance to a river mouth, the combined outflow from three rivers, named the Rat, the Gold, and the Milk, perhaps from what the founder saw or hoped to find. All three were uniformly brown and shiny with run off and tailings from work upstream, the remains of industry and some leaching from long-disused mines and metalworks.
New Destiny had been a port city but shipping was an infrequent affair these days. What produce was bought and sold there came from inland or from the other city-states. Truces and trading agreements existed where wars and hostage taking had been the principal interaction. The armies or paramilitary forces were untrained, poorly armed and corrupt in most cases. Local commanders had little to worry about but demobilizing their forces was risky. If no one else did it, they would be at a disadvantage. And it was a job for many. Not a lucrative one — no one got rich at the lower levels of the forces — but it came with housing and food, of poor but reliable quality, and that was more than many were able to count in their favor.
New Destiny was the largest in area of the three city-states, with inhabitants spreading across the lowlands of the alluvial plain in all directions. Flooding or high-water was irregular but the people most at risk didn’t care. In most cases they had the least to lose and would often find themselves better off once the flood waters had receded and they had managed to reclaim enough spoils and debris to make a new home.
The New Lands, misnamed as they were, had been colonized mostly by people from New Destiny, the heirs of that pioneering spirit who had founded a great city in an unknown land. In the intervening years, the city itself resembled a ruin, but was in fact being constantly rebuilt. No one used or needed new materials to build or restore buildings. Every brick or stone in the city have been used in many building by this time, as houses, office block, and shops were razed, their materials reclaimed, and a new structure built in the same spot or somewhere else.
Some tired of the cycle of renewal which refurbished and elevated buildings but not people. A plot of land had more social mobility than a person, with its status linked to the prestige of the building sitting on it. A person had no such opportunity. To be born into one of the right families was one way to make one’s path easy, but without money, that was not always successful. Money helped those without the right family connections, but there had been instances of the money being liberated from the unconnected and used to ennoble another with the right connections. It was all made to look above-board and anyone who claimed otherwise was silenced one way or another. These often found themselves booking passage to the New Lands.
The northernmost of the three was Helle. It may have been short for something else and passionate partisans would offer their own etymology for the name but most were content to say they lived in Helle. It was inland, but linked to the sea by a channel made long ago. It may have been a natural river at one time but no one knew for sure and the histories were inconclusive. It was no longer passable for shipping, with wrecks moldering at their moorings and sunk across the channel. Small boats could pass, though few would try. Old as the wrecks were, they occasionally secreted solvents and combustible fluids and gases. In recent memory, a small fishing boat had been making its way in for repairs and provisioning when its captain tossed a match overboard after lighting a lantern. The explosion had been heard in all quarters of the town and the glow had been visible in the sky for miles. The wreck that had caused the explosion had broken up and sunk, though its bow remained moored to the bank, moss-covered warps taut but unyielding.
Helle was a trading city that had always looked inwards to the interior. It was a market town with the bulk of its trade taking place in open air marketplaces. It was a more orderly and civilized place than New Destiny, and had survived many upheavals, man-made and natural in the course of its history. By the same token it was looked at as bucolic and stagnant, its people as slow and easily outwitted. It gave as good as it got, and for every sharp dealer from the bustling port who claimed he had taken a denizen of Helle for a ride, someone from Helle had managed to outwit their more sophisticated counterpart.
On the other side of New Destiny lay the third of the city-state capitals, The Bone Kingdom. It was in a permanent state of war with the other two, though no open hostilities existed. The Bone Kingdom was named in remembrance of the aftermath of a battle that no one remembered the outcome of, only that the ruling family had been captured, killed, and been returned as bones. The bones were re-assembled as intact skeletons — all the parts were returned — and enshrined in the throne room as if their owners still ruled. There was a second, lesser throne for the incumbent ruler but supplicants and ambassadors were required to address the skeletal rulers while listening for the replies to come from the living ruler who was off to one side, at a ninety degree angle.
The Bone Kingdom was a fearsome place to visit or live. The permanent state of war extended to its inhabitants as well, who were expected to be armed at all times and were constantly drilled in the event of an attack. The city was walled with a high keep close in and a series of lower walls in concentric rings, and made of less and less durable materials. Close in, the walls were dry-fit blocks of cut stone, made of huge blocks that no one could hope to dislodge or topple. Further out, the walls were of large uncut stones, interspersed with sharpened tree trunks, long-since rotted through and ready to crumble at a touch, wooden pickets, similarly fragile, and finally an earthwork, long since eroded down to a gentle berm.
Not many visited. The Kingdom made no overtures of friendship or conciliation to its neighbors and suffered infrequent visits with little enthusiasm or cordiality. Those few who did were escorted through the multiple perimeters under heavy guard and at these times, the checkpoints were heavily manned, the towers bristled with weapons, and martial chants and music were heard from all directions. Emissaries feigned respect and awe as best they could but they could generally see through the subterfuge. They didn’t know quite how crumbly the Kingdom’s physical defenses were, but they could guess. And they really had no interest in laying siege to a city state that was in no better shape than their own were. In fact, the Kingdom’s constant war footing had limited its trade options and made it less prosperous. One couldn’t eat swords after all. While the other cities had evolved and grown, the Kingdom was like a fly in amber, frozen at one moment in its warlike past.
The city’s leaders, constantly reminded by the enthroned skeletons of the outside world’s perfidy, lived their own lives as though the city were under siege. They lived as frugally as the poorest within their walls, without ever considering that it had been time out of mind since an arrow, stone, or even an angry word had been hurled against their defenses. Their defensive posture was a more than a habit, it was a way of life. They wore swords at the table, slept with them, avoided windows, and checked their stocks and food and water constantly.