Timestamp: 31st Day of Summer, 514 A.V.
Location: The Radiant Tower
Clouds carpeted the city, moving like drifting fog through the streets and sluicing silently over the lower buildings and lesser spires of Lhavit. For all that the usual panorama outside Alses’ broad windows had been replaced with a diorama of a million shades of grey, bland and uninteresting as they melted into one another, the heat was still oppressive.
More than that, the clouds had brought with them a suffocating humidity that seeped through the entire city and sapped everyone and everything of – if not life itself – then certainly their usual joie de vivre. Banners curled listlessly around their pennons instead of snapping and racing merrily, and the luckless Shinya sought what scant relief fountains and overhanging awnings could offer. Everywhere, the doughty citizens of Lhavit were wilting, melting under Syna’s unflinching, inflexible regard and the cloying humidity that made even the smallest of tasks herculean.
Even in the (marginally) cooler elysium of the Radiant Tower there was no escape. Alses was perhaps one of the least affected, the heat not being a concern for her and leaving only humidity as a torment, but there was something about the thickly clinging wetness in the air that made her especially short-tempered and snappish, peevish in the worst possible way.
Her secretary had melted completely, and even Mercadier was showing signs of the strain; he’d discreetly loosened his shirt, for one, and his usually immaculate slicked-back hair was being decidedly unruly as whatever fixative he used began to fail. The heat and the humidity were irritating almost everyone, and minor spats were growing more frequent.
The business of government, therefore, was getting more difficult with every passing tick as the clouds swirled indecisively, never quite plucking up the courage to rain and just holding the water oppressively in the air.
Alses rose abruptly from her chair in a swish of silks, crossing to the window in a few brisk strides, resting first her fingers and then her head against the diamond-leaded glass, enjoying the feel of the fleeting coolness on her skin. Stress couldn’t eat away at her flesh – she filled out her dresses to the voluptuous pre-Valterrian ideal no matter what happened – and nor could it carve deep canyons of worry and concern across her face, but it was still there, all right.
Always young, always beautiful, perfect features and a perfect body, few people wanted to look past that. It was a mask that could hide a multitude of sins and a multiplicity of weaknesses; as Alses herself had once put it: few people looked behind the shine to see the Ethaefal cowering there.
Even if it never, ever showed – at least, not physically – Alses was still finding being Councillor Radiant very hard. There were so many details, so many pies into which her department had its skeletal fingers – skeletal because they were so strapped for staff – and all of them involved dealing with people, unpredictable people, with their own agendas and wants and needs and desires, most of them incompatible – at best.
It was, Alses was beginning to realise, like herding cats. Made all the worse by the fact that her principal subjects were mages of all stripes, almost by definition smarter than the norm and all in command of great forces the likes of which could level cities, if left unchecked and unregulated.
And it was her job, her happy job, to do the regulating.
‘Syna above,’ she thought – prayed – unhappily. ‘Why did I want to do this, again?’
The wicked little voice that she knew to be her own answered, rising above the choral cacophony of internal memories and voices that was every Ethaefal’s lot. ‘Because you thought it would all be parties and cake,’ it gleefully answered. ‘Because you don’t like to bend your head as a supplicant, and because you are an ambitious immortal sorceress with a head full of grand designs that you need power and prestige and money to pull off.’ A pause.
‘And,’ that little internal voice went on, very much in the spirit of grudging fairness, ‘Because you wanted to do a little something for your city.’
None of which helped very much.
“Mercadier,” she murmured. At the sound of her voice, the efficient deputy looked askance at her, leaving off his fruitless attempts to secure his hair and endeavouring to appear enthused and immaculate, as per usual. He was only partly successful.
“Yes, your grace?”
“The Amendment. How have our friends in the judiciary and the Ascendant been getting on with our request?”
Location: The Radiant Tower
Clouds carpeted the city, moving like drifting fog through the streets and sluicing silently over the lower buildings and lesser spires of Lhavit. For all that the usual panorama outside Alses’ broad windows had been replaced with a diorama of a million shades of grey, bland and uninteresting as they melted into one another, the heat was still oppressive.
More than that, the clouds had brought with them a suffocating humidity that seeped through the entire city and sapped everyone and everything of – if not life itself – then certainly their usual joie de vivre. Banners curled listlessly around their pennons instead of snapping and racing merrily, and the luckless Shinya sought what scant relief fountains and overhanging awnings could offer. Everywhere, the doughty citizens of Lhavit were wilting, melting under Syna’s unflinching, inflexible regard and the cloying humidity that made even the smallest of tasks herculean.
Even in the (marginally) cooler elysium of the Radiant Tower there was no escape. Alses was perhaps one of the least affected, the heat not being a concern for her and leaving only humidity as a torment, but there was something about the thickly clinging wetness in the air that made her especially short-tempered and snappish, peevish in the worst possible way.
Her secretary had melted completely, and even Mercadier was showing signs of the strain; he’d discreetly loosened his shirt, for one, and his usually immaculate slicked-back hair was being decidedly unruly as whatever fixative he used began to fail. The heat and the humidity were irritating almost everyone, and minor spats were growing more frequent.
The business of government, therefore, was getting more difficult with every passing tick as the clouds swirled indecisively, never quite plucking up the courage to rain and just holding the water oppressively in the air.
Alses rose abruptly from her chair in a swish of silks, crossing to the window in a few brisk strides, resting first her fingers and then her head against the diamond-leaded glass, enjoying the feel of the fleeting coolness on her skin. Stress couldn’t eat away at her flesh – she filled out her dresses to the voluptuous pre-Valterrian ideal no matter what happened – and nor could it carve deep canyons of worry and concern across her face, but it was still there, all right.
Always young, always beautiful, perfect features and a perfect body, few people wanted to look past that. It was a mask that could hide a multitude of sins and a multiplicity of weaknesses; as Alses herself had once put it: few people looked behind the shine to see the Ethaefal cowering there.
Even if it never, ever showed – at least, not physically – Alses was still finding being Councillor Radiant very hard. There were so many details, so many pies into which her department had its skeletal fingers – skeletal because they were so strapped for staff – and all of them involved dealing with people, unpredictable people, with their own agendas and wants and needs and desires, most of them incompatible – at best.
It was, Alses was beginning to realise, like herding cats. Made all the worse by the fact that her principal subjects were mages of all stripes, almost by definition smarter than the norm and all in command of great forces the likes of which could level cities, if left unchecked and unregulated.
And it was her job, her happy job, to do the regulating.
‘Syna above,’ she thought – prayed – unhappily. ‘Why did I want to do this, again?’
The wicked little voice that she knew to be her own answered, rising above the choral cacophony of internal memories and voices that was every Ethaefal’s lot. ‘Because you thought it would all be parties and cake,’ it gleefully answered. ‘Because you don’t like to bend your head as a supplicant, and because you are an ambitious immortal sorceress with a head full of grand designs that you need power and prestige and money to pull off.’ A pause.
‘And,’ that little internal voice went on, very much in the spirit of grudging fairness, ‘Because you wanted to do a little something for your city.’
None of which helped very much.
“Mercadier,” she murmured. At the sound of her voice, the efficient deputy looked askance at her, leaving off his fruitless attempts to secure his hair and endeavouring to appear enthused and immaculate, as per usual. He was only partly successful.
“Yes, your grace?”
“The Amendment. How have our friends in the judiciary and the Ascendant been getting on with our request?”
