~The Dusk Tower~ Timestamp: 62nd Day of Winter ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Another glorious day in the city of stars – not that any stars were evident at the moment, of course, it being a shining winter morning, the air crisp and clear and the sky a bowl of endless powder-blue. The city streets were full of the scent of fresh-baked bread, rising in puffing clouds of white vapour from the elegant chimneys of its bakeries, and what with the ordered progression of citizens and carts through the wide streets and the courteous, unobtrusive Shinya guard making their sedate patrols as usual, it would be easy to believe that the city had forgotten anything that might rock it from the state of calm serenity. Appearances, however, would be deceiving; for all the outward calm, Lhavit had been shaken to its crystal core. It had been a turbulent winter so far – fights with otherworldly creatures and chimeras summoned within the city confines, ever-bolder Zith attacks on the Okomo herds - and subsequent rampages of panicked livestock, meteor showers, amnesiac snow, the suicide of a Synaborn and much else besides. It said something for the fundamentally calm, practical nature of the city that it had swung back so readily to ordered serenity, methodically repairing the damage, tending to the wounded and then getting on with the steady, sedate procession of life. Even so, whilst the general citizenry of Lhavit might have been only too happy to put the worrying, upsetting, odd and/or downright perplexing anomalies of the season to the back of their collective minds, the militant arm of the city government, the Shinya Guard, certainly hadn't forgotten all the upheaval, and nor had the civilian elite for that matter. The Council of Towers, that august body of Lhavit's wealthy and powerful who collectively advised the Night Lord and Day Lady on the running of the city, were in discreet uproar. Yes, for anyone who had eyes to see and the ears to hear, there had been conferences and congresses, summits and meetings galore as of late, an almost continual round of one Tower hosting the others - and select representatives from various other parts of the city: the smallholders of the Azure Market, the Seekers representative from the Bharani Library, the Head Astronomer from the Observatory...on and on it went, and it showed no sign of stopping or even easing, everyone scrambling to formulate a response to the unsettling events which had streamed down onto the celestial city almost as soon as the Watchtowers had finished their boreal flare. In accordance with the more hectic schedule of those who sat in government, there was certainly a great deal more Tower message traffic these days, a stream of couriers arriving and leaving at all bells, come day or night, rain or shine or meteor showers for that matter, and all that translated into a lot more work for the traditionally-impecunious Tower apprentices who generally got drafted in for that sort of thing. Alses, for the moment still one of said impecunious apprentices, strolled through the gates and into manicured grounds of the Dusk Tower, taking her time and savouring the last few moments of freedom. This was something Alses made a point of doing, no matter how busy things got, relaxing and preparing herself for a hard day of graft in service to House Dusk. Alas, a gentle wander through House Dusk's grand garden couldn't last forever, even though the sheer perfection of the design, refined down the centuries by the gnarled hands of a succession of master gardeners and landscape artists - she felt mildly proud of having remembered the proper term for anyone who thought nothing of moving a couple of thousand tons of stone to make an artificial lake and then followed it up with planting thirty thousand trees on a neighbouring hill to afford a pleasant view to the Tower's occupants - gave it a grandly timeless quality, unchanging and eternal, even though Alses knew that the grounds were exactly the sort of studied idyll that needed a great deal of maintenance to keep them looking as though they needed no maintenance at all.
A Inside, the Dusk Tower's main atrium entrance was an elysium in shades of teal-green, blue, and delicate purple shades, as peaceful and tranquil as ever it had been, at least, now that the Akka priesthood and their battalions of more mundane assistants had finished in the entrance hallway, growing skyglass coatings over all the once-exposed wood and common stone which had infiltrated the Tower over the long centuries – prime conduits for out-of-control wild djed, as everyone had been painfully reminded back in Spring. Alses included. Most unusually, Mr. Secretary was not at his marble desk when Alses came to call; he knew she arrived on or about the tenth bell of the morning and generally made sure to be there ready with a stack of the day's instructions (and generally a pile of heavy message-boxes to go to the prosperous and important people of Lhavit) . She didn't have to wait long for the dapper fellow's return, however – she'd barely crossed the room to gaze, pensive and unseeing, out of the window at the sun-dappled, snow-covered grounds when the door whispered open once more and in shimmered the immaculate figure of Mr. Secretary with the career servant's gliding walk, his mirror-polished leather shoes almost silent on the skyglass and marble, swift and sure across the Eypharian rugs with nary a stumble or slip to impede his orderly and rapid progress. “Ah, Alses!” His face split into a small smile as he continued: “I was hoping to catch you. Sit, sit.” He waited patiently whilst she took a chair opposite the desk, shuffling a few papers into a more pleasing order whilst she arranged herself as comfortably as possible. After the usual ritual pleasantries: the comments on the vagaries of recent life and, as ever, the capriciousness of the Kalean weather, Mr. Secretary came to the meat of the matter that was troubling him. “Now...now, I believe we owe you something of an apology, Alses.” This was a sufficiently unexpected turn of events as to render her temporarily speechless; she blinked stupidly at the dapper secretary for several long moments. “We're sorry, Mr. Secretary?” A brief smile flashed across his features. “No, I – on behalf of the Tower – am sorry, actually.” He sighed and leaned back in his chair a little; it gave easily and silently under his weight. “It's a matter of bookkeeping, really...” he coughed, slightly uncomfortably. “There's been a little...oversight, shall we say?” Alses closed her eyes and groaned, a heartfelt rattle. “How much do we owe?” she asked, bracing for the worst. She opened an eye at the burst of gentle laughter. “What?” “Always so sure it's bad news. You misunderstand; the Tower owes you, really. We do a full audit – well, when I say 'we', I truly mean House Dusk's seneschal – of the accounts every two seasons, and the recent one showed up something of an anomaly with regards to your good self.” He took off his monocle, polished it industriously for a moment, and then slid it back into place with practiced ease. “One of the junior clerks made a minor error with the account books, and your...well, I shall be blunt. Your salary was never upped from the probationary wage. Now, usually, after a season of satisfactory work, that gets raised – in the case of couriering work, to our standard of three kina a day. In your case, it stayed at one due to the aforementioned oversight.” He sighed, and then continued. “It's now been rectified, of course, and we've backdated it to the first day of Winter at the full three kina.” Alses blinked, doing a few rapid calculations. 'Two hundred and seventy-six kina for winter!' her mind crowed. “That's a substantial increase,” she managed; the secretary didn't dignify it with a response. Two hundred-odd kina was pocket change to House Dusk, and probably even less than that. Alses leaned forward. “What about Autumn?” she asked quietly. “Not that we wish to seem ungrateful, but-” Mr. Secretary waved away the rest of the sentence. “Perfectly understandable, and most everyone else would be baying for the seneschal's blood right about now.” He looked uncomfortable again; it was clear that denying an Ethaefal was no fun for him. “I'll see what I can do, but general policy's just to the beginning of the season. I'll pass on the comment to the seneschal, but it'll probably have to go-” he cast his eyes briefly heavenward “-higher. No promises, mind.” Alses smiled, vaguely wicked. "None expected, Mr. Secretary." A small imp of mischief led her to add: "I shall have to trust in the fabled generosity of House Dusk." Which made him squirm. |