City hall, as it turned out, was in the same building as the bank. It was one and the same institution. “You can’t serve both God and Greed,” Daisy thought to herself. When Ruler gave her a quizzical look, she realized she had chuckled. Though, she had to admit, her first thought was that he was just kind of perched in her mind like a carrion bird. But then he chuckled at her passage from the Gospels, and when she vented her concerns about his presence in her mind, he shook his head and reminded her that psi was taxing for him.

  The bouncer, a man with a neatly trimmed beard this time, seemed perplexed by her demand to be nationalized. She iterated her desire several times, before demanding to speak to his boss. He shook his head and tapped his suit, emblazoned with a four of clubs. “Oh, so you’re the ranking thug. Take me to the four of hearts, then!” He looked at her incredulously, and looked her up and down in a frankly appraising manner she would have taken offense at were she not painfully aware of the Marzian obsession with castes.

  Ruler stepped forward with his own denizen papers, and made a polite entreaty to appeal the case of his friend. Daisy was about ready to take a chunk out of the ceiling with her dragon staff when the man finally acceded to Ruler’s request and took them to a well-appointed office up a flight of stairs. There was a small gargoyle at each corner of the room and walls of shelved clay tablets. Before them, not sweating in the slightest, was a young woman Daisy judged to be her junior. Such were the perks of a caste system, she supposed. No ladder to climb.

  “I am Frozen Hell, how do you suppose I am going to help you?” Once more, Daisy repeated her request to be dealt a card and nationalized. She also asked how a people without a concept of water magic on account of the heat nonetheless had a concept of freezing things. “Copper freezes well below the temperature of the human-habitable—” an interesting qualifier “—regions of Marz. Don’t ask stupid questions. If you wanted to be nationalized, you should have applied for citizenship in Honeystone or South Helland, wherever you came from.”

  “I came from Jupitre.”

  “And what territory is that? Did The Armed Nation finally yield?”

  “The Armed Nation?”

  “Whatever they call themselves, ‘Tanith,’ I would have thought they would be ‘East Helland’ but perhaps some whimsy struck the honorable Black Donjon. In any case, you still should have applied for papers in Honeystone.”

  “Jupitre is the planet from which your deliveries of water arrive by rail. The large building on the edge of town? Leads to a cave with a dragon in it?” Led to a cave with a dragon in it, she supposed.

  “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about. If you’re looking for water, that does sound an awful lot like Tanith, they have natural sources of water thanks to their dragon.”

  “What say I go find someone who knows what they’re talking about?”

  Frozen’s eyebrows shot up. “You’re an illegal interloper and you dare to insult a four of hearts? Good luck finding your way up the ladder with that attitude.”

  “Why wouldn’t I insult whoever I please? It’s not as though I can lower my status any more than it is.” Without waiting to hear what Frozen had to say in retort, she strode out of the room, almost forgetting to make sure Ruler was keeping pace with her.

  “Well. That was disheartening. What’s y-y-your plan now?”

  Daisy quirked a grin on one side. “I have the canny of a native Jovian and a light sorcerer yoked to my cause. Now I find out how an ace of hearts can become a ten of clubs.” Ruler stared at her curiously, but he caught on quick enough when she walked them to a part of town where copper linings had been stolen off a few buildings, the whitewash worn away by time. “Look inside, if you would, Ruler.”

  “Certainly. What am I-I-I looking for?”

  “A pawn shop pretending awfully hard not to be a pawn shop. A fence. They’re the twitchiest of criminals because they’re the least able to be protected from the law. An unexpected guest will get us one step up the ladder. The thought of a bought fence will buy us up the next step, until I’m whatever caste I care to be.”

  Ruler grinned. “I am doing some quality learning from you.”

  Daisy waved a dismissive hand. “This is fundamental skulduggery. Come from the planet of the Lord of Lies and you learn a little cunning. Now then, if you wouldn’t mind?” It took them the better part of several hours, but they found the fence. Telescope cocked to be parallel to the length of her dragon staff, Daisy applied her booted foot to the door… and nearly fell over. Ruler chuckled, while Daisy scowled and said he could have warned her the door was barred. He asked about her cunning, and she sighed. “What did I do to deserve this help, Lord?”

  She leveled her rifle at the knob side of the door, snapped her fire-branded fingers over the trigger, and with a roar her dragon staff blew a large chunk out of the formerly locked and barred door. Once again, she applied her boot to the door, slamming it open this time, and walked boldly inside. Inside was a twitchy-looking man, much as Daisy had suspected she would find. She thought he rather resembled a rabbit. “We’re not here for you. We’re here for your boss. And we’re not even here to upset your boss, we’re here to make her a little money.”

  Daisy tried not to flinch at the tentative touch of psi against her mind, but shot Ruler a look directing him to rebuke the touch. The slap was smaller and gentler than that of the priestess, but then it was only Ruler and only one recipient. The fence seemed to take it in stride, reassured perhaps that he was as yet not in manacles.

  “Tired of being castless, eh? That’s fair, that’s fair. Bold Virtue has papers. You’re not the first Waterborne to want a cushy new start. Though, couldn’t you have just knocked? That door is getting added to my fee.” Daisy doubted she could afford to repair the door, she was by no means wealthy. She had hoped to trade in favors with someone of sufficient status not to need her money.

  “I don’t want your cheap counterfeits. I want legitimate papers, issued by a crown caste.” If aces were at the bottom, it stood to reason that Jacks, Kings, and Queens were at the top.

  “Why don’t you look at Bold’s papers and tell him whether they’re cheap counterfeits.” With a greasy smile—perhaps more like a weasel than a rabbit—he splayed papers across his countertop.

  “I’m sorry, you seem to have mistaken me for someone to mess around with.” Daisy reached for her magic, and with effort centered her will on a small orb of water. She lofted it across the room, from her standing at the door to Bold. She watched his shallow breathing and tossed the water in his face just as he drew breath.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Spluttering and coughing, Bold wiped his face with his hands, and Ruler cocked his head. “Hey, ‘B-B-Boss,’ h-he made contact with someone while he was spluttering. W-we may not have much time.” Daisy replied that Ruler could obscure their forced entry and she’d block the door with her staff. “Y-you want m-m-me to maintain an illusion while translating? That’s a lot to do at once…”

  “Then you talk to the fence.”

  “You don’t mess with Bold Virtue! I’m not nobody! I’ve got cred, I’ve got protection!”

  “You have jack squat. The fences with status have guards like at a bank. Ruler, negotiate. I think more than my staff might be called for to bar this door.”

  “Let m-m-me make this simple, B-Bold. All we want is your boss. We-we’re not cops, we’re a source of revenue with nothing to lose. Give us y-your boss and we—thank y-you.” Daisy, back propped against the door, raised an eyebrow and asked what he’d done.

  Bold replied for Ruler in a somewhat squeaky voice. “A cheap trick is what he did! He’ll never find her! You may have found me, Hell knows where you could have bought that information, but you won’t find my boss! She’s not public!”

  Daisy swung the door open to permit Ruler past her, and said over her shoulder, “You’re still mistaking me for someone to mess around with.”

  “So are you!” Bold cackled as Ruler stopped short, confronted with an athletically-built woman bearing a three of clubs across her entire chest. She raised a revolver, and Daisy knocked it aside by reflex with her staff. The shot embedded itself in the stone of the floor, then ricocheted into the wares lining Bold’s store.

  Spinning her dragon staff to build up momentum, Daisy aimed for a sharp rap to the temples of the enforcer, but the woman blocked it with what looked to be a common truncheon. Taking the fight a little more seriously, Daisy was about to go for the woman’s shins when she realized the thug still had a revolver in her off-hand. Daisy was about to take either a bullet or a truncheon blow to the head when the woman reeled, putting a hand to her head. Daisy would question providence later and put the woman on the ground with a two-handed strike of her staff.

  As they left the neighborhood, Daisy asked Ruler if she had him to thank for her foe’s timely incapacitation. He chuckled. “Bright light in the eyes. N-nobody’s ever ready for it.” Daisy smiled and said that, at least, he was learning a bit of wrath. “Now w-we go search the wealthier districts. This could take a while. Can w-w-we get a bit of food, in the meantime? I-I’ve left off begging to follow your quest…” Daisy nodded, chagrined that she had given no thought to such concerns for Ruler, and had just eaten from her rations when she was hungry again. She inquired what there was to eat around here. “Oh, just a few varieties of cactus—what’s a cactus? A drought-resistant prickly, waxy vegetable, I-I-I think I would classify it. Squash. Peppers. And vent fish. Y-you’ll want to check for bones, they’re made of iron.” Iron bones, in a fish? “Abomination fish. Swim in the north seas. That’s all I-I know.”

  They set out for somewhere that smelled tasty, gave up that quest, and set about finding someplace that smelled like vegetables. Within an hourglass, by Daisy’s judgment, they found a place selling what she supposed would be a relative luxury of chilled sliced squash and cold filets of vent fish over rice. This time, she let Ruler bicker over the price they paid, mindful that she would be stretching her resources to accommodate two unless she wanted to resort to begging from the doubtless-uncharitable Marzians.

  The next morning, Ruler related the appearance of Bold’s boss to Daisy, so she could search the markets while he searched houses. She appeared to be a woman who affected an impressive handlebar mustache, or a man who favored cosmetics, either way an original on the repressive and regressive planet of Marz. Perhaps Bold had been right that she was above such petty concerns as “society” and its “rules.” Which made her quite likely the exact kind of person Daisy was looking for.

  After two days of meeting three times a day to check in, Ruler had struck gold. How many people—he omitted a gendered pronoun in referring to her—with fine makeup and a handlebar mustache were there who maintained a pallor on this planet? This time, Daisy was polite. She knocked courteously on the door to the woman’s estate and handed over one of her graduate cards as a Bachelor geometer. It would likely mean little, but cards made the social wheels of high society go round, if Marz was anything like Jupitre.

  Sure enough, they were shortly told, “Madame will see you now,” and shown into a drawing room. Daisy didn’t mean to be surprised, but she was nonetheless when the furniture was upholstered rather than ergonomic stone. Upon sitting upon it, she realized it was camel hair.

  The woman behind the desk was small; she barely saw over the top of her desk despite a very high chair indeed. Her skin was fair, her hair dark, and her eyes pits into which Daisy suspected she might fall forever. This was a face of power, of scarcity borne of inconceivably vast resources. Also a face with a handlebar mustache.

  “Bachelor… Daisy. You do not use family names where you come from?” Daisy shook her head. “You caused quite a stir with my underlings. And it’s rather hard to keep valuable goods locked away when one’s lock has ceased to be.” Daisy nodded acknowledgement and apologized. “So. You want to be a higher caste.”

  “I want to be a high caste, as opposed to no caste at all.”

  “Ah, right. Right. The Jovian thing. It can be arranged, but why would you want a place on Hell? Why not run back to your own ‘planet’ if the portal is accessible as you say? Unless you are damned, and it was a one-way trip?” Three questions, and not one breath in which to answer them, Daisy thought, resisting the urge to raise an eyebrow. “That is why you speak Lider through your familiar.” Interesting choice of words for a friend. Huh. I guess Ruler is a friend at this point. That was fast.

  “We’ve had Waterborne want to be naturalized before. Their little cult doubtless found a wellspring and have been siphoning off water since at least the Age of Stone, but then they get tired of their politicking and think they can do better here.” Daisy vehemently protested that she was no Waterborne. “Why the plant name, then? Not even one that grows well here. I had to consult a text of archaic draconic just to find a picture.”

  “That ‘archaic draconic’ is likely Jovian. What will it take to get me my papers?”

  The woman before her—it rankled not to know her name—crossed her arms over her chest. “I would have two things from you. A demonstration of your alleged ‘water sorcery,’ and the promise of a position of status when things come crashing down. I have no doubt you will be the focal point of the unrest to come.” When Daisy shot a surprised look at Ruler, the woman chuckled. “I’ve heard the prophet’s ravings. Some third of the population is trepanned; nephilim factor heavily into our copper economy, as no human can survive the temperatures of the copper seas; we’ve gotten demands of outrageous price increases from our contacts to the south. So I will get you papers—not as a ten of clubs, but I will get you a seven of hearts and see what you do with it. And in return, you will remember the kindness done to you by Hard Minded, when you are at the epicenter of a collapse.” Daisy made a mental note not to underestimate the cunning of native Marzians just for not being born into the Kingdom of Air. She also noted that her new ‘friend’ evidently had more pull, wisdom, or both, than she had thought. She would give Daisy papers just to hedge her bets against a societal collapse which seemed, to most of the populace, more than a little far-fetched.

  With a nod, Daisy stood and summoned a sphere of water. Minded drew breath sharply, and gazed in fascination at Daisy’s handful of water. At Hard Minded’s direction, she revealed the light of her soul, still bright enough to be a light in the dark. On her own initiative, she turned to the light of Hard Minded and was surprised to see a dim glow, not the opaque blackness of an unseen depth. Minded laughed, doubtless aware of what the dimming meant. “I am not entirely an evil woman, Daisy. I had ideals, ones I like to think back fondly upon. By securing my status after whatever chaos you wreak, I secure the wellbeing of my allies. My family.”

  Those were words that would come back to haunt Daisy as she wondered whether she had dealt with the Marzian equivalent of the Repositorium of Knowledge, or if she had found a redeemable soul amongst the Ranks of the Damned.