The next order of business, at Daisy’s insistence, was finding a reliable cartographer. Ruler’s comment was to not bet on the reliability of a people who considered astronomy taboo, but in his own geometer’s way was curious as to what they would find, particularly when Daisy mentioned that tapping into a ley line would facilitate casting her water sorcery. Water was, after all, a valuable commodity. Ruler asked Daisy how one traced ley lines to begin with, and she launched into a discussion of the dimensions of a planet, as well as the natural landmarks and joining places which marked intersections of them.

  The first store which looked promising turned out to be a bestiary of stuffed and treated animals from around the globe of Marz. Not being able to read the local signage was a distinct handicap in finding such a specialized merchant. Ultimately, they resorted to Daisy’s patent tonic of blocking people’s way with a long rod of steel and asking them very politely to answer a simple question. It took three tries, but they did ultimately secure directions to what they were assured was a reputable cartographer.

  Inside was a shop full of clay tablets. Daisy sighed. Such a thing was going to be heavy, expensive, and prone to breakage. Unless they had cases… which would also be clay or ceramic. She turned to Ruler with a bleak expression, to gauge by his reaction, which led to him asking the shopkeep if she had any ceramic maps. The woman behind the counter, heavyset with long gray hair, nodded a bit proudly. “That we do, sir. If you’ve an eye for quality, ceramic is the only way to go. Durable, shatter-resistant, waterproof, and much lighter. What region are you looking for?” Ruler looked over at Daisy.

  Daisy indicated she was looking for a world map. “I’m afraid we don’t have anything like that, nobody knows just how big Hell is. Not to mention, the nephilim are cagey about their demesnes. There’s only one rail line through them, even, and it passes through the only city of theirs we’ve ever seen.” Daisy commented that, for an unknown planet, the woman certainly knew a lot.

  The woman behind the table preened. “Retributive Sin’s maps are the best, because I am Retributive Sin and I’ve traveled the length and breadth of Helland! Even visited Tanith on a special visa, though I can’t guarantee I got everything!” She proudly pointed to her four of diamonds on the breast of her shirt. Daisy went on to ask about a map showing as much of the globe—that got her an odd look—as much of “Hell” as possible, oriented to the globe of Heaven setting in the west. “Well, you don’t want much!” The woman laughed. She turned to metal shelves behind her and started checking clay labels. “Let’s see now…”

  In a matter of moments, she had pulled out a piece of ceramic the size of a serving platter. To Daisy’s dismay, it portrayed a rectangular map, and the long side was the longitude of Marz. Ruler counseled her not to be hasty, and she took a second look at the map. Major landmarks, as well as cities and villages, were grooved into the ceramic and dusted with something dark to make them stand out. Daisy asked if the woman knew how far they were from the equator, and got a blank look. She sighed. This was not going to be easy. Not to mention, she couldn’t read the names of locations written on the map. She asked, “Madame Sin—” and was cut off with a laugh that they could call her Retty. She was, she said, simply too old for formality. “Retty, then. How much is this map?” Being told, she counted out copper coins and laid them on the counter. “Do you have an oven on site?” Retty once again clearly prided herself upon her shop, because she replied that she certainly did. “I am… a foreigner, though I do have papers. Would it be possible to apply clay to this lovely map, and let me write my transliterations of the names, and have you bake it for us?”

  Retty looked thoughtful. “I could do it. It would take a few hours. I close soon. If you pay up front, I can get it ready for you first thing tomorrow. It’d be a little more for the water to wet the clay, though.”

  “That is no problem. Do you have a vessel?” Retty hefted an urn from beneath the counter, though she protested that she had a stock and charged a market rate for it. Concentrating, Daisy summoned water into the urn, and Retty stared open-mouthed.

  “That’s a neat trick. Do you have a tube in your sleeve? Where’s the reservoir? You made it look like sorcery!”

  Daisy sighed. “What element do you assign to the Jester, Raquelia?”

  Retty gave her a strange look and replied, “Air, of course.”

  “And the Knight, Camael?”

  “Earth.”

  “Where is the balance?! That’s three earth Virtues, three air virtues, and only one of fire!” Daisy practically shouted the last words of her question, unable to believe a society could at once know so much and so little. She had no idea how it had happened and she didn’t like it. Even on Jupitre they had a concept of earth sorcery, even if it wasn’t the most popular. Ruler patted her on the back, making soothing sounds. Daisy knew she was overreacting, that Retty wasn’t the source of this disconcerting misunderstanding as to the fundamental nature of reality, but she was so tired of coming up against it. With a suit and a caste, she could work, but the work she was suited to was taboo—triangulation or preaching—or would have the Waterborne after her if they weren’t already—conjuring water, which would admittedly make her a mint.

  Ruler apologized to Retty and said it had been a long day.

  Retty asked if it wasn’t the more natural thing, that there be fewer Virtues of fire, when Hell itself was a never ending flame, and the One God Himself was a holy flame as well? Daisy just groaned and shook her head.

  While Daisy stood, numb and tired to her very soul, Ruler saw to it that Draconic runes were grooved into wet clay and, leaving the payment and jug of water on the counter, walked them both out of the shop. “L-let’s find somewhere cool to sleep for the night and get y-you some rest.”

  “There’s nowhere ‘cool’ on this miserable planet,” Daisy moaned. “I haven’t been cool since I stepped through the gate. Maybe I should have let the death cult come for me.”

  “No no no, w-w-we’re not talking like that. Y-you were sent by the One God for a reason. Everything that happens is for a reason.”

  Daisy hiccuped a sob and shook her head. “No, no, not let them take me. But opposed them. Fought them with my dragon staff.”

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  “Daisy, I-I-I have seen you brave, I-I have seen you wrathful, and I have even seen y-y-you perpetrate the odd violent act. But I-I-I would be sincerely surprised for you to kill someone.” Daisy looked up at him, just a bit bleakly.

  “Wouldn’t it be better if I did? I could go back to Jupitre, where it’s cold and the people…”

  “The people?”

  “Well, okay. So outside my geometer sect and church people kinda sucked. The Kingdom of Air isn’t known as the Enemy’s realm for nothing. But I had something!”

  “Y-you have m-m-me.”

  Daisy sighed and nodded. “That I do. I’m teaching you wrath. And, evidently, how to make a mess of oneself in a shop.”

  Ruler laughed. “You want to see messes, y-you should have seen m-m-me when I was learning to control m-my stutter. The frustrated tears that young lad shed! But w-we should get you some sleep, just the same.”

  In the shadow of a building, next to the copper strip where it was coolest, Daisy laid out her mattress and was in the process of filling it when a gruff voice said. “Drop the staff and put your hands behind your head!”

  Rather than comply, Daisy straightened and turned slowly, holding her dragon staff in a two-handed grip which would let her use it quickly as either a staff or a rifle. Behind her had been two uniformed threes of clubs, and now that she faced them she saw they had their truncheons out but not their revolvers. Not facing two pistols with one rifle—she looked, and Ruler had not drawn his revolver—she adjusted her grip and took a step forward. “I don’t think so.”

  The thugs—she had no doubt they were not acting officially; they had not asked for her papers, which she had now, and they had defaulted to Lider rather than Marzeilles—grinned at one another and asked if she was going to take them both on. In reply, she spun her staff in a way that unreadied both their truncheons, and then caught it with a kick to rap one of them smartly on the head, knocking him off-balance. She’d hoped it would floor him, but she’d missed his temple and—once again supporting her theory of “thug”—he had a thick skull.

  The thug she hadn’t struck cursed, and with one doubtless-stinging hand reached for his revolver. That simply wouldn’t do. Once he pulled a gun on her, she would reply in kind, and as Ruler had said, she wasn’t a killer. Dragons aside. While the first thug reeled, she swung her dragon staff in a wide ark and probably broke the second one’s hand. Unfortunately, it was the hand holding the truncheon, not the one with the gun. But the thug wasn’t looking at her now, he was looking at… Ruler.

  “I-I-I am warning y-you, I-I have compunctions about using this but I will if I-I have to!”

  “Pity for your ‘compunctions’ but we don’t have any.” The first thug said, also drawing his revolver. Daisy decided it was time for decisive action and leveled her dragon staff. Seeing the bore for the first time, they realized they were matched, two guns for two, and she was holding a rifle where they had pistols. Everyone stood, muscles tense, until Ruler declared they were leaving town, and that they could leave two bodies behind or not. This evidently suited the thugs’ needs, because Daisy and Ruler were able to back down the alley into the next street and round the bend without issue. The thugs had seemingly followed them at a distance, because they had shadows until they reached the city limits, but after that they seemed content that Ruler and Daisy would do as they said.

  Outside town, they circled until they found the rail connecting Watergate to Oracle City, the next settlement and capitol of the Kingdom of Hell. Except evidently, and Daisy gave Ruler a good-natured shove at this, there were nations outside of Helland. Tanith, wherever it was, would probably be their ultimate destination, because Helland was one big lost cause.

  Well now, Ruler contradicted her there. There was Hard Minded, and Retty. There were good people in Helland. They just lived under an oppressive caste system which had lied to them at great length. With a sigh, Daisy acknowledged the truth of that. Weren’t they going to get some sleep? They had been, yes. Except she realized she had left her mattress in the alley where the two thugs had interrupted them.

  “You see what I mean, about perhaps violence against people might be more practical? We’d be sleeping in a nice cool alley on a water mattress—”

  “Next to two cooling bodies? I-I-I’ll pass on that.”

  “They wouldn’t cool much, here.” This time it was Ruler who playfully shoved Daisy, though he apologized immediately after. “So what’s next?” Ruler tugged thoughtfully at his beard, considering. He asked if she didn’t have some ideas herself. She’d wanted a rank for something after all, hadn’t she? “Well. I mean, I planned on being a high club. But as a ranking heart, I can still do some of what I had planned…” Ruler egged her on. “I thought I would use water sorcery—evidently a minor miracle on this morality-forsaken planet—to preach the Unchained Gospel.” With a grin to indicate it was for show, Ruler stopped in place and crossed his arms. Why not Clockmaker Gospel? “You want to preach Clockmaker Gospel, you knock yourself out. But some of us have more charisma than others.” Ah, but he had a prophecy. Shouldn’t she heed the Will of the One God and help him spread it? “I’ll make fertile ground, but you said it yourself. It’s your prophecy. And while I’ll believe the One God wants me to help you be heard, I’m not shouldering your prophetic burden.”

  It was then that a bolt of lightning shot horizontally over their heads. There were several, and Daisy lamented not knowing the language, much less the dot code, though she was relieved to learn there were some modern conveniences on Marz. Well, no, that’s not fair. They had been very clever about their use of fire runes. But still, if they had lightning relays… “What do y-y-you want to bet that’s bad news for us-s?” Ruler asked with a grin. “A lightning relay at this time of night?” Daisy gave him yet another shove.

  “Way to be an optimist.”

  “Says the w-woman who wants to upend the social order of an entire planet because sh-she finds it distasteful.”

  “They’re certifiable! Even Jupitre—” memories of the Repositorium and battles of public opinion with death cults drew her up short. “Okay, so maybe Jupitre has its problems too. But at least here it seems to be… oh, demon dung, should we just go to Orth? Is Orth as insane as Marz and Jupitre?”

  Ruler shook his head. “Not so insane, but I-I-I have a divine mission, remember?”

  “Sarx! Yes, okay, so we’ll go to Oracle City, use my shiny new caste papers, and start preaching the Gospels. I think we did agree that they’re not that different between Clockmaker and Unchained, didn’t we? Certainly suitably different from the Infernalist thornseeded nonsense they preach in the churches here. And I’ll make us money—and enemies, you and your compunctions had better be ready for that—by selling water. I can’t do it endlessly, but I can probably make us a fair bit of coin doing that. Do they… I mean, it sounds disgusting but it really is a simple matter, do they keep cesspools? You said they distill water from it. Oh, but it would be a valuable resource. So I’m drawing water out of the aether. More work for me. Thank you, oh Lord, for judging me one of your tougher soldiers.” Ruler laughed at that one.

  As the lightning beacons arced lightning overhead, they set their sights on the distant tower lit by the beam and set about walking towards Oracle City. Ever the optimist, Ruler pointed out that at least they were headed north, so it would be cooler. “‘Cooler’ is a relative term,” Daisy retorted, but even she laughed at her stubborn pique.