Daisy redirected the conversation towards her own wrath; which she acknowledged lacked prophecy and so could wreak injustice, but that was her own demon to face. This revolver mechanism, could it be retrofitted to her dragon staff? It was a breech loader, but the stock could be cut, she supposed… she was not an expert on smithing. But Ruler affirmed that Marzian technology could craft revolvers, if not one of his particular design. He pointed out a few people passing by, wearing hip holsters.
Daisy looked around again, at the whitewashed buildings bearing larger or smaller flames and banded with copper. Those were, however, the features she noted least. The gargoyles made sense now, if the people of Marz believed themselves to be in Hell. They were, indeed, a devoutly religious people if they sought to purify their corner of Hell and scare away the Lord of Lies and his host of fallen angels. Already they invested so much time and effort into their architecture; load-bearing walls notwithstanding, their understanding of fire runes and their consequences was cleverly applied. In the time since the Age of Loss, even if they had been deceived by those who told them they were in Hell, they had recovered a great deal of knowledge. Even on Jupitre, there were not such creative abuses of branding’s natural effects.
But a smith. Daisy had been so busy examining a particular gargoyle, possessed of horrid goat’s eyes bulging from a frog-like head which vanished into blackness with its depth, that she nearly walked into someone despite the uncrowded streets. She would have to pay more attention. Only Ruler’s timely tug on her arm had prevented a collision. She supposed she might have minded the familiar contact more if he hadn’t been of clearly pure intention.
The smithy they found had rifles and revolvers on display, as well as daggers and the odd saber. They were, however, held to the display with locked bands of steel. Avery greeted the smith in what Daisy supposed as Lider. The woman working the forge, her skin more weathered even than the norm on Marz, turned to face them while admonishing her adolescent apprentice to continue tending the bellows despite his obvious curiosity about these strangers. She bore a round scar above her left temple, and Daisy thought of dragons.
Daisy felt the tickle of Ruler’s psi as the words of the smith were given meaning to her. Daisy approached, and asked if there was any hope of fitting a revolver mechanism to her rifle without destroying it. She spoke haltingly at first, unaccustomed to speaking while reading a prompt, although thinking of it as reading a book gave her more confidence.
The smith held out her hands for Daisy’s rifle, and with a small amount of misgiving she handed it over. The smith sighted it, examined the breech, and even spun it competently over one hand, before handing it back to Daisy. “I can try. It won’t be cheap. What part of Helland are you from, that you don’t even speak Lider? I won’t do weapons work for a servant of a cold dragon.” Daisy sent a shocked look at Ruler, who shook his head and shrugged. “I can feel the psi,” the smith said, tapping her temple. Ruler replied evenly that he served an air dragon. The smith harrumphed, but admitted that wasn’t within the confines of her ban. Daisy fished out weights of silver, and the smith raised a dubious eyebrow. “You can come back when you have proper coin.”
A little disappointed, and more than a little dispirited, Daisy struck out to find a pawn shop—she shuddered. The Repositorium of Knowledge was like a pawn shop for pieces of one’s mind. Maybe not a pawn shop. But surely there was a bank or something similar? She asked Ruler. He said he didn’t have wealth worth counting but spiritually, so he’d never given the matter much consideration. Besides, the signs were in Marzeilles and didn’t have minds to read.
Daisy squared her shoulders and went about looking for an imposing building. Okay, so with the flaming roofs and hideous gargoyles, they were all imposing. And high ceilings seemed nearly universal, at least in this affluent part of the city. Even the smithy had been built tall. She would ask directions as soon as she found someone who looked reputable. Or at least wasn’t glaring at her green clothes. Maybe she should buy some clothes in the local colors. Lack-of-colors. But asking directions.
The first person she asked simply walked away, and Daisy was so stunned as to let her. Faithful they might be, but Marzians were certainly not friendly. The next person, she blocked his path with the length of her dragon staff. “I asked a reasonable question, you can reasonably answer.” Or so she assumed she’d said, still reading Ruler’s mental cues. He looked at the steel pole blocking his path, and even gave a half-hearted shove against it, but he didn’t step around and finally directed her to a columned building a few blocks away. She thanked him, and the pair moved on. Ruler made an admiring comment as to her ability to invoke wrath in the name of a good cause.
The bank was imposing. They were all imposing, but the bank especially so. They had walked past it, and Daisy had assumed it was either city hall or a church building. There weren’t the massive windows that marked churches on Jupitre, given the climate and nature of cooling, but there were caryatid columns of a sort rather than load-bearing walls. Of a sort, because they portrayed hideous giants being climbed by plaintive human-sized figures, rather than beautiful women. More gargoyles. She’d been encouraged by them at first look, but now it seemed they represented an oppressive element of the culture’s preoccupation with damnation. The doors of the bank, too, were carved stone, showing in relief thieves meeting various gruesome fates. She thought to herself, “What thieves break in and steal…”
Within, the air was comparatively cool, and she wondered if the bank, despite lacking obvious copper on its walls, might have cored its columns with copper. It had the flaming roof, and with an earth sorcerer it was a simple enough matter. A metal sorcerer could even abrogate the need to cast the molten copper into the core, shaping it as though liquid. In any event, it was a relief. But tarrying was not in the cards, the bank employed finely-tailored, immaculately-groomed, and impressively-muscled men and women to make sure everyone was seen to their business in the most efficient manner possible. “How might I be of service, ser, madame?” The polite bouncer—undoubtedly a bouncer, but undoubtedly polite—didn’t look twice at their attire, but also stood between them and the majority of the building’s main hall.
Daisy communicated her need to translate weights of silver into local coinage, and at the sight of some substantial amount of valuable metal, something eased in the bouncer’s body language. She asked, as an aside, whether she should keep some in reserve or whether they would be spending long in Helland. Ruler replied quietly that so far as he knew, nations on Marz had names such as South Helland, West Helland, and Helland itself.
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“So no, no reserve needed.”
Evidently translating raw ore into coinage was not unheard-of, and they were shown into a large room with an elderly bespectacled woman in it. She asked how much copper they would be translating into coin. Told they had silver and not copper, her frizzy eyebrows nearly vanished into an impressively wrinkled and incredulous forehead, but she shuffled around the room and found a different scale to consult. Silver was a rarity on Marz, but not unheard-of. Mostly used by the water traders, so easy enough to convert into something actually valuable. Daisy was surprised to hear silver referred to as less valuable, but she supposed the climate would impact that.
The old woman asked for Daisy’s denizen papers, and Ruler hurried forward with his own. She once again raised her eyebrows impressively high, but shrugged and took the silver after filing away a copy of the information on Ruler’s papers. They strode away from the bank with Daisy’s pockets lighter, but filled with denominations of local coinage.
“You need denizen papers? How do I get those?” Daisy asked Ruler, who had no ready answer. He had naturalized himself as an ostensible South Hellander, but she was in Helland proper. For now, he would supply his own when they had to make a purchase. Daisy was in for more unsettling experiences, before the day was out. The smith, looking at Ruler’s papers, shook her head. She couldn’t do gun work for an ace of hearts. You needed to be of a black suit to get weapon work done, and above a deuce to get a gun. She looked intensely again at Daisy, and she felt a headache coming on before Ruler interposed himself and she realized the smith had been about to interrogate her psionically. More dragon nonsense.
Dispirited, Daisy walked out before she or Ruler faced further scrutiny. She asked if she should buy herself some more traditional garb for the region. Ruler shrugged and said that if anything it was likely smoothing their path to have what would be ostentatiously expensive dyes in her clothes. As long as she could avoid getting mugged, it should be fine. And speaking of which, they should duck into the shop to their left, they had picked up two tails outside the bank.
Inside, a number of glasses and cylindrical objects were on display. Daisy was immediately curious, and on looking through one of the glasses found it made things appear larger. From there she went to one of the smaller cylinders, overhearing through Ruler that anything she broke she bought. She peered through it, first at the shopkeeper and then through the small high windows, finding she could see the far distant sky as though it were close. She asked Ruler what these things were, and he identified the first as a quizzing glass and the second as a telescope.
Enchanted with the device, Daisy took it to the counter and asked how much it was. The shopkeeper indicated the tag held by a string to the telescope, but upon seeing Daisy’s incomprehension took on a calculating expression and named a price. Daisy heard in her head, clear enough she thought at first he had spoken Draconic, Ruler say, “He’s ripping you off. I don’t know the right amount to pay for this, but he’s inflated it knowing you don’t know what it’s worth.” Daisy looked at him and nodded, then shrugged and fished out the suitable number of coins. She wanted the device that much. Ruler asked her how it was she didn’t know what a telescope was. Daisy replied simply that Jupitre was a vast place of foggy skies, and while one could measure some geography and the brighter stars from a high elevation, a “telescope” would be largely useless against the cloud cover.
She asked how much it would be to have it mounted on her cross staff, indicating the dragon staff. The shopkeeper seemed perplexed by the staff, and Daisy launched eagerly into an explanation of the markings on the side and cords tied to the stock. Geometers were nothing if not practical, and her rifle was usable to perform measurements of the heavens, not just mountains. With the telescope, she suspected she could manage an unparalleled degree of accuracy. To say nothing—and she said nothing—of being able to shoot a mosquito off a friend’s shoulder at two hundred yards.
Looking abashed, the shopkeeper introduced himself as Penitent Soul. Daisy replied that she was simply Daisy, and her companion was Ruler. The latter name evoked surprise, and Daisy asked Ruler if his name had a different context in Lider. He replied that he had used the meaning of one who rules, rather than one who measures, thinking it would be less remarkable. Daisy shrugged and returned to business. Penitent Soul was a student of the heavens, in his spare time. He would mount the telescope on her staff for free, provided she helped him with the measurements to produce his own cross staff.
When she, in turn, expressed surprise that he did not already possess such a thing with his impressive array of observational equipment, he replied that study of the heavens was widely regarded as unseemly. They were, after all, the Ranks of the Damned, and it was not their place to regard Heaven. Indeed, it was proof of their condemnation that the sun burned the eyes of those who stared into its light. Where was she from, that such information was not common to her?
Ruler apologized and replied that they were recent acquaintances, and that he was an emigre of South Helland, where things were a bit more liberal. Despite being a nonanswer to the question actually asked, it resembled a meaningful reply and seemed to satisfy Penitent. Daisy indicated the manner in which she wanted the telescope mounted on her staff, and inquired as to the possibility of a locking hinge to let her sight both down its length and orthogonal to it. This once again got her a strange look, but Daisy brooked on the lack of firing mechanism and her not having unlocked the breech loader to veil her intentions.
Ultimately, after having marked a long metal rod with notches and symbols, tied a few knots in some lengths of cord, and given Penitent a guide to their meaning, Daisy left the store with a marvelously accurate tool of navigation and endangerment. Ruler grumbled that she had still paid far too much for what amounted to a toy, but Daisy shook her head. There was no price too high to pay for knowledge. Of course, saying that brought to mind the Repositorium and its rates of payment, and she shuddered. Not everyone knew the value of knowledge, or of sanity, nor the relationship between the two.
Ruler confirmed they had taken too long in the shop to keep the attention of their tails, which meant their plan had been a common mugging and they had not attracted the interest of the wrong kind of people as yet. He asked what she planned on doing next. Daisy peered at the sky, Heaven’s orb setting in the west, and asked about where they might stay the night. Ruler replied that he had been sleeping rough, in the shade of a copper-banded building. Helland did not encourage indigents nor travelers. If she didn’t want to overpay for a hard cot and a blistering round of Bible study, she would do the same.
Daisy considered making an issue of it, insisting that surely there were some industries which did not possess warehouses and housing for its traders, before recalling her water mattress and deciding it wasn’t worth the struggle. Ruler seemed impressed with her camping equipment, and Daisy considered whether there was room to let him share the bed with her. She trusted her water sorcery to be accurate; he would not respond lustfully to such an offer. As they settled on the mattress in the shadow of a building, Daisy the big spoon, Ruler asked a single sleepy question, as to what was next. Daisy scrunched up her face thoughtfully, knowing he couldn’t see her face, and said that from what she’d heard from the locals, a visit to Watergate’s Church was in order. She did not miss Ruler’s shudder, but elected not to inquire.
