The Heartstone Chronicles: Windchaser

Chapter One

- PART ONE -

- HEAVEN-FIRE -

- ONE -

The more civilised a city becomes, the more laws there are imposed upon it. Eventually we forget that the city made the law, and begin to believe it was the law that built the city. Before you know it, there’s no room for old-fashioned cutthroats like us to slink about – even the shadows are taxed. It becomes far more beneficial to our life of crime to pin on a brooch, straighten our shirts and start calling ourselves ‘lawmen’.

Quote attributed to Antithras the Stealer, Lothos Par, 1,774R

From the graceful curve of Alandis Bay to the mudflats of Dogwater Delta, spreading eastwards from the shining shores of the Hot Sea to the verdant borders of the Venhim Woods, the city of Lothos Par sprawled across almost two hundred and fifty square miles. Flanked on either side by green and granite banks that sloped lazily towards the beach, the capital of the Coriathir Sceptery was a city built upon hills, considered by almost everyone as a city of splendour.

Jinriki the snike, however, hated it with every fibre of his being – where he came from cities were small, confined, intimate, twisting warrens tunnelled through mountains of dark stone. Human cities simply sprawled, spreading too wide, towering too high, and Lothos Par – split into three huge districts by twin rivers – was one of the worst examples.

Whether in the cramped, shadow-haunted residential areas of Dockend – the crescent which incorporated the docks and the wharf as well as several hundred warehouses, dice-houses, whorehouses and taverns – or in Farend, the mercantile district where traders sold expensive silks, rare spices and imported jewels and bards performed daily in the famous Wide Market, Jinriki had never felt comfortable, so far from the embrace of his colony in the Nathnamoon Mountains. Only when he had travelled to Alabaster Row, the teardrop island at the city’s centre, had he felt any semblance of peace, so far removed was it from the grit and grime of the other crescents. He had been there on only two occasions, both times whilst carrying out an unsavoury assignment for Jharek Doon, but was considered lucky to have laid eyes upon it.

Home to some of the finest architecture in the Sceptery, the houses there were vast and imposing, many with estates covering several acres, all built around the Sceptre’s Seat, the great square at the heart of the island where stood the four colossal buildings of the Concordance.

Alabaster Row was a place of striking majesty that most who lived east and west of it would never see, as access was only possible at two points: the Low Gate – an underpass from Dockend where the river Loth was at its narrowest – and the High Gate, across the bridge from Farend. Talnathyr marshals vigilantly patrolled the skies above the river, directing airborne visitors to check in at one gate or another, and entry was granted only to those with signed authorisation from a cleric of the Concordance. Of course, in Jinriki’s line of work there were ways around such obstacles, though he shuddered to imagine what might happen if he was caught trespassing on the Row…

He sat now on a roadside in Dockend, watching the market crowds as the salt-dashed air drifted through his twitching nostrils. Such things are not for you, Jinriki, he chided himself. Focus on the task at hand.

Examining the throng with practiced technique, his beady pink eyes finally settled upon two young men wandering along the cobbled road towards him. The one closest to the snike was red-haired and pale of face, dressed in a simple tunic and trews – but while the clothes were of poor quality, they were not in poor condition. Jinriki could spot a nobleman a mile away; it was a noted pastime of the younger upper class to descend to the lower crescents from time to time and live a day in a commoner’s shoes. Ha! If only they knew…