Osomo's Mistake, pt. 1

"I challenge you to a duel of honor."

I wanted to respond to that. Dueling is something I can do well - not as dangerously as a true Iron Lion, but as effectively anyways. This was my game.

Instead, I decided that trying not to suffocate underneath a thousand pounds of bricks and bystanders was a better idea.

As it turned out, it wasn't, because Osomo (Osomo!) decided to speak instead.

"I'll defend your honor for 250 in gold."

I wanted to respond to that. I decided that trying not to laugh instead was a better eidea.

A woman's voice, sounding not flustered enough to lose her haughty cool, answered him. "Does it look as if I carry that much in gold?"

(Osomo again. "Half?") "Fifty." ("Only fifty?")

Chitin pulled himself out of the pile, and I had a precious moment of sunlight and air before the pile caved in on me to fill his void.

It was enough time for the woman to finish speaking. I recognized the accent: Serpentine. "My bodyguard is-" (Osomo interrupted: "He's dying.") "You're a four-arm I know nothing about."

Osomo sighed. "Fifty now."

I heard leather slap and money jingle as a coinpurse got tossed. Then, with a hard push upwards, I mananged to pull myself up into a sitting position, with my head above the rubble. Just in time to see what happened next.

Osomo responded, as is his nature, in the usual fashion.

He stepped backwards and reached under his cloak, tossed his hooded head back, and pulled his arms back out with four of his custom-ordered crossbows.

Then he fired them all.

My eyes shifted, and for the first time I saw the circumstances. The woman was indeed lithene, and dressed well enough to be from Embassy City. Just in the background was Serpentine, lying face-down in a spreading pool of blood.

Most importantly was the challenger. His race was unimportant. What was important was his outfit:

Plate armor. At least six ribs on each side of the cuirass. Specialty work, in other words, and expensive enough that the owner inside was clearly Noblesse.

Nobody wears armor like that casually, not even in Cloudbirth. And nobody ever wears just plate armor. The plates are over full mail, and the mail goes over an inch-thick layer of felt. All of that is over a layer of silk.

The silk layer is for use after battles. When you have a spare moment, you grab the hems of the silk and padding and you yank them. This causes all the missiles that pincushion your armor to pop out.

Two of them hit ARMOR square in the chest - and harmlessly. One of them shattered on his armor.

The fourth bolt went wide, and I saw what was going to happen a split second before it hit a passer-by.

If it's any comfort, I don't think she felt any pain. It was a clean hit between the eyes, with one of the special quarrels that Osomo had gone to great pains to buy.

The shafts were filled with some chemical - naphtha resin, I think - that made them explode and burn on impact. Which it did, a split second before her corpse flew past me and knocked down what was left of the scaffolding.

Before I was buried under the rest of the scaffolding, I took a moment to sigh.

Prelude to Osomo's Mistake

Spring Eve, Water Eve

My companions and I had met up, cleaned up, and were departing to go our separate ways for the morning when abruptly the entire day turned into a disaster.

It actually was a disaster: a runaway cart came rampaging down the street, right towards a violently sick Chitin and myself. (He had made the mistake of drinking witch's brew, and for all his efforts couldn't keep his stomach down long enough to meld his soul.

(This probably won't be explained much more.

(These things usually aren't.)

I saw it coming and dodged into Chitin. Chitin saw me coming and dodged into the passers-by.

They saw several hundred pounds of muscle, meat, bone and spikes flying towards them and scattered, except for one. He was bodyslammed backwards by Chitin into what was behind him.

Unfortunately, that was a scaffolding, which promptly collapsed on all of us.

Amidst all the screaming, I heard somebody say the magic words:

"I challenge you to a duel of honor."

But you really miss your mother

The Shadow-Shifting Style has only one teacher in Cloudbirth.

The clouds on the horizon bode ill for all of us. Not for him. Under these clear rskies, he has only one student.

The class starts at random hours, for such is the nature of both the teacher and the subject. To learn to control one's shadow, must learn to do so regardless of circumstances.

As such, the student's life is dominated by struggle with his own shadow, and has only so much time available between the start of the day, the waking of Cloudbirth, the start of the lesson, the end of the lesson, the closing of shops, and the end of the day.

This time, for the last ten days, the student has spent struggling, more or less in vain, to find something that has evaded him for his life and which he has a responsibility to find.

This day, the search has begun to end.

***

When I was a child, my mentor taught me what to do if I ever got lost, or found myself in a city alone: look for your cousins. Or, failing that, look for his cousins.

I know he has cousins in Cloudbirth.

But how are you supposed to find people you've never met, especially when you don't have the faintest idea of how to find them in a crowd of 300,000? If you don't know what they look like? If they don't have an appetite for fame?

It took four days before I could find my way around Cloudbirth, and another few before to get a gasp of what was where.

The ideas took a few days to express, but once they did, everything else fell into place.

The plan was relatively simple: start in the nicer parts of town. Begin with the tailors - not the posh ones; I'd stand out too much there, and that's reason enough to suspect that they would too. Work my way through them. If that didn't pan out, I would go to the Dyers' Guild, ask about the sales, and work my way up the chain from there.

I didn't know anything about my cousins looked, you see, but I do know some things about how they dressed.

That sort of thing is important.

These things usually are.

*****

The Shadow-Shifting Style class ended halfway through the third watch after high noon. With the shops still open, I visited the first tailor that I came across.

In a city of reptilians and siarrans, his sight was something of a relief: he was as human as I. Short, ordinary, and as forgettable as any human could be - maybe as forgettable as I am.

Which made it hard to begin asking questions.

"I'm... I have an unusual problem." He stared, and I stumbled.

"I'm looking for some cousins from out west. A friend of mine says that they live here, and I'm not sure what they look like-"

"Fuck me if I know," he said tersely.

"-but I think that they wear something like this" (pointing to my coat.)

He stared blankly.

"Like this, but the embroidery isn't actually blue like this."

I stopped. Not to hear him speak. To concentrate on not sweating.

He didn't interpret it that way. "Cornflower?"

"No, no, mine is cornflower. They wear" [and at that instant I realized why he asked, and saw his face loosen up a bit] "...I'm not sure. Theirs is red."

("Red?") "Some kind of red. Carmine or cinnabar, or something like that. I'm not-"

He interrupted me again.

"Crimson?"

We met eyes - his were small and beady, mine were big and liquid and blue - and I felt him read them. I tried to read his, but I stopped.

He was smiling.

So I answered: "I think so."

"And you're looking for cousins, you say?"

"Distant ones, and I thought you'd be able to help me find..."

I trailed off. The shop was empty, and in this stillness and quiet I could see everything I needed to know. Almost everything. "Did I just find them?"

His response was terse: "Probably."

It was all I needed to know.

My cousins aren't very decisive. Neither am I.

Not a word I heard could I relate

I was with Chitin when it happened.

I was tapped on the shoulder. I turned, and my face did not show shock. We met eyes, and my jaw did not drop.

We stared, Chitin and I, at him. He spoke first.

"I believe you killed me back in Bladibal."
"No." (On asking if he would accept my apologies)

He passed Chitin a piece of paper and disappeared into the crowd.

Chitin asked me to read it to him.

The Shadow-Shifting Style, part I

People cast shadows the way they breathe: naturally and unconsciously.

The Shadow-Shifting Style arose as a means of addressing that. Its belief that, with practice, one can learn to control one's shadow in the same way one can control one's breathing and pulse. More importantly, to me at least, it asserts that this ability can be gainfully employed.

Pursuing this possibility first requires that you gain conscious awareness of casting a shadow.

This is achieved by intensive practice of moving in a darkened room. At the center of the room, a spotter squats with a bullseye lantern, which follows you as you slowly walk around the perimeter of the room.

At the same pace, the teacher stands at the far side of the room, circling. At various points, the teacher will make a chalk mark on the wall.

When the student reaches that point on the wall, they are to move in such a way that their shadow exactly traces the mark on the wall - not going above, not falling below.

Initially, the student never manages to trace the mark. As the hours pass, however, the student slowly picks up on how standing at specific angles in relationship to the light, in various poses, best allows you to keep moving while tracing the marks. The instructors then show them variations on the poses, ways to move and stand without contortions, and so forth.

The second phase of the regimen begins the day after the student is reliably able to trace every mark.

I'm not there yet.

Like a haystack needle III

The inns of Cloudbirth are five a night in gold, the most I've ever paid for a roof over my head. Aside from the times I've spent under the care of chirurgeons.

Dinner was spent asking about Cloudborn steel.

"Cloudborn steel" is distinct in the iron, the process and the blend. The iron is different from other types of iron; it's a hit-or-miss thing - either a vein has iron that's usable for Cloudborn steel or it doesn't. There were other deposits of iron like this, but most of them were exhausted centuries ago.

The process and the blend are trade secrets.

Cloudbirth has monopolized this kind of steel, and it's a seller's market.

Six hundred in platinum is, apparently, reasonable to ask for a cuirass of it - in fact, slightly low. Somebody asked where I'd found that price, and I gave him the name.

It wasn't true.

Lots of things aren't.

Cloudbirth is shockingly expensive. Assuming three meals a day and not moving to a more dangerous part of town, we have money to last us a few months - but it isn't enough.

Which means that it's time to find two things.

First, a real job.

Second, and more urgently, some distant relatives whose names I don't know and who could be any face in the crowds. Maybe they can help.

Like a haystack needle II

Chitin does not know armor. Nor does he understand money, beyond "coins are shiny," so when he decided that he wanted some armor he asked Draven and me to go with him.

This was a good choice on his part. While I wear very little out of personal preference, I understand armor. More importantly, I know it.

Chitin was already overwhelmed by Cloudbirth; when we began shopping, he became like a child locked in a confectioner's store overnight.

Trying to narrow things down didn't help at all. "Do you want bezainted? Jazerainted? Chain? What kind of chain? Striped, or banded? Would barred work? Doubled? Do you mind heavy, or would half-heavy do? Can we even find somebody who's willing to make half-heavy around here?"

Chitin had no words for what he was looking for, but at the very first armorer we visited, he found his heart's desire: he pointed at a polished steel cuirass and said, emphatically, "That." No need for the rest of the pieces in the suit, or for the chain under it, or the felt under that, or the silk under all of those; he wanted the big piece in the center.

Eventually, he found a cuirass that was big enough that it might conceivably fit on him. (It was fitted for somebody else, of course.) And so, out of curiosity, he asked to put it on.

He hated it.

It was too heavy; he was looking for something lighter. (As was I, incidentally.) So we went through a dozen neighborhoods, comparing quality and prices and asking about custom work and so forth.

Eventually, we found what we were looking for. The man dealt in Cloudborn steel and the quality is reliably good. And, most importantly for Chitin, the cuirass was light enough. Light enough that I could see myself buying armor made from it.

The price was six hundred down, in platinum.

I once saw a ship unloading a cargo of spices, and knowing what I know now that cargo was easily several dozen Cloudborn steel breastplates, all tailored to fit Chitin perfectly. But in coin? Nobody has that kind of money. That's a dog's weight in platinum coins.

The price was inflated.

It had to be. We came over as being completely clueless ("But what kind of Moonsilver blend are we talking here? You can't just ask for a Moonsilver blend, there's no standard ratio so they'll sell you normal steel marked up seventy times. Would you like oryargyr, then? How about half-heavy, with the light rings straight steel? Starmetal? What the hell is that? I don't deal in Starbone. You'd have to do that custom order and pay extra...") - and we were. So he marked us up for it.

Like a haystack needle I

We left the King's District with a bath, a haircut, a change of clothes, and a favor (unspecified, but presumably "a 10% cut of the next year's canelle revenues" would be too big) from the King.

It was, at this point, that we had to go shopping. For my part, I wanted a shirt that wasn't white.

A decent gray shirt was ten blacksides.

Nor lose the common touch

The king remembered my name, and if he remembered me being bigger, he had the tact not to say so to my face.

All others needed introduction. All, save one.

The king has five children. None of them are his by blood.

To the right of SWORDS stood SHUFFLES, who did so. His gaze was downcast, and he clearly had better things to do than be memorable here.

To the right of the King stood SWORDS. He carried two of them, one for each pair of arms. I've seen swords like his, but never so ornate - and never used in pairs, even by martial artists who had specialized in their use. This means one of two things: either the swords are for decorative purposes only and he has never used them, or he's mastered them more than anybody I've seen before.

That's probably not true.

Lots of things aren't.

To the King's left stood SKARN. A skarn. Polished, for such is their nature. Forgettably perfect, for such is their nature. With a shockingly clean and high-pitched female voice, for though crossdressing is not the nature of skarns, it is apparently the nature of her. Unless SKARN is a male with a perfect female voice.

At SKARN's left stood NEY. A rilkan. Scaled but not spiked, for such is the nature of rilkans. Ravishingly beautiful, for such is their nature. Visibly a woman, but rumor has it that NEY was a crossdresser too.

There are only two princesses; it would have been impolite to ask which was which. Especially since I had forgotten all of their names in the eleven years since we were last in the same room together.

All of us, that is, save one.

Before the king, flanked by the judging gaze of her four adopted siblings, was Anaphity (I'll explain her later.) When she had come to my hometown, Bladibal, she had come for the Summer Solstice Festival. That was her explanation.

It wasn't true.

Lots of things aren't.

And so she stood, having gone absent without leave, accepting judgment without apologies.

His Highness and Honor asked us of our concerns. I spoke mine.

"A four-way war is breaking out, and every side but ours has an advantage."

Arriving in Cloudbirth

It's been ten years since I've been in Cloudbirth. They've been very long years. And I'm not sure it's good to be back.

It was good for Chitin, though. I'll explain him later.

But first: a trip to the baths and the barbers. (Chitin had his beard shaved, probably for the first time in his life. Again, I'll explain him later.) After three weeks of hard travel through melting snow (and an ambush), it was very nice to make myself presentable.

Things went downhill from there, at least for awhile.

Some new clothing was bought for me during my bath, to replace the old - which I wouldn't mind, except that the shirt was white. Immaculately white.

And my coat was replaced. The fastenings are silver buttons instead of knots, and the coat's the heaviest and best velveteen I've ever seen (if it's not real velvet.) It's full and perfect where mine was threadbare and broken in over sixteen seasons, and badly patched where I was injured - but mine was a gift. And I'm not happy to see it gone.

I won't complain about the rest of my outfit. It still squeaks when I move, but the scarves are silk and the boots fit tightly and I'll be able to break my hat in sooner or later; it will serve. But I miss my coat.

Then, to top things off, it happened. They said it: "I remember you being taller." Horror of horrors.

There followed some awkwardness: except for Rael and myself, none of us had proper documentation as citizens. Kara, in particular, needed documentation to establish her freedom.

And then we were swept off for a royal audience.