The protector's farewell

At dawn, the bells of Torres rang nine times. Almost as if they were echoes, bells across the city of Arc rang solemnly chiming nine times each. From the high gardens of Torres, Barres, Gharesi, Asoon and Moraska that nestled along the side of the great red cliff face of Arc to the markets, courtyards, streets, boulevards and dockyards of the vast metropolis that served at the heart of all Aestis's trade and diplomacy, the ringing of the bells brought the city at dawn to an agonising pause. Arcites had been waiting for this moment for months, waking each morning in the anticipation that the bells would chime nine times and the life and reign of Protector Droskun Arand would finally have come to an end. Sailors disembarking from across the Arc Sea and beyond knew what the bells meant. Beggars who lived in the darkness of the shadows cast by the Three Sisters, the vast stone bridges that descended into steps into the city from the great gates, knew what it meant. Diplomats from across Aestis, merchants, bankers, mercenaries and the city's inhabitants that had gradually drifted deeper and deeper into the hidden places beneath the city knew what it meant. One world had come to an end and another one would soon be born in the last days of the Summer 295 in Our Time of Miseries. Just as monsoon storms broke across Harenis and as the children of Maredh and Faren Khanhalary set foot in the great Library of Harenis under Mount Khest, the old protector breathed his last.

The Protectors of Arc, thought Cassea Antares, had been and always would be frauds. Each and every one of them had been an emperor in all but name and had been too frightened of the title to accept it. Instead, they took on the mantle of worthiness with a far more palatable job description; no longer the undisputed master of the city, its people and more importantly its wealth, but its defender and guardian. She had no such illusions about the Protectors at all. Once they had been elected by the senate at the Azure Court, now they gradually emerged, one after another from  father to son, proving that in the world of the truly powerful very little changes. The Protector's ministers, the Lords of the Dome, had no doubt sat in the Rulderhall in the centre of the city and planned for months who would succeed Droskun when the time was right and there was little doubt that it would be his son, Simon. The last emperor of Arc, Toun a Dryne stepped off the battlements of the city walls, plunging into oblivion when the news of the loss of the Southern Empire, now more commonly known as Del Marah reached him. In the ensuing chaos the general that held the city Anjun Arras declared himself to be the first protector of Arc and swiftly dismantled an empire that the city could no longer hold together by force. Anjun's particular genius was to manage to hold on to the city's wealth and power using money itself, not blood and iron. Within a generation the trade and banking that had seen wealth flow through the city's gates had returned and the territorial empire that had been designed to guarantee such riches was gone. Every sane commentator at the time commended him, they knew that the vast expense of endless armies and endless wars was done with forever, but the power that Arc's lending houses and market squares exerted over the rest of Aestis would live forever. Protectors after Anjun knew full well that their first responsibility was to protect Arc's wealth with its citizens coming sometimes a distant second.

Cassea came from a very different tradition of power and knowledge within the city, one which sat, in economic and political terms  far below the protectors, their ministers and the money lenders who financed everything. Her father, Aurime Antares, was one of the nine justiciars of the city, investigating judges; he was a man who, in a long career in the service of old Vannic law, had sent several generations of thieves, frauds and traitors to the Chain City, the network of prisons that existed hundreds of feet beneath Arc's streets. She reserved a special awe for his methodical calm, having never known so much as a flash of anger from him over the years. He was normally armed with little more than his old battered leather ledger and a quill, but both these items had more power than any sword in this city of both rules and rule breakers. Law and corruption lived side by side with one another and Cassea's father was quite sanguine about this. The battle was never lost nor won, just simply ongoing. This was something he had thought until sunrise on this, the longest day of his life. 

Today everything changed.

Deo had little idea where he had been for the last few days. To call him a drunkard was perhaps to miss the point, he sometimes managed months without a drop of wine but then there were weeks like this. This one had ended badly, so bad in fact, that there was no immediate comparison. He had woken on cold wet stone with a a burning thirst in his throat and the blood pounding in his temples and ears. His body shook and ached and he tried to make sense of his surroundings. He weakly pushed himself up on to his hands and knees and felt for the first time cold steel around his wrists. Opening his eyes, he could see little around him, incarcerated as he was in an enveloping gloom; a crack of pale flickering lamp light shone from underneath a door in front of him. The type of door was unmistakable and he had encountered it at least once before. It was the door between the inside of a dungeon and freedom and he had awoken on the wrong side. Now was the moment for Deo to take a painful yet familiar mental journey back through the list of events that had most likely brought him to this moment. Recalling most of this would be difficult, but he knew it started several days ago with one fateful decision; the decision to go to the district of Morning Hill for a drink.