Chapter 4 (Part II): And Things Went South From There

“Why is it that everyone assumes I need to have children in order to have an heir to my throne? I should by far prefer it to be the other way – let me find someone I can trust to take over my responsibilities one day, and then perhaps I’ll be ready to take on the challenge of fatherhood.”

“But how can one be prepared to rule if they are not born to it?”

“Kings and queens expect total devotion from all of their people – yet few ever venture beyond the bubble of safety that they were born into to know those people. I doubt, sometimes, that anyone born to lead can truly do so.” 

-        Caelus IV recounting an argument with his cousin Flaedin in a journal dated three years prior to Syliva’s arrival in Caelia.

As she’d promised, Azraea laid low for a couple of days in the shack in order to sell the idea that she’d left the city with Kaira.  There was only so long she could stay there, though; even if there had been enough food and water for indefinite seclusion, Azraea was simply not the type to stay idle. She made the best of the time in the shack she could; she meditated to try and connect more deeply with the spirits of Kingstown (and in the dirty, low end of town it was pretty easy to find restless spirits to commune with), and she intensely practiced every spell outside of necromancy she could remember. Fiddling with the blade Vinny had given her became a nervous habit in the confines of the shack, but after three days of fidgeting with it she’d gotten completely comfortable with its weight and balance. Perhaps it had been that comfort that emboldened her to break her self-imposed quarantine and venture out into the strife-ridden city.

Azraea had never been as far north in Kingstown as she was now. When the residents of southern Kingstown wanted a nice (and in their minds relatively safe) adventure, they often went north of Gate Street to “Old Town”, where all of Kingstown’s ethnic grottos had long ago merged into one very colorful community. For Azraea, Old Town was like a second home within the city, and in the midst of such turbulence it was where Azraea wanted to be. It had always reminded her of her home in Hermanelle, and she’d always felt it was the soul of the city. The wide range of cultures mashed together with tightly spaced, almost ancient buildings, created an atmosphere of mystery… no, not mystery. It was possibility. The crowded restaurants and cafes, the overflowing shops – no matter how many times she’d wandered through Old Town, she was always certain that she’d only ever seen a fraction of what was there.

Right now that sounded oddly comforting, but Vidi’s shack was well north of Old Town in the slums that abutted the northern wall of the city. There had once been open ground within the walls of Kingstown, perhaps for farming or maybe simply for leisure - Azraea didn’t know - but that area had long since been filled with tenement housing packed in around Kingstown’s warehouses and least reputable of businesses. The slums were notorious for being home to all sorts of inappropriate goings-on; within the kingdom, Azraea's hometown of Hermanelle had an unfairly exaggerated reputation for criminal activity, but it was a reputation that she was certain Kingstown's slums would have lived up to. They had regularly been a hot topic in discussions of urban renewal and addressing Kingstown’s ‘crime problem’. Kaira had made forays into the slums on many occasions, but Azraea had never felt safe doing so. Even after everything she’d endured in the past few weeks, the place still unnerved her. In fact, the smell of refuse, the filthy mud in the streets, the chaotic angles of the unplanned buildings, and the deep shadows now reminded her quite a lot of the Dark Dweller’s forest.

Yet, here she was, slipping out of Vidi’s shack in the early morning into the labyrinth of dilapidated structures, hoping to find her way to a hot meal in Old Town. Even now, she wasn’t brave enough to go out in the slums at night – she felt that she might be able to defend herself against one, maybe two assailants, but she honestly wasn’t sure she could find her way out of the slums in the dark, and imagined herself wandering about for hours in the labyrinth of chaotically placed buildings and filthy streets.

Homeless individuals were abundant here; they had been forced to the northernmost portion of the city but even here, amidst the minimalist shacks and rickety structures, many of them still couldn’t afford a roof over their heads. Most were curled up with travel bags and haversacks in corners and under overhangs, and ignored her passing. There were far fewer panhandlers and beggars than she’d expected, but as she walked past the rows of decaying shacks piled on top of each other, she realized what most of the people here already understood; begging for money in this part of town would have been pointless. A few children asked for food or the means to purchase it when they saw her but she was afraid of what might happen if she showed off the contents of her coin purse. One man followed her for a ways, shouting at her about Golon judging her for her apathy.

The only real orientation Azraea had in the maze of buildings came from the morning shadows and the glimpses she could occasionally catch of the northern wall. It was difficult, but she tried to keep the wall behind her, to ensure she kept moving south. At one point she realized she would either be forced to head eastward through the warehouses, or westward through what was, essentially, the red light district. There was a time when she would have erred on the side of propriety, and avoided being seen in a place of ill-fame. Being now slightly older and much wiser, she decided it was more important to go where there were people to see her; the warehouses would be an easy place to disappear.

The tenements gave way to flophouses and the sorts of shops that kept their windows covered and their doors closed, even during business hours. Many men scurried about hurriedly, leaving the cheap hotels in the early morning light with their heads held low, avoiding eye contact. A few men leered at Azraea, whistling or shouting for her attention, bragging about their physical abilities or shaking their coin purses. One man, accompanied by an ostentatiously dressed young woman, seemed to take her cold shoulder as a bargaining tactic and jumped in front of her to start haggling.

“I’ve got an hour before I have to be at work, baby, and a dark cup of coffee like you is exactly what I need.” He was a clean cut, young professional man – a tad disheveled from a long night, perhaps, but his appearance wouldn’t have shouted ‘sleaze’. She’d been harassed by all sorts of men, though, especially where alcohol was involved, and it was always a tossup which was the worst. She quickly pegged him as falling into the entitled-fratboy-who-thinks-women-are-a-commodity category. They didn’t take rejection well, but she was in no mood to tip-toe around his fragile feelings.

“Sorry, but I don’t pay for sex,” she said flatly as she swerved around him.

The young woman laughed at the turnabout and tried to lead the confused man away, but he regained his train of thought and rushed to intercept Azraea again.”

“Honey, I’m not selling, I’m paying,” he laughed. He jingled his money, “Coin purse in hand.”

“Then I suggest you keep everything else in hand as well,” she said as she walked around him again.

“Well, okay,” he reached out and grabbed her butt cheek tightly, driving a finger up between her thighs.

Azraea whirled, unleashing the Gnoman blade strapped to her wrist. Driven by reflex, it didn’t occur to her not to kill him, but thrown off balance by his manhandling she missed his throat.

The man cursed and grabbed her wrist. She twisted her hand to slash his forearm, but he didn't let go, he just twisted her wrist bones until her hand loosened and the blade dropped to the ground, clattering on the worn cobblestone. He grabbed her by the throat with his free hand and began to throttle her.

“Bitch! Are you fucking crazy?!”

The young woman tried to pull him off of Azraea, but he shoved the girl away. Azraea summoned a fireball in her free hand as she reached for the man’s crotch, setting his pants aflame. He released her, screaming and frantically trying to put out the fire. 
A few bystanders had gathered to watch the fiasco, but no one interceded to help the man, so Azraea finally closed her fist the way Kaira had taught her and belted the man straight across the jaw. The punch laid him out flat on the muddy ground and with a shove of her foot she rolled her assailant over onto his front, extinguishing the fire with a long hiss.