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  Mui Thom

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  It was a very rare experience for a military man to not know what to do with himself. Very rare indeed.

  Oh, it was common as mud for a military man to not find anything useful to do with himself. Having nothing to do at all, though? That just didn’t happen. In the eyes of officers, there was always more, more, more. There was always armor to be polished, leaves to be raked, and if all else should fail, a bucket, mop, and pouring rain to soak up. Everyone knew that idleness was meant to be a civilian luxury, even if the work being done was of no benefit to anyone.

  As he watched the Empire’s entourage retreat without him, Mui was confronted with the very strange fact that he had no orders whatsoever. None meaningful, at least. He and his squad had been left near the weapon testing grounds, told to wait for the Chosen to show up. He had no idea how long that would take, what he would be doing when she did show up, and was generally ignorant of any other detail he could have possibly wanted to know. Were he slightly more pessimistic, he might say he’d been abandoned.

  This suited his squad well enough. They’d repurposed a few empty crates for lounge chairs, recognizing that the splintery wood was slightly softer than stone. Most were already unconscious. The first skill one learned in a marching army was the rarity of sleep. Rest was a precious commodity, to be hoarded at every opportunity, and opportunities to seek it jealously fought over.

  But as their Sergeant, Mui couldn’t seek it himself. Not only was it inappropriate for an officer (even a sergeant) to be seen loafing about, at least one person had to be awake for someone to notice the Chosen’s arrival. It wouldn’t do to have the woman unknowingly pass them by, leaving them stranded in this foreign, half-empty city.

  Which left Mui with the same problem as before.

  He had nothing to do.

  He looked about himself, stirring the slight haze of smoke with his muzzle, wondering at all he could see.

  His first experience with true foreigners was certainly proving appropriately alien. There was a very peculiar mixture of behaviors he could see, mostly brought on by the presence of the constantly-cracking weapons. The city streets were far wider than should be necessary for such a small popution, yet the people walking them did so in tight clusters, chatting loudly with one another. In Haradrapavata, this much space for oneself would have been a luxury. He could already imagine his mother and father shouting at one another across the road for entire conversations, simply to indulge in the luxury of having access to the space to do so.

  Yet for all the nd they had, the signs of poverty were omnipresent. The currency he saw changing hands was mostly cheap copper discs, thin enough to be bent between two fingers. The people’s clothes cked color, and though no one was running about in rags, patches and stitches were visible on nearly every shirt, even the children. It was not a destitute popuce, not as Mui imagined one would look, but the city was a far cry from wealthy.

  Which made it all the stranger when he occasionally spotted signs of the bizarre.

  The weapons, for example. They were thick tubes of iron, with complex mechanical mechanisms at their rear to create sparks on demand, including finely worked metal notches through which dozens of citizen volunteers were peering. The wooden portions of the weapons were not eborately carved sculptures, but they were obviously well-made, with a sheen of cquer that suggested they were meant to st for a very, very long time. Entirely out of pce.

  And the city Guards! He had never seen a civilian force so well equipped. The Empire prided itself on providing its soldiers with the finest protection avaible, but to see mere catchpoles wearing metal breastptes and helmets? Odd as could be. Many of the guards even wore the scars of battle, either on their armor or their skin. He idly wondered if this “Republic” bothered to distinguish between civilian and military. At the very least, he had to imagine those in charge of instructing the civilians had at least some degree of military experience.

  Save for one man, at least. The fellow had caught Mui’s eye early on, and had kept dragging his attention back. A tall, rge-bellied man, wearing a strange pair of metal-framed gss ptes over his eyes, was huffing back and forth between the tables, happily babbling away to anyone who made the mistake of gncing his way. It was a highly entertaining sight. Mui watched the way the civilians were politely nodding along to the man’s words, uninterested in hearing more, yet unwilling to be rude by refusing to listen. Occasionally the man would pick up one of the weapons, pointing at one part or another while he continued to jabber away, and then the civilian might take a slight bit more interest, but that was rare. Most only looked ready to return to their shooting. Those waiting behind the wayid individual certainly wished for the man to finish his interruption.

  Unfortunately, Mui failed to realize his own staring was a risk in and of itself. Despite the fact that fifty or so feet separated them, as he turned around, the man caught Mui’s eyes. His expression lit up in a smile.

  Oh, no.

  Mui tried to stare over the man’s shoulder, as if he’d been looking at something further down the street, but it was too te. The man came up to Mui with a rge grin, pointing at the table.

  “Bah sarnot de polu?” He asked.

  Mui pointed at his ears, shaking his head. “Can’t understand you, friend.”

  “Ah!” To Mui’s dismay, the man perked up considerably. He pointed at Mui’s chestpte. “Empire?”

  “Empire,” Mui confirmed, after considerable hesitation.

  The man babbled more nonsensical words, louder now, waving encouragingly for Mui to follow.

  Mui gnced at his squad, all of whom were still asleep. He’d been in the army long enough to know that any group of unsupervised soldiers was a liability. He also knew they wouldn’t willingly wake until physically disturbed.

  And the strange weapons did look awfully intriguing.

  Mui followed after the man, heading over to one of the tables that was poputed only by armored individuals. The weapons ying on this table were slightly different to the others. They were a few inches longer, with a slot of metal protruding from the bottom of the tube near the end, while the upper rear of the weapon’s seemed more complex, featuring a number of additional lines cut into the metal. From what he could see of the two groups, there was little change in their use, leaving him wondering what the difference was.

  Responding to the enthusiastic man’s insistent nattering, several of the other shooters at the table stepped away, clearing a space for Mui. He appreciated the gesture. Even with cotton stuffed deep into his ears, the crack of each booming weapon was painful.

  What followed was perhaps the most awkward “training” experience of Mui’s life. Without a single common word between them, the man walked him through the steps of loading and firing the weapon by gesture and pantomime alone. Occasionally the fellow would go so far as to grab Mui’s wrists, correcting his motions. Mui had nearly broken the fellow’s fingers with a snap of his hand, instinct telling him to fight off anyone taking hold of his arms while he had a weapon, but he thankfully restrained himself.

  After a few minutes of profoundly awkward back-and-forth, Mui was holding a loaded weapon. The man produced a sheet of paper, sketching out an image of the weapon’s sights and how they should be aligned, clearly unaware that Mui was already familiar with simir devices on Imperial ballista.

  He made a show of carefully inspecting the diagram, just to be polite, then put the weapon to his shoulder. Mui put his thumb on the metal striker which held a crystal gem, looking to the man for confirmation. After receiving a confirmatory nod, Mui pushed down, readying the weapon.

  His target, a perforated breastpte that seemed to have previously sported an impressive set of enchantments, was set at the far end of the dueling grounds, maybe a hundred feet or so away. An easy enough shot for a trained bowman, but nothing to scoff at for his first shot of a strange weapon. The weapon was heavy for its size, maybe nine or ten pounds, and it was uncomfortable to keep it in position. He lined up the two outer sights with the center notch at the end of the barrel, pcing it over the target. He started to lift his aim, to adjust for the drop of the unwieldy lead ball he’d loaded, but the man once again interrupted him, gesturing to keep his aim low. Against his better judgment, Mui did so, aiming directly at the breastpte.

  When no more corrections to his form came, he pulled the trigger.

  The sudden impact against his shoulder was shocking in its intensity. He’d seen the smoke from the others, heard their weapon’s snap, but he hadn’t expected the sheer force the weapon would throw against his body. It turned him aside slightly, and if he hadn’t been wearing a chestpte, he suspected a bruise would already be forming. He shook his head as the wind washed the smoke back over him, his whiskers twitching vigorously.

  A short moment after the ringing in his ears faded, it was repced by the sound of ughter. Mui turned to find a cluster of the armored members of the Tulian Republic thoroughly enjoying themselves, having gathered to watch his first shot.

  Mui just managed to stop his lip from curling into a snarl, and only because he noticed that their ughter was punctuated by appuse, as well. One man noticed Mui’s expression and, by way of expnation, pointed to the target.

  Right in the center of the chestpte, just where the armor creased above the sternum, was a new hole. A neat circle had been punched in the steel, clean as could be. Anyone who had been wearing the chestpte would have dropped dead, probably before they realized they’d ever been struck.

  Mui’s whiskers kept twitching. He looked down at the weapon in his hands, the soldier’s ughter forgotten.

  “Another?” He asked, waving to the bag of ammunition his guide held.

  The man smiled as he dug out a pellet of lead and a paper-wrapped bundle of powder, handing them over.

  The mind-numbing tedium he had been anticipating had suddenly become something very different. Mui went through the loading process yet again, this time needing less guidance. In another minute, he had reloaded. He wanted to know if the first shot’s accuracy had been a fluke.

  Mui lifted.

  Aimed.

  Fired.

  And hit.

  Another circle of punched steel appeared, a ring of hollow space, this time in the center of what would have been his target’s right lung.

  Another polite smattering of appuse from the troops. Mui recognized their reaction now for what it was. It wasn’t particurly remarkable for this weapon to strike so accurately. Their encouragement was simply what good troops did for nervous recruits, congratuting them on simple achievements so that they would not be discouraged when they inevitably failed.

  This in mind and his own expectations adjusted, Mui began loading again, trying to find a rhythm in the process. Weapon held between his feet, lead and paper between his fingers. Bite the powder package open, dump it down the barrel, then send the lead ball chasing after it. Help the ball along with the ram rod until it thumped home. Slot the rod back into its pce under the gun, press down the spring-loaded crystal, take aim.

  Fire.

  Begin anew.

  His third shot flowed into his fourth, then his fifth, each coming quicker than the st. The soldiers watching him eventually lost their interest and rejoined the line, adding their own smoke to the skies. Mui watched them through the corner of his eye, judging their shots.

  They were more accurate than him, as he’d expected. What he hadn’t expected was how much more accurate they were. His shots were pced within the same ten or so inches, an admirable first attempt. Meanwhile, many of the soldiers were pcing their no more than a thumb’s width apart, sometimes slipping them into the same hole the previous shot had left. Mui was no prodigy, and this strange weapon clearly had more skill to discover.

  With nothing better to do, and frankly because he was rather enjoying himself, Mui kept at it.

  It must have been an hour ter that he was startled from his practice by the sudden sound of proper Kemari being spoken directly behind him.

  “I can see you’re enjoying the guns, huh?”

  The voice was eerily familiar. Mui spun about, startled, one hand instinctively reaching for his sword.

  Only to find an iron grip stopping it in pce, the pain of pressure radiating up his arm.

  A woman he barely recognized had seized him by the wrist, stepping between him and the Chosen. The woman from before, he realized. The one that hadn’t left the Chosen’s side through the entire day.

  Despite the pain, Mui’s first thought was that the woman was enchantingly peculiar. She had the ears and tail of a catfolk, yet her skin was bare as any human. Mui had heard of those like her, but never met someone who fit the description. She wore a cavalryman’s metal cuirass, with the odd addition of a rge leather pouch strapped across the armor, though she eschewed any armor beyond this. An intriguing ensemble.

  His fascination, however, vanished the moment his appraisal reached her face. Her features should have been as beautiful as the rest of her, but there was something… off. Her face looked as if it had been peeled away, turned a touch to one side, then pced back down. Her every feature was ever so slightly twisted, off-kilter in a dozen ways he could not quite give words to.

  Her expression did not help. She was looking at him with a fire in her eyes, cold-forged fury fring behind slitted pupils. The anger had worn deep trenches in her skin, lines dug along the course of a deep scowl, as if the expression rarely left her.

  Against his will, Mui’s tail puffed out while his lips curled away from his fangs, a panicked hiss ripping out of his throat. He tore his hand away, cws emerging as he prepared to–

  Nothing happened.

  Mui’s arm was left dangling in the woman’s grip. She hadn’t so much as twitched, even as he threw his entire body into tearing his wrist free.

  “Woah! Hey there, it’s alright,” the Chosen cried, moving between the two of them. “Sorry about that, Mui. Shouldn’t have snuck up on you.”

  The other woman released her grip.

  Mui stumbled backward, grabbing at his sword. He didn’t care what the Chosen said, he was not going unarmed near that… that thing.

  “This is my wife, Evie,” the Chosen said as if nothing had happened, holding her hand out to indicate the woman. “Evie, this is Sergeant Mui Thom.”

  The monster vanished with a fsh of white teeth, repced by the vaguely pretty woman he had first mistaken it for. The harsh creases of her face smoothed over into a polite, gentile smile.

  “My pleasure,” Evie said, nodding her head respectfully as the foreign words flitted across her tongue.

  Mui rubbed his wrist. The fluffing of his fur had spread from his tail all the way up his spine, making him grateful his back was facing away from the two women.

  “I apologize,” Mui said, willing his fur to rex. “You startled me, and I reacted inappropriately.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about it,” the Chosen said breezily. Even with his hand still on the hilt of his sword, she sauntered forward casually, squinting to inspect his target.

  While she did so, Mui could not help but stare. She was wearing clothes of a sort he had never seen before, not even amongst the Tulian popuce. A bck-scaled coat of alligator hide dropped just to her waist, adorned across the shoulders with spikes and blood-red, pentagrammic iconography. Her hair was falling free in gentle bck waves, rolling over and across the spikes without once tangling, and following it drew Mui’s eyes down to her legs. Here, more than anywhere else on her otherwise covered body, was on dispy the sblike muscuture that y beneath her clothing. The tightly-clinging material, yet another thing Mui had never seen, may as well have been painted on, highlighting every twitch of the steel-cabled muscles which y beneath her skin. Only her undershirt beneath the alligator jacket, made of subtly dyed cloth, was something he had seen before.

  That and her almost disturbingly pleasing smile, which she treated him with once again.

  “Nice shooting,” the Chosen said, thankfully not noticing the gawking he could not restrain. “Most people don’t do nearly as well their first time.”

  “Not as well as I would have preferred,” Mui cautiously replied, turning so he could keep both women in his line of sight. “Your other soldiers were making a mess of me.”

  “They better be, with how much bckpowder I’ve budgeted for their training.” She gnced at Mui, scanning his armor from head to toe with a flick of her eyes. “And if there are armies like yours sitting on our southern border, I think I might have to start spending even more.”

  Mui did not know how to respond to that, so he fell back on the ever-reliable standby. A polite smile and agreeing nod, stating nothing.

  “C’mon, don’t give me that,” the Chosen ughed, grinning widely. “You can ease up. I’m not going to bite your head off.”

  Before he could stop himself, Mui’s eyes slid to the woman at her side. Evie.

  “She won’t either,” the Chosen tacked on. “So long as you don’t give her a reason to. My wife’s the protective sort, but that doesn’t mean she’s a cold-blooded murderer.”

  Evie’s ears twitched slightly at this. He didn’t think the Chosen noticed, but Mui’s family had been catfolk for four generations, and he easily recognized the little quiver. Apparently the two women disagreed on some matters.

  “How much were you told about your purpose here?” The Chosen asked, moving to inspect the weapon he’d been using.

  “Precious little, Your Holiness. Only that I am to follow your instructions as I might the Adjutant’s.”

  She raised an eyebrow without looking away from the gun. “Really? They just told you ‘do what she says’ and left it at that?”

  “Erm. Yes, Your Holiness.”

  “Okay, now that you can cut out,” the Chosen said. Her eyes darted up, boring into him. “I’m not holy. Amarat and I have, at best, a solid professional retionship. I don’t worship her, and I’m certainly not her errand-runner. Besides,” she added with a scoff, “worshiping a real, living, breathing person is about the stupidest thing you could ever do. I’m not perfect. I won’t ever be. My name’s Sara Brown, Mui Thom. And if you refer to me by any kind of trumped-up-honorific again, I’ll find someone else for this task.”

  Mui swallowed hard, filing to find an adequate response. The casual air of the Chosen did not match the uncompromising severity of their words. Thankfully the Chosen’s wife turned to her, rapidly saying several things Mui could not understand. The Chosen rolled her eyes, but seemed to relent.

  “You can, however, refer to me as ma’am, or Governess, which is my official title in Tulian. Well, technically my official-official title is Provisional Governess, but that’s a mouthful. So basically, ‘ma’am’ is fine, if you want to be formal for some reason.”

  Mui sighed in relief. This was something that he could much more readily parse. That foreigners would have differing opinions on proper forms of address was far more reasonable than not using honorifics at all.

  “I understand, ma’am. I apologize for offending you.”

  She ughed, setting the weapon he’d been using aside, having apparently finished her inspection. “You didn’t offend me. Trust me, if you had, you’d know it. But it’s harder to do than most people expect. And besides, I already know you’re a decent enough guy. Don’t tell me you already forgot our meeting a few days ago?”

  I wish I could, Mui thought. Outwardly, he cleared his throat, shaking his head in the negative.

  “Of course not, ma’am. I must say, your acting was remarkable. I didn’t suspect a thing.”

  “No one did. We got in and out of your army clean. Unless there was some wizard bullshit going on, I can be pretty confident saying that no one but you knows about it. Thanks for not ratting me out, by the way.”

  “I wou–”

  Mui froze, the sentence dying on his tongue. He was about to say ‘I would never’. He’d stopped when he’d given better though to who, exactly, he was about to say it to. The Avatar of Speech was not likely to be fooled by his stuttering falsehoods.

  “I tried, ma’am,” he said instead. “But the meeting was almost underway, and I wasn’t allowed access to Preeminant-Most Warrior Suy-Ty.” He hung his head. “I apologize.”

  She looked at him, a peculiar expression on her face. She faced him squarely, arms folded over her chest.

  “Pretty hierarchal society you came from, then? Big emphasis on interpersonal ranking? I gathered some of that from my time in your army, but I was hoping that was just standard army shit. This isn’t that. Would one of your leaders, if you told them the same thing, be angry at you?”

  He was gd he had hung his head, because it mostly hid the way his eyes were threatening to pop from his skull. It was the commoner’s nightmare: ordered by one Lord to testify against another. He had seen a dozen pys in which a character’s poor answer earned them a gruesome fate. Only the cleverest, most eloquent individuals could worm their way through the jaws of such a trap.

  Mui thanked the gods that, before he could remember the exact wording those famous characters had used, the Chosen turned to her wife and spoke a few terse words. There was a brief reply as the woman pulled a notebook from her pocket, opening it to a list that extended across several pages. The Chosen’s wife scratched a harsh line through one of the very first entries, then snapped her book closed, returning it to her bag.

  “Don’t worry about it, Mui,” the Chosen said. “Sorry to put you in an awkward spot.”

  Mui slowly raised his head, blinking. “I’m… sorry?”

  “Nothing to apologize for. And I mean that literally. I was just curious about your culture. I’m pretty good at what I do, but until I know more about your people, accidentally stepping on toes is kind of inevitable.” She chuckled. “You should have seen the look on Suy-Ty’s face when I mentioned that I have two wives, and one of ‘em’s pregnant.”

  Mui bnched.

  “Yeah, that one!” She ughed. “That’s the face he made. I mean, less, like,” she made a motion around her face, drawing it outward, “muzzle and whiskers and all that, but still. Dude couldn’t believe it. What’s so surprising about that?”

  “That’s…” Mui struggled to put it into words. “I have never heard of a human with two wives before. It seems incredible.”

  “A human?” She asked, cocking her head. “What do you mean by that?”

  “Well, not just human. All the races save the Elven, of course.”

  Her eyebrows rose. “Sorry, I didn’t catch the implication. What does ‘of course’ mean there? Why would the elves get multiple wives?”

  “Because… they do?” Mui floundered, struggling to find words for a sentiment so simple it shouldn’t have needed them. “Perhaps it should not be so shocking. You are a Chosen of the gods, ma’am. Of course you would be included amongst their ranks.”

  “Oh. Oh, is this some racism shit?” The Chosen leaned forward, her interest piqued, and not in a good way. The motion left her shirt drooping, and Mui’s mental efforts redirected themselves wholly to maintaining firm eye contact. “The elves are allowed to do shit you’re not? Is that it?”

  “They are the Elves,” Mui insisted, as if repeating himself would add crity. “I wouldn’t dare compare myself to them.”

  “See, Mui, that’s funny.” The Chosen took a step forward and, mercifully, straightened. Less mercifully, however, that single step from her long legs had carried her much closer than it would most, and he had to stop his nose from reflexively breathing deeply of her scent. “I don’t like when certain people are allowed to do things that others aren’t. It’s not something I approve of.”

  Out of the corner of his vision, Mui watched the nearest soldiers exchange nervous gnces, shifting away from the Chosen. Her wife pressed into her side, one hand on her lower back, as was common for wives to do. Unlike most, however, she took a fistful of the woman’s shirt, like an owner gripping the chain of a growling dog.

  “And I really don’t like when certain people cim they’re better than everyone else. That’s a very, very good way to piss me off.”

  “Sara,” the Chosen’s wife harshly whispered.

  “I’m fine,” the Chosen snapped. “Just something I’m interested in learning.”

  “I can’t say that I am aware of much of the Elves and their thoughts, ma’am,” Mui cautiously ventured. “They’re just not… I do not know what to say, ma’am. I have not seen them often. And when I have, it has only ever been at a distance.”

  Though he’d meant the words to soothe whatever anger was building up inside the Chosen, the whites of her eyes only grew.

  “Segregation, then? They do fucking racial segregation?”

  Before Mui could sputter out a response that would, judging by his current track record, almost certainly make everything worse, he was cut off by the Chosen’s wife physically tugging her aside. A brief conversation ensued between the two women, so rapid-fire and filled with snapped gesticutions that Mui doubted he would have been able to follow it even if he’d been a native speaker of the nguage.

  “Sorry,” the Chosen said as she abruptly pivoted back towards him, her exotically accented Kemari returning alongside her dazzling smile. “My wife’s right, as usual. That’s not really a topic worth pursuing. Right now, we’ve got better things for you and your troops to be doing.” She gnced at Mui’s sleeping squad. “Are they up for a tour of the city as my wife and I go about our duties? Or should we have them quartered and fed after their journey? I’ve led soldiers before. I know how it is.”

  Mui was about to say that of course his squad was able to join the Chosen, that their journey across empty hills hadn’t been a struggle in the slightest, but then he caught sight of one of the women cracking open an eye. She’d heard the Chosen’s offer.

  “I think that they would be grateful for rest in a proper barracks, ma’am,” Mui said instead. In his troop’s minds, he’d earned them this abandonment in an alien nd, and he feared they’d soon loathe him for it. He needed to make amends if ever he was to maintain their loyalty.

  “Of course.” She whistled, and the same man that had been leading the envoy jogged over.

  As he got closer, Mui had his first chance to properly appraise the strange, oil-skinned fellow. He had been training some of the troops nearby and, accordingly, donned more of his armor. The sight stirred some memory in Mui, one that he struggled to grasp for a moment, until it suddenly clicked into pce.

  What is a Carrion Sergente doing in this empty city?

  The moment after the question came to him, Mui knew he would have no answer. It was not his pce to ask, so he forced himself to discard the thought.

  The Carrion fellow came up to the Chosen, listened to her speak for a moment, then snapped off a precise salute. He jogged back towards Mui’s squad and, with his broken shards of Kemari vocabury, managed to communicate that they would be brought to their dwellings. The squad looked to Mui, who nodded, and then they were being escorted away.

  Amazing how simply some things happen, when one is speaking to the master of a city.

  “And what do you wish of me, ma’am?” Mui asked. “I would not be so presumptuous as to dey your dealings for the day simply by following in your shadow like a lost dog.”

  “You won’t slow anything up,” the Chosen assured him. “Besides, you’re going to be teaching my people about yours. It’d be best if you knew as much about us as you can before you start, right?”

  “As you say, ma’am,” Mui said, bowing slightly.

  The Chosen’s lips turned down at the gesture. He hastily straightened.

  “No need to bow for me, Mui. I’m just some chick who got lucky. Now, let’s see what we have first.” She spoke to her wife, who produced a notebook, yet another of an increasingly astounding collection, and responded quickly. The Chosen cpped her hands, pleased. “Perfect! Mui, what do you know about steel?”

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  The building which Mui was approaching was intimidating. Not intimidating like a fortress, with its steep earthen hills angling up to solid stone, nor intimidating in the way the towering paces of nobility loomed over the cities.

  No, it was intimidating in its sheer, uncompromising utility.

  Its ocean-facing side was made of the same white stone that had crawled up the city’s walls and its bulbous fortifications, capped by a sturdy roof of thick cy tiles. Its other walls were less monumental, for they had rge sections cut out to allow great billowing sheets of heated air to escape. From the angle they approached, the entire construction appeared wreathed by a great mirage, shimmering as if it were sitting behind a veil of water. Though the Chosen had already told him this was an illusion created by the great heat the building was outputting, Mui struggled to imagine how that could be.

  Then there was the noise. He had thought it the roar of the ocean at first, but soon realized that it couldn’t be, not when the city had no beaches for waves to roll up upon. Next he imagined it to be great stone boulders constantly being pushed up hills, the ground itself groaning and trembling under their weight, but he could not imagine any reason for such a thing to exist. Whatever it was, it was growing louder as they approached.

  Then, without warning, the Chosen did the st thing Mui could have expected.

  Her coat of bck alligator leather, with its strange spikes and incomprehensible symbols, was shucked off and tossed over a shoulder. She began rolling up her simple cloth shirt until it ended just at the bottom of her ribcage, then pinned it in pce, moving to her hair, which she slid into a tied ponytail. Even her wife peeled off her metal cuirass, holding it in one hand as they approached.

  “You sure you want to keep all that on?” The Chosen asked, eying his armor.

  Mui thought of the sweaty, rat-chewed underclothes that protocol forced him to wear under his armor. He’d never taken care of it, not when his fur was more than enough to prevent his equipment from binding and pinching.

  “No, I will be alright,” he said, forcing a smile. “I have lived in a jungle my entire life, ma’am. You northerners are too used to the winds gifted to you by these open nds to know true heat, I think.”

  The ethereal, otherworldly beauty of a Goddess’s Chosen responded with an indelicate snort of ughter. “Alright, buddy. Let me know if you’re gonna pass out.”

  “Of course, ma’am.”

  Taking a deep breath to gird himself, Mui entered the wall of heat.

  The first thing he became aware of when he passed across the building’s threshold was the sudden jump in volume of that ominous rumbling. The indistinct grumbling gained yers of detail, rising and falling in rhythmic tune, accompanied by what sounded like a hundred snakes hissing in unison. It was regur enough to be music, the thump and hiss chasing one after the other in an endless circle, but no instrument he’d ever known could recreate what he heard now.

  “Oh, that’s the steam engine,” the Chosen said as she noticed his swiveling ears, directing Mui’s attention to something in a distant corner of the building.

  If he hadn’t been warned ahead of time, Mui would have leapt backward. It looked like someone was in the midst of trying to capture a demon by draping it in a pile of chains, and they were failing. It had bones of whirling iron, joints of spinning steel, and it spat its fury in terrible spouts of steam. Even knowing it was nothing of the sort, old memories threatened to fight their way to the surface, and for once he didn’t bother to hide the fear rippling down his spine.

  But then some child, a boy who could be no older than sixteen or seventeen, strolled up to the thing’s body. He reached in, twisting something Mui couldn’t see. The whole assembly shuddered slightly, the pitch of its hiss shifting, and after listening for a moment, the boy moved away, hiding his yawn with a raised hand.

  “This is the engine you referred to?” Mui demanded, aghast.

  “Yeah,” the Chosen answered casually, gesturing ahead of herself. “It’s not the best, but it’s pretty good. We’ve only had a few months to get this going. Watch this, now. We got here just in time.”

  As the boy retreated, one of the chains attached to the iron beast suddenly tensed, drawing itself up like a snake. Mui’s eyes followed the links, each of which was thicker than his forearm, as they were drawn higher and higher. The chains slithered along the warehouse ceiling by following a track of firmly mounted pulleys, each one creaking as weight was put upon them. The chain finally dropped back down in the center of the room, where it was attached to some rge, egg-shaped vessel that was suspended over the floor. Twice Mui’s height and equally wide at its bulging center, it was wrapped in iron ptes that were heated to a subtle cherry glow.

  Though the vessel was far less demonic than the engine to which it was attached, it was certainly more alien. It was vomiting a great torrent of sparking fmes into the air from a tapered upper half, each guttering spout more than enough to consume a man whole. It alone was responsible for all the heat in the building, and it took no smith to tell him that the thing was hotter than any forge he’d ever seen. Beneath the multitude of industrial cngs, clicks, and hisses, Mui could hear the rush of air constantly flowing through a great metal tube feeding into the bottom of the device, creating the torrent of fmes that were spitting out above. The exact way by which it produced the billowing breath was hidden from him, save for the fact that it, too, was attached by a series of bizarre mechanisms to that violently pounding ‘engine.’

  The chain tightened yet further, drawing itself up, and Mui realized with a burst of panic that the entire fire-spitting vessel was tilting, tipping, turning itself over.

  It was only the fact that the Chosen and her wife continued to dispassionately watch that kept Mui rooted to his feet. Otherwise, he would have fled with his tail between his legs, and never once would he have felt shame for it.

  The workers of this hellish forge were made of sterner stuff. Wearing sb-faced helmets with darkly-tinted gss across their eyes, they began pushing some sort of iron cart running along metal tracks.

  The vessel reached its tipping point, the chain no longer required to shift it, and the oppressive heat became utterly unbearable. Glowing liquid vomited from the thing’s mouth, spitting out into one of the carts that had been moved to receive it in sludgy torrents. Clouds of smoke and steam spat into the air with a banshee’s shriek as the liquid metal made contact with the body of the cart.

  Then, with the regurity of a pendulum clock, the chains reversed themselves, tipping the vessel back up. Those workers that had pushed the cart into pce slid a coffin’s lid overtop, then pulled against its body, moving it out of the way. They were repced almost immediately by a second team sliding their cart into pce, and the vessel began to tip forward again, repeating the process.

  Mui watched in awe as the cart was removed and the entire series of events began again. There were six or seven carts in a line, each waiting to receive their load of molten metal.

  “How much iron can this… this thing hold?” Mui asked.

  “Five tons,” the Chosen answered distractedly, watching the procession with an eagle’s eye. “I wanted to make more of them, and better ones, but we just don’t have the resource production to keep up right now. We can only run it twice a day at most, when we get a shipment of foreign ore, or once a day at half volume, when it’s only our domestic production being used. The whole thing’s still pretty primitive.” She gnced at him from the corner of her eye. “Oh, and it’s not iron. It’s steel.”

  The great vessel tipped again, heating the air to a boil. The tips of his whiskers began to curl, and he feared that if he stepped any closer, his fur may burst alight.

  Mui shivered.

  “I… yes, I think I’m beginning to feel light-headed,” he muttered, moving away. “I will go elsewhere, if you do not mind.”

  The Chosen’s analytical focus was swept away by a tide of concern as she darted towards him, taking an arm.

  “Of course, of course! Sorry, you seemed so interested. Let’s get you out of here.” She whistled, calling out something as she led Mui away, and he soon found a cool rag pced upon his neck, a canteen of water thrust into his hands. Even a healer rushed over, hands already aglow, but he waved them off.

  The Chosen and her wife left him on a set of steps near the building while they returned to review something or another with whoever was in charge. Mui watched from a distance. Already the molten steel that had been moved into the carts was being ferried about the greater yard, being poured into casts of a great many shapes and sizes. All were moving quickly, presumably to use up all the steel before it cooled too much, and there was so much to do. The tipping of the molten metal had summoned hundreds of workers into the yard, smiles on their faces as they emerged from every nearby building to begin their work.

  Mui watched other ‘engines’ creak to life. Though there were only a handful spread across hundreds of workers, and each one was far smaller than the beast contained within the white stone, the devices had energy to spare. They were used to lift weight, tip carts, and generally do anything which might have required a Css of great strength to accomplish at his own home. Pimple-faced teenagers were, with the clink of a chain or click of a lever, doing the work of master craftsmen.

  Later, the Chosen would come to collect him, and their tour of the city would continue. He would see steam powering great weaving machines, uncountable needles piecing together enough cloth to see an entire ship outfitted with sails, only to be told the sheet would be cut up and turned into clothes for those who needed them. He peered through a thick gss window as men and women covered head-to-toe in glistening protective clothing shifted vials of gss with the care of religious ritual, pouring them into other bottles that began to hiss and bubble. He was told the names of the substances they were producing, but not even the Chosen’s magic could provide a transtion. They were new to this world. He was told that even now in the distant mines there were being assembled roving beasts of steel, their mouths a tornado of picks and shovels, their excrement untold tons of unrefined ore.

  And still he couldn’t scrub that first warehouse from his mind. Five tons of steel a day. Ten tons, if they had the ore for it. Enough to make a sword for every man, woman and child in the city, with a helmet and breastpte alongside. Heat like hellfire turning the tips of his whiskers bck, and the scrawny, Cssless child who had been the organizer of it all. He’d watched a Chosen of the Gods speak to that child, agreeing with his words like he was an equal.

  When he had watched pys as a youth, he had never understood certain characters menting their so-called ‘curse of knowledge’. How could knowledge, the same knowledge that brought power, ever be a curse? It was a tool like any other, and one could do with it as they wished.

  Mui shook his head in the darkness of the private room he’d been gifted. He had been staring at the dark ceiling for hours, sleep yet to find him. Cursed.