Inch by Inch

The crowd scurried back and forth. They swarmed and subsided. It was frantic and uncontrolled display of the emotions within, yet all with such unity that from afar, you might think they moved with one mind. The mass formed a semicircle around the patchwork entrance. There was communication between the layers. The hive debating whether to protect or attack.

It was not your average day at the dog track. Even the bookies hadn’t set up shop. All bets were off. Adventurers came today in their armor, but they didn’t prepare to run. Instead, they clogged the doorways to the Lauchia bureau of adventuring.

“What’s going on?” Jay asked, unsettled by the swarm ahead. The sight had stopped him at the end of the road.

“Nothing good,” Kane stated, eyes twitching as he stared at the crowd.

“The announcement?” Ana replied with a question of her own. She stepped to the side and stepped up on her tiptoes to try and get a better look.

“Tif?” Jay flexed his hands. The familiar motion and pressure of his muscles helped center him. “You think this confirms he’s on the council, then?”

It was a theory they’d come up with on the way back to the dorm last night. One of the more sensible ones. While none of them were well connected in the city, they knew enough other adventurers that ‘common knowledge’ about an announcement would have filtered to them. Tif, however, was old. Old enough to have worked for decades, and built a life’s worth of connections. Especially if he’d worked for the city, which, if Ana’s guess about his word — Sweep — was correct, was a strong possibility. The city council would know about recent deals with Pono.

But what did Pono have to do with Lauchia’s adventurers?

It was a question that had floated through Jay’s mind. That and “Pono talk”. Pono, the giant empire that bordered the city states, had views, views that were becoming more popular in the city states recently. Views that were very detrimental to Jay’s plans, and dangerous for him in particular.

In Pono, one did what they were worded.

There were no questions. There was no doubt. There were no Deniers.

An announcement about Lauchia’s adventurers spurred by Pono was very dangerous for Jay indeed. Especially after word about his Word had gotten around. New regulations or rules could ruin him, and as he’d already seen, Lauchia seemed to have no issue adding more.

Ana waved a hand at the agitated crowd before them like that was answer enough to his question. She was probably right.

Jay swallowed and stepped forward. “Let’s find out.”

They were 68.2 m away from the crowd when Kane stopped.

“I... need to stop,” Kane said, blinking irregularly. “You go on, I’ll wait here.”

After confirming that their teammate was sure, Ana and Jay continued, though slower than before. Entering a crowd like that was intimidating, especially with less backup. As they got closer, it was easier to pick out the details. Many of the adventurers here were not prepared for a run. They wore sandals or soft shoes. Some looked like they’d just gotten out of bed. Others seemed to have just finished tasks or arrived back from outside the city, bearing stains of all kinds from the work. It was the way, though, that all cast occasional dirty and fearful glances at the building opposite the bureau, the embassy, that worried Jay. Those glares confirmed his fears.

He grabbed a tired-looking adventurer when they reached the crowd. “What’s going on?”

She looked him up and down, relaxing when she saw his armor and Ana. “The city. The guards. They’ve gone and done it for all of us.” She spat on the ground. “They’ve lifted the restrictions.”

“What restrictions?” His heart beat faster.

The adventurer, only now back in the city after an overnight task, glared at the pristine fossilized walls of the embassy behind them. “Pono’s.”

A hush spread over the crowd in a wave. Everyone turned to face west and stopped moving. It was a fake calm. The slack in a rope before it stretched to snapping. The center of a storm.

The sound reached Jay then. It was a rhythmic beat. Thump. Thump. Thump. The sound of metal on stone. Of hundreds of heavy feet. He saw the standard first, a tall banner that reached above the crowd. The edges were frill and gold, the center a deep green and outlined in black, an insect of some kind.

Adventurers did not give way as the banner approached. A call rang out, and the banner shifted, moving to the opposite side of the street.

From behind the color and crowd of individuals, came the machine. Metal all, and bearing no distinction, they marched. Mud and dirt cloaked their boots, but the beat drummed on all the same.

Soldiers marched the streets of Lauchia. Carts followed behind, as muddy and dirty as the soldiers’ feet.

The column stopped in front of the embassy. Leaving the protective envelope of their fellows, the standard bearer marched forward with another nondescript soldier. The waiting guards met them before the doors. Their armor was different, but only slightly. More fabric wrapped around the embassy guards’ shoulders, and they didn’t wear those metal boots. The small figures exchanged a series of words and gestures before the standard bearer was escorted to the wall. That green and gold banner was placed between the doors, proudly displayed. The giant fossil that was so characteristic to the building was hidden behind it, leaving only the claws that reached for the sky visible.

“March!”

At the sound of the below, the column of soldiers moved again, twisting around the side of the embassy to disappear behind it.

What spell they cast on the adventurers disappeared. Jeers began. Insults were shouted.

The soldiers never responded. After six minutes, the adventurers stopped, only the stubborn left shouting, and they were drowned out by metal boots. For another ten, the soldiers marched, carrying carts and supplies.

Only when the last disappeared behind the embassy did Jay feel free to move again.

“Come on, let’s get back to Kane.”

Ana looked back at the bureau, struggling to see over the shoulders ahead of them.

“We’ll come back after the dog track. Some of the crowds will be gone by then. We need to collect yesterday’s task as well.”

They met Kane, who was no less solemn about what they’d seen. Apparently, all that was needed to break him out of his fugues was an army. Jay didn’t have it in himself to laugh at the thought right now.

Why was a Pono army here? There had been no reports of any city killers. No news of missing caravans. No trade mishaps. Nothing that required Pono to send aid or support.

Jay didn’t know. He didn’t like that. Nothing his memory supplied spoke of any event like this.

The dog track started late. Even the Marching Orders and Bedrock were disturbed by the morning’s events. Less than half the usual runners set off. They left an agitated crowd behind.

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After the run, the crowd remained large enough that the bureau set up a special desk on the street for dog track rewards. Thankfully, people had enough sense not to annoy the runners and stayed clear of the desk if they hadn’t taken part.

Taking one look at the numbers gathered, Jay, Ana and Kane thought better of it and went to clean up and have breakfast before attempting to dive in. No one mentioned their midday break at the dorms. It wasn’t important in the face of what they saw this morning. The three of them left their room, ready for a long wait and hoping for answers. They left as a team.

Time and hunger had dispersed some of those gathered around the hodgepodge building that was the Lauchia adventuring bureau. There was still a queue and a wait, but it was in the order of thirty minutes, not multiple hours. To Jay’s relief, they were met at the desk by a face other than Cole. To his dismay, it was someone else that they’d met before in a less than positive experience.

“Hello,” Gabe said. He didn’t look up as he spoke. The young clerk was far from his previous relaxed demeanor. His pointed hat was askew and his pointed nose buried in a far larger pile of paperwork on his desk. “Announcement off to the side.” The clerk gestured off to the left at a group larger than the queues before the six bureau desks. “If it’s something else, how can I help you today?”

“We want to collect payment for a task,” Jay said. When prompted by Gabe’s waving hand, he passed over the slip of paper with the details of Tif’s task.

Gabe finally looked, eyes squinting as he tried to place them. After a moment of failed recognition, he focused on the slip. Shoulders slumping, he took it. “Wait here.”

As soon as he turned his back, Ana began to whisper. “Kane. Can you tell if he uses his Word on us?”

“Why does that matter?” Jay murmured back, turning his head just enough to spot Kane’s expression and know that their teammate was contemplating it.

“Cole said he used his Word on him last time I was here. He didn’t sound happy about it. What if this guy tries to do something to us, or take some of the money?”

“I could,” Kane finally answered.

Jay turned so he could see Ana. “The bureau is packed. Why would he do anything here? How could he?”

“He did last time,” she hissed back.

Kane coughed.

“That was different. Did you see anything? Or you, Kane?”

“No, I didn’t, but-“ Ana’s face widened as she saw something behind Jay.

“Your payment.”

Jay flinched and turned to Gabe. How much had the clerk heard?

Gabe set the pouch down on the table. His voice was flat and his face drained. “You got a bonus of five bronze. The client left no note.”

“Right. Sorry. Thanks.” Jay took the pouch. Absently, he thought it was nice of Tif to give a tip. He couldn’t help but study Gabe closely, watching the numbers if not the face. They all moved, but not in any way he could make sense of.

Kane made a strange noise behind him.

“Look, my Word’s not like that.”

Oh crap, he heard everything. Jay’s brain stilted to a stop. His feet refused to move and his mouth didn’t want to open.

“It doesn’t do anything to people. It just helps me avoid issues.”

“Sorry! You don’t need to explain anything,” Jay said in a hurry, brain finally working again.

Ana made a sound of complaint behind him, and he resisted the urge to shove her back.

“No, trust me, I do,” Gabe said with a long-suffering expression. “Dilemma. I get to see the unpleasant choices and this is the better one.”

“Right.” Jay didn’t know what else to say.

Gabe hummed. “You can all go now.” He buried his nose back in the paperwork.

Jay retreated with what dignity he could, glaring daggers at Ana the whole time.

They had plenty of time while queueing to read the notice to argue about it. No one won. The two of them weren’t alone in their bickering. All the adventurers waiting for their turn to see it in person were discussing the notice. The gossip was perhaps more helpful than the notice itself.

Most people agreed that three things sparked the change: the grisly deaths of two leather teams in the month before the solstice; A growing divide between the guards and the adventurers; and the gradual decay of the bureau. Jay wasn’t alone in his distaste at the state of the building and furnishings, it seemed. Slow Keeping and their encounter with tailmouth was mentioned, but as another stone on a broken back rather than being the cracking point. On any other day, talk about their narrow escape from an Oddity would have been enough to shut Jay and Ana up, but it was the overheard details about the dead teams that stole their fight.

Fourteen adults between eighteen and twenty, all dead in the month leading up to a day of celebration. Eight were lost to a flock of Oddities that flew right over all the patrols and defenses. The bodies of the other six had yet to be found. Few believed they ever would. All six had been confirmed by Word to be dead, but the cause was undiscovered. Fourteen lives full of people and relationships that ended too soon. A tragedy that reached across the city.

It was a chilling reminder of where they stood and the risks they were taking.

When they got their turn at the notice, they didn’t linger. The council’s announcement was simple in the end, for all the fuss about it. When Pono soldiers had previously been allowed to take bureau tasks directly related to the Pono nation, a number of restrictions had been placed on the soldiers. Task type, level and client had been limited and spelled out.

All of that was gone. Pono soldiers could take any tasks, operate in the same way as any adventurer. The announcement specified a trial period, but as if it was an afterthought thrown in at the end.

The Pono army had become Lauchia’s largest guild. The cold, unfeeling soldiers were here to stay.