Surviving Arkadia

We were outside the Council Building with no real memory of how the meeting concluded. I had the Rotveil diary in my hand and the knowledge that our next task was to take it to Moonstone, which I assumed was a city. I couldn’t remember why or what for. In front of us the Market, with all its crowds and noise, was still in full flow. Behind us someone was organising something in the Council Building. I could hear shouted orders and people moving about with more than usual purpose in their gaits.

I looked up at Jethro, hoping that he had more idea than I about what was going on. He looked down at me, his face all blank confusion.

“We’re going to this Moonstone then, I suppose?” I said.

“Not today though,” said Jethro. “It’s a long journey. We’d be better off waiting and setting off first thing in the morning. And it’s going to be expensive. We’ll have to pay for transport. We might have to find work locally to earn enough money for the journey.” He put his hand into his pocket and when it came out again he was holding a roll of paper. It looked like cash to me.

“Is that paper money?” I said. “I didn’t know there was any here.”

“We don’t see it much out in the woods,” said Jethro. “Coins last better and we don’t charge enough for anything to need paper notes. This is the most money I’ve ever seen in one place.”

“Do you think the Council gave it to us?” I said.

“Must have done,” said Jethro. “I suppose we’ll be travelling in style. Might be enough here to get you those boots you were looking at. So the paved streets of Moonstone don’t wreck your feet.”

“Let’s get the travel sorted out before we start getting extravagant with other people’s money,” I said.

#

The Guild of Navigators had a public office in one of the side streets off the Market plaza. We were able to book someone to pick us up in a mechanical Carriage outside the Badehaus Tavern the following morning. By paying some of the fee up front we were able to negotiate a fixed fee to take us to the nearest Gondola station.

Jethro was very proud of the hard bargain he’d negotiated, he’d managed to knock the price down enough that I would be able to afford the boots. He was proud right up until we went back to the leather-work stall and discovered that the boots didn’t fit me.

#

The next morning we packed our breakfast sausages in waxed paper and met our driver outside the Badehaus Tavern. He was a small man with a large nose, pointed ears, and wild orange hair that could not be contained by his flat cap. He was wearing goggles and a heavy woollen overcoat that looked far too hot for the weather.

“Jethro? Petra?” he said, looking back and forth between us.

“That’s us,” said Jethro.

“The Carriage Master at the Guild of Navigators sent me, I’m Sigifrid Helt. I understand you’re going to Moonstone and you want to get to the Gondola Station at Aalen as soon as possible?”

We made noises to indicate the affirmative.

He looked us up and down, playing particular attention to Jethro’s rolled up shirt sleeves and my bare feet. “Don’t worry about the cold, there’s a blanket for the back seat.” He paused in thought for a moment. “Actually I’ve got some furs in the luggage box. I’ll get those out, just in case you need them.”

We climbed up onto the back seat. It was a single padded bench. On one end was a tartan woollen blanket, folded up into a neat square. We made ourselves comfortable while Sigifrid put my bag and Jethro’s pack in the storage box over the rear axle and collected an armful of furs. He packed the furs around us, then got more furs and piled them up in the foot well.

The furs felt glorious but I was instantly too hot. A distracting red symbol appeared in one corner of my eye. Presumably some kind of heat stroke warning. Before I could object Sigifrid hopped up into the front seat and the vehicle pulled away from the pavement.

The moment we started moving I felt a cool breeze created by the speed of our movement. The carriage made a crackling noise, almost like static electricity. I’d noticed carriages making that sound before, when they passed us on the street, and I’d wondered if it was meant to warn people of the approaching vehicle. Now that I was actually sitting in one it felt less like that and more like the sound of the machine operating.

The Uln we drove through had a very different vibe to the place that we’d walked through just the day before. There was a tension there that I hadn’t felt then or on the night we arrived. I noticed groups of men in uniform moving through the city carrying sandbags or wooden fence panels.

When we reached the edge of the city there was construction noise everywhere. The houses on the edge of the city were having their windows boarded up and their fences raised. A group of the uniformed men seemed to be building a checkpoint across the main road into the city.

“Are you going to be alright getting back into the city on the way home?” said Jethro as the carriage slowed down to inch its way around the nascent checkpoint.

“Oh yah,” said Sigifrid, “I’ve got my Navigator badge, my Carriage License and the Guild secretary arranged for a letter of permission from the mayor. I’ll be fine.”

Once we were free of the city the carriage began to gain speed. The breeze ruffling the long hairs on my head turned into something closer to a gale and that distracting red symbol disappeared.

“Now, as we speed up,” said Sigifrid, “It’s going to get a lot colder in the back. This is your chance to get the blanket out and wrap yourselves up. Miss Petra, I think there’s a spare muff or two in the pile of furs if you want to try putting your feet in something to keep those foot pads nice and warm.”

There were several muffs in the pile. One of them was large enough that I could fit both my feet into it. They were instantly too warm and I found myself wondering if this was an overreaction.

The crackling sound grew louder and the carriage accelerated so fast that I was thrown backwards in my seat. Jethro pulled the blanket across both our knees and grabbed for one of the muffs. I struggled into a more upright position so that my back was better supported.

The main road was much smoother than the roughly paved road we’d used to arrive in Uln. The wheel ruts looked less like depressions worn into the stone by constant traffic and more like tracks deliberately cut for wheels to ride in.

“Just going to ping the road ahead,” said Sigifrid.

“I’m sorry, what?” I said.

Something inside the carriage made a high pitched ‘ping’ sound and I half heard, half saw, a shock-wave move away from us and up the road in front of us.

“Oh, have you never been in a long distance carriage before?” said Sigifrid.

“Petra had a very sheltered upbringing,” said Jethro.

“This will be a real treat for you then,” said Sigifrid. “The faster we go, the longer we take to stop. You know this, it’s harder to stop when you run than when you walk. If we were to stop too quickly we would all be turned to a paste by the inertia, yes? So we cannot wait until we see a slower vehicle ahead of us to decelerate. We must know that they are ahead of us before we are close enough to see them. The ping travels the road ahead of us. When it hits another vehicle it bounces back to us to tell us that we must slow down. If the vehicle is stationary they may send a second ping back to us to tell us we need to stop. If they are not Navigator guild then they know to get out of the road when they feel the ping.”

“How fast…” I intended to ask how fast we would be going that we needed so much warning to slow down, but before I could get the words out I had my answer.

Very fucking fast.

The acceleration pushed me back into my seat with such force that I could barely breathe. The crackling sound grew louder. I could see sparks of electricity dancing around the carriage, forming a capsule of, presumably magical, energy.

The air was now a frigid, biting cold. My breath turned to steam and I thought I could feel my tears freezing at the corners of my eyes. I pulled the blanket up, pulled one of the furs around my shoulders, and shoved my hands inside a muff. Jethro leaned against me and pulled the blanket up on his side so that we were huddled together beneath it with only our heads above the wool. I refused to hide my face. There was no way I was going to miss this spectacle. I did wish I’d brought a hat though.

As the speed increased even further, I noticed that the capsule around us included a space in front of the carriage where an animal pulling it would be. A glowing ball of light began to coalesce in that space. Too small to be a horse or similar creature, more like the size of a house cat.

I stared at that ball of that light, desperate to know more, even though I worried that it might burn out my retinas if I stared too hard. Just as Sigifrid cheerfully announced, “Top Speed!” I was rewarded with a blurry vision of something.

It was a horse after all. It had the proportions of a Shetland Pony but was the size of a lap dog. It had comically fat buttocks and tiny hooves, and it pranced rather than galloped. There seemed to be no relationship between the speed of its feet and the speed we were travelling. The pony had a long mane and tail that crackled and sparkled with lightning. It kept tossing its chunky little head in the sassiest possible way, making its crackling electric mane dance.

“It’s adorable!” I said, almost before I realised that I was going to say it.

“What?” said Jethro.

“Oh you can see the Blitzenpaard,” said Sigifrid. “You are blessed. Most people outside the guild can’t see them. I didn’t see one until I was most of the way through my apprenticeship. Not until I was ready to summon one of my own. This one I call Maria, after my mother.”

“Please tell her that I think she is beautiful and also a very good girl,” I said.

“Oh I think she can tell that,” said Sigifrid. “You can see by the way she shakes her tail at you. She likes to be appreciated.”