Most cities and species worked within those rules, until a bunch of Dragon-slayers discovered a limitless supply of energy right beneath their feet. So, the slayers grouped together, brought in some building partners, and built themselves a city from scratch.
Other than the fire, Sunder City was utterly impractical. There was no adjacent farmland ready to sustain crops. No natural food for cattle or sheep. The mountains to the north blocked out much of the sunshine and when the nearby streams overflowed, they made the plains all sodden and marshy.
But the slayers and their business partners didn’t care. They had pits of fire beneath their feet and that was all they needed. The Dwarves built a mighty furnace up on one of the hills, and great mounds of metal were being pumped out within months. They made factories, forges and steel mills, so blacksmiths and artisans came to work them. Of course, to make steel they needed to make iron, which was seen as another insult to the Fae. Each new piece of industry dug an even deeper line between Sunder and the rest of the world.
Canals were cut into the earth to control the water, flushing out the filth and letting the topsoil dry. They drove steel beams into the rock to solidify the foundations and lift Sunder City up off the land.
Before long, they were producing more material than they needed. The excess was shipped off around the world and the profits were used to import food to feed the workers. In under five years, the first ever city without farmland was born.
Sunder was the ultimate insult to the Faery-folk. It was a fire-fueled slab of steel that carved its way into the earth without any sense of the future. The Fae refused to cooperate in its creation or provide any of the citizens with support.
Poverty seeped into the shanty towns and shacks that sprung up on the outskirts of the city. During its first true wave of immigration, Sunder City met disease. In other areas of the world there was always a plant or potion to be found. In Sunder, there was no natural world left. There was only garbage, sewerage, starvation and broken skin. It was an exploding population of desperate families who’d left their homes with the hope of something better and wouldn’t turn back till they found it.
When these cracks in Sunder started to show, nobody in the Faery community seemed to care. At least, not until Amarita Quay came to town.
I was waiting under the arch at the edge of the city, expecting someone in fine gowns similar to Hendricks, when a young nurse in uniform stepped up beside me.
“You’re the kid, right? Come on, then.”
She was tiny: a foot shorter than me with a fragile frame. Every grandmother in the world would ask if she were eating enough. Her hair was wrenched back in a severe bun that was half-hidden under a nursing cap. Her eyes were rainforest green, shining out from earthy skin, but her brief look in my direction was colder than a winter morning in the mountains.
“Uh, don’t you have luggage?” I asked.
“I already dropped it off. Your Governor, Mr Lark, offered me a room at his house. I assume it was just a courtesy but I accepted his offer. I’m going to have a lot of things to say to that man so the closer I am to him, the better. Come on, let’s get to work.”
Before I could respond, she turned on the heels of her white slippers and headed back down Main Street. I had to scurry through the incoming crowd to catch her as she went straight towards the slums without looking back. No wonder Hendricks had been smiling, she was a twig in a skirt with no manners and a death-wish.
“Excuse me!” I called, doing my best to keep my voice at a masculine timbre. “I think you’re going the wrong way.”
Without paying me any notice, she jumped up on the base of a lamp-post to have a good look around. Once she’d locked something in her sights, she hopped off and kept on marching.
We crossed over the causeway that separated the solid buildings from the self-made shacks and I had to reach out and grab her shoulder to stop her from heading into the darkest part of the township. She spun like lightning, and the anger in her eyes made me hop backwards, red-faced and ready to be slapped.
“Listen, kid, Lark has some rule about me coming here alone and I can’t get things done without the support of the city. That’s all you’re here for. So how about you let that jaw loosen a little and maybe we’ll have some fun. Okay?”
I searched my mind for some witty rebuttal. Instead, I said, “Sure.”
“And keep your hands to yourself. With a little luck, you might still have them by sundown.”
She went off again without waiting for my response, weaving her way into the crowds. With softly offered questions and an apparent inability to notice the state of those around her, she stopped and talked to the strangest members of the Sunder slums: Gnomish kids with missing limbs, head-sick soldiers and strung-out junkies who slurred all their words. Mostly, she just asked questions. Who had been to the medical center? Why were people turned away? Where did they get their potions?
Sometimes, she even offered help. We followed a beckoning young boy through the muggy streets to a small tarpaulin held in place by old rope and optimism. Propped up on mud-brick and rolled burlap was a fat Gnome with half his body sticking out from sweaty sheets. His face was pale, his eyes were red, and his leg was pea-soup green. Even with the stench of the slums all around us you could smell the infection as we entered the room. Either the sickness had made him mad or he was just an ass, but he snarled and spat at Amarita when she approached.
“Open my bag and keep the ingredients out of the dirt.”
Without taking her eyes from her slobbering patient, she took her arms out of the straps and let me pluck the pack from her shoulders.
The creature growled, sending a mist of green spittle in our direction. Unfazed, she motioned towards the offending leg. When she got within his reach, the creature raised an arm to hit her.
Before the Gnome or I even had time to squeal, a tiny but effective right fist was in his jaw. His head snapped back with a popping sound and the grumpy little bastard fell on to the pillow. She’d knocked him out cold like a prize-fighter and hadn’t even messed up her hair.
Her fist had changed, though. The smooth, nut-brown skin had been replaced with the cracked and colored grain of strong wood. She stretched her hand out to her side, flexed her fingers, and the timber faded from her pores over a few seconds.
I’d been outside the walls of Weatherly for almost two years, so I wasn’t a stranger to seeing the occasional spell. Every now and again, a scuffle at the bar would degenerate into fireballs or transformations. This was different. There was something effortless and almighty about how she carried her power. The magic wasn’t something she used but an intrinsic part of herself. It was primal and breathtaking.
It was also painfully attractive.
“Open up the pack,” she said.
I untied the buckles and opened the container. Inside was an apothecary of herbs and healing potions separated into little bottles of liquid and unlabeled powder. Her slender fingers danced over them as she selected her ingredients.
“Something for the infection,” she said, picking up an orange bottle of pollen. “And something for the pain.” She plucked up some pieces of recus bark, crushed them into her hand and mixed both ingredients into a sticky paste. Once she was satisfied with the mixture, she rubbed it on to the wound and covered it with her hand. An aroma of rich soil and fresh rain cut through the acrid stench of the room and after a few moments, it almost smelled pleasant.