The following morning, they crossed the last stretch of desert in their final approach to Urk.
The winds blew—not overly blusterous, but enough to kick up the sand and throw it in their faces. Root doubted she’d ever be able to close her teeth without hearing a crunch again.
They arrived at the outskirts of the city quite a bit dirtier than when they’d set out that morning. Characterized by sand in a wide array of hues, the desert had sweeping patterns of spirals and squiggling stripes, and now they, too, glittered with those colors, gritty and looking like a preschooler’s sand art.
Skitter kept following them right up until they reached the first homestead. She paused there on the corner and watched them continue.
“We really could bring her. She’s such a sweetie,” said Vit, looking back.
“She’s an animal,” said Azriah. “If she wanted to enter the city, she’d keep following. She’s just looking for more food.”
Vit ripped something from a bundle in their bag and tossed it back towards Skitter. She bounded forward and scooped it up like something else might dart out and steal it from her.
Up this close, the walls of Urk were even more impressive. Standing at least forty feet tall and slanting inwards slightly, the whole structure had the look of a deflating cake. Flat buttresses jutted out at intervals along the wall’s face and wooden structures sat here and there along the top, each one manned by several guards moving about like ants swarming in to feast on the confection. Made from warm sandstone, Root estimated the flavor to be somewhere in the neighborhood of toasty vanilla or something soaked in gooey caramel. Her stomach growled at the sight of it.
It’d been a long several weeks in the wilderness.
From their vantage point, the bounds of the city walls looked enormous—a massive city contained within. But even still, the stretches of buildings outside the walls more than tripled the city’s footprint.
The first ones they passed were not so nice—hardly more than plywood and canvas shanties. Some proper buildings joined the mix, but often these were barns at the edge of livestock pastures carpeted with dried grass and fly-crusted shit. As they got nearer to the walls, the next buildings they passed were… also not so nice.
The scattered homesteads and small clusters of shacks became bigger clusters of shacks, still relying heavily on the architectural style of nailing some scraps together and praying. The handiwork got dicier when limited space demanded two or three stories be stacked haphazardly atop one another. They passed several heaps of junk that left Root wondering if they were scrapyards, curated stashes of building materials, or collapsed buildings not yet reconstructed by the neighborhood. Perhaps in this city those three things were one and the same.
The city streets bustled, and that left Root watching the teetering buildings on either side of the narrow streets with a careful eye. Mostly spirits, the locals would be only inconvenienced by a serious infrastructure failure. For Root, that inconvenience would be a tad more significant.
“Why is everyone just standing around?” asked Vit. Just ahead, the flow of the street slugged to a stop. A crowd stood around not moving anywhere or even looking up at the mess they caused as passersby and carts squeezed around them. When they did look around, it was with bleary-eyed fright, like they suspected everyone who passed them by might take something from them (their money, some blood) or give them something (a knife the wrong way ‘round). Many of them were humans, more than they’d seen anywhere else in the city up until that point.
“Don’t know,” said Azriah, watching the loiterers. “But they’re causing a jam. Come on.” They took a detour down a side street to avoid the crowd and emerged back on the same street further down. More people stood around even two blocks along. It was like half the street had just frozen in place.
“Excuse us,” said Root, taking the lead and letting her elbows do most of the talking. They weren’t great conversationalists, but they got their message delivered. “This way, yeah?”
“Towards the wall. Should be a gate ahead by the looks of it.”
It was slower going, but they arrived after plenty of squeezing and having their toes both trodden on and doing the trodding. A tall arched gate loomed above with a heavy metal grate raised just high enough for people to slip under. Six guards worked a checkpoint at the base of the arch.
“Tight security,” said Azriah.
“Looks like there’s a line,” said Root, pointing to the people waiting in front of the guards.
“Where does it start…?”
“I think I have bad news,” said Vit. They pointed.
Root followed their gaze all the way back down the street. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Excuse me?” Azriah started, striding up to one of the guards—a human.
“Back of the line.”
“Sure, I was just wondering—”
“Trying to enter the city?”
“Yes, and—”
“Back of the line. No, we don’t have an express lane—yes, even if you have papers. No, we don’t have refreshments. No, we cannot have everyone waiting their turn up here—yes, that includes those who are carrying valuables. If we hear you screaming, we will get to you when it’s your turn.” The guard waved condescendingly with his fingertips.
“Well all right, then,” said Vit when Azriah rejoined them. “Back of the line it is, I guess. Oh come on, it’ll be fine!”
They squeezed their way back down the street and got in line, which seemed to have gotten a good deal longer.
In the first hour, they moved only two steps, and one of those was because an old woman several spots ahead of them dropped. “Old age,” the doctor who came to check her had said. The coroners dragged her body out of line and no one behind her had said a word of complaint, they just filed forward.
Root wondered if she, too, would grow old and die before reaching the front of the line.
The reason for such a slow hour, as they learned via rumor passed down the line, was that the guards went on a lunch break and closed the gate for an hour almost immediately after Root and the others got in line. There were also details about one of the guards turning on the others and revealing his evil scheme, and something about a person at the front of the line getting caught with explosives stuffed down his pants, and also a good deal of kissing for all parties involved. They chalked all of that up to a lengthy game of messenger jumping through the hurdles of a few hundred overbored imaginations.
In the second hour, they took another step forward. They also took two steps back. Apparently one of the spirits ahead of them had a form that slowly inflated and deflated over time as he breathed his two daily breaths.
In the third hour, Root nearly strangled the man in front of them. He didn’t do anything particularly bothersome, but some people just have a natural dosage limit on their company, and his was two hours and eighteen minutes, at which point exposure became lethal.
(Lethal for him, that was.)
The fourth hour moved the line a good deal, as did the beginning of the fifth. Beel fell asleep somewhere during that span, which meant Azriah and Root had to keep picking him up and moving him forward a stride. Root was almost certain he was pretending so they’d carry him.
Finally, somewhere in their fifth hour, they reached the gate.
“Next!” called a guard.
The three of them stepped forward. Beel awoke without delay to join them.
The guard stared at them and waited.
“Uh, just entering the city,” said Azriah.
“Names?”
“Vit Lartuh,” said Vit. “Azriah Kaiyn, Orne Tyn, ‘Root’ Hashells, and Beel.”
“What the fuck were those quotes for?”
“Reason bringing you to Urk?”
“I told you it’s my name.”
Azriah cleared his throat. “Uh, just travelers. Tourists.”
The guard looked at him. “Papers.”
“I’m sorry?”
The guard gave an exasperated sigh. “Papers? Anything that says you have some business here?”
“Do we… need—?”
“Only those with strict business inside the city can enter.”
“We’re visiting family,” said Root.
“Family members must escort visitors through all checkpoints.”
“She’s bedridden. It’s serious.”
“Send for a written letter, signed and dated, and return when you have it.”
“Uh,” said Root. “We’re visiting dying family. It’s very urgent.”
“Our postal system is quite efficient.”
“And we’re… here to convert?” offered Root as a last-ditch effort.
“Next!”
“Listen here, you—”
“Hold on,” interrupted Azriah. “We just stood in line for over four hours.”
“How you spend your afternoons is none of my concern,” said the guard. “Next!”
A hard look from the other guards steered them away from the gate. They took a side street to avoid the crowd and started walking. Root waved away the smoke curling off the back of her neck and scratched a scab near her ear.
“What the hell was that?” she asked. “What do we do now?”
Vit shrugged and looked around. “You think maybe they keep… it out here?” They pointed to a church across the street—it bore the symbol they recognized now from the building they’d used as a temporary hideout in Midden, the symbol of eight prongs. To call it a church—a large box of stone slabs topped with an upper story that was mostly balcony under a canvas awning—would’ve been like calling an empty storage crate a lavish multi-family home. Both of which seemed to be objectively true in this section of Urk.
“Hey!” said a voice. “Hey, you four!”
Root turned. Something shambled out of the shadows with a gait that nearly made her summon her sword. A spirit, squat and brown and walking like he was either balancing on stilts or had woken up with one hell of a cramp, shuffled toward them, swaying his shoulders and head like a snake on the move. Despite the heat, he wore a big coat that sagged off his shoulders. He paused when Azriah put a hand on his sword.
“Hey, hey—listen, aight? I’m just tryna help youse out is all.”
The only response he got was a raised eyebrow from Azriah and a whimper from Beel, the latter as unnoticeable as ever.
“You tryna get inside, yea? I heard you talkin’ to that goober at the gate, yea? No help, those guys, not like me, your buddy Tohlog.” He put out a hand. Only Vit shook it.
“Nice to meet you, Tohlog.”
“Mm. Listen, you’re tryna get inside? What you need’s some pilgrim papers, aight? You know about pilgrim papers, yea?”
Azriah shook his head. “We’re not interested.”
“No, no, listen—pilgrim papers is what you get when youse a pilgrim, see? Pilgrims come from ah-over—lotta them comin’ from Seto’ and such, humans like youa’. Says you’re part o’ the church, see. Says you can go on into Urk ‘cause you’re all pies and such. You pies?”
“No,” said Beel, “and we’d very much like to keep it that way.”
“Ahhh, my man, putter ‘ere.”
Beel did nothing that could be considered “putting it ‘ere.”
“Problum is, only home parishes issue pilgrim papers. But—don’t worry my friends, I consider myself somethin’ of a home parish too, you ‘ear?” Tohlog lifted one side of his oversized jacket. Inside, filed neatly into a dozen or more pockets, were slips of crisp white-and-gold paper. “You got one o’ these, and you’re in.”
“I see,” said Azriah. “Of course, you could also be telling us that to make a buck and then disappear.”
“No, he’s right,” said Vit. “The people in front of us had papers just like those.”
Root eyed the papers. “But how do we know those hold up? The guards can probably spot a fake.”
“Oh, oh, oh.” Tohlog put a hand to his chest. Root thought back to the old woman in the line. “You wound ol’ Tohlog, you wound my pride, you ‘ear?” He flashed a smile. “Course the guards can sniff out some fakey papers. But they can’t sniff out mine. Not Tohlog’s handiwork. You buy from me, you’re gettin’ the best there is—the creamed crop. You’re gettin’ the good stuff.”
“And how much will it run us?” asked Azriah.
“For these—the best—only five mantles apiece.”
Azriah scoffed. “It’s paper!”
Tohlog raised a hand. “It’s gold! In there, it’s better ’n gold! You understand? One of these—it’s better ’n bein’ an Urk resident, yea? You know why?” He waited, as if he actually wanted them to answer. “One o’ these means youse a two-rist. And the thing about a two-rist is they come in ’n spend a whole lotta money. You got pilgrim papers ’n you can go anywhere. You go through this gate, you go through any checkpoint—you go right up to the Eternal Palace itself!”
The four of them shared a glance. Azriah shrugged.
“Fine,” said Root. They had made a lot of money off the Affodell gig—a lot of money. The crypt currency they’d exchanged in Midden had earned them all a hefty sum. They could afford it. Even if it got them laughed away from the gate, it was worth a try.
“Ahh, that’s what I like to ‘ear—that’s the music of my ears. Yea, yea I’ll hook youse guys up with the nicest papers I got. You’re real lucky you got ol’ Tohlog here takin’ good care-uh you!”
Grant Perfellum thought his first day on gate duty would be more exciting.
It was why he’d joined up in the first place. “Outsiders are always trying to force their way in,” he’d always heard. Sneaking through the gates, slithering up and over the walls, laying siege to the entrances—they tried it all, the stories said. They’d do anything to get inside, and the noble Urk guards kept a steadfast watch, ever vigilant, the thin line between peace for all of Urk and utter chaos running amok through the streets as outsiders pillaged and looted and murdered their way through the city. They smuggled weapons and drugs and dangerous ideologies about who deserved to use weapons and drugs.
The captain stuck him there at the north gate, which by the looks of it must’ve been where all of that happened the least, because he hadn’t seen anything but pilgrims, farmers, and stupid refugees complaining about being hungry all morning.
He knew—he knew those crooks were out there, just waiting for their opportunity to rush at him and break into the city. He’d heard so much about them. It was why the city had guards like him in the first place. He knew the danger was ready to pounce, and when it did, he’d be ready. He hadn’t passed yesterday’s two o’clock guard training session with a C- for nothing.
His orders were clear. One: don’t let anyone into the city unless they have all the right paperwork and look medium-rich or above. If they had the papers but looked otherwise unwelcome—such as a frown with a slope of more than ten degrees, an attitude which might indicate a dangerous ideology, or they just looked stupid and poor—he was to turn them away by any excuse necessary. Two: protect those with a lot to lose first. The wealthy locals or tourists were most important, because if they got robbed or if their property became damaged, it might impact their ability to spend that money stimulating the economy. Three: when beating a poor person, be sure to shout about their wrongdoings while doing so to make sure all witnesses know they’re a dirty criminal outsider.
Those orders had given him hope he might have important work to do, but so far—
“Stealing! Stop stealing! Stop disagreeing with me!”
The shouts came from one of Grant’s fellow guardsmen just across the small plaza at the gate’s exterior. Finally, something to do! Maybe the day was looking up.
Grant ran over to join the fray, already shouting before he’d even reached the hulking spirit sitting on the ground and minding his own business. “Stop being somewhat dirty! Stop being poor! Yeah!”
“Stop loitering!”
“Stop looking at me like that!”
“Stop eating during your arrest!”
The spirit munched on a handful of corn chips. He glanced up at the two guards kicking his legs like he’d only just noticed them there.
Yes—this was why Urk needed such a robust force of guards. They couldn’t have criminals like this running around. No wonder the citizens worried—no wonder they were afraid. It wasn’t like they would fear without justification.
Thankfully, Grant had caught this no-good scumbag. If he hadn’t, where would the citizens find their justification?