The Rosenfeld carriage stood outside with the step already down. Viola climbed into the compartment first and Elaine followed. She had barely settled when the whip cracked lightly outside, and the wheels rolled over the even flagstones of the Middle City, carrying them slowly south.
Truthfully, Viola had never seen Raea like that. Recalling the look on her face, the look of somebody entirely capable of cutting a person down, she felt a delayed fear go through her.
Perhaps she did not know Raea as well as she thought... Or perhaps a rich girl's admiration for a gallant woman knight of her own sex had simply papered over Raea's faults.
Elaine had no idea what Raea and Viola had actually said to one another back in the flat. She only knew that Viola had come out looking terrible.
She wanted to ask what had happened, and Viola would not say, only sat there in a subdued mood.
With noon coming on there were fewer people out than in the morning. The taverns and the grubby little eating houses along the street held a scattering of workers at their meals. The smell of baking wheat and of frying oil drifted out through half-open wooden doors and mixed with the sour reek of the leather shop next door.
A delivery apprentice carried a sack across the road, saw the Rosenfeld crest on the carriage door and hurriedly backed to the kerb. Viola leaned against the cushions tidying her wind-blown hair, and several rings flashed once in the sunlight before she put them away again inside her gloves.
The further south the carriage went, the more crowded the streets became.
The neat brick houses on either side gave way to old apartment blocks pressed together, which was the sign that they had entered the Lower City. Gutters ran along the foot of the walls, and stalls selling old clothes, coal and salted fish were set out right to the roadside, so that the driver had to keep hauling in the reins to work slowly between carts and people.
When Elaine lifted the curtain she caught a few children chasing a lame yellow dog past the junction, with a fruit-seller behind them waving a wooden ladle and swearing, her voice quickly buried under a factory whistle in the distance.
Once they were past the grey bridge the air grew heavier as well.
The sky was a dull grey, oppressive enough to make breathing difficult.
Coal smoke sat down on the low roofs, and several tall chimneys kept spitting out black fog. A coal wagon passed alongside them, its wheels rolling into standing water and throwing mud against the outside of the carriage.
A good many walls along the street had fresh notices from the city hall pasted up. Some people stood beneath them working out the words; others could not be bothered to look, or perhaps did not read Loren script at all, and simply went on carrying crates and old furniture out of their doors.
"My father says the crown means to turn the Lower City into an industrial district."
Viola looked out of the window for a while and said it to Elaine in an idle sort of way.
Elaine did not answer.
What the Lower City was going to become interested her less than the plainly increased number of officials in silver-grey uniform on the streets.
At the bridgehead somebody was checking the wooden tallies on a goods wagon. Outside a factory somebody was breaking up an argument between workers. Even in the narrow alley beside the market you could see Judgment Tribunal personnel moving through the crowd. The residents nearby seemed used to it, and only gave a little ground as they passed; once the cloaks disappeared round a corner the hawking and the arguing came flooding back.
Compared with three days ago there were noticeably more Tribunal staff in the Arosa Old Quarter.
The carriage finally stopped outside Arosa's main street, where a flatbed cart loaded with scrap iron lay across the road with its axle snapped in two and several workers gathered round shifting the load. The driver turned to say they would not be getting through any time soon, and Viola had to gather her skirts and climb down.
She and Elaine decided to walk. It was not far.
"How did you and Raea actually meet?"
Elaine had been looking at the young lady of House Rosenfeld beside her, and it struck her that she had never thought to ask how a noted noble's daughter came to know Raea at all.
Thinking of how the two of them had been with each other that morning, Elaine rather doubted they were ordinary friends.
"Why ask that all of a sudden?" Viola looked as though the question had caught her unprepared, and for a moment she didn't know how to answer it.
"Just curious. You don't seem like friends."
Viola turned to look at her at once, her face colouring slightly.
The road ahead was blocked by a gang of workers hauling timber, so the two of them had to go round with their backs to the wall. The white paint on it was fresh and not yet dry, and several men from the city hall were checking house numbers with a measuring line, two Tribunal personnel standing beside them.
Residents crowded in their doorways arguing over whether their own houses would come down, showing off to one another, in a manner of speaking, the far from generous compensation each had been offered, sums closer to what you might hand a beggar, their voices climbing over one another.
Only once they were past that crowded junction did Viola speak, slowly.
"The first time we met was about half a year ago."
"About?" Elaine didn't quite see why Viola had brought that up.
"The date isn't the point."
That winter House Rosenfeld had attended an auction of old Sacred Objects. Before the auction ended, a Sealed Object that ought to have been inert lost control. Every door and window in the banqueting hall sealed itself shut, and after the chandeliers went out, voices came from all sides.
Then everyone in the auction, without exception, began seeing visions of every kind, while the low human murmuring at their ears turned by degrees into a speech nobody could get their teeth around.
By Viola's account, she had been trapped in a second-floor withdrawing room with her attendants already unconscious beside her.
Astraea had come in with the Judgment Tribunal, broken open the side door, and found her there.
The knight-rescues-the-princess set piece so beloved of noble young ladies' circles had happened to Viola herself, and Viola had begun, without quite deciding to, to look up to this knight of the Judgment Tribunal.
It sounded rather like cheap melodrama, and Elaine could not think of any comment to make on it.
She could feel well enough that every time Viola mentioned Raea, something like reverence surfaced in those violet eyes.
But... surely there was no future in it, between two women?
"So then. Since you're Miss Raea's little sister... and this young lady has done you such an enormous favour, you know what you ought to do, don't you?"
At that point the reminiscence went out of Viola's face and a distinctly wicked grin took its place.
She fixed Elaine with a thoroughly haughty stare, and being stared at that way was not comfortable.
"That is... my lady, between two women, surely there's no future in it?" Elaine couldn't hold it in, and said what she had been thinking.
"You... you, what do you mean by that?"
At that, Viola's face flushed scarlet.
To Viola, Elaine was supposed to be a sweet, soft little sister who understood nothing at all. How... how could she say a thing like that?
"I mean exactly the outcome you're thinking of. And if it's Raea... she would certainly never agree to it."
Thinking about this scatterbrained young noblewoman, Elaine was already getting a headache on Raea's behalf.
Raea was a person who did not know how to express what she felt. Nobody knew that better than Elaine.
Refusing people, especially...
Though what Elaine did not know was that Raea simply had no idea how to refuse her.
As for anybody else... they were passers-by to Raea, there or not there, it made no difference.
"Of course. I knew that all along, so I gave it up long ago... The knight-rescues-the-princess script only ever turns up in plays and novels."
Saying it, Viola looked as though she had made her peace with it.
More than half a year had gone by, and Viola had gradually lost interest in Raea.
Sometimes she thought that what she felt was less liking than curiosity.
Curiosity about that unknown, theologically tinted, marvellous and secretive world.
Unfortunately... House Rosenfeld kept Viola very well protected. At most they spent heavily on Sacred Objects for her to defend herself with.
As for letting a daughter come into contact with occult studies, in her father's view that was the forbidden thing among forbidden things.
Just now, though, set beside her admiration for Raea, Viola seemed to find the Elaine walking beside her, half a head shorter than she was, considerably more interesting... And considerably more likeable.
How had she never noticed before how exquisite Elaine's face was? Exactly like a heroine walked out of one of those occult novels.
All of which stayed inside Viola's head.
The two of them stepped onto the wet, slippery stone road together, and the subject of Raea had been closed.
Elaine had no wish to go on talking about Raea either. It was all rather melodramatic.
When she looked up, the faded sign of the Red Vein Relief Society was already visible, wedged between a pharmacy and an old tavern. The canvas awning out in front was much larger than last time, and the space beneath it was full of people wrapped in bandages.
Publicly Disclosable Information #5
The Kingdom of Loren
The Kingdom of Loren lies in the west of the continent, one of the three great human kingdoms, renowned for its long knightly tradition, its strict religious order and its solid northern frontier.
Loren governs by the principle that "order stands above liberty, and judgment before mercy", which also makes it the country among the three in which religion runs deepest and the people trust the Canon institutions most.
It was originally known as a grain kingdom for its broad plains and fertile soil, but with the recent advance of technology all manner of new ideas have begun to spread among its townspeople, which has given the kingdom's official religion no small headache.
Loren holds the greatest number of Sacred Codex tribunals and cathedrals; nearly every town and city has a Judgment cathedral. Beyond the tribunals, the Order of Daybreak and Long Night is responsible for frontier patrol and for the subjugation of large-scale calamities.
The Loren Assembly of Sacred Kingship is responsible for royal legitimacy, for coronations, and for the divine right of kings.
The Grey Tower branches are responsible for Relic appraisal, anomaly records and Sealed Object containment.
Beyond these, only small numbers of the Dawn Healing Order and the Church of the Tide Lamp are distributed about certain ports and larger cities.
Long religious education has left the people of Loren generally convinced that "all which is of the Counter-Canon must be judged, and no contamination may be indulged."
Where Counter-Canon Seal-Bearers, unidentified Relics, contamination incidents, or anything a citizen simply considers anomalous are concerned, most will report it to the tribunal themselves rather than deal with it privately.