A black carriage marked with the Judgment Tribunal's emblem drew up slowly at the roadside, and two deacons in long grey-black coats stepped down one after the other.
Set against the high deacons who kept permanent station at the principal cathedrals, their uniforms were a good deal plainer, with only a single silver line on the shoulder board, a standard-issue longsword at the waist and a black record book.
"The Arosa Old Quarter again."
The younger deacon looked at the coal smoke rising in the distance and complained under his breath.
"Third time I've been here this week. Honestly, I always get a chill off this place." The other, a middle-aged man, finished speaking and pulled a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket.
Paper cigarettes with filters were the new fashionable thing; compared with a hand-rolled or a cigar they were cheaper, and quick to settle a man's nerves.
The younger deacon took one, lit it with a match, and opened the record book.
He said nothing more, only marked the junction on the map the city hall had sent over.
"Old freight road, the grey bridge, the eastern warehouse district, and a few old factories on the outskirts that have gone completely derelict. We'll finish those today. Though I'll grant you, this old quarter does feel strange." The middle-aged deacon pulled hard at the cigarette, the pale yellow tip shrinking fast in the shadow.
"It does. Praise the God of Judgment, and let's hope nothing unexpected turns up."
"Weren't we told this was assisting the Affairs Bureau with the industrial redevelopment inspection? What could turn up? Finish the cigarette and let's move. I don't want to spend a second longer here than I have to."
Deacons at their level were not told much. The order they had received was simple enough, and the two of them talked on.
Their work was to record, to inspect, to report.
Nothing beyond that.
The two of them went on along the road.
A good deal of wooden fencing had already gone up on both sides, and several workers were hauling stone in preparation for the widening that was about to begin. Further off stood a few old factory buildings that had stopped work, their chimneys standing quiet, like so many rusted iron posts.
The middle-aged deacon crouched and looked at the white powder line on the ground.
That was a survey mark the Affairs Bureau had left a few days ago.
He walked over to a drain shaft, lifted the cover and looked down into it.
Damp, dark, nothing but slow-moving filthy water.
The younger deacon could not help asking. Compared with assisting the Affairs Bureau, what they were doing now felt much more like an inspection.
Inspecting as they went, recording as they went, with the day's assignment written plainly in the record book.
Assist the city hall with industrial redevelopment; conduct an anomaly sweep of eastern Arosa.
Beyond that, no explanation of any kind.
The young deacon frowned slightly at the assignment sheet.
As for what an anomaly meant here, he did not really know either.
Nobody had told them, and they were not entitled to know.
Back to Elaine. By the time she returned to Raea's flat the sky had gradually darkened.
The room was as quiet as it had been when she left that morning, and Raea seemed to still be at work.
Elaine put the identity certificate down on the table, took off her coat, sat in the chair and let her body settle slowly back against it.
Only at that moment did she genuinely relax.
Far too much had happened lately, and she had not had a chance to put any of it in order.
One thing after another, with almost no time left to think.
Now that it was quiet, she found she rather did not know what to do with herself.
Elaine looked down at the certificate on the table and reached out to pick it up. Looking at the basic details written on it, she felt a certain bewilderment.
In the past her worry had simply been how to fill the holes in House White's accounts. As for now... House White's affairs presumably had very little to do with her.
She was Elaine Vilan now, after all.
Yes. Elaine Vilan.
She put the certificate back on the table and idly turned over the few copper coins lying there, a currency also called the copper fen, issued by the Bank of the Kingdom of Loren.
Besides the copper fen there were the silver sol and the gold crown, corresponding to copper, silver and gold coin.
Metal currency it might be, but for convenience and to encourage spending, the bank was said to be trying to issue paper notes lately.
The reception had not been good, and so at present the overwhelming majority of people still used metal.
One coin. Two. Three.
...
Having counted them, she counted them again.
Then let out a small sigh. These were still the pocket money Raea had left for her before going out.
"Really not very much money after all."
Elaine rubbed at her temple.
The problem of identity was solved.
But what came next?
Earning money?
She could hardly go off to a mine and dig every day. And besides... a girl, down a mine...
No... Elaine shook her head, and the silver hair wound itself around her arm and made her uncomfortable.
She had never once imagined a thing like this happening to her, and for a moment she was quite at a loss.
She got up and went to the window. The setting sun was dropping bit by bit behind the Arosa Old Quarter, the black smoke over the distant mining district had still not stopped, and the roar of the factories carried across every so often.
The city went on running along its track, and her own life had changed entirely.
Elaine braced both hands on the window ledge and looked into the distance for a long while in silence.
Money was only one of the problems.
There was the wrongness in her body, and that Relic or Sealed Object or whatever it was that had gone into it.
The White manor.
And House Roland...
What the workers had said yesterday came slowly back into her mind.
As Elaine saw it, House Roland had already begun trying to swallow House White whole.
She genuinely could not work out how she had come to be this unlucky. If she had not gone down into that cellar, House White might really have come back to something through the industrial revolution, on the strength of a modern man's far-sighted investments.
And in the end, all of it gone.
It made her stomach hurt just to think about.
If things went the way she suspected, and the Lower City was in for redevelopment, then that land of House White's that nobody had ever wanted would very shortly be worth something quite different.
Elvira...
She had certainly seen it too, or she would never have taken on the debts outright.
Elaine had heard a little about House Roland before.
A typical rising noble family. Profit above everything, without even the decorum and the manners of the old houses, and thick with the blood-smell of capital.
She tapped the window ledge lightly and did not follow the thought further.
Even if she understood all of it now, understanding changed nothing.
As she stood at present she had neither the standing to interfere in House White's holdings, nor money enough, nor strength enough.
Never mind. Better to sort out what had happened to her body first.
Though come to think of it... it was dark already. Why wasn't Raea home yet? She was getting hungry.
Thinking that, Elaine got herself up, and her rather small figure went drifting back and forth in the kitchen alcove, apparently in search of something to eat.
Publicly Disclosable Information #6
Rosenfeld
House Rosenfeld is one of the oldest first-rank noble families of the Kingdom of Loren. It has long controlled a great many of the country's coal, iron and silver mines and the transport industries attached to them, and is deeply involved in bank lending, public debt and chamber-of-commerce settlement.
Rosenfeld is not only illustrious in the capital but carries a degree of influence in other cities as well.
It rarely intervenes directly in royal struggles, and yet by way of its wealth and its industries it can move the kingdom's economy.
It also holds a certain collection of marvels, and maintains good relations with most of the Canon churches.