Making Peace Read online

  And that’s really what Tiers is all about, you see: money. The rest of the galaxy depends on the resources from Tiers in order to build their homes, wage their wars, house the orphans that result, and build barracks for those orphans when they’re ready for the next cycle. Wood, mostly, is what gets exported from here -- a special wood called ripplewood which lights up with expanding rings of every color when pressure is applied to it. The greatest export is the white ceramic material, Sivernite, named for the planet. Sivernite is made from a dense clay that needs to be worked by skilled nano-mages and harmonized to exactly the right frequency as it’s fired. But Sivern, and its capital city Tiers, also exports stone, wool, animal skins, flesh, and just about any other commodity the Terran Empire figures out how to market to the people of the galaxy.

  When there aren’t enough workers, the city imports more slaves. Don’t get the wrong idea. Slaves aren’t worked to death here. No, that would be an unnecessary expense, and it’s considered scandalous to engage in such decadence as slave killing. But… yes, it does happen. Of course it does. When everything is for sale, even life itself has a monetary value attached.

  The city has an old history I’m not going to get into, but almost everything is built by hand, so the buildings last forever and just get repurposed again and again. Everything has been recycled with hardly even a dash of paint to cover the old purpose. The temple district is the best and worst example. The grand cathedral at the top of the city, originally devoted to some old god a thousand years ago at the colonization of the planet, is the most popular brothel in the city. When you’ve got humans roaming the stars with powers to rival any of the gods of old Earth, few people still want to pray to some distant and vague deity. The cathedral fell out of use and smaller temples to the various galactic super-powered Saints sprang up all over the city. The new owners painted the entire cathedral bright red, from the bell towers up top right down to the massive carved stone entryway, and you can see the damned eyesore from anywhere in the city. Great marketing, they say. The road leading up to this Red Cathedral, which blushing brides once walked to take their marriage vows, was called Maiden Lane. Well, it still bears that name, because the folk are too cheap to throw away a good carved sign. Instead, the prostitutes of the city have taken to calling themselves maidens. Their clientele, which is a good ninety percent of the city at least, both male and female, have fallen in line with this naming, and see no irony in it whatsoever. If that doesn’t illustrate this city, I don’t know what does.

  It also costs a lot of money to train a force to keep the law, so Tiers hires mercenaries. In a sparkling galaxy full of starships and giant combat mechs and every technological convenience one can imagine, who would choose to move to a medieval world like Sivern? The type of people who come to Tiers are usually the ones looking to be forgotten, to be as far off the grid as possible, and Sivern is the only place in the Inner Cluster of planets where this is possible. As such, very few people who immigrate here use their real names. Like the prostitutes in the streets, the law folk create false identities to escape their past lives, to create distance from what they’re asked to do, to protect their families from shame or retribution, or to conceal their activities from those same families.

  The law folk are divided into two groups. The first is the Watch, responsible for making sure standard laws are enforced throughout the city. The Watch is under the direct command of the First House. They also keep the riffraff of Low Town out of Upper Town whenever possible. Once in a while they’ll get a mercenary who still has a conscience and a sense of civic duty who gets it into his head to try to protect the common people of the city. And the people are grateful for it, don’t you doubt it. Some of them, anyway.

  The second law group is the Peacekeeper force, known locally as the Keepers. They are not responsible for maintaining laws in the city and don’t usually bother making arrests even if they see a crime in progress. Their task is exactly what it sounds like: keeping the peace at all costs. You see, a city that runs on money finds itself ruled by the organizations with the most coin. In Tiers, that means the Houses; merchant organizations consisting of allied families who form one House to consolidate their business ventures. The Houses rank themselves by number based on who has the most money and power in the city. The most powerful becomes First House, and the person ruling that House becomes the Hegemon. The first three Houses also form the Council. Any House below these three doesn’t matter in the slightest, power-wise. The families intermarry, and over time each House becomes a bloated, inbred thing, both genetically and financially. And that’s just the way they like it, because that means they can do their harvesting, processing, and producing all within their own organization, which cuts down on costs.

  Again, saving costs. This is a city run as a business, a finely tuned machine designed to squeeze every drop of blood out of every stone.

  A machine needs to keep running. The Houses don’t get along so well, and someone has to keep them in line. Not police them, no. A Keeper’s job is never to embarrass a member of a recognized House or cause offense. Rather, the Keepers are present to make sure House feuds don’t get out of hand and develop into House wars. Open warfare between the Houses is absolutely forbidden. This isn’t altruism. It’s self-preservation. Nobody wants to get the Terran Empire thinking it might run the operation more efficiently.

  Everything here has to be made by hand because the planet has forbidden all electronic technology. This was set down by their original founder and patron Saint, the Seer. It prevents the Terran Empire from placing any troops here, because there’s no risk of an armed rebellion. This affords the planet a lot of autonomy, as long as they keep the supply lines running smoothly. They know, though, if they’re ever found in violation of this old agreement, the planet will be seized immediately and run by martial law. This is why they brought me down in a shuttle to the only spaceport on the planet and confiscated every single piece of electronic gear I possessed. I’m writing this on parchment paper!

  Thus, the Keepers are left in a precarious situation. They must maintain the peace without actually punishing any of the Houses. The only way the Keepers do their job is by investigating every hint of a House war, and bringing undeniable evidence before the Council of Houses. The Council of Houses has sole power over controlling which Houses are recognized and protected. No House wants to be accused of starting a House war, declared invalid, and dissolved. It hasn’t happened in the upper five Houses in almost two decades; only to some lower Houses who tried to climb too fast.

  The Keepers themselves are broken into small Cells, operating mostly independently from each other. Their leaders meet periodically at undisclosed locations in order to coordinate, but these meetings are closed to outsiders except by express invitation. They seem to have their own code and their own brotherhood of sorts, though I’ve only begun to unravel it.

  This city is about as far from the shining jewel of Garden as a city can get. Ah, Garden, a beacon of civilization. The laws are kept, and altruism rules; at least for the most part. Which, of course, means the nobles there are bored to tears. That’s a beautiful opportunity for a company like Lush Bodice Publishing to step in and give them something to read and blush over.

  The problem is inspiration tends to run dry in paradise. As an example, we’ve had an absolute flood lately of bodice-ripper novels about a dashing combat mech pilot. Inspired by recent events in the Terran Empire’s ongoing war against rebellious planets. Every young woman in the city has got a dog-eared copy of one mech romance or another. They giggle over them in alcoves and in the streets, and blush while discussing passages with their peers. Many a young man has picked up a copy of his own hoping to learn techniques and flair to get these young ladies to swoon for him. My own foray into this genre and my most recent novel, My Mech, My Love, was naturally the best of them all. Why, reader, I wouldn’t be surprised to find you yourself possess a copy of your very own!

  This is where yours truly
enters the story. The nobles need entertainment, and I need to increase my fame and fortune. I’ve come to the planet Sivern and the city Tiers to find grand inspiration for a new novel, something the Garden residents haven’t even dreamed yet.

  Some last notes about the key players. The fine, upstanding Keepers in this story belong to the Upper Town Division, First Cell. The Keeper leaders decided welcoming me into the fold as an embed would be good for their purposes, and the First Cell was the best place for it. No doubt they felt my talents would be wasted anywhere but at the very top.

  The events of this story are absolutely true. Every bit of it, no matter how fantastic, is completely accurate. I have changed names where necessary in order to protect the privacy of the people involved. These are real Keepers doing their job, struggling to keep the peace in a city which crawls every day further into the darkest corner, looking to die.

  So, you know. Enjoy!

  CHAPTER 3

  BEFORE I WAS fighting for my life in an alley…

  “What do you think Tiers will be like?” I asked Ved. We’d been stuck in the carriage together for two weeks, and my hired bodyguard still looked uncomfortable on the little cushioned bench on his side of the carriage. He shifted his rear end around and seemed to mull over my question, furrowing his brow and scratching his chin.

  “Wet,” he finally said. Not hired for his brains, this one; three weeks of travel had made that clear. We’d spent a week shuttling through space and then arrived at this planet, only to have every scrap of electronic gear and anything that couldn’t be hand-made stripped from us. They even took my self-adjusting sunglasses. Ved had taken just about every opportunity to show off his ignorance, and I’d lost track of how many times I’d been asked to explain a word.

  I waited for more, but he’d turned back to looking out the window. I made an impatient gesture with my hands. “Wet, because…?”

  He turned back, looking surprised the conversation was still going on. He seemed to think it over. I say seemed because I’m not convinced he had two whole brain cells to rub together. He alternated between scratching his huge chest through his stained, brown shirt, and rubbing his other hand over his massive chin. At last he came up with an answer. “Well… Tiers is about the river, right? And rivers is water. And water is wet.”

  I caught myself about to roll my eyes and pretended to soak up his wisdom. It’s not good to openly insult someone three times your size, and I doubted my slender form could stand up to his fists if he caught me mocking him, bodyguard or no. “And what about the parts of the city that aren’t water, Ved?”

  He rolled his eyes and looked at me like I was particularly thick. I guess slim, manicured people don’t inspire the same fearful consideration. “People is people, Bel. How different from Garden could it be?”

  I sighed and turned to look out my own window. It had been a long three weeks. I was looking forward to getting my feet back on the ground for good. I had just the pair of walking shoes for it, in fact.

  “If you’re coming into Tiers, get used to blood on your shoes,” the guard leader informed me.

  Our approach to the city had taken us through dense forests and up a winding mountain trail which branched off multiple times toward the city, higher up the mountains each time. We aimed to enter by the highest entrance, along the border between what the signs called Upper Town and Low Town. Our little caravan had fetched up against the walls outside their gates, and I had stepped out of the carriage preceded by Ved, who neglected to tell me we were stepping into what looked to be a rather sizable pool of blood covered over with some hastily kicked dirt. The gate guards at the entrance to the city apparently found my horror particularly funny, one of them doubled over in laughter while another slapped his laughing friend on the back. Even Ved was grinning, the inbred jackal.

  I fished my letters of introduction and credentials out of my satchel and all but flung them at the leader of the gate guard, who caught them easily and continued to chuckle to himself while leafing through the stack. Somehow, he pretended not to hear the grinding of my teeth.

  “Looks in order.”

  Of course they’re in order, idiot, I thought.

  He waved at his men up on top of the natural wall. “Let them through!” As the gates ground open he turned back and handed me my papers, still smiling. “Have yourself a grand time, author. Shoe store is a few streets in.”

  Troglodyte.

  I accidentally kicked Ved on the way back into the carriage.

  I don’t know what I expected, but I wasn’t prepared for a city like Tiers. A life on Garden just doesn’t prepare you for the stink of a city which genuinely does not care about its people. The fact we entered through the gate reserved for the upper class only made me concerned about what went on in the lower streets.

  Buildings tended to be short and blocky. They clustered back against the cliff face in a few rows separated by narrow streets before reaching the next cliff edge. Everything seemed to be painted to the taste or ability of the owner, with no unifying theme to each Tier other than the living conditions being slightly better than the one below it. The ground underneath us was dark and gave off a fragrant, earthy smell, detectable even inside the carriage. The air was moist and damp, owing to the constant spray from the waterfall.

  People I saw tended toward more conservative dress. Conservative fashion often happens when everything must be hand-made. Women and men both wore their hair longer than galactic standard, with most men’s hair brushing their shoulders. Women favored braids to keep control of their long hair.

  Vendors shouted at us from their stalls lining the street, hawking everything from trinkets to food to young girls dressed in rags. Children smeared with filth ran alongside the carriage as soon as we were inside the gates. They climbed up on the running boards and I was afraid of one of them falling under the wheels. My concern abruptly shifted to my own safety when the children leaned through the windows and reached for me. Ved beat them back none too gently and they leapt off the carriage like monkeys.

  We saw the Watch kill someone mere minutes into the city. He couldn’t have been more than sixteen. They had him backed into a corner and he was waving a knife, clutching what looked like a coin pouch in his other hand. They simply leveled their spears at him and impaled him through the chest. One of them scooped up the pouch, fished something silver out of it, and tossed the remainder to an old woman who was standing nearby. She spat on the warm body and went her way.

  Our driver took us up to what they call the Lift – a gilded cage large enough to hold two carriages. Enormous chains stretched as far up and down as I could see, running at a slight angle to accommodate the tiered structure of the city. I could see other lift cages up and down the chain. I leaned out of my window to call to the driver. “You knew these lifts were here?” He turned around and nodded at me, the waxed ends of his gray mustache bobbing. A native of the city, perhaps, or at least someone with knowledge. “Is this lift the only way up and down the city?” He shook his head. I waited, but he wasn’t any more forthcoming than Ved usually was, so I ducked my head back inside to find Ved picking his nose.

  Despite the look of it, the Lift pulled us up smoothly and fairly quickly, and we were afforded a beautiful view of the massive waterfall to our right, which divided the city in half east to west. Stretched out below us, I could see the massive river flowing south. I noticed clumps of something in the water, and upon closer inspection I realized they were corpses hung on chain nooses. Some of them were very old; some fresh. The poor people, whoever they had been, were both hanged and drowned at the same time. Our driver informed me these were criminals who had threatened the ruling Houses in some way and been condemned to death for it. After our first half hour in the city I was about ready to steal a boat and ride that river back to the spaceport and my beloved Garden.

  Upper Town proved more to my liking. The streets were clean, and there was no blood. No one was selling children in the streets. No
one reached to grab me through my window. In fact, the clean and well-dressed people out walking the streets looked like they were perfectly content to pretend I didn’t exist. There were enough people strolling and enough of a Watch presence that I started to feel safe for the first time since entering Tiers.

  Once we slipped into the inner streets of the tier and the cliff edge was out of sight behind buildings, it could almost have been an average quarter of Iris City back home on Garden. There were still some noticeable differences, however. One was the deep but narrow channels cut into the road, running through the gaps between buildings and sloped toward the edge of the cliff to divert rainwater and snowmelt. The second was the smell, the overwhelming scent of pine off the mountains and cliffs around us, carried through the narrow streets by a gentle breeze. Last was the architecture. Tiers favors a blockier, simpler style with straight eaves and pitched roofs, and most buildings look the same from one to the next. “Cheaper to pay one architect to design everything,” my driver explained.

  At last, we pulled up in front of a four-story building. It was blocky and painted white like every building on the street, with natural wood shutters. The wooden sign blowing in the breeze on the front of the building read simply, “Peacekeepers,” along with their emblem, a brown rolled scroll tied with a red ribbon set against a gray shield, for citizens who couldn’t read. It also had a second picture, a gauntleted fist covered in ivy, which I would come to know as the emblem specific to this group. The front door opened straight off the street, and there were no windows on the first floor. Some adventurous soul had planted purple flowers to the left of the doorway, the only greenery I saw on this street.