The Praetor “From Thazan”

A short story I speedwrote as part of a setting document for an upcoming project. This is set in the world of Rale (like Three and Two and Two) but several centuries earlier. Again, a reminder that Promises for a Worse Tomorrow and Three and Two and Two are both heavily discounted on all formats and platforms until the end of January. If you haven’t picked one of them up yet, now is a perfect time!

No one in Piraeus remembered when exactly Halia Eleria–called “the Thazanian” by her detractors–arrived.  It wasn’t so simple as her becoming an irreplaceable fixture of the city, though she seemed on her way to accomplish that.  Rather, just as no one could pinpoint the timeframe of her arrival, everyone was dead sure it wasn’t that long ago.  Everyone could remember a time when she hadn’t been there, though Piraeus’ most introspective folk certainly found it odd that they couldn’t remember any specific event that occurred during that time.

Still, it was damned obvious she wasn’t from around here.

The “Thazanian” thing reportedly came from her own mouth.  Eavesdroppers to a conversation between her and Praetor Cleonar at the Calibratory Festival two years ago–or was it three?–reported a discussion of her childhood in Saltstill.  Thazan, the Khettites used to call it, back when Saltstill was a Khettite city, though Halia didn’t much look like a Khettite, Grayskin or otherwise.  Meanwhile, in a speech to the council last year, she cited her experience managing a famine in her home village to the East, in old Kolai territory.

Ultimately, the most convincing account of Halia’s ancestry arrived by way of a rhetorical question from old Edward the Pirate during one of his drunken rants at the tavern in the Fisherman’s Quarter:

“Does it fucking matter where she’s from?  You have a place in mind that’ll make her trustworthy?”

This argument didn’t satisfy anyone, exactly, but few could argue with him.  Indeed, no one trusted Halia, though the reasons why this should be the case were varied and nebulous.

Her politics hardly raised eyebrows.  By every account, her ministry over the city’s aquaculture and trade, to which she had been appointed over her own objection by Praetor Pierron, had saved thousands of lives last summer during the siege by the forces of the Revián’s self-proclaimed Highlord.  There was a superstitious handful that blamed her for the ensuing plague of ectoplasm that now ravaged the Hospitality Quarter, but these accusers held that the plague was divine punishment for the cowardice the city had shown in refusing to mount a counteroffensive against the Highlord.  Anyone keeping score could point out that Halia had abstained from the Council vote which had sealed the gates that summer–how could she be blamed for a decision she had not supported?

Unseemly though it was, the most pervasive criticism against Halia was for her appearance.  None could accuse her of neglecting formality, but her ubiquitous wardrobe, the impeccable silken tunic, hose, and long gloves, the heavy cloak she wore over them–they were all too pressed, too clean, too white.  And they covered everything from the neck down.  Not even her eyes were visible, as she was in the habit of wearing spectacles with dark-tinted glass, even indoors.  It was uncanny, many thought, and her still, perfect poise gave few if any reminders that what lay beneath all her finery was especially human.

Indeed, there was a vocal minority that claimed she was actually not human.  Some said she was a mermaid, hiding her disfigured fish-body beneath all that silk.  Others speculated that she was some sort of crocodilian face-stealer, that her anatomy was human enough, but her too-still posture and too-sharp teeth betrayed what lurked beneath her pilfered skin.

Few listened to Edward’s observation that what she had “stolen” was capital in nature: Over the course of the wars with the Highlord, more and more of the city’s industries seemed to be pulled under the financial auspices of Halia’s affiliates.  The fishery had become a funnel to a single intermediary buyer, the navy had contracted its supply lines to Halia’s merchant captains, every single stall in the Market Quarter was now owned and rented out by trade companies who could, if placed under the appropriate duress, provide documentation linking their provenance to a certain alleged Thazanian.

The rumors and accusations against Halia never stuck, of course.  Her control was never obvious.  She was no crocodilian.  She never seized what she wanted to hold, never bit what she wanted to consume.  She merely drew close, helpfully reached out, and slowly, nigh-unnoticeably, drank it.