In the Flat City, anything could happen.
Born as a humble trading post on a plateau where three great trade routes intersected, the city had long ago outgrown the landform of its namesake and spilled over the sides of the crag, swelling into a vertical tangle of stairs, elevators and subterranean mazes. Even to a native like me, there was no telling what you would find if you probed the dark corners deeply enough.
The people who walked along the city's paths, reliefs, bridges and catwalks hailed from every corner of the gods' creation. Nestled as it was between three great empires, in the geographic center of the civilized world, Flat City attracted people named Sanghamitra, Oleksandr, Albert, Ashitsune, Singing Bird, Ulfric and Mwanza, and plenty more that I still have never heard. In this city, natives like myself, with our tall builds, barrel-chests, red-copper skin and broad jaws with no beards, were only one race among many.
I had finished my day's work, hauling stone with the other men at the quarry downhill. After stopping at the bathhouse to wash the chalk from my hands and the sweat from my back' I headed home up the steep, carved stone stairs.
Inside the humble apartment where I made my home, I pulled open the window shudders to let in the fading evening sun. I looked for my cooking pots. My set of blackware, the finest kind of pottery in the city, waited for me on my table, ready to boil up dinner for me.
But there was also something that didn't belong. A thin, wiry girl in tight black clothes leaned over the pots. A short cape shrouded her back and shoulders, and a hood hid the top of her head while a face mask hid the bottom. All I saw were her huge blue eyes with eyelashes almost long enough to reach her eyebrows.
"What in blistering fire?" I said slowly. "You're a thief!"
The girl cowered. Her eyes darted to the window, then the door, but she knew she could not make it to either. I was too close.
"I ought to call the city guardians on you," I growled. Lunging forward, I seized her and threw back her hood.
She was a northern girl, probably twenty years old, tough but slight and with pale, delicate skin. From her pretty face, her long, jet-black hair stood out like ink on milk.
I didn't hold her very tightly, but I didn't need to. She shook silently and never took her eyes off me. Clearly, any thoughts of escape had been scared out of her.
