milliways_bar | (no subject)

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There is in Milliways an immortal who is busy looking over papers and setting the affairs contained on them in order for an absence of his; at his elbow there's a large mug of coffee, brewed strong and black, but he's not drinking it.

No, on the contrary it has cinnamon sticks, black peppercorns, cloves and cumin powder in it, and while the smell is very aromatic, the taste isn't very good at all. But it serves its purpose as he's mixing henna dye paste, testing the mix every few minutes to see how easily and darkly it dyes. Depending on when you come by, he may be in progress of a tattoo on one hand up to the wrist.

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Poins laughs. "Does he expect those he would drink from to cut themselves for his convenience?" he asks.

"No. The blood he drinks is collected in a tax for him," Ganymede says, musing aloud. "His city is very different, built entirely on ships--his is one of the ridings there. The citizens that live there pay their tax in blood." It's clear by the way he says it that Ganymede finds the practice fascinating.

And the only reason he didn't exclaim louder at the way Poins spoke is that he has cut himself purposefully to let the Brucolac drink a little of his blood. With his own knife, even.

"And what do blood-drinkers, in turn, do for their subjects: bite them not?" Poins asks.

"In Armada--his city--he's the only vampir that governs Dry Fall. In return for their blood, he gives them all sorts of subsidies and things." Ganymede shrugs gently. "He is a very different sort of man, and a different sort of ruler."

"Dry Fall?" Poins asks. "His quarter, or his skill?"

"His quarter. There are eight district to the city, and Dry Fall is his to rule."

"Thus, eight blood-drinkers that would rule the city?" Poins says.

"No, he's the only vampir that rules any quarter. There are other races, other ways of rule, in the other seven. He's told me what they all were, but I can't remember them all just yet."

He finishes the tattoo, and turns his palm over to ink in his fingertips, almost down to the first knuckle.

"Tis a strange world, from what you tell of it," Poins nods, watching what Ganymede is painting on his skin.

"It is," he smiles secretly. "Strange and fantastical, and full of things I could never have imagined. It's wonderful to go somewhere and have no one know who you are. He doesn't care what my name is, not the way that people who know my story do."

And there's something about it--about simply looking up and seeing stars that aren't your own, being under the light of three different moons, and knowing you're not even on the same world as you were--that's incredible.

"He took you to his world?" Poins says amazed.

"Yes," Ganymede nods, still a little amazed at it himself. "To the ship where he lives--a moonship, it's the only one of its kind in the city. The whole thing was lit stem to stern with moonlight and starlight and saint's-fire, like lightning. It was beautiful."

"Such wondrous worlds will hide behind that door, where I will find merely odoriferous Eastcheap!" Poins says.

"You could ask to go to another's," he says. "When you have friends--or lovers, or anyone you meet--and they take you through the door with them, you might be in their world. You could see mine, and see the edge of the Pacific."

"Pacific?" Poins asks. "A place of peace?"

"Yes. It's an ocean that covers half the world. Between California--where I am, on the other edge of the Americas--and China."

"China!" Poins says. "The silk-lands! So those exist as well and are not only mythic tales of Prester John and uniciorns!"

"Of course they exist," Ganymede laughs. "Where do you think you get silk from? And black powder, and a hundred other things they trade?"

He gestures to the door. "Do you want to come with me, and see the other edge of the ocean?"

"Indeed," Poins says, "I gladly would do so!"

He stands.

"Then come with me," he says, letting the black liquid steep at his table. When he opens the door, it leads through to a short hall and another door with a glass pane set at face-level. Beyond that there is the sandy beach, and the ocean.

"Come and see."

"A house upon the beach, right by the sea?" Poins says. "Is it not ever threatened by the flooding tide, when storms obscure the heavens, and waves rise?"

"It is," he says. "But not often. The house is built well and it stands the waves when they come up the beach. They've never reached this far, though."

"That is a very tame spring-flood, indeed, if it doth not spring high upon this house," Poins says.

The seas are rougher where he comes from.

"This is why they call the ocean pacific," he reminds Poins. "The storms here are rarely so rough as they are on the other side of the world."

"So men may build their house upon the beach, and place foundations safely in the sand," Poins nods.