This is the first of a multi-part episode set in Stormhaven. For the first time I’m using my own drawings — done in Scratch — instead of AI to illustrate the cast. For better or worse, it won’t be the last time.
“I prefer we use the word ‘situation’” said Euen Mistborn, “If we define what’s happening in the Sprawl as a ‘problem’ it limits our thinking.”
Captain Julian Greatfield glanced at Morien, acting head of the Paldir in Farjika Pendragon’s absence. Both men had agreed that the Sprawl had many problems, that it was a problem, and that the vigilante Strike was part of the problem, not the solution that Mistborn seemed to think that he might be.
For Greatfield it was a problem that Strike was building a private army from the street gangs and that he claimed to speak for the Sprawl. It was still a problem for the Stormhaven Guards that Strike had killed a Guard almost a year ago when he had first arrived in Stormhaven.
For Morien it was Strike’s killing of several gang bosses and other thugs who refused to join him that was the problem. To kill a man without giving him recourse defence before Law violated principles of Law and Justice.
Both men knew that Mistborn would come up with some argument of necessity to justify his inaction and both were glad that Sister Hildagard, Abbess of the Palumae also sat at the table. Surely she would defend principles of law and justice over Mistborn’s arguments.
The table was round, twelve chairs surrounded it. It could have accommodated twelve people, but this early evening there were six. Besides Mistborn, Greatfield, Morien and Hildagard were Shanti Celestine and Galhadris D’Ancellus. Celestine, the Prime Administrator’s sorceress and personal assistant, always agreed with Mistborn, at least in public.
The sixth member of the gathering was Galhadris d’Ancellus. One week before, she had lit the funeral pyres of many who had died on the ‘Day of the Demons‘ a week before that. Their number, forty, had included her own brother and fellow Paldir, Peredur d’Ancellus. Peredur had died destroying demons of hatred on the Astral planes, now Galhadris fought hatred and despair in the Sprawl, the slums and shanty town that had grown, and was still growing, outside the walls of Stormhaven.
Since the ‘Day of the Demons’ Galhadris had become a legend in the Sprawl. She looked out of the window onto Citadel Park where she had stood before a crowd more than four thousand strong and had lit forty fires. The room was rectangular. The arched windows of the long east wall let in the light of the fading day. Soon lamplighters would come to put flame to the glass enclosed candles of the two great chandeliers suspended from the ceiling on either side of the room.
Galhadris looked at the bookshelves and cabinets along the west wall on both sides of the heavy polished wooden door. It was the first time she had been invited to this room. The meeting had no official name, it was not a subgroup of the Council of Stormhaven or of the Commonwealth nor a formal advisory group. This was nevertheless the room to which those the Administrator of Stormhaven and Prime Administrator of the Commonwealth needed to speak with were called when there was a problem or, as he had put it, a situation, to be dealt with.
Galhadris was the group’s youngest member and the only one without a title of office. She was still Paldir, called, like all Paldir, in a series of dreams to serve Justice. Two years before she had fought with the Commonwealth Peacekeepers against the army of Baron Mokosh. She had returned to Stormhaven sickened by war, even just war, and had declared her intention to renounce the sword and resign from the Paldir. Farjika Pendragon had told her that renouncing the sword did not mean renouncing her calling to stand for Justice and refused her resignation. Galhadris remained a senior Paldir involved in the training of novice Paldir.
It was her march through the Sprawl playing her bagpipes as the slum town rioted around her that had made her legend. But it was two years of work with the Sprawl’s desperate and destitute, particularly their children, that had built its foundation. With the help of the Palume, the clerical partners of the Paldir, Galhadris had set up a dojo, a practice hall, in an abandoned church, and there she had started to teach the ‘Art of Loving Harmony’, a martial art based on protecting oneself and the enemy from harm. ‘The Harmony’ was not only a martial art, it was a martial and meditative dance and a philosophy. When it was not a dojo the practice hall became a soup kitchen and a community centre.
As Strike, known as Sans-Pitié, was imposing his own order on the Sprawl through violence, Galhadris D’Ancellus was building a school for its children and the school brought together parents from families that had lived in the Sprawl for generations and those that had only been there for weeks or months. While Strike had, on the Day of the Demon, delivered the heads of five rebel aristocrats to Euen Mistborn, Galhadris had, on the same day, with her bagpipes and a choir of Palumae, delivered to the Light the hearts of the poor in the Sprawl.
Returning her attention to the room, Galhadris heard Mistborn say, “Stormhaven can no longer be the Eleven Districts. It’s long past time that the North and South Sprawl are represented on the Council”.
“I agree Euen”, said Sister Hildagard gently. The Abbess of the Palumae Order, Hildagard, a dark skinned elderly woman, refused the title ‘Mother’. When people called her ‘Mother’ after the fashion in the Christic Church she would say that the One Light is our Mother and Father. All Palumae are Sisters and Brothers in the Light.
“But we’ve never been able to establish representation in the Sprawl”, continued the Abbess. “Most people there don’t stay in the same place long enough to form a Sprawl community. Many don’t speak Arkaenic and some bring old hatreds with them. Galhadris has been doing a fine job in the North Sprawl, the Palumae are helping but it’s not enough. I fear that the people there have no love for each other.. And yet.” The Abbess hesitated.
“And yet”, prompted Mistborn.
“And yet many seem to have fallen in love with Galhadris D’ Ancellus”. Hildagard continued.
Mistborn nodded. There was a knock on the door. Julian Greatfield opened it and two lamplighters entered to lower the chandeliers and light the candles. While they worked the group at the table stopped speaking and sank into their own reflections.
The administrator looked around the table. Julian Greatfield was an Arkaenic man, white of skin like himself and Shanti Celestine. The Greatfields were one of the Hundred Noble Families that had ruled Arten before the Commonwealth. Apart from the Nine Baronnies the Arten Nobility did not officially exist but that did not mean that they had disappeared. Though the Assembly of Lords no longer existed, their influence through the lands that they owned and the wealth they had accrued had not disappeared. The sympathy that Greatfield had expressed for the rebel aristocrats that Strike had killed on the Day of the Demon was a reminder that these people held their lives more valuable than those of other citizens. Mistborn frowned. Greatfield was a loyal man but the old ways of thinking died hard. Still, Mistborn had arranged that five of the pyres that burned at the funeral in Citadel Park were those of the young rebels. And he had invited their families to see that they were honoured, alongside the other fallen of Stormhaven, without blame, without shame.
Mistborn looked at Morien. The big man, as tall as himself, but dark and well muscled, had his eyes closed and his lips moved. Mistborn did not have to be a mindreader or a lipreader to know what the Paldir was silently reciting to himself.
“Abun d’Bashmayo
Netqadashmokh
Tete Malkuthokh
Nehwe Tsevyanokh”
Since the Funeral Ceremony in Citadel Park everyone the Administrator knew could be seen silently reciting the words.
“Our Father in Heaven
Sacred is your Name
Your Kingdom Come
Your Will be done.”
Mistborn had expected Hildagard to recite the Vows of Ulf Pendragon at the funeral, instead she had recited a far more ancient prayer. The prayer was familiar, recited in Arkaenic, but the Abbess said that perhaps it had become too familiar. She had said that Stormhaven should recite the first four lines in the language in which they were already spoken so that they became sacred again.
“Netqadashmokh”.
Someone asked if the words were magical. The Abbess replied that they should repeat them at dawn, at noon, at dusk and at midnight for forty days.
Mistborn looked to the window. It was dusk. Closing his eyes he silently recited the words.
When Euen Mistborn reopened his eyes the lamplighters, who had also paused, had resumed raising the chandeliers towards the ceiling via winch systems on the walls. After they had gone, he said the thing no one had expected. He proposed that, as an interim measure, Galhadris and Strike, plus five deputies each, should represent the North and South Sprawl respectively.
No one said anything, or even moved until Shanti Celestine began clapping softly. “Well done Euen. If you can’t beat them, invite them to join you. I’ve told you that I can’t read Strike. I can’t see him on the Astral. So I can’t say what his intentions are. But Sister Hildagard has her sources on this plane. If she approves Strike’s appointment, so will I”.
The Abbess smiled. “My sources indicate that whatever motivations Strike has, they are changing. Don’t trust Strike, trust your instincts, Euen. I trust them and I support your decision”.
“And what of the Acting Paldir Commander?” asked Mistborn.
“I abstain,” said the Paldir.
“And Galhadris”, continued Mistborn.
Galhadris replied that she would not vote, if this was a vote, as Mistborn’s decision involved her.
Eyes settled on Julian Greatfield. “Well if this is a vote” he began, “it seems that I am already outvoted”. Greatfield knew that the arrangement would be informal at first and that it would have to be approved by the Stormhaven Council but he did not doubt that with both Mistborn and Sister Hildagard backing it that it would be confirmed.
The Captain chuckled. “So the Administrator who has no liking for tyrants and aristocrats returns a tyrant and a princess to Stormhaven.”
Eyes turned to Galhadris. Great granddaughter of Ancellus, the Second Pendragon, and Zahra Zenobia, the last Princess of Stormhaven. Galhadris and her brother Peredur might have been considered hereditary members of the Paldir Order had this been possible. But no other member of their family had been Paldir since Platon d’Ancellus, known simply as Ancellus and later Ancellus Pendragon and none had held high office in the Commonwealth administration. It had seemed auspicious when both twins had been called by the Light. But now Peredur was dead and Galhadris stood in a place she had made for herself. She did not stand as a princess.
Euen Mistborn began to chuckle, then so did Morien, Celestine, even Hildagard. Finally Galhadris herself started laughing.