The Nine Bishops

With Monsoon so close, Mika was too excited to sleep, though she knew the things she wanted to do would have to wait until morning. She spent a restless night turning a lifetime of goals and expectations over in her mind. After what seemed like an eternity, a glimpse of morning light glinted into the caravan. She took it as her cue to get up and gather her things.

Alighting from the caravan, she saw Jacque was already up and had set up a hammock and a temporary camp. She was surprised to see him awake so early after the long journey. He had made a fire—offering the first glimpse Mika had seen of his magic. As generic as his magic might have been, it seemed incredible to her.

The caravanist was cooking eggs and sausage in a skillet, but not over the fire, as she would have expected. Instead, the fire enveloped it, while Jacque lay in the hammock, lazily waving his fingers with one hand while reading a book held in the other. Mika realized he was using Manipulation to control the flames. She had never seen anyone use magic so effortlessly, including the other fire mage she’d known, back at the circus. Jacque had complete control over the flames, and his ability to multitask so nonchalantly impressed her.

Jacque had yet to notice Mika when she commented on his magic. “That’s amazing! How are you able to do that with such little focus?” she asked in wonderment.

He looked up suddenly, with a grin. “Oh, good morning! You startled me,” he said, quickly releasing the flames and letting the fire burn under the skillet normally. Jacque closed the book and rose to check on the breakfast. “That is nothing special, honestly. My brother is a lot more amazing than me,” he added, almost embarrassed to be caught using it.

“Nonsense. I have never seen such effortless magic,” Mika said reassuringly.

“Well, you will see plenty of it in Monsoon. I’m just surprised you haven’t been exposed to better magic, what with that medallion and all,” Jacque said.

Mika did not want to acknowledge the fact she could hardly control her own magic. Jacque might, if anything, be thinking that possessing the Bishop’s medallion must of meant she was an incredible mage. Mika had no clear idea what the medallion signified, only that holding it instantly led to being treated with respect.

She’d guessed possessing it meant that a Bishop backed her, but the conjecture ended there, and Jacque didn’t probe any further. Nonetheless, she thought it best to change the topic.

“Even so, despite your history with your family, they must at least be proud that you have made a life for yourself without your incredible magic,” Mika said, not pausing to think about the feelings that comment would evoke.

“I thank you for your kind words, but I highly doubt that,” he said, laughing.

Fortunately, Jacque took Mika’s words positively. She genuinely felt bad for him. In many ways, she could relate to Jacque. Filth-mage marriages were every bit as illegal as same-sex marriages. Both were regarded with deep prejudice and brought the possibility of severe punishment under the law. Somehow, Simone and Jacque had coped with the ways this prejudice had hindered their lives. Even though Mika hardly knew Jacque, she wanted him to know she supported him.

“Despite what the laws say, I think your family would be absolute fools not to be proud of you. They are lucky that their son was able to find such a good partner. They just want you to be safe, I’m sure,” Mika added.

She was afraid she might have overstepped, yet somehow her words needed to be said. She knew next to nothing about the man, but something told her he could be counted on as a friend.

“How can you say all that without knowing a thing about me?” Jacque wondered aloud, seemingly hoping what she said was true.

“Let’s just say it’s my strain,” Mika replied, quietly. She didn’t know what had moved her to say that, but was instantly convinced it was the truth once the words left her mouth.

Jacque, seemingly convinced by her response, broke into a smile and offered her breakfast, which she gladly accepted. Over the food, they talked about their families. Mika noticed Jacque was careful with the fine details, much as she was. She carefully avoided any point about her prior Filthhood and spoke mainly about her uncle and aunt. Jacque did the same with his family, but avoided talking about his father. Mika did not probe him on the details, since he gave her the same courtesy.

Before they knew it, amid the conversation and laughter, a few hours had passed. The sun was well up in the sky when they finally agreed it was time to part ways. Mika thanked Jacque for everything and gathered her things. For the first time in her life, she embraced a mage of her own free will. In that moment, it didn’t matter to her whether Jacque was a mage or a Filth. All Mika saw was a friend.

“Are you sure you can’t stay in Monsoon for a while? I really need someone to show me around,” she asked hopefully, already knowing the answer.

“I wish I could. Simone and I have plans to travel to the wine country in the southeast. That is where our journey will take us,” Jacque answered, regretfully. “Hopefully this is not a goodbye, but a see-you-soon,” he finished with a smile. With those words, Mika lunged in for one more hug. Wishing Jacque safe travels in the journey to come, she hoisted her bag on her back and walked towards Heaven’s Gate.

It wasn’t far from where she had enjoyed the spectacular view over Monsoon last night. She was a bit surprised to find it was a literal gate, located above the upper reaches of the city’s southeastern flank, facing the cliff that marked Monsoon’s northwestern limits. The gate was made of a green, crystalline rock Mika couldn’t recall seeing before. It had an intricate pattern carved into it, which captured the light so that it appeared to glow faintly. When she reached it, she noticed a sign with an inscribed message in front of it:

Welcome to Monsoon.

Do not fear the fall.

Take your first step with faith.

Unsure of the meaning of the message, Mika opened the gate, which was difficult because it was exceptionally heavy. She was just able to squeeze through before it closed heavily behind her. Mika turned to take a step toward the crest of the hill but suddenly realized there was nothing before her but air. She quickly brought her foot back and leaned back into the heavy gate, panting in fear. She had nearly walked off the cliff’s edge!

On seeing the gate from a distance, she’d assumed there must be a staircase leading down just beyond it, but now she saw nothing but a three hundred meter drop. Feeling a bit of vertigo, Mika tried to hug the gate tosomehow get through it again, back to solid ground. But the gate was too heavy to pull open and she was unable to budge it. She looked side-to-side frantically for another way into Monsoon, but sheer cliff faces like the one in front of her surrounded the city. There were no stairs; in fact, the only way she could see of entering the city safely was from the sea, far down below. And now she was trapped on the cliff side of the gate, with hardly any space to safely move. I should have asked Jacque more questions about getting into the city, Mika thought. Then she recollected the words from the sign. Do not fear the fall. Take your first step with faith.

Mika looked at the path before her, which led straight off the cliff. There was only one way to go, only one way down into Monsoon. Mika closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She could hardly believe what she was about to do. Her eyes closed, she took a step forward toward the drop. Her foot met solid ground! Not wholly confident, she kept her eyes closed and took another step. Again, she felt ground.

Mika opened her eyes and, sure enough, she was standing on something solid. Peering around, she felt her heart pounding. What was holding her up was a pair of rocks only as big as her feet. Everything else was just air. There was no space to move, no space to act out her fear, without falling.

Mika practically tripped into her next steps, but this time her eyes were open. As she moved her feet, the rocks followed, each time providing her with a sure footing. Eventually, Mika became used to the sensation and walked as if she were walking down stairs normally. Every step was supported, and this strange conveyance started to feel natural. After a while, Mika could see that her descent, as she wound her way down the side of the cliff, was bringing her close to the edges of the city.

With each step, Monsoon’s features seemed larger and more real. Soon she could hear faint voices drifting up from the streets below. After what seemed like a thousand steps, she reached solid ground and a gate exactly like the one she had originally passed through. It, too, had a sign inscribed with a message. It read: Welcome to Monsoon. Here, every step is one of faith.

By Mika’s calculations, she was in the westernmost part of Monsoon, where the city buildings stood at their highest elevation. Buildings to the east still looked distant and far below. Beyond them, she could also see the sea, which seemed perpetually shrouded in fog, making it impossible to see the horizon. This perspective gave Mika some idea of just how large Monsoon was.

She was fascinated by the city’s design. The roads seemed paved with a strain of crystal like that of the gates, creating a sparkling cobblestone effect in the sunlight. The reflection was not blinding, but Mika was aware of the refracted light in her peripheral vision.

The buildings were all shapes and sizes, a fusion of ancient stone masonry and more contemporary metalwork that Mika had only read a little about before. For every material and design she knew about, there were two she’d never heard of. Every building she passed caught her eye, so much that she could hardly focus on one before some new wonder drew her interest.

Mika found herself falling in love with the city. Instead of the torches used to light the streets at night in every other town Mika had seen thus far, Monsoon was dotted with lampposts topped by glowing orbs—dim now, but gleaming bright at night. Mika surmised that either some magic controlled their intensity or they simply glowed brighter at night. She couldn’t be sure, but nonetheless she was amazed.

Between the streets lay canals Mika hadn’t noticed the night before. Remarkably, some of them appeared to be flowing upstream, which made no sense to her. People were riding boats up and down the canals; the boats seemed to be rowing themselves. By the looks of things, the canals seemed to be an express method of travel within the city rather than for cargo, since none of the passengers carried more than a few things.

The presence of the canals made the city’s road networks extremely complex. Walking, she found there were alleys and unexpected turns everywhere. She let her eagerness to reach the beach be her compass. As long as she kept taking stairs and paths that led down, her way was obvious. As excited as she was to find the mages’ guilds, Mika wanted to see the ocean first.

Although Monsoon was the most populated city in Seemos, it didn’t feel that way. The city was so massive and sprawling, it didn’t experience the crowding Mika had seen in Zanark—at least, here on the outskirts of the city. Mika was curious to see what the center was like.

She did see some Filth on the streets. They were distinguishable, like those in Zanark, for the care they took not to bump into mages. However, to Mika’s eyes at least, there were significantly fewer Filth here than elsewhere, and those she did spot seemed better dressed and more educated. Listening in as she passed groups of them, she noticed their conversations seemed to take on a more intellectual tone than she was used to.

In all, the people Mika passed by seemed as unique as the buildings that surrounded them. Their dress was far more varied and exotic than she’d seen elsewhere. There were people wearing elaborate jewelry, piercings, and articles of clothing Mika was not accustomed to, in all manner of styles, from loose and revealing to covered head to foot; flowing skirts, button-up shirts, sturdy work pants and fancier trousers fringed or cuffed or held up with striped suspenders, colorful robes, tunics long and short, feathered hats and brimmed caps, in cotton, silk, leather and pelts of all varieties. There seemed to be no particular fashion or style, as each person Mika passed seemed dressed to suit their own personality and practical needs. Though everything was foreign to Mika, she found herself more intrigued than intimidated.

Mika spent a couple of hours wandering down through the city until she found herself at last in the central square, which was dominated by a massive marble-domed building that had been severely damaged somehow. The nature of the damage seemed more akin to battle than weather, which piqued Mika’s interest. The canal system wrapped around this core of the city and came to a confluence at the far edge of the square, where the canal waters flowed in a broad delta toward the sea.

Instead of caravans, public transportation here seemed to consist of boats, scores of which filled the canals. Bridges crossing the canals were typically lined with marble statues, which, according to the placards Mika was able to decipher, mainly depicted former guild masters. The condition of these monuments varied; some were nearly a thousand years old and still standing. Some memorialized guilds that no longer existed.

While more spacious than Zanark, Monsoon’s core area bustled with market activity: people producing, buying and selling various useful items. The city center served as a market, where vendors were selling interesting trinkets and everyday wares: soaps, glassware, clothing, rugs, and so much more. In some corners of the neighborhood, Mika saw groups of mages gambling; in others, children playing games.

Enthralled, she strolled around the market, soaking in the history and atmosphere of the place, until she realized the sun was beginning to dip lower and decided it might be a good place to find out where the guilds were. She came across a tent festooned with a giant handcrafted map of Seemos. Pondering this, and what she had learned about trades in Seemos through her reading, she realized the tent must belong to one of the most lucrative trades: that of a cartographer.

When she entered it, she immediately noticed a large table in the center. Within the tent were many storage containers overflowing with rolled-up maps. Pieces of crumpled parchment littered the floor.

Mika saw a young woman around the age of twenty-five sprawled across the table, working on a map. She was wearing a low-cut tan top that revealed her midsection, loose brown pants, and a purple bandana in her curly, silver hair. Her face was hidden behind an enormous pair of magnifying glasses. The map the cartographer was working on was already half-finished. It was a map of an island that Mika had never heard of before, drawn in extremely fine detail.

The cartographer didn’t seem to notice when she walked in, so Mika watched her work silently. She worked extremely quickly, seemingly without missing a single detail. It was the most intricate map Mika had ever seen. The cartographer did not lift her ink-laden quill once as she continued to map out the details. More remarkably, the cartographer had no notes, no sketches, or any other map to reference, yet she seemed to know every detail off the top of her head. The map looked almost complete when, abruptly, the cartographer stopped working, ripped her glasses off, and shook her head in disgust. She then snatched up the massive map and began to crumple it.

“Wait! What are you doing?” Mika asked in alarm, shocked she would destroy such impressive work. The cartographer, who had been unaware of Mika’s presence, was startled and tumbled from her precarious position leaning over the table. Mika rushed over to help her up, but the young woman was already getting to her feet.

“Woah, there! Don’t sneak up on me like that! How long have you been standing there?” she asked.

“Not very long. Sorry to have scared you. I just didn’t want to distract you from your work. When you started crumpling your incredible work I couldn’t just stand there and say nothing,” Mika said, frowning sympathetically.

“Incredible work?” The cartographer laughed. “Did you not see how thick those last lines were? It was awful!”

“Well, I thought it was pretty amazing myself. Not only the fine details, but the fact you were drawing the map out with no references or breaks. How did you do that anyway?” Mika said, a little embarrassed.

“Let’s just say I have a good memory. But if you think that was amazing, then you must not have seen that much amazing stuff. Which probably means you just got into Monsoon, am I right?”

“Is it that obvious?” Mika asked, thinking back to what Jacque had said to her earlier that morning.

“Yeah, but don’t worry about it. You’ll fit in soon enough. The name is Zaya, by the way.” She extended her hand.

“Mika. It’s nice to meet you.” Mika noticed Zaya’s purple eyes and then, as she looked down to shake her hand, a tattoo on the inside of her wrist: a wolf howling at the moon. Mika knew all the symbols for the mages’ guilds in Monsoon. Zaya’s tattoo marked her as a member of the Howling Moon guild: not the premier guild, but certainly one with a solid reputation.

“Are you in Howling Moon?” she asked, excited to finally meet a mage from a guild.

“That I am,” Zaya said, smiling. She howled towards the sky, one of the guild’s battle cries, and then, grinning, asked, “What brings you to Monsoon?”

“I’m actually here to join a guild myself,” Mika acknowledged, eagerly.

“Oh really? Dang, you came at a bad time,” Zaya said. “Our guild isn’t taking any recruits at this time. It would have been nice to have a girl the same age around,” she said, looking genuinely disappointed.

Mika was a little disappointed herself. Though she hadn’t meant to pursue Howling Moon specifically, she wanted every opportunity she could get. And Zaya’s comment made her wonder whether other guilds were also not accepting recruits.

“Yeah, that definitely would have been nice. I don’t expect you to know this, but do you possibly know what guilds are accepting right now?” Mika asked, hopefully.

“Oh, we always know who is accepting. We are rivals after all, so we need to know who the competition is going to be. Right now, Nature’s Fury, The Dreamcatchers, and Crow’s Nest have openings. Your best shot is with the Dreamcatchers, since they have multiple openings. I wouldn’t even bother with Crow’s Nest because there are about a dozen mages trying out for their one opening.”

Mika thought back quickly to what she had read about the guilds. All the guilds Zaya mentioned were good, especially Crow’s Nest. They were ranked on two main criteria: first, how many current and former Bishops came from the guild, and second, how many first-class contracts they had completed, first-class being the most difficult of the four classes.

Most mages joined guilds solely on the number of Bishops they boasted. Mika knew that becoming a Bishop was a childhood dream for most mages. Guilds were typically treated as a means to an end. The better the guild, the better trained a mage would be. The better trained a mage was, the better chance they stood to become a Bishop. Nature’s Fury formerly had Bishop Wild. The Dreamcatchers had no current Bishop but had produced many of history’s former Bishops. Crow’s Nest had three current Bishops: Bishop Soot, Bishop Mistress, and Bishop Flame. It was no wonder so many mages were trying to get into Crow’s Nest.

There were eight mages’ guilds in Monsoon. The War Eagles were ranked number one because they boasted the most first-class contracts completed by any guild—by two-fold. Second was Crow’s Nest. The Dreamcatchers were ranked fourth, and Nature’s Fury sixth. Zaya’s Howling Moon ranked seventh.

“And what of the War Eagles?” Mika asked, hoping for good news.

“The Eagles? They always have open slots,” Zaya said with a laugh.

“Wait, really?” Mika asked hesitantly.

“Yeah, but why would you want to join them?”

“Because they are the best guild in Seemos!” Mika exclaimed.

“After Howling Moon, of course,” Zaya said, laughing. “I guess you are right about that one, but I advise you against wasting your time. You won’t have forever to decide, so you probably should try the Dreamcatchers before tomorrow if you have time. Do you know your way around?”

“No, which is one of the main reasons I came in here,” Mika admitted.

“Well, in that case you came to the right place,” Zaya said with a grin. She walked toward one of her overfilled drawers, rummaged through it, and pulled out a map. She slapped the map on the table she had been working on and said, “Here, have this map I made of Monsoon. I’ll write in the location of the guilds I discussed.”

Mika gazed at the map and noticed the sea was labelled as Fog’s End. No doubt because it’s always covered in fog, she thought.

Zaya grabbed one of her many quills and dipped it into a well of red ink. She highlighted the three guilds she’d told Mika about. They were scattered across the map, which was inconvenient, but Mika would manage.

“Can you add the War Eagles, please?” Mika asked. She planned to go there first.

Zaya bobbed her head around sarcastically and scribbled in the Eagles’ location. It happened to be right by the beach, which was exactly where Mika had planned to head anyway.

“I’ll also show you where I live. If I’m not around here making or selling maps during the workdays, you can find me at the guild,” Zaya said, scribbling in where she lived. “I can show you around town, if you like. I’m typically free on the Sixth and Seventh.”

“What is the date right now? I’ve lost track during travel,” Mika said, sheepishly.

“Today is the Fourth Day of the Third Week of the Fifth Month,” Zaya responded formally.

Mika began to laugh, so hard she was almost crying.

“What’s so funny?” Zaya asked, looking at her as if she were crazy.

“You are not going to believe this, but I forgot it’s my birthday,” Mika said, still laughing.