Farmer or Cultivator Chapter 63: The holy city again

Chapter 63: The holy city again

"Welco to Marina."

The holy city seed to brim with a divine light. Its buildings stood tall with spires that appeared intent on pressing themselves into the sky, as though the city had decided long ago that height was a form of reverence and had built accordingly ever since. The streets were full of people, with a few moving through them in carriages or carts, but most on foot and unhurried. It was very easy to tell who was a native and who was not. The city residents were conservative in their dress in a way that went beyond simple preference, it seed almost philosophical, a communal agreent. Their clothing differed from person to person, but only to a small extent. Long, draping outfits made from a thick fabric that Ren could not identify with certainty, sowhere between wool and sothing denser, fell from their shoulders to their feet. The city carried a mild and persistent cold, and Ren had only a thin tunic shirt and a pair of old fading trousers. He noticed imdiately that he looked out of place in more ways than one. This was not Tunish. There were genuinely powerful people in this city, the kind who could make life quietly terrible for a person who drew their attention. It was best to stay low, stay quiet, and keep himself off whatever radar mattered here.

He could have spent a long ti simply looking at the architecture. The city was beautiful in a way that was serious about itself, nothing decorative for its own sake, every spire and archway and carved facade seed to an sothing. But the days of travel had settled into his bones with a particular heaviness, and the bumping of the cart over uneven roads had done him no favors. He was tired.

He climbed down from the cart and offered the rider a mild bow. He would have pressed so coins into the man’s hand if the rider were not so firmly and cheerfully opposed to receiving paynt from him. It had beco a matter of pride for the man, and Ren had learned not to push it. Instead he went to the gogins, gave each of them a generous pat on the head, and held out so carrots that both animals took from his hands with imdiate and enthusiastic interest. They parted ways there. The cart had goods to deliver to several rchants across the city, Ren’s blue milk among them, and the rider had stops to make.

The streets of Marina were full but remarkably quiet. Aside from the sounds of footsteps, the occasional groan of so crude machinery running sowhere out of sight, and the hiss and spit of food cooking at the stalls along the road, there was very little noise. The people moved and spoke and went about their business in a contained, self-possessed way that was unusual to him. The streets reminded him of the cities he had known before coming to this world, the layout of it, the density and the rhythm, except that those cities had always been loud, always pressed full of carriages and voices and the kind of noise that never fully stopped even in the early hours of the morning. Marina had the shape of those cities and almost none of the sound.

It was while he was making his way through the streets, still orienting himself, that his stomach made its opinion known.

The sll hit him at almost the sa mont, drifting from the food stalls and the open fronts of the eateries he passed, layered and warm and insistent.

That is Saltmud nut cake. He recognized it imdiately. He had tasted it once and the mory had apparently been waiting patiently for the right mont to resurface. There was no better place to eat it than the city where it was created, and his stomach had clearly decided that the ti was now.

He turned into one of the taverns along the path, and the sll hit him again at five tis the strength, thick and sweet and entirely convincing. He found a seat and waited.

When the attendant ca to take his order, Ren recoiled before he could stop himself.

It was his first encounter with a living creature that was neither human nor humanoid in any way he had previously encountered. The attendant wore what appeared to be a staff uniform, a brown overall of soft fabric, neat and functional. But the face above the collar was sothing else entirely. A green skin, or rather a green face, since the rest of them was covered, and the texture of it was strange, a spiral quality to it, as though the face had been caught mid-stir and frozen there. A few long strands of hair jutted from the skin like the spines of sothing that had not fully decided what it wanted to be. Insectoid was the closest word Ren could reach for, though it did not fully land. The attendant stood in front of him with patient readiness.

Ren stared for a mont longer than was polite.

The thing was genuinely difficult to look at, and his hesitation was entirely reflexive. He shook himself out of it, mildly embarrassed by his own reaction, and made his order.

"Saltmud nut cake. And a small jug of ale."

The attendant nodded without expression or apparent offense and moved on to the next table before disappearing through a door that Ren assud led to the kitchen.

He sat back and let the strangeness settle. His reaction, he realized, had been less about the attendant’s appearance specifically and more about the surprise of it. Since arriving in Enesh, the world had presented itself as sothing close enough to his own that he had unconsciously stopped expecting radical differences. The gods existed here, yes, and the angels, and the animals were their own particular versions of things he half-recognized, but the people had always looked like people. It had never occurred to him that there might be other kinds of people entirely, ones that looked nothing like what he knew, going about ordinary work in ordinary uniforms and taking food orders in a tavern. He adjusted.

The attendant returned with his order on a wooden tray and set it down in front of him. The face at close range almost put him off his appetite, but the sll of the cake overruled the objection completely. No one else in the tavern seed remotely troubled by the attendant. He took the cue and dug in.

The Saltmud nut cake was exactly as good as he rembered. He washed each bite down with pulls of the corn ale, and for a stretch of ti that felt genuinely restorative, he did not think about Marina’s rchants, or the road ahead, or the war, or anything at all.

The farr cultivator was headed for Thorerk, which lay east of the city. Thorerk sat between the capital and the eastern border, and it held the highest concentration of sects in the entire kingdom. The Crane Crab Pavilion was the foremost of them all, and that was where the letter from Evo was intended to take him. With that many cultivating powerhouses concentrated in a single region, the eastern border Maldrin shared with Combec was considered nearly impenetrable. Any force that chose to test it would invite the kind of response that ended armies.

But Ren had business to attend to in Marina first. Pressing business, the kind that had been building since the spies arrived at his farm and the three rchants decided that his patience was an infinite resource.

He finished the last of the cake, drained what remained of the ale, and settled back with a slow exhale. The warmth of the drink sat pleasantly in him as he rose and left the tavern. Outside, the sky had shifted, the light going dimr and heavier with the approach of evening. Night was coming soon. He needed sowhere to sleep before he could attend to anything else.

He looked up the road and began walking. Getting a nice place would be no problem in the holy city, as long as one had the coins.

Ren got up as the beautiful suns of Enesh let their warm rays past his windows. He yawned, and stood up. He took a bit of the dried herbs he carried, threw it in his mouth, chewed and then spat it back out. This herb was one of the most important herbs in the nation, and possibly in all of Enesh. Chewing it kills the micro organisms present in one’s mouth, and it gives the mouth a fresher odor. He spat it into a jug that was left in the room, and he headed to the public bathroom. Luckily, no one was in, and it was just him. He washed his body with the little water that was available and headed out, donning the sa clothes he had worn for over four days. He only took another pair of clothes aside that which he wore and he had decided that only upon leaving Marina would he wear it.

Two silver coins for two nights in the mid-tier inn, Ren was not sure if that was a steal or whether he had been robbed. He applied so sweet slling oils he had gotten from a stall on his body and clothes to mask whatever unpleasant sll that may ooze from him.

He wore his rugged leather boots, and stepped out. He wanted to see Evo the shaman, and everyone in the city knew where to find Evo, in the city’s temple.

’Truly a beautiful place.’

The streets were even busier today and louder. More stalls were out too, and Ren imdiately deduced that today had to be a market day, it explained why there was more stalls and more people. He loved the city’s architecture, but he was not sure if he loved how packed it was, Tunish’s sedentary and quiet life had rubbed off on him, that being around so many people felt wrong. Even back on earth, and had lived in the countryside, although not far from the city.

Thorerk was his destination, Thorerk was where the Crane Crab Pavilion laid, and to get to Thorerk, he must pass Marina, and there was business at Marina to attend to.

"I have to see Evo." Ren muttered. Directions to the Temple were clear enough, even right from the gate, direction signs were laid for pilgrims who wished to pray, and or to visit the wise shaman. Ren had to resist the sweet aroma from each street he passed, he would spend almost every coins he had if he was to indulge himself at every food stall.

After so many temptations, he eventually got to the front of the temple, and he stood bewildered, his jaw almost dropping. The many tall spires in.the city hid the temple, and from the looks of it, it seed like it was done on purpose. The last ti he was here, he had been unconscious.