The Price of Mercy

[Kronan]

Sneak-peak foreword.

Foreword – The Jewel Reforged

Peltarch had once been called the Jewel of the Icelace.

In those days, the name belonged to a city of pale stone and northern wind. Its walls rose against the cold like the clenched hands of some stubborn old monarch, their towers watching the western roads and the black teeth of the Giantspire Mountains beyond. Merchant caravans arrived beneath armed escort, their wheels thick with mud from the Nars. Ships entered the harbour under patched canvas, carrying salt, timber, iron and stories from coasts most citizens would never see.

The Commons lay open beneath the sky. Traders shouted over one another among canvas awnings and wooden stalls while mercenaries waited beside fountains for work that was rarely honest and never safe. Near the docks, the Dancing Mermaid Inn spilled lamplight, music and the smell of fried fish into the wet streets. Sailors drank beside adventurers. Magistrates drank beside smugglers. Those who entered alone often left with companions, enemies or debts.

City Hall stood above them all, stern and enduring, its chambers filled with councillors, petitioners and clerks who believed ink could impose order upon a city built by refugees, soldiers and opportunists. The Lighthouse Temple burned through snow and sea-mist, guiding ships toward shelter while priests tended those whom the harbour returned broken.

Beneath the streets, the sewers carried away what respectable Peltarch preferred not to see.

The city endured because endurance was what northern cities did.
It survived wars, cults, famine, plague and things that crawled from older ruins with no proper names. Walls were breached and rebuilt. Districts burned and rose again upon their own foundations. Every generation swore that Peltarch could not grow larger without losing itself.

Every generation was wrong.

The first engines arrived wrapped in brass and prayer.

They rattled between horse carts, coughed black smoke beneath the city gates and required both mechanics and priests to keep them obedient. Artificers learned to set spellwork inside copper lattices. Dwarven foundries sank deeper beneath the Commerce District. Lightning was taught to remain inside wires. Bound flame heated homes. Speaking crystals became household terminals, then vanished into devices small enough to conceal beneath the skin.

The old walls could not contain what followed.

They were dismantled, absorbed or buried beneath new construction. The West Gate became a customs and transit complex through which thousands passed each hour beneath scanners, warding arches and watchful security spirits. Elevated railways curved above the ancient roads. Glass towers rose from stone foundations, their upper floors disappearing into cloud and rain.

The Commons became a many-tiered concourse flooded with advertisements bright enough to turn midnight into an imitation of day. Food stalls crowded the lower terraces beneath recruitment booths, public terminals and corporate clinics. The old Rant Stand remained, though its weathered platform now stood among broadcast projectors. Anyone could still speak there. Whether anyone heard depended upon which network carried the signal and who had paid to suppress it.

City Hall survived by allowing the new city to grow through it.

Its oldest chambers remained built of carved stone, their floors worn smooth by centuries of argument. Above them rose ministries of mirrored steel, private offices and secured conference levels where corporations negotiated laws before elected officials were invited to discuss them. Armoured lobbyists crossed halls once guarded by men with halberds. The weapons had changed. The function had not.

The Dancing Mermaid endured too.

Her painted wooden sign became electric, then holographic, then neon once nostalgia became fashionable. She still danced above the entrance, blue and silver against the harbour rain. Inside, dockworkers with reinforced spines drank beside data brokers wearing borrowed faces. Street samurai rested swords within reach while smart pistols slept beneath coats. Old blades remained useful in crowded rooms where a bullet might pass through three strangers, rupture a pressure conduit and summon corporate security before the wounded struck the floor.

The docks spread outward over the Icelace on colossal platforms of steel and enchanted concrete. Cargo cranes moved like long-necked beasts through fog thick with exhaust. Autonomous freighters arrived without sails or crews. Beneath them, fishermen still worked from narrow boats, their nets repaired by hand, navigating water illuminated by the chemical glow of runoff from manufactories upstream.

The temples adapted.

The Triad opened hospitals beneath immaculate white towers where artificial organs could be grown, shattered bones rebuilt and death postponed—if the correct authorization arrived in time. The Lighthouse became a navigation beacon for ships, aircraft and orbital traffic, its sacred flame burning behind layers of reinforced glass. Smaller shrines appeared beside elevator motors, under railway arches and inside maintenance tunnels. Incense mingled with ozone. Prayer strips fluttered from ventilation grilles. Old spirits learned the names of new machines and accepted offerings in whatever places people were still afraid.

By then, the city had acquired another name.

Neo-Peltarch.

The Jewel had been reforged into something vertical, dazzling and merciless.
Its highest districts breathed purified air above the clouds. Their streets were quiet, their gardens warm even in winter, and their emergency services arrived before blood reached the pavement. Far below, beneath transit lines and cooling pipes, families lived in apartments where daylight appeared only as a pale reflection between towers. Ambulances crossed those streets with destination priorities already calculated. Medicine existed for almost every wound. Access did not.

Rain washed the whole city without discrimination.

It streamed down corporate glass, old temple stone, patched armour and rusted fire escapes. It turned neon into rivers beneath the feet of executives, mercenaries, pilgrims, augmented labourers and children selling counterfeit medication outside clinics they could not enter.

Peltarch remained a city of gates. Some were made of stone. Some of steel. Some of contracts, credit ratings and unpaid insurance.

And beyond each one waited the same ancient question, sharpened for a newer age:
When mercy has a price, who is permitted to live?