PUBLISHED UNDER THE EYE OF THE CROWN · KORMOR KIRAK

The Eternal Courant

VOL. I · No. II The 24th of April, 1793 PRICE · TWO GROATS

The comet now plainly above the Eastern Tower, no glass required. Festival scaffolds rising in the Grand Square. The gates closed; the eastern lanes dark.

The Crown proclaims a Festival of Convergence and closes the gates, the comet crosses into plain sight, and a magistrate is suddenly indisposed. Attendance is required.

THE CROWN PROCLAIMS THE CONVERGENCE FESTIVAL

Filed by Our Correspondent at the Castle

Her Majesty Queen Kiraline has been graciously pleased to proclaim a Festival of Convergence, to be held in the Kereskedo Marketplace at the hour of the comet's nearest approach, that the whole of Kormor Kirak might stand as one people beneath the Crimson Comet and share in the splendour of the Eternal Reign. Attendance is to be general. The Crown desires that no household be absent.

The star is now plainly to be seen above the Eastern Tower, no glass required, a wound of light that brightens with each night that the works climb to meet it. The carpenters of the Theater of Everlasting Peace have been set to raising scaffolds and a great stage in the Grand Square, and the stalls that have stood there since before any living memory are ordered struck to make the room. Yuri Szek, Master of the Market, received the order without comment, which is itself a kind of comment from a man who has had something to say about every order these forty years.

This sheet reports the proclamation gladly and entire. It notes only, for the record it is permitted to keep, that the festivals of this city have a way of asking the people to gather, and a way of being remembered afterward by who did not come home from them.

THE EASTERN LANES STAND EMPTY

From the Marrow and the river wards

Whole lanes below the Tanners' Stair are dark now of an evening, the windows unlit, the doors shut and unanswered, the ochre on the frames gone the colour of old meat where no hand keeps it fresh. The lamplighter of the Marrow keeps his round all the same and lights the empty streets their share. The conscription squads take the able, the festival takes the rest, and the houses they leave are not let to new tenants but stand vacant under the Crown's notice, as though the city were being cleared to make room for something it has not yet been told the shape of.

THE MAGISTRATE VORON IS NO MORE

From the steps of the Counting House

Magistrate Voron, long the Crown's instrument in matters of law, has been removed from his office and his life in the same hour, by the Queen's pleasure, his post given over to an administrator of the castle whose name has not been published. The watch records the cause as a sudden indisposition. Those who knew the Magistrate record that a man is rarely so suddenly indisposed as on the day the Crown discovers it no longer requires him. He leaves no widow and a great many debts, several of them owed to persons who will not now be paid, and who are advised by this sheet to consider the debt a lesson rather than a loss.

THE PRINCESS KEEPS HER TOWER

The Society Page continues

The Princess Szeret, who in gentler seasons was seen upon the terraces and at the dress shops of the Kereskedo lanes, has not shown herself at court this fortnight. The castle gives out that Her Highness is unwell and keeps to her rooms. Her tower stands dark, her fine glass unused, and the handmaidens who served her are reassigned. The court does not ask after her. The court has learned which questions are health and which are danger.

BY ORDER OF THE CASTLE, THE FOUR-AND-TWENTIETH OF APRIL

The Office of the New Administrator

BE IT KNOWN to all residents of Kormor Kirak. Attendance at the Festival of Convergence is required of every household, one soul at the least, upon pain of forfeiture of residence. Travel beyond the city walls is suspended from this day until the festival is concluded; the gates are closed to common passage; the Cliff Road is reserved to the Crown. Any person furnishing information of an intent to depart the city unlawfully shall receive a reward of one hundred korma. The Crown thanks its loyal subjects for their joy, and for their attendance.

COMET WATCH

The Astronomer's Office no longer answers letters

The Crimson Comet has crossed into plain sight and will not now leave it. It rises a hand's breadth higher each night and burns the colour its name was given for. The learned men who once charted it for the pleasure of knowing have been taken into the castle to chart it for the pleasure of the Crown, and send out nothing, and are not seen upon the terraces with their instruments as they were. The bells of the eastern wards have begun to ring at hours no living hand is set to ring them. Look up, while the looking up is general and not yet particular.

GENERAL MARKOS TAKES NO WINE AT THE TREATY BALL

The Society Page, with its usual care

The Treaty Ball is concluded, and the two empires danced their hundred-year war to a pause, and parted no warmer than they came. The Albion ambassador, Lord Barron Whitehallow, attended but did not dance, being much reduced; he leaned the evening upon the arm of a younger man and left early. The accountant Miss Olivia Faren stayed late and asked, of anyone who would answer, after the Counting House ledgers and the theater accounts, with a persistence the company found less charming than it did a fortnight past. General Markos, host of the evening, took neither wine nor the candlelight, kept to the cold end of the gallery, and was observed by Lady Mireva to cast, in the long mirror, rather less than a general ought.

OVERHEARD, WHERE IT IS STILL SAFE TO OVERHEAR

The Courant hears, and tells what it dares

That something walks the Hallaset Fields by night that no sexton set walking, and that the sky-burial frames have been found disturbed, and the dead not where the dead were laid. That the Terra Sotto, below the struck stalls of the market, is busier after dark than the market ever was by day, and that the busy ones wear no faces a neighbour would name. That Brother Aldric, who kept his list of the missing, is still upon no list but the Crown's, and that a second list-keeper has lately gone quiet of his own accord, which is the wiser course, and the sadder. The Courant names nothing the Gatekeepers have not already heard, and prints nothing that walks.

THE BILL OF MORTALITY, THIS SE'ENNIGHT

A magistrate of the city, of the Crown's displeasure; the watch records an indisposition.
Four labourers of the eastern works, of the works; the foremen record nothing.
Two list-keepers, of keeping lists; only one of them dead, the Courant is glad to report.
Nineteen souls given to the Hallaset Fields unwashed, against all custom, by the Crown's leave.
An unknown number returned from the Hallaset Fields unbidden, which the bill has no column to record.

THE MARKET REGISTER, IN GROATS AND KRONE

Bread, the loaf: 4 groats, up from 3, where it can be had
Tallow candles, the dozen: 8 groats, hoarded
Lamp oil, the measure: 2 krone, the lamplighters served first by order
Red ochre, for the door-wards: unobtainable at any honest stall
A sky-burial, performed in the old custom, with washing: refused; the Crown takes the dead direct
Passage beyond the walls, by any road: closed; name your bribe, then name your next of kin

ALL ISSUES ▸ ‹ RETURN TO THE COURT

THE ETERNAL COURANT // No. 02 // PRINTED IN KORMOR KIRAK IN THE YEAR OF THE CRIMSON COMET
SISTER SHEET: THE BLOODLETTER · ALL THE NEWS THE CROWN PERMITS, AND A LITTLE IT DOES NOT.