PUBLISHED UNDER THE EYE OF THE CROWN · KORMOR KIRAK

The Eternal Courant

VOL. I · No. IV The 8th of May, 1793 PRICE · FOUR GROATS, AND COUNT THEM QUIETLY

The comet stopped low and red at the Tower's crown and will not climb on. The square emptied, some doors still on the latch a week gone. A perpetual curfew, the gates made a wall, and patrols that keep no fire walking the night.

The Crown proclaims its reign everlasting and the Convergence accomplished; the festival's orders are made perpetual, the comet hangs stopped above the Tower, and the Hallaset dead do not keep their frames.

THE CROWN PROCLAIMS AN ETERNAL REIGN

Filed by Our Correspondent, beneath the Tower

The Festival of Convergence is concluded. On its final night, when the Crimson Comet stood at the very crown of the Eastern Tower and the violet light of the one ran down into the other until the Grand Square was lit as if at noon and yet held no warmth, Her Majesty Queen Kiraline Veresz Eroszakos was pleased to proclaim from the height of the Tower that the labour begun in stone is now finished in a thing older than stone, and that her reign over Kormor Kirak is henceforth and forever without end.

The Courant prints the proclamation entire, as it is bound to, and beneath the single headline the day permits.

Her Majesty's heralds give it out as a blessing upon the city. The hundred years of the Century War, they cry, are spent, and the old quarrel of Albion and Terrassia is a small thing beneath an authority that no longer answers to death; the city that gathered whole into the square has been gathered into a peace that cannot end, because the hand that keeps it cannot end. The bells rang of themselves the whole of that night, and no sexton was found to have pulled a rope.

This sheet stood in the square to the last and sets down what it is still suffered to set down. The city was let go to its homes near dawn, or the most of it. Some doors stand yet upon the latch a se'ennight gone, their households not come back to bar them, and no notice accounts for the families that kept them. The labourers of the Tower are not paid off and sent home. They are kept on, the foremen say, in the Crown's continuing service, though no man has seen the work that yet wants doing. The Crown asks of its subjects now only what it has always asked, and a little more: that they be glad, that they be quiet, and that they not count. The Courant is glad as it is told. It counts as it is able. The two columns no longer agree.

THE FIELDS GIVE UP THEIR GUESTS

From the Hallaset road, by daylight only

The Hallaset Fields, where this city has laid its dead to the open sky since before the war, are reported much disturbed. The sky-burial frames that stood crowded a month since are many of them empty now — empty of bodies that were laid in them whole and not yet gone to the birds. The Crown's account, given by a clerk of the General's office, is that the faithful dead have been called to the Crown's continuing service and that the city should take comfort in it. What service the dead are fit for, the clerk did not say, and the sexton who might have said keeps the gate no longer; his lodge is dark, and his keys are in another hand. Carters who once took the dead up the Hallaset road will not now take the road at all after the noon bell, at any fare. The bill of mortality this se'ennight keeps a column it has never before been asked to keep.

THE GENERAL IS MUCH CHANGED

From the Cliff Road and the castle stair

General Markos, who gave the conscription orders that filled the eastern works and the levy that emptied the river wards of their young men, was seen this week upon the castle stair and is much changed by his labours. Those who have long known him remark that he keeps from the daylight now, conducts his business by the second bell and the third, and casts at the lamp the same long mirror-trouble the society page once unkindly remarked of him. The Red Guard he commands is thinned in the open lanes and is not missed there, the lanes being kept after dark by the tireless patrols that carry no lamp and answer no challenge. Captain Ashford holds the Cliff Road station yet and keeps the old hours. He is, the men below him say, the last upon that stair who does.

THE GATES ARE A WALL NOW

From the Northern gate and the high passes

A se'ennight after the borders were shut for the festival, no gate of Kormor Kirak has opened, and the Crown has let it be known that none will. The closure that was given out as a measure for the Convergence is made the standing order of the city. Those gathered below the Northern gate are gathered there still, fewer than they were, and the high passes are kept as before by watchers who need no fire against the cold. Devorlen Koss, who has sold a way out of worse corners than this, has shut his Curiosities in the Marrow and put it about that he keeps no such ware at present and counsels no man to seek it. When Koss will not sell the door, the wise reckon the door is bricked.

BY ORDER OF THE CASTLE, THE EIGHTH OF MAY

By order of General Markos, Commander of the Red Guard, in Her Majesty's name

BE IT KNOWN to all souls of Kormor Kirak that the Reign of Her Majesty Queen Kiraline Veresz Eroszakos is proclaimed everlasting, and that the orders laid for the Convergence are made perpetual from this day. The curfew upon every ward stands from the second bell of evening until the dawn; the streets in those hours are the Crown's. The gates of the city are closed and shall not be petitioned. Every household shall keep its door unbarred to the Crown's inspection, by day and by night alike. The naming of the new patrols, their nature, and their hours is no business of any subject, and inquiry into it shall be taken as disloyalty and answered as such. A reward of three hundred korma stands for word of any household that bars its door. The Crown thanks the city for its perpetual joy.

COMET WATCH

What the terraces no longer report

The Crimson Comet has passed the crown of the Eastern Tower and does not, as a comet should, go on. It hangs where it met the Tower, low and red and broad as a fist, neither climbing nor falling, and the almanacs this sheet keeps have no precedent to set beside it. The Astronomer's Office is not merely shuttered; its terrace rail is struck down and its glasses carried into the castle, and the learned men who read the sky for us read it now, if at all, for one reader only. Look up while looking up is yet permitted. Do not be heard to wonder aloud why the comet has stopped.

THE ALBION PARTY KEEPS ITS COUNSEL, AND ITS DYING LORD

The Society Page, more careful than ever

The Albion delegation does not leave, the road being shut to ambassadors as to drovers, and is no longer much seen at any window that faces the street. Lord Barron Whitehallow is by all accounts near his end; his physicians have given over the daylight calls and come now in the dark, and the young Albion gentleman who attended him at the Treaty Ball is never from the embassy, and signs, it is whispered, papers a dying man can no longer hold the pen to sign. Miss Olivia Faren has put away charm altogether. She has been at the theater's accounts and the castle's reckonings with a cold patience the court finds unwholesome, and has asked aloud where the labourers of the Tower are lodged now their work is done, and why the Crown's books speak of a second night still to come in the autumn when the festival is plainly concluded. Lady Mireva keeps the list of who answers Miss Faren. It is shorter this week.

OVERHEARD, WHILE THE OVERHEARING HOLDS

The Courant hears, and tells what little it dares

That the patrols which keep the night come up the Hallaset road and go back down it by dawn, and that the men who keep no fire were lately laid in that ground themselves. That the Princess Szeret has not shown at her tower window these two months, and that the iron of her door is set, a maid swore before she too went silent, to keep a thing within and not without. That below the struck market the Lich Cult keeps a reckoning of its own and is ill content, the comet having stopped for the Crown and not for them, and that the dying lord in the Albion embassy is named in that cellar more often than a foreigner has any right to be. The Courant counts nothing that walks back up the hill, and names nothing the Gatekeepers have not already heard.

THE BILL OF MORTALITY, THIS SE'ENNIGHT

Magistrate Voron, late of the city courts, of the Crown's displeasure; the manner is not recorded, and the office stands empty.
Brother Aldric of the monastery, who kept a book of the names of the missing; of the same displeasure, and his book not returned with his effects.
Nine labourers of the Eastern Tower, of the work concluded, kept since in a service the foremen will not describe.
Constance Veyer, landlady of the river wards, of grief or of asking too loudly after a missing seamstress; the household records a chill.
A number raised from the Hallaset Fields and standing again, for which no parish has a rite, no physician a cause, and the bill no honest column.

THE MARKET REGISTER, IN GROATS AND KRONE

Bread, the loaf: 7 groats, the festival ovens cold and the bakers' grain gone to the castle stores
Lamp oil, the measure: 4 krone, the Tower lit perpetual, the wards dark by decree
Tallow candles, the dozen: scarce, sold by the half-dozen, and the chandler asks your ward before your coin
Red ochre, for the door-wards: worthless now, the doors ordered open and the ochre proved no use against what was already within
A grave dug deep and weighted, in ground that is not Hallaset: dear, and dearer weekly, and no longer to be had near the eastern fields
Passage beyond the walls, by any road: none; the gate is a wall, the bribe is kept, the petition is taken for a confession

ALL ISSUES ▸ ‹ RETURN TO THE COURT

THE ETERNAL COURANT // No. 04 // 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.