PUBLISHED UNDER THE EYE OF THE CROWN · KORMOR KIRAK

The Eternal Courant

VOL. I · No. V The 15th of May, 1793 PRICE · FIVE GROATS, AND NO CHANGE GIVEN

The comet stands where it stopped, low and red at the Tower's crown, and is broader than it was. A whole district taken up the Cliff Road in the dark; the Register clerks working ward by ward toward the river. Nine dead in the square and the platform swept each morning.

The Marrow District is inspected, registered, and emptied in two nights, the Register of Wards is opened perpetual, and the Terrassian clockworks are carried up the hill.

THE MARROW IS CLEARED, WARD BY WARD, AND THANKED FOR IT

Filed by Our Correspondent, from the Marrow end of the river lanes

Between the second bell of Tuesday evening and the grey of Thursday the whole of the Marrow District was inspected, registered, and emptied. The Crown gives it out as a sanitary measure long wanted in that quarter, and the Courant, which has itself complained of the Marrow gutters these three years, is bound to say the complaint is answered.

The manner of the answer is set down here as this sheet observed it. The lanes were stopped at both ends by the tireless patrols, which carried no lamp and wanted none. Clerks of the Ward Register went house to house with the household books, and where a door was found barred the door was not knocked upon twice. The people of the Marrow were brought out in their coats and permitted to carry what a person carries in one hand. They were formed up in the old textile yard and counted twice, once by the clerks and once by an officer who did not use a book, and then taken up the Cliff Road in carts, in the dark, the road being kept clear for them and no other traffic suffered upon it until dawn.

The Crown's account is that the households of the Marrow are lodged henceforth at the Crown's charge in the Crown's continuing service, and that the quarter will be cleaned and given over in time to worthier tenants. Where the lodging is, the account does not say. This sheet counted eleven hundred and some odd going up the Cliff Road and has yet to hear of a cart coming down.

Koss's Curiosities stands shut and its shutters nailed from the outside, which is a thing done to a shop by the Crown and not by its keeper. The textile warehouse that was condemned these six years is condemned still and is the only building in the ward with a light in it after the second bell.

The Register clerks were at the river wards by Friday and are promised to the Terrassian Quarter within the se'ennight. Householders are advised to have their books in order, their doors unbarred, and their gladness ready at the door, since the clerks are instructed to note the temper of a house as well as its number.

A JUSTICE DONE IN THE GRAND SQUARE

From the Kereskedo end, where the stalls used to stand

Nine persons were put to death on Wednesday last in the Grand Square, upon the platform lately used for the Red Guard watch, and the city was invited to attend and did. The charge read out over all nine was disloyalty, particularised in three cases as the keeping of a written list. No counsel appeared, the office of Magistrate standing vacant since the eighth. Captain Ashford read the warrant and the Red Guard performed the sentence, the new patrols being kept back that day out of what the heralds called respect for the custom of the city. Bella, who has sold sausage at the square's north corner since before the Tower was thought of, did not open her cart, and has not opened it since. The platform was not struck afterward. It stands, and is swept each morning, which the market takes for a kind of notice.

THE PITS ARE FULL AGAIN, AND THE HOUSE NEVER LOSES

From the Pits, by the low door

The Pits, dark since the festival, reopened on Monday under a new licence and a new sort of card. The fighters of the house are not named on the bill, only numbered, and they are the sort that take a wound and go on taking it, and the wager is no longer laid upon the winner. It is laid upon the minute at which the living man goes down. Rozito Vallikozo keeps the book and pays out in krone at odds that flatter the living. Admission is six krone at the low door and the low door is crowded nightly, the wards being dark and the taverns thinned and a man wanting somewhere to be that is not his own unbarred house. Two of Wednesday's condemned were promised the pit in place of the platform, the rumour ran, and did not take it.

THE CLOCKWORKS ARE CALLED UP THE HILL

From the Terrassian Quarter

Every workshop of the Terrassian Quarter that grinds a gear or winds a spring has been surveyed this week by the castle's engineers, and the better part of the Quarter's stock of brass, mainspring wire, and finished movements is carried up the Cliff Road under guard. The Crown calls it a requisition for the Tower's continuing works and promises payment at the assessed rate in the autumn. The Man with the Clockwork Arm, whose shop off the Quarter's east lane has served this city and the war before it, was taken up with his tools on Thursday and is said to be lodged now within the castle, at his own request, the Crown says. His apprentices are turned out. Terrassian clockwork is a slow craft and there is no telling in a week what is being built with a Quarter's worth of it. The Courant notes only that a movement wants no food, keeps no household book, and cannot be counted among the missing.

BY ORDER OF THE CASTLE, THE FIFTEENTH OF MAY

By order of Captain Ashford, of Her Majesty's Red Guard, Commander of the Castle Watch

BE IT KNOWN that the Register of Wards is opened this day and shall be kept perpetual. Every household of Kormor Kirak shall present at inspection every soul lodging under its roof, with name, age, ward of birth, trade, and the whole of its household book, and shall present them upon the first asking. No soul shall remove from one ward to another without a chit under the Castle Watch's seal. The taking in of any lodger not entered in the Register is a felony against the Crown and shall be answered upon the household entire, and not upon the lodger only. A reward of five hundred korma stands for information of an unregistered soul, payable upon the Register's confirmation and not before. The Crown further requires that the temper of every household be cheerful at inspection, the city's joy being now a matter of public record.

COMET WATCH

Kept by an old glass and an older almanac

The Crimson Comet stands where it stood, low and red at the Tower's crown, neither climbing nor falling, these two weeks and more. It is broader than it was. That is the whole of what this sheet can honestly report, the Astronomer's Office being carried into the castle and its terrace rail struck down. A Terrassian glass-grinder of the east lane, who asks not to be named and is now lodged elsewhere, held that the almanacs still agree upon one date not yet come: the fifth of September, when the moon takes the sun at midday for the space of four minutes. He thought it a small matter beside a stopped comet. The Courant sets the date down and leaves it to abler heads.

THE EMBASSIES KEEP LATE HOURS AND EARLY SECRETS

The Society Page, writing by permitted light

Lord Barron Whitehallow has not been seen abroad in a fortnight and is given out as resting. The embassy nonetheless burns lamps at every hour, and a homing-pigeon post goes out of the Albion Quarter nightly, which is a great deal of correspondence for a resting man. The young gentleman of the delegation who was so much admired at the Treaty Ball now signs on his lordship's behalf and has begun to speak of the Albion boy-king in the manner of a man arranging a chair for an expected guest. Miss Olivia Faren dined at the Theater of Everlasting Peace on Saturday with nobody, which is to say with a ledger, and asked the house manager why a theater lately refitted has a cellar door of castle iron. She was not answered, and made a note, which in Miss Faren is the worse of the two. Lady Mireva has taken to keeping her list at the castle rather than in her own hand, and tells the court she sleeps the better for it. The court, which knows what is kept at the castle, does not.

OVERHEARD, WHILE THE OVERHEARING HOLDS

The Courant hears, and tells what little it dares

That the carts from the Marrow do not go to the castle at all but turn off at the third switchback, where a cut has been made into the hill, and that the Hallaset road and that cut come out in the same dark. That the Marrow's people are heard below the struck market in Terra Sotto, and are heard working, and are not heard talking. That the Lich Cult reckons the Crown has taken the comet and now means to take the eclipse, and that its cellars have gone quiet in the way a house goes quiet before it moves. That the Bastion keeps a fire and a full table yet, and that Eppy Flinder has turned nobody from her door, and that whatever she has set on her lintel is not red ochre and is not failing. That the Gatekeepers walked the Marrow after the clerks and took their tribute out of the empty houses, and that even the tireless patrols stood aside for them. That the Princess Szeret's window showed a light on Tuesday for the first time since March. The Courant names nothing the Gatekeepers have not already heard, and counts nothing that goes up the Cliff Road.

THE BILL OF MORTALITY, THIS SE'ENNIGHT

Nine persons in the Grand Square, of the Crown's justice, publicly done; three of them of the keeping of a list, the list not produced in evidence and not returned.
Vadim Solh, of no fixed ward, of a fall from the embassy roof in the Albion Quarter; his crossbow was recovered and his errand was not, and the Lich Cult buried him below rather than at Hallaset.
The sexton of the Hallaset Fields, of long service, his lodge being dark since the eighth and his keys in another hand; the parish records him now because it can no longer pretend otherwise.
Two apprentices of the Terrassian Quarter, turned out of a requisitioned workshop, of the cold and of the curfew, being found past the second bell without a chit.
Eleven hundred and some odd souls of the Marrow District, not dead, and entered here only because no other column in this city will hold them.
A house of the river wards entire, of a barred door, in accordance with the notice printed above.

THE MARKET REGISTER, IN GROATS AND KRONE

Bread, the loaf: 9 groats, the castle stores taking the grain first and the bakers' ovens lit by permission
Lamp oil, the measure: 6 krone, and none sold to an unregistered hand
A chit of removal, ward to ward, under the Castle Watch's seal: 2 krone at the office, 20 krone at the Black Market Alley, and the second is the one that comes without a question after it
Admission to the Pits, at the low door: 6 krone, standing; the seats are not sold, the house preferring a crowd that can run
Terrassian brass and mainspring wire: not to be had at any price, the Quarter's stock being up the hill
Hallaset flowers, the bunch: 1 groat, and cheap at it, the Fields being open to any who will go and none who will
A night's lodging at the Bastion, common room, with a fire: 3 groats, unchanged since April, which the Courant prints without remark

ALL ISSUES ▸ ‹ RETURN TO THE COURT

THE ETERNAL COURANT // No. 05 // 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.