The Charlatan

05. Barking Up the Wrong Tree

The town below bustled with activity and, like the capital, shone with vibrant colour. Machinery clanked together and steam whistled out of every major building, reflecting the heritage of the town. Drills poked into the rough ground, and explosions faintly sounded from the distant caverns. Engineers babbled loudly in the consonantal Dehic language and no one paid any mind to the travellers climbing down the cliff to the Lower Grounds.

Clara did not bother brushing the dirt off her trousers; her clothing was already beyond saving. She reminded herself that she needed to earn some gold somehow and buy a trip to the bathhouse as well as some new clothes. Air echoed her thoughts aloud,

"The grease staining my shirt is nearly as thick as that forest was."

The pair wandered into the mining town through an arched gateway that was equally extravagant as it was falling apart. The town clearly needed some patching up. Immediately to their right was a crowded train station, but something wasn't quite right about the tone in which the people were speaking. Clara doubled back to take a look, a momentarily confused Air tripping over himself to catch up. "Is that where your target is?" Air asked. Clara ignored him and listened to the shouting on the station platform.

"How do you expect us to sell anything when we don't have anything to sell?! Fixing the supply line should take priority."

"My brother is down there in those mines! How could you value pieces of junk over human life? Gods curse you and your family!"

"Please calm down, we simply don't have enough people-"

"I beg to differ, there is clearly spare enough to be up here arguing about profit."

Air tapped Clara's shoulder and asked what was going on. She translated and Air raised an eyebrow. He looked as if he were going to make an annoyed retort but his expression changed as he seemed to suddenly realize what Clara was on about. "Do you think they'll give us food and board in exchange for our help?"

Yes.

Clara was tired, hungry, and filthy. She was a polite and professional individual, but she was also acutely aware of her tendencies to curse at anything and everything that crossed her path when she wasn't at her best. She needed cleaning up.

Not a moment after Air had asked his question, the flustered engineer that was being bombarded by the public's questions stalked over to him. He greeted Clara and Air uncertainly in broken Genesese, "Heard you speak Genesese. Do you need to find somewhere?" Clara poured all her energy into being polite and amiable despite her exhaustion, raising her hand in greeting and responding in Dehic. The engineer lit up at the familiar language and began babbling about how he wasn't used to so many foreigners in the town so he couldn't assume they all knew the local language, even if they were businesspeople.

Clara found this odd. They hadn't seen anyone on their journey through the forest to the Lower Grounds. Where had all of the people come from? She didn't have much time to dwell on this thought as the crowd that had been arguing with their engineer began to flock towards them. The engineer's excitement turned back into anxiety very quickly, and he began ushering Clara and Air off the platform.

"The rail system is down right now; you will have to wait until we repair it to leave."

Down? Clara's thoughts went back to their journey through the forest again. Now it makes even less sense that we saw no other travellers. Would the town not have sent for engineers from the city to help fix the rail system? She did not get a chance to ask about this as their own engineer let them off the platform and was promptly swarmed by the irritated horde of people.