Emmarelda woke to a violent jolt that hammered her against something hard and unyielding. Against her better instincts she opened her eyes only to find her instincts had once again been right. Judging by almost continual spine rattling jolts she was in a buttertub. Buttertubs were another wartime innovation that had been brought to the streets by the goats. They were armored wagons, framed with wood but with axels and crude armor fashioned from iron. In battle they were used as mobile fortifications and block houses, with narrow slits cut in the armor to allow crossbowmen and arquebusiers to ply their trade. In the city they provided mobile bases and block houses for the goats, as well as prisoner transport. Emmarelda tugged at the chains that had been wrapped around her wrists. Further chains encircled her ankles and her waist, all leading to an eyebolt in one of the walls. She couldn’t move her finger, a glance downward revealed that quilted gloves had been pulled over her hands, from the way it felt they had been stuffed with oakum to stop her from moving her fingers. 


“Mrrmmmf,” she said eloquently, discovering that a gag had been forced between her teeth. That seemed like overkill. Two goats sat on the bench across from her, short truncheons drawn and eyes suspicious.  Through the narrow aperture of the crossbow ports the medieval architecture of Fae Gate was rolling past. This was one of the few parts of the city that had escaped the ravages of the Great Fire, largely because it was rich and built of stone, its crenelated rooftops and gargoyle encrusted buttresses proof against mere fire. It helped that it was adjacent to Court street and the palace, rich folk who had the money to hire firefighters and buy the space that protected them from the flames. That meant they could only be going one place. A frisson of fear trembled through Emmarelda’s body as they turned onto Crow Hill.


The Black Fort stood atop Crow hill, its talons reaching deep into that modest rise. It was a hundred feet of gray basalt, all that remained of an ancient fortress that dated all the way back to the Basalian invasions over a thousand years before. It had been rebuilt many times and served many functions over the year but for as long as anyone could remember it had been a prison. Not just any prison either, it wasn’t for the common thief and pick pocket like Goldbrick or Kupford. The Black Fort was where the King had been held before his execution, where hundreds of Royalist nobles had been tortured and executed during the worst days of the civil war. The heads of those men and women had been nailed to the walls for all to see and despite the years, stains of blood could still be seen on the masonry.

It wasn’t the place's reputation that chilled her. It was the image itself. As they climbed the ancient stone streets of the Black Fort it made an almost perfect replication of The Tower from the Tarot. First the strange man, clearly the Page, then the Leviathan and sailor on the rope, a representation of the Hanged man. The appearance of so many arcana in the real world never augured anything good. Well she was chained up and being dragged to the most infamous prison in the country so maybe her prognostication wasn’t that impressive.


The heavy oak gates boomed shut as the buttertub pulled into the courtyard of the Black Fort, the four heavy dray horses snorting and puffing with the exertion of dragging such a weight up even a shallow incline. The guards stood and began removing her chains from their bolts with long clattering rattles. They then tugged her like a leashed horse out of the buttertub and into a courtyard. It was after midnight but the moon was huge and bright. A half dozen luciferite lanterns blazed on poles, bathing the courtyard in a bright yellow light. A squad of goats stood at attention, their gear neater and less rusty than the normal run of the mill. In front of them stood a neat little man in an orange silk doublet and a pair of green hose. He had a pencil mustache and his dark hair was oiled back. He held an embroidered handkerchief to his nose against the smell of horse ordure, sweat, and oiled steel.


“This is the one?” the stranger asked.

“Yes Vicount Cranborn,” one of the goats declared. The perfumed nobleman sneered and looked the gypsy girl up and down.

“Well I can’t say I see what all the fuss is about. Throw her in a cell till the Count arrives.”