Dark rises over Korvosa, and a brisk wind blows off of Conqueror's Bay. It is not unusual for this time of year, where the temperature can still plunge below freezing at night, and temperamental weather lashes the Varisian coastline. This evening, the wind brings in a wintery mix, rain and sleet slick Korvosa’s silent streets; the cobblestones grow dangerous in such weather, and the city’s denizens take refuge around warm hearths and tavern fireplaces. Even the running battles of pseudodragons and imps, high-altitude acts of pest extermination, pause. For the most part, Korvosa is as quiet on these nights as she ever is.
High atop the Grand Mastaba, a young queen sits at the bedside of her husband, she wrapped in a fine shawl of imported Ustalavec wool, he bundled in blankets, unable to shake off the chill. This night, as many before it, King Eodred Arabasti II, is feared by all the right people. His rule is steady. He has navigated the rocks and shoals of Chelish diplomacy and earned Korvosa favorable trade agreements with the Old Empire. Rumors swirl of course, as they do of all royals, some of them as entrenched in Korvosa as those damnable imps: Eodred’s insatiate appetites have drained the city’s coffers; the king is a womanizer and a spendthrift, given the moniker The Stirge King by the low classes, for Eodred has sucked their future dry. Despite his fondness for the soft touch, the king has produced no heir to date, the latest in a long line of rulers afflicted by the Curse of the Crimson Throne, said to manifest in infertility and premature death. Lately a new rumor has flourished in Korvosa’s gaming halls and tavern rooms: the King has not been seen in weeks. Why of course, is where the rumor gets vague. Foreign perfidy? Years of womanizing and drink come to collect their due? A young queen scorned one too many times?
The king coughs. A pinch of worry crosses the queen’s face, and she wraps her shawl tighter. It was no surprise that when Eodred finally wed, it was to a woman barely a third his age, and it was no surprise that she was hauntingly, classically beautiful, with fiery hair the color of finest Vudrani silk and alabaster skin the envy of any Chelish noble. Which, surprisingly, Queen Ileosa was, having made the trip from sophisticated Westcrown four years previous. At first, Korvosa’s nobles worried about having a Chel a step or a heartbeat from the Crimson Throne, but as the years went on, Ileosa’s interest in the city seemed secondary to life a luxury, and with the more-than-competent Seneschal Neolandus Kalepopolis guarding Castle Korvosa’s interests, the worries of nobles were pushed aside as new schemes were borne.
But, enough has been written of nobles to fill a million skalds’ sagas, and this is not Eodred and Ileosa’s story, exactly. Over twenty thousand souls live in Korvosa; Chels, Empties and Gaters, Moths, and Horsers. And they all have their ways of coping with the blustery Gozren nights.
A young artist gathers her brushes and rinses them in the washbasin of her studio/apartment, smiling as she looks out the window of her small flat, twinkling lights from candle-lit windows stretching into the deeping night’s darkness. Even this part of town was beautiful, in its way, seen through the right eyes. And besides, once the artist's new patron became known, she could finally move up the hill, perhaps to Cliffside or maybe even Citadel Crest, the toniest neighborhood in the city.
Nearby, an old Shoanti shaman leans heavily on his walking stick, a reinforced length of wood and polished femur from some giant beast, crowned with an imposing skull. The shaman’s eyes are milky and his skin papery thin, and he preaches patience to his grandson as wind gusts through their clapboard shack high in the Shingles.
A fortune teller’s tidy residence on Lancet Street sits empty, its owner gone this evening, misfortune recently visited on her family. The scent of perfume lingers in the home's air.
At the Chelish Ambassador’s mansion in Cliffgate, an argument ensues. His half-Moth daughter pulls her cloakhood over her curly black hair and slips into the rain, while across town her brother takes another hit of Crush and slips further down the wall he was propped against. The Ambassador sighs and nods, apologetically to his patient wife, a saint of a woman who barely tolerates visits from his bastard daughter when they aren’t fighting. The ambassador retreats to tome-laden study, for the Old Empire's demands are never sated.
At a well-kept manor, a single torch lights the practice room of a swordsman, who feints and twirls as the rain and sleet patter against the nearby windows, providing cadence as he steps, thrusts, steps.
In old Korvosa, an Empty, barely fourteen year-old girl curses as her chalk won’t take to the slick cobbles in the rain. Pocketing the chalk into a tattered satchel, the girl presses herself into a doorway and stairs into the alley’s darkness. It was too dangerous to sleep unaccompanied in Old Korvosa.
A few blocks distant, a family settles down to dinner. Red-soaked goblets are clinked, servants deposit steaming platters of meat and saffron rice onto the long table. The conversation is at once syllabent and eubilent, in a tongue rarely heard on Korvosa’s streets. Schemes within schemes hatch and tumble, some near fruition, some yet to begin. All look beyond the city.
At Eel’s End, domain of Gaedran Lamm, King of Spiders, even the chilling spring nights can’t keep the crowd at bay. Lovers of vice - drugs, sex, gambling, even violence, for Eel’s End caters to all - converge on the five boats moored there. Fortunes will be lost, perhaps even a life or two tonight. A brickhouse of a man watches over the crowd to make sure nothing too untoward happens - for his boss, at any rate. The man’s face is flattened and misshapen from years of fighting, as are his fists. He passes his gaze over the partiers and scowls, though the man’s thoughts are elsewhere tonight - drifting always like flotsam on the Jeggere River, in one direction: towards a friend in peril.
Many lives, all about to be irrevocably changed. This is not their story either, though they will all play a part. And even in Korvosa’s darkest places, like Eel’s End there can be the spark. A spark of hope, a spark of heroism. Korvosa will need it.