live to serve, Ms. Mason.”
“Well, we’ll see if we can find something better for you to live for, but I guess it’s a start.”
“Say,” Rondeau said. “Do you know anything about the care and feeding of baby goats?”
Marla left Pelham and Rondeau at the club and went to take a walk. The goat was locked in the men’s room eating a potted plant and drinking from the toilets. Pelham had been reluctant to leave her side, but she convinced him that Rondeau would teach him the ropes—answering phones, the ins-and-outs of Marla’s rather free-form filing system, which people she was willing to take phone calls from, and which she’d just as soon avoid. She set off toward the esplanade, wanting to hit the center of Felport’s tourism and get a sense of the summertime commerce, and as the Market Street Market wound down in the afternoon, the esplanade was the next best thing. Fiduciary magic wasn’t her specialty—her consiglieri, Hamil, was the one who kept his finger on the pulse of the city’s economics, with a little help from the chaos magician Nicolette—but she could get a crude sense of the health of a particular sector by quietly sitting and letting the city flow through her. She’d been chief sorcerer for nearly five years, and was finally beginning to develop what her predecessor Sauvage had called city sense, the ability to expand her consciousness until the city became almost part of her own body. With some effort, she could feel spikes in crime rates like sharp pains, taste pollution like morning breath, experience economic downturns like fatigue and bad traffic like clogged sinuses. Apparently the city sense became second nature after enough years, but Marla wanted to practice, and she found positioning herself with some physical analog of the quality she wanted to explore helped her focus.
The day was warm and lovely, and the esplanade was hopping. Most of the little shops had their doors open for the breeze, and people strolled in and out at a good pace. Marla sat down on a stone bench with a good view of the water and watched people in shorts and T-shirts stream by, kids clutching ice-cream cones, young women Rollerblading, lovers strolling arm in arm. Felport wasn’t a real hub of tourism, but it was the biggest city in this part of the state, and so a lot of people from the sticks and suburbs came to see the occasional show, eat in good restaurants, take the kids to museums or the zoo or the little amusement park and boardwalk down by the bay. Marla closed her eyes and let the shape of the city coalesce in her mind, from Ernesto’s vast junkyard in the south, then north to the green expanse of Fludd Park—gods, she hated that place, all bugs and dirt and ducks and trees—in the city’s center and up to the rabble of student housing, on past the river to Adler College with its weird sculpture garden, and then east to the Heights where the Chamberlain lived, on to the old city with its cobblestoned narrow streets and historic buildings, over to the fancy houses with bay views, then down to the south side of the river again, to the clutch of skyscrapers and high-rises downtown, over toward the old industrial sector by the docks, down to the esplanade again, where Marla sat. The city felt whole and relatively safe, no pin-pricks of interdimensional invaders, no waves of rage from some passing monster, most of the ordinaries going about their lives with the usual mixture of hope, anxiety, sadness, and joy, unaware of Marla or her kind looking out for them (and, admittedly, sometimes making a living off of them). Marla shivered with pleasure, a sensation like eating a perfect meal and being absolutely satisfied, neither under-nor overfull. Felport in early summer, before the intense heat and humidity really set in, was a wonderful place. So what if she had a party to plan? So what if she’d acquired a valet against her will? These were minor concerns. Her city was healthy. Life was
“Well, we’ll see if we can find something better for you to live for, but I guess it’s a start.”
“Say,” Rondeau said. “Do you know anything about the care and feeding of baby goats?”
Marla left Pelham and Rondeau at the club and went to take a walk. The goat was locked in the men’s room eating a potted plant and drinking from the toilets. Pelham had been reluctant to leave her side, but she convinced him that Rondeau would teach him the ropes—answering phones, the ins-and-outs of Marla’s rather free-form filing system, which people she was willing to take phone calls from, and which she’d just as soon avoid. She set off toward the esplanade, wanting to hit the center of Felport’s tourism and get a sense of the summertime commerce, and as the Market Street Market wound down in the afternoon, the esplanade was the next best thing. Fiduciary magic wasn’t her specialty—her consiglieri, Hamil, was the one who kept his finger on the pulse of the city’s economics, with a little help from the chaos magician Nicolette—but she could get a crude sense of the health of a particular sector by quietly sitting and letting the city flow through her. She’d been chief sorcerer for nearly five years, and was finally beginning to develop what her predecessor Sauvage had called city sense, the ability to expand her consciousness until the city became almost part of her own body. With some effort, she could feel spikes in crime rates like sharp pains, taste pollution like morning breath, experience economic downturns like fatigue and bad traffic like clogged sinuses. Apparently the city sense became second nature after enough years, but Marla wanted to practice, and she found positioning herself with some physical analog of the quality she wanted to explore helped her focus.
The day was warm and lovely, and the esplanade was hopping. Most of the little shops had their doors open for the breeze, and people strolled in and out at a good pace. Marla sat down on a stone bench with a good view of the water and watched people in shorts and T-shirts stream by, kids clutching ice-cream cones, young women Rollerblading, lovers strolling arm in arm. Felport wasn’t a real hub of tourism, but it was the biggest city in this part of the state, and so a lot of people from the sticks and suburbs came to see the occasional show, eat in good restaurants, take the kids to museums or the zoo or the little amusement park and boardwalk down by the bay. Marla closed her eyes and let the shape of the city coalesce in her mind, from Ernesto’s vast junkyard in the south, then north to the green expanse of Fludd Park—gods, she hated that place, all bugs and dirt and ducks and trees—in the city’s center and up to the rabble of student housing, on past the river to Adler College with its weird sculpture garden, and then east to the Heights where the Chamberlain lived, on to the old city with its cobblestoned narrow streets and historic buildings, over to the fancy houses with bay views, then down to the south side of the river again, to the clutch of skyscrapers and high-rises downtown, over toward the old industrial sector by the docks, down to the esplanade again, where Marla sat. The city felt whole and relatively safe, no pin-pricks of interdimensional invaders, no waves of rage from some passing monster, most of the ordinaries going about their lives with the usual mixture of hope, anxiety, sadness, and joy, unaware of Marla or her kind looking out for them (and, admittedly, sometimes making a living off of them). Marla shivered with pleasure, a sensation like eating a perfect meal and being absolutely satisfied, neither under-nor overfull. Felport in early summer, before the intense heat and humidity really set in, was a wonderful place. So what if she had a party to plan? So what if she’d acquired a valet against her will? These were minor concerns. Her city was healthy. Life was
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