Then came the great bloody desert where smiled the quilted colors of Setroxia’s opium fields, mountains, and beyond a wetter clime still arid to one emerging from the balmy bay of Megakratheon’s power. There in the plain on short grass and starlight was the City of Leagues, a yellowlit sprawl kneeling blackly manifold like a geometric arthropod whose legs were forges and foundries.
Black fighters bearing the long red triangle across their wings escorted the petitioners, their white biplane like an angel, dove, or swan fallen into the World Machine and silently sorted to its final position by unspeaking psychopomp autonoma.
They flew low over the city. It was a place of vents, tunnels, great blocks like obsidian temples, everywhere sheds and hammocks for sleeping; vast hammocks between buildings, families looking up from where they gathered on blankets, fires burning inside sheet metal shelters and foundries which knew no flicker. No towers; a great sprawl, utility upon utility.
___
Menu of the 22nd Annual Political Officer's Conference Capstone Dinner
With explanations for esteemed labor delegates and intelligence assets
Apéritif
Cookies and Cream
freeze dried coffee in heavy cream
This is a “get up and go” food; one can heat the cream before adding the freeze dried coffee and then re-chill, but this would reduce the nostalgia many Leaguesmen feel for the texture when semi-mixed.
Appetizers
-choice of-
▢Earthsavor
peanut butter pumpkin purée
Circle preferred additions:
Cinnamon Allspice
Nutmeg
Ginger
Cloves
A Leagues seasonal favorite. The primary ingredients are grown here using rotary trough gardens which are hauled through the sun each day via a chainworks before resting in subarchitectural chambers.
As you can see, the Southern Vice Isles campaign has delivered a bounteous crop of spices to our diligent militia unions and beloved tribal allies, which are now available to grace your table tonight.
▢Interfluvial Purée
whipped salmon and potato
Veterans of the Minervan Cascades pacification developed a taste for these abundant local ingredients, mashing them together in leafy pits to be served communally. Tonight's rendition can be tamed with chive sauce available at your table.
▢Broiler stew
Mains
Free flow begins: Glasses of fuming sorghum moonshine, steins of manioc beer like liquory buttermilk.
-choice of-
▢Savannah Pudding
white rice blended with mayonnaise and soy sauce
“Semi-abandoned” vinegared fish sauce is sometimes used in lieu of soy sauce, in which case the mayo proportion is reduced; this is referred to as Island Pudding.
▢Butter Thighs
chicken thighs fried in butter served with butter
One kilogram of chicken thighs fried without breading in butter until crispy, on the very cusp of being burnt. Served with a fist-size piece of sun-softened sea salt-flaked butter seized in gigantic casks from the Juncaceaen cattle barons. Sometimes served drenched in mashed green chili and vinegar.
Dessert
The Four Corners
durian ice cheese toast
Prepared by those deployed to tropical theaters, with pasteurized processed cheese food on toast being commonly enjoyed in the City of Leagues. Slices of durian and cheese are chilled in a medic’s ice chest and served on hot toast, optionally buttered; those who want to really taste something will leave the sandwich in the sun for a few minutes before getting down to business.
Digestif
Blood Mana
water with sodium chloride, potassium chloride, trisodium hydrate (citrate), and glucose anhydrous
This wonderful mixture is the key to rehydration. It is prepared for those who are recovering from survival and evasion or POW status, and is distributed to communities suffering from diseases like cholera and dysentery.
Humanitarian cargoes are sometimes delivered by our elite soldiers, such as the Committee for Freedom, who have learned to use Blood Mana to recover from their benders and immediately get back into the action.
What you will have tonight is Blood Mana's Hospital Formula. A "Field Formula" can be prepared from water, honey, ashes, and salt, with potato skins and medicinal bark added if available once the water is boiling.
Note that despite rumors seeded by labor spies, the name has nothing to do with the Blood Bank Entity, which was quickly suppressed by the heroic sacrifice of the City of Grandoval.
___
Merlane lay in the safehouse for days, numb, listless. Gradually he regained his hearing underlaid with a constant whine. His balance returned with fits of wooziness. The explosion had blown a small hole in the ceiling of the workshop, the floor of the sleeping area, and this became a tiny volcano of horrific scent after a few days. Merlane grew sick again and left, walking to the freight logistics district, bearded, matted, filthy, bent, and wild-eyed. He lay in a dark corner, ignored, until a truck bound somewhere abroad had been loaded with sacks of macadamia nuts. He clambered into it, ensconced himself, and waited, perfectly still. The truck rattled to life and headed for the city gates.
…
A mailplane approached the City of Leagues by night; missives, records, communiques, pleas of requisition. Sacks of paper hung from the wings; Merlane huddled in the rear seat. The city was like the highest tip of an ecumenopolis rising through the wastes, dark sere streak of metal, a budding x uneven with many protrusions, hooks and sawteeth imperfectly imitating the greater examples of yore. Raised spines budding, conning towers of the sprawl, grain silos and water basins and tenements unyielding concrete scaffolded in dark metal. A thousand amber windows and blood-eyed mills forging the city’s skeleton night after night.
They touched down on a dusty street on the city’s outskirts. Boys in leather trenchcoats watched them from walls and doorways. A donkey laden with steel water drums tied to it by rope nets stood impassively, droverless, sniffing as the plane came to a stop beside it. Thanks, said Merlane, and crawled out of the plane. He went up a staircase shaped from corrugated iron and walked along the featureless, charcoal-colored roof of a building. He found a tarpaulin thrown over a vent to keep the rain out, wrapped himself in it, and lay on his side. Visions of people being disemboweled and pulled apart with jolting splitting rips filled his mind. He blinked and shook his head but there they were. He breathed deep as they sickened him. Screaming echoed over the singing of his ears and the universe was filled with the ripping butchery of tortured people.
The next day he awoke from his vicious fugue. He wandered until he smelled food. A canteen window for file sorters. They gave him a bowl of vegetable broth with a few pieces of semi-molten broccoli in it. They shrugged and apologized; this was what they’d been given. He swallowed it and went back to his tarp.
