I woke, abruptly. Not the kind of cold sweat screaming-from-the-veil-of-sleep awakening that the Dreamer liked to inflict more nights than she didn't, more the kind where your eyes open and you're properly awake. Alert, for better or worse. Not all that often that I'd wake like that, and if I were more superstitious I might have wondered what it could mean, but I try and ignore superstition wherever possible.

As I sat up, something in my back made a grand show of creaking while being unfolded from the awkward position I'd slept in, face against the desk and the papers I'd been looking at before, evidently, I'd given up for the night and passed out. That was a habit from times long gone that I'd never quite shaken, sleeping where I fell- a common enough habit for anyone, but especially so for my old vocation. Waking up with a tattoo of last night's calculations on the cheek wasn't anything unusual, that's for sure.

After a few moments blearily blinking to wait for my eyes to focus, I was on my feet, muttering a companionable string of profanity to myself in something of a greeting to the waking world and the day ahead. The familiar, slender shape of my cigar was quickly found, by the ink stained quill I'd been using to write my report. Wisps of white smoke twisted upward as I took it for a walk across to the windows and looked out over the basilica.

The glass was murky at the edges, ice having crawled up from the corners in the night- it would make a half hearted attempt at melting when the sun was high enough to send light voyaging down between the spires to hit this end of the citadel, but it wouldn't get far before night fell again and the balance would be back in favour of the biting cold which was a constant this far north. Through what glass that was still transparent, I could see the decorative façade of the building across from mine, the ever-present crust of frost jewelling the sweeping Ankyrean architecture with glassy facets that caught the greasy green-yellow light from the lamps in the street below.

Just as I had come to consciousness, the basilica down below was waking up. Guard shifts were changing, fur-clad conscripts nodding grimly to each other, Atabahi greeting their colleagues in growls and snuffles, because who in their right mind would not wear a natural fur coat if they had one available, this time of morning? Shopkeepers were beginning to set up their wares, and the urchins were emerging from their street-level hiding places to beg and steal and generally get underfoot.

It would be a while yet before the sun was in a good position, but over the tops of the buildings I could see the silhouetted shapes of the spires nonetheless, spearing blackly up into the sky with a back-lit edge of gold. An intimidating sight for the young or the foreign, but for the long-time citizen, they were a comforting reminder that everything was still in place. During the years of the Dreikathi wars that had been a very needed reminder- if you saw the spires in the morning, it meant they hadn't been bombed to rubble, after all- but that anxiety was little more than an uncomfortable memory, these days. Still hovered in the mind of the pessimistic and maudlin, of course, but for most of the citizenry the Dreikathi would only really have surfaced to mind if someone asked for directions to the history section of the archives.

Even if you didn't like the Ankyreans and the legacy they'd left behind, there were worse places to live than in the shell of their former capital. Certainly much less decorative places. The next most decorative location was probably Enorian, and living there was an issue if you had a habit of developing your own thoughts, especially in recent times- or so the news scrolls had been telling us, at least. Still, for those willing to sing praise with the choir and otherwise do exactly as was expected in the charter, no more and no less, the southern city provided something of a safe-haven from the various perils of the night and other such categories of danger.

A sharp tapping dredged me up out of my little morning reverie, and I brought myself to focus again to discover an owl perched outside my window looking ruffled and crotchety, as owls tended to. This one had mail, though, and I sighed between my teeth. Well, alright. I wrestled briefly with the catch of the window, yanked, then gave the frame a good, sharp thump with my fist- the window rattled, and the sealing rim of ice cracked and splintered away, allowing me to wrench the sash up a short ways, until the top of it ran into more of the encrusted ice. Cold air flooded in- I wrinkled my nose at it, but waited with only moderate impatience for the owl to deliver me the letter. It seemed about as displeased as I was, understandably so, and before long it had spread its snowy wings and fluttered off to do more rounds. I leant my weight on the window frame, shoving it back down again through the frost to slam closed once more. The letter, I tossed onto my desk. Standard crimson affair with a seal I didn't even bother to look at. It could wait until I had gotten my hands on some kawhe for the morning.