Claupiose

Claupiose is built in a half-bowl: the harbor at the bottom, the dye-houses and silk lofts on the lower slopes, the lavender fields above. The road from Wromthalm enters from the west through the Land Gate and leaves east along the shore for Solvaine.

The Rèvascare. The harbor ("rèvascare," port), a stone mole sheltering the galleys of the Claupiose squadron and the lake boats bound for Solvaine. Fishermen, galley crews and bargemen from the Drift crowd its taverns. The harbor is proud of its past in a way the rest of Caelvenne finds tactless.

The Dye-Houses. The lower slopes along the stream that comes down from the hills, where silk is dyed in open vats and the water runs a different color below each house. Dyers' arms are stained to the elbow for life, and a Claupiose dyer can be known anywhere in Caelvenne by his hands.

The Silk Lofts. Terraces of tall, airy houses above the Dye-Houses where the silk-moths are fed on Claupiose mulberry and the cocoons are reeled. The lofts are quiet and warm and smell of leaves, and the reelers are nearly all women.

The Road Town. The western quarter inside the Land Gate: customs sheds, carters' yards, money-changers and the inns for travelers from Aldmere. The Wheel and Barrel, the largest inn, keeps its back room for the Wheelwrights, the Qaflan caravan clan of the Golden Road, and nobody else may take it.

The Lavender Hills. The slopes above the city, purple in summer, where the pickers live in hill villages and the still-houses boil the flowers down for the perfume trade.

The Land Gate. The first Caelvennois gate on the road from Hethlend, and the city's customs house. Every cart from Aldmere is weighed here, and the grain toll is waived under the Grain Compact.

The Pitch Stair. The harbor stair where, as the town tells it, the pitch was loaded onto the galleys that burned Ienvaune's harbor in 271 and killed two thousand. A plain stone marks it. Claupiose calls the stone a memorial. Ienvaune calls it a boast.

The Silk Hall. The guildhall of the reelers and dyers, where every bolt of Claupiose silk is measured and sealed before it goes to the Dyers' Reach in Solvaine.

The Niala. The street of still-houses ("niala," perfume) at the top of the town, where lavender is boiled and bottled. On still summer nights its smell carries across the harbor to the galleys at anchor.

The Claupiose Mirror Tower. A mirror tower on the hill above the harbor that links the southwestern shore to Solvaine and the far shore of the lake.

Claupiose works to the seasons of the moths and the lavender. The mulberry leaves are stripped in spring, the cocoons reeled in early summer, and the lavender cut in high summer, when the whole town smells of it for a month. The Settling Days and the Night of Mirrors are kept as in Solvaine. On the 9th of Surmave every harbor house sets a mirror and a lamp in its window, and the Claupiose squadron rows out to see its own city lit twice.

Its people follow the Radiant Iévaine, but the dye-house workers are rougher and more pious than Solvaine's clerks, and the Ledger has few followers here. They eat perch and whitefish from the lake, bread from Aldmere grain that comes straight down the road, and the first Ienvaune wine they can get, which they say is poor. The grudge with Ienvaune is 875 years old and still breathing. Claupiose houses do not marry Ienvaune houses, and a Claupiose boy who wants a fight in a Solvaine tavern has only to mention the year 271.

Trade runs both ways through the Land Gate. Silk, perfume, Solvaine glass and Caelvennois credit go out to Aldmere, and Aldmere's grain, linen and Wromthalm otter pelts come in. A reeler earns a flirone a day. A bolt of raw Claupiose silk sells for four leusores at the Silk Hall and six once it is dyed in Solvaine. A flask of lavender water costs a flirone. The customs house takes its cut of everything but grain.

Naular the Dyer, whose family has run the largest dye-house for five generations, sits on the Silk Hall's council and argues for the Bench in every tavern that will have him. ("naular," kind)

• A company of Southdowns longbowmen is expected on the Wromthalm road, bound for Larvir under the Grain Compact, and the Road Town inns are doubling their prices.
• A match has been proposed between a Claupiose house and an Ienvaune house for the first time since 271, and somebody has chipped the Pitch Stair stone.
• The barge-town Threeoars has been seen moored off the Rèvascare at night with no lamps lit.
• A silk-moth sickness has broken out in two lofts, and the reelers are burning mulberry leaves and saying nothing to the Silk Hall.
• The Wromthalm fishermen's carved black stone passed through the Land Gate hidden in a cart of flax, and three different people have asked the customs men which cart.

RISING. Claupiose is Caelvenne's landward door, and every trouble on the lake makes it worth more. If the Cherüsh cut the Tsanha trade, or the lake turns dangerous, Aldmere's grain and Caelvenne's silk still move on the Wromthalm road, and that road passes through the Land Gate. The silk and perfume trades grow with the Nine Houses' fashions, and the harbor still commands the southwestern water. Its danger is its old pride: in a year when Caelvenne needs every shore as one, Claupiose still counts its enemies from 271.

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