Metallan District
The Metallan District is south and east of the district of the Central Cylinder.
A shabby but not squalid district.
We were in a street of Ar, a narrow, crowded street, in which we were much jostled. It was in the Metellan district, south and east of the district of the Central Cylinder. It is a shabby, but not squalid district. There are various tenements, or insulae, there. It is the sort of place, far enough from broad avenues of central Ar, where assignations, or triflings, might take place.
“Is Ar this crowded always?” asked Marcus, irritably.
“This street, at this time of day,” I said.
My companion was Marcus Marcellus, of the Marcelliani, formerly of Ar’s Station, on the Vosk. We had come to Ar from the vicinity of Brundisium. He, like myself, was of the caste of warriors. With him, clinging closely, about him, as though she might fear losing him in the crowd, and attempting also, it seemed, not unoften, to make herself small and conceal herself behind him, was his slave, Phoebe, this name having been put on her, a slender exquisite, very lightly complexioned, very dark-haired girl. She had come into his keeping in the vicinity of Brundisium, some months ago.
Magicians
“We are coming to the Wall Road,” said Marcus. This is the longest road, or street, in Ar. It follows the interior circumference of the wall. It is not only a convenience to citizens but it enables troops to be moved rapidly from point to point in the defenses.
I could hear the flutes.
Magicians
Given the anger in Ar at Ar’s Station, and the fact that the Home Stone of Ar’s Station had been sent to Ar, supposedly, according to the rumors, not for safekeeping, given the imminent danger in the city, but in a gesture of defiance and repudiation, attendant upon the supposed acceptance of a new Home Stone, one bestowed upon them by the Cosians, the stone was, during certain hours, publicly displayed. This was done in the vicinity of the Central Cylinder, on the Avenue of the Central Cylinder. The purpose of this display was to permit the people of Ar, and elsewhere, if they wished, to vent their displeasure upon the stone, insulting it, spitting upon it, and such.
“The stone,” I said, “is well guarded.”