Almost to 75K! Then I take the weekend to assess the manuscript, and use the last 5K to make the plot go good! Jesus, at this rate I’ll have another book ready for alpha/beta reading soon.
So forget the Dominion, I told myself (and I wish!). Think about Rowan himself. What’s his angle?
Well, he was a foreigner, to start. Of course, a lot of people from here ain’t really from here originally. Shoot, half the Greek families in New California think anybody who can’t trace their ancestry back to Old Mexico is some kind of immigrant. But you get live and let live. Play by Cin City rules, and you’re golden.
But Rowan didn’t like our rules, did he? He was only here because he and his crew got chased out of the Dwarvenwood — and I was ready to bet that Rowan wasn’t from the ‘Wood, not really. His wardrobe and attitude was right out of the badlands, only that wasn’t a real popular place to be from, these days. Too many horror stories from Mormon refugees.
So. Foreigner. And the kind who wouldn’t like New California at all. Mages are rare on the ground in the badlands, because the Dominion hunts them down, and kill anybody who helps them run. And the ‘Wood doesn’t have mages, just priests of… whatever the ‘Wood is. I don’t know. I just know it likes to eat demons. Point is, there just ain’t any good magic up there, if you’re the criminal type.
Coming here must have been one hell of a shock. Magic everywhere, right out there in the open. Powerful guilds locking up all the really good crime, and they all had these rules that got in the way of an enterprising businessman. They had plenty of juice with the government, too. Everything was nice and respectable, and maybe just a tiny little bit smug about it all.