Excerpt: The Day of Burning (or The Right to Rule - I can't pick a title)

He hated this city.

The sights, the smell, the sounds, the people – everything about it irritated him, grated on his every nerve, made him wish he were somewhere – anywhere – else. He had grown up here, but that didn’t really mean much to him – there were no especially fond childhood memories lingering here. No especially terrible ones, either, but the lack of either extreme made him wish he had grown up anywhere else. Boredom was perhaps the biggest vice here. Dull, aristocratic dinner parties were held every other night, and besides them, there was very nearly nothing to do. Some capital city. Seam Harbor was, for all its heralded glory and grandeur, truly Caleb Wembley’s least favorite place on earth.

He had learned long ago, however, that his parents – Lord and Lady Wembley – refused to even consider moving anywhere else, and so here he would stay until he started a life of his own. It would not be long now, perhaps another year or two. They could not keep him here forever, and he intended to remind them of that.

He strode purposefully down the streets, his hands deep in his pockets. His shirt was uncomfortably hot – even silk was almost too much to wear in this heat, which persisted day after day. If only the Favored had considered that outcome when they had decided to do away with the movement of the sun.

He was not sure where he was going. Not to any of the many dinner parties and celebrations being held tonight, that was for sure. Even the Eve of the Day of Burning could not make him attend another one of those superificial events. He could hear the laughter and sounds of crashing china coming from one of the mansions on the street; someone was having a bit too much fun.

All the houses looked the same here. Yet another feature of the city that was unbearable. Every mansion had high-vaulted windows to let in the eternal sunlight, possessed great iron gates with depictions of the sun and sea welded into them. Every mansion sat upon a hill, overlooking the rest of the city, so as to better reach the sun. Every mansion was painted some shade of blue, to represent water and life. And every mansion had an airship of some sort in its jurisdiction, or at least access to such high-class transportation. The steam-powered airships were rarer than one would believe upon seeing Seam Harbor, though the city councilmen would never admit that, nor would the lords and ladies who lived in such mansions.

Caleb had lived in one such mansion his entire life, airship tethered in the back yard and all. Very rarely had he ever gone up in it. It was never usually necessary to leave Seam Harbor, and airships were not needed to get around this city. One could go on foot or horse-drawn carriage down white granite-cobbled streets, past wrought-iron gates and mansions of glass and blue. The whole city sat above Port Seam, overlooking the harbor. No sailing ships ever came and went from there. Airships would land in the harbor, refuel on water and steam, and then take to the skies again. Sailing ships were no longer necessary.

Caleb had seen a sailing ship once, only once when he had been seven years old. It had been a massive thing of wood and metal and sails and rigging and shouting crew members. He’d been enthralled, and much desired to set foot upon one ever since – but no more sailing ships existed. If they did, they didn’t come to Port Seam.

“Pity,” Caleb said, kicking a stone on the ground. It bounced off the cobbled street. It was unnaturally quiet, and Caleb wondered what time it was. It was impossible to tell outside anymore. He could remember that when he’d been younger, he’d been able to tell the difference between three and four in the afternoon simply by looking at the sky….

No longer. That had ended years ago, during the Great Burning. A simply ceremonial name, that was – nothing had burned at all on that day, of course. But the sun had begun its eternal noon, so Caleb supposed that the name was more than apt.

Nothing had been burned that day. But ever since, Caleb Wembley had dreamed of fire.