GAZETTEER · THE VALE

The Span

The great three-arched bridge the city is named for, and the roaring throat of quarter that grew around it — the toll-chain, the caravan yard, the crossing every road in the Vale must pay to use. Also the place the street-prophets stand, because the whole world walks past the toll-queue eventually.

Three arches of imperial stone leap the Vellen gorge here, and they are the only reason Highbridge exists: nobody living knows how to raise their like, so every road east funnels down to this one crossing and pays for the privilege. The Span is the quarter that grew fat on that fact — the toll-chain and its house, the weigh-scales, the caravan yard where the Wheelmoot factors haggle mule-trains through, the Counting-Floor under the first arch where the Gaunt Ledger prices the traffic by daylight, and a permanent reek of dung, tar, wet rope and roasting chestnuts. Ysolde Marr keeps the chain and has not set foot off the bridge in thirty years; when she raises it the Vale stops moving. The open secret of the Span is the crack in the middle arch, a hairline the Stonewrights have been about to see to since before anyone's grandfather — the whole city's wealth crosses a bridge no living hand can mend, and everyone has agreed not to think about it. Because all the world passes through here, the toll-queue is also where the Vale's cranks come to be ignored at scale: the Skyblamer with his copied tallies, the mad sky-elf with his doom, working the line like beggars while the guard moves them along and the carts roll on.

This world ships in Valenfeld. Play the game →