Toll

The town that straddles the great chasm that marks the Kingdom's edge. No visiter may pass to the other side without paying fare in and out.

Built on the only bridge ever to sucessfully span the gap, the town of Toll relies on strict rules and a lot of faith to stay standing. Its people believe fervently in the power of their Luck, their special artifact that keeps the town from falling into the rift.

Clinging to the cliff edge, fighting and submitting in turn to rule by the Locksmiths, the people of Toll pray to their gods, and uphold the standards of the names they bestow.

For Toll is divided not only by the nations it spans, but by the very nature of the people within it. By day, all those with 'proper' names, born under respectable gods, walk the streets in sunlight and their pale-wooded badges. Only after sunset, when the law-abiding people have been locked and shuttered away, can the pale, creeping night-city emerge, labeled with rounds of dark, carved wood.

Anyone born under the wrong saint, anyone caught outside after nightfall, any visiter whose pass has expired, falls into Toll-by-Night. Here Thieves stalk and criminals gather, not because their destinies were foretold by their births, but because they have been thrown into a world of chaos, and told that they are meant to be a part of it. That they are born rebels, or murderers, or perverters of the truth, and that is all they can hope to be.

As Clent said,

“Brand a man as a thief and no one will ever hire him for honest labor - he will be a hardened robber within weeks. The brand does not reveal a person's nature, it shapes it.” ― Frances Hardinge, Fly by Night

But Mosca Mye, fly child, lover of words, has a tendency to bring change in her wake. Change that not even the old fusspots of Toll can evade.