Episode Twelve

When Morran's household needed fresh water, which they seemed to almost constantly, she took all the pans and buckets to the street pump herself. It used to be Dryden's task and he took an amusing amount of pleasure in carrying it out. Unlike most household duties, it felt like Man's Work. "I'm going to the pump," he would announce in the same bold tone which patriarchs in other societies used to declare that they were about to fell trees or hunt tigers. Since his back collapsed, however, Dryden no longer dared do any Man's Work. (Apart from the onerous duty, Morran added acidly, of lifting a full pint pot to his lips.) Stonnie ought to have inherited the job. But Morran found that haranguing her son into acquiescence and then ensuring that he came back with them rather than ditching them all and running off with his friends was far too onerous. It was easier to just do it herself. And it wasn't really too difficult, even though the pump was almost twenty yards down the street. Like most Jakks way women, much of her bulk was pure muscle.
Her trips to the pump were carried out very early. She had always been in the habit of rising when the sun did, which in May was around six o'clock. Immediately after dawn the air was still pleasantly cool. Sometimes she even felt a chill, a rare experience in the Cities at that time of year. And few other women shared her habits, which meant that she could get to the highly desired pump. She always derided the idle ways of her neighbours even as she thanked the Goddess Ella that she didn't have to wait in a long, sweating, grouching line of them.
Somebody else was up early this morning, however. As Morran tugged on the squeaking pump handle, sending globules of faintly cloudy water into a an, she spotted Zesheyek's husband Kriyas exiting his apartment building. She often did. He leaves before I'm awake, Zesheyek had told her, and sometimes doesn't get home until very late. Kriyas paused a moment to glance u and down the street, his usual habit. Then he turned left to head for Mistletoe Square, Dorlaf Avenue and, ultimately, Forgar. They exchanged their customary greetings as he passed the pump. Kriyas bade his neighbour good health. Morran wished him a pleasant day at work and once again resisted the temptation to demand what he actually did.
She rather liked Kriyas. He was always polite, if somewhat formal, towards her. She knew that he treated his wife decently. Zesheyek had never complained and Morran was skilled at spotting signs of abuse even among stoical wives. She wished, however, that she knew how he actually made his living. Half of Jakks Way worked in Forgar, of course, but all at the workshops. Kriyas had denied they employed him with a supercilious tone hinting that he believed he had found something better. That, together with his erratic hours, suggested he had a proper profession. Yet he was a poorly educated farm boy with no connections. He wouldn't have become a lawyer or even a clerk. He was also young, naïve, desperate for money and prone to delusions of being more cunning than he actually was. And secretive. Even though he earned very little and never returned with any blood on his clothes, Morran still though he had dropped into one of the Cities' many illicit trades.
She was pragmatic about these. Some, such as forgery or smuggling, were necessary ways for people to earn a living. They only harmed a government which passed laws solely in the interests of its own excessively rich members. Morran was, however, always aware of possible consequences. And unduly confident farm boys unversed in the ways of the Cities tended to be the ones who got arrested first. Zesheyek's position was already dangerously precarious. She didn't need a husband trying to be sharp.
She had once admitted, in a conversation draped with insinuation and metaphor, that she suspected Kriyas was breaking the law. The notion didn't seem to worry her particularly. That was, Morran believed, because she didn't understand the Cities either. She was still thinking in terms of Notruf, where illegal trades started and ended with poaching and gin stills. The Cities had taken them to uncharted new lands, as it did with all forms of activity. It had made them complex, sophisticated, sometimes unrecognisable. A man could be working regular hours, sitting at a desk all day – and actually committing treason. True treason as well. The blend which would earn him a brief meeting with the noose at Swallow Square.
Morran saw Zesheyek later the same morning. The elder woman was heaving down rather than hauling up this time. Dragging, amidst much muttered cursing, a heavy weight of cloth in her old handcart which was eternally on the verge of total collapse without ever making good its promise. Zesheyek was no more composed. Also pausing outside her door, she seemed to be trying to observe the whole street at once while staying unseen herself. When Morran bawled a friendly "Zesh!" she jumped in apparent terror. Though relaxing slightly when noticing her friend, she still approached her reluctantly.
"Morning," Morran nodded. "Just on me way to kick some sense into me contractor."
Zesheyek, still taking regular looks over her shoulder, spared the handcart a glance. "Have you finished another batch?"
"I wish. Got a right load of shite dumped on me. Cloth that comes apart soon as you put a needle through it. Reeks of damp too. Mrs Amecco, she got given the same. No way we can shift owt we make with it. So I'm taking it back an' telling the contractor, buck your ideas up. Exploit us, fine, rip us off, super. But don't bugger us about. Taking Mrs Amecco's at the same time. Well, you know what she's like. Nice woman but a spine made of jelly. You off… No, you ain't off shopping, are you? Where you off to?"
Zesheyek moved closer. Muscles on her face were twitching Morran noticed, and her hands were kneading together restlessly. She looked like she had been crying recently. "I'm just… We got a note, you see. I've got to go and see our…The man we asked to… You know, that business I told you about. He… he needs to see me."
Morran finally understood. And she reflected how poor Zesheyek was at subterfuge. She really should have invented a euphemism for her private investigator. The Busy Bloke, Our Mate With The Nose… Anything would be better than these pauses which begged to be filled in by a passing eavesdropper. Especially when uttered by a woman almost bursting apart with guilt.
"Oh aye," Morran said neutrally. She nodded towards Mistletoe Square. "You heading that way? Me too. Let's walk together." The handcart started squealing and lurching as they set off. Morran tightened her grip and ignored it, however, treating it as she would a disobedient child. "An' you're off to see him alone?" she asked neutrally.
"Kriyas didn't want me to," Zesheyek replied wretchedly. "But he only sent the note yesterday and said he needs to see us right away. Something about how he'd be leaving the Cities for a while tomorrow. You know how he needs to be… be elsewhere sometimes. And Kriyas tried getting off work but he couldn't so..."
"Stopping down in Southmarket ain't he, this bloke? Aye, well, that's one thing. Plus there's the type he is."
"He seems, I thought he seemed nice enough when I-"
"If he were nice," Morran said grimly, "He'd have picked another trade. No, I reckon I'm coming with you. Wouldn't want you going into Southmarket alone at the best of times an' this sure ain't one of 'em."
Zesheyek grew even more agitated. "But you can't… I mean, Kriyas might… And you said you had to talk to your contractor-"
"You'll have to wait for me. Don't worry. If I can't sort out this damn nonsense in five minutes flat I ain't the woman I was."
Mistletoe Square was unusually empty. It was not a market day or even one of the many more unofficial market days. Mr Golting was there, however, manning his usual stall on his usual pitch. Apparently lost in a reverie, he came to life suddenly as the women walked past. "A fine morning to you, ladies," he called out. "And how lucky you came at this moment. I've two splendid pumpkins, just two left from the whole batch, with your names on-"
"Don't bug us now," Morran warned. "I'm having one of my 'don't trust any men' days."
Mr Golting remained cheerful. "Ah, seems to be that sort of day every other day, don't it?"
"Aye, I'm getting 'em more an' more."
Morran's contractor operated from premises on the corner of Dorlaf Avenue. She did not, as promised, resolve her dispute inside five minutes. It was nearly half an hour later when she emerged from the house. In her defence, though, she required over ten minutes to find the man and another fifteen to get him to see her, leaving only five minutes to shout at him. And she did indeed batter him into submission during that time. She exited the house without the defective cloth and with quite a substantial reimbursement. Not quite the amount she had hoped for but much more than the contractor, who had not tried cheating Morran Heppac before, ever dreamed he would have to pay.
Zesheyek waited outside and recovered her composure while she did. It was the same process as when she first told Morran about her plan. Panic about involving another person, something forbidden by her husband, dominated at first. Yet that was only temporary. The anxiety was soon obliterated by her relief at having Morran by her side. Somebody who was obstinate and worldly and eternally reassuring. Who was far stronger than Zesheyek thought she was and probably stronger than Kriyas too.
Zesheyek wanted to take her friend's arm as they walked through the intimidating bustle of Dorlaf Avenue. Morran was still pushing her now-empty cart with both hands, however. At first she used it as a broom to clear a path through the busy pavements. Increasingly, however, she kept it close to her body, clinging to it with an ever-tightening grip. It became a comfort blanket, a piece of Jakks Way to safeguard her on her journey. Perhaps she thought that in extremes it could serve as a weapon. They both needed their reassurances, Zesheyek in Morran and Morran in her handcart, to let them cross the bridge and enter Southmarket.
Jalkin was a city with very definite right and wrong sides. The River Brulos weaved an approximate north-south through it. You tried very hard to live on the west bank. On the east there was a remarkably degenerate artists' colony. There were a lot of large, sinister warehouses. There was the cattle market of Drayers Square ringed, none to subtly, with slaughterhouses. And there was Southmarket.
Before the Triple Cities were constructed, Southmarket was the only settlement in the area where Jalkin now stands. It is wrong, however, to revert to the usual cliché of saying that the city was 'built up around it.' The original Southmarket had been a farming hamlet. None of its cottages or seed barns were allowed to remain when Jalkin arrived. they were ripped down and replaced by the usual precarious tenement blocks. However, Southmarket in 1334 did offer some sort of testament to the past. It looked like all poor districts did before Christoté liberalised, before taxation allowed some sort of poverty relief and infrastructure development. None of its buildings had enjoyed even the half-hearted improvements of those in Jakks Way. They were basic, grim, damp and dangerous. Grills covered almost every window, excrement covered the roads. The few street pumps never worked; water had to be drawn from the nearby, heavily polluted, Brulos. Guardsmen were rarely seen during daytime and never at all at night, surrendering to the gangs. There were no amenities, no industries, few shops and little hope.
Most newly arrived immigrants, whatever Mrs Coplan's complaints about Jakks Way being swamped, got dumped in Southmarket. Or in another of the Cities' slum districts, Astor Square in Forgar or Yaleth's Brekklinside. Some managed to haul themselves out after a few years. The rest remained in the pit, paying phenomenal rents for a tiny and decaying flat, unable to find an employer who would look at them, wondering what had happened to the vision of gold and marble which was the Triple Cities. Because they hadn't arrived there, not truly. As Morran walked past the tattered women and the naked children playing in filth, she felt she had left the Cities. Not, she told herself sternly, because the women were talking in half a dozen different languages and the skin of the children ranged from albino white to virtual black. Or, she then conceded, not only due to that. Because she didn't feel safe. There were many areas which she wouldn't enter at night. During the daytime, though, the whole of the Cities ought to have been hers. It belonged to her because she was part of it. But districts like Southmarket had been cast away, freed from all civic and moral laws. Her only protection here was Zesheyek and her handcart.
"This mate of yours we're off to see," she said to distract herself. "He any good?"
"I… I don't know. He seemed to know what he's doing."
"Guess that's summit we might be about to find out. You only met him once before, you say?"
"Yes."
"Aye, well, I'll give him a look. It's a trade with a lot of chancers, I hear. An' he can't be doing too well for himself," Morran added sourly, "If he can't afford to stay anywhere better."
"He's not in the Cities for long. He moves about a lot, I think. And I suppose if you're… if you're in his line of work…"
Not much frightens you, Morran thought. Not even Southmarket. Not even the vile alley which held the private investigator's lodgings. A sliver between buildings where the shadows almost turned the day into night and unnamed liquids virtually flowed over the cobbles. As they splashed along, trying not to retch from the smell, Morran thought how far she was from Jakks Way. Not just because of the foreign land which had engulfed her. Because of the man lodged in its depths and the mission he was carrying. The scheme which Morran had blundered into with her usual blustering altruism, treating it as she did all the usual imbroglios. It was not, however. It was strange and frightening and had possible consequences she barely dared contemplate. That characteristically impulsive gesture earlier, insisting on accompanying Zesheyek to the meeting, had taken Morran further from home than she had ever been before. The handcart hopped and bounced on the cobbles but she clung to it as tightly as she could.

"Well," she said afterwards. She used a very traditional tone which made that one short word convey a great deal. Disdain, contempt, disappointment – and the grim satisfaction at being proved correct. "Well, I dunno about that." Again, an expression which many local women used. It meant Morran did, in fact, know about the meeting and didn't approve at all.
They were sat on a rock in a small, nondescript quay by the Brulos. On the west bank, the right bank, of course. Neither woman had wanted to stop until they crossed the river again. However, they found that they were unable to face the long, anarchic haul of Dorlaf Avenue without a sit down first. Southmarket, land of terrors, stood directly across the waters. It wasn't quite invisible but was hard to notice, overshadowed by the line of tall warehouses which began just to its north. From the river, east Jalkin always looked like a fortress.
"What I reckon," Morran continued, "Is your mate's been taking your money an' doing nowt with it."
"He said he's not finished yet," Zesheyek protested.
"Well, he'd better get a move on," Morran said, glancing at her friend's swelled belly. "'Cause the day ain't far off now. An' I got the impression he reckons he's done pretty much all he needs to. An' I reckon he's got pretty much nowhere. What were all that he were banging on about, all them servant girls an' dairymaids which your lord got knocked up?"
"He explained about that, didn't he? Said hit established… what was the word, precedence."
"Precedence? What good does that do you? We know what that lord's like. He's a lech. He knocks up his servants, he knocks up his farmer's daughters, he-" Morran stopped. 'He knocked you up' she was about to tell Zesheyek. Which was a truth her friend had confessed but still hated to hear. "So what good does that do?" Morran said instead, redirecting her tirade. "We say all that to your lord, he'll just say, 'prove it.' An' your mate over there can't do that, can he? He's been snuffling around Notruf for months an' what's he found? Some poor lasses with bastards on their hands. A few servants who can account for your lord's movements the night he called on you. Anyone who'll come over here to the Cities to say any of that? Don't reckon so. Notice how our mate tried covering up that part too?"
"He did say he hoped-"
"To go back to Notruf to get 'em to change their minds? Aye, well, good look to him. Truth is, everyone over there's scared shitless of your lord. An' you ain't got enough to bribe some courage into 'em. An' even if he gets someone to testify, it still ain't gonna be good enough. Our mate's been coming at this the wrong way. He's been trying to collect witnesses for a court case. You know an' I do that there's no way you can afford to take this to court. It can't drag on. You get one punch an' that's it."
"I know."
"So what I'm thinking is this. Get rid of our bloke over there an' hire someone who can really pack a blow."
Morran smiled in satisfaction. Already her sense of bewilderment was fading. The case no longer felt alien to her. She was taking command of it, dragging it into frameworks which she understood. To further the process she had to change it. One step would be to replace Zesheyek's investigator with somebody she knew herself.
Not that she didn't think this necessary anyway. The detective probably wasn't a conman but he was still a waste of time. He was a fop, Morran believed, and an actor. Maybe his funds were low, maybe Southmarket did indeed hold no terrors for him. But she thought he had picked the address solely for dramatic effect. He had presented his 'discoveries' like a mummer in a bad melodrama, the bombastic delivery hoping to disguise the paucity of the words. Morran also sensed that he was enjoying himself.
All of this would be fine for most of the nonsenses which detectives were hired for. Adulteries, inheritances, industrial espionage – let the fops mess about with them. Zesheyek, though, needed somebody who took her life seriously.
"But we can't," she cried. "I mean, we… it's too late now…" The objections were purely instinctive, however. she too was calming down. As Morran took the case in her arms it was being taken away from Zesheyek as well as the investigator. All control was sliding away from her; and her relief at losing that weight was immense.
"No it ain't," Morran said decisively. "Our mate over there's got some distance. You're paying him on an hourly basis, ain't you? You up to date?"
"Yes, more or less, but-"
"Then just settle up with him. An' say, let's have the files, ta for your work, have a nice ride home love. Easy."
"But who else can we… If we hire someone local they won't know anything about Notruf. That's why we went to-"
"Aye, but he's already dug up the Notruf side of things. Dug it to death if you ask me. This ain't gonna get played out in Notruf, is it? Gonna get settled here in the Cities. We need someone who can handle that."
"Hiring someone else, though… It means someone else knowing."
Morran gave her a sympathetic look. "You're gonna have to face that sooner or later," she said gently. "More an' more folks are gonna know an' eventually everyone will. Your lord might've noticed summit's up already. If he got wind of our mate snooping around back home." Zesheyek shuddered. Morran wondered how afraid she still was of 'her lord.'
"Who can we go to?" she asked in a tight voice.
"Off the top of my head, I'd say ask Myran Smithson for a recommendation. 'Cause he might play the respectable little herbalist but I know he's got some funny mates stashed away. Either that or go straight to the Tansons an' see if they're interested."
"The Tansons?" Zesheyek repeated in horror. "But I don't know them at all. And they look so… They seem…"
"Aye. They ain't, I reckon, but I grant you that they seem that. I'll have a word with Myran Smithson, then, soon as I can. Don't worry. I won't use your name. An' even if he guesses, he can keep his mouth shut when he's asked to."
"Kriyas won't like this. He didn't want anyone else involved."
Morran shrugged. "Up to you if you tell him just yet."
As soon as she said that, they both knew that Zesheyek wouldn't. Not just yet. Kriyas too had been excluded. For the moment, Morran was in sole command. So another layer had been added to the deception which Zesheyek was practicing against Kriyas. It was remarkable how thick they grew simply because she had a strong friend and a weak husband.
"You're going to ask Mr Smithson for..?"
"A recommendation." Morran nodded. "Aye. Any dodgy characters he knows are looking for some work. Though chances are he'll just say, why not speak to that scary looking couple who've just moved in upstairs from you."