Jakks Way

Episode Seventeen

2007-10-27T03:23:00.000-07:00

Ses Netrasso hated these sort of evenings. The Last Drop Inn was supposed to be a welcoming pub, a friendly pub. He wanted it to be a safe haven for all, regardless of whatever warfare was being conducted outside its doors. Mostly it was. Then there were evenings of this kind, however, when the battles were essentially conducted on his property. One day, he vowed, one day… But he knew that was meaningless. Whatever else he changed, he would always have to condone these arrangements as a price for being a landlord in somewhere like Jakks Way.
So he let Boldan and his gang have the back room for the night; the room officially closed due to leaking drains. He often turned it over to Boldan or another of the gangs and usually didn't mind. The would just gamble or take illegal herbs or do whatever else came into their limited minds. Overgrown louts, Netrasso considered, best out of the way of anyone decent. Tonight was different, however. Netrasso had been instructed to ensure nobody else came into the room. Even if they gave any of the secret codewords or knocks which usually allowed admittance. Nobody was to be let in – except Yaxi and Radav Tanson.
They'll be coming at eight o'clock, Boldan had said. And they did, with remarkable punctuality. The brass saloon clock was still striking when they sauntered into the pub. Netrasso studied them as they approached and tried to reassure himself: they know what sort of an evening this is too. They've faced them before and survived. They only gave the saloon one quick glance apiece. It was intense rather than casual, however, and seemed to tell them everything. Netrasso couldn't see any weapons on them. He also knew of a great many weapons which could be concealed, a great many places to conceal them; and he was only an outsider. They know what they're doing, he told himself again.
"Hey there, Mr Landlord," Yaxi grinned as they reached the bar and Netrasso wished she was acting a little less carefree. "Sorry to jump straight to business but I hear there's a guest list tonight and, hey, we're on it." She glanced significantly at the empty corner normally commandeered by Boldan.
"He's waiting in the back room." Netrasso nodded towards the door. "He said to go straight in."
"Well then, we'll just snog you and scarper if that's OK." They started to walk off.
"Wait," Netrasso said suddenly. He then looked around himself. Nobody officially on Boldan's payroll was left in the saloon, which didn't mean he had no presence there. There were always men looking for payments or favours. Still, he had to say something at least. Leaning across the bar and dropping his voice he urged, "You don't have to go in there. You can just walk away, you know."
Yaxi raised her eyebrows, still smiling. "Just walk away? When such a, you know, big important guy asks us round for drinks?"
"He said he were buying too," Radav supplied.
"The second invite we've had in a week too. First dinner with the neighbours, now this. I've a feeling Jakks Way's taking us to its heart. And what, we're supposed to turn it down? I think not. That'd be… what would that be, hon?"
"Shitey."
"Well I think you just made that word up but we'll kind of let it pass. No, we-"
"He's brought a lot of men with him," Netrasso said.
"See? Everyone wants to welcome us to the neighbourhood. I bet they're all in there waiting to, you know, shout "Hurrah!" the second we step through the door."
"Summit like that," Radav nodded as they moved away.
Netrasso watched them knock on the back door. Watched them step back, be scrutinised, be admitted, step inside; and so pass from his protection. He could do nothing now except hope that they were only playing with him, that they trusted him no more than they did Cepu Boldan.

"Radav Tanson and Yaxi Celcetto," Boldan said with a minatorial smile. "Been hearing quite a bit about you these last few days. Some real interesting stuff. Let's see… You've ridden the caravans up and down the Moretti Road. Passed right through Bladebranch Forest and fought off the Dark Elves. Took care of some seriously heavy business for some merchants on the coast, they were sponging the blood off the walls for weeks. Sailed on one of those ships that prey on fucking pirates." Boldan chuckled. "A nice legend you two are building. Any of it true?"
"All scripture so far, except now my name's Tanson as well," Yaxi replied. Her eyes flickered to the four men standing round the table, then back to Boldan. He was sat opposite them, his posture seemingly relaxed and friendly. "We kind of got married last spring but one."
"A spring wedding? Sweet. And here's my favourite tale. How you two were the ones who knocked over the Four Stars Bank in Chorley last year."
"You know, I told you that was a mistake," Yaxi told Radav. "We build one hell of a career, do all sorts of crazy things, most of which I'm so not going to repeat here. And what do we get remembered for? Knocking over a bank. Like, whoopee."
"Sweet job, by all accounts."
"Yeah, well, my point is, it's not really our kind of job. We only did it to get at something inside one of the vaults."
Boldan chuckled, glancing around his men. "That's the point of bank jobs, ain't it?"
"A specific thing, I meant, which we were hired to get specifically. By a guy who claimed to be its owner, by the way, and we did ask, why don't you just go to a counter and, you know, withdraw it yourself. But he gave us so much financial mumbo-jumbo, in the end it just seemed kind of easier to cut our losses and rob the damn bank. A-a-a-and, to get back to my point yet again… While we're not whaling on bank robbers, the team we put together were a real charming bunch-"
Radav looked at her sharply. "You reckon?"
"I thought they had a certain rough-hewn charm, didn't you?"
"I ended up having a punch-up with one of 'em."
"Were in the main a real charming bunch of guys – and thanks, hon, for that helpful intervention there – it's so not our favourite line of work. And nor's what you do most of the time, Cepu, 'cause I've sort of guessed where this is going already. We've done a bit of homework on you too. Cepu Boldan, 'Blood-Eyes' Boldan, real sweet nickname there by the way. Head of a little gang of scamps in central Jalkin for way longer than the Guards would have liked. Bank robberies, wagon robberies, the odd kidnapping, counterfeiting and, as a bedrock to the finances, that good ol' extortion racket. Plus the occasional murder as part of your ongoing push to be the only gang in central Jalkin. How's that one going, by the way?"
Boldan stared at her for a few seconds. "That's what we're here to talk about."
"Hey, you're going to give us a blow-by-blow account of the latest knife fights? Or do you kind of mean, you want to dragoon us into joining your gang?"
"Guess."
"You think he can guess what our answer's gonna be, hon?" Yaxi asked Radav. "I'm so hoping he hasn't so I can tell him and watch his face fall."
"It'll be a picture."
Boldan smiled slightly. "Yeah, that's it. Look at my face. Both of you. Thing is, you've given me a problem. If you were just more wogs coming into town to cream off the state, I could ignore you. Another couple of wog shits, I'd think, an'-"
"Nice," Yaxi smiled. "But kind of not too accurate when it comes to Radav. I'm looking into your face as directed and, hey, very sweet it is, but it's no paler than his. A bit less pale, you know, as you seem to be getting a bit tetchy. What's that all about?"
"Reckon you interrupted him there," Radav said.
"Oh yeah. I did, didn't it? Sorry. Carry on."
After a moment Boldan said, trying to keep his voice level, "I'd think some monkey an' his wog wife."
"That's better."
"But you ain't that, are you? There's these legends. I'll bet every bit of gold I've ever stole you've got some hardware stacked away in that flat of yours. And yeah, I know which flat it is."
"Well, duh."
"And you're putting out this story about how you're on holiday. I think that's a piece of shit. You're here for a reason. So what I'm saying is… You think I'm just gonna let a pair like you run around free in my neighbourhood? Talking to whoever you like? Doing any deals you like? Fucking well think again." Another pause, then Boldan added, "I'm not asking for much. I'm not saying, join my boys or else. Not sure I'd have a pair like you, to be honest. But we come to an agreement tonight. We make a… a treaty, understand? Then everything's settled, we're all good mates and we'll have that drink together. Right?"
Yaxi leant back and asked, "And if we don't agree to some of the sub-clauses in this treaty and, you know, refuse to sign it?"
"Just seven of us in this room. Me, my boys and you two. How many do you want to walk out?"
"Uh-huh. Hey, just out of interest, does this approach work a lot?"
"It does it's job."
"And do you think it's working right now?" Before anyone could react she asked Radav, "You know that thing you do under the table with your dagger?"
"Aye. Just got it in place now."
"What's it pushed against?"
"Dunno. Reckon it's his dick."
"Yeah? Is that right, Cepu, is the tip of his dagger right against – Yeah, look at his expression, hon. It's his dick." Yaxi looked up at the men stood around the table and announced, "In case you kind of missed that development, my husband's got a dagger pressed right up against your guy's dick. Anyone does anything to make him tetchy, it's going to go a foot further forward and won't that be fun to watch. You know, hon," she added, "I sort of wish you'd stop choosing the dick. It does a job but, you know, lacks class."
"Weren't out of choice. I were aiming for the belly but seemed to get lost."
"Yeah, right." Yaxi's hands dropped. When they came up again each was holding a knife; tight, angled, ready to throw. She swivelled on her chair so she could see all of Boldan's men at once. "OK, what I could do with now is for you guys to all take a few steps back." She waited. None of them moved, apparently frozen in uncertainty towards this new situation. "Guys?" Yaxi said lightly. "You kind of want to start listening to me? Otherwise I've a feeling your boss is gonna spend the rest of his days talking in a high pitched voice. Which I admit would be pretty funny but-"
"Do what she says," Boldan rasped.
"Thanks, Boldo. Want to repeat that in that high pitched voice just to give them a taste? No? Oh well, it would've been a scream. OK, that's far enough, guys," she called to the men who had been slowly shuffling back. "Sort of awkward throwing knives at people when they're standing real close, did you know that? I think I've got you in the, like, optimum range now. So why don't you put down your dagger and you drop that dinky little crossbow and you – well, you're so tooled up you'd better take off your whole belt. Don't be, you know, embarrassed if your pants fall down. I'm a pretty worldly gal."
They were good, she conceded, now that they had recovered from their shock. They moved very carefully, very slowly. And their concentration was locked on her, waiting for the first stutter in her attention. She was good as well, however. Her eyes moved evenly from one man to another, noting every movement. Her hands held the knives in a steady, vigilant grasp. Radav, meanwhile, continued to stare at Boldan, his own dagger maintaining its gentle but steady pressure.
There was a pause after the gangsters had put down their weapons. Thinking he had detected uncertainty in it, Boldan demanded, "Now what the fuck are you going to do?"
"We-e-e-ell," Yaxi replied brightly, not turning around, "Seven people entered this room, like you said, and I think us two are gonna leave it now. The rest of you don't have to. You can stay here, settle down and grow crops. But it's sort of beddy-byes time for me and the husband."
"This'll be good," Boldan sneered. "You watch this, lads. See how she gets out like that with her bad leg."
"Oh. Yes. Me and my bad leg. Oh deary, deary me. What is, what is –"
She tapped her foot. Then she and Radav rose swiftly and simultaneously. Yaxi tossed one knife up; Radav snatched it out of the air. Now he had two daggers ready to be thrown; Yaxi had her walking stick in her free hand. The whole manoeuvre had taken perhaps three seconds.
"-What is a poor old cripple to do?" Yaxi continued. "Hey Boldo, why don't you get up kind of real carefully and go over to join your guys. It's so, so sweet to see a little gang all sticking together. And why you might be thinking is, three daggers, five of us, wa-hay, no problem here. But we will be aiming at the very first guy who moves wrong and after all you've heard about us, do you really want to be that guy? You know, really? What's more, Radav will still be tossing a blade right at Boldo and, being Radav, he'll be tossing it right at Boldo's dick."
"It's a big target," Radav said. "You've got to give him that."
"Well, I'm kind of disturbed you've even noticed that. But after a number of years I'll probably be able accept it and move on." Boldan had reached his men. Yaxi and Radav began circling towards the door, eyes still clinging to the gang.
"And what do you reckon'll happen to you when you get out there?" Boldan demanded, his tone still belligerent and disdainful.
"Well, I'm hoping we'll all be able to look back on this one day and laugh together," Yaxi said. "We are on holiday, Boldo, despite this weird belief of yours that we never can be, and we so want to get on with it."
"Then you should holiday somewhere else. And start packing tonight."
"Yeah? OK, but we've already done the coast, we've done the hills, we've done the two lakes… Nope, I think the Cities suits us fine."
"Then you don't have the first fucking clue who I am," Boldan spat.
They had reached the door. "No, we've met you before," Yaxi said. "We kind of meet you in every town and city we roll into. And hey, it's always a pleasure." She leant her stick against the wall. Radav tossed a knife back to her and turned the door handle. "And you know who we are, Boldo," Yaxi continued. "'Cause you took the trouble to read up on us which, I've got to say, is kind of touching. You know what we can do. We knocked the Four Stars Bank over and that was pretty much a rest day for us. I'm not even bothering putting that on the résumé, 'cept maybe in the 'Other Experiences' box. So you so need to ask yourself if you want to be dragging us off our holiday. 'Cause if you do we might be a bit… is 'narky' the word, hon?"
Radav opened the door a sliver, glanced out, turned back. "Aye. Narky." Again the knife was thrown between them and Yaxi was holding her stick once more.
"And when we get narky… well, it's kind of not good. Just think about the alternative though. All of us sat down together, laughing about this evening. You guys getting on with your busy little deeds, me and the husband just taking it easy. Sweet picture, isn't it?"
Then they were out of the room and the door was kicked shut. The knives vanished as soon as they re-entered the saloon of the Last Drop Inn. They proceeded cautiously, however, Radav walking backwards while Yaxi scanned the drinkers in the pub. Nobody stopped them. Everyone, in fact, tried to avoid looking at the little procession for more than a second. When Boldan commandeered the back room for an evening, it was best not to be interested in what came out.
Boldan himself didn't. Not while the Tansons were shuffling through the saloon; not while they were hurrying down the street. They stopped walking back-to-back and flitted their concentration around the shadows, aware that the gang could have found a different exit and a different angle.
"You know," Yaxi remarked after a short distance, "If this is gonna become a thing, I'll have to find a way to take my bow out with me. 'Cause one day they're kind of gonna find out I can't throw a knife for shit."
"You could just learn how to," Radav pointed out.
"Well, that's not really very likely, is it?" The tapping of her stick on the flagstones grew more rapid. She was now moving at the fastest pace she had short of the uncoordinated lurch which approximated a run. Radav looked behind him again and the street was still empty. Yaxi stared ahead, though she could now detect their tenement block – and the street was still empty. She tried to move quicker. "He knows where we live," she said unnecessarily.
"Zokou can look after herself."
"Yeah. Only there's a certain method she might choose to look after herself which could cause, you know, complications afterwards. Not that she'd choose to do that if there were any other-"
"Aye," Radav said heavily. It was the closest he ever came to telling his wife to shut up.
"You know," Yaxi ventured, "We could try the coast again."
"It stinks of fish an' the folks are all tossers an' the bloody cliffs keep falling down," Radav said with uncharacteristic venom. "Don't talk to me about the damn coast. Anyway, we need to get Zokou sorted. Reckon we could do that in Port Sea Shanty?"
"True."
"Besides which, you said it yourself. We meet Boldans everywhere. Want to start running from 'em all?"
"And if Zokou's had to kind of adopt that method of self-defence."
"Oh, aye. We'll leg it then. First coach out of here."
Zokou had not. She had been enjoying a quiet evening alone attempting to study. Therefore she was somewhat nonplussed when Yaxi and Radav barged in abruptly, barricading the door behind then with any spare items of furniture, unlocking the chest where their proper weapons were stored. Boldan hadn't attacked the flat. He didn't launch an attack the whole of that first tense night. And if he did, when he did, he would fail. The Tansons were all confident of that. They had survived far worst than Cepu Boldan before.
Nonetheless he had changed them. And in one way he had damaged them. They had to be vigilant now. They had to plan. They had to consider other people properly, not simply targets to be courted or deceived for amusement. Their idyllic first period, when they were indestructible players in a game nobody else understood, was over. They were at risk and they were just a little afraid. In short, the Tansons had properly arrived in Jakks Way.

Episode Sixteen

2007-10-21T01:47:00.000-07:00

Hanging around street corners on an evening. The activity which Stonnie Heppac's parents seemed to believe he prize above all others. He encouraged this illusion. "Just hanging around" was a euphemism he found useful when interrogated about his plans. It disguised some of the other things he did on an evening which his parents emphatically wouldn't approve of. Nor, on occasions, would the Guards.
In fact, just hanging around was often dull and dispiriting. Especially as the corner he usually chose was the intersection of Mankho's Passage and Ashel Street. This kept him firmly inside Jakks Way, that district which managed to be both beside the world's epicentre and next to the back end of nowhere. Doing nothing all evening except watching humdrum Jakks Way conduct its menial life, Stonnie would find, confirmed your irrelevance. It stated that you had no home which was truly yours. That you had no money either and no woman. That you were still too powerless to escape your birthplace, and too timid to even visit another district after sunset. All these accusations were in fact true for Stonnie. Which meant that many nights were indeed spent "just hanging around."
Enforcing the sense of scraping a near-empty barrel this evening was the fact that he was alone with Marksen. Marksen was the default, the one could always be relied on to always be around, having even less money and even less parental control. Stonnie liked the boy in a way; he was clever, he was exciting. He preferred, however, a few of his other friends to be around as well. They acted as a buffer for Marksen's excesses and sometimes kept them in check. Alone, Marksen's cunning could turn him into a smartarse. And the recklessness which made so exciting often gave him the look of a psycho. As he matured, Stonnie was increasingly sharing the opinion which the adult world held about Marksen – he was unsettling.
For example: earlier a particularly obese man had waddled past. Both boys, of course, immediately began the chant:
"Who ate all the spuds?
You fat bastard, you fat bastard
You ate all the spuds!"
Without looking round, the man gave an equally traditional response. He waggled his right hand up and down to imply that his tormentors were unduly attached to masturbation. That for Stonnie was the end of the episode. Both parties had continued their customs and satisfied their honour. Marksen, though, started scooping up stones and hurling them at the fat man. He even pursued him a little way down the street, still hurling vigorously. All the missiles missed their target in the gloomy air. The man pretended not to notice, perhaps genuinely did not. If he had turned and confronted his assailant, however, Stonnie was sure that Marksen would continue throwing. And if the man got close enough he would probably start attacking him. Stonnie recalled that when his friend was younger he was particularly fond of torturing cats and lizards. He sometimes thought Marksen desisted because he had grown more ambitious rather than less cruel. That he was still searching for more satisfying victims.
And he was trying company even when relaxing. Stonnie had made the mistake of imparting details of the Tanson dinner party. That had been three nights ago and Marksen still hadn't shut up about it.
"What she look like again?" he demanded.
Stonnie sighed. He was rhythmically kicking a wall with his heel, his usual habit when bored. "Which one?"
"Who you think, nob-end? Not the big one. Seen that fucking dyke lumbering around mesen. The lass. Zoko or whatever."
Stonnie had already given an extensive description of Zokou. He tried capturing in words her odd dichotomies of exoticness and conformity, of timidity and confidence. He always failed and knew the only parts his friend was interested in anyway.
"How good you say her tits were?" Marksen specified helpfully.
"They're OK. Can't complain."
"Big as Lalai's?" Lalai was always used as a marker in these conversations, the girl known to have the largest breasts in their school.
"Naw, but Lalai's a fucking barrel," Stonnie said harshly. "This Zokou's pretty slim. Thin girls always have smaller tits."
"Not the dead good ones. The best ones, they're like…" Marksen sketched in the air the outline of a woman who, Stonnie felt, would be a circus freak. "An' this Zokou's their ward, you say? What the fuck's a ward?"
"Dunno. Mum said it means they're looking after her though they're not her mum an' dad."
"Sounds like bullshit. Bet they use her as a sex toy," Marksen sniggered. "Both of 'em. No way they're shagging each other."
"How d'you reckon?" Stonnie demanded.
"Well, look at that big fucking ape. All them muscles an' stuff. Clearest fucking dyke I ever seen. She'd never be sharing a bed with a bloke."
"You're full of shit."
Marksen laughed. "She probably grabs that Zokou an' shoves her right up her fucking twat. Head first. Then pushes her in an' out." And with that he began to sing:
"Fat ugly dyke
Do I not like
Your ugly hairy body
You stick to lasses
Ones who need glasses
An' keep the fuck away from me."
He seemed about to continue but then abruptly stopped himself. Perhaps he had noticed Stonnie's habitual kicking of the wall increasing in speed and ferocity. Marksen slumped beside his friend again, giving him the occasional glance and giggling to himself.
The evening grew darker. A highly stacked delivery van clattered past. The boys watched it expectantly but the donkey was pulling it carefully and no produce bounced off the back. And they weren't going to risk raiding it just to get an armful of potatoes and swedes. In its wake, a lone youth appeared and turned down Ashel Street. He too was scrutinised closely. He was a stranger. Stonnie and Marksen exchanged looks, wondering whether to challenge him; just as they would be stopped from entering a rival district at this time of night. The youth was rather older and bulkier than they were, however. He also clearly had a short sword fastened to his belt. Even Marksen decided to let Jakks Way be violated by intruders on this occasion. An evening of just hanging around could contain a hundred such episodes. Encounters which promised excitement for just a second; before the wind shifted and evaporated it.
"Boldan's got his eyes on 'em, I heard," Marksen said eventually.
"Who?"
"Your fucking dinner mates. Ugly an' Uglier."
Stonnie pushed his anger down again. Thee was no point hitting Marksen. The boy always lost his fights. And always afterwards managed to find ways to contort his defeats into victories. "How come?"
"I dunno. Wants to know what they're playing at, I reckon. You could get in with Boldan here, you know. He's looking for anyone with info on 'em."
"Yeah? Well, I don't know shit."
"You had fucking dinner with 'em," Marksen exclaimed.
"Yeah, but they didn't say shit when I were there. Not stuff Boldan'd want to hear. Just a load of toss about Ellniss. Reckon that were all bullshit too."
Marksen often talked about 'getting in with' Boldan. It appeared to be his one ambition in life. He might eventually succeed too. Boldan's henchman occasionally joined the street corner loiterers if there was a decent crowd out. Seemingly just for the sake of it. But they always reminded Stonnie of the recruiting officers from the Forgar workshops who sometimes visited his school. Well, let them all try. He wouldn't say so out loud, not yet, but Boldan had even less chance of ensnaring him than the factory who had crippled his father. Stonnie thought that Marksen was a psychopath. He had absolutely no doubts about Cepu Boldan. He owned memories which ensured that.
"I reckon that-" Marksen began then broke off, peering down Mankho's Passage. "Hey," he called out. "Evening, lasses.
Jaricta and Nostell, both girls in their year at school, sauntered into view and stopped in front of them. Stonnie immediately fixed all his attention on Jaricta. All his thoughts and memories too. It was a sign of the flittering qualities of his nascent libido that Yaxi and Zokou were forgotten in a breath. Though possibly also an indication that he recognised the difference between the fantastic and the just about obtainable. He had been very aware of Jaricta for some time now. She was smart and clever, he thought, certainly by the standards of her peers. Her body was just the right side of plump and her breasts were emerging nicely. She had bad skin, legacy of a short but savage smallpox epidemic three years ago which had taken some of his friends. He couldn't see the little craters in the dark, however. And he hadn't been able to see them on the few occasions he had kissed her and felt her up. That was the extent of their relationship thus far, isolated entanglements facilitated by alcohol. He believed they both wanted to start an actual romance and wished at least one of them could find the nerve to begin one. It probably wouldn't happen tonight. Jaricta stared at the ground while he studied her. As soon as she glanced up, he turned away hurriedly. This occurred a lot.
He would also have to get her away from Nostell for once. Nostell always struck him as a female version of Marksen. Not as dangerous maybe, but just as smug and probably even nastier. She and Marksen also always assumed they were the superior halves of their partnerships, dominating the conversation and only addressing each other. "Hey," she answered. "You two here again?"
"Best place in the world."
"Yeah, whatever. What you up to?"
"Just hanging around. Looking for some kicks."
"Found any yet?"
"Maybe have now," Marksen leered. "Now you're here."
Nostell snorted. She did at least have the sense to treat Marksen's suggestive comments with suitable contempt. Stonnie looked up again and managed to hold Jaricta's gaze for a few seconds.
"All right, Jarry," he offered.
"All right, Stonnie," came the shy reply.
"'All right Jarry all right Stonnie,'" Marksen mimicked in a grotesque falsetto. Stonnie started kicking the wall again.
"You hear about Olbaran?" Nostell asked.
"Heard he got kicked out for twatting a teacher," Marksen said. "Old No-Dick weren't it?"
"Yeah. He did more than take a swing at him though. He went fucking psycho. Jarry saw it all. Just launched himself at him. Even fucking bit him."
"That No-Dick's a fucking wanker."
"Yeah, but biting him," Nostell insisted. "What sort of poof does that. He must be a right headcase."
"I dunno," Marksen shrugged. "Sometimes a bloke gets hungry. An' there's plenty of meat on No-Dick."
Nostell giggled. "You're a headcase yourself. Surprised they ha'n't chucked you out yet."
"If they knew half the stuff I'd done…"
Nostell rolled her eyes. "Yeah, big man. Whatever."
The conversation expired. Marksen seemed to want to do more bragging but couldn't find an excuse. Nostell wasn't inclined to give him an opening. Stonnie knew his friend had an eye on her but didn't believe girls of her cast ever went for boys their own age. "OK, we're off," she announced eventually. "Good luck finding them kicks."
"Bye, Stonnie."
"Bye, Jarry."They managed to exchange one more glance as she was walking away. She stared over her shoulder shyly, perhaps wistfully. And then she turned back, guided by Nostell's firm arm, and quickly vanished into the darkness. Stonnie continued gazing after her, ignoring Marksen's predictable parody of their farewell. Moments promising excitement for a second, he thought. Then the wind shifts.

Episode Fifteen

2007-10-14T03:23:00.000-07:00

Myran Smithson dropped five toad eye berries into the pan. Each reacted slightly curiously when they hit the boiling water, sizzling ferociously as if covered with scalding fat. They started behaving after a few seconds, however, and sunk to the bottom of the pan. As they slowly dissolved, they stained the water an unwholesome dark red and began emitting a faint acrid scent. Smithson stirred the brew gently, thinking while he did: somebody at some time discovered that this is a very good cure for constipation. Boiled red berries; blocked orifice. How on earth had the connection been made? Such questions often troubled him as he practised herblore, which relied a great deal on magic and ancient wisdom and therefore not a great deal on logic.
"Be about five minutes, Mrs Horstice," he declared. "Come back later if you want."
"I'll wait, if that's convenient, Mr Smithson."
Smithson shrugged and set up stools on the other side of the room, for the smell from the hearth was becoming quite strong. It was not just convenient, it had been expected. Calli Horstice was not merely seeking a cure for constipation. She was Showing Her Face. The Last Drop Inn was but one place where Calli was suddenly visible since being elected praetor. Smithson's the herbalist, Ramac the blacksmith, Golting the fruit and veg man; all the local traders previously ignored by a woman who preferred buying expensive goods from outside the neighbourhood were now given her patronage. Not everyone got her custom. But she carefully selected the businesses which were seen as integral to Jakks Way, who composed its character. Doubtless if she had any documents to forge she would call on Kalinka the Inker round the corner.
"Has there been any further news about your trading license?" she asked politely, shuffling uncomfortably on her stool. Smithson wondered if she personally was plagued with the constipation.
"No. The Gods still seem to have that inside their mills."
"Yes, I see. One does wonder sometimes if they are really grinding at all. I'm sorry I have been unable to help you further. My influence with Jalkin Council's Trade & Industry department is very limited, unfortunately…"
Smithson nodded. Calli Horstice's influence almost everywhere was very limited. He knew why and knew that it would mean she would probably never be more than a praetor. She was not brilliant, not well connected and not, save by Jakks Way standards, rich. She had nothing to sell, be it patronages, ideologies or oratories. He liked her, however. Her attitude to his trading license epitomised why. When she heard he still didn't have a licence, despite his palpable skills as a herbalist, her sole concern was to try and help him obtain one. She hadn't seemed to ask why he was quite happily trading without one, nor whether she should try to end this blatant flouting of the law. Such myopic humanitarianism was another reason why she would most likely not rise far.
"Don't worry about it," he said equably. "There is something you can tell me though. My payment, if you like."
Calli's eyebrows rose. "Mr Smithson, I believe I have already paid you in full for today's-"
"Not for the toad eye berries. Payment for not spending the next five minutes harassing you about your Councillor friend."
"I assure you, I'm quite willing to fully answer any questions about that affair."
"Not the ones I'd ask, you wouldn't," Smithson said, smiling faintly. Because she knew of his reputation, Calli hesitated and finally conceded,
"What do you wish to know instead?"
"Tell me about the law of paternal acknowledgement. I know of it but not the specifics."
Calli looked at him and broke into a snorting laugh. "What on… Why by Garrath do you want to know about that?"
"Let's call it a school project," Smithson said calmly.
"Oh, very well. Paternal acknowledgment… let me try to get this right… It says that if a man declares an infant to be his child, and I think the maximum age of the child is five years, if he makes the claim, the mother agrees and if there are no contrary claims for paternity… Then the infant is his child and he must fulfil all obligation. Most importantly, the claim cannot be rescinded later."
"That's all there is to it?" Smithson frowned. "Does he have to sign anything?"
"No, the claim can be an oral one providing there are two independent witnesses… And I understand your expression, Mr Smithson. Paternal acknowledgment is an extremely archaic law, older than Christoté itself. It is almost never used now. But it somehow found its way onto our statute books and has never been revoked."
"'Welcome to the brand new world / Just like the last one, so I'm told,'" Smithson quoted. "Does the midwife at the birth count as an independent witness?"
"I imagine she would, providing she is not related to any party. The priest also."
"I'm sorry?"
"A priest or priestess is sometimes asked to be present at difficult births. In case of…" Calli paused delicately.
"Of course. A midwife, a priestess. And a father pointing at a screaming infant shouting, 'Bigods! The feller's mine!' Words he can never take back. It sounds like a scene in a farce."
"I believe that it was used in one," Calli smiled. "A rather good piece by Myers Cass. Perhaps that's where your recollection comes from."
"I don't go to the theatre much. Real life is entertaining enough." And surreal enough, he thought. He had refused to pass Morran Ceppac's commission to anybody until he had checked it was at all feasible. This didn't seem at all likely. The pitiful last hope of an abandoned mother. At the same time there was always that small chance. Because real life, and especially real statute books, could contain almost any lunacy.
"And is the law in force across all Christoté?" he asked.
"I think, though I'm not entirely sure, that it was always an exclusively Dorlafan law. Not entirely surprisingly, it hasn't proved very popular."
""So it wouldn't apply to, say, a father from Elsey?" He relished the swift, sharp look which Calli gave him. Smithson was known to be from Elsey. She believes she's just found out something new about me, he thought. And let her carry on believing that.
"That rather depends," she said thoughtfully. "I would have to check, but I imagine that it's covered in the Confederacy Family Acts. A great many of these obscure local laws were."
"The… ah, one of those attempts to unify laws across Christoté, right? To make us look like a single proper country. Rather than seven separate countries stuck together with rather substandard glue."
"That is correct."
"How's that going, by the way?"
Calli gave her rueful smile again. "It is, as ever, a work in progress."
"So tell me how the Family Acts would work in the case of paternal acknowledgement," Smithson requested, hobbling across the room to give the pan of toad eyes another stir.
"As I said, the law can only be enacted in Dorlaf. But if it took place here then it would apply to any Christotan citizen – not simply, I mean, to Dorlafans. Furthermore, it would continue to have effect even if all concerned left Dorlaf again afterward. The man is the father of the child and that is that. It works on the same principle of a marriage being legally binding across the Confederacy wherever it occurs."
"And what happens," Smithson asked slowly, "If another Province, Elsey say, has their own little law covered by the Family Acts saying a dad can denounce a child whenever he fancies it?"
"Well, of course."
When she offered nothing else, Smithson looked at her quizzically. "No, I mean-"
"That is why," Calli said, "This country has a great many lawyers and some are very highly paid."
The toad eyes were almost ready. Smithson made himself focus on completing the potion which, for no good reason, required a pinch of sand to be added at the end. A little string of other customers came in after Calli left. He kept this other problem stored away until he had dealt with them all. Herbalism requires absolute concentration. Years of mental training had given Smithson an orderly mind filled with small compartments which he could open at will.
An hour latter he allowed himself a sit-down and time to examine the Morran Heppac commission again. "I know you know shady blokes who do this sort of stuff," she had claimed. She was right, though many weren't especially 'shady.' They were mostly former Guardsmen, who had left the force due to injury or old age or politics or, at worst, some small corruption scandal. A lifetime in the Christotan National Guards had trained them to fight and follow suspects and interrogate witnesses and do absolutely nothing which might earn them a proper wage. They now called themselves private detectives or freelancers. An objective observer would label them unemployed drunks who spent most of their energy bitching about how soft Guardsmen had become since their day.
Now Smithson had a commission for one of them. It involved Notrufans; unless Morran had another heavily pregnant and clearly desperate friend she was hiding away. There wasn't a great deal of time, if the size of Zesheyek's belly was any indication. A detective had already been involved and had, allegedly, done more hurt than help. The target was apparently a powerful aristocrat. There was a heavy cloak of absurdity covering the whole affair which could only grow thicker. And there was the likelihood that it would all be in vain and would leave the clients no better off. Which of Smithson's contacts were cynical enough to accept?
Well, that removed perhaps two names. He started working through the long list again, this time looking at whom he trusted and who might actually succeed. This removed possible candidates somewhat more effectively.

Episode Fourteen

2007-10-07T04:14:00.000-07:00

Stonnie Heppac was growing up. His mother noticed the true extent when the Tansons came round for dinner. He was simply mesmerised by Yaxi. By her black skin, by her muscular body, by what Morran had come to recognised as her powerful air of sexuality. The poor fourteen year old boy had never seen anything like her before. Certainly not in close quarters, not sat in his very own apartment. Certainly not giving hi the occasional wink. He looked close to fainting the first time she did, through either terror or lust or possibly both. The rest of the time he managed the composure of a slowly boiling haddock.
The only element which broke his obsession with Yaxi was Zokou. She was older than him, Morran estimated, but not by much. And despite her foreign appearance, she was his type. Another scrawny street kid. Morran had seen him hanging around with girls like her. He had possibly gone further with them; his mother, at present, didn't want to know. If Stonnie fixed Yaxi with an awestruck gaze, the looks which he spared Zokou were calculating. And Morran had placed the girl next to him at the table and the woman directly opposite. Happy early birthday son, she thought. Normally it was a struggle keeping Stonnie in place for ten minutes before he wanted to be out with his mates again. Tonight she foresaw a fight to get rid of him after the meal.
Zokou had affected Morran strongly for different reasons. Yaxi had asked her beforehand if they could bring another person. No details were supplied. Morran's sense of hospitality made her agree but she had reservations. She was expecting another Tanson. Or rather, another Radav, just without the good manners or restraint. Some foul-mouthed traveller wanting a free meal. Instead they had presented this strange girl. Announcing, for good measure, that she was living with them as their ward. A peculiar word which belonged to the aristocracy, not nouveau riche barbarians.
And the declaration shocked Morran. It showed her how far she still stood from being friends with Yaxi. Her notion of friendship, that is, where affection is built slowly and in conjunction with candour. At first she expected to be taken aside and given at least a truncated explanation about Zokou. Again, though, Yaxi gave no more details. She was amiable immediately with people she met and then used this as a wall. Any truths had to be tricked and teased out of her. Morran realised she was being treated as an absolute stranger would be and this hurt her a little.
Zokou didn't have the self-assurance of her guardians, if guardians they really were. She seemed to have inherited their ways, however. Treat an interrogation as a game. Never refuse to answer outright but always say something even more intriguing, which creates five more questions. Morran decided to play, at least for now. While serving out the substantial meal she asked the girl,
"You're their ward, then, love? So what does that involve?"
Zokou smiled and nodded across the table at the Tansons. "Doing what they say, mostly." Yaxi stuck her tongue out at her.
"So they've kind of taken over from your mum an' dad?" Morran persisted.
"Kind of, yeah."
"An' your real mum an' dad? Are they..?"
Zokou caught the implication after a moment. "Oh, no. Not as far as I know. They were still living back in Blacksheln."
"Where?"
"Port Blacksheln. Place I was born. You know, that big port in Ellniss."
"You're from across the water?" Stonnie squawked. He was not doing well. This was virtually the first thing he had said and really not uttered in an alluring tone. Zokou gave him a suitably haughty look.
"Yeah? What about it?"
"But Yaxi an' Radav here just came in an' took you over?" Morran asked. "Got made your, whatsit, legal guardians?"
"Yeah, I don't think we should look too closely into the legal aspects of it," Yaxi warned. "It's a bit, you know…"
Morran was still looking at Zokou. "Di'n't kidnap you, did they?"
For some reason the girl erupted into giggles. "Well…" she eventually managed.
"Hey, consent was asked and consent was granted, thank you," Yaxi said.
"Eventually," Radav observed.
"They got me out of Blacksheln," Zokou told Morran. Yaxi breathed,
"And let's all say a prayer of thanks to that."
"I like Blacksheln," Radav protested..
"So you keep saying, hon. And every time we visit this place you like so much, boy, do you whip us out of it again fast enough."
Finally everyone's plates were stacked high with food. Morran took her place at one end of the table, looked around slightly nervously and told her guests, "We normally say a prayer before dinner… Are you Church of Ella yoursens?"
"Narlat," Yaxi said.
"The Great God Garrath," Radav said. And Zokou replied,
"It's pretty complicated explaining what I am."
"Then we'll skip the prayer. The Goddess don't want us ramming our faith down other folks' throats. That's what the food's for."
They began to eat it. Morran was a very good hostess by Jakks Way standards. She stuck to the basics, the foods she knew well. Lamb, potatoes, peas, dumplings. When entertaining, the temptation is always to wander into strange lands looking for the items which aristocrats consume Food which you cannot afford and which the guests are uneasy eating because they know you cannot afford it. They are also unhappy because they can taste that you don't know how to cook it either. Morran was faithful to the wares she had prepared for years. Which she could blend with a sprinkling of salt, a pinch of parsley and rosemary to make into something subtly delicious.
She made too much of it, however. That tended to be her failing. Each portion was a huge, unstable tower on the plate. The Heppacs could afford this meal but Morran had wasted a whole week's food allowance on it. She tried to stop herself but anxiety had bit her at strategic times, pouncing when she was buying the lamb and putting the potatoes in the pot. More, it always cried, or they won't like you, they'll think you a miser. The result was a meal bluff and normal on the surface but whispering of inner insecurity. Which rather summed up Morran's attitude towards both the Tansons and entertaining in general.
Still, she told herself, she was trying. She had approached newcomers whom everyone else merely peered at from a distance and whispered about, and she was making a gesture. She was displaying acceptance and tolerance towards strangers, those qualities which are supposed to be a feature of the Triple Cities and so very rarely are. She was ensuring this very disparate gathering was only slightly awkward. And she was doing it alone – or at least, without the help of her own family. Stonnie was still in his lust-induced trance. Dryden was a mute, as he had been for the past few days; Morran vowed that soon she would find the energy to beat his latest woe out of him. Saska and Temes were talking but only to each other, in low murmurs and accompanied by much giggling. It was the only real bad habit which the girls possessed but was a trying one; especially now, as Morran suspected they were mainly laughing at Yaxi. Ignoring her daughters for the time being, she asked her guests,
"You travelled in Ellniss a lot then?"
"Yeah, a reasonable amount," Yaxi said airily. "'From mighty mountain to dusty desert' as they say, even when I ask them not to."
"Were that on work then?"
"A pinch of work, a pinch of sightseeing. You know, the usual."
"You see any dragons?" Stonnie blurted out. His eyes may be maturing, his mother noted, but his mouth was regressing. She remembered fondly the little boy who loved hearing tales about the dragons and centaurs of Ellniss, the magical continent.
"Well, just once. We saw one kind of gliding overhead, didn't we, hon?"
"Ha," Radav replied scornfully. "All they ever do."
"What do you mean?" Stonnie demanded.
Yaxi rolled her eyes. "And now you've gone and set him off. Part 157 of What Radav Tanson Hates About The World."
"Forget about dragons, lad," Radav told Stonnie. "Hopeless things. Can barely even fly, for one. Body's too heavy, wings too weak. Just have to glide the whole time. Can barely even turn themselves. All that stuff about them sleeping on a heap of gold's rubbish too. We know 'cause we've looked. Cave's just full of-"
"As there's tots and parents in the room, shall we just kind of call it dragon guano," Yaxi interrupted quickly.
"An' they don't attack folks. Things are scavengers mostly. No better than coyotes. An you know what they like to eat most? Cows. Wilderbeast. Damn gnus, for Garrath's sake. Don't talk to me about dragons."
"Don't they even breath fire then?" Stonnie quavered.
"Oh aye. That's a decent trick. Don't use it much though. Don't seem to have much control over it. Just rushes out at random. That's what kills the most folk actually. Dragon accidentally breaths on them. Folks get killed 'cause a dragon burps. Says it all. Wyverns, now, they're the real business."
"What are they?"
"A kind of cousin of the dragon," Yaxi said. "They can't breath fire and they're about a tenth of the size but, oh boy, you'd better believe they've got ten times the attitude. They mostly live in the mountains of northern Ellniss. And they make travelling through those parts, well, something of an experience."
"Come at you with everything," Radav nodded approvingly. "Teeth, talons, the works. Hide up high on a ledge, leap down on you as you're going past. Lost count of the number of times we've been riding down a quiet valley, suddenly, bam, one of them little sods is on me trying to take me skull off."
"Yes, hon. Though since that one caught you right on the top of the head you've not been able to count too high, have you?"
"Do you always travel together?" Morran asked after laughing uncertainly.
"She's kind of a recent addition," Yaxi replied, indicating Zokou. "Me and apeface here have been meandering the world together for over a decade."
"Seems like longer," Radav muttered.
"And when you've got to fight stuff," Morran probed carefully, "Wyverns an'… an' suchlike. Do you both…"
"When we've got to fight, which is so more often than we want to, we both, you know, do our share."
A short, stunned silence was broken by another sotto comment from Saska and another wave of laughter from her and her sister. Morran's more restrained reaction was, "That's pretty uncommon, a woman…"
"She still does all the pansy stuff," Radav said deadpan.
"What the loving husband means," Yaxi snapped, "Is that I pick off our attackers with my bow with truly chilling accuracy. And he mops up the remains with his you-know-what substitute sword and, believe me, that really isn't much work."
"Still a man's job. More risky. Having to get up close."
"Well, I'll have to agree. Otherwise you're going to start another count-the-scars contest, aren't you, and we so don't want to do that in mixed company. 'Cause I've managed to unleash a typhoon of giggles," she added, suddenly rounding on Saska and Temes, "Just by mentioning my bow and arrows. Kind of wondering what's so funny about that. And boy, I hope it's not what I'm thinking."
The girls froze for a second, then turned to their mother for help. Her blank expression said: serves you right. Unless she turns nasty, you're on your own. "I were just…" Saska managed eventually. "I just heard… You know what you hear… About, you know… The Charlen women-" She smacked her hand over her moth. More hysterical giggles, given additional power by fear, were almost overwhelming the girls again.
"Uh-huh." Yaxi said with a straight face. "I've heard a lot about the Charlen women and, you know, haven't found much to laugh at yet. Except Radav's expression, when he hears what they do to their men."
"Just…" Saska spluttered. "Their archers… How they cut off one of their tits to-" She surrendered to the tidal wave of laughter. Yaxi waited until it had abated a little before remarking,
"You know, I guess that's a bit better than the obvious one about bows and arrows. But it must be said, a room containing a teenage boy and two men, one of who I know is a bit of a perv." She glared at Radav to make herself clear. Morran, though, noticed that Dryden suddenly jumped. "And who makes the leap straight to the boobies?" Yaxi continued. "The gals. Five generations of women's freedom fighters are screaming from their funeral urns, that's all I'm saying." She took another mouthful of potatoes and smirked at Saska and Temes.
"You ain't answered the question," Radav pointed out.
"No, that's true. Well, you remember what that Charlen gal said don't you, hon? Most of the things you hear about Charlae is just stuff other people invented. The rest is just, you know, stuff they made up themselves. Lady archers cutting off a breast… Well, we'll ignore the implied correlation between military effectiveness and defeminisation, though that so, so speaks volumes. I guess there might be a practical point. When you're firing an arrow you don't want anything, you know, bulging out and getting in the way of the bowstring. But take a look at my chest and tell me honestly if there's anything there big enough to get in the way of anything. And when I said stare at my chest, I was kind of only talking to the women present. Guys, avert your eyes."
Radav, the only one not staring dumbstruck at at least one part of Yaxi, asked mildly, "What, even me?"
"Well, take an ogle if you really want, hon. Though if you still need to look after all these years, there's something seriously wrong with either your vision or your memory."
"Wouldn't be surprised. Blow to the head from a wyvern, remember?"
Saska and Temes vanished as soon as the meal was over. Their interest in the guests was clearly confined to mocking them. Now Yaxi had made this impossible to their faces, the girls preferred to retire to their room to continue. Morran supposed it possible they might actually do their homework too at some point. She tried encouraging Stonnie to do likewise. When finally prised from the table, though, he announced that he had to go out.
"My warehouse needs me," he claimed. "They need someone to do a few hours on the evening shift."
"Oh ay," Morran said as she noisily cleared the table. "Then bake me a cake while you're there 'cause I were only born yesterday."
"It's true!"
"Any chance of you doing your school work any time?"
"I done it all."
"Yeah, right."
Stonnie jumped up somewhat melodramatically. "Don't believe me then. You never do. Anyway," he added, pointing at the Tansons, "I bet they never bothered with schoolwork."
"Yeah, not to sort of take sides in a domestic," Yaxi said, "But if you start modelling yourself on us, boy, you've got problems."
"But you've had great lives."
"What were we talking about earlier, hon?" Yaxi asked her husband. "Sleeping in ditches, being attacked by wyverns and getting lost in the Great Ellniss Desert. They weren't a whole load of laughs at the time, were they?"
"I weren't chuckling much," Radav confirmed.
"Hey!" Zokou exclaimed. "You kept telling me we weren't lost in that desert."
"Not with you, Zok," Yaxi said. "But the first time, on our own… Boy, we were going round and round like a spinning top. And as we were we kept saying, oh how I wish I paid attention to geography at school."
"Aye," Radav nodded. "That an' 'water, water!'"
Morran retreated to do the washing up. She tended to store a water tub in a corner niche so that she could retreat. It was a useful trick when she felt the need for a temporary withdrawal. Extract herself from the room under the cover of a necessary task until her strength could be mustered again. When she turned back ground, the guests were huddled on the flimsy, uncomfortable sofa. Dryden was sat in his favourite armchair, still silent, still contributing nothing. Stonnie had vanished, almost certainly to loiter on street corners with his friends once more. If his father had extracted any promises of return times before he left, Morran hadn't heard him. She eyed Dryden sourly as she lowered herself into her own favourite chair, drying her hands on her apron. He didn't need any excuses to retreat, she though. He just goes, and you can't reach him again until it pleases him.
"Sorry about Stonnie," she told the Tansons, having rehearsed this opener in her head for the past few minutes. "He shouldn't have just assumed you dropped out of school early. Most folks around here do, that's all."
"Well, he was kind of part true," Yaxi smiled. "Zokou here's still doing her studies."
"Whether I want to or not," the girl murmured.
"And Radav's school put up with him till he was seventeen, didn't they?"
"They were desperate."
"And how. But for me, puberty and schooling didn't, you know, coincide."
"Right." Morran paused, then asked, "That because of you getting taken from your home?"
"No, that came a bit of a while later. It was 'cause of the much cheerier factor of horrible, horrible poverty. As in, nobody in my family could kind of afford to eat. So I dropped out and got a job as soon as the law let me or, frankly, somewhat earlier. Then there were a few years spent in, 'cause this was East Zabrial and 'cause clichés kind of are true sometimes, a fish gutting factory. Believe me, getting kidnapped was almost a relief at first."
Morran blinked. Yaxi had already hinted at that, of course. But hearing the word first spoken was still a shock. Trying to make light of it, she asked Radav, "Weren't by you, were it?"
Yaxi laughed. "See, hon, you've clearly built a reputation as a guy who prowls the ports nabbing young girls. I hope you can live with that."
"Better than her thinking me a pansy," Radav said.
"There's probably a way to combine the two. Radav didn't grab me," she told Morran. "He was sort of the guy who saved me, actually."
"From who?"
Yaxi was silent for a moment. Morran was about to apologise for the question when she began, "Well, you know how the guys in government sometimes promise how they're gonna kick the asses of the pirates who prey on the ports? The ones who launch the lightning raids to burn down houses or grab helpless people. No? You hear the speeches more on the coast, I guess, and less than you used to. Could be that the government finally stopped talking and finally, you know, kicked some ass. Anyway, the guys who got me were part of the reason why those speeches were made."
It took Morran a minute to interpret this and another to truly believe it. "You were kidnapped by pirates?" she whispered. "In East Zabrial?"
"Yeah, it never happened too often there," Yaxi said easily. "They mainly stuck to the towns in Ellniss where the protection's often, you know, non-existent. Probably still do, actually. When they hit the Christotan coast it was usually the teensy-weensy isolated fishing villages. But sometimes they got cocky and had a go at East Zab. And I've got to say, my mom knew they did and that's why she told me to never go to the docks at night and sure never go alone. And did I listen? Did I, as they say round here, heckers like."
Morran hesitated again. But she felt the other side of Yaxi turning disclosure into a game. Anything could be asked. If the Zabric woman didn't want to answer she would simply joke it aside. She wouldn't, Morran believed, ever get offended or upset. "So they just… grabbed you? An' took you away?"
"Yup."
"You were a slave?"
"Well, I was never actually sold on the slave markets. Which do, by the way, so still exist, whatever we've been told. Not sure why. I guess my guys just wanted to keep me."
"What did they do with you?" Morran asked, unable to stop herself.
"Well, now, picture the situation," Yaxi replied in a quieter voice. "We've got a bunch of guys out at sea for months on end. Guys who, shall we say, are kind of not over-burdened in the morals ledger. And one of their possessions is a helpless fifteen year old girl. What do you think they, you know, used her for?"
Zokou stood up abruptly. They had forgotten she was there; a girl only a teenager herself and still learning the Tansons' style. "I'm off home," she said awkwardly. "I mean, I'm really beat. Thanks for the meal it was-"
"Hey, it's OK, Zok," Yaxi said, turning instantly. "Sorry. We're done talking about this now. We're done, right?" she asked Morran.
"Sure. Definite. Sorry," Morran also told Zokou. "Nosy cow here. You'll get used to it."
Zokou managed a shy smile and sat down again slowly. "No, it's… I've heard this before, that's all, and it's… At least hear the happy ending."
"Happy ending?"
"That'll be me," Radav said.
"Oh yeah," Yaxi smiled. "Him. Well, these pirates, yeah? Raiding and pillaging with impunity, if that's the word I mean. So they're the biggest psychos on the seas, right? Nope. There were headbangers even more whacked out who actually preyed on the pirates. And I don't mean government ships, I mean sort of freelancers. They figured, these pirates may be tooled up to the eyeballs but at least no-one'll miss them. Which I guess makes sense if your mom, you know, dropped you on your head when you were a baby. That's what the Eastern Ocean's like and when guys call it the Civilised Sea, I laugh so, so hard. Anyway, when my hero here was about twenty he couldn't find anything better to do then join a boat of these headbangers. And one day they hit my pirates. I guess they knew what they were doing 'cause they took them apart pretty quickly though, it should be said, not into as many parts as I'd have liked. Anyway, that's how I got released."
"Bloody hell," Morran whispered, and asked Radav, "You find many captives on these pirate ships?"
"Aye, a fair few. We'd take 'em home if we could, otherwise to the nearest port. We kept all the treasure, mind."
"Well, duh," Yaxi rolled her eyes. "That was kind of the point of the whole exercise, wasn't it?"
"But were you looking for Yaxi this time?"
"We were strangers till he, you know, dragged me out of the hold. That's how we met." They exchanged a rare look of genuine love and Radav said,
"That's how we saved each other."
Morran frowned at him. "She saved you an' all."
"Aye. Course. Till I met her I were nowt but a headbanger who hit bloody pirate ships for fun. She gave me purpose."
True or not? Morran wondered. If they were fantasists, though, they were the most skilful ones she had ever met. They told their tales in precisely the same way most people relate accounts of their lives. In a self-mocking, self-depreciating way which always downplayed the heroic. They hadn't fought dragons. They had seen a dragon, that was all, and didn't think much of it. They had only fought the stunted cousin of a dragon. And Morran noted that they hadn't even claimed to have actually killed a wyvern. They had just been attacked by them. As the evening progressed they continued to offer scraps of stories in the same manner. Only after prompting and always in accounts laced by pragmatism and in-jokes.
Morran wanted to believe them. And not simply because the alternative was that she was sharing a building with three advanced schizophrenics. It would be nice if all fairy tales, which tended to depict heroes as either braggarts or saints, could be wrong. Heroes should be ordinary people who just had a little more courage and a lot more sense than most. Who, moreover, didn't believe in their own surfeit of bravery but were certain about their lack of sense. Who could be charming and modest and were secretive simply because this was more fun than boasting. Ordinary people with the inner strength to survive ordeals as horrific as Yaxi's experience with the pirates – the one part which Morran hoped wasn't true.
Really, though, she would have wanted to believe them however they behaved. Even if they were breathing clichés, she would wish them to be true heroes. For the same reason why Stonnie couldn't quite relinquish his childhood fascination with dragons. Probably why, too, Morran was adopting Zesheyek's predicament with such enthusiasm. There had to be more to life. More to the world than the grey, claustrophobic confines of Jakks Way. She knew that there was and yet couldn't find the courage herself to seek it out. So she wanted to trust these emissaries who had come to her and spoke of lands where everything was both brighter and darker.
Dryden barely said anything for the rest of the evening. Morran wasn't sure if he slept either, after their guests had left and they went to bed. As she drifted into slumber herself she sensed him lying rigid beside her, still staring into space. She knew she ought to at least try and find out what was wrong. That too would belong to the greyness, however. Some imagined slight or rumour of redundancies. At worst, the onset of one of his trivial little bursts of depression. Nothing concerning her husband ever seemed important. So she fell to sleep thinking of the Tansons and dreamed about fighting dragons.

Episode Thirteen

2007-09-23T06:59:00.000-07:00

When Dryden Heppac stole out to meet Lady Sosia Kemble, he always told his wife the same thing. He said he was visiting his friend Sebsen. It was a useful story. Sebsen was the only person to whom Dryden had confided his adultery. He was, and had almost always been, the only man Dryden trusted entirely. He would always supply an alibi if given enough notice. The story was also a credible one. Morran wouldn't believe her husband if he said he was going out to do voluntary work or night school classes or anything else of any redeemable value. She did believe that he was going to waste another few hours drinking bootleg rum, reminiscing about lost childhoods and bemoaning his fate. There were, after all, many more occasions when Dryden did genuinely call on Sebsen and do all of the above. He enjoyed these afternoons so much that the sometimes wondered why he bothered with Lady Sosia at all. Nonetheless, whenever she agreed to meet him he reduced his best friend to a mask again.
The story was useful for another reason. Morran was sharp with him before he left and even sharper when he returned. (He made sure he was always half-drunk and reeking of rum.) She wondered frequently why he couldn't manage a full day's work yet always found the energy to lift a bottle repeatedly to his lips. She lambasted idle husbands who drank through the family coffers. She raised complaints on a great many related themes. Dryden felt in some vague way that he deserved his liaisons with Lady Sosia. They were his compensation for having been cheated by life on many occasions. On a baser level, they were a way for him to treat somebody as badly as the gods had treated him. Yet he also believed, far more vividly and far more frequently, that he was doing wrong. And so he should be punished. Morran was attacking him for the wrong reason, and much more mildly than she would if she knew the truth. Nonetheless, she was given a moral superiority which she deserved.
Dryden didn't know what excuse Lady Sosia gave her husband. Or even if she bothered giving one at all. She boasted that they enjoyed an 'open relationship', whatever that mean, and had even once hinted that she told him about her lover. Dryden didn't know if this was true. He didn't really know anything which occurred before or after they met. He always contacted her to arrange the time and place but Sosia claimed the address he wrote to was owned by an 'intermediate.' That may have been the truth; or it may have been a device to prevent him ever visiting her home. He didn't know how she got to their meetings. He would surely have heard the gossip if an aristocrat's carriage was seen regularly in Jakks Way, where the smartest vehicle was usually a dray cart. Yet it was hard to imagine her walking any distance through the streets. She always arrived before and left after him mainly, he suspected, to keep him in ignorance. He didn't know a great many things about her, including why she kept meeting him.
She did, however. She had even submitted to another meeting in Kiely Alley, despite having declared the flat at that address unsatisfactory. Perhaps she thought he had overcome his qualms and agreed to pleasure her on the filthy cobbles. She followed him inside the tenement block, however, after they had exchanged their usual unaffectionate gestures. He sensed her irritation growing as he led her up the stairs. It built as the route became familiar, as it became increasingly obvious that he was taking her back to the same flat. Curiosity held her in check at first. Perhaps too a fascination that he had finally found the courage to disobey her.
With Sosia, though, petulance always triumphed eventually. When they reached the third floor landing, she stopped dead and issued a crisp,
"Heppac!"
Dryden did not turn round immediately. The landing had always fascinated him. Somebody in the past had actually tried to gentrify it, decorating the walls with murals of roses and lilies. As if it were a respectable building, as if the paintings would be lovingly retouched when they started to fade. The artwork which did come later also entertained Dryden. The words were fairly predictable but, as if to compensate, the variety of spellings were immense. One four letter noun was often attempted with only three letters, the final 'k' omitted. Presumably, like Dryden's surname, it would be pronounced 'fuch.' When Sosia was waiting for him in the flat he would always spend some time staring at the walls of the landing, another part of his mind debating furiously whether he should really enter.
"Heppac," she snapped, "Where are we going? Because I believe I made my feelings quite clear. That flat is not satisfactory." He turned but did not reply. "You were to find a place which met my needs," she continued. "Your message indicated that you had succeeded. Now I find that – and what are you smirking at, Heppac?"
"Have another look at it." He paused, then when she was about to begin another tirade added, "I've made a few improvements."
She opened her mouth but closed it again. A confused frown landed on her face. Then she nodded reluctantly. She was unbalanced. Dryden also felt dizzy as he led her to the flat, but his vertigo came from triumph. Just for a moment he had conquered her. And she was right: the thought of conquering an aristocrat was glorious. He felt himself growing stiff. And just wait until he had shown her those improvements…
They had worked remarkably quickly. Only a fortnight had passed since he gave the two beggars access to the flat. He made sure they were the right type of beggars. Not men made destitute by the fickleness of the gods and the cruelty of economics, men determined to scramble back to redemption. But ones who had drunk themselves into the gutter, who would drink whatever they could while lying there and drink away any chance of salvation. Dryden wasn't looking to give anyone a hand up. He was essentially hiring internal decorators. Still, he hadn't expected them to make quite so many changes in only a fortnight.
The stench of urine, both stale and fresh, struck him as soon as he opened the door. Most came from the rudimentary bed. Even from the doorway, Dryden could see that the tattered mattress was dark with moister. There were, however, also damp patches on the walls, a fresh pool slithering across the floor. The drunks seemed to have relieved themselves wherever they pleased. The chamberpot lay halfway across the room, upturned and empty. Presumably the sight of such a restrictive device had offended their sensibilities. Faeces was less evident in the stench but lingered there as a subtle undercurrent. As he surveyed the rest of the room. Dryden noticed a large lump in one corner and a few brown crumbs scattered around haphazardly. Then there was the vomit. It did not literally cover the ground. A few patches of relatively virgin boards still existed. There were, however, swamps of it almost everywhere, some growing old and crusty, some still possessing the slick gleam of the freshly laid. The engine of this destruction was also in evidence. Overturned flagons, scattered bottles. And a great deal of broken glass, giving the disgusting bog the tang of danger.
The drunks had done splendid work. For a moment Dryden thought they had succeeded too well. Sosia took a step back when he opened the door, pummelled by the physical force of the stench. She tiptoed forward again but her face was creased with disgust. She started shaking. For a second she swayed, as if she were going to faint. This is what the absolute bottom looks like, Dryden thought grimly. He believed she had only imagined it before.
Then whatever urge had perverted her upbringing, her basic human instincts, took over. Sosia took one long stride into the room and another. She looked around, carefully studying the destruction. To Dryden's horror she breathed in deeply, determined to experience every nuance of the bouquet. Finally she whirled round with an expression of pure delight and burst out laughing.
"Oh, Heppac!" she exclaimed. "You have done me proud."
She had always understood him. That was the rope which kept him by her heels. His own human instinct had been to rush out of the room and slam the door shut. His body was pumping bile into his throat, threatening to add another lake of vomit to the floor. When she started to laugh, however, when she gave her approval and he knew what that meant, his clockwork suddenly turned another direction. Instantly he grew stiff again.
He was on her tether… but he could pretend otherwise when he was inside her. She became his creature. And he was pushing this beast further and further downwards. This haughty, high-born, beautiful woman; he was dragging her after him as he walked through the sewer pit. As he thrust in and out viciously, he imagined the new depths he would take her to. She would become his chattel, his whore, to be sold to whatever dregs wanted her. And she squealed her delight, like the filthy animal she had become.
They avoided the urine-soaked mattress. When she lay face-down on the floor, she chose a rare patch which was untouched by any moisture. Her head was very close to a patch of vomit, however. She would have been breathing it straight into her lungs. It made her pant more heavily and squeal even louder. Perhaps next time she would be instructing him to push her across the floor though all the human emissions and they wouldn't mind when broken glass lacerated her skin. Next time, too, the flat would be overlaid with another week's filth. It would get ever more satanic and they would descend with it.
And the agents of the degradation? Dryden had ordered them out for the afternoon. He had been slightly surprised that they obeyed. Perhaps they wouldn't next week. Perhaps he wouldn't even give the instruction. That would really test this arrogant bitch wouldn't it? She had talked of screwing one beggar. How about two taking her at once while she writhed in their excrement? With Dryden watching, ordering them to treat her worst and worst… And this thought brought him to a climax impressive for a man of his age.
The two beggars didn't return that afternoon. There was another presence in the flat though. It departed as soon as the act was over, as Dryden was beginning his freefall into shame and Sosia was resuming her command over him. However, it remembered what it had seen.
Menoney was visiting Kiely Avenue to try and recover a loan. Debt collecting was far from his favourite task but his boss, Cepu Boldan, often insisted. "You tell them how much they owe," Boldan would say. "Then some of my head cases'll come round to show why they should pay it." This was, however, just Boldan trying to be humorous. He had a layered approach to reluctant debtors. First Menoney went with his limited repertoire of threats and menaces. If necessary, one of the accurately described 'head cases' followed. Occasionally Boldan would call round in person. That usually mean that the alternative to full and instant payment would be fatal.
Menoney disliked debt collecting because he believed himself too intelligent for it. He was also depressed by the depths of stupidity he encountered. If somebody had borrowed a sizeable amount of money from Cepu Boldan, couldn't they then afford anything better than a Kiely Alley dosshouse? And why didn't they realise that their most important task each month was repaying Cepu Boldan? A surprising number failed to, however, including Menoney's latest client. "Tell that fucker I've not got his money an' he can break me legs if he wants," was the response. Even when Menoney promised to relay the message verbatim and mentioned that the offer would be accepted, the man was intransigent. Oh, he was a drunk and a gambler, of course. But even dogs responded when they sensed danger approaching, even insects had instincts of self-preservation. It was disconsoling to see that some people had managed to evolve backwards. And it caused a lot of extra work.
The noises, seeping around a sloppily closed door, cut through Menoney's thoughts as he walked down the landing. He stopped. His schedule was tight but he believed he deserved a few minutes of free entertainment. He pushed the door open a little further and sidled his head round. The stench, almost as vivid as the squeals, hit him. It almost knocked him backwards. Couple of dossers going at it, he decided as he noticed the debris surrounding the bare, writhing bodies. Not that he disapproved but it never made an inspiring sight.
About to withdraw, he noticed the woman's face and checked. She was actually quite attractive, even with her eyes screwed shut and her teeth clenched. A little old but then Menoney preferred mature women. He studied her plump limbs and full, squashed breasts in admiration. He also appreciated the vigour which the couple were bringing to their act. Most beggars just seemed to get it done in as cursory and half-hearted a manner as possible. As if they really had better ways to spend their time and energy. Menoney gave the man straddling over his prey a short glance. At least, it was intended to be that. The briefest look to complete the picture before he focussed on the woman again. But it hooked something in his memory. Menoney stared more carefully, trying to reconcile the flushed, triumphant face with the meek and battered one he usually saw. He studied the image until his disbelief was finally conquered and he was sure that it was-
"Who?" Cepu Boldan snapped without looking up. He was sat in his plush office, studying a complex legal document with poorly concealed desperation.
"Dryden Heppac," Menoney repeated. "Lives on Jakks Way in one of Delpess' flats. Son's Stonnie Heppac. One of the lads we've got our eyes on."
"Yeah, I know him. What about him?"
"Well, I got a good look at the tart he was rodgering an' it sure as fuck weren't his wife."
"Ah, for fuck's sake." Boldan sat back violently and thrust the papers at Menoney. "Can you make head or tail of this crap? It's all fucking Elvish to me."
Menoney took them obediently. "What is it?"
"Property deed. Some old tosser in Ashel Street offered it up. Mr Delpess said, take it, something like that's way more valuable than gold. Except now I can't figure out what the fuck we've really got."
"Sorry, boss. I don't know the legal stuff. Get Delpess to have a look at it."
Boldan snatched the documents back. "Mr Delpess owns half the neighbourhood as it is," he said sourly. "I don't think I want him managing the other half."
Menoney noted with interest this rare show of rivalry between his boss and the landlord. "Why did the bloke give you the deeds anyway?"
"Why do you think? He couldn't make the payments. Only thing he had left to give us. Useless tosser. Which reminds me. How did you get on with your mark?"
"Yeah, we're gonna have to break his legs."
"For fuck's sake," Boldan snarled. "Is it worth chucking him out of the window?"
"Doubt it. No-one'd notice."
"Right. Fine. Have a word with one of the lads. I'll tell you this though. Next fucker worth anything who pisses us about is really gonna get it. This is happening way too often."
He bent over the property deeds again. That should have been the cue for Menoney to exit. He vacillated, however, debated with himself and finally said, " Boss, this business with Dryden Heppac-"
Boldan threw the papers across the desk. "What fucking business?" he snapped. "Why are you still banging on about that? What do I care what that old cripple does?"
"You don't think it's-"
"So he's shagging around? Good luck to him? If I were married to that fat old cow what's-her-face, I’d be doing the same."
"The other day," Menoney said patiently, "You told us to look out for blokes in the legit community we could influence. A nice bit of bribery, you said, or a nice bit of blackmail. This'd leave Heppac open to influence, don't you reckon?"
"Blokes with a bit of pull," Boldan cried. "Blokes with power. Not some clapped out old – well, whatever the fuck he used to do."
"His wife's getting friendly with those Tansons, I hear. Could get us some info on them."
"We've got Mr Delpess to give us info on the Tansons. He owns their pissing flat."
"Aye, an' what's he given us so far?" Sensing Boldan's temper about to snap completely, Menoney added quickly, "It were just a thought, boss."
"Fine. Great. Keep it up. Go have more thoughts. Go blackmail the old cripple. Go do whatever the fuck you want, just get out. I need to look at these damn deeds."
Menoney was already backing out of the room. His boss often struggled to think, at least in any patterns outside the old grooves. He tried, however. And through sheer persistence he generally succeeded eventually. That alone was what distinguished him from the role carved on his soul: a straightforward street thug. He remained one, but kept attempting not to be and often managed it. And that was gradually lifting his gang to pre-eminence amongst all the other street thugs in the locality. Plus he has me, Menoney told himself smugly.
Once Boldan stopped trying to understand legal documents and turn to what was possible, he would realise the value of Dryden Heppac. He would trudge to the point Menoney had reached instantly, guided by the markers set by his treasurer. Dryden the father of Stonnie Heppac. Dryden the neighbour of the Tansons. Two sets of people which the gang were hoping to influence and, ideally, recruit. The processes might go smoothly. However, at some point they might need a lever. Boldan would ask for one and Menoney wanted to have it already prepared and oiled. Anticipating a master's wishes: always easier if you have helped create them.
Menoney first asked a henchman to break the legs of the reluctant debtor in Kiely Alley. His next call was a little more delicate and a lot more rewarding.

Episode Twelve

2007-09-22T05:26:00.000-07:00

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."

Episode Eleven

2007-09-10T09:27:00.000-07:00

"You know," Yaxi began. She then paused to take a mouthful of rice and beans. Her status in the improvised family known as the Tansons was such that the other two were prepared to wait and see what she believed they knew. "You know," she began again after swallowing, "I thought we'd pretty much agreed on this."
Zokou, disconsolately pushing her own dinner around her bowl, mumbled, "Yeah, but-"
"Before we came to the Cities we decided – well, not actually what to do. 'Cause something that ambitious would be laughable. But what we weren't going to do and this kind of came top of the list. You, missy, weren't going to go out alone and get spotted till we'd got you sorted out. That was, like, pretty unambiguous wasn't it? I understood it, didn't you, hon?"
The last remark was addressed to Radav. From his nominal place at the head of the family table he was observing the scene in a detached manner. He nodded. "Aye. Not much else, but I got that one."
"And one semi-millisecond after we go out and leave you alone, what happens? Whoosh. Heels lost in a cloud of dust, out you speed-"
"But no-one did see me," Zokou interrupted. "I checked no-one was about."
"You kind of sure bout that? 'Cause they say each street's got a thousand eyes and, boy, you'd better believe this one's got a thousand and one mouths."
"OK, they could've seen me coming out of the building. Not out of this flat though. I checked the corridor was empty this time. They wouldn't connect me to you and I don't see…" Zokou trailed away. Just say you're sorry, an inner voice was telling her, and move on. Neither Yaxi nor Radav would hold a grudge. They weren't even angry with her now. They were just mimicking the forms. In all the months since they had careered into her life and adopted a stance sometimes as her bodyguards, sometimes her tutors and sometimes her foster parents, she had never witnessed that emotion. She had watched them fighting for their lives, and her life. She had seen them cut creatures in half with one swing of a sword and slay monsters with a single, precisely aimed arrow through an eye and starving and wounded, close to desperation and close to death. But never angry. Certainly not with her, and for such a trivial cause as her disobeying an instruction. Which wasn't the only reason why she loved them so much but remained a compelling one. So she said, "Sorry." And when Yaxi then continued the argument, Zokou knew that was simply because she was enjoying it.
"Why did you have to sneak out and see the marvels of the Cities anyway? We showed you the marvels of the Cities when we got here. You know, that's them. Like 'em or lump 'em."
"You whisked me round at top speed in the carriage. Half the time you had a blanket over my head."
We cut eyeholes in it, didn't we? And drew a little smiley face on it."
"Aye, we never told you 'bout that last bit," Radav said.
"Why's it so important I stay hidden anyway?" Zokou demanded.
Yaxi sighed. "Don’t' wind me up while I'm eating, Zok. If I get pissed while I'm swallowing something, I tend to choke on it. And that's so not a sight you want to see while you're eating."
"OK, I know about keeping it secret about what… what I can do. But why can't anyone know I'm living with you?"
"Well, there's a few reasons," Yaxi said. "But the main one, which, you know, I have explained before is that as a couple, me and fatso here fit. Guys take one look at us and think, OK, got 'em sorted out. We're, well, we're thugs. We're the dudes who hang round the taverns and join the mercenary gangs and sometimes get hired to do the tasks you so wish governments wouldn't keep doing. even us renting a swish pad like this, people can sort of understand that. They'll be guessing we've just done a big job, probably the sort where the wages are kind of locked inside a bank vault. So we fit. But you so, so don't, sweetie. They take one gawp at you and they'll start thinking, what the hell's going on? And then they might, you know, start asking questions."
"I can do all that stuff too," Zokou said a little sullenly. "You've been showing me how."
"Yeah, we all know that but no-one else does and they wouldn’t' guess it if they tried for a year. I mean, look at you."
Look at her. Zokou's features were pretty and slightly unusual. She had long, fine hair, very high cheekbones and eyes which were very round in the middle and tapered at the outer edges. She had the same weather-beaten cast to her skin and hard-wearing comfort to her drab clothes as Yaxi and Radav. She was built far smaller, however, having clearly spent most of her sixteen years scrabbling for food. Nor did she seem a natural member of a street gang or even a brothel. She was somehow too asexual for the latter and too timid, even inside the flat, for the former. She looked like a young apprentice to a seamstress; that is, a genuine seamstress.
"Well, if you look so tough and I look so puny, you could say you've kidnapped me," she ventured.
"That one'd kind of get a hole punched in it if they saw you, you know, coming and going as you pleased," Yaxi countered. "I don't want to be a hard-on about this but we've got to manage appearances here. And until we figure out what the hell to do about yours, you'll sort of have to keep yourself under wraps for a while. Otherwise this thing we laughably call 'a plan' might get one of its legs knocked out and just tumbling right down-"
"You ever gonna eat that or just wave it around?" Radav interrupted. He indicated Yaxi's food, piled onto her spoon but neglected for some time now.
"Excuse me. In the middle of an oratory here."
"You're never owt else. Amount you talk during dinner, it's no wonder you never get fat. Burn off more calories than you swallow."
In reply, Yaxi brought her spoon back and catapulted the rice at Radav's face with pleasing accuracy. "Don't taunt an archer, hon. Everything's a potential missile to us."
Zokou smiled, sitting back and letting the memories of the day pour through her. She was, she realised, still slightly dazed. She wasn't a country girl seeing a city for the first time. She had been born in Port Blacksheln, a vast sprawl which clung to a lot of the coast of another continent like a malignant tumour. But Port Blacksheln was far different to the Triple Cities. It had no industry, no parks, no avenues, no spectacles. It had no real law and barely a government, simply one man whose gang was slightly bigger than anyone else's. The only thin astounding about Port Blacksheln was its squalor and its capacity for violence.
The Cities were more than a hamlet writ large, however. They ran the greatest and richest country in the world. And they were not shy about advertising this fact. Still unsure of herself, unwilling to explore strange byways, Zokou had mostly revisited sites she had already seen. All were worth another viewing. Huwdone House, base of the federal government, a vast and unearthly cube of white marble and black windows. Parliament Square which stood in front of it, with its sombre mansions and dizzying chequerboard paving stones. Vellers Square close by, where two great trading routes collided in a deafening band which splashed every colour, most of them lurid, across the buildings. The Lewis Avenue sector in the north-west, hosting the shrill, brash townhouses of the wealthiest people on earth. The astonishing markets of the Milliks Triangle sector, where every item ever made, hunted, fished or grown could seemingly be purchased.
That was merely in Jalkin. Zokou had gone to the city of Yaleth too as well, to walk between the 'giant's handrails' of the Reckstag Bridge which crossed the River Brail. To see the Tukas Halls of Justice, once a king's palace, now wrestled into the services of a democratic government by an armlock which still didn't hide its menace. To gape at the Church of Garrath on top of Royal Hill, the gigantic logical conclusion of a religion obsessed by spectacle inside a land with the same tastes. Finally to Forgar to see one of the dynamos of each edifice. The creatures by the river generally called workshops but which looked like fortresses. Sardacs the tailors, the Ocheverry Printing Works, the Zierlona carpenters, Charlac Carriage Makers; each one accumulating more fame and profit through the scale of their production than the most skilled craftsman ever could.
Yes, they had shown her all this when they first arrived. They hurried from one sight to another, however; and if they didn't actually put a sack over her head then the shutters on the carriage were always half-drawn. Zokou was left with a montage of amazing images which didn't make sense, didn't fit together and didn't seem real. By exploring on her own she hoped to start the first steps towards comprehension.
She failed in that respect. Standing at the foot of each vertiginous structure, it was even harder to believe that mankind alone could ever build anything so great, so beautiful or so dreadful. But she was able to learn a little more about the Cities. Her walk had reminded her that it wasn't simply about the architecture. The people were different too. And they were almost amazing. What struck her most of all was their freedom. She noticed the most vivid examples, the ones whose notoriety had spread. The demagogues bawling slanderous obscenities outside each Town Hall. The vendors almost on the doorstep of Huwdone House selling newsheets containing detailed criticisms of the actions of Huwdone House. The street performers often enacting what was basically unapologetic pornography. Yet Zokou sensed the liberty everywhere. In the way men and even women moved and talked, in their stride and their demeanour. There was a certain amount of belligerence there, an awareness that their freedom had to be defended constantly. But their confidence didn't come from their weapons – to her amazement, Zokou saw that almost nobody was armed. It flowed from a sense of what they belonged to.
Yaxi and Radav possessed it too. They were Christotans and the Cities, after all, was simply the epitome of Christoté. Strip away their bows and swords and they would still be free. And they offered Zokou the same rights. Just as she had been preparing to shatter her childhood liberty with a life of drudgery, they had shown her the road out. Under their protection, to some extent, and under their tutelage. However, every time they chastised her she sensed them waiting and hoping for her to defend her independence.
"You know," she began cautiously, "I saw a lot of wizards around today. Or at least, men-"
"Yeah, I'm gonna stop you there," Yaxi said. "And ask if these 'wizards' were sort of guys in fairground tents with a hell of a lot of sequins and signs saying 'The Amazing Montou: Gods Are Astounded By His Powers.'"
"Well, OK, mostly. But they can't all be frauds, can they?"
"Er, just one question in return here. Why not."
"We could try talking to one or two at least. If your friend… If you can't find him or something. It can't do any harm."
"Hmm. People messing about with magic without really knowing what they're doing. I wonder, can that possibly, possibly do any harm?"
"Remember that damn great desert we crossed?" Radav said. "They reckon that were made by folks messing with magic."
"So it wasn't the sun then?" Zokou returned.
"A pretty neat zing there," Yaxi smiled. "But that aside I think we'll stick with the 'our guy or broke' plan for now. And if we really can't find where he's skulking, well…"
"We're buggered," Radav suggested.
"So I've got to hide in here till you find him?" Zokou demanded.
Yaxi glanced at her husband. "No, I suppose not. I guess we went a little bit, you know, insane on that diktat. If you really want to make a grand coming out, blowing kisses at the neighbours and the alley cats, the street's yours."
"I never wanted-"
"Yeah, I know. But if you want, you can come with us to dinner at the family who live downstairs the night after next."
"Some nosy woman, her husband and three screaming brats," Radav said. "Should be a real treat."
Zokou glared at them. "You were gonna sneak off to a party and not even tell me?"
"I think the plan was to kind of camouflage it as another trip to the Last Drop Inn, wasn't it?" Yaxi asked Radav, who nodded.
"For the love of… How many times have you done that before?""Well, this would've been our first," Yaxi grinned. "And hey, given that, we're pretty good at it aren't we?"

Episode Ten

2007-09-04T09:47:00.000-07:00

Jakks Way – the district rather than the street – was a creature of indeterminate size. Only in two directions were its borders conclusively fixed. To the west it abruptly ended at The Tonelays, that grim and hermetically sealed enclave whose denizens worshipped a strange, savage god and tried to only ever speak to each other. Eastwards an equally vivid marker was provided by Dorlaf Avenue, the chaotic paradise for shopkeepers which sliced Jalkin neatly in half. Up and down though, matters were more ambiguous. Was one still in Jakks Way as far north as Yashin Close? If one ventured southwards to Kakran Crescent? Some would claim so. Others preferred to squash the neighbourhood into a tight rectangle, with Clock Street forming the southern frontier and the eponymous road the north. Jakks Way had an official existence, of course, the fiefdom of the local praetor, but over time that had proved no more solid. The boundaries squirmed from election to election, depending on who was deciding them and how it would benefit them.
If there were no definite edges then there was no centre either. Although Jakks Way did, in most people's perception, have a cultural heart at least. Mistletoe Square, where the markets were held, where the fairs sprung up, where folks gathered on every fine day to gossip and argue. Ses Netrasso was one of the few who held an alternate view. In certain ways, for certain people, the real heart of the district lay further west, on the corner of Jakks Way and Fountain Avenue. Where stood the Last Drop Inn, the pub which he owned.
Since inheriting the Last Drop five years ago he had been tempted to remove the ambiguity by relocating to Mistletoe Square itself. It would have been feasible. Property everywhere in Jakks Way was cheap but especially on that notoriously odiferous, rowdy square. After making a few tentative enquiries, however, he realised he wouldn't be allowed to get away with this. The Last Drop Inn was a neighbourhood pub and so was tightly encased with custom. It stood on the corner of Fountain Avenue. It always had, it always would. Likewise, young Ses was only allowed to own it in the moral as well as legal sense because the Netrasso family always had. Not always, he discovered, but for six generations and that was enough. Sufficient, certainly, for Ses to be accepted despite the consensus that he was a quarter the man his late father had been.
Part of this low-key but constant hostility came because of his regular attempts to make improvements. The feelings were reciprocated because of his customers' inability to accept that improvements did, in fact, improve things. Ses Netrasso tried introducing more entertainments on evenings. The regulars complained that all these bards singing lies at them interfered with them speaking lies to one another. He tried invigorating the drinks range. They stuck to their appalling local brews which either tasted of treacle or nothing at all. He made the interior a little more hygienic. They moaned that they had no rushes or sawdust to spit on anymore. So the Last Drop remained humble and mundane, totally overshadowed by the Black Dog, the Calderdale, the garish taverns of Cuelon Road, a hundred other establishments on the Cities' legendary pub scene. And Netrasso had spent five years almost but not quite selling up and going somewhere his talents might be appreciated.
Several factors had prevented him so far. One of the few which he would admit to was that the Last Drop was a fine building. It looked exactly right for a Cities tavern. Externally it was half timbered, with two great bay windows thrusting out impertinently. There was a single great lounge at the front, its gloom providing shade in the summer and its hearts heat in the cooler months. Behind this were a few private drinking rooms for business deals or certain entertainments which Netrasso might allow initially and then deliberately know nothing about. Netrasso and his burgeoning family had ample, comfortable quarters upstairs. They shared them with their servants but not any overnight guests, because the Last Drop was a tavern rather an inn. The pun had just proved too tempting. It looked the archetypal pub from its foundations to its chimney and even the fact that it wasn't built as a pub increased its perfection. No true establishment in the Cities carries out the function for which they were originally intended.
Another source of compensation for Ses Netrasso was a diluted version of one of his father's maxims: "Every man in here a friend." Mr Netrasso senior had in turn been an archetypal innkeeper, a Jakks Way man from birth to death, and almost meant what he said. He may not have actually liked all his customers but did love them with the possessive familiarity of family. Ses didn't yet have his father's ruddy complexion or barrel stomach, though both were arriving. He had a more cynical view of the world, which was expanding as quickly as his body. But he partly agreed with his father in this instance. Most nights everyone in the Last Drop was at least known. Sometimes that thought brought pleasure. At worst it was a comfort. He didn't have to cope with the transient scum who drank at the Cuelon Road pubs, the migrants and adventurers and refugees and out-and-out criminals. The Last Drop did attract scum, and at the end of a Saturday night they could cause trouble. But Netrasso knew most of their threats and brawling were just postures, and predictable ones at that. It helped.
Netrasso gazed around the saloon now, halfway through a Saturday evening, and felt the reassurance again. The nosiest group was probably composed of Stefan Amecco and his cronies, all let off the leash once a week by their wives on the understanding that it would be clipped back on just as tight the next morning. Roaring at each other, taunting each other, pretending that the last twenty years hadn't occurred and brought its distressing changes. Their role models, in a reversal of what was supposed to happen, were the gaggle of genuinely young men. Including Stefan's son Jerich, they were almost as loud and turned their semi-serious hostility outwards not inwards; notably in catcalls towards anyone of vaguely feminine appearance. The one woman spared was old Kalinka, supping port after port by the bar. Because Kalinka was old and because she was again enacting her inexplicable but convincing impersonation of a lunatic. The bar stools seemed to attract the old timers. Half a dozen veterans slumped on them, as they did almost every night, with the unapologetic airs of people who had survived a great deal and now deserved some sort of reward. The corners of the room, meanwhile, collected the dregs. Cepu Boldan, his cronies and their tarts were filling one with the aura of men who owned the place. Boldan sometimes gazed around with the expression of one who wished he did. Another of Netrasso's reasons for not abandoning the Last Drop – he would almost certainly be forced to sell it to Cepu Boldan.
The gang were the only ones who could not be comfortably handled by Hielach, the 'Noriscan' bouncer leaning beside the door with his cudgel. And they would not turn violent. Not Saturday night violent, aggression caused solely by drink and egotism. Boldan was a psychopath but despite – or maybe because of – that quality, he practised and enforced discipline. His men struck after careful planning and struck in dark alleys. And that was a good example of knowledge bringing comfort. Netrasso could survey a room containing some fairly menacing characters and be assured that none would threaten –
Then two people entered who shattered that protection. Strangers in every sense. Though one was a woman, both looked like they belonged in the Cuelon Road taverns. Guards for the big merchant caravans; or perhaps part of the reason why guards were employed. The din in the saloon only dipped for a second but the newcomers were being studied, assessed. Something about the way they moved, the manner in which they carried themselves, conveyed a warning. The woman was quite stunning, Netrasso noticed as she approached, in a masculine way. Yet not even the most inebriated of the young men called out an invitation as she limped past.
"Hey," she grinned at Netrasso as she sat on a stool. "I've heard that there's a beer in the Cities so watered down and foul that you're guaranteed to barf up before you can get drunk on it."
"Clarwater." The man rolled his eyes at the landlord. "She knows it's called clarwater an' all. She just likes doing the line."
"Whatever. Anyway, I fancy trying it again. Do you kind of do it here."
Netrasso nodded. "Finest clarwater in the Cities."
The woman raised her eyebrows. "A-a-a-and is that, you know, saying much?"
"Not really," he admitted, smiling. "Pint and a half then?"
"Let's go with two pints. I want to try the vomiting experience side by side with the husband. Though I've a bit of a bad leg so I might not make it to your toilets in time. Will it be a problem if I heave up all over your floor?"
"Won't be the first, won't be the last."
"Cool. And, you know, kind of gross too. I'm Yaxi Tanson, by the way, this is my husband Radav. We moved in a couple of weeks ago. We've been quiet as – what are guys as quiet as around here?" she asked Radav.
"Otters."
"Oh, yeah. Still not sure about that one but let it go. So we've been quiet as otters up till now. But we couldn't resist checking out the folk singing stroke multiple stabbing experience here at the Last Drop Inn. Hey, do both of those really go on?"
Netrasso shrugged. "This is a quiet enough place."
"Yeah?" Radav said. "Have to see what we can do about that."
"Now, hon," Yaxi chided playfully. "What was our first rule when we moved here?"
Radav sighed. "Don't wind up the locals."
"And what was our second rule?"
"Don't wind up the locals."
"And what was our third rule…"
Netrasso relaxed, though only slightly. The Tansons. He had heard of them, of course. All Jakks Way seemed to have been talking about them the last fortnight. All he actually knew, however, was the tiny amount of information gleaned by Mr Delpess and the other morsel extracted by Morran Heppac. The rest came from widening circles of guesswork and rumour which grew more unfeasible as the drifted away from their origin. One account did seem accurate. The discrepancy between the Tansons' fearsome appearance and their amiable conversation. But Netrasso knew that both could be façades concealing characters entirely different again.
His eyes wandered around the saloon again. Calli Horstice had stolen in at some point, he noticed. She was sat in her usual posture, hunched on a bench with a martyred expression while some tiresome drunk lectured her on politics. Calli never used to come within twenty yards of the Last Drop. She was one of the few Jakks Way residents to make real money – doing what, Netrasso had no idea – and not flee the neighbourhood immediately after making it. Instead she affected the manners of a local queen, the epitome of respectability and good manners. A year ago, though, she had used her riches to become the local praetor, a minor official who runs the day-to-day affairs of a district. Now she had to prove herself to be one of her people. To win their vote again she had to copy their customs and ways; and that included entering taverns to be lectured by tiresome drunks. Observing the same process engulfing a praetor of the previous generation, Netrasso's father once remarked, "Politics. Drives any man to drink."
The landlord's smile dissolved as his eyes turned back to Cepu Boldan's table. The gang leader had seen Yaxi and Radav too. He was studying them. He was muttering to his men and they joined the examination too. Not a hostile assessment, but one blatantly open and almost pleading for a challenge. The Tansons didn't notice at first. Finally Radav spotted Boldan. He said something to his wife and they both turned towards the table in the corner. They returned the gazes for perhaps ten seconds, no more; and Netrasso had never seen anybody so apparently unaffected by Boldan's attention. Then the couple swivelled back again.
"Yeah, that's kind of disgusting," Yaxi announced, pushing away her third-drunk pint of clarwater beer. "I think I'll just take it as read that I'd barf up on that pretty soon and switch. You got anything which is very strong, sold in teeny-weeny glasses and is pretty much transparent?"
"We sell Dragon's Breath," Netrasso said, hoping to shift one of the new drinks which his regulars refused to touch. "A rum distilled up in the Brown Hills, admired by many connoisseurs-"
"OK, sounds good. Dragon me. Hey," Yaxi added after taking her first sip and making an appreciative noise, "Who are those guys sat in the corner? You know, the ones who seem to be trying to work out what size clothes we take?"
Netrasso leant closer, a slight but significant movement which he had copied from his father. "Right, you see the middle aged woman on the bench at the far side of the room. Calli Horstice. Our local praetor. She thinks she runs Jakks Way. She doesn't. Sat in the corner are Cepu Boldan and his gang. They do."
Again the pair did a simultaneous swirl towards the corner. Boldan was still looking at them. The Tansons turned back even sooner, however, and their apparent lack of interest was just as absolute. Netrasso studied them himself for as long as he dared. He had seen false bravado before, false nonchalance, false almost everything. He didn't believe that the couple were faking anything. They just weren't frightened of Cepu Boldan. Netrasso could guess how much this would frustrate the gang leader.
"One of those deals, huh?" Yaxi said. "You know, I heard no single gang kind of ruled these streets with sword and mayhem."
"They don't have overall control, true," Netrasso replied, wishing that Yaxi would keep her voice down. "There's still some jostling for position. But Boldan's the strongest and he's getting stronger." He paused, then added, "What I'm saying is, don't be antagonising him and expect another gang to pull you out of trouble."
"Hey now, do we look like we want to antagonise anyone?"
"That'd break the first, second and third bloody rules of our bloody code of conduct," Radav said heavily.
Netrasso was glad that a customer pulled him away then. He felt he had risked quite enough trying to aid people who clearly wanted no assistance. His relief turned to pleasure upon seeing that the visitor to the bar was Calli Horstice. She was looking harassed. Netrasso had been trying to monitor the conversation at her bench amidst the cascade of voices in the saloon. It wasn't too difficult. The voice of Armace in particular, an opinionated boor among opinionated boor, kept clapping down as regularly and repetitively as a printing press.
"…now, no-one's blaming you, lass," he would say. "You needed yoursen a patron. Fair dos. One of the proper politicians. You're just an arse-feeder right now, ain't you? But now your bloke's been caught with his trousers down an' you're buggered. Might as well admit it."
The praetor would make some inaudible protest and Armace always answered with, "Now, you know it's true. He were caught with them fat fingers o his right in the till an' he can't say otherwise. So you're buggered 'less you can find another patron. Just admit it, lass."
Now Calli was saying, in a rather bemused tone, "This round seems to be on me." She rolled off an extensive list of drinks and added to Netrasso, "And one for yourself too."
"I'll get the girl to carry it across." He looked at her, took pity and said, "Stay here till it's ready if you want though."
Calli smiled. She glanced nervously at the Tansons, decided to ignore them as completely as they were her and told Netrasso, "I'm sure it's really not as bad as it looks. What we were talking about over there, the business with the Councillor."
Councillors are one step up from praetors, officials elected to collectively run Christoté's towns. Any praetors with ambitions, which Calli Horstice probably did have, attaches themselves to Councillors or to Emissaries, their rural equivalent. Any Councillor looking to build a power base welcomes them. Any especially corrupt Councillor accepts bribes from praetors to hurry through legislation relating to particular neighbourhoods – the crime which Calli's patron had just been accused of regarding the Westgate district. And any cynical electorate then starts wondering if the rest of the Councillor's clientele, even if apparently innocent so far, has been offering their own little presents. Netrasso had to remark, "It looks bad though."
"Well, of course at this stage it does. But nobody really knows anything yet. There will be an inquiry and I'm glad of that. Because I'm sure all it will show is that the Councillor made a few silly mistakes of presentation."
"That's not too good either, is it?" Netrasso replied, leisurely pulling tap handles and letting the beer surge into pint mugs.
"Oh well, if you're another one who thinks he should be strung up from a tree because he doesn't come across well, so be it," Calli snapped. "I don't think it will turn out half as bad as it seems now, that's all. And I can appreciate the Councillor's point of view as well."
Netrasso relented. "Always two sides to every story, ain't there?"
"And he's been in a difficult position for some time now. It's a terrible job, for one. He was only given it because he's the most junior member of Jalkin Council. Highways & Amenities… It's a dreadful department to run."
"One street cistern gets blocked, one drain backs up, and it's your head they want," Netrasso murmured with a smile.
He had relented, he was even sympathising now, because he had started musing about power. And he realised that he and Calli Horstice were in a similar position. In one sense, they were the most powerful people in the Jakks Way neighbourhood. The only residents to run successful businesses, after all – or legal successful business – and both occupying roles of considerable influence. They had sensed this and often competed for sole dominance. Especially before Calli's election, in the period when she shunned the Last Drop and tried presenting herself as the only legitimate pole which respectable people should cluster around. A claim he tried negating by wondering loudly just what her secret investments were funding.
Only from one angle, though, did they stand so high. Because there were different forms of power. Netrasso knew the greatest of all. The anonymous, secretive medium where words alone could wreak vast changes. Calli had acquired a tiny slice of it now. And if she gathered more and more she would leave him far behind. She wouldn't just control the neighbourhood. She could sit in a meeting, another meeting and another and finally transform Jakks Way utterly. Enrich it immensely or, conceivably, destroy it.
But another method of power couldn't be disregarded. If only because it made a landlord tell newcomers, "She doesn't rule this district. He does." The ability to impose your will directly on a situation. Calli had to endure being hectored by men whom she despised, had to listen to ill-disguised slanders directed against herself. She always would, in one forum or another, however high she scrambled. And so would Netrasso. He must endure the same bores and the same fatuous opinions night after night. In an inn which he supposedly owned yet couldn't change the way he wished.
Nobody told Cepu Boldan how to run his business, however. Nobody told him anything he didn't wish to hear. Netrasso glanced at the gang leader again, sat at the far side of his table. In the corner which he effectively owned for as long as he was there. He couldn't be approached without his permission. His sentinels would spring up if anyone came near; and unless they brought an apology and a reason which he cared for, they would be evicted rapidly. Netrasso noticed Calli looking towards the corner too. She knew who Boldan was. She knew a great deal about him. Everyone in Jakks Way did. Naïve and rarefied though she was, she knew and she wanted him destroyed. But until she achieved that, he held dominance whenever they met. If he ordered it, she would probably drop onto all fours and bark like a dog. There might be consequences eventually; she might one day acquire sufficient amounts of the greatest type of force. In this situation, though, Boldan controlled her. Netrasso knew that he himself would be on his hands and knees with one command; and so would everyone else in the pub.
Or perhaps not quite everyone. Perhaps not Yaxi and Radav Tanson. That was why Boldan seemed obsessed with them. They hadn't reacted in the right way. They hadn't shown fear or respect or, really, much interest. Stupidity maybe, or misguided arrogance. But also perhaps because they had power of their own, the same direct form which Boldan wielded. As much? Boldan didn't know yet and there was uncertainty, anger of course but also just a little fear emanating from the corner. He liked to be sure about everything, Boldan. He would always twist an arm to see how badly it was broken.
"I notice, Mr Netrasso, that the door to your back room is bolted again," Calli Horstice remarked abruptly. "I trust the reason isn't what I fear it is?"
"'Fraid so, Praetor Horstice," Netrasso smiled. "Drains backing up again something rotten. Whole room smells like a sewer pit. Thought of complaining about it to your Councillor friend as a matter of fact. If he's got any free time right now."
"So there are not, in fact, any people in there tonight?"
"Can't imagine who'd want to be in there with that stink."
"Perhaps men who enjoy partaking in games of chance?"
"Well now, I don't have a gambling licence, do I? So that would be illegal." Netrasso's smile broadened as he thought: don't try over-compensating on me. That won't work. Not until you come here with a lot of warrants, a lot of Guardsmen and a kick that break a bolted door down.
Calli had none. Neither did she have any excuses left to loiter by the bar. The barmaid was taking the last of her drinks back to the bench. So the praetor had to follow, her poise that of a noblewoman walking to the gallows. Back to the men who had just had five minutes to compose fresh hectoring and fresh slanders. Netrasso watched her wearily retake her place, turned and found himself staring into the face of Menoney. His smile crumbled instantly.
Menoney – perhaps the only one close to Boldan who seemed to have any sort of intelligence. Which didn't make him any less vicious and didn't really mean he was, in fact, intelligent. A lance of fear stabbed through Netrasso as the man glared back. Then it turned into confusion as Menoney started rapping out a drinks order. None of Boldan's men ever came to the bar. They bawled out on the frequent occasions they were thirsty and Netrasso sent a barmaid over. And the girl, after delivering the drinks, would have to endure her bottom being groped, her breasts being fondled, sometimes worst if the night was growing old. And she had to go back every time the gang called out again and never protest. That was the law and one major reason why the Last Drop Inn struggled to keep staff for long.
Here, though, was Menoney collecting the glasses himself. As Netrasso dexterously poured the ales and rakis, he realised why. Menoney was looking straight at Yaxi and Radav. Of course – if a puzzling new element appeared then a scout, one with a certain amount of acumen, would be sent to study it closer. That was the first step. Boldan wouldn't come personally, not yet. That belonged to a later stage, one of many in the surprisingly complex dance which Boldan could dictate. Netrasso assumed Menoney was simply there for reconnaissance. However, the man then nodded at the Tansons and said,
"Get them what they're having an' all."
Yaxi gave him her brilliant smile. "Hey, no shit? Thanks."
"Courtesy of Mr Boldan," Menoney told her gruffly.
"Mr..?"
"Boldan. Mr Cepu Boldan. He's over in the corner."
Again the slow, simultaneous swivel on their stools. They actually acknowledged Boldan this time. But the raising of the glasses and the cries of thanks seemed pure courtesies; and perhaps delivered a little facetiously. Boldan responded with a regal wave. Netrasso thought he detected the same uncertainty in it.
"See what I'm on about?" Radav said to his wife when they had turned back again. Then to Menoney: "She keeps reckoning we're all a bunch of tightwads up here."
"Yeah, yeah," Yaxi responded. "Look, the facts are in general terms-"
"You're wrong, woman. Just admit it."
"All I'm saying is, you know, a few ripe bananas don't make the whole crate sweet."
"A few…" Again Radav addressed Menoney. "I've been with this lass ten years. I still can't make hide nor hair of her bloody similes."
"That was actually a metaphor, hon. You so shouldn't throw in the big words if you don't know what they mean."
"Balls. You can use them two syn… syno-"
"Oh, please don't try and say 'synonymous' after three pints again. We'll kind of be sat here all night. Besides, you're talking right out of your ass. It's only a simile if you say something's 'like' something else."
"Well, that's what you were doing. Like a crate of bloody bananas or whatever."
"Ah, but I didn't, you know, actually say it was 'like' them."
"What, so just because you say 'like,' a metaphor becomes a simile."
"It's the magic word. Turns one thing into another like it was a sorcerer. See? Now that was a simile for you, right smack between your eyes."
"That's bloody stupid."
"I don't write the rules, hon. I'm just the gatekeeper." She turned to Menoney. The gangster was waiting for his order to be finished and listening to their babble with clear exasperation. "Back me up here, big guy," Yaxi smiled. "Can't go running around calling a simile a metaphor unless you put a 'like' in there, can you?"
The intellectual of Boldan's gang glared at her for a moment. Then he growled, "Fucking well call it whatever the fucking hell you fucking want." He grabbed the tray of drinks, sloshing them in the process – which would probably cost him when he got back to the table – and stalked away. Netrasso had to turn his back until he had conquered his urge to laugh.
"You know what we kind of just did, hon?" he heard Yaxi say in hushed tones.
"Aye. Pretty much knackered our first, second and third rules.""Seems that way. Ah well. When we get onto grammatical terms, strong men so have to hide beneath the tables till we're done."

Episode Nine

2007-08-28T09:42:00.000-07:00

"This room is not sufficient," Lady Sosia Kemble said abruptly as they lay side by side on the bed. They had only finished making love thirty seconds ago and already she was complaining, "This room does not meet my requirements."
Dryden Heppac, still panting after his exertions, let his breaths merge together into a sigh. No, of course the room wasn't sufficient. The room was dreadful. It was a tiny square box. It had bare stone walls, a bare stone ceiling and a bare stone floor. The lack of decoration allowed one to fully appreciate the extensive and doubtless widening cracks in all the surfaces. There was a single tiny window, heavily grilled as if there was actually anything inside the room to protect. And if a view outside was possible, it would only be of Kieley Alley; a putrid narrow link between Fountain Square and Federation Row. Despite the almost total exclusion of sunshine, the heat of the afternoon had cascaded into the room. Dryden was lying still and naked and he still felt the sweat rising and trickling across his skin.
The bed was the only object stored in the room. And the bed was barely that. It was a single mattress; not even raised on bricks, the usual defence against marauding insects. Dryden watched a fat woodlouse crest the hill and begin waddling across the summit towards his legs. Just as cockroaches were basking on the walls and squadrons of ants were marching single file across the floor. And even the mattress was scarcely a mattress. It was a collection of sharp iron springs joined by a flimsy stretch of cloth. Dryden could feel at least three digging into him. He had seen the marks on Lady Sosia's back before, caused by his weight on top of hers pushing her body onto the vicious coils. Sometimes they broke the skin. Yet she never complained. Dryden suspected that she enjoyed the feeling.
She was still grumbling now, however. Gazing at the disintegrating ceiling, her fingers lost in her shaken mass of auburn hair, she repeated, "It is not at all sufficient. I told you what I required, Heppac."
He knew her requirements, true. And he knew that the room was the best he could do. She insisted that he pay for it. Lady Sosia Kemble, Mistress of the Tremmest Estates, would not pay for anything during their weekly liaisons. So he had to find somewhere inexpensive. So cheap that it would make such a tiny hole in his tiny wage that not even his perceptive wife Morran would spot the gap. Lady Sosia also demanded that they meet in his own neighbourhood. He therefore had to find somewhere in the back streets; and not use the usual landlords. Not somebody local like that damn Delpess, who would doubtless hang around the markets telling everybody about the mysterious piece of business he had just conducted. Renting a room to Dryden Heppac, no less, who already rented a sizeable apartment from Mr Delpess, who had only stipulated that the room contain a bed, who couldn't be using it for travel purposes because it was just around the corner from the home he shared with his wife and children. So what, Delpess would wonder very loudly, did Dryden Heppac need that bed for?
It had taken Dryden months to arrange. Months during which his only meetings with Sosia were public ones, fully clothed and lasting no more than five minutes. While she teased him and tempted him and made parts of him insane with anticipation. Finally he had found this room. He believed it to be safe. And she had decided,
"It simply will not do. You must find somewhere else."
He sat up. "Look, Sosia-"
"Do not call me that," she said sharply. "You may only call me that while you are inside me. At all other times, address me as Lady Sosia or My Lady."
Dryden sighed again. He didn't even call her Sosia when he was inside her. He called her slut or bitch or whatever demeaning name he could think of; and that was at her instruction as well. He glanced down at her, wondering again at her self-proclaimed status. Mistress of the Tremmest Estates, wife of a very rich, very old nobleman, childless and so heir to all his riches… Yet Dryden had never heard of a place called Tremmest. Sosia claimed it was somewhere in the north, but she had the features of a local and never seemed to leave the Triple Cities. On the other hand, she had clearly acquired money from somewhere. Her dress were always exquisite, her fingers sparkled with silver, the skin on her face had the preserved cast of expensive cosmetics. When he was entering her she squealed like a rodent. A second after leaving her, however, her voice instantly regained its sharp, cultured clarity. If she was simply an actress then she was obviously a very successful one. And she shared the popular believe that greater wealth equalled superiority in every aspect of a relationship.
"Look, this were the best I could find," Dryden argued, opting to call her nothing at all. "If you want summit better-"
"I wish for something worst. I thought I made myself clear on this matter." Sosia propped herself up on her elbows. "I mean, take a look around this place. It is almost habitable. I imagine that a family of eight could exist quite comfortably in here. And when I shake out my dress-" she nodded at the strip of finery lying crumpled on the floor – "I cannot imagine that a single cockroach will fall out. Where is the squalor, Heppac? I made my requirements quite clear. Where are the odours? The noises? The blood stains on the wall?"
"Keep banging on like this, there might be a few," he muttered.
Sosia laughed. She had an aristocrat's laugh too, a piercing giggle like fingernails scraping across slate. "Oh, do carry on threatening me, Heppac. You are so sweet when you do."
She started to run her foot idly across his thigh. Irritated with her and disgusted with himself, he wanted to move away but couldn't. He always wanted to move away from Sosia and never could. "This place'll have to do for now," he insisted stubbornly.
"Oh, please do not try to tell me you really cannot find anywhere worst. In Jakks Way? I imagine your own flat is barely more salubrious than here."
"Yeah it bloody well is. An' Jakks Way ain't the slums. We-"
It was Sosia's turn to sigh. "Please, Heppac, do not sing me that song. 'This is a respectable district, there's plenty worst than us'. I am so terribly weary of that tune. I believe that the poor of the Cities are even more obsessed with status and wealth than the rich. Which is pitiable because you have no cause to be. The truth remains, Heppac, that this most definitely is a slum neighbourhood. And I want to be in the absolute depths of it and I ordered you to take me there."
"You so keen on squalor, why don't you just shag a beggar in an alley?"
"Oh, but a beggar would just demand money. And then keep on demanding money. It would be too tiring. If that was all I wished for, I would simply hire a gigolo." She was suddenly sat up beside him, running fingertips over his thinning hair. "But the idea of you taking me in an alleyway," she murmured in his ear, "Now that is intriguing."
"Aye, an' it ain't gonna happen."
"Oh, and why not, pray? Because we might be observed yes? You could be found out. Then, of course, the news would wriggle its way back to your sweet little wife Morran."
"I told you not to talk about her."
"Oh yes, of course. Because that causes the guilt, does it not? Because Morran is not so sweet any more, is she, and not so little. Not now. Neither is her husband, of course, and so he should make do with her. But he cannot, can he? He still wishes for something younger, something more succulent. And he knows that is wrong and I do not believe he can ever quite banish the guilt. So we can never mention Morran-"
Dryden shook her off. Sosia fell back onto the bed as if he had struck her. Perhaps she wanted him to. He looked down at her in disgust. She wasn't really that 'young' or 'succulent'. She was his age, he guessed, in her early forties. Cosmetics had only preserved her face. The rest of her was gaunt, wrinkled, withering. He thought about his own body, his round belly and fat limbs and decaying skin. It was fortunate that the light in the room was so bad.
"I ought to start asking for money an' all," he muttered. "Least I'd get summit out of this."
Sosia laughed again. "Oh, but you do, Heppac. You get me."
"Aye, great."
"Is that not enough anymore? You get to nail an aristocrat. You get to fuck an aristocrat as if she were a dirty whore. I know the though excites you, Heppac. It is the dream of every common man, is it not? To have us underneath you, in your power. And perhaps next time…" She rolled over, spread her legs, spread her buttocks. "Perhaps you can enter me this way. Down the passage which every man fantasises about. Think, Heppac, think how that will demean me." Sosia rolled onto her back again, face contorted into a contented smile. She placed her foot gently on his chest. "You are imagining it already, are you not?"
"You're bloody sick."
"And you are growing hard again, I notice. Continue to picture it. Dream what it will feel like to enter me that way." Suddenly she straightened her leg, almost kicking him off the bed. "And all you will able to do is imagine," she added sharply, "Until you find me a satisfactory room."
"For fuck's sake-"
"Now get out, Heppac. I am done with you."

Episode Eight

2007-08-27T12:37:00.000-07:00

Myran Smithson prodded Yaxi's left shinbone very gently. He moved his fingertips, insulated from her skin by velvet gloves, over her shattered and only partly repaired knee. He prodded that too, equally softly. He crouched down a little further and his faint frown grew slightly deeper. Finally he looked up at his patient.
"Well," he said with finality, "Your leg's shot."
Yaxi grinned at him. She was sat on one stool, her damaged leg bared and stretched out with the heel resting on another. "Hey, they told me there was a real kick-ass herbalist here in Ashel Street. They sure hit the nail on the head."
Smithson bowed his head in mock-gratitude. "The damage to the kneecap, to the cartilage around the kneecap… I don't know if anything could have been done about that. It's basically only half-functioning as a joint now. The shinbone… It's had a bad break and it wasn’t set properly. It might be too late to do the job now."
"Hey, don't pull a disapproving doctor number on me. I was kind of concentrating on other things just after it happened."
"Like what?"
"Not dying."
After pausing, though making no other reaction, Smithson said, "Normally I'd recommend coscock and brabbes leaves."
"So I guess I'm a normal gal 'cause coscock and brabbes leaves have both been wolfed down like they're blackberries."
"No good?"
"Well, coscock's mainly supposed to reduce the pain isn't it? I don't feel much pain so I guess that's done some good."
"Erish crowns are sometimes used on the more serious breaks."
"Yeah, I've tried erish crowns before. Not on this injury, on an earlier one. It's supposed to vary from guy to guy, isn't it? Well, with me it hurt like hell and so, so wasn't any use whatsoever."
"It's not my favourite herb either. You can cover yourself up again, by the way."
Yaxi did so, though indolently. She was showing her leg, and so modesty demanded that she have a private examination by the herbalist. Smithson's establishment only seemed to have two rooms. The back one was his bedroom, and he gave the impression that nobody save himself ever went inside. Accordingly, he had agreed to see Yaxi outside normal shop hours. Which meant the evening, which meant that the shop was only lit by two grimy lanterns and his gently crackling fire. There had never been any tension, however. Smithson dissipated the chance of any at the outset by remarking, "I probably don't have to tell you not to worry. We both know you can take me without even trying."
That was true; but Yaxi also found it easy to relax around Myran Smithson. He was a trim, slight, middle-aged man who radiated an aura of blandness. His hair was grey, his clothes drab, his face still free of defining wrinkles. His shop was similarly mundane. Many herbalists, even the poorer ones, tended to try and create an air of mystique. They burnt incense and had mysteriously bubbling cauldrons and painted cabalistic writing everywhere. Smithson's had bare stone walls, rushes on the floor, an improvised counter and not much else. Only the liquid herbs simmering above the fire and the solids stored in a vast cabinet behind the counter revealed his actual trade.
It was spartan but not slipshod, Yaxi knew. Everyone in Jakks Way spoke with admiration of Smithson's in Ashel Street. She had even heard him recommended outside the Triple Cities. He was said to know his art in a field excessively full of charlatans. Likewise, Smithson himself seemed calm but not ordinary. His speech and movements were measured and restrained; he always seemed to be holding something back. He was the first person Yaxi had met since moving to Jakks Way neither brazen nor ostentatiously cryptic. She suspected he was concealing a great deal and would continue to conceal it, and she was already warming to him.
"I'll have a look through my grimouries," he said, sitting down himself. "Off the top of my head, all I can recommend for the knee is fairy dew."
"Yeah, I tried that when my elbow got mangled up a few years ago. And I was, you know, leaping behind the bushes every half hour for the next week. I so don't want to hear about fairy dew."
Smithson smiled slightly. "Exactly how many old injuries are you carrying?"
"Well, sort of enough to groan every time the weather changes."
"And this particular one was caused by a castle falling on you?"
Yaxi gave him a sideways look. "Hey, just the gateway. Let's not exaggerate."
"No, let's not. And are we telling the truth at all?"
Another paused, then she asked, "Well, what do you think?"
"You sustained the injury about ten months ago, you said. Well, the only castle I heard about collapsing then was across the ocean in Ellniss. A fortress, really. The Dol Zigul fortress. And you couldn't have been there when that happened, could you?"
"Hey, these old castles are coming down all the time. They put the babies up with all their ginormous barbicans and portcullises and ramparts and the rest of the package. But do they ever give a thought to, you know, basic maintenance? I think not. Most of them are queuing up to topple over."
"Especially if you remove something like the cement."
Yaxi laughed. "Oh great Narlan. Morran Heppac sure whizzed that one around the neighbourhood in double-quick time."
"I think you probably meant her to, didn't you?"
"But you don't think it could have been the dread collapse of good ol' Dol Zigul that knocked my knee all to hell?"
They were staring at each other now, sensing that a contest of some sort was underway. Yaxi found Smithson's gaze rather difficult to meet. He didn't blink often enough and the composure in his pale irises was slightly too strong. She had, however, looked into far more unsettling eyes. "It couldn't really have been, could it?" the herbalist answered.
"And why's that?"
"Because the ballads tell us that Dol Zigul only collapsed when three heroic adventures slew the sorcerer king who dwelled inside. Thus stopping his army of lizardmen marching out of the desert, as they were poised to do, and sweeping across the land of Ellniss leaving carnage in their wake."
"And you don’t believe it's sort of possible two of those adventurers have hired a flat just round the corner from you?"
"It's possible. I don't believe it's likely. Just as I don't believe a mighty fortress was ever built in the desert because what would they build it out of. I don't believe a wizard powerful beyond all reckoning could find nothing better to do with his life than shack up with a bunch of lizardmen. I don't believe lizardmen could get organised into the proverbial shagging team in the proverbial brothel, let alone a mighty army. Frankly, I'm not even sure about the lizardmen themselves. All I've ever seen are skeletons in carnivals. Each one looked rather like a big iguana that's been messed about with."
"You sure don't have much time for the bards, do you?"
"Some of their songs make a pleasant sound," Smithson said politely.
"And the continent of Ellniss itself?" Yaxi smile. "Really there or, you know, just another big hoax?"
"A lot of sources indicate its existence. No-one whose word I trust has actually been there."
"And this chosen group of trustworthy guys. Including yourself, do they kind of number between one and zero? Hey, I've heard a tale about your own leg injury," Yaxi added. "I heard you picked it up when a rogue Guardsman shot you with a crossbow."
"I've heard that one as well."
"Would the first time have been, you know, from your own mouth when you were making it up?"
"It's a perfectly feasible account," Smithson said. "A projectile missile could tear the tendons and cause permanent damage."
"Yeah, yeah. And I guess it's perfectly feasible that a bear chewed your leg up in the wilds by the Sunken Sea? You told Morran that one to her face without cracking a muscle, she says."
"I believe bears are still found in those parts."
"But you're still holding that you're a guy whose word can be trusted?"
"I only said that I rely on it. I wouldn't recommend anyone else do the same. Not unless I'm telling them what herbs to use." He shuffled to his counter. "I see if I can find any I've overlooked, like I said. But I'm afraid you shouldn't get your hopes up."
"Hey, I've gotten used to sitting on the little devils whenever they show their faces."
"I normally have a glass of revolting wine at the end of my shift," Smithson said, reaching under the counter. "Care to join me?"
"Sure," Yaxi smiled, hiding her surprise. She hid her reaction too when she took a beaker and the wine was as bad as described. Smithson didn't drink his own at first. He simply sat holding the glass, not moving at all. Yaxi studied him surreptitiously. He was as good at stillness as anyone she had met. And the other masters of that art had been hunters of one kind or another. They were waiting for their kill. Smithson was simply letting himself be absorbed into the atmosphere of the dim room, turning himself into a still life.
"It's difficult," he said eventually in the same flat tone. "I see a lot of injuries that I can't cure. The body just breaking down. It's difficult when it happens to people who rely on strength or mobility for their living. You need both, I imagine."
"Well, sort of more a steady hand and good depth vision. If I lost a thumb or an eye, I'd be royally screwed. But, yeah, that loss of mobility is so a might pain."
"I imagine. I never know what to tell them though. Change your goals, change your whole outlook. Because that's what they have to do, whether they like it or not. Some realise that. They manage it. Some don't. They're the ones who've really let their injury destroy their lives. It comes to own them."
"And how have you coped yourself?"
"I've been lame for as long as I can remember. I've never had to realign. This has always shaped my plans."
Yaxi smiled. "Hey, so is this finally putting to bed the story about being mauled by the wild boar with the rogue Guardsman on his back?"
"Not necessarily," Smithson said instantly. "Wild bears could maul a baby. It's happened."
"Whatever. And, advice appreciated and I know what you're saying But I'm realigning, believe me. I'm realigning like hell. I've just taken a flat in the Triple Cities and, boy, was that not on my map a year ago. I can't say it's easy or that my new plans are, you know, at all sane, but I'm trying. My husband's been a massive help, though I'm only saying that 'cause you don't know him. It'd be obvious if you'd ever met him. Hey, he used to be in the Guards. Kind of years ago, before I met him. You're sort of an ex-Guardsman yourself, aren't you? Or is that just another gammy leg story you've put around?"
Smithson almost smiled again. "No, that one's solid. In the force for over a decade."
"Yeah? Radav barely lasted a year He sort of disses the whole experience now. Says he only enlisted to get weapons training and all they taught him was where he wasn't legally entitled to kick people. Once he left, he just went back to kicking them there anyway. Course, that's his story. I think he signed up 'cause he had a quick burst of that good ol' patriotism. Is that the same in your case."
"I've never really had bursts of patriotism. It's always been a constant. I joined up because they give herbalists a steady living."
"So why did you bail out."
"It was never anything other than steady." When Yaxi gazed rather ostentatiously at the lack of riches held by his current enterprise, he explained, "I expect to be turning a corner any day now."
"Uh huh. Well, if you ever want to swap old army tales with Radav, feel free to drop round."
"Thanks. But I'm still in touch with a few ex-Guardsmen. Sometimes I get dragged round to their taverns where they sing 'Great Hammer of Harkanas' and talk about their old glory days all evening. I really do have my fill of that." He studied her for a moment and added," If the offer's still open if your husband doesn't want to talk about his army days…"
"That will not be a problem, actually. Getting Radav to talk about his past usually requires, you know, pliers. Not just your itsy-bitsy dentist pliers either. The great big ones. Yeah, sure, we keep, well, sort of anything but open house, but feel free to drop round."
"Thanks. I might do that."
Yaxi felt the tiny thrill experienced by everyone to whom Smithson gave a nod of genuine friendship. The favour was so rare, so infrequently granted, that it meant something. So did Smithson himself. He ran a tiny herbalists with an impoverished clientele. He was a man of consequence, though, even if the reason why wasn't obvious. Yaxi also felt stirrings of professional interest. Smithson's poise and opaqueness hinted that he knew about her world. He could have lived there once; he could even still be partly inside it. She had an insight which she didn't think would be applied to anybody in prosaic Jakks Way. He could, she mused, be one of us.

Episode Seven

2007-08-22T09:12:00.000-07:00

"What did your Stonnie expect?" Mrs Cobson demanded. "Talking to you like that. You think he should get away with it?"
"I ain't saying that-" Morran began.
"Just not a slap, eh? Didn't think you were one of those, Morran."
"I ain't, an' I ain't saying-"
"Sometimes it's the only language kids understand. 'Specially the lads. Too many parents nowadays not raising their hand to their kids. Ain't modern enough for them. An' look what we end up with. Kids everywhere running riot, not listening to a word anyone says."
"I ain't saying Dryden were wrong to hit Stonnie," Morran protested, trying to keep her temper in check. "But there's ways of doing it an' he chose the wrong one."
"How can there be-" Mrs Amecco began and was glared at ferociously by Morran.
"You give your kids a slap or two when needs be," she was informed. "You don't belt 'em in the face like you're some drunk in a pub fight."
There were five women sat in Morran's flat that morning. From the outside they looked like that middle class cliché, the sewing circle. Neighbouring wives clustered together to gossip, busy themselves, fill an otherwise vacant morning. And the quintet did gather regularly to keep each other company and exchange news mostly about families and neighbours. They worked feverishly as they talked, however, and on items much less refined than a wealthy lady would touch. This was their livelihood; Mrs Cobson self-employed, the others thrown commissions by contractors. Mrs Cobson was mending holes in grimy socks, fastening buttons back to tattered shirts. Mrs Amecco and Mrs Chorley, two battered and rangy women who looked like sisters and may indeed have been related given the tangled thickets of Jakks Way's older families, both knitted relentlessly. Zesheyek was stitching sequins into lengths of cloth to form rather unenthusiastic brocade. Morran, meanwhile, was trying to liven up drab dresses by fastening aged strips of lace to hems and necklines.. She had first formed the circle. She also encouraged the women to offer up any problems they were having regarding pay or supplies. These were usually solved communally, albeit also surreptitiously. The tactic would not have pleased their contractors, who used domestic labour primarily to avoid the problems of a unionised workforce.
"Don't see how the method matters," Mrs Cobson declared. "So long as the message gets hammered in. My dad used to take his belt to me, I recall, an' a damn heavy one it was too. Twenty strokes of that we got sometimes, right on the bare. An' it did me no harm in the long run."
"You reckon?" Morran muttered.
"What do you think, young Zesh?" Mrs Cobson asked. "Kids are still brought up the old style in Notruf, I hear."
Zesheyek hesitated. She was conscious that Morran had introduced her to the group, that Morran had first found her the sewing commission. And that on this occasion she didn't precisely agree with Morran. "I guess you've got to be careful of, of really hurting the child…" she began diplomatically.
"That ain't the point," Morran snapped. "You've got to stay in control. Dryden ain't. He loses it every time. Stonnie's old enough to spot that now. Every time he gets hit, he loses a bit more respect for his dad. An' that ain't the worst. Stonnie's getting bigger an' stronger. Soon he's gonna be bigger than Dryden. An one day soon he's gonna get right up, hit his dad back an' put him down. You can see it coming. An' then where the hell are we gonna be? How are we gonna keep him under control then?"
There was a silence, filled by the clatter of colliding knitting needles. "Well," Mrs Cobson said eventually, "Guess that'll be the time for your Stonnie to leave, won't it? He'll be out of school soon, getting a proper job. Can't keep him at home forever."
"That shouldn't be the reason why he leaves. Just 'cause his dad can't control him anymore."
"Got to go sometime," Mrs Cobson said phlegmatically.
"Why don't you sort out your Stonnie?" Mrs Chorley ventured. "If his dad-"
"'Cause it's the dad's job," Morran said. Her annoyance grew when she noticed Mrs Cobson nodding agreement but she continued anyway. "That's the way it works. The dad takes care of the sons, the mum of the daughters. Dryden's got nowt to complain about. I've got twice the work he has."
"Aye, but I reckon Stonnie's twice as much work as your two girls together," Mrs Cobson said, almost smiling.
"Now, maybe," Morran replied darkly. "We'll see when they get to his age. An' when they start keeping the company he does."
"You think that's the problem?" Mrs Amecco asked. "The company-"
"Course it is," Morran interrupted. She rarely let either of the identical knitters finish their sentences. Few people did. Both quiet and self-effacing, Mrs Chorley and Mrs Amecco tended to get casually bullied by stronger personalities. "Plain as your boots. Look at that little Marksen thug. Stonnie's gotten twice as bad since he started hanging around him. You know that Marksen, don't you?" she asked Mrs Cobson. "Bloody hooligan."
"I know him. Know his whole family. They've all gone to bad."
"Aye. Dad's up at the New Reystone Prison an' here's hoping they never let him out. An' the son's following right in his footsteps. That Cepu Boldan's been sniffing around him, I hear. Reckons he could be a fine new member of his gang, no doubt. So a great example he'll be setting for our Stonnie. You know," Morran added, feeling she and Mrs Cobson had been in agreement for slightly too long, "You're always banging on about folks moving here an' causing trouble. But some of the ones already here, the Markens an' the Boldans, they ain't no angels either."
"Ain't saying they are," the older woman sniffed. "Just that we don't need any more devils. You prefer your Stonnie to be hanging round the East Zabric?"
"Why not? Least they might teach him how to cook."
Zesheyek laughed. She had sensed Morran's unhappiness at having her own son's problems analysed by Mrs Cobson. That little victory, however trivial, had been important to her. Seeking a question which was relevant but not too upsetting to her friend, Zesheyek eventually asked, "Is Stonnie leaving school next year then?"
"Looks that way. Even if we had the money to keep him on, he ain't interested. He's got the brains but if he don't use 'em, what can you do?"
"More and more kids are staying on till seventeen," Mrs Amecco said incautiously.
"An' the bulk of 'em still ain't," was Morran's angry reply. "Anyway, it's not your education that counts, it's the job you get at the end of it. Our Saska might stay on," she continued more evenly. "She's keen on the idea. If we pinch a few coppers an' this keeps bringing in the money-" she nodded at her stitching – "I reckon it's possible. I ain't worried about Stonnie leaving though. That place he's working weekends now, he says they'll take him on full time."
"A warehouse on Leighman Way," Mrs Cobson said with disapproval. "Asking for trouble."
"Aye, well, the twenty thousand pubs next door might be a bit of a temptation for some. But one thing Stonnie ain't shown signs of becoming so far, that's a pisshead. I checked this place out before I let him set foot in it. It's OK."
"Deal in funny goods, some of them warehouses."
"An' this one don't," Morran said firmly. "'Cause it's OK. Stonnie's a good lad at heart. He just needs to keep his head together. An' stay away from thugs like that bloody Marksen."
"And Cepu Boldan," Zesheyek said.
"Aye, well. He knows about Boldan. An' he knows that if he goes anywhere near him, he won't just have to leave home. He'll have to leave bloody town. 'Cause I will take care of him myself that time an' I'll give him the biggest bloody thrashing he's ever had."
"And once thrashed, he'll stay thrashed?" Zesheyek asked. She was mimicking one of Morran's phrases but doing so supportively. Her reward was a grateful nod.
"Damn right."
Zesheyek smiled. She was glad to see Morran's usual aura of combative self-assurance fully restored. At the same time, the conversation depressed her a little. They had so many of these in the sewing group. Mrs Chorley and Mrs Amecco brought similar tidings of their children, Mrs Cobson of her grandchildren. They had such limited dreams for their sons and daughters. They just accepted it. That their offspring would be tossed from the fabled Triple Cities education system at the earliest possible opportunity onto whatever menial tasks they could land upon. Which seemed to Zesheyek far beneath the rural labours which her own family carried out. They weren't helping things grow, helping animals breed or die, producing anything truly of value. They were stacking and polishing. Carrying out tasks which somebody had decided, probably arbitrarily, ought to be done. It was an existence, not a living.
And even these menial hopes were always threatened. The fears of the women were the same too. Of the darkness which not just surrounded Jakks Way but had penetrated it. Boys like Marksen, men like Boldan. Zesheyek had met Marksen a few times and he did unsettle her. Only twelve years old, he had already learnt the traits of cunning and false courtesy. He was always polite to her. He was polite to everyone. And she knew that the moment he passed from her hearing he would start spraying insults about her. He would be encouraging boys like Stonnie, who were far too impressed by his sly intelligence, to do likewise. She thought she also knew that his pockets, where his hands were permanently buried, always held a weapon; and he would produce it given any encouragement.
As for Cepu Boldan… Zesheyek had only heard of his reputation. She thought some of it must be exaggerated. The numbers of men he had killed or banks he had robbed. Not so the accounts which really frightened her friends, however. Of how he seduced promising neighbourhood boys, whispering of the money they could earn in his gang, the power they would accrue, the revenges they could enact. Dragging them in further and further until they were too far from the light to ever escape. Boldan was getting very good at that, the women said. He practised at it.
Only Zesheyek was different to them. Her son would have a chance of escaping. To rise above the meaningless drudgery of Jakks Way and the servile status of her own family. It was small, it carried a risk of making his life far worst. But while the chance existed, she had to pursue it for him. She sensed a trace of jealousy in Morran that her friend's son alone had this opportunity. The envy had erupted as a tiny geyser when Zesheyek first told her and still emanated a few tiny dribbles occasionally. The fountain was almost dry, however. Morran was too strong to heed it. Instead she had put almost as much faith as Zesheyek into the chance which the tiny, unborn boy had. She would, if necessary, fight just as hard to preserve it. Because it had somehow become hers as well as Zesheyek's as well as her husband's. The baby was the best hope they all had.

Episode Six

2007-08-18T05:33:00.000-07:00

Dryden Heppac seat. The afternoon sun saturated the terrace. Above, below and beside him other families were taking their leisure on their own terraces; including, had he known it, the controversial new arrivals the Tansons. Behind him his wife Morran and his three children were commencing the uproar which generally followed their communal Sunday lunches. Dryden ignored all peripheral details, however. He had closed the curtains to the terrace and locked the doors. Every week he was alone to remain undisturbed for this hour. And he had been transported off the terrace. Away from Jakks Way, across Jalkin to a site separated by both a few streets and an unimaginable gulf. Huwdone House, the home of the Christotan federal government.
The magic which had teleported him there was actually fairly mundane. The great presses of the Ocheverry Printing Works in Forgar. A lot of under-employed writers with university degrees but poor connections, who had therefore developed grudges either specific or general. And a population like that of the Triple Cities, with basic literary skills, a few spare coppers each week and a desire to see politics reduced to a pantomime. The result was the newsheets. A perennial and distinctive feature of the Cities, forever corralled with the words 'irreverent', 'satirical' and sometimes 'grotesque.'
There were a great many different newsheets, fresh titles appearing each week and others vaporising just as regularly. And a wide range of styles were bundled into that single lazy category. Some did in fact give weighty, intelligent analysis of current affairs. Some were earnest calls for revolution; some preferred to ignore what the ruling classes did in assembly chambers and focus on what they – allegedly – did in their beds. Others were devoted to religions, sports or the arts. Dryden's choice of reading each week was The Messenger. A long-established title, it was a standard example of a classic newsheet. And that suited Dryden because he considered himself to be a standard example of a classic Cities resident. The Messenger gave a mixture of serious news and unfounded gossip. The tone throughout could best be described as snide. It considered Christoté's leaders to be greedy, bigoted and incompetent and rarely made exceptions. Yet it did not really question the structures which they stood upon, nor the assumption that Christoté was still the greatest nation on earth. A man like Dryden could emerge from The Messenger with his sense of superiority renewed, towards both the men who ruled him and the world which his country ruled.
It was also the right length for his weekly period of solitude. Eight pages and large print – that filled an hour nicely. But as he read now, tracing the words with a finger as he did, one phrase continued to trouble him. Not because it contained a difficult words. The Messenger knew its readers and did not use difficult words. Perhaps its writers, sometimes appearing only semi-literate themselves, did not know any.
Nor was he puzzled by the nicknames which dominated some of the stories. Many newsheets used them for news which wasn't exactly based on empirical facts; which were therefore not precisely news. The accounts of whose wife who was sleeping with, or which poverty relief fund had just been plundered by whom. Nicknames were very useful in these cases. While censorship barely existed in the Cities, libel laws certainly did. A great many newsheets had been obliterated by damages awarded after incautious accusations. But if a story said Jack-In-The-Box was copulating with Hangdog's mistress, the editor could claim with a straight face that he was talking about somebody entirely different to the man accusing him in the courtroom. The Messenger knew this because it had used the defence successfully more than once in the past. It employed its aliases consistently, however, and with clues as to their real identity. So their established readers could know precisely whom was being accused of what.
Dryden knew most of their lurid cast of characters. Some were easy to decipher and featured regularly. The Spider, for example, was patently Holan Brightson, Principal Secretary of Huwdone House and the éminence grise's éminence grise. Fat-arse would be Holstace Fortraine, Baron of the Province of Dorlaf; again, not hard to guess as Fortraine couldn't make a public appearance without somebody commenting on the size of his posterior. Not all were understood by Dryden. He was a little puzzled about the identity of Knock-Knees, a new arrival to the low farce which was Christotan public life. But the cast of characters was so great that it was hard to keep up. The Messenger gossiped about almost everyone. From the meanest Guards sergeant or magistrate right up to the Chancellor herself…
Yes. That was the phrase which was making Dryden frown. The Chancellor her self. Four years after the election of Chela Tatel as Chancellor, the leader of the federal government and effectively the most powerful person alive, it still didn't seem right. It was like a comforting old cliché which had a strange new word inserted in the middle. Only monarchies were supposed to end up with female rulers, sometimes acquiring them by default. The countries which chose their rulers almost always selected men. Even Christoté, for all its boasts to be embracing gender equality. Dryden knew why Chela Tatel had been elected. The Spider – though we may as well use his real name, for this account cannot really be contested. Holan Brightson wanted to continue running the country behind a curtain. He had accrued immense power under the previous Chancellor ('The Walking Corpse') and wished for a new mannequin. So he selected Tatel, a protégé of his with very little personal influence, and systematically destroyed all other candidates. That was understandable to Dryden. Shocking, of course, but at the same time not remotely surprising. And it wasn't that Dryden disapproved of a female Chancellor. He was a just man. He tried hard to support equality and quite often succeeded. But still, the Chancellor her self…. The notion was somehow puzzling, somehow not right. Dryden also realised he had entered an age when all new developments belonged to this category.
Chela Tatel's nickname was The Office Girl. She justified it, however, and rarely featured in The Messenger's racier stories. As far as anyone had discovered, she worked every hour she was awake and usually stayed awake until she was almost fainting from exhaustion. And when she featured in The Messenger's political polemics, she was almost always treated with approval. Tatel hadn't become just another victim trapped in The Spider's web. At first, perhaps, but she was becoming increasingly independent, decisive and sensible. Under her, a government sunk deep in corruption and malaise was being hauled to firm ground. There were signs that Tatel would not just be the best Chancellor for fifty years – after all, the competition was scarcely strong – but actually a good ruler.
This notion troubled Dryden far less. Women being granted the trappings of power was something alien. Strong female governance in practice, though, was ingrained in his life. When he was growing up his mother was the dictatorial governor of a chaotic kingdom. His dim memories of his grandparents featured an obese old woman ruthlessly bullying a timid old man. His family now… Well, he liked to say that he and Morran were basically equal though his word ultimately settled all disputes. He suspected the truth was different, however. Especially since his back collapsed and his wages toppled with it while her own earnings grew. In those last few years he had never dared test who was truly the master of the household. This was his only authoritarian command left. That he could have one undisturbed hour a week to read. Even then he had to flee the apartment to get his peace and rely on Morran guarding the door.
And where did the power reside in his other relationship? The one he plunged into six months ago when rebelling against being sucked into the role of solid citizen, dependable father, obedient husband? That question barely needed asking. She had total command, of course. She controlled him utterly. When they fought it was only so he could emerge from their liaisons with the smallest fleck of dignity left.
What else could he do though? What could he create which allowed him any real freedom or power? Dryden sat back and stared into the blue sky, the comforting sarcasm of the newsheet forgotten for the moment. He wondered how many thousands of identical men in the Cities were doing exactly the same as he was that second. Fleeing their families for an afternoon, gulping down sunshine in their mean little terraces or putrid little back yards. Many no doubt also shifting position on their seats, trying to ease the aches from their damaged bodies. Looking forward to a future in which absolutely nothing would improve.
Dryden tried remembering the moment when he realised: this is it. This is the best I can get. He used to have the usual childhood dreams. To grow up into a great warrior, a great ruler, a great writer; anything, really, to set him above everyone else. And at some point the ambitions shrivelled and he knew greatness would always elude him. And he accepted this. The epiphany should have come when his parents took him out of school at thirteen, unable to educate him past the minimum legal age. That should have been the moment because it was when his future was effectively denied. When his development ended with him still partially literate, partially numerate, partially complete. It meant he would never find work which carried a proper salary or any sight of a ladder heading further upwards. Which was a career rather than just a means of survival. So he would never leave Jakks Way except to go somewhere just like it, or ever find a wife other than someone just like Morran. But he didn't think he truly realised this at the time. He vaguely recalled some sort of hope surviving for a while. Even a tremor of excitement, just for a short time, at becoming an adult. It happened gradually, he supposed. Awareness rising while determination was pressed down, until they met to form a perfectly flat horizon.
Besides, his future was being shaped even before he was thrown out of school with half an education. He might have inherited his father's business or learnt an uncle's trade. None of his family, though, owned even the humblest enterprise. They were employed by the Forgar workshops. That was the single gift they could give Dryden: an opening at the workshops. And that was all he could pass down to his own children. They still saw their futures as infinite and glowing. Even Stonnie, the eldest, who was starting to learn a few truths about the world and was almost permanently angry as a result. All three still had the vivaciousness which accompanied hope. When each one turned thirteen, Dryden knew he would have to cripple their lives and offer the same measly little gift as compensation. Together with the excuse his father had given him, doubtless learnt from his own father. I had it no better.
Dryden could, however, remember the exact moment when his dismal replica of a career had been capped permanently. Five years ago he was working at the Zierlona carpentry workshop. He was still only a tooth on a cogwheel, one small part of a long assembly line. But he had been at the Zierlona for nearly two decades and had progressed from entirely unskilled tasks to ones requiring a reasonable amount of concentration. Promotion to foreman, the standard reward for capable and loyal workers, was a reasonable aspiration. If granted another year or two, he might have achieved that. One morning, however, he bent down to pick up a chisel. A torrent of agony suddenly flowed down his back. He couldn't straighten up. He was imprisoned in his bed for weeks, unable to walk or stand properly. Even after a partial recovery he was unable to stand bending over all day – the precise position he needed to work on the assembly line.
Zierlona treated him remarkably well, he was told. Most workshops would have fired him immediately. Instead Dryden was allowed to work half-shifts, finding that he could manage about four hours at a time before the pain grew unmanageable. His wages were slashed in twain, of course, and his more routine duties taken over by an apprentice who was paid half that amount. And that was indeed extremely generous by the standards of the Forgar workshops. His bosses could have given him a foreman's job anyway, or any other post which didn't require him to be stood stooping all day. However, that was a little too subtle for men who really were unable to distinguish their workers from saws or hammers. Nor would they ever promote Dryden now. He was still loyal and capable. But he had given them a small problem, a tiny amount of extra work, and they would always resent him for that. Dryden's herbalist told him that two of his vertebrae had somehow fused together. Dryden didn't understand that but it sounded right, for his career had been fixed just as permanently.
He was, of course, unable to stop himself reliving the fateful morning over and over. What if he had never dropped that chisel, he kept wondering. What if he had bent down more carefully to retrieve it. What if… His priestess finally managed to end these hypotheses. The Goddess Ella, she told him, places everyone in their positions. She had meant him to be half-crippled as well as half-educated. What matters is not what one's role is but how one plays it. This also seemed logical to Dryden. He wondered, though, if the priestess thought the theory was any sort of a comfort. Because if true, it meant that absolutely every hope he had ever had was an illusion. The Goddess had marked him out at birth for mediocrity.
The voices in the apartment were growing louder. As often happened nowadays, what had begun as a good natured free-for-all was focussing into a real contest between Morran and Stonnie. He was starting to realise. Stonnie, twelve years old now, was becoming increasingly aware that his parents were not unique and not special. The usual categories could be applied to them, and the usual insults. And Stonnie was sensing that the only ways in which his father differed were failings. Some days Dryden did not leave for work until noon, others he came home for the afternoon. He could not work like other boy's fathers. Because he was weaker than other boy's fathers. He was barely a man and what work he did was really only for pin money. It was Morran who kept the family fed and clothed, Morran with her endless rolls of lace and cloth and her perpetually dancing needle. She was the strong one. Stonnie seemed to appreciate this more with each passing week and his respect for his father shrunk in proportion.
The two voices, one a mannish female one, the other still slightly uneasy with its newly gained masculinity, grew even louder. Dryden detected swear words coming from each. He tensed in irritation. Morran ran the household quite blatantly. She did whatsoever she pleased whereas his own actions – the ones she knew about at least – were expected to be presented for her approval. Yet she still didn't try to control their children properly. She was forever criticising Stonnie, castigating his poor school grades, his eating habits, his foul language and, most especially, his friends. There were no real commands handed out, however. She always let her son answer her back. And when he tested her discipline, as he was doing more and more, she just let it crumble away and finally there always came the shrill cry of:
"Dryden!"
He hauled himself to his feet, grumbling under his breath. Always that cry for the stern father. The appeal to a higher authority which didn't even exist anymore. Perhaps it was her way of indulging him, assuring him that he still had a morsel of power. But he thought it was just the familiar woman's trick to retain her children's love. Father would discipline them; then mother moves in afterwards to dry their tears.
Their two daughters had vanished, doubtless fleeing to their bedroom as usual. Morran and Stonnie were on the other side of the room, their postures betraying the cause of the argument. Morran was barring the doorway, all but clinging to the frame for support. Her son was trying to get past. He looked close to pushing her aside, even striking her down. Dryden thought that one day soon he would. Morran was furious rather than frightened, however, and turned her outraged face to Dryden.
"Did you hear what he just said to me? Did you hear what the little get called me?"
Dryden walked across the room, feeling the peace of the terrace drain away. "What did you call your mum?" he demanded, as sternly as he could.
Stonnie stepped away from the door. Perhaps unconsciously, he kept retreating until his back was against a wall. "Nowt," he mumbled, his head down.
"Don't bloody deny it now," Morran said triumphantly. "You try an' have the guts to admit it."
"I just wanted to go out," Stonnie said, his voice defeated.
"Aye, an' I said you couldn't. Not while you're hanging round that little Marksen thug. An' not till you do your homework for once."
"Don't see what's wrong with Marksen."
"You bloody well know what's wrong with him. Whole neighbourhood does."
"You don't even know him-"
"What did you call your mum?" Dryden repeated.
Stonnie looked up suddenly. His eyes were on a level with his father's, partly because Dryden now had a permanent stoop. He was still thin but muscles were building on his forearms and shoulders. He worked part time stacking crates at a warehouse; and quite a lot of his school hours were spent fighting. And he was still growing. "I called her a fucking bitch!" he shouted. "An' she fucking is for-"
Dryden's arm sprang out. Sometimes he struck his daughters too. Only on the back of their legs, though, only with an open hand. And he held back so much that he was sure they barely felt a thing and only cried because it was expected.
He used to punish Stonnie that way too. Now he balled his fist. Now he struck the boy on the jaw or, in this case, the cheekbone. And he let all his frustration, all his outrage at the injustices, explode through him and power his arm forward.Stonnie's head snapped back. His whole body shuddered back. His shoulders hit the wall and he slid down it to land in an untidy, beaten lump. His eyes were glazed for a moment. Tears then filled them as he gazed up at his father. Dryden looked down at him dispassionately for a second. Then, before the boy could get up or Morran could remonstrate with him, he turned. Before any consequences could reach him, he fled back to the haven of the terrace.

Episode Five

2007-08-12T04:38:00.000-07:00

Cepu Boldan was, Mr Delpess considered, very conservative in certain respects. In particular, he liked a scene to look right. After each job, he and his gang, together with any associates contracted for the work, would meet in the back room of a warehouse. Mr Delpess owned the warehouse himself. To satisfy Boldan's sense of drama he always ensured that it was deserted the evening they gathered and all the windows of the room itself were boarded up. A single table stood in the centre of the room and two candles rested on that. Boldan himself always sat around the table together with those associates not permanently in his gang. Those who he did not trust, in other words. Behind them, a little too near for comfort, were members of Boldan's gang. Another pair waited either side of the room's single door.
For a long time almost all men in the room were statues. They waited mute, eyes transfixed on the one person granted movement. The gang's treasurer, a Kratzan called Menoney who was rumoured to have actually finished school. He too obeyed the conventions for the scene. First he took the great mass of coins from the sacks and bags and arranged them into little piles. Now he was placing the stacks one by one onto a pair of scales, their mass balanced by a weight of ten gold. One pile went on, a mark was made by Menoney's quill onto the balance sheet, off with it and on with another; a series of tiny chinks of metal which echoed through the silent chamber.
Only Menoney was moving yet the others were gradually transforming as they did. As the strokes of ink crawled down the paper, peace spread slowly through the room. The henchmen were becoming more relaxed. Mr Delpess felt his fear change into simple nervousness. He glanced at Boldan as often as he dared and watched amiability creep across even that visage. Boldan had begun to watch the tallying up armed with his usual scowl. When a particular number of strokes were recorded – the break-even point, Mr Delpess guessed – he let the crevices on his skin disappear. As they continued mounting up, he looked as if he might actually smile. And when Menoney finally ended his count, checked and double-checked his figures, Boldan did permit that rare movement to contort his face.
"Nine thousand, two hundred and fifty gold plus change," Boldan repeated. "Not bad, not bad. Thanks Menoney. Thanks everyone. A nice, straightforward job."
He paraded his smile around the room. Aside from Mr Delpess, he himself was the only man whose appearance did not match the scene. Even Menoney tended towards the burley, the unshaven, the lank-haired. Boldan, though, was a squat but tidy man in his early forties with a reassuring air. His clothes were unremarkable but well-cut and he appeared to visit both barber and bathhouse once a day. Cepu 'Blood-Eyes' Boldan looked like a mildly prosperous craftsmen and actually owned eyes which were a pleasant chestnut colour. The picture never reassured Mr Delpess. He had known Boldan for too long. He could remember when the man had been a straightforward thug, before he grabbed control of his gang and refined his image. And he knew Boldan got his nickname by bloodying other people's eyes, usually by inserting a dagger through them; and knew he still had this habit.
"Right," the gang leader continued. "Divvying up. First, Mr Delpess' five per cent as normal."
The man sat opposite Mr Delpess snorted. The landlord hadn't met him before the start of the job and would be happy never meeting him ever again. He was built too solidly, wore too few clothes and smelt a little too strongly. He was only ever referred to as Tatts, presumably because almost every inch of his putrid skin was covered with blue and green decorations. Mr Delpess would also be content if he never learnt the man's true identity.
"Don't see why," Tatts growled. "Fucker weren't even on the fucking job,"
"Mr Delpess gave the info which made the job so nice and straightforward," Boldan said calmly. "He supplied equipment and premises, including the room we're sat in now. He gets five per cent for that. He always does. It's the arrangement."
"Your arrangement. Take it out of your fucking cut, not mine."
"No. He gets five per cent of the total cut. Those are the rules. You were told the rules at the start, Tatts. You want to challenge them now?"
And it was understandable that Boldan was remaining so calm. The rules also said: Tatts was on his own. All the men who mattered in the room worked for Boldan. They mattered because they were now stood even closer behind Tatts, opening their cloaks, resting their hands on their swords and crossbows, awaiting the next instructions from their boss. Tatts only turned his head half an inch but must have seen enough.
"Guess it's OK," he said reluctantly.
"Good." Boldan smiled again. "I wouldn't like any of that 'thieves fall out' crap kicking in. Makes me tired that. Bad for business. So," he continued, slamming a bottle of wine onto the table, "Let's all have a drink. Celebrate together. Show that we're all still mates."
Tatts continued looking unhappy. No doubt he had heard the stories. Of Boldan's fondness for having a drink with his associates during the tallying up after a job. And of Boldan's habit of putting something into the wine of any associates he thought might become problematic. Mr Delpess had heard the tales too. He also knew they were true because once a man sitting right next to him had keeled over suddenly, purple face gasping for a breath which wouldn't come. Nonetheless, he drank from his own beaker without hesitation. Boldan was, amongst other things, frugal. He wouldn't waste poison. And if he decided to just cut Mr Delpess in half then there wouldn't be much he, Mr Delpess, could do to pause the event.
"There you go, sir." Boldan slid a very full bag of gold across the table towards him. "Thanks again for your help."
"And thank you, Mr Boldan." The landlord clutched the bag, feeling the hard, jagged coins. He reminded himself that this was worth the terrors, the dangers, the revulsion.
"Do Tatts' next, Menoney. He looks like he's eager for it. How's the reco going for the next job?" Boldan asked Mr Delpess.
"Proceeding very well, Mr Boldan. I'll have my recommendation and a nice full file to you by the end of the week, just as you asked."
"Which one is it likely to be?"
"Down to a short list of two now, the wagon train and the jewellers. And I imagine it will be the jewellers because while the security looks tighter there, I know of our fondness for targets which stay in one place."
"So let's hit the fucking jewellers," Tatts snapped. "Let's hit it tomorrow. Why all this pissing about?"
"That would be preparation and reconnaissance," Boldan replied, his tone growing dangerously courteous again. "All that 'pissing about.' That's what made this last job so easy."
"Dunno what were so fucking easy about it."
"Yeah?" Boldan looked around. "Lads? You said there weren't any problems."
"Floor got a bit slippy," a man standing directly behind Tatts smirked, "When Tatts here crapped himself."
Tatts spun round and leapt up with remarkable speed to confront the man. Not fast enough, however. And the hands which had rested casually on hilts and bows were now gripping them, pulling them free of belts. Tatts froze. Mr Delpess did as well. He was not really worried, though, not even for Tatts' safety. Because Boldan was still controlling the scene; and Boldan bellowed instantly,
"For fucks sake, you lot. What did I say one bloody minute ago about thieves bloody falling out? Quit it. You want to carry on like this, piss off and join the bloody apes over in Southmarket. Tatts, sit down. And Rollo," he snapped at the man who had allegedly slipped on faeces, "Wipe that off and shut it. You're not funny."
Tatts subsided. Rollo muttered a "Sorry, boss," but continued to smirk, knowing he had not really been chastised. Boldan pretended they were a professional unit but they were still only really a street gang writ large. Quick to squabble amongst themselves but always closing ranks against outsiders. Thinking how Boldan had taken his side against Tatts, Mr Delpess supposed that he was more or less considered one of them now. The notion left an ambiguous taste.
"And here's your cut, Tatts. Nice doing business with you. Let's stay in touch."
"Yeah. Right." Still apparently no happier, Tatts grabbed the money bag, made another abrupt rise and strode away. Mr Delpess watched the man guarding the door glance at his leader. Then he turned back to Boldan who, after a moment, nodded. Mr Delpess released a breath he hadn't been aware of holding. Yes, the nod proclaimed, Tatts is allowed to leave the room alive. The door was held open for him with mock-courtesy and slammed shut.
"So you'll get us the file by the end of the week, Mr Delpess," Boldan said.
Realising that he was being dismissed too, the landlord began a more circumspect departure. "Of course, Mr Boldan, of course. No hitches whatsoever anticipated, oh no."
"You had any other problems? No more fucking chancers knocking on your door asking for protection money?"
"Oh no. Your visit to those two scamps the other week has spread the word that I've all the protection I could ever need."
"Should fucking well think so. Little shitehawks. There's rules in Jakks Way, isn't that right."
"And where would any of us be without rules, Mr Boldan?"
"How's things in general? You taken on any interesting new tenants lately."
Mr Delpess sighed inwardly. He wouldn't have mentioned them otherwise, he told his conscience. Or: he probably wouldn't have. Boldan had asked him, however. If he stayed silent now, if Boldan found out anyway – which he almost certainly would – then he would be committing a deception. There were many actions which one didn't attempt around Boldan and one was to try and lie to him.
"One very interesting couple, yes, just took up a lease at No 5 Jakks Way. They call themselves Radav and Yaxi Tanson." And Mr Delpess imparted the very few things which he knew about them, and the rather larger number he had guessed. Boldan sat back frowning.
"The names ring a bell somewhere. Anyone know anything?" he asked the room in general. Silence answered him. "No fucking surprises there. They asked about the scene here?"
"Showed a remarkable lack of curiosity about their new home, Mr Boldan."
"Well, that doesn't mean anything. Could be that they already know. They're definitely players, you'd say."
"I imagine they have played with the highest stakes available, Mr Boldan."
"OK," Boldan nodded. "Get back to your homework now. And when you've finished that, I might want a new file. One on these new tenants of yours."

Episode Four

2007-08-11T05:37:00.000-07:00

Yaxi, when she opened her door, came as a surprise to Morran. The near-black skin was there as described by Mr Dreyess, the sable, wavy hair, the broad shoulders. Morran had been expecting a fearsome warrior in riding leathers, however. Not one wearing an old, flowery gown with hair cascading town in a tangled waterfall. And who gave Morran a brief but entirely welcoming grin.
"Hey."
"Er, morning," Morran said, still nervous. "I'm Morran Heppac. I… er, I live in this building too. Next floor down, a couple of doors along, I think."
"Hey. Yaxi Tanson. I live here."
"Yeah. An' I thought I'd, like, pop my head in to say How Do. An' see if you were settling in OK."
The grin appeared again, more mischievous this time. "And to, you know, see who we are and get what I'm told is called in these parts a reet good gawp?"
"Er, yeah. I guess."
"Come in." Yaxi stepped back and closed the door. Morran took a quick but thorough glance around the living room. It was twice the size of her own and contained maybe a third of the possessions. The few items of furniture which did exist appeared to be brand new. The one exception was a large travelling chest by a wall, battered and stained almost to the point of parody. As Yaxi walked further in, Morran noticed how badly she was limping. She was surprised; this detail had failed to make it onto the gossip circuits. "You're the first to call by, actually," Yaxi continued, "Which kind of amazed me. I was starting to think nobody was interested in us."
"Oh no. We're interested all right."
Radav wandered out of the bedroom, wearing a faded shirt and an absurd pair of pale pink pantaloons. Morran had the feeling that, though it was nearly midday, she had got the couple out of bed. "One of the nosy neighbours," Yaxi explained after making introductions. "But she's quite up-front about being nosy so I guess that's OK. You want to sit out on the terrace?"
"Aye, ta," Morran smiled. "Be nice on a day like today."
"Radi," Yaxi said as she hobbled across the room, "Why don't you be a star and fix us some refreshments?"
"Summit wrong with you doing that?" Radav demanded truculently, though he was already heading for the kitchen nook.
"No, I think the phrase should have been, 'You break your legs or summit?' To which the answer, of course, is 'Oh boy, yes, in spades.'"
"Aye, OK. If you don't mind the neighbours thinking I've turned into a pansy boy."
"If the cap fits, hon, if the cap fits." Out on the terrace Yaxi fell gratefully into a cane chair, waving Morran into another.
"You've got him trained well," Morran smiled.
"He's adjusting. We're both, you know, having to adjust a bit."
"That a…" Morran waved vaguely at Yaxi's crooked leg. "That recent?"
"About six months ago now. But you'd better believe, it's not getting any better."
"You never know. We've got a decent herbalist nearby. Smithson. Mind you, he limps pretty bad himself. Was born with it, I think."
"Well, I know quite a heap about herbs myself. Radav does too. And we've tried everything there is to try and can pretty definitely say: this baby is here to stay." Yaxi shrugged. "You know, that's the cards you get."
"You mind if I ask..?"
"A castle gateway fell on it."
Morran gaped at her. "What, a whole gateway?"
"Well, all of it didn't land on my leg. Just, you know, a significant enough percentage. In the gateway's defence, I don't think it was aiming for me. I just kind of happened to be in the way."
"Hell. That's awful. This happen in the Cities?"
"No, not in the Cities. And it should also be said, the gateway wasn't the only thing falling down at the time. The whole of the castle was really. It's just that while we got out of the rest of it before that happened, the gateway was proverbial last hurdle I couldn't quite manage."
"A damn castle fell down. Where the hell was this?"
"Oh, you know. That place where the castle fell down."
"But what made it?"
"Well, to be totally honest, we kind of did. So I really don't have any cause to whine about some of it landing on me."
Morran stared, trying to decide if Yaxi's half-smile meant that she was joking. "You saying you knocked a castle down?"
"We-e-e-ll… we sort of removed the thing that was keeping it upright."
"What, like the cement or summit?"
"Yeah, I guess it was like the cement or summit." Radav stepped out onto the terrace carrying fruit cordials. "But we won't talk about it in front of the husband, if that's OK," Yaxi continued. "He's heard the story a few times before."
"I were there, remember."
"Oh yeah, hon, and you were a terrific help."
"Tried kissing it better, didn't I?" Radav said over his shoulder as he stomped indoors again. Morran received the impression of a couple who expressed their love mostly through bickering and mockery, and warmed towards them.
"That the sort of thing you normally do then?" she asked cautiously.
"No, not out of habit," Yaxi smiled. "And I think I can definitely declare us retired from the castle demolition business. You know, for a while at least." She took a long draught. "Orange and lime with just a touch of ginger. Say what you want but I think the man's a genius."
Morran sipped her cordial and rather agreed. "What you planning on doing here then? For a living, I mean?"
"Kind of not a lot for a while. Chilling. We've only just got up and, while we won't be going to such extremes every day, I don't think this'll be the only one."
"Yeah? Nice if you can afford it."
"Well, we can for a while. We've got a few savings to live on. So I guess for the next month or so we'll be kind of the idle rich."
"Don't get many of them settling here in Jakks Way."
"I know, but you sort of don't have to be as rich to live here, do you? So you can get away with being so, so more idle."
Morran studied Yaxi's face for a moment. Though illuminated perfectly by the harsh noon sunlight, it was impossible to read. "Well, when you're done with that…" she began carefully. "My husband Dryden works at the Zierlona carpenters up in Forgar. When his back lets him, that is. Lots of the folks round here are at one or other of the Forgar workshops. They treat you like shit but the wages are steady. So that could be summit your Radav might look into. I need to be home more, got kids to look after, the flat to clean an' so on. So I take in stitching, lacework mostly. There's always contractors looking for new seamstresses. Brings in a decent living if you can make the time. You with your leg like that, could be summit you take up. This the sort of thing you two have done in the past?"
"Conveyor belt assembly work and seamstressing?" Yaxi asked, raising her eyebrows. "Well, no, frankly. But hey, we're not ones to block off new avenues without having a peer down them first."
Morran laughed. "Fair enough. Your bloke's a local boy but you're from East Zabrial, I hear. That right?"
Yaxi nodded. "City of Mermaids, according to our landlord. Nice to hear some still calling it that rather than, you know, City of Psycho Headbanging Rebels or something."
"Yeah, we're getting more an' more coming here from East Zabrial, running from the troubles down there. That why you leave too?"
"Well, not so much. I left a way long time before that wagon had really got up to speed."
"Because of your man in there then?"
"Hm." Yaxi frowned. "Not really. I guess it would be because of 'my man in there' that I've not really missed it and so not wanted to go back to live."
"What made you first leave then? Work?"
"No. Force."
"What?"
"Force," Yaxi repeated in the same neutral tone, "Made me first leave." Morran blinked at her.
"What kind of force?"
"Well, that would be physical force."
Morran made one more attempt to interpret the calm, still figure. She failed; and, almost unprecedented for her, she was unable to find the courage to pry any further. Her laugh this time was a nervous one. "OK, I'll shut my gob for now. Good answers, by the way. Not really dodging but still leaving me wanting more."
"Hey, thanks. And thanks for a pretty civil interrogation too. There was some seriously subtle stuff going on at times there."
"Well, this is the Cities. We do stuff civil here. Sometimes. By the way… You got my husband's name. Dryden. He were my first husband but not my first love, buy me a few drinks one night an' I'll tell you about the others. I've three kids still alive, one age fourteen, one ten an' one eight now. I were born in the Cities, my folks were too but I think the family's from up Sharsaw way originally. We worship the Goddess Ella but I just mean go to temple once a week, I don't mean worship worship." Morran paused. "Right, that's the basics. Owt else you want to know."
"Is there anyone we shouldn't be making fun of in your presence?"
"Foreigners," Morran said instantly. "Especially Notrufans. Not that they are foreigners but they might as well be here. The old bloody one about the only reason Notrufans come to the Cities. Sick to my stomach with it all."
"Well, I've so never felt tempted to make fun of the good Province of Notruf, but I'll make sure I resist if it comes."
"Not that I'm Notrufan myself, like I said. But my mate Zesheyek, is an' she's treated like shit sometimes. I'll introduce you to Zesheyek. Lovely lass. I'd have brought her here today but I wanted to check you weren't a couple of psychos. No offence."
"None taken. And let's be honest, you've kind of not really found out that weren't not, have you?"
Morran abruptly exploded into laughter, the strangeness of the situation and the deadpan wit of the answers making something erupt inside her. Yaxi laughed for a second too, she noticed, but no longer. "Naw, I reckon you're all right. Owt else you want to know? About the neighbourhood?"
"Do you guys really stab each other at the Last Drop Inn every Saturday night?"
"You got that from Delpess too, I'm thinking. Well, I dunno what his mates get up to an' I don't want to. The Last Drop's OK. Worst thing that happens most Saturday s is a bunch of drunks singing bloody awful folk songs an' pinching the barmaid's bum."
"Sounds like my kind of place."
Morran stood up. "I'd best be off, if you don't mind. Tons of stuff to do, like always. Glad we did this. You two likely to accept an invite to dinner sometime soon? Say no if you want. My kids can be pretty rowdy."
"You know, you'd be seriously amazed what conditions we'd put up with if there's free food involved. See you later then. Radav'll see you out if you don't mind. Radi!" Yaxi hollered, then when he appeared, "You fancy doing the good host deal, showing our guest out and check she hasn't lifted any spoons."
Radav glared down at her. "Aye. OK. You hurt your leg by any chance?"
"Good guess. Hey, did you see that?" she crowed after Radav had escorted Morran out and returned to the terrace. "And don't pretend you didn't. I so know you were eavesdropping like a nosy old woman. Do I rule or what? The neighbourhood hath spake and it said: I'm all right. I'll tell you what else I am. I'm a goddess."
"You're a bloody headcase, that's what," Radav countered churlishly. "What were all that about knocking a castle down?"
"Well? We kind of did, didn't we?"
"That's no bloody reason to… We agreed. We'd slip in an' live quietly for a bit. Sometimes that seems like the only bit of the stuff we agreed that makes sense. An' now you-"
Yaxi sighed theatrically. "You know, I'm going to buy us a mirror tomorrow so you can take a good look in it and decide if we'd, you know, ever look like a couple of normal dudes. We could burn my bow and all my arrows instead of just hiding them under the bed, we could melt down your sword and all your knives and that card was never coming up. We look like a couple of highway bandits. Deal with it. My way of dealing is to get us some allies. That Morran woman looks like she could be one and I've made one hell of a start and that, hon, is why you should be worshipping at my feet right now." Yaxi paused, then added, "Hey, what is the old one about the only reason Notrufans come to the Cities?"
"I dunno. We're in the Province of Dorlaf here, ain't we? Notruf is the Province to the south-west-"
"Yeah, thanks, I kind of was still in school when I was five. So I don't need the lecture about how Notruf and Gesund are in the south-west, Zabrial's to the south-east, Dorlaf, Elsey and Kratz are the central Provinces and Schall's up to the north. And how they all used to be separate kingdoms before uniting to form the shiny, smiley Confederacy of Christoté. Just tell me the old one about why Notrufans come to the Cities."
"I dunno, do I?" Radav said. "Notruf's got no money. Place always has been a shitehole. Maybe they all come here to get work."
"That's the joke? Economic factors, arf arf arf?"
"You're in a hell of a mood all of a sudden."
"Well, you're not worshipping at my feet," Yaxi pointed out."
"You'd only be whingeing about me hurting your bad leg if I were."
"Did you hear, they've got a kick-ass herbalist here only he can't cure his own bad leg? I so want to meet him. Find out if he goes around crying 'Oh! The irony!' as much as me."
"If you find someone to swap bad leg stories with, that's it. I'm bloody leaving you. Actually, that could be it. Divorce. Women can't divorce men in Notruf, I hear. Only the other way round. So they all charge up here to do it."
"Yeah? Still not the greatest gag in the world, is it."
"That kind of joke ain't meant to be funny." Radav frowned at his wife. "'What made you leave East Zabrial?' 'Force.'"
"Well? It did, didn't it?"

Episode Three

2007-08-09T11:00:00.000-07:00

While Golting was marvelling at Mrs Copson's memory for honest landlords, Morran was trying to catch up to Zesheyek. Her friend was already on the fringes of the market and heading back into the street of Jakks Way. "Zesh, don't let her get to you," Morran called out. "She's just a silly old cow."
"I know, I know. But-"
"She weren't even laying into Notrufans that time. Give her that much."
"She meant us though," Zesheyek insisted. "You know she did."
"Well, yeah-" Morran began.
"It was like what she said the other day. 'All come crawling here from Notruf and Gesund and the rest of the Provinces and you know they're only after one thing.' As if she's any idea why I moved here."
"Well, in fairness, you've never told her."
"What's it got to do with her? She isn't anybody, is she? She's just some nasty old busybody."
"Aye, OK. So don't-"
Zesheyek stopped walking abruptly, her face twisting with pain. Morran caught her arm and studied her carefully. "Don't get worked up, I were about to say," she continued gently. "Here, sit down for a sec. Breath deep."
"No, it's…" Zesheyek gave a weak smile. "I'm fine. He was just kicking again, that's all."
Morran noted again how Zesheyek always assumed the gender of her unborn child. "Aye, I remember that. First time it's magic. Hundred and fiftieth time it's, all right you little bugger, give it a rest."
Zesheyek managed a more convincing smile this time though didn't start walking again immediately. By chance they had stopped between their two tenement blocks, facing Morran's. Morran scanned the windows, eyes flitting across her own for a second, wondering which held the latest arrivals. "Mind you, that old cow could be right about the new couple being trouble. If Delpess says they are. 'Cause there's a bloke who knows what trouble smells like. An' goes out drinking with it half the time." After a pause Morran announced, "Maybe I'll know on their door myself some time soon. Give 'em a bit of a look over."
"Hell, is that sensible? If they really might be dangerous-"
"I know every person in my building, at least by sight. It's my home. I don't go hiding behind my door for anyone." At that moment Morran's composure was shattered by a trio of boys who ran past shrieking. One of them caught her elbow and almost knocked her over. "'Ey, you little bugger!" she called after them.
One of the boys stopped and whirled around. "Fuck off you fat old bat," he shouted, making his two companions scream with laughter.
"You what?" Morran bellowed back, apparently enraged beyond all measure. "You come back here an' say that, you little sod." She began a helpless pursuit of the boys as they scampered away again. "I know who you are, Tomas Morric. I'm coming to your house tonight an' I'm getting your dad to kick your arse for you. Same for you, Ses Wetteran. An' as for you, whoever you are, you better not show your face round here again. Get your bloody arses back here now…"
Zesheyek waved a farewell to her friend and slipped quietly into her own building. Morran, she knew, was enjoying the confrontation almost as much as the boys. Their trips out together tended to involve a high-volume argument with somebody. Afterwards the older woman would be energised, eyes shining and face glowing happily. Zesheyek was still a stranger to the Triple Cities, however. There were many local ways she could not understand and one was the apparent pleasure in making a spectacle of yourself in the middle of a public byway.
Though they faced one another, Zesheyek and Morran's apartment blocks were very different. Morran's was almost as good as the owner of most of its flats, Mr Delpess, claimed. It was barely a decade old, built in 1323; and its freshness was not important simply because it meant the fixtures hadn't had time to start rotting. By the 1320's, in the Cities at least, the idea had spread that even poor housing should not be laughably unstable, inflammable, unhygienic or generally unliveable. It was a notion which germinated hesitantly. For most of the history of the Cities, its rulers were content for many poor houses to fall down regularly, others to catch fire almost as often; for the inhabitants to be periodically wiped out by plagues and the survivors to do something called, for want of a better word, living in lightless, damp boxes. The residents themselves grew a little weary of this, however. Eventually they expressed their displeasure enough times to the politicians through ballot boxes and to the landlords by more informal means. Improvements were slow to emerge, of course, always held back by greed and indolence. But by 1334 there existed structures which were palaces by the standards of the old working class districts. In the new tenement blocks, apartments like the one Yaxi and Radav had just rented were top of the range. A family like Morran's, though, with approximately one and a half reasonable incomes earned by various means, could afford a flat reasonably spacious, warm, dry and safe.
The old monstrosities were not cleared, however. It was assumed, logically enough, that they would eventually all fall or burn down and could be replaced then. In the meantime they were dumping grounds for couples like Zesheyek and Kriyas. Their block was one of the old mansion houses. Belonging to the idealism of the first years of the Triple Cities, which fled north-west with the aristocracy and left their old houses to be covered in grime externally and partitioned up a hundredfold internally. Zesheyek had been told that her tiny third story flat had probably once been part of the master bedroom. Where she and her husband now lived was perhaps previously occupied by one of Christoté's founding fathers. Maybe; but the damp, the lice, the bare stone walls and the mouldering roof beams only ever inspired images of the meanest servants' quarters.
There was a range of sorts to cook on, Zesheyek told herself. And there was just enough room for a tiny dining table at one end of the room, a bed at the other. They could live there for now. When the baby came… But she thrust that worry to the back of her mind, along with all the other travails which would accompany the birth of her first son. For the moment, she would have to make do. Zesheyek was used to making do. While the memories of her old home were becoming more roseate every day, the reality was a tiny, odiferous cottage, itself only two steps from collapse and springing a dozen leaks whenever the rains came. She was from a peasant family in Notruf, the Christotan Province which treated peasants the worst of all; and one shackled to a baron who perhaps treated his tenants the least equitably in all Notruf. There had been several reasons for them to leave home and one was that home itself.
But she had been able to look out of the window, she remembered wistfully, and see the fields. Undulating gently until they rose to the line of quietly beautiful hills on the horizon. She had been able to steal half hours to walk the lanes, moments to immerse herself in the undemanding chorus of nature and to feel truly free. Here it seemed impossible to escape the harsh blare and glare of the Cities, however far she walked or gazed. Her old cottage had a proper range; a source of comfort in the winter, a focal point for the whole household. A place where true cooking could be managed too, not the thing she had now which was essentially just a hole in the wall. And they had a tiny patch of land at home, grew pumpkins and potatoes and swedes in it. Everything had to be bought in the Cities; everything dragged down their flimsy rope of fortune which rested permanently just above disaster. They made constant sacrifices just for produce which always seemed battered, tasteless, somehow lifeless. Zesheyek tried as hard as she could but saw the disappointment in her husband's eyes with every meal she put on his table. She was failing him. She was waiting for him to say so and wondered if she would have the courage for the rebuttal: this is your fault.
The dinner, another stew heavily spiced to try and hide the deadness, was just coming to the boil when Kriyas arrived home. The timing was rarely so fortuitous. He could often be late, sometimes not returning until midnight, so she had to find meals which could be left to simmer. Zesheyek didn't know what delayed him or even what his job in Forgar actually was. She never asked him. It brought wages and that was enough for her. Kriyas kissed her dutifully, pulled off his boots and sat at the table. Although on time, he looked as exhausted as always. She ladled the stew into a metal tureen, replaced the lid and put it in the middle of the table. She cut them both a piece of bread. Kriyas murmured the Ode To Evening. They both ate a single mouthful of bread. Afterwards Kriyas spoke the Ode To The Spirits, sprinkling a circle of dust around the tureen as he did so. Finally they both recited the Ode Of Thanksgiving, alternating between its six verses. Only then was Zesheyek permitted to remove the tureen lid and spoon out the stew.
All were prayers to the God Garrath. The Garran faith was followed by nearly half the Triple Cities. Yet the only ones who performed the same dinner rituals, the night rituals, the morning rituals, were also from Notruf. Many 'worshippers' did nothing at all, of course, but the pious locals performed rites which Zesheyek had never previously heard of. She was still trying to adjust to the alien services held at her local Garran chapel. She felt she belonged to an entirely different church, just as the whole notion of Notruf being in the same country as the Cities appeared a fallacy. Maybe this was, as Morran kept assuring her, merely a period of adjustment. And maybe she would come to appreciate the supposed compensations of Cities living over time – the freedom to say what she wanted to abuse her betters to their faces, to visit libraries of books which she couldn't read and theatres performing plays which she couldn't understand. Maybe, as both she and Kriyas had tentatively suggested before their journey began, they would wanted to stay permanently after their mission was completed. Maybe: but right now Zesheyek wanted to run home as soon as she could and spend the rest of her life trying to expunge memories of this inferno.
The stew was disgusting. Zesheyek didn't think she had cooked a good meal since coming to the Cities. She watched revulsion crease her husband's face as he ate. He always seemed on the boundary of making that complaint. Would he ever find the valour, she wondered. And would she for the riposte. The meals, the rotting vegetables and the stale meat and the inadequate hearth – it's not me. This is your fault.
When she calmed again, however, she reminded herself that timidity alone wasn't stopping the complaint. Kriyas could make do as well. He was polite and stoical and considerate; the three qualities which she always boasted about to others. He rarely said anything during a meal either, and neither did she. They were ill-suited as a couple, really, because they were too alike rather than too dissimilar. Both introverted, both quiet, both shy. And they hadn't known each other especially well before the wedding and seemed unable, for all the trials they had shared, to move closer together. Only when he was wiping up the dregs of his stew with his stale bread did he say,
"I saw the Morran woman outside. She mentioned you'd been to the market together again."
Zesheyek nodded. "She's a help when I go shopping. She stops me getting cheated."
"You see a lot of her, don't you?"
There was a rebuke there, Zesheyek decided, but Kriyas hadn't been able to get the tone quite right. Somewhat defensively, she replied, "She's been a good friend to me. I think she's a good woman."
"I'm sure she is," Kriyas frowned. He's young too, Zesheyek reminded herself, and just as inexperienced. A farm boy and a farm girl. And he was just as bewildered by the Cities as she was. They had first met Morran the day they arrived. The elder woman had been bawling across the street, requesting somebody to "Tell your damn Baron of Dorlaf to shove his legislation up a dark, warm passage." Then Morran spotted them and, with pause to change gears, greeted them with a cheerful "Always nice to meet new faces." Women in Notruf were not all, despite the stereotype, meek and subdued. They did not shout in the street, however, and certainly did not shout political statements. Not the ones who were 'good' at least. Searching for a safe comment, Kriyas finally managed,
"Maybe we should have her here for a meal some time. With her family, of course."
"We should probably go to hers first. If you like. I told you that she asked."
"Is that the custom here? The newcomers visit the hosts?"
"I don't know. I think it just depends who asks first."
"All right," Kriyas nodded. Zesheyek cleared the table and washed the utensils as best she could in a barrel of grimy water. Kriyas sat back and lit his pipe. Fed, at leisure, smoke ghosting out of his nostrils and his woman working around him, he almost looked like a proper head of a household. He almost looked grown up. He seemed to sense the façade and draw strength from it. His next comment was, "I'm glad you've found a friend. But you shouldn't get too close to her."
"I won't."
"Remember, these aren't our people."
"I know."
"And no-one must know why we're here. Not till the time comes. You've remembered that, haven't you?"
"Yes. Of course," Zesheyek said. She hoped the meekness in her tone would mask the guilt. One secret begat another begat another. And now the very best conversations, the only ones she could hope for, were like the last exchange. With questions phrased so that she could avoid answering with a direct lie.

Episode Two

2007-07-29T07:41:00.000-07:00

Central Jalkin, they say, is a beast which had a short life, died and was resurrected. As an entirely different creature but equally, perhaps more, alive.
Its first life started in the early eleventh century. When Jalkin was built almost from nothing, as was Forgar, and Yaleth was expanded. The greatest construction project ever inflicted upon a weary world which, in only a few decades, created the Triple Cities. The brand new capital of a brand new country, Christoté. Although it wasn't, then, really a country as such. It was instead seven rather old counties welded together into an uneasy federation. It was trying to become a proper country, however, and by creating this brand new capital it could at least project the image of one.
The Triple Cities created a fine illusion too. Central Jalkin especially; streets such as Jakks Way and Federation Road were refine avenues lined with stately mansions. A place of parks and statues, an elegant home for the new rulers of this proto-nation. Mistletoe Square, a diamond-shaped plaza where Federation Road and Jakks Way meet, encapsulated the spirit of central Jalkin. Two impressive statues stood there. One of Tars Tukas, the legendary founder of Christoté; the other an opaque and allegorical sculpture representing Freedom, Dignity, Labour and any other virtue which Tukas' new toy was trying to epitomise.
Christoté worked a little too well, however. Agriculture, trade and industry soon flourished. As they did, the Triple Cities grew and grew. It attracted a great many people who were emphatically not the rulers of any country. The residents of Jakks Way noticed that their streets were getting choked with wagons, their houses were ringed by workshops and taverns, everything was becoming noisy and everything was starting to smell. Eventually they fled to the north-west corner of Jalkin, and made sure this quarter would stay refined and wouldn't become surrounded again. What happened to central Jalkin was like a sedate, slow-motion Storming Of The Palace. The impoverished new immigrants flooded in. The mansions were either razed and rebuilt as tenement blocks or simply partitioned into a thousand flats. The avenues ceased being avenues; their trees quickly fell victim to the incessant need for fuel. An equally strong taste for convenient dressed stone also gulped up most of the statues. By the start of the 1200's nothing remained of the allegory in Mistletoe Square save a single leg. Tars Tukas was deemed a little too sacred to be demolished so thoroughly. But even he had lost his sword arm, and the charger he rode was a strange beast with two legs and no tail.
Some claim the end of the wrecking of the central Jalkin statues marked the birth of true civic pride. The 1200's saw government programs lift areas like Jakks Way out of real poverty. Though remaining poor they were no longer slum districts, and the residents could acquire other priorities beyond simple survival. A distinct culture started to emerge, a sense of dignity and belonging. Jakks Way started to feel like a real home, a place both unique and connected to the rest of the Triple Cities. And so the wholescale demolition of this home was no longer encouraged. Other writers simply argue that better barges, better waterways and better quarries meant the hunger for stone could be sated more easily elsewhere. Whatever, the same structures which stood in Mistletoe Square in 1200 still watched the plaza in 1334. A disabled Tars Tukas astride a crippled stallion; a single leg somehow containing all mankind's greatest virtues.
They watched the square become even noisier, even dirtier and even more alive; a place to gossip and laugh and greet friendly faces and continue comfortable vendettas. They also watched it, with the inevitability of a dip in the ground during a storm, fill up with traders and stalls. The exotic ones during carnival times; the card trick artists profiting from mankind's invincible optimism, the sequinned old women forecasting unlikely futures, the self-proclaimed wizards peddling gold-painted amulets and strange beakers full of dyed water. But proper stalls the rest of the year, selling the basic goods which allowed Jakks Way to function. Always damn stalls, Tars Tukas may have groaned, and the damn traders with their monotone calls. He could also have noted that Mistletoe Square only had a license to hold a market once a week, and that Guardsmen would stroll unconcerned between the stalls on the other six days. And if Tars Tukas was weary of traders in general, one face he must have been particularly tired of was Golting's.
Golting was a rarity amongst the Mistletoe Square traders. Golting, in fact, was an aristocrat to them. He had a permanent pitch. The craters he assembled his wares up on were crude and decaying the banner announcing Golting's Groceries had enjoyed better decades; though, thanks to the crudity of the needlework, not enjoyed them greatly. But Golting could arrive each morning knowing no rival businessman would be allowed to steal his spot. They had, at best, set up stall next door and try to steal his customers. Golting had been coming to Mistletoe Square with this security for twenty five years. His banner announced that the Goltings had been trading in Jalkin for two centuries. If this was true it was a happy coincidence, for he had invented the fact one evening. He was nonetheless an established part of the local scenery, as fixed as the buildings and more secure than many of them.
Mainly he sold, as his alliterative banner announced, fruit and vegetables. Basic produce bought from the surrounding farms; maybe some more exotic wares from the caravans if he was feeling ambitious. Few Cities traders only peddle one type of goods, however. Golting always had a few trinkets, cheap and flashy pieces to attract any impulsive housewives. A few toys as well, in case any had children they wanted to quieten down. And Golting could, on request, get hold of many other items; more expensive ones, though generally sold far below their standard retail price. Legally? He would shrug happily if asked. He could honestly claim that he had never stolen himself, nor sold an item he had seen been stolen. His conscience thus appeased, he could indulge the pastime much loved by street traders – passing judgement on others.
"Both looked like they'd be right at home in a bar fight, Mr Delpess said," he claimed happily, weighing out a small bag of carrots. "Wouldn't turn his back on either of them for a second, he claimed."
Morran snorted. "Aye, well, I wouldn't turn my back on Mr Delpess in a hurry. Not if I'd owt in my purse."
"An' he said they were from East Zabrial?" Mrs Cobson demanded.
"Just the lass. Black as your boots by all accounts. The lad's from these parts, least, that's the story. Now, anything else for you today, love?" Golting asked Zesheyek. She was his only actual customer at that moment. Yet the only time he spoke to her, rather than the other two women, was to conduct business. Not through hostility, for he rather cared for Zesheyek. She was simply very easy to overlook. Small, young and very dark, she was quite pretty in a meek sort of way and haggard in an understated style. She looked at the ground a great deal and moved in rapid bursts. When people did notice her they tended to only see her belly, which was being turned rotund by the child inside it, and completely overlook the lady attached.
"Half a pound of swedes, please," she said in her usual semi-whisper.
"Place is filling up with them Zabric," Mrs Cobson sniffed. "Soon be no room for the rest of us. An' they'll bring trouble, you watch and see. These new ones are in your building, Morran. What d'you reckon to 'em?"
"Ain't seen 'em yet. If they held a house warming, I never got the invite."
"You must've seen 'em moving in."
"Nope. Reckon they slipped in right in the middle of the night."
Mrs Cobson snorted. "Well, I call that mighty suspicious. What's that about?"
"Probably didn't want nosy cows like us gawping at their privates," Morran said happily. Zesheyek looked foreign and out of place. Morran and Mrs Cobson were both natives and carried all the corresponding confidence in their stature. They looked, in fact, like caricatures of Triple Cities women at different stages of life. Morran was just entering middle age, somewhat stout, a little battered, but retaining some traces of a vivacious girl. Mrs Cobson was elderly , bent, almost spherical, her once-brown skin now silver and her skin the texture of a walnut. Maybe there really was no difference except age. And over time Morran's genial air would shrivel into Mrs Cobson's aura of suspicious pessimism.
"And that Mr Delpess didn't trust 'em?" the latter asked Golting.
"Nope. That all, love? That'll be, let's see, one brass, two copper, one harcopper altogether. Thank you very much. Nope, said they seemed a friendly enough couple but he wouldn't be surprised if they've got half a million Guards warrants out on 'em."
"Didn't stop him renting the flat out to 'em, I note," Mrs Cobson said grimly.
"Bloke's got to earn a living, I suppose."
This time the elderly woman snorted. "I recall when this were a respectable district. You knew everyone. You knew their families an' where they all came from. Now there's all sorts coming in, strangers from all over. An' you know where part of the problem lies? Landlords like that Mr Delpess renting out without asking the whys an' hows."
Morran glanced at Zesheyek and sighed heavily. "We're starting again are we, Mrs Cobson?"
"You laugh if you want. The way things are going, it won't be long before true locals like me an' you stand out. Won't be long before we're pushed out. There's folks arriving each day by the bucketful from East Zabrial. From Erenland. From… from everywhere. They all bring problems with 'em. You tell me that they don't. Getting so we can hardly tell we're in the Cities anymore."
"Bye, Mr Golting," Zesheyek said abruptly and strode off. Morran repeated the farewell and hurried after her friend; although she, like Zesheyek, didn't actually know if Golting was his first or second name."
"Bye, ladies," he called after them. "See you again. You both have a fine day. Now that wasn't too diplomatic," he said to Mrs Cobson in the closest he came to a low voice and a critical tone. "You know that young Zesheyek's from Notruf herself."
"Hm. Well, I do believe this is the land of free speech. An' it's gonna stay that way, least till the Notrufans an' the Zabric take over completely."
"Still, maybe show a bit more grace to a different skin an' a different face? That Zesheyek, now, she's as well-mannered a young lass as you could wish to meet. No stink on her husband either."
"I guess," Mrs Cobson said reluctantly. "If you can trust 'em… But that new couple, now, they sound like they'll be some trouble. Mr Delpess knows that an' still he lands 'em on us. It's typical. You know, Golting, I recall the time when landlords behaved with a bit of responsibility.""Then you can remember a lot further back than me," Golting said cheerfully. "Oh boy, you've got one hell of a memory indeed."

Episode One

2007-07-28T08:33:00.000-07:00

"… and you'll feel how lovely and cool the bedroom is too, even on a day like today," the landlord continued in his cracked but relentless voice. "Windows a bit small there, many sorrows for that, but in a climate like we have you want shade more than you want sunshine indoors, isn't that so? But for the winter months, you've doubtless noted the size of the range out here in the living room. Get a fire burning here and it heat the whole apartment up something lovely. It's not more than ten years old, this place, barely a draft or a leak anywhere. Only one previous set of occupants and, as you'll be seeing, they've left the place looking lovely."
"Yeah, you mentioned that," Yaxi Tanson remarked. She and her husband Radav were gazing around the apartment with the same expression. The main room was low but generous in floor space. The range was as large as the landlord remarked and looked impressively functional. At the end of the room was a wall cut into by an impressive arch, behind which was a nook which appeared to have no purpose other than to be something behind the impressive arch. All the walls had basic but vivid murals of lilac and scarlet flowers. Even the condition of the room, the whole apartment, justified the boasts. There were a few chips, a few stains but very few; and the bare boards of the living room even looked as if they had been recently polished. The expression of both Tansons was: impressed, covetous, but determined not to let this show. "You never quite told us what happened to those guys," Yaxi said.
"Onwards and upwards, good lady, onwards and upwards," the landlord replied triumphantly. "Moved to a lovely little house in Yaleth, I'm led to believe. She was blessed with her third child, he gifted with another promotion and they told me, Mr Delpess, we couldn't be happier here but it's time to move on."
Radav, meanwhile, had opened another door from the living room and was staring inside dubiously. "Not the largest of rooms, I know," Mr Delpess said as he scuttled up. "But ideal quarters for a child or perhaps a servant. Do you have either?"
"A definite no to the first," Yaxi said, limping across to join them. "We've not really decided on the second yet."
"Thought we had," Radav told her.
"No, hon, if you remember that's sort of one of the many things still on the debating table."
"Oh aye, that's right. Keep losing track of 'em all."
"And if you decide to take the lease," Mr Delpess ventured, "For how long might you be… that is, what is your intended length of occupancy?"
"Well, you work on six month contracts and we'll be happy to sign one of those," Yaxi told him calmly. "Beyond that, the seers are kind of silent."
"Of course, of course. Flexibility, so important in today's day and age." He studied Yaxi; tried studying both of them but Radav was already moving across to the front windows. "And you, if I may say, seem the sort of folk a bit more flexible than most. You young lady, are not from the Triple Cities, are you?" His eyes were on Yaxi's skin. Both his and Radav's were the colour of oak bark but Yaxi was even darker, a brown which almost shaded into black. Her sable hair was done in a foreign style too, thick strings knotted together and tied halfway down her back by bright beads.
"Well, the husband isn't either, actually," she smiled. "He just pretends he is, to cover up coming from a wheat silo in the middle of the Central Plains."
"Hey," Radav called out. "Stop knocking the home."
"Your home's lovely, hon, just that if you park a cart on the outskirts, you've pretty much doubled the size of it. We're from all over the place really," Yaxi told Mr Delpess. "But I was born in East Zabrial."
"Ah. Of course. The City of Mermaids."
"Yeah, that's one of our nicknames. Though we've kind of picked up a lot of not so nice ones lately. I'm not limping because I'm slowly growing a tail, by the way." She tapped her crooked left leg with her walking stick. "I've just, you know, mashed up my leg a fair bit."
"Ah. A wound picked up on your…. heh, travels, Mrs Tanson?"
"We-e-e-e-ell. You might say that. Specifically, the bit where I tried to travel through a gateway before it fell on me."
"Indeed? Most upsetting, most upsetting. And what happened, may I ask?
"I didn't travel fast enough."
Yaxi limped back across the room to her husband. Radav was surveying the view from the front of the second storey flat. A typical Triple Cities street ostensibly, a dirty, noisy melange of bright clothes and billowing dust. Handcarts stacked high with gyrating piles of produce were being dragged across the cobbles, weaving around donkey wagons and single-horse gigs. Noisy gangs of children played in the gutters, their high voices competing with the low bellows of the traders. Some of the buildings were like the one Radav was stood in, modern, pale and functional tenement blocks some five stories high. Some were older and taller, unstable looking minarets corkscrewing into the sky. Some were squat white towers, some modest cottages, some customised, dilapidated old mansion houses. They all crowded together with no discrimination and no sense of a plan.
"Don't know Jakks Way," Radav commented on the scene. "Don't know the neighbourhood too well either."
"Which is also called Jakks Way, right?" his wife asked.
"Jakks Way, Jakks Way, so nice they say it twice," Mr Delpess sang happily. "Oh, it's a lively district, always plenty to see and do. See Mistletoe Square there, at the far eastern end? A permanent market there, buy any sort of goods you want. Get your wrestling booths setting up there near the carnivals, your fortune tellers and some such, and always plenty of liveliness at all times of the year. And at the other end-" he pointed down the road, where a large half-timbered house was just visible- "The Last Drop Inn, brews up the finest quart of ale you ever will taste. A nice little gambling table in the back room too, and always a few nice stabbings going on every Saturday night."
"Uh huh," Yaxi grunted.
"Oh, there's plenty of action around here. Don't like the ale at the Last Drop? There's five backroom stills on this street alone and that's just the official count. We've got fences and forgers and lots of others to supply whatever you might require. Got the street gangs of kiddie hoodlums always scrapping with each other. Got the serious gangs too – Jakks Way is on the boundary of some five different ones, no-one can ever get complete control but does that ever stop them trying? Hear a crunch when you walk down an alley, sir and madam, just carry on by and don't look what you've just trodden on. We've got a lovely mix of folks here too. There's the old timers like myself, the real Cities folk you might say, no offence, always free with our opinions and our opportunities. Got the big, scary Torgun worshippers just across the western border. Got your settlers coming in from Erenland, often as not bring their feuds with them and fighting them out right here on our streets. Got your arrivals from Zabrial, no offence meant either, ma'am, but slitting your throat if you look at them crooked. Got your-"
"OK, OK, we get the picture," Yaxi laughed. "You know, I like the honesty around here. We were looking at a flat in Brekklinside earlier and asked about the district's bad reputation, the landlord said that was all in the past. And we could, you know, see at least two pools of blood from the window. We never even knew Jakks Way had a reputation until you just told us it."
Mr Delpess gave the couple another careful assessment. They weren't excessively large but still emanated an aura of great power. Yaxi was built like a strong youth; small breasts, wide shoulders, thin hips and remarkably thick forearms. All of Radav was broad, but the contours of his tight tunic and trousers revealed this to be caused by muscle, not fat. They were both handsome in their own way, the landlord conceded, and seemed amiable enough. But the skin of each face alone carried half a dozen scars and had been hardened by a demanding life. Whether moving or standing, there was an alert tension inside their bodies. Neither was carrying a weapon and they seemed almost naked, if no less dangerous, without one. "Well, I'm reckoning, sir and madam, you won't be put off by any such perils. Think they might be an attraction, hm?"
"Not put off, as such. But we've come to the Cities to relax for a while. Get kind of soft and corrupt in the fleshpots. That's the plan, isn't it?" she asked Radav.
"Aye. Fleshpots. Definite."
"Of course, of course. And if you don't look for trouble here, chances are it'll never find you. Take myself. Lived in Jakks Way for near twenty five years now, hardly any bother at all. Course," he added with a grin, "The folks around here know what sort of folks I know. And they know it won't benefit them to upset some of Mr Delpess' friends."
After a few seconds Yaxi said, "You mentioned there was a sort of balcony."
"Oh yes, at the back. I'll show you now. Nice place to sit, it is, nice and peaceful. Catches a lovely bit of sun on a summer evening."
The balcony only overlooked a lot of small, ugly back yards. It was in shade and looked like it always would be, the sky swallowed by the tall buildings around. The peace was real, however, the street noises still audible but seemingly trapped behind a sheet of thick glass. Radav leant over the side, looking with approval at the weeds trying to push through the paving stones.
"Heard a lot of these balconies come detached," he said neutrally.
"Only, I assure you-"
"I ain't having the wife falling off an' doing her other leg in. She whinges enough as it is."
Yaxi laughed. "Oh, the priceless comfort that is a supportive husband."
"The problem, I assure you, is confined to the older buildings," Mr Delpess said smoothly. "The structures is perfectly sound on this property – on all my properties."
"Aye, well, we'll have a check. A bit of a jump up an' down. An' a chat."
"That's your cue to sort of fade into the background, Mr Delpess," Yaxi said. After shutting the door to the balcony she joined her husband at the rail. They glanced around thoughtfully for a few minutes. Eventually she said, "Well, I want it."
"Aye. Me too." His face creased in contempt. "'Don't mess with Mr Delpess and his friends?'"
"I know, I know. Oh, was it ever an effort keeping a straight face just then."
"What did he think he was bloody… We agree not to do business with blokes who're either crooks or outright loonies?"
"Thing is, hon, if we made that pact we wouldn't find a great many people to do business with."
"True. Still, with him as a landlord, I ain't ever keeping more than ten gold in the flat."
"Oh, please tell me you weren't thinking of doing that anyway."
Another short silence. Then Yaxi said, "You know, I'd kind of feel better if we let Zokou look at it first. 'Cause she's going to end up in that wardrobe laughably called a second bedroom and then, boy, is she going to moan."
"You know her. She ain't a moaner."
"She ought to moan about that. I'm still trying to remember why we're hiding her away right now and smuggling her in with the swords and the bows."
"We agreed to that," Radav said uncomfortably. "She agreed to it an' all."
"Er, yeah, but were any of us, you know, right? It's not like we can keep her locked away in the flat the whole time."
"We're breaking her in slowly."
"Breaking her in to what, exactly? Oh yeah, I've remembered. We've not worked that bit out yet. That's why it's got to happen slowly." Yaxi sighed and glanced over her shoulder towards the patiently waiting Mr Delpess. "And we've got the nerve, we've got the cheek to think he's ludicrous."
"Let's just sign the contract or whatever to get this bloody circus started."