A scene had been painted on the outside surface of the shutters. A field of yellow flowers, viewed through a framed window. A blue sky hung above, empty of clouds. A fat, tortoiseshell cat lay on the windowsill, staring down at Marius with the same impersonal disdain he had seen on Keth’s features. Marius knew the cat’s name. He was Alno, and he was the cat that Marius had promised to buy for Keth one day, when the grime and desperation of their lives grew too much to bear, and he had sequestered enough money to take them both away to an estate somewhere in the untroubled countryside. Nothing too big, he heard himself telling her as they lay cuddled together for warmth under the lodging house’s thin blankets. Nothing too fancy. But a place just for us, with fields of yellow flowers for picking, and an uninterrupted view all the way to the horizon. Marius closed his eyes. It was not the sudden knowledge of what he had lost that defeated him. It was the fact of the picture itself, that it was painted on the outside of the shutters, not the inside, that Keth had known his fantasy for what it was, had known this rift between them would open up, and had been so much more prepared for it than him.
Slowly, he raised one hand and laid it upon the opposite arm. He clenched, digging his nails deep into bicep. He felt nothing. And now, he could not even taste his bile. Marius nodded, head bowed, then turned away and walked slowly back into the street.
Keth had found him a ship, at least. With nowhere else to go, he turned towards the docks and began the slow walk down the thoroughfare. The Minerva, she had said, and if the size she mentioned was anything close to the truth it was more than large enough to take him to the end of any ocean he cared to name. Marius hunched deeper into his cape, thoughts tumbling around the image of Keth’s face, and the frozen, dead look she had given him as they parted. The crowds slid past him as he walked, oblivious to the myriad nudges and touches of close contact. His coins were well hidden, and should he have chosen to, he could have ignored the fluttering touch as a well-placed hand sought out his pocket, swiftly flitting in and out in the hope of dipping a coin or two. But Marius was not in the mood to play games with street rats. When the next casual bump arrived, and the bumper’s hand flitted into the inner pocket of his cape he grabbed the offending wrist, spun the startled thief around, and pushed them both into the mouth of the nearest alley.
“What the hell is your game?” he snarled, leaning down so that his dead face filled the view of the child cowering in front of him. A girl, no more than eight or nine years old by the look of her. She looked just like any other street rat; dirty and dishevelled from a lifetime of begging scraps from whoever trod the cobbles upon which she slept. But Marius knew the signs. The dirt was just a little too carefully spread over her face, a little too effective at blurring distinguishing features. The scraps she wore were roomy rather than ragged, all the better for the multitude of hidden pockets they undoubtedly contained. The wrist he held had strength within it that spoke of at least semi-regular feeding.
“Whose are you?” he growled. He grabbed her other wrist, held them both in one hand, and used the other to roughly push her sleeves up to her shoulders. He twisted her arms this way and that, examining the wrists, the inside of the elbows, her armpits. Not finding anything he reached out and grabbed her jaw, turning her head back and forth until he located a tiny tattoo just below her ear – a small fish with a hook protruding from its mouth.
“A Salmon Streeter? Look!” He let go of her jaw and held his hand up, spreading his fingers so the webbing between thumb and first finger was visible. A tiny tattoo of a horse’s head nestled within the space.
“Pony Lane boy from way back.” In reality, Marius had tattooed it there himself three years previously, part of a failed scheme to embezzle the street gangs around the old market districts that had led very quickly to his last exit from the city. “Tell Old Gafna to teach his brats better. Trip, dip, flick. It’s not that difficult.”
He dragged the terrified girl down the alleyway and back into the street, stepping through the flow of human traffic until they stood equidistant from any path of escape. Marius let one wrist go, keeping a firm hold on the other, and let the girl strain to be free. People barged past on both sides. Marius stood still. Pedestrians stared as they passed, without bothering to intrude. Still Marius made no attempt to move. Then he saw a child across the way, indistinguishable at that distance from the masses of underage poor who choke the streets of any big city, except that this child most definitely did not glance at the unusual sight of the cowled immobile stranger and the urchin girl so obviously in conflict. He moved past, hugging tight to the wall, completely failing to notice Marius staring at him, before turning into an alleyway and disappearing into the darkness within. Marius pulled the girl towards him sharply, so that she stumbled and bumped her face into his hip.
“Get,” he said, pushing her away so that she tripped and fell backwards into the stream of humanity passing them. As soon as she was hidden by the press of legs he stepped back towards the side of the road and strode swiftly away. Only when he had traversed several blocks did he stop, and step into a nearby doorway. He leaned against the doorframe, and slipped a hand into the inside pocket of his jerkin.
“Clever girl,” he said with a smile. The thruppence he had placed there during their altercation in the street was missing. He reached into a pocket slightly further down, better hidden by the stitching, and removed a small pouch. He counted out three tenpennies worth of coins, dropped the pouch into the street, and returned the money to his pocket. Good girl, but not good enough to notice her own victimisation. Old Gafna would correct her mistakes.
Marius slipped into the street and continued on his way. Word spreads quickly, at street level. No more fingers troubled his journey.
The Borgho City docks ran for several miles along both sides of the Meskin River, a mile-wide brown snake that had long ago been domesticated by regular dredging, tide-breakers, and a profusion of weirs and locks further upriver. The docks were a mini-city in their own right, with their own culture, their own language, and several customs that would appear bizarre to anybody who wandered in from even a mile outside the unofficial city limits, even if they had been a Borghan their entire life. There was no logical reason, for example, for a ship’s captain to throw overboard a corn dolly dressed like Severn Magnassity, the folkloric discoverer of the mythical port of Haventide, but you’d never find a ship that sailed out without having done so. Generations of families had garnered a tidy living from making dollies and selling them at dockside. Each such family had their own particular tradition when it came to folding the corn just so, cutting and tying arms and legs one way and not the other, sewing and folding Magnassity’s uniform in one particular shade and not the next. As each distinctive style of Magnassity became associated with this plentiful fishing season or that devastating tornado, they went in and out of fashion, became famous or infamous in their turn. Fortunes waxed and waned, dolly families climbed and fell within their own unique caste system, marriages were made, alliances were broken, and woe befall the outsider who uttered the words “But they’re just corn dollies” in the wrong tavern. So the culture of the Borgho wharfs progressed, and drew the mismatched travellers and vagrants who occupied them closer together, until all who lived there spoke the quayside patois, where knowing the difference between a topreeb and a jibreeb makes all the difference, and no dictionary in the world can help you if you don’t. The Minerva was a massive ship, if Keth was correct – fifty tonnes of wood and leather that would loom over the surrounding area like a war tower – but the docks were so large that Marius knew it could still take him the better part of a day to locate it, longer if he had to cross one of the bridges upriver and explore the north bank as well.