glad to see someone spending.
People filled the streets. It was their playground, their living room and their theatre, all the entertainment most of them would ever get or could ever afford. Young couples walked together, arms linked, the girls with Mourning Time black ribbons in their hair, the boys wearing their temple best jackets and black armbands.
A daring showman played his accordion while a small and mangy bear did a lumbering shuffle that was meant to be a dance. Puppeteers put on shows by lantern light. Pie-sellers pushed forward the trays dangling from their necks, hoping to convince the short sighted to buy their filthy wares. Old women smoked pipes and gossiped on tenement steps. Drunks lay in the gutter while ragged children went through their pockets and then skipped away. Rouged women thrust their hips at strangers and sometimes disappeared hand in hand with them down shadowy alleys.
“It’s nice to see the common folk taking Mourning Time so seriously,” said Weasel.
Rik was not so sure he had good reason to be cynical. If you looked closely you could see that there were people in their best clothes heading to temple, and there were as many buyers for religious tracts and prayer crystals as for liquor bottles and pies. The theatres were ostentatiously closed, their doors sealed with ribbons of black cloth. Their managers sat gloomily by the doors, lest someone should steal even this. Some mothers were hustling their children indoors and hushing them.
Still things had changed. Rik could remember the Old Witch talking about her youth, when humans had to be silent all day during Mourning Time, and indoors all night unless they got special dispensation from a priest. Watchmen had enforced that law, and the stocks and whipping posts had been full of those stupid enough to disobey. There were some that saw such things as proof that the world was getting worse. Rik thought that it meant it was in some ways getting better.
He found himself relaxing a little. There was something about these streets that reminded him of Sorrow. It was the bustle and the commerce and all the little details of street life; the lanterns dangling on brass arms from street corners and in shop windows; the link boys with their sputtering torches leading wealthier citizens home. Merchant’s palanquins and their escorts of bully boys shoved their way through the throngs. And of course there was the constant singing of drunks and glee clubs and beggars trying to earn a copper. The scent of open sewers and incense and cheap perfume battled with the smell of pies and wine in his nostrils.
He saw a young woman inspecting a dress inside a second hand shop, holding it up to her bosom. Closer inspection showed it to be a Terrarch officer’s dress coat too narrow at the shoulders for a man, but just right for a tall girl. She caught his glance, looked modestly away and then looked up again just to make sure he was still looking, by which time the cart had moved on.
Other things reminded him of Sorrow. The hulking bruisers who lounged in doorways and alley mouths and studied passers by the way wolves studied herds of cattle looking for the weak ones. One of them saw him looking and glared and Rik was suddenly glad he had a loaded pistol thrust in his belt and a knife in his boot. Beside him the Barbarian caught the glance and thought it was meant for him.
“You looking at me?” he shouted. “Or are you chewing a brick? Either way you will lose some teeth.”
It was an old favourite line of his and he shouted it with obvious relish. Taking in the Barbarian’s size and obvious confidence, the bruiser spat on the muddy street and disappeared up a side alley into a courtyard. Rik put his hand on the Barbarian’s shoulder and whispered the magic word beer to restrain him.
The cart carried them through the gates in the old walls of Redtower. Watchmen checked the driver’s pass, and inspected the soldiers sullenly.
“Regimental business, for the Quartermaster,” said Weasel. The old Sergeant of the watch said something to the others in a low voice and they were let pass without further challenge. The Quartermaster’s name was always a talisman. He had his finger in most of the criminal pies in town.
Tall, old buildings leaned overhead blocking out the evening sky. The streets became so narrow that you could reach out from the back of the cart and touch the walls. Rik slipped the carter a copper and they got down. This was the really bad part of town. No money had been spent here on upkeep. It was an area that was said to be fever-ridden, and ill-omened and not even those wealthy merchants and factors who normally paid extra to live within the walls close to the mansions of the Terrarchs wanted to live here. Instead it had decayed like an old whore riddled with pox. Even the buildings had a weak, crumbling, diseased look. Patches of damp soiled the flaking plasterwork. A mouldy smell filled the air. They passed huge old brick buildings that had once been warehouses and were now transformed into the worst sort of taverns, huge dance halls and brothels.
Normally these would have been doing a roaring trade, but tonight because of Mourning Time it was quiet. They were going to have to go a lot deeper into the Pit to find what they were looking for.
Rats scampered along the streets, moving from midden heap to midden heap, dancing across the open sewers. Gangs of furtive youths studied them as they approached. They were the same the world over. Many a night he had fled from such bravoes through the back alleys of Sorrow.
Weasel hailed a linkboy and the torchbearer approached. He was a local youth and Rik guessed he must have some sort of arrangement with the local boss, to work here unmolested. Weasel slipped him a coin and said; “The Headsman’s Axe.”
The boy lit a torch and moved with confidence through the darkened alleys. They streamed along behind him, keeping their hands close to their weapons. They were all more or less sober still and they all felt the menace around them.
The lad led them through an archway and into a large courtyard. A midden heap the size of a small hill filled its centre. All around, the walls of a vast decaying mansion leaned closer. It was one of those fine old houses that had once belonged to some wealthy man, and was now endlessly sub-divided and sub-let. Rik listened to the sounds from within. Just from the little he overheard as they passed he knew that lovers were quarrelling, a man was beating his wife, two whores were fighting over a customer and a drunk was protesting his undying fidelity to a woman who quite obviously did not believe him. Music sounded too, in defiance of the Mourning Edicts.
Suddenly the linkboy stood to one side and indicated they should do the same. Rik soon understood why. A party of young Terrarchs and their twenty strong bodyguard moved past. The slumming nobles were immaculately dressed and their sharp perfumes cut through the stench like a truesilver blade through a rotten fruit. They did not so much as glance at the Foragers as they went by, although their bodyguard did, giving them a quick competent appraisal.
“Looks like Solace came early for some of those boys,” said Weasel. Bitterness and hatred twisted in Rik’s gut. Doubtless his father had been like one of those careless semi-immortals. Perhaps he was even among them. Rik could never be sure. He would not look any different today than he had those twenty odd years ago. The Exalted aged slowly if at all.
“Probably visiting Mother Dagon’s,” said the Barbarian. “What I would not give to go there? Wish I could afford it.”
“Don’t we all,” said Toadface. Mother Dagon’s was a famous brothel where the girls were the most beautiful in the province, and trained in every manner of depravity by their Madame who was said to be a Terrarch half- breed herself.
“Let’s not talk about what we can’t afford,” said Weasel. “Let’s do something about what we can.”
“I am all for that,” said the Barbarian. “Beer then a brothel.”
Chapter Fifteen
They pushed deeper into the maze of winding alleys and courtyards. Rik was glad the linkboy knew where he was going because he himself surely did not. He wondered if he would be able to retrace the way in daylight. In the thick darkness, and with all the booze, space seemed to have altered in an ominous way. This part of town had not seemed so large the last time he had passed through it.
The old mansions had been built over, around and on top of, until the whole Pit was a crazy tottering pile of firetraps and tumbledown. Thick wooden buttresses reinforced walls and half-blocked narrow alleys. Wooden bridges ran between ledges and windows high up in the sides of buildings. Lean-tos and shanties grew out of walls and partially blocked what once had been streets. New huts filled the space that had once been the gardens of mansions and created a crazy webbing of new lanes and alleys which flowed back into the courtyards of the older
