From the sharp look that accompanied her words, Hugo couldn’t be sure whether she meant things wouldn’t go well for him with his neighbors in Nagspeake, or whether she meant things wouldn’t go well for him with Deacon and Morvengarde. Or maybe that was just the miasma, obscuring her face and making it look more threatening than she meant it to. That was another thing the fog could do.
“Now,” the young woman continued, folding her hands on her desk in a businesslike fashion, “I am happy to order you a replacement box, if you’re able to pay. If not, please take that mess out of my office immediately.” She waved a hand, half gesturing toward the door and half fanning the seeping effluvium away from herself.
Hugo, who well knew what a pea-souper could do even indoors, got an idea. “I’m not going anywhere until you order me another box, and free of charge.”
“No,” the clerk said, trying to stifle a cough.
Hugo shrugged and sat down in the chair opposite her desk.
“Deacon and Morvengarde has no responsibility—”
“I’m a customer,” Hugo protested. “I’m unhappy with my purchase.”
“That would perhaps count for something if you hadn’t ordered and received exactly what you wanted,” she argued, blinking hard as the level of yellow fog began to rise and the room began to fill. “And if you hadn’t signed a form taking all responsibility yourself.”
“And that,” Hugo said, pulling his fog glasses down over his eyes, “might count for something if I wasn’t willing to sit here and ruin your office until you fix things.”
The young woman reluctantly pulled her own glasses on. “If you’re unhappy with the service you’ve received,” she said, climbing onto her chair and stepping from there onto her desktop in order to keep her chin above the level of the miasma, “perhaps you’d like me to escalate things to my employer.”
There was an edge to her voice that made it sound less like an offer and more like a warning. Still, “Certainly,” Hugo said, tying his pocket handkerchief around the lower half of his face and climbing onto his own chair just to keep them at roughly the same height.
The clerk glared at him as she tied a handkerchief over her mouth. “I’ll call Mr. Morvengarde if you like,” she said, her voice slightly muffled, “but I wouldn’t advise it.” And despite having to cough a bit as she spoke, it was perfectly clear this time that “I’ll call Mr. Morvengarde if you like” was definitely a threat. He decided he emphatically did not want to meet the young woman’s employer. Still, perhaps it needn’t come to that.
Hugo nodded. “All right.” Then he looked around the darkening room. The fog had risen over the level of the lamp on the woman’s desk, and now what had been a bright and cozy light was muted to a dim glow, changed from a warm sun to no more than the hint of a faraway hidden moon on a cloudy night. It had gone from day to night in the office, just that quickly.
“How long will that take?” he asked quietly. “Is he here?”
“No,” the young woman said at last.
“I can wait,” Hugo said.
The two of them looked at each other.
She hacked up a series of coughs. Then she sighed. “All right.” She climbed down, muttering. Then, louder, she said, “Ordering won’t do the job, anyway. It would take another week for it to get here. And they’d take the cost out of my salary,” she added mutinously. “But I can tell you where to find a new container here in town, if you’ll just promise to leave.”
Hugo heard her pulling open drawers, though he couldn’t see anything at all. “But the instructions said never to put it in anything but the box it came in.”
“I know that’s what they say,” the woman said, and there was the sound of a pen scratching on paper. “They say that because it’s not good business to send you to our competitors for replacement parts.” The woman’s hand appeared out of the fug, clutching a piece of paper. “I’m fairly sure this is the right address, but honestly I can barely see two inches in front of my face.”
Hugo took the page and read the words scrawled on it. Feretory Street, Printer’s Quarter. “This is just a street.”
“Anyone on that street can help you.” The woman’s hand appeared again, pointing desperately at the door. “Please go, will you? And if you tell them—or anyone—who sent you, I’ll kill you myself.”
Hugo went.
He avoided the river and cut through the woods that carpeted the hill to the northeast. It was certainly a very long route to take to get from the Quayside Harbors to the rest of Nagspeake, but the Skidwrack was twisty and shoaly under the best of circumstances, and he didn’t trust anyone to navigate even their home waters in the kind of pea soup he was pouring out. Plus, although Hugo was trailing fog behind him, the woods and inlets ahead still had perfect visibility.
It took what felt like hours before he reached the outskirts of the artisan’s district called the Printer’s Quarter. He was thirsty and tired, but he didn’t dare stop anywhere for even a moment longer than it took him to ask for directions. The quicker he moved on, he thought, the less fog he would leave behind and the longer it would take for it to congeal to fill whatever
