Miro grinned back, "The whole night?"
"The whole night. And most of tomorrow, too."
"Doesn’t the High Lord need us?"
"Tomorrow’s the Chorum, lad. The Chorum is under the Primate’s protection, and so are the market houses; it’s the one thing that remains inviolate. Good news for us?"
"Good news for us," Miro echoed, punching Tuok in the arm.
Tuok punched him back. Miro chuckled, unable to hold back a grimace of pain.
Tuok left the room laughing. When he was sure Miro wasn’t watching he rubbed at his arm. Lord of the Sky, the boy didn’t know his own strength!
~
TUOK took Miro to an area called the Tenamet, assuring Miro it would be the best place to see what he called "the real Seranthia".
They first passed through a wealthy neighbourhood called Fortune, where the merchants who worked at the market houses had their manses. Miro couldn’t believe the size of the manors. Nothing like the Crystal Palace, of course. But these weren’t even lords — they were just men who sold wares in markets!
From Fortune to the Tenamet was a surprisingly short distance. The manses gave way to a sparse area spotted here and there with rectangular storage buildings. There were few people walking the streets here, and those there were seemed like the kind Miro was in no hurry to meet. At one point Tuok grabbed Miro by the shoulder and forcibly crossed him to the other side of the road.
"What—" Miro said. He then noticed the twisted expression of the man who had been walking towards them. The man held a club of some sort and was cursing as he strode purposefully on the path, beating the walls with his club as he went.
His cursing rose in intensity as he passed Miro and Tuok on the other side of the road.
"Ignore him," Tuok muttered.
The man shook his fist at them and continued walking.
"Redberry," said Tuok. "Never cross a man on redberry."
"Was he in pain?" Miro said.
"Far from it, in his own mind he was probably having the time of his life."
Miro shook his head.
The frequency of other passers-by began to increase.
"Are we late?" Miro asked. "I’m guessing most people will have gone home, given the hour."
Tuok snorted. "In Seranthia the celebrations don’t really kick off until after midnight."
"After midnight? When do they finish?"
"Dawn. Sometimes after dawn. Sometimes through the next day. And because tomorrow is the Chorum and there are newcomers in the city, I’m thinking there’ll be more revellers out than usual."
A party of young men walked past, swaggering and pointing things out to each other, laughing raucously. They seemed to find Miro hilarious. One of them tugged on his simple jerkin. Miro frowned.
"Don’t worry about them," Tuok said.
Miro turned at a scuffle in an alleyway nearby. A fat man had a young woman by the hair, pulling her down to the ground. She screamed as he twisted her arm behind her back and lifted her skirt above her waist, displaying a pair of white buttocks.
"Help! Please, help me!" she cried.
Before Miro could react, Tuok gripped him by the arm and walked with him away from the alleyway. The woman’s cries followed them.
Miro pulled away from Tuok angrily. "What? You can’t tell me you didn’t see that! He was—"
"Miro, you take one step into that alleyway and four of his mates will step out of the shadows and you’d be dead. It’s one of the oldest tricks in the book."
"You can’t be serious."
"I am serious. She’d probably be the first to slit your throat. It was a set up, Miro."
"You think…" Miro bit the words off.
"I’m sure of it."
"But what if it wasn’t? What if we just walked away from someone in trouble, serious trouble?"
"Trust me, Miro. It was a set-up."
"But what if it wasn’t!"
Tuok sighed. "If it wasn’t, then she should have known better than to get herself into that situation. A woman shouldn’t be out without company, not in Seranthia, and especially not anywhere near the Tenamet. Miro, if I was in Altura, or Halaran, or any of a number of other nations, I would be there in a flash. But not in Tingara. And especially not in Seranthia."
"I don’t understand, why doesn’t the Emperor do something?"
"It’s the way of the people here. What would you advise the Emperor to do?"
Tuok stepped over a comatose body on the ground. Miro put his hand to his nose as the smell of faeces and vomit rose from the prone figure.
"Make some laws!"
They entered the Tenamet proper now. Miro had never seen so many bars, saloons, taverns, gambling houses, food stalls, beer halls, and other places less readily categorised. The sounds, sights and smells were an assault on the senses. Music, singing, talking and cheering echoed around the streets.
"What kind of laws?"