All That Glitters
To most who lived in Fivecourt, Coinbarrow was considered the bad part of town. To those visiting from lands beyond, it was usually the first stop after they arrived.
While the north shore of the river was fronted by palatial manors with manicured lawns, elaborate hedge-mazes, and stone jetties where pleasure barges and white-sailed dhows bobbed on the drowsy current, the south side was more what Clay would have expected a harbourfront in Grandual’s largest city to look like.
Here were the gambling holes, the scratch dens, the smokehouses; here the seedy taverns, the wild brothels, the raucous inns. Here were the pawnshops and fence stalls, the moneylenders and the rowdy, run-down theatres where the actors were twice as drunk as the standing crowd and half as entertaining.
Block for block, Coinbarrow was home to more fighting pits than anywhere west of Phantra. Fortunes were won and lost on contests pitting desperate men against vile monsters, vile monsters against vicious dogs, vicious dogs against strutting cocks, and the ever-popular (and wildly unpredictable) desperate men and vicious dogs against vile monsters and strutting cocks.
“Gods, but I’ve missed this place,” said Matrick, hopping down from the carriage and stretching his arms.
“The prodigal son returns,” quipped Moog, whose wild white fringe and soiled pyjamas helped him blend right in with the colourful denizens of Fivecourt’s filthy dockside.
Even at night the streets were crowded. As he stepped clear of the carriage Clay recalled the very first time he’d ever set foot in Coinbarrow. He and Gabriel had come in search of cheap lodgings while Kallorek was trying to secure them gigs. It had been morning at the time, and the quay was simultaneously bustling with industry and teeming with those best described as orc-shit crazy. Gabriel, probably thinking he was doing a fine job of talking the place up, had assured Clay that come nightfall it was just as lively, except everyone was orc-shit crazy.
On the nearest corner, for instance, was a man in dirty green robes beseeching passersby to repent their sins at the shrine to the Spring Maiden, while on the opposite corner stood an immaculately dressed man proclaiming that two blocks over was a back-alley brothel in which Glif herself would spread her legs for a silver crown.
“Wait here,” Gabriel told the driver. “We won’t be gone very long.”
The man narrowed his eyes and frowned below a bushy moustache. “I’ll be needing some collateral from you, then,” he said.
Gabriel looked momentarily defeated, but then Matrick offered the man one of his jewelled knives—either Roxy or Grace. Clay had never known which dagger was which.
“If you leave without giving this back,” said Matrick, “I will hunt you to the curling edge of the fucking map and pull your tongue out through your ass. Are we clear?”
Good to see being king only softened his stomach, Clay thought amusedly.
A fight broke out on one of the merchant ships moored nearby, and the birds out front of the carriage baulked at the sound of shouts and ringing steel. Akra instinctively changed colour when they were startled or distressed, and the feathers of one were already flushed pink.
The driver looked appraisingly at the knife Matrick had given him. “Clear as glass,” he said. “But you pay double the fare from here to Pearling Heights. Unless you’d rather I go and see if the real Screaming Eagles need a lift,” he added, when it looked as though Matty meant to throttle him.
“Fine,” said Gabriel.
Clay hadn’t the slightest idea how Gabe planned on paying a double fare—or any fare at all, for that matter—but decided to keep his mouth shut.
“And a word to the would-be wise,” said the driver. “The next time you lot decide to masquerade as mercenaries, maybe don’t choose one of the most famous bands in all of Grandual. The Eagles are headlining the Maxithon tomorrow. There may be a few cheap seats left if you’ve a mind to see real mercs at work.”
Gabriel turned on his heel and set off toward the shadowed mouth of the nearest alley. Moog and Matrick hurried after, leaving Clay the choice between staying to ponder the staggering irony of the driver’s words or to follow along.
“Hey, wait up,” he said.
Gabriel led them up a set of rickety stairs set against the shabby tenement on their right. The boards creaked dangerously beneath Clay’s heavy tread, and somehow the reek of stale piss got stronger the higher he climbed. They’d surprised a pair of trash imps upon entering the alley below. The critters had squealed piteously and scampered into the darkness farther down the way, but now they returned to continue a spirited tug-of-war over what looked to Clay like a broken latrine seat.
Gabriel knocked on the warped wooden door at the top of the stairs, and when the hovel’s occupant failed to materialize he hammered it with his whole forearm, which set the sign above the door teetering on its rusting hook.
“Fender’s Cakes and Custards,” Moog read aloud.
“Seriously?” Matrick looked dubious. “We came to an alley in Coinbarrow for dessert?”
“Fender!” Gabe shouted, giving the trash imps below another scare. “Open up.”
“Who’s Fender?” Clay asked.
“A friend,” Gabe answered. “He collects things, sells things, stores things …”
“So he’s a fence?”
“He’s a kobold.”
Clay decided to stop asking questions, since Gabe’s enigmatic answers only spawned more. Fivecourt was one of the very few cities that granted a form of limited citizenship to nonhumans, so long as they behaved themselves. He supposed a kobold was as capable as any creature of living among humans, though Clay had never seen one outside a cave or a sewer—or without several hundred others of its kind yapping angrily alongside it.
Half a minute passed. The discordant music of half a dozen taverns wafted over the rooftops above. A pair of Carteans staggered by the alley mouth, trading poorly sung snatches of song back and forth. Something dripped into Clay’s hair, and when he looked up to discern whether or not it was raining (it wasn’t), another drop found his open mouth.
“Vail’s bloody fucking—”
The thunk of a bolt being thrown came from beyond the door, then another, and another. Clay heard the slink of several chains, followed by the scrape of a wooden plank being drawn from its brackets. At last a reedy voice called from within. “Is open!”
Pretty tight security for a custard joint, Clay might have joked, had he not been busy trying to figure out what the hell had trickled past his lips just now. His tongue tasted like he’d fished a copper coin out of a sewer drain and popped it in his mouth.
“Careful,” Gabe whispered, before easing open the door. When nothing barreled out at him he crept over the threshold, and the others cautiously followed.
Inside it was dark. The smell of urine retreated as its cohorts mould, dust, and rusting metal advanced in its place. Clay could hear something scuttling in the shadows, and detected the faint sound of rasping breath from somewhere nearby. The roof was so low it grazed Clay’s head if he didn’t stoop a little.
“Something tells me the cake was a lie,” grumbled Matrick.
Clay became aware of several pairs of lights floating like wisps in the darkness, faint as shuttered lamps.
“Whoosit?” came the shrill voice again. “Name you, now!”
“Fender—” Gabriel began.
“Fender is Fender.”
“Yeah, I know that. I’m Gabe.”
“Gabe? I know Gabe. Good Gabe Good.”
“Good Gabe Good, that’s me. Hey, can we maybe get some light in here?”
The speaker clapped its hand and barked, “Chittens! Lights!”