D Cornish - Foundling

Despite all these claims they did little to allay Rossamund's fears. He knew too much about how a vessel should be-a benefit of being raised in a marine society. He looked the Hogshead up and down and spied the figurehead for the first time, protruded from the bow. It was of a snarling pig, so corroded and neglected that it looked as if it was rotting. He thought the name Hogshead-which he knew was also the name for a large, cumbersome barrel-profoundly fitting. A laborer rolled by them such a barrel, which emitted an odor so powerful and foul it made Rossamund gag.

Pullets and cockerels! I hope I don't have to spend my trip next to them-whatever they are…

"I was told my fare was already paid?"

The rivermaster seemed to do a quick calculation, then said, slowly, "Aye, young master, that it 'as." He gave Rossamund a quick grin. "Welcome aboard!" He steered Rossamund up the gangplank and onto the befouled deck of the vessel. "I'll 'ave to be about me business now. We make off shortly. Settle yerself out o' th' way. May your cruise be as pleasant as th' Spring Caravan of th' Gightland Queen."

The cromster shuddered. Its gastrines, the engines of living muscles that would quietly propel her through the water, were being limbered-stretched and warmed ready for the hard work of turning the screw that pushed the Hogshead along.

Rossamund stood by the helm and waited with apprehension. He surely wished Mister Sebastipole had accompanied him. Things seemed a little too odd.

"Ready to go, Poundinch!" a sour-looking man called to the rivermaster.

"Poundinch?" Rossamund could not help but exclaim his thoughts. "Aren't you Rivermaster Vigilus?"

"Ah, aye… well… I am one and th' same!" The unsavory fellow rolled his eyes a little. He sucked in a breath. Then he said, "Poundinch is just another way of saying Vigilus, ye see. Different language, ye see, Tutin-like th' Emp'rer hisself speaks: 'vigil' is th' same as 'pound'; 'ilus' is th' same as 'inch.' Ye see? Me lads prefer the more comfortable sound o' Poundinch, is all. They says it so much I gets in th' 'abit of callin' meself th' same too… and ye can calls me it as well: Rivermaster Poundinch. How'd that be?"

Rossamund squinted. He knew almost nothing of the Imperial language-Tutin, it was called-but something sounded a little off beam.

The musty rivermaster raised an apparently conciliatory hand and gave a mildly wounded look. "It's all right, I won't be offended. I often gets people axing-'tis almost a habit for me to 'ave to explain."

Rossamund knew what it was to have a difficult name-to be misunderstood by it. He pressed the confusion no further.

"So, now we're all properly acquainted, let's 'eave to." Rivermaster Poundinch or Vigilus-whoever he might be-smiled, then called, "Cast 'er off, Mister Pike!" to his boatswain, who relayed the order with another yell. The rivermaster took up a speaking tube and hollered within, "We'll 'ave 'er at two knots, Mister Shunt!"

The pier men threw ropes, the bargemen pushed off and with further shuddering the Hogshead moved slowly out and steadily down the narrow channel. Rossamund quailed faintly with confusion, holding off an embarrassing, blubbering panic. Away from the bank wall of sandstone they went, away from the granite pier. Just like that, Rossamund was on his way-uncertain, and unhappily alone with this frightful crew.

The Hogshead slowly trod past the shadow of another cromster on its right. That it was in much better repair was obvious even in the murk. Rossamund squinted and took a step forward to see if he might read the other vessel's nameplate, but was prevented by fog and the bustling of the bargemen. Yet, just before the other cromster disappeared into the obscurity, he thought he saw someone pacing beside it, on the pier, as if waiting for something or someone. He could not, however, be sure.

The Hogshead moved on.

The channel was one of the many man-made tributaries that had been dug from the main flow of the Humour many centuries ago-running into and out of the city, flowing down valleys of brickwork. Buildings often went right up to the channel's edge, making the banks an almost continuous wall of drab bricks and dark stone in which streets and sludgy drains made deeply vertical gaps. Rossamund watched it all pass by in a silence of profound agitation. The Padderbeck Stair and its pier disappeared into the gloom.

"Now, me lad!" the rivermaster's voice boomed, offending the morning quiet, and startling Rossamund from his unhappy funk. "Do as I tells ye, and we'll be th' best of mates, matey. So find yerself a spot on th' prow and stay outta me way."

The foundling obeyed, sitting right at the front of the Hogshead. The crew left him alone, free to fret on his future, as they made their way out of Boschenberg. The cromster passed beneath a heavy arch of black stone, its portcullis raised and dripping with condensed fog, and went from the dim gloom of the city-channel into the pale murk of the open waters of the Humour. In the dark sepia waters before them was a lane marked with squat quartz pillars that glowed wanly in the vaporous morning. Rossamund had heard that these were made using an ancient and half-forgotten art, followed step-by-complex-step but little understood. The shadows of other vessels passed them by with faint thrumming hisses; ships' bells clung their warnings in the turgid damp.

In the middle of the river the Hogshead came about and went southward, going downstream. The fog began to thin, showing the sun low in the east, a bulging, bloodred disk. The cromster continued south, moving past mountainous onyx palaces, past grand villas and dark stately homes, past the wooden houses and low hovels, past even the Vlinderstrat and his old abode. Before them, athwart the Hogshead's path, was a massive rivergate that spanned the entire width of the Humour. The Axle. Tall it was, with pale granite turrets and many high arches held up by great columns and guarded by ponderous iron grilles that descended right to the muddy bottom. Heavily fortified bastions towered by either side of each arch and strong points filled with soldiers and forty-eight pounder long guns at every midpoint between. Over five hundred years ago the Axle had been built out from the city's second curtain wall to guard it from unwanted things on and in the river. All the traffic of the Humour had to pass through it, and to pass through meant you paid a toll. Rossamund had seen the rivergate several times before-though he had never passed through it-and it still amazed and daunted him. He knew very well that doing so for the first time was a deeply significant thing for a Boschenberger. It meant you were leaving the lulling, familiar security of your city, your home. It meant you were entering the broad wild places, where monsters harried and mishaps threatened. It meant your life changing forever.

Rossamund stared at the Axle in awe.

High above, musketeers in black and brown stood upon its solid battlements, vigilant wardens who strove to keep the city safe-whether from monsters or wicked men. The scarlet gleam of this eerie morning reflected from bayonets and musket muzzles. Graceful pennants of sable and mole flicked and snapped higher still above them all. Such a mighty and well-defended wall. What Rossamund found even more spectacular was that there was another Axle-the twin of this one-upstream, guarding Boschenberg's northern end. He felt a strange swell of pride for his city-state.

With a deep, near-silent thudding the Hogshead slowed, the screws pushing back against the flow of the old river. One of the many great gates in the Axle loomed. Contrary to Rossamund's pessimism the cromster had managed to make it there without sinking. It pulled up alongside the enormous base of one of the great columns that fixed the whole rivergate to the immemorial rock petrified beneath the slime of the riverbed. Part of the column's base was fashioned into a low, grimy wharf, and by this the Hogshead halted to have its cargo inspected and pay the river toll. A door of pale, corroded green opened out onto the wharf, and from it marched several excise inspectors dressed in the familiar brown and black of Boschenberg.