Col Buchanan - Stands a Shadow

‘Then welcome home, brother of the tribes,’ the young man said in rough Trade, and helped him to his feet.

Ash wandered through the rain, lost and aimless. His mind had sunk into his feet, and he released himself to the feel of the hard rounded cobbles against the soles of his boots, letting them take him wherever they would.

Hermes the agent had offered him a room to stay in for as long as he needed it. Numbly, Ash had thanked him but declined, and had left the man standing at the front door with the birds shrieking behind him.

‘I’m not certain what I do now, Ash. Are we finished then? Is it over?’

Ash had only waved a silent farewell.

He didn’t realize he’d been walking south towards the Shield until he sniffed the scents of fish and seaweed and brine, and looked up from beneath the brim of his dripping hat, and saw the Sargassi Sea and the calmer waters of the east harbour before him. The countless ships that sheltered there bobbed and rocked in the gentle swell, while gulls wailed forlorn and hungry, sweeping back and forth through the sheets of rain. Men with fishing rods sat on stools along the waterfront, clad in hooded ponchos to protect themselves from the weather. Their demeanours were calm and patient as they chewed on tarweed or smoked from clay pipes.

To Ash, just then, they looked like the most contented men in the world.

The Shield was visible from here above the huddle of All Fools. The Lansway it stood upon stretched out across the water into a dull obscurity. He could see little of the ongoing assault itself out there; just plumes of smoke rising from the outermost wall, and the occasional flash of fire. The scene was muted, the sea breeze carrying the sounds elsewhere into the city.

Pressing onwards, he came to a busy junction overlooked by inns and merchants’ storehouses. The junction was the scene of a vagabond street market. Fancy carriages attempted to force their way through the crowds, which were mostly street vendors, brash prostitutes, the occasional gang of roaming urchins. A hill rose steeply ahead of him into leafy streets and high, marble mansions fronted by spike-topped walls, an enclave of Michine and wealthy common-born. The Congress of the council could be found up there, he recalled.

Ash saw little point in going that way. He carried on along the seafront, the road curving out to skirt the base of the hill. After a row of rowdy taverns and sleep-easies, the road eventually petered out into a shingle track, with the hill on his left fronted by limestone cliffs.

The coastline here was a narrow, windswept strip of rock between the cliffs and the sea. Shanties had been erected amongst pools of brackish seawater that plopped and shimmered in the rainfall. Ash meandered between the shacks, stepping over the occasional crab or bundle of seaweed. The flimsy domiciles were propped high on stacks of flattened stones, and wooden boards ran between many of them.

He’d heard of this district in his previous visits to the city, though he had never visited before. The Shoals, the city-folk called it, due to the tides that swamped it in heavy weather. It was said to be the poorest district of the city, the place where people landed when they could fall no lower. Many penniless sailors came here and waited for news of ships hiring men. They had their own name for the place.

They called it Bilge Town.

Ash smiled without humour, wondering at the irony of his life.

The area stank of running sewage and rotting fish. Picking his way along the rocks, he risked straining his neck by looking up to the very top of the cliffs. Seabirds were spinning in the updraft rising past the Michine villas, where orchards overhung the crumbling edges of limestone. Kings had once lived up there. For a thousand years they had lived in the Pale Palace with their families and courts, ruling over all of Khos.

Ash slipped on something beneath his heel and caught himself just in time. He looked down at a sour apple, fallen from one of the high overhanging trees of the orchards, smeared flat and brown beneath his boot. A gust drove the rain into his face. Ash shivered.

He headed towards the cliff face, where the rocky shore rose sharply and the shanties huddled together more densely than they did below. The shingle paths wound between dwellings both small and weatherworn, leaning against each other for support, clinging to the slopes all the way to the face of the cliffs. In the cliffs themselves, within depressions in the chalky face of stone, structures were perched in enclaves that seemed impossible to the eye. High above them caves had been carved out, connected by ladders and swaying gantries.

He trod upwards along a path that switchbacked between shanties and the occasional two-storey structure. Women hung clothes out to dry beneath stretches of tarpaulin, their heads and shoulders wrapped in shawls, faces reddened by the wind. Babes cried indoors. The street children chased after dogs or skipped to odd chanting rhymes, or struggled with bulging waterskins up the slopes. There seemed to be fewer men than women, he noticed.

Already the ache in his head was returning, despite the leaves still bundled in his mouth. His eyes swam with a kind of fog, and Ash blinked hard to try and clear them. He took more of the dulce leaves, and stood for some moments until his vision cleared a little, though the pain remained, stabbing his forehead to the beat of his heart. He began to feel sick with it.

He stopped a local – an old, hungry-looking, grey-haired man carrying a straw umbrella – and asked where he might find some room and board. The old man looked at him curiously, but was helpful enough. Ash followed his directions, climbing ever upwards.

The Perch was a ramshackle establishment that occupied a shallow ledge on the cliff wall. The sign above the door swung creaking in the wind, as old and decrepit as the rest of the long, narrow building. The flaking picture showed a rat squatting on a sea-tossed barrel, its own tail clamped in its mouth in apprehension.

Smoke was billowing from the taverna’s central chimney. Laughter could be heard from within.

Ash pushed through the doors into the taproom. A squall of rain followed him in, causing the lantern light in the dim, smoky space to flicker against the walls. A few heads turned to appraise the newcomer.

‘Shut that door!’ shouted a man behind the bar, a fat bald-headed man with thick tattooed arms. ‘You’re letting the cold in, man!’

Ash pushed the door closed, warped and ill-fitting in its frame, and shook his coat dry as a pool of water gathered at his feet, soaking into the rushes that covered the floor. It was hot in the narrow room. A log fire crackled fitfully in the hearth. Ash removed his hat and stepped to the bar, trailing water.

The proprietor was playing a game of ylang with a woman sitting on a stool and wearing an expression of boredom. The man moved one of his black pebbles across the board, and looked up at Ash as he approached.

‘What can I get for you?’ he asked.

‘Cheem Fire, if you have any.’

His eyes brightened. ‘Then you’re in luck. I probably have the last case in the whole city.’

The bottles were hidden behind the bar in a locked strongbox chained to the floor. The proprietor fumbled with a ring of keys that hung from his belt, then unlocked it and removed a bottle with an exaggerated show of care. The cork squeaked as he pulled it free with his teeth. He swirled the contents of the bottle, allowing the aroma to waft into his flaring, hairy nostrils.

‘Only the finest,’ he purred as he trickled out the tiniest of portions into a glass tumbler, chipped but reasonably clean. He was about to add some water into it when Ash held his hand over the glass.

‘And leave the bottle,’ Ash told him.