My prison cell stank like a bird cage. It was terribly dark, and I listened for the sound of rats. I despise rats. I lay down on the wooden plank that would serve as my bed for the night. My bruised back throbbed, but at least I could still breathe. It’s always nice to breathe after a beating.

In the morning a sweet little sparrow of a girl would testify against me. The charge was murder, and she had seen me do it. It had started only the evening before, when I decided that something had to be done about the new Warden.

Something had to be done about the new Warden.

I stood alone on the veranda, surveying the Street all the way down to the docks. I saw no musicians. No actors. No mimes. The Quarter lay empty, except for a trio of Tilpic sailors staggering along the gutter. They sang in their own language, their voices clear, the song indecipherable. Their performance would have scandalized the respectable citizens of Pald, but on this side of the Wall, in the Foreign Quarter, attitudes were more permissive. Or they were supposed to be.

Public performance was illegal in Pald, of course, but the law was not normally enforced on the Street. The Foreign Quarter was famous for its diverse music, foods and women. Or it was, before the new Warden arrived.

He was a problem. A dangerous problem. I had to solve him.

As usual, the Tilpics walked up one side of the Street and would soon walk down the other, searching for a whorehouse they could afford. I displayed my prices on the front post to discourage such riffraff, of course. Still, I liked their voices. The Quarter could be quite gloomy without music.

Then the Public Men appeared, carrying those silly halberds strung with yellow streamers. The Tilpics laughed at the ribbons, and the Men laid their hands on their truncheons. There was no fight. After a few words, the Tilpics bowed and silently crossed the Street. One paused to read my prices, but his fellows dragged him away.

I wiped a smudge from the red glass of my lamp and stepped inside. A Tilpic captain, maybe commander to those musical sailors, sat at the bar. All the other customers were upstanding Paldan men, aging merchants and dissolute nobles who dared the Quarter for pleasures forbidden in other parts of Pald.

And we were only half full.

The Tilpic captain saw me and approached, iron-banded hat in one hand, drink in the other. He displayed his brown teeth.

“Captain Onsooloc!” I said. “It has been too long, sir.”

“Zed, it has been a mere six months, my friend.”

“If you would permit me to disagree, it has been eight months. You were last here during the Clock Festival.”

“Ah, Zed, your good memory honors me. But tell me, why is there no music tonight? No dancing? The streets are a somber as an old maid’s bedtime.”

A pastry flew across the room and struck the Captain’s shoulder. “Because, you sweating clown,” a man announced, “we do not prance around like a pack of Tilpic idiots!”

Onsooloc and I turned together. Jugun emerged from a corner booth, a second pastry in hand. He stepped toward the middle of the floor, thick arms across his broad belly. “Why don’t you put on that hat, clown, and dance a jig for us.”

Onsooloc lifted his collar and examined the jelly stain there. His face grew calm and he laid his hand upon his sword.

I stepped in front of him. “Captain Onsooloc, I do not believe you have met Jugun, the mayor’s nephew.”

“He will soon be a mound of soil in the mayor’s garden. Step aside, my friend.”

“I am not quite sure you are aware that any injury, however minor, to the mayor’s nephew would send you to the gibbet…”

“… Honor demands…”

“… And your entire crew would join you. As, I am afraid, would I.”

Onsooloc’s hand fell away from his sword. “Is it true?”

“I am sorry, but as proprietor, I am culpable for any crime committed here. May I offer you something for your inconvenience? Perhaps an evening in the Sunset Room with Banu? She just arrived from the provinces; you would be her first client.”

Onsooloc clapped my shoulder and laughed. “To sacrifice my life for my honor -- Fft! It is nothing. But to sacrifice yours, or my crew… Well, it seems I must endure.”

“Thank you, my good captain.” I nodded to Aneek. Pitcher in hand, she hurried toward Jugun.

“A new girl, eh?” The captain winked as he walked toward the stairs. “You would not lie to me?”

I widened my eyes and laid my fingers on my throat. “Good sir, I would not dare.” Onsooloc laughed again and went upstairs.

Aneek poured a cup of wine for Jugun. He gulped it and flashed a contemptuous smile toward me before flopping back onto his couch. Something in that smile made me nervous.

Aneek followed me into the waiting room. Six girls lingered there, applying makeup or nibbling at their dinners. Banu sat alone, a plate of chopped egg untouched in her lap. She was three years past her Paldan marriage day; I refused to hire girls younger than that. But she had yet to prove she was ready to work the rooms upstairs. “Banu,” I said, “it’s time.”

She set her plate on the table and walked toward me like a bird summoned by a serpent. Aneek scowled. “Come,” she barked. “It’s not as bad as all that.”

I took Banu’s elbow. “Do you want to change your mind?”

Her face lit up. “May I?”

“Of course, my dear. You are not a slave. You may quit any time.” Aneek frowned and drummed her fingers on her elbow. Banu stared at the floor.

“I will go.” Her voice cracked as she said it.

“Captain Onsooloc is a Tilpic gentleman. If you are nervous, tell him. He will be kind.”

Banu climbed the stairs, bare feet whispering on the carpet. I exchanged pleasantries with the other girls and went back into the main room. Aneek followed.

“You gave Jugun a drink from the green pitcher?” I asked.

“His third. He should be snoring in the corner.” He wasn’t. He was leaning across a table murmuring to one of the girls. Whatever he was saying, she didn’t like it.

The delicate frown lines around Aneek’s mouth seemed especially pronounced. “Is something wrong, my dear?”

She glowered at me. “Pereek is leaving at the end of the tenday. She’s our best girl! I keep telling you, you pay them too much. They build their nest eggs in a few months and they’re gone. If you’d pay a few apes less…”

“… We’d have a less enthusiastic staff. It isn’t as though we’re running low on applicants. This is, after all, Pald.”

Aneek scowled and stalked behind the bar. Irritated with me again. She had stopped working in the rooms upstairs ten years ago, and I still wasn’t sure why she’d stayed on.

I approached the Chief Magistrate’s table and complimented the man’s rather garish sash. He had barely opened his mouth to reply when Jugun shouted my name. I excused myself, motioned to Aneek to refill the man’s cup, and approached Jugun’s booth.

“Good evening, sir. Always a delight to see you in my humble establishment.” I glanced into Jugun’s cup. Empty. The green pitcher had never failed to quell an unruly customer before, not after three doses. “May I refresh your drink?”

“No, boy, you may not.” Jugun was at least 15 years my junior, but I let it pass. “Bring me a pot of kepple.”

“I regret that we do not serve kepple here.”

“Well go out and get some, dunce.” His voice was slurred.

“I’m sorry, but selling kepple violates house rules. There are other establishments in the Foreign Quarter, I am told…”

Jugun lunged out of the booth. I yelped and backed away. The man was tall, his arms thick from hours in the dueling yards. Food and drink had already swollen his belly, and eventually he would be too vitiated to threaten anyone, but that happy day was far in the future. “You Jallaran scum, don’t talk to me about rules.”

“It is also against Paldan law.”

“Law? My uncle is the law.” Jugun reached up and grabbed a delicate crystal luster from the chandelier. He held it as though he might pluck it, like fruit from a tree. Years of kepple use had stained his thumb and index finger gray. “I could have you shut down by morning. Is that what you want?”

It wasn’t. “No, sir. Please. I am, of course, aware, like the rest of the city, that you are a man of great influence. I will certainly do everything in my power to serve you. Aneek!”

Jugun poked me. His thick finger sank into my over-plump belly. “No. You do it. Keeping me happy is no job for a servant. When I say get something, you get it yourself.”

I stepped back and bowed. “You are, as always, right, sir. Someone of such elevated stature as yourself deserves only my most abject service, and I was a fool not to realize it.”

“You are a Jallaran fool. Say it.”

Jugun was often rude, but never this outrageously. “Well, since my family is from Jallarel, what other kind of fool could I be?” I twittered nervously and wrung my hands over my belly, a womanly gesture in Pald. Jugun sneered and retreated as if I’d suddenly transformed into a leper.

Everyone in the room was scowling. One man stood, dropped a pair of gold apes on the table and walked out. Paldan men couldn’t stand the sight of humiliation.

I hurried into the kitchen. The cooks had also decided not to look at me. Aneek banged into the room. “Zed! How could you let him treat you that way! That dog! I’ll pour so much green pitcher in him he’ll never wake up!”

“No,” I said, “no more green pitcher. If he dies we’ll be in terrible trouble. Pour him a glass of red pitcher and keep him happy. Something is happening tonight.” I pulled on my coat and left by the kitchen door.

The Street was empty. Normally, there would be crowds swarming around jugglers, mimes, dancers, mock duelists and musicians. Instead, I passed a lone stall offering spiced wine and skewers of “pork.” This quietude would never draw the crowds I needed to run my business. I nodded to a trio of Public Men as I walked by. Bored, they leaned on their halberds and scowled. Everyone scowled at me that night.

The farther I walked toward the docks, the seedier the establishments became. Shadowy figures lurked in alleys or crouched in trash heaps. Somewhere nearby, a man begged his son to stop beating him. I stayed within the glow of the oil lamps.

Two men stepped out of the shadows. “Hello, Wiskik,” I said. “How is the Foreign Merchants Association lately?”

“Slow,” he answered. It was an answer that described many things about Wiskik, but he wasn’t employed for his brains. He extended a meaty paw. “So give it here.”

This game again. “Why certainly.” I surrendered my purse. “Have you a receipt? I must have one for the Public Examiner.” Wiskik only snorted; I shrugged. “I shall stop by Bilby’s office, then, and get a receipt for 33 double apes, collected by his trusted lieutenant, Wiskik.”

He drew a knife. “No you won’t.”

“I’m sure Bilby will be impressed with your initiative, sir, especially since he collects so little from me each month.” Which was the exact opposite of the truth. Wiskik was employed to shake down street beggars and mimes, not businessmen like me. And if I was killed, Bilby would lose my rather large monthly payments.

Wiskik dropped the purse into the gutter. I picked it up. I do not mind stooping for money, even my own. “Terribly kind of you to let me pay at the usual time. Good day, gentlemen.”

I walked a short distance further to a whorehouse with mud flaking off the lintel and urine stains on the sills. I entered.

The smell of sweaty feet assailed me. The owner of the house flavored his meals with Lisk spices, which have often been compared to dirty human flesh. According to local gossip, they were a perfect compliment to the stewing meats he employed.

The hostess, a dingy woman with missing teeth and gray fingers, recognized me at once. She gave me the worst booth in the room. To sit down, I had to shove aside one of the Tilpic sailors I’d seen earlier, now without shoes or scarf. The booth had a broken seat, and customers had half-filled the opening with rotten food, kepple sludge and spit. I hoped the patterns on my waistcoat would disguise any stains I might pick up.

The proprietor, a Lisk named Sansunus, slid into the booth as if his limbs had been freshly oiled. “Pleasant midnight to you, Jallaran. Have you considered my offer? Two thousand apes is a tidy sum for that small house of yours.”

I smiled. My wardrobe alone was worth two thousand. “Prosperity to you, Lisk. I believe your hostess told you why I have come.”

Sansunus grinned. The fingers of both his hands were stained as gray as a storm cloud, and his pale, pustule-ridden face gleamed with sweat. He wore an elaborate cravat, and I wondered if it was really enchanted, as rumors suggested. All magic was outlawed in Pald, especially Lisk embroidery.

He produced a stoppered brass pot and named an exorbitant price. It was not as high as I had expected. I asked to conduct business in the back room, but he waved away my concerns. I paid.

Neither Sansunus nor his hostess escorted me to the door. The latter was unlacing the gloves of the Tilpic sailor, and the former stared at me like a starving man about to be fed.

Once outside, the air of the alleys and docks seemed positively fragrant. I lifted the pot and stared at it. My instincts jangled. I could not get the Lisk’s hungry expression out of my mind. Something was happening, and if I did not wake up to it soon, I was headed for terrible trouble.

Then I remembered Jugun’s insistence that I run this illegal errand personally, and his contemptuous grin. I was being set up. If only I had realized that before giving Sansunus my money.

Three men lurched out of an alley, but slipped back once they recognized me. I was, after all, paying a tidy sum to be protected by the Foreign Merchants Association. Matching gazes with the man I took to be the leader, I set the pot on the cobblestones and walked away. That much kepple would fill their cups for a tenday, if they didn’t use it themselves.

I soon approached home. Several newly-arrived Public Men lounged near, but not too near, my front stair. I draped my handkerchief over my hand, as though hiding something from them.

I nodded to the Men; they pretended not to notice. At the back door I found three more leaning against the alley wall, awkwardly refusing to look at me. I climbed the back stairs and, within minutes, entered the main room with a new brass pot from my own kitchen in hand. It was covered with my handkerchief.

The new Warden stood at the bar with three of his Men, including Lodol, who had been First Man in the Foreign Quarter for a good dozen years. I tried to nod at them and hurry by, but Lodol grabbed my arm with a gloved hand.

I smiled for them. “Welcome, gentlemen. Always a pleasure to serve the Warden and his Public Men. I will be with you as soon as I see to a customer.”

The Warden blocked my way. He was not a robust man, but the strength of will evident in his expression was quite menacing.

“Prosperity to you, chosen one,” he said, in Jallaran.

“And to you, sir,” I responded, but in Paldan. “You honor me with my own language and its proper forms, but I am afraid that I have spent the whole of my life in this fine city, and you seem to have the advantage over me with that lovely language. How did you ever come to learn it?”

“I served in the Ape Head Bay campaign,” The Warden said, staring at me as if I was a stain about to be wiped away, “and had cause to interrogate many Jallaran prisoners.”

“Brrr! It gives me chills just to hear you say it!”