Imagine this. You tremble in fear of your life. The greatest empire the world has ever seen wants you dead. Its enemies also want you dead. You are scurrying around your humble home trying to decide what of your life you can fit into a bag. Your favorite silken under-robe? You must take the small pot your son made, a shrunken, drunken pot that could not hold a thimble of water, but which is more dear to you than gold, because it is all that you have left of him.
And then you hear whispers in the street.
Maybe they are walking past. But they are talking very softly. As if they don’t want to be heard.
You freeze, half a loaf of bread in your hand. Do you gently place the bread down, reach for anything that could serve as a weapon, and steal into the shadows by your front door, ready to give up your life in defense of your home, your liberty?
I am impressed by your courage and obvious desire to die. I stuffed the bread into my bag, and squeezed through the narrow side-window that overlooked a rubbish strewn alleyway. I picked my way through the noisome gutters, and was halfway down the alley when I heard my front door crash into splinters. At that point I abandoned all stealth, firstly because whoever was breaking into my house was making so much noise that I could have fled down the alleyway blowing ceremonial trumpets and not been heard, and secondly because if I did not run they would catch me anyway. I came out on a deserted side street, plunged on wheezing into a maze of twisting passages through which I hoped no pursuer could follow, all the time heading in the general direction of the east.
I had set a demon to kill one of the emperor’s chosen men, and would be regarded as a traitor in league with those who conspired to overthrow the Imperial Throne of the Endless Waters. Ordinarily in that situation it would have been prudent to seek shelter with the conspirators. Unfortunately I had also freed and banished the demon that those conspirators had wished me to enslave for their own ends. So even the traitors regarded me as guilty of treachery. The mangy street cats flattened their heads against the walls and regarded me through narrowed eyes as I huffed and puffed past them. All around me were enemies. I could not stay in this city another night. And there was only one way to leave it in a hurry. The docks.
I smelled them before I reached them. The salt of the sea, the ripe stench of the river, the fetid stink of the gutting halls. The smell was my guide, as I stumbled past houses that became narrower and narrower, every fifth building an inn, every sixth a whorehouse. Then I came out onto the docks.
I hurried to the edge of the water, walking as briskly as I could without drawing attention to myself. The crew of a large ship swarmed over its decks, coiling and uncoiling ropes, moving boxes to the back, and spitting over the side a great deal. A stout lady was supervising the transfer of a number of boxes from the quayside. Whatever was in the containers must have been precious and delicate, judging by the way she screamed insult after threat to her beleaguered servants. A short man lounged on the deck looking on, his hands stuffed in his pockets, whistling at nothing in particular. He was too scruffy to be the owner or the captain, and too idle to be one of the crew, so I reckoned him for another passenger. If this vessel sailed soon, it would be ideal. I would be anonymous among the other travelers. I stopped one of the servants as he trudged back for another box.
“Excuse me, what is the destination of this ship?”
“Away from here, thank all the gods,” he muttered, “away from here and I’m not on it.”
I was about to reply that much as I delighted in his good fortune, this information was less than useful, but I was interrupted by the stout — and increasingly florid — woman bawling down at the servant.
“If you louts spent less time in conversation and more doing the duty I pay you for, you could take better care of the boxes, you ignorant oaf.”
The servant hurried on his way. The woman swiveled her glare on to me. “And you there, my servants would do a better job if they were not subject to continual distractions and interruptions. When you start paying them, then you can start talking to them and keeping them idle. I have had to pay good money for the doubtful privilege of traveling on this filthy brig and I would not wish to delay the happy day when I can disembark it by a moment.”
I wondered whether risking my life in the city might not be preferable to sharing several days voyage with this demon in human form. As the servant crept back past, cradling a small wooden box with air holes drilled in the sides and something fluttering within it, he mumbled “Quishen” without moving his lips.
Perfect. Quishen was a good four days sail up river, a large city with no great claims to fame and not a soul who knew me. From there I could take another boat down the great canal to Shushon, or I could join a caravan towards the mountains. No one would think to look for me in Quishen. I approached one of the crewmen.
“I wonder if you have a berth on your boat, I —”
“See captain,” he mumbled, still wrapping one bit of rope around another bit of rope for no discernable reason.
“Thank you.”
There was a pause.
“And where...”
He jerked his head towards the back of the ship. I picked my way between boxes and coils of rope, getting a pleasant nod from the short scruffy man who was still whistling to himself. At the back of the boat an old man with a straggly beard and a resigned expression was being harangued by a thin man whose hawk like face immediately made me think he was a lawyer.
“...and I have paid good money for this and I certainly expect more comfortable accommodation than that which I have been given. I would refer you to the wording of the specification of passage hung outside the offices. It said in part...”
And so on. I stood waiting patiently, guessing that the elderly man was the captain. He stood impassively, waiting for the other man to finish, or to at least take a breath. Eventually hawkface ran out of steam, finishing with a promise that if things were not changed that he would be taking it up at the highest level.
“You have the best accommodation The Jewelled Swift can offer,” the captain remarked. “Should have booked sooner.”
“Well it’s simply not good enough.”
“Can’t do better than what we have. The Blue Peacock has comfortable cabins on board, spent real money on that, they did. Very comfortable.”
“Ah, progress. So when does this Blue Peacock depart for Quishen?”
“Blue Peacock don’t go to Quishen.”
Hawkface made a sound as if he were choking on his tongue. “You waste my time. I must be in Quishen this week, I have very important clients that I must meet.”
“Well you have the most comfortable berth on this vessel. If it’s not to your standards then you could look for another vessel that sails to Quishen this week. I’ll give you your money back if you find one.”
“Excellent, then that is what I shall do. What other boats are due to leave for Quishen this week?”
“Just this one. No others.”
Again, the choking sound. “I shall take this up, you know. With your shipping agents. They shall hear from me. This is not satisfactory.” With that hawkface strode back down into the bowels of the ship.
The Captain watched him leave with impassive indifference, and then noticed me waiting and raised a weary eyebrow.
“Captain, I understand you are sailing to Quishen. I wish to buy passage, and if you can get me to Quishen, I do not care if I sleep in a barrel. I will not complain.”
A flicker of a smile appeared on his face and then vanished as he mastered it.
“You’d be the first. You’re in luck, there’s a berth, but you don’t have much time, we sail within the hour.”
A surly looking man thumped down from a ladder and joined us. Or rather, joined the captain, he ignored me.
“That aft spontoon’s never going to last without thrum-wrappling,” he complained. Or words to that effect. “For’ard stanchions’ll splice up but the mizzoon is feckled. Cheated on that by the bastards back there. Settle with them next time we’re back, that I will. What’s this?”
“Another addition to our manifest,” the captain said, then turned to me. “My first mate will take your payment.”
“We can’t be waiting for any luggage,” the first mate observed sourly. “We sail now.”
“That does not concern me,” I replied airily, “I travel with everything that I need.”
He shrugged, glared at me, and spat over the side. I have had bigger victories.
My accommodation was a hammock slung between beams that only a dwarf could walk under without braining himself, in a cramped space shared by at least seven other hammocks that I could count. The stinking darkness hid more from view. I did not care, because it was better than the accommodation I would have been granted had I stayed any longer. I went back to the deck as the crew cast off, and watched the city slip past, slowly at first, and then with increasing pace.
I wondered whether what I felt was regret. I would miss the city that I knew so well, its bustle and filth, the whole shouting, stinking row that was the only world I knew. I would miss Mama Shen’s, I would miss the bars on the Golden Walk, I would miss the sound of the late night revelers falling and laughing down the alleys while I lay in the arms of one of Mama Shen’s girls, full and sated and warm and not having to be anything other than myself.
I had met my wife in the Long Park, had courted her with walks along the banks of the river I now sailed down, courted her while strings of colored lanterns bobbed with grace in the evening breeze, and a lovely, haunted music drifted from somewhere behind the trees. We had married in the city, lived in two rooms but needed no more because we were world enough for each other.
And it was in this city, with me holding her hand because I could think of nothing else to do, that she screamed and shook, and held on to me so tight that my hand bled. My blood mixed on the floor with her blood and my tears as she brought new life into this hard world and then left it herself. It was this city that I walked, alone in the world apart from the small bundle of warmth that slept quiet and happy in my arms as long as I walked, walked, not following any map of the city, just the map of two short year’s memories, the map of my heart.
So life went on, and I worked my trade deceiving the gullible and the pompous because it was the only talent I had that would provide for my son. He grew up in the city, screaming through its alleys with his allies, tipping market stalls and stealing apples and occasionally getting a beating or a blow on the head from a particularly well-aimed root vegetable. By the time he was ten he knew the streets better than I did, every short cut, every hiding place. I was all the family he had, and he was all that I had. And he sent me mad in the head and I sent him skulking and sulking at my restrictions and my lecturing, and we loved each other more than I thought I would ever be able to love again.
And then he listened to the Emperor’s call, and he went to fight in the mountains. When he died, the city died for me too. I realized that I did not regret leaving it, even if it was forever, not one bit. The only things of the city that were important to me I carried wherever I went, and I could see them any time I chose to close my eyes.
