The sun was setting and Flower was lost.
"Fuck." The word came easily to lips that only a year before would have made a big O just at the thought of saying it. "Fuck."
The street she found herself on was clear of mud and litter. The plaster on the houses might be flaking here and there, but it was kept clean and there were signs of repairs. It was a street where people were proud to live.
They were no fools, though, and every door had an iron grate in front, every window had heavy shutters. The alleys were empty of the usual crates and barrels that littered the City's darker corners, and the walls were too high to climb.
The sun was setting, and the ghouls came out at night.
"Fuck." It didn't seem enough. "Fuck!"
It seemed like she'd been lost ever since that night in the Neckless Nag. She'd had to watch her friend being raped. She'd hated the man Rulk, she'd hated herself, she'd even hated Gienna, though she wasn't quite sure why.
And now Gienna had locked herself in her room, the black room with no windows under the Widow Queen's house, and all she did was cry. The Queen ventured in sometimes, but when Flower asked how her daughter was faring, she only shook her head.
The other girls of their little troupe soon found other things to occupy themselves with. Eska and Tro went back to walking the docks, the others attached themselves to other bands. Without Gienna, there was little to keep them together.
And without Gienna, it seemed that Flower had few friends. They'd never really accepted her as one of their own. They seemed to think that she had a way out, that she could go back to live with her family on Rich Pigs' Hill.
Well, she couldn't, because the only family there was her mother. And her mother would never let her back, not after what had happened with her sister and her father. Flower didn't know if she could stay with the Widows, though. Without Gienna to protect her, she'd be working the docks along with Eska and Tro unless she scored something big by herself.
That was why she'd let her feet take her uphill, away from the riverfront and its slums. There was no silver to be found there, not without half a dozen friends and half a dozen cudgels. And the Widow Queen to stare down any goons who came demanding retribution.
The people she'd met looked at her like the stranger she was. Her best leather jerkin and breeches weren't quite good enough to mark her as a resident, and no servant would wear their hair tied back in a queue.
But she put on a swagger, small and slim as she was, and no-one had interfered with her. They'd let her wander their streets, and their disapproving disinterest created a bubble of invisibility around her.
Except now the sun was setting and she was lost. Really lost. "Fuck fuck fuck."
Her life had been spent up on Pigs' Hill -- she hadn't called it that then, of course -- and recently down by the waterfront. This part of the City had been either beneath her station, or above it.
Each house here had a tile particular to its own street or square, showing a picture of a plant against a white background. It took Flower a while to figure out that these represented the streets' names. Daisy Square, Fern Alley, Unidentified Yellow Blossom Street.
She'd passed the afternoon wandering around, looking for as many new tiles as she could find. It was such a simple but charming thing that she wondered briefly why no-one used it in the rest of the City. Then she realised that there was no need. Up on Pigs' Hill the handful of mansions were clustered around a single square, and everyone knew who was who and where they lived. Down below, nobody cared. As long as you knew Low Street, the docks, Hangman's Square and a few other places, you could find your way around.
The signs weren't the only difference up here. The ever-present fog that lived in the marshes and made the docks its own didn't venture into these streets in the afternoon. Only now, with the onset of evening, did a single tendril drift by, but it seemed as much out of place as she was. She followed it along a cobbled street until it disappeared downhill again after a few dozen paces. Somehow she felt even more lost without it.
"Fuck!"
It came out louder than she'd intended in the empty air, like an echo shouting the word back at her. Flower blushed, even though there was no-one to hear her, and hurried on until she found another street leading away from this one. "Fuck." This time it was a whisper.
Even so, the word seemed to hang in the still air. The street -- Rose Street, judging by the sign -- was as empty as all the others. On one side it was dominated by a large house -- a merchant's, Flower thought, or perhaps a successful artisan's -- while the other showed a row of identical doors and windows, one after the other.
And they were all barred.
"Fuck." Another whisp of fog crept over the flagstones, then vanished, as if only a fool would be out in the streets after sundown.
I'm not sticking around,
it seemed to say,
there are ghouls about!
Her pace quickened until she was almost running down the street. Her footsteps were dull thuds on the stone -- too quiet to draw the ghouls, she hoped, but they sounded like hammer blows on a smith's anvil.
For a moment she considered calling out, asking for help. Surely people who took such pride in their homes and streets wouldn't leave a stranger to the ghouls? Surely they were kind, and decent, and they'd take a helpless woman in?
But the bars and shutters told her otherwise. Ghouls wouldn't force a door. They wouldn't smash a window. They wouldn't climb onto an empty barrel to reach the top of a high wall.
Those defences were all about keeping strangers out.
"Fuck." She could hear the despair creeping into her voice. "Fuck, fuck!"
Beyond the large house the street curved away. Hope kept her feet moving forward, hope that there was some sanctuary just out of sight, somewhere to hide, a place--
A garden gate.
Beyond the large house was a garden gate. Little more than a wooden door, solid and well-built but unbarred.
Flower almost ran towards it, hands reaching for the latch, heart sinking when it didn't move. Then she remembered the ghoul lock. Common up on Pigs' Hill, but rarely used down by the docks. A special latch on the inside, just within reach for someone standing in the street. Lift it at the same time as the latch on the outside and--
The gate swung open.
An instant later Flower was standing inside a narrow passage, closing the gate behind her and making sure the latches -- both of them -- were secure. Her heart was pounding, and she realised she was shaking. "Fuck," she breathed, leaning against a brick wall. This time all she heard in the word was relief.
She stood for a long moment, listening to the sounds of her own breathing, her own heartbeat, and further away the sounds of the City. She didn't hear the tramp of ghouls, but that did little to diminish the relief. She was lucky to find this refuge, she knew. There might not be another safe place between here and the docks, and the longer she looked the more likely she was to find a pack of ghouls instead.
Once she felt steadier she pushed herself upright again and looked around. There wasn't much to see, beyond a few yards of passage that the lingering evening light revealed. As her eyes became accustomed to the gloom, she realised that there were trees ahead, and the bulk of a house.
Remembering that she still needed to find some loot, she moved forward, careful to be as quiet as she could. She hadn't seen any light coming from the shuttered windows, but that didn't mean anything. Whoever lived here might prefer to spend their evenings at the rear of the house. That was probably where the best rooms where, anyway: upstairs, overlooking the garden.
And they'd definitely have servants. Servants heard everything. Servants knew every sound of the house. They always did.
The passage ended in another gate. This one was thicker, heavier, with an ornate handle and long hinges in a swirling pattern. It fit snugly, a thumb's width above the tiles and another thumb below a stone lintel. And it was locked.
That didn't stop Flower, though. With the immediate pressure off now that she was safe from the ghouls, her mind seemed to be clearer.
She was light and lithe, and it was the work of an instant to clamber up the door and onto the lintel. It was wide enough for her to lie comfortably, with her legs dangling on either side as she peered around in the deepening gloom.
The garden below was unkept and overgrown. Shrubs that once had probably been groomed and pruned were now shapeless forms. The paths were half-hidden by weeds and overhanging branches. The trees that Flower had spied earlier, and that seemed to mark the rear of the property, rose from a layer of dead leaves and branches.
A small patch of light came from a window just above the ground by a broad tiled area. Clearly the servants' quarters. The only other light came from the upper storey, shining through three tall but narrow windows set side by side. The master's chambers, most likely.
That left the whole first storey dark. Flower felt herself grin. Her fortunes were looking up.
She turned her attention to where she stood. If she stretched, she could just about reach the wide sill under the closest window on this level. The shutters were open, and she had the razor-thin hook in her belt that Gienna had given her and that would open any latch from the outside.
Behind her was another house, only two storeys high. When she had enough loot, she'd let herself out of the window, cross the lintel and make her escape that way. Find somewhere on the rooftop highway to hunker down until the sun rose.
She grinned to herself. It was a plan.
After a few moments' struggle -- it wasn't as easy as it was before, when she knew Gienna and the rest were around as lookouts and back-up -- she had the window unlatched. It opened outwards, and for an instant her heart lurched in her chest as she lost her balance and almost fell. But she recovered, and seconds later her hands were pushing apart curtains of a heavy blue velvet.
If she'd known about them, she'd have been more careful. They blocked out the light from a small oil lamp standing on a table by the door. It was only dim, and a quick scan of the room -- lip trapped between her teeth, hands almost trembling -- showed her that there was no-one there.
Still, they'd probably be along at some point, otherwise they wouldn't have left the lamp. Steadying her breath, she dropped from the sill onto a hard wooden floor behind the tall winged chair that stood before the window.
Her soft leather boots didn't make a sound. She stayed where she was for a slow count to ten, crouched in her hiding place, ears peeled. Nothing.
