From then on the city prospered, becoming the centre of trade for the neighbouring duchies. As predicted, the city filled out until it touched the walls, and then expanded beyond them, but not far. There was always a wariness about the folk that lived within. Rumours abounded about the pirates, but they were never seen within the city, only on the high seas, or in raids far and wide, but never within a few days sailing of the Bay's Point. The merchants ignored this though, many forgetting their humble origins, shunning the ancient law of the rural folk in their greed for profit. So it became that Bay's Point was a prosperous city, but somewhat of an outcast. The folk there were regarded as hostile, though they would have merely seen it as high-spirited. The city attracted more of its like, and became a major port, full of the roughest sailors, and the slyest merchants. But those that risked their lives to exist alongside them usually ended up prospering.
Zya could well believe it as she walked with Lorn through the streets of the prospering city. Everywhere that she looked were the signs of prosperity. Three storied houses crowded the streets, leaning over protectively like ancient old crones trying to stay standing. In places, the roads even spread out to show far off estates and the crystalline splendour of the far-off and rarely glimpsed Ducal Palace rising on the hill near the coast. “It would take most of the day to walk to the palace from here.”
“Rumour has it that mercenary guards spring as if from nowhere, if anybody should actually get that close. If you were to approach the palace, you had better have a good excuse, or watch your back. Bay's Point is that sort of a city. Every person has a weapon of some kind. Old ladies peddle a splendid variety of knives on street corners. From the sturdiest dagger to the daintiest poniard, everything is on sale.”
“So I see. They all walk around as if they own the place.”
Hulking pirates swaggered up streets, cursing merrily, great falchions and cutlasses swinging precariously from their scabbards, though not too many of them made it as far as the area of the city they were now in. Children played with dogs in the street, unafraid of anybody that might pass by.
“Bay's Point is their heritage. If they exude a sense of ownership, they have every right to. The children are bold and courageous, pirate's children from birth. They are born knowing that their fathers have ridden the waves for generations, and are brought up to appreciate what they fought for.”
“I hear they can curse as colourfully as the pirates. You know this rubbed off on Ju.”
“Zya, Ju is only a little older than most of these street urchins, and he has settled in at home in this city as though he had been born here. I would not be surprised if he could curse like that before you knew him. Now do we cross the river today?”
They had been in Bay's Point for just over one turn of the moon, or month as the city folk called it, and the place still seemed unfamiliar to her. She had not even attempted to cross the river on one of the many ferries to discover the eastern half of the city, though Ju and Lorn had crossed over there regularly. The western City was a mix of docks, merchant houses and wealthy estates. From the talk they had shared in taverns, the estates were apparently the homes of the descendants of the original Bay's Point pirates, who had raided the coast so many generations ago. Zya wished to see the buildings, the palace especially, for she had never been anywhere near anything bigger than a small town. Until arriving at the city, the biggest building she had encountered was the Town Hall in the unfortunate village of Hoebridge. Even now, as she turned and looked back to the East, unconscious thoughts rose to do the bidding of the part of her that worried. Zya knew that something was wrong back where they had turned aside from the rest of their travelling companions. “I can't cross it, Lorn. Something is wrong with it, and I feel queasy even thinking about doing such. It is as if the wrongness flows down out of the East, from where we came.” The river that split Bay's Point like an arrow split a target in a tourney. Thinking of arrows, she looked back across at Lorn, who was contemplating her as she mulled over her thoughts. He smiled as he noticed her coming back to herself amidst the rubbish-filled streets of the pirate city. That was enough for Zya. Lorn's dark features were so similar to her own, and yet to subtly different. The tilt of his eyes, the confidence in his ability betrayed by his sure stance. Lithe as her father, Zya appreciated the slightly stockier appearance of the nomad from the Uporan Steppes. Walking down the street together, their dark features and their height served to make people think that they were family, married or brother and sister. Zya had never really considered how similar they actually did look. Their only real difference was in their style of dress. Zya had managed to combine her leather riding gear with the woollen tribal material favoured by the wise women, the tribal seers of the steppes. Lorn stuck to his traditional warriors garb, leather and skins with his bow slung across his back in its oilskin. It was well that he had come with them. Although this city was not half the size of granite Raessa, it was the main trading outpost for the Uporan tribes, and they had their own section of the city, near the northern wall. Making contacts quickly due to his status within his own tribe, Lorn soon had a roof over their heads, and jobs for them all. The house they had been granted from the elder tribesmen in the city was not big, but it too was unsettling. Zya could not bring herself to stay confined within the stone walls. She needed to move, to see different things. The boxed nature of the house made her feel trapped.
“Well there is plenty of the city for us to see yet. I just appreciate being back in such a place. Being a traveller of sorts is nice, but the hustle and bustle of a city reminds one that there is no cause to be lonely in this world.”
“Strange. My father and Ju are not like that. When I asked him about it, he said to me that he had had cause to live in a house a long time ago, but would offer no more.” Her father was busy this day, employed in the job that had made him his living. He had been a wandering carpenter with the travellers, or tinkers, as they were more commonly known. He was now installed in a carpentry that was rapidly gaining renown for his deft touch with the plane and the lathe, even after this short amount of time. Lorn had been placed with a weapon smith, for he was an adept at the making of arrows and the other weapons that the nomads had need of. “Should you not be getting back to your work?”
“I have finished for the day. I am only going to make so many arrows for that man. Weapons I put my touch to should be for hunting, but these will be used in less than noble contests, resulting in the spilling of blood in anger rather than for survival. This does not concern the weaponsmith, so long as the customers are happy.” Fletchers were few and far between in a city dominated by the sword, and many a pirate had been caught trying to entice Lorn to join them on a ship bound for some mysterious place, for archers of quality were even rarer.
“Well at least Ju is happy,” Zya countered. Ju had amusingly been given the child's job of a message runner, and they rarely saw him. “He has found his niche in life for the present, and from what I hear he revels in it,” Lorn agreed. Ju's quick wit and fast legs gave him a tremendous advantage, for the local children might be hardy, but they were not always the cleverest of people. He also gained access to many of the larger houses, which caused Zya pangs of jealousy.
“He gets to visit the places I can only gaze at from afar. I have not even seen the halls of the guild I am working in.”
“Which guild is that?”
“I have no idea, Lorn. I never get beyond the kitchen, and nobody will tell me. They won't even talk unless it is to order me around.” The irony of it was that Zya had been put in a guild house doing menial chores, as befitted one of her 'station', though the guildsmen themselves had descended from pirate stock. She was in a large, almost palatial building, but she never got to see any of it because the seamstresses and cooks only entered through a half-rotten mouldy door on the corner of a street off of one of the main thoroughfares. The guild was protected within its own walls, but she could never see any of the splendour, and was barred from mos
t of the building. She was never one to hold a grudge though. She worked hard, and was rewarded with pay. This was one bonus, though she kept very little for herself. The tenets of the Old Law were strong in her blood, and as a result of her until recent life Zya really did not crave for very much. Her belted dagger and her necklace were all that she wanted, and neither was obvious to behold.
“How far until the market?”
“We are almost there.”
Today they were out shopping for food. Zya had never needed money, or possessions, but Gren had instilled in her a love of food that went beyond passionate. Though she would never be comfortable here, the markets took that worry away from her for at least a little while, and she anticipated every visit. Merchants brought in produce from the farmsteads upriver, many of which she had passed by in person. They also brought in all manner of delicacy from different parts of the Nine Duchies, and it was these that she had gawked at in stupefied wonder every time they had passed by. There was no need to buy them, but the pleasure of discovery was ever strong in her mind, and the scented fruits and spiced meats that the vendors did their best to sell were worth a long walk into the middle of the town. The marketplace they were headed for was right in the middle of the exquisitely decorated western side of the city, in amongst the guilds. Tales had it that the guildsmen of old did not want to have to move far to purchase their luxuries, and so the merchants had moved to where the money was, and there was plenty of that. The greed and avarice that Zya saw on a daily basis had literally turned her stomach. If these people had ever followed the tenets of the Old Law, they had clearly forgotten them. Thievery was rife, but only because the fat merchants and dim nobles swaggered through the town with their pockets dripping gold, and their fingers and ears decorated with a year's wage to a farmer. The thieves were almost as gaudily attired, and Zya was sure that on many occasions she had seen a thief end up as the victim. She felt a need to speak to them, about what she saw, but she had the common sense to see that it would do no good. 'Keep your head down, keep your wits about you, and stay busy' was what Tarim had told her when as a child she had asked about why not everybody followed their way of life. It had been a cryptic remark to make, but it was only in situations like this that his words rang true. Zya thanked her father silently as she looked away from the gaudiness of the busy citizens, and up at the sky, a steadfast companion that had been with her on the road for all of her life, and was resolute in its winter grey.
“You okay?”
Zya came back to herself, withdrawing her perceptions from the purity of the sky, and looked across at Lorn. He watched her strangely from under the dark locks that had loosened themselves from his warrior's tail. Zya noted once again how fathomless his eyes were, and felt that were they a lake, she would dive in and willingly drown in their midnight perfection. “You okay?” he repeated. “You were looking up at the sky, and you just stopped, right there in the middle of the street.”
Already people were milling around as the street blocked up, a result of them stopping in such a narrow place. Over to the side, a door crashed open and a huge baker in less than pristine white hat and apron leaned out, his red, sweaty face looking for the cause of the blockage. His eyes found the two of them. “Move along you two!” he bawled, spittle flying from his mouth, “you are blocking my customers!”
“Yah, like anybody would buy bread made from the filth you get a hold of,” bellowed a man, equally as large, and attired in garish purple and yellow, with a blue-steeled falchion strapped to his back. Zya tensed, feeling there was going to be some sort of conflict, but the two men stood to one side of the milling crowds, bellowing and exchanging such a vile series of epithets and curses that Zya felt the beginnings of a flush start to creep up her neck. Then she looked around. Nobody cared, and those that did pass by chuckled at the exchange. This was obviously something that had become common between the two men, as both were grinning, and laughing out louder the worse the insults became. Lorn beamed back, a flash of white teeth, and led Zya out of the flood of humanity and up a shortcut through a side street. Zya glanced around as she walked. “The people bustle on as if nothing had happened there.”
“Of course they do. This is a city. They are too preoccupied with their own business to care about a couple of locals.” Lorn led her on slowly, walking under tar-smeared wooden buttresses. Tar was evident everywhere they looked, and the trade was a major source of income. The houses leaned in even closer above them, and it looked as if the only things supporting some residences were the adjacent buildings. Arches and doorways loomed, turning the morning into a suspicious twilight. “Be careful, “Lorn warned.” These sorts of alleys are where lurkers prey on the unwary.”
As they walked warily along the cobbles, slippery with filth and the Gods only knew what else, Zya was careful to not look down. She had been down this alleyway before, and knew it to be a shortcut. Nevertheless, Zya had her hand on her dagger, for one never knew when one would suddenly become a potential mark. They had been accosted but once before, Zya's dagger singing as it whistled out of its sheath to be bared alongside Lorn's longer and much heavier Borad dagger, a sturdy knife reputedly used by a tribe far to the South. The pair of thieves had reconsidered, and ever since they had been left alone in this part of the city, their threat of violent self-defence showing that they were obviously not to be trifled with. “So are you feeling okay?” Lorn persisted.
“I don't know, to be honest.” Zya replied with a dumbfounded scratch to the back of the head. “I found myself contemplating the clouds, and then all of a sudden it was as if I was not standing there next to you anymore. I was much closer to the clouds, or they were closer to me.” She shook her head as the memory stayed with her, fuzzy and indistinct.
Lorn studied her, straight faced. She felt somewhat lost. “Our wise women would say that your head in the clouds is not the best place for it to be.”
The irony in the statement made Zya smile, and she saw that Lorn was joking with her. “Fool.”
He smiled back, eventually breaking into a grin. She felt much better for it, her spirits rising as they rarely did in this place. They turned and walked on, their company enough to make them oblivious to their surroundings.
“In truth, I find all the twists and turns of the dirt-filled alleyways rather intriguing. There is always a new path to follow, a new nook to discover.”
“The fact that it was so close to the rich estates is what truly amazes me. No, perhaps close isn't the right word.” Zya mused. “On top of is more like it.”
“That is the nature of cities. You never know when you are likely to get surprised.” One moment they were twisting through a veritable maze tar-topped stone buildings, with rotting little wooden porches and a small dog barking out of every shadow, and the next they were in a wide-open space, where a large mansion dominated the scenery, its grey stone walls and columns magnificent in spite of their dreary colour.
“That is hideous.” Zya looked over the building.
“It happens that rock was in great abundance, but those with money aren't always blessed with sense. Fortunately for the citizens of Bay's Point the stone was also cheap, hence the height of houses and the stark splendour of the great buildings. If any building in the region was made of stone, the chances were that the stone had come from the quarries. Because of this, the stonemasons' guild has always been a close second in size to the fishers' guild, the official name for the pirates. They operate out of separate ends of the city, the fishers having a large collection of dockside warehouses, and the stonemasons being situated closer to the walls.”
“Proximity is of great value to these people, isn't it.” Zya saw this every time that she turned from one scene to another.
“Absolutely. When one lives in such a climate, proximity is necessity. Consider my tribe. We move to where we can find food. The same can be said metaphorically for these people. Fortunately for the stonemasons, the rock is easily accessible, and they had created huge p
its in which they toiled to excavate rock on the Southern side of the city. Your father remarked on this when we first arrived, saying that it was not defence that was the reason for the smaller wall in the North, though the bluffs and sharp drops did their job very well, it was money. Moving all that rock across the river would have taken a massive chunk out of the profits of such an endeavour as building the city walls, and the effort of crossing it over the river to the other side even more so. Therefore it was only the rich that had built their massive mansions, for most others could not afford the ferry price. The rich here were the same as the rich any place else. They were the guilds and the nobles. The commons were left to fend for themselves in most places, although it did appear that Bay's Point has been very well constructed. The houses are well built, and in most cases the proximity of so many huddled demesnes served to protect them from the cold that was perpetual all year round as the Arctic's deep cold struggled to spread down and beat back the warmer conditions that threatened its absolute grip on the Northern climes. Only a noble is able to afford to pay the woodcutters and merchants that continually ferry in stacks of felled lumber from any number of places, and for that reason the woodcutters' guild has grown considerably.”
The Path of Dreams (The Tome of Law Book 2) Page 12
