The first days after she had moved into Three Knocks were so strange to her. The strangest of all was the lack of all-present mud that dominated the Drowns. For so long squelching under her feet had been the sign of being home, the sound as familiar as the beating of her own heart. Three Knocks were raised a bit higher from the river, the water seeping through the anti-flooding measures not reaching here. The ‘Knocks’ themselves were three long tenement buildings, officially known as Morris-Ehelia Workers Settlement Projects. But all around the Arklington they were always known as Three Knocks, built over a small residential area that was destroyed during the war and then knocked down completely to make space for the influx of workers that had been attracted by new magic-based industries. And those buildings were built from the reclaimed stone and rubble picked from the knocked-down district, making them look like three very tired and pox-ridden beasts of burden. Each of those three-storey high buildings made an arm of a big triangle, almost touching at the ends, only open wider at one side where there was an exit to a wide street leading to St. Evie’s Bridge. In the middle there was a big plaza occupied by a latrine building- long and square, made of bricks as poxed as the tenements themselves. Stone gutter ran away from it to join the sewers couple streets further. The companion to the latrine building was a well- thick and square, under a canopy of a wooden shelter.
There is no place that would be left empty in Arklington and so the plaza lying in the arms of Three Knocks tenements spawned a shanty town around both the public latrine house and the well, making traversing the plaza a daunting adventure with a threat of being perpetually lost in the maze of small shops, food stands, drinking holes and other businesses, legitimate and not, nesting in tiny ramshackle sheds. Jay had to make a mental map of the place, marking the fastest route through this gaudy gathering that always smelled of fried cake, spoiled turnips and of whatever was rolling through the open gutter from the latrines.
The building she was now living in was the one farthest from the main route. Past the main door there was a thick, wooden staircase that blissfully had its bannisters intact on account of all those factory workers who would drunkenly fall up the stairs come the payday. Beyond it a narrow corridor led all alongside the tenement, its much scratched, wood-panelled walls broken up by doors leading into the rooms on one side and small windows on the other.
Jay’s room was at the very top floor, stuffed between two of her neighbours. On one side there was a family of five that all worked in the magic-works and was gone the entire night, rolling through the corridor at the crack of dawn, stomping their feet and cursing cheerily. The other side was taken by an old Nyrah man, half-blind and half-deaf. The landlord, out of pity, let him stay in his mice-infested room in exchange for him scrubbing the floors and sweeping the stairs. Once Jay passed him in the corridor, hauling heavy water buckets. Tentatively, she offered her help, just to be looked at as if she just proposed to perform some unspeakable acts on the man’s dead grandmother, so she offered no more.
And then there was her room, a real room, not a hole in a wall somewhere or a shack that barely held together with strings and rags and badly placed hopes. There was a small stone fireplace in the corner and a row of cast-iron hooks to hang her clothes. A palette bed with an old and stained horsehair mattress was pushed under one wall, as far as possible from the window. The window had a windowsill so eaten through with rot that droughts reigned supreme on windy nights. Runic plate that she bought from the enchantment shop kept the rats away, even though Three Knocks rats were much more polite than those in the alley in the Drowns and almost didn’t bite. And then there was space enough for a wooden iron- plated chest, where she now kept all the tools of her trade. In the end, it was a roof over her head, for the first time in her life she was warm, dry and able to stay that way more than just for a short while. And that was all she wanted, wasn’t it?
‘Jay!’ she heard one early evening. ‘Jay! The Sacred Pair punish that girl! Jay are you at home?’
Jay crept to the door and carefully peeked outside.
‘Oh here you are’ her neighbour, the matron of the clan of the factory workers from next door was balancing at her threshold, her high-pitched voice agitated.
‘What is it Mrs Podrock?’ she asked carefully, hoping that it there wasn’t some sort of complaint that the woman wanted to bring to her. The tenants of the Three Knocks loved those, always on a lookout to complain about something their neighbours did or were thought to be doing.
‘The Lord and Lady have mercy!’ cried Mrs Podrock. ‘Is that how you treat your family? That they have to walk up to strangers and ask about you?’
‘My…family?’ asked Jay, utmostly confused. For all the years she spent in the streets if she knew one thing then it was that she had no family at all.
‘Your family! Your grandfather to be exact. A little fellow, I could tell the family resemblance at once’ beamed Mrs Podrock.
‘Oh I…um…Is he still here?’
‘He said he’ll be around the well. Said that his legs are not what they used to be and that the stair tire him. Lady preserve such a sweet gentleman! And you girl, hadn’t your mother taught you better than to treat your family like that? Have you run away without telling anyone? All Saints save us from such children!’
Jay extricated herself as fast as she could from Mrs Podrock’s presence, leaving the woman to drone on about the importance of family. Jay ran downstairs and out of the door, barely having time to wrap her blanket around herself.
Outside the wind carried a deathly chill from the river, pushing the charcoal smoke from the food vendor carts low to the ground. The crowd in the plaza was always thicker at this time of the day when the half of the city sought to rest from daily toil while the other was in the middle of readying for one. She sifted the crowd with her gaze, looking for him even though she knew that it is an art to be able to pick him in the crowds. She hadn’t seen him for two weeks now, ever since she started to move, busy with the adjustment of the new place, the new way of doing things and yes, also with new clothes she could now not only afford in the used clothes shops, but could afford to be seen in them.
‘Nuts roasted!’ hollered a hawker straight into her ear, making her jump. ‘Tube pine pods whole. Getcha some while still hot from the coals!’
Jay glared at the man, but he paid no attention to her as a swarm of dirty kids, all wanting a paper bag full of nuts to chew and empty husks to spit from the tenement roofs onto the crowds below. Jay pushed through the crowd of runny noses and lopsided hoods, disentangling herself from the sudden crowd.
‘Hey kid, over here.’
She spotted Lethe, sitting on the makeshift stools that were pushed into a corner between two sheds, next to the chargrilled fish vendor. He was perched atop one of those, chewing on a shellfish-and-seaagle skewer.
Jay came over and pulled over a stool to herself.
‘Nice place’ said Lethe and spat out a wooden splinter that got into his mouth alongside the shellfish. His green features split open with a cheerful grin.
‘It is’ she said, returning the grin.
‘And you seem to be fitting well. Not bad for a street rat, I’d say. What did you tell your neighbours that you do when you’re out half a night?’
‘I said I’m a barmaid.’
‘Ha! A barmaid! Practically half-way to a noblewoman.’
A feeling akin to guilt crept into her when she thought how she neglected her literacy lessons and other skills that she should be practicing instead.
‘I told you before, I don’t want to be a noblewoman’ muttered Jay.
‘Well then half-way to whatever is that you want.’
What she wanted indeed! But now that she was no longer busy with wanting to be dry, warm and fed, no longer being the ‘loon’un’ from the back ally, the question of what she wanted become more akin to an urchin that waits for her at every corner, sticking their tongue out as she passed.
‘Listen Lethe’ I want to than-‘
‘No, kid I don’t want to listen to that again. And I didn’t come here just to check on you. Or to grill you on whatever you plan to do with your part of the money either. None of my business in the end. Listen I actually came with a job proposition.’
Jay shifted herself closer to Lethe. In the crowded alley of the shanty town full voices talking at once one had to come very close to them to listen-in. Even so, Jay preferred to be careful.
‘Is that the job that you’ve been saying is coming? A proper commission?’
‘Nah, not yet kid. This one is just a good, old-fashioned house burglary. All very easy- go in, take all that is worth three copper bits and isn’t nailed down. A complete clear-out in fact. I got a man with a cart and a robo-horse, and a muscle. He’s-stupid as a boot off your left foot but useful to carry out any heavy stuff there might be. I thought you’d like some of that action too.’
Jay couldn’t help but feel a bit disappointed.
‘Hey you don’t have to make face like that. I thought you might want to have some fun before we get our break into gentle-thievery. You don’t want to- you don’t come.’
‘No Lethe I…I want to come.’
Lethe grinned again.
‘I knew you’d might, kid. Do you know where The Drunken Mage is?
‘Um, the Upways?’
‘Right. Be behind the place in two days at midnight. We’ll go on from there. And, kid?’
‘Hm?’
‘I don’t have to tell you to come dressed properly, right?’
Jay patted her side where under the almost-new grey tunic her dagger hung in its scabbard. She might play a role of a barmaid to all the people around her, but she didn’t forget that she was not one. Lethe grinned at her and waved over a hawker for another round of skewered seagle and oysters.
