Thomas woke to a finger poking his shoulder.

"Mr. Chester, where are we?"

The setting sun had turned the clouds a purple orange. Boatmen and fishermen had come into the wharf like the tide and were carrying cargo and supplies ashore. Above them the waterfront streets buzzed with unrestrained human conversation. This was a more faithful sign the Shroud had lifted than his emotional state.

"By the river," he replied to Sayuri.

"I know that! Where is that relative to my family's plant? Have you word of what transpired?"

"We’re east a ways,” Thomas said. “After you teleported us, we carried you here and let you sleep. Haven't had the chance to hear any news.”

"Then we must go find out!"

"No, we eat," Milly said, massaging blood back into her slack face. "And then find a boat.”

"Should we split up and do both?" Thomas asked.

Milly quivered at the climax of a stretch. "Mm! Sure. I'll get food, you get us a boat. Sayuri, you're with me."

"Whatever for?"

"Because if anyone asks questions, I can answer without shooting them," Milly replied.

Using the bench's iron arm as a crutch, Thomas pulled himself up. Songs whispered in his ears. Whistled tunes and folk songs, sometimes his mother sang them, sometimes little taunting rhymes from his sisters, or the beefy, off-key singing of his comrades in arms. Snippets that sounded so real he barely recognized them as hallucinations.

Pins of sweat pricked his legs, back, and hands. The corners of his eyes populated with the sensation of a human figure startling him. Withdrawal had set in.

At the stairs up to the road where their paths diverged, he said, "bring me back something to drink, please."

"Tommy, you alright?" Milly asked.

"I'll be fine. Just some withdrawal. I don't need much to fix it, a bottle of barleywine'll do. Here," he pulled out the stolen wallet and handed Milly a 500 dō coin to pay for dinner and something to stave off his symptoms.

Despite the poor state of the wharf, there was no lack of demand for docking space. Rowboats, canoes, skiffs, rafts, and small sailing ships packed in bow to stern, knocking against each other. Thomas searched for someone to charter a boat from, but most of the sailors were rushing to get their fish to market as the stalls above fired grills and fryers.

"Excuse me," Thomas said to a man about his age gathering up five or six fishing rods in his arms.

"Sorry lad, I don't do direct sale," he replied.

"No, I want to charter your boat."

"Don't do travel neither," he said, squeezing past Thomas in a hurry.

Moving on, Thomas found a man setting down a cooler and a bottle of wine on the deck of his skiff.

"Pardon me, sir," he said.

The man looked up, leery of the arrival. Thomas wasn't sure what he himself looked like, but after a day and a half of being tired, hungover, and stained head to toe with sweat, he must have made an ugly picture.

"What?" the man asked. He was an assistant foreman by the quality of his wool sweater and corduroy pants. This was a man his company could depend on to whip other Æfrians into line.

"Me and my family, we'd like to charter your ship. Down at least to Burnehithe. Further if you'll take our money."

The man offered up something between a smirk and an apology. "Sorry, lad,”

From behind Thomas came a beautiful young woman with shiny chestnut hair and a peacoat. She hooked her arm around the man's waist and smooched him on the cheek. She had no way of knowing how close Thomas had come to attacking her when she popped out of the dark, hallucinatory ring around his vision. He nodded to the couple and walked away.

~~~

The ramshackle stalls along the riverfront emanated smells of grilling meat, frying oil, cheap spices and herbs, and other, less identifiable odors.

"I would ask that we find some Kaihonjin food. They must have it, for they sell to Kaihonjin laborers too,” Sayuri said.

"You won't ask for anything. You'll get what I give you," Mildred said.

"I can conceive of no reason why we cannot stop at two stalls," Sayuri replied.

"I can.”

"Pray tell."

"Because I said so."

Sayuri's cloak shifted to watch catfish roasting on a charcoal grill being lathered with a Kaihonjin sauce glistening brown and syrupy over the flames.

"That is not a reason, that is a whim."

"When you're the one holding the coin purse, Sayuri, whims are reasons. You of all people should know that."

Stolen novel; please report.

"As I said previously, my clan are businessmen, not aristocracy."

"I don't care what your silly family are, I'm not getting you Kaihonjin food.”

"Do not call the Ueichi clan silly!"

Eyes turned to them, anonymity lost as the rhythm of the crowd was broken.

"Be quiet you stupid girl!" Mildred whispered, grabbing the girl's arm. "You'll have Æfrian food and you'll like it!"

Sayuri yanked her arm away. "Apologies, but my stomach is a bit delicate for pig lard and organ meat.”

"From a culture whose finest cuisine is rotten soybeans and plums that taste like battery acid, I take that as a compliment."

That wasn't fully true. Mildred recognized that Kaihonjin food was generally higher quality, but it had nothing to do with refined palates. They could just afford quality ingredients. Animal fat and organ meat, though quite tasty, were a matter of necessity. If you weren't prepared to eat chicken livers and pig intestines and fish eyeballs, you didn't eat.

If Mildred was honest, her vehemence wasn't solely because Æfrian food was cheaper. She also wanted to force Sayuri's nose into the scraps the Kaihonjin left them under the excuse of "market dynamics."

"I would rather starve," Sayuri said, spinning on her heels and walking away.

"S'pose you will then," Mildred said, spotting a stall selling some nice, savory offal pies with a mouthwatering flaky crust.

It was only a matter of time before Sayuri got hungry enough to eat whatever she was given. For once, it would be an Æfrian inflicting a "gift" on a Kaihonjin. The thought reminded Mildred of Ilsa. As humiliating as the encounter had been, she couldn't fault the woman. She didn't want to bear children for the same reason Ilsa didn't want her to have them. The last thing Æfrians needed were more Kaihonjin "gifts.”

Mildred ordered three of the pies in anticipation of Sayuri caving and set off towards the wharf while scanning for a drink-peddler. Before she found one, Kaihongo reached her ear. Low and precise.

Six men in Genji silver-and-blue body armor bearing assault rifles swept through the crowd who scrambled out of their way. Mildred’s eyes scoured the crowd. She spotted Sayuri's tell-tale cloak in line for battered vegetables and grilled river fish between her and the Genkai-Wabu drag net. The stupid girl had zero situational awareness.

Mildred walked as fast as she could without drawing attention, but the Genkai-Wabu found Sayuri at the same time and broke into a jog, shoving bystanders out of the way. Before Sayuri realized what was happening, a soldier roughly pressed a rubber collar with silver bands set into it around her neck.

Mildred waited for Sayuri to use her hatsuden to escape, but nothing happened. She suspected the collar they slapped around her neck had something to do with it. No one in the crowd felt like dying for the sake of some strange Kaihonjin girl and Thomas was nowhere in sight. Praying to Loothsa, she let insanity take her.

"Kono toui souha ao niaraneba~!" Mildred sang, loudly and off-key.

It took effort to sing like this, since the song was a familiar and comfortable one. Milly’s mother had sung it to her when she was a baby. Selling her performance, she staggered and lurched into the soldiers' invisible perimeter.

"Kuni no midori no tsukasa no gotoshi!"

The second line was sung as swinging triplets imitating the silence at the bottom of a wave, pregnant with anticipation of the next rise. Mildred ruined the artistic impression by screeching the "ee" at the end.

"daga omoi bito no kage mo naku!"

The crowd was drawn to the bizarre performance and to the forced disappearance they were previously happy to ignore. Everyone was paying attention except the performer herself, who was walking straight into a group of soldiers with her cheek pressed to a stack of pies.

"Back up! I said back up!" One of the soldiers yelled as Mildred came closer.

Her heart pounded towards a rising climax as she sung, "Kuni wa mada haruka tо̄..."

She held the apex of the musical phrase like a guillotine waiting to fall. The soldier moved to raise his rifle as Mildred staggered up to him.

"...ku."

She kissed him on the cheek which switched off his brain and made it so that, when she held out the pies, his hands went for them instead of his gun. The other soldiers were so stunned by the audacity they would have accepted a pie themselves. Hands now free, she grabbed Sayuri's wrist and ran, putting bystanders between them and the rifles.

~~~

"Cannae help ya, son," the old man said, tipping his tartan hat as consolation.

As the evening sky bruised purple, Thomas grew more and more anxious and aware of how ill-equipped he was for the job he had set himself to.

"Oi! Man in the red jacket there! You lookin' for a boat, ain'tcha?"

Calling him was an unusual man leaning against an unusual boat. For one, the man was Kaihonjin, fully Kaihonjin, with a blue jumpsuit tucked into rubber boots and a dark brown tan. His craft was an old riverine patrol boat with a flat, sideless deck and mid-deck canopied bridge from the days when boats ran on diesel gasoline instead of hatusden fuel cell.

The only differences between it and a museum piece were the hull painted solid white and the Kaihon Imperial Flag of a white egret against a deep purple background fluttering over the bridge. Thomas hadn't seen the flag since returning from the war. Most locations of importance were privately owned and flew conglomerate flags.

"I am looking for a boat," Thomas said.

The man, in his late middle-age by his wrinkles but with a blocky, cleanly-shaven jaw and shaggy mop of black hair, stepped off the boat and tramped across the pier to shake Thomas' hand.

"Shuiichi! I go by Shuu. Nice to meetcha.”

"Thomas. Or Tom. Not Tommy," Thomas said, returning the shake.

"Want me to show ya 'round the boat? Then we can talk prices."

"What's your story?"

The man already had one boot back on the patrol boat when he turned around. "Hmm? I'm just a geezer who likes antiques. I drive my boat up and down the river, place to place, and I make just enough money ferryin' folks, fish, or flotsam to buy food and petrol to keep her and me goin'. Then I do it all over again."

"So you're homeless?"

The man laughed. "My Daisagi-Maru here is my home! Most folks' homes don't move, so it might seem a nibble strange. But mine does! And she'll carry you straight down to the sea if that's what you're lookin' for."

Thomas narrowed his eyes. "How'd you know we were looking to go to Tо̄tо̄shi?"

"I didn't! But I do now, and now that I know, I betcha I can cut ya a hell of a deal, what'd'ya say?"

Something about the man felt off. He'd never heard of someone living off a boat, and the cute, folksy act was laid on a little too thick. For all he knew this man was with Genji.

"How much?"

"Don'tcha wanna see the craft first?"

"I'll trust you it runs. How much?"

"Down to Éstfýr? Let's call it, eh, a flat gin. I'll also take trade in kind."

The going rate was one Imperial Gin to 10,000 dо̄, so a Gin was a little over twice what they'd have after Milly bought dinner.

Thomas shook his head. "I've got 4,500 dо̄, what'll that buy us?"

The man clapped the railing of the bridge. "Ah-ha! I see you're a man who likes to haggle, Tommy— er, Tom. How's'about 7,500?"

"No, I mean, 4,5000 is really all we have."

"Tell ya what, I can make that work. Yeah, that'll work. How many did you say there were?”

No one agreed to less than half their asking price that quickly. Either the man was hard up, or he wanted them on his boat for other reasons, and both possibilities made him a threat. Having their throat slits, their pockets picked, and their bodies dumped in the river was hardly any better than what they could expect from Genji.

"I appreciate the offer,” Thomas said. “She's a lovely boat, but I think I’ll keep our options open."

"Hey! Hey, hey, are ya sure? It'll take ya gods know how much longer on these rickety little paddlers! My boat's the only thing on the dock packin' pump jets and a diesel engine! Come on, you're a military man, so you know she's the real deal!"

Ignoring the man's protests, Thomas walked towards the stairs where he was supposed to meet Milly and Sayuri. His vision kept populating with shadow people. He hoped a bit of food on his stomach might ease the worst of it, even if he had to wrestle with nausea to get it down. Before he made it, he heard shouting from the road followed by Milly and Sayuri sprinting down the stairs.

"Go!" Milly screamed.