14 - Endstown

For the majority of lowborn in the City of Yartha, there was no clear line that separated childhood from adulthood. No formal schools or graduations to punctuate the years. The transition was for the most part only a series of non-events; childish things were slowly left behind and increasingly replaced by more adult concerns until suddenly on some unexceptional day one realized that they were now an adult, and that was that. They were simply there, and the further along they ventured into the deepening tunnel of age, the more their childhoods would seem to them like a life led by someone else- a different person entirely.

In later years, Syatt would have the bitter privilege of knowing when both he and Pox's childhoods had officially come to a halting stop; at the end of a long summer's day in the year seven-hundred and ninety-five. During the late morning they had gone to donate their hair to a fledgling cult in exchange for a silver piece, and later had spent the afternoon drinking beer in Alma Bryde's cellar home on the east side of Yartha, leaving with work she had found for them in the district of Endstown.

The final hours of their youth counted down unbeknownst to them as dusk crept toward Yartha, for the real catalyst would be the evening which would descend on them within those few short hours. In the morning each of them would be changed, as would the city. When the dim light of day was to finally creep across Yartha, it would be as if a lifetime of fear, disappointment, and punished naivety had been compounded into the young fiber of their beings, all within a single summer's night.

***

They arrived back at the short alley behind their rooftop home on Raccoon Street, singing loudly a song they had learned in the orphanage called "In the Arms of the River," and hanging on to one another in their drunkenness. They made most of the song up, forgetting large sections of its verses. When they finished the final chorus they clapped for themselves and laughed and walked along, chuckling and slap-happy.

They’d crossed back over Velias Bridge to procure supplies for the night ahead of them. In the alley behind their rooftop lodgings and hidden under a pile of rubble was a traveling pack Syatt had found discarded on the academy campus during their first winter out from the orphanage. He’d patched it up so many times and with so many different materials that it now looked like a jester's bag. Inside was what they’d come for- an old deck of cards and a few pieces of extremely tough jerky they'd managed to square away, but inside the pack were also articles of their winter clothes, a tinderbox, lockpicking tools, and a pair of fur boots. The boots were too big on Syatt but fit Pox well, though Syatt had a feeling that they would be his size by the time the snows came again and Pox would be out of luck next winter. As miserable as summer was, winter was an entirely different and more dangerous problem for them, and he pushed away the thought. It seemed far away.

Upon hearing five tolls from the bell at the Temple of Lyrwin down the street, they reasoned that they had a couple of hours to spend before they would need to start the walk back across the bridge and to Endstown. The trip would take around two and a half hours total, Syatt knew. It was roughly a four hour walk to go the span of the city, all the way from the west gate to the east. He and Pox had tested it before, as well as the time it took from north to south, and all manner of other trials and experiments for no other reason than being young and having unoccupied time.

Still slightly tipsy, they joined a group of mostly far-younger children in a huge game of hide-and-seek that was being carried out all across a few blocks in Fiddlewood. They were not yet too old for a good game of hide-and-seek. At least Syatt wasn't. He thought Pox may have been growing tired of kids' games by that point, but Syatt wasn’t terribly excited about the idea of growing up. Most of the adults he knew, except now for Alma, perhaps, seemed to live either miserable, or routine, dull lives. He didn't see how or why theirs would be any different, and it filled him with dread rather than promise. Puberty to him had just seemed to be one more step of transformation into the stubborn and sad creatures he saw populate the city.

The game of hide-and-seek was still going as the fireflies gathered, and when it was Syatt and Pox's turn to hide, they simply left without a word for the east side and for Endstown- far, far outside the game's previously established borders.

"How long do you think they'll look for us?" Syatt asked him as he caught up to Pox. Their sweaty torsos and arms were red and itchy from hiding in a row of shrubbery during the game, and they had sobered up considerably from the grog they drank at Alma’s.

"I think we'll probably go down in some infamy for it," Pox laughed. "Bet you that little feller with the spiky hair is going to find us all the way on the east side, though. He's a damn good seeker."

As the sun set, they traveled on through Glass Avenue and to Velias Bridge, on the way to their only night of work for Mr. Perias, or for anyone, ever, for that matter. They would never work again in any traditional capacity or play again as they had as children. Fate or circumstance would soon intervene.

***

Alma had written a note with her signature on it and some simple directions. She’d stamped it with a stamp that left behind her own personal initials. Syatt wondered again who she had been, or rather, who she still was. She had given the letter to him and told them to hand it to Mr. Perias when they arrived, and to explain themselves to him. She’d described his appearance and told them that he would likely be relieved to see them as it would mean he could then go home. She said that if he was in a good mood he may pay them an advance or possibly even a few more coins. He was a wealthy man, she told them.

They were to arrive at nine o' clock that evening. The bazaar would be shutting down, and the stalls would be covered with tarps for the night. All they had to do was stay there throughout the night and keep an eye on Mr. Perias' goods. There were markets along the river which were open all night, but those in Endstown were not, and thieves had been breaking into closed bazaars like his recently, she'd said. They were easy targets. The boys knew from experience.

Those who guarded bazaars and markets like their destination were known as runners, or disparagingly as squealers; their job was not to defend and fight for the wares they were guarding, but to run and alert the Yarthanguard as quickly as possible. They were usually young, around Syatt and Pox's age, sometimes younger, sometimes older, but hardly ever older than teenagers. Syatt and Pox held resentment towards them and often talked down on them, but much of it was posturing around the other Tabby Rat Bastards. On one hand, they had much in common with squealers- they were paid the pitiful wages of the underage, a fifth of what a grown person would receive- but on the other hand, the boys saw them as traitors to the lowborn, running to the pant leg of authority whenever their masters were threatened despite their pittance of compensation and lack of respect they received from both merchant and rogue.

The two never entertained that they would accept such a job, and were of mixed feelings about what to do if something were to happen there. Would they alert the guard, or look the other way? Pox offered that they play it by ear. Syatt agreed, and each of them hoped for a simple, quiet night.

Velias Bridge lay out before them as they walked the wide lane flanked with its flaming braziers. The five towers rose in the darkened sky of the first stars, the windows of the twenty-leveled columns already twinkling as with interior candles and lamp-light. Ahead was the cities' eastern side where they headed once again, and the last vestiges of the sun against the rising bluffs and hills and plain-roofed structures. The two walked past the spot where just the night before last they had seen the filthy and haggard man step over the bannister and fall from the bridge, and they looked at one another but said nothing as they continued on across the river.

***

Mr. Perias didn't speak much, nor did he seem particularly happy to be relieved from his post. He was a stern fellow. Tall and muscular. He had a thick black beard with a patch of white on only one side, and dark, intense eyebrows. He looked to Syatt as if he could have guarded the entire bazaar on his own had he wanted, but he also wore clean, tailored clothes and had gold rings on his fingers. Syatt was aware that the man didn't have to do anything he didn’t want.

The merchant looked at the note from Alma, then folded it and tucked it into the breast pocket of his shirt. He reached to a pouch on his belt, loosened the drawstring of it, fished out five small copper coins and put them in Syatt's palm. "You'll receive the rest at first light. Stay here, and stay awake,” he said, and left.

There was still a smattering of merchants wandering beneath the brightly colored tents and awnings, but most were packing up or were in the process of doing so. They didn't see any other runners. Squealers, Syatt thought to himself. We're squealers, and he was glad that they were nowhere near their stomping grounds on the west side. There was no doubt that if other members of the Tabby Rat Bastards knew, or found out, Syatt and Pox would be kicked out of the gang for it. Not a huge loss, he thought. Secretly he’d wanted to leave them for quite some time. They were a rough crowd, and getting rougher as they aged.

The stalls they were to guard were off from the central part of the market and tucked around the side of a trading hall, the nook of a dead end where the bluffs of the Springboot Mountains became the natural northeastern border of the city. In the man-made cave chambers along Drifter's Row as the stretch was called, merchants and various services had set up shop, much of it unsanctioned by the Towers. Some caves held shrines and temples of the lesser gods, others dens of fighting, gambling, drugs, sex, or both, and some were converted to bath houses where the inner chambers connected to natural pools. All along the great walls of the cliff face these places were set into the rock. The road that ran alongside it was called Drift Street, and it signified the end of the city on that side, hence the name, Endstown.

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The territory was held by the Yarthan Raiders, a gang which had evolved from the fighting dens. The district south of there, Ironworks, where Alma lived, was held by the Ironsmiths. Both were feared groups, normally at one another’s throats, but that summer they had called a truce.

Although there wasn’t much to their job that night, Syatt and Pox were still young, and entertained themselves with ideas that they were guarding some fantastic treasure- a magic ring, maybe, and that they were the only two who could be trusted with guarding something so valuable because of their incredible fighting skills. In reality, they had only been in a few minor scuffles with other kids, Pox a handful more on his own, and they were probably guarding dinner plates and chamber pots.

A few men and women had walked past them on their way to some other place, but so far no one had even asked them what they were doing. Before long, their youthful impulsiveness had worn the novelty of the experience thin. When the boredom of guarding became unbearable in the small hours of the night, the two had taken to making short walks around the vicinity of the bazaar while the other stayed back at the stalls.

Pox had returned not long ago, bored and tired. He sat back down on the log stool, wordlessly, and reached for the deck of cards and gave them a lazy shuffle, then started to deal. A little oil lamp illuminated their dark hands. The shadows of them danced over the squat table and dog-eared cards like spiders as they began their seventh game of Fortress, but Pox threw down his cards immediately. "I'm done. Too hot," he said.

Syatt put his down, too, stood and stretched his back. It was impossible to sit on their makeshift stools for long. He surmised that Mr. Perias had likely known that to be the case when choosing furnishings there.

Pox swatted at a mosquito on his chest, and it left a red smear. He looked at his hand. "Gods damn me," he said, and sighed. “Nobody’s going to rob this dogshit stall," he said, "I almost wish they would, and my brain is telling me it ought to be asleep right now.”

Syatt tapped his foot against the table. “I think I’ll take another walk,” he said. "You going to be alright for a while?"

Pox had taken his shoes off and was examining a blister. He didn’t look up. "Ain't you seen everything there is to see out there? I sure as hell know I have," he said, "and it ain't much.”

“I don’t know if I’m going to be able to sleep,” he said. “Are we still planning on goin’ with Millie’s niece tomorrow?”

“Why not?” Pox said. “We sure as hell got something interesting to talk to her about, now.” Pox waved his hands in a shoo-ing gesture. "Go on. I'm going to try to catch some sleep. You know I’m a light sleeper. I’ll be fine. Be sure to come back in an amount of time that makes sense, though. Before first light, of course. Preferably sooner."

"Alright. Be careful," Syatt said as he gazed up at Lyrwin’s Belt. He had a few hours.

Pox grunted. "You too, and don't you go giving up all our hard-earned coin on them lovely ladies up the river bend, or them lovely fellas either for that matter."

Syatt groaned. “Go to sleep,” he said, smiled and walked away.

As Syatt left the bazaar behind him, the night was still but for a lone male voice calling repeatedly and drunkenly for someone named Gloria, far off. He made his way down Drift Street, his soft footfalls a hurried rhythm. He heard other voices as he walked, everyone audible in that hour in some kind of crisis. The yelling came from off in the distance, or around the corner. It was hard to tell. The tall buildings and cliffs warped and distorted the sound. When he reached the end of the storehouses he passed two men holding a conversation at the mouth of an alleyway. One of them sat at a stool there holding a weathered guitar. The other stood next to him, and Syatt overheard in a gruff whisper, "They ain't starving. They showed their hand."

"Going to wish they hadn't," muttered the other before they noticed him. They glared up at Syatt as he passed, didn't meet their eyes, and after he had gone their conversation continued unheard.

He left Endstown, and when he reached the river began to travel north along it. The blocks in the interim were devoid of the cozy architecture of the west side's taverns and inns, but here were rows of buildings, haphazard and rushed looking, almost entirely wooden, with many abandoned and falling into disrepair, populated with a hardened type of people. Most buildings were dark, but occasionally a lantern hung. As he neared the dockyards he found that there were as many sex workers plying their trade along the river during those late hours as there were dock workers in the afternoon. Neither he or Pox had ever been with one, though they knew boys who had. Camp fires with hunched and huddled forms dotted the rocky beaches. As he passed, a figure stood up from his heap of embers a good fifty feet away and started to approach him dressed in rags and holding a torch he’d picked up from the fire. He had a disease called Spider's Eye, and clusters of black boils spread from the man's collarbone, up his neck and to his left ear. He wanted to read Syatt's palm. "Two bits," he said.

"No thanks," Syatt told him, and kept walking.

"Two bits," he said.

"No thank you. No."

"One bit,"

"No,” he said, a decidedly final time.

The man spit in his direction. "You're going to die, kid. That's your future," he said. "Your life will be short, confusing, and ultimately disappointing. That's your future." He stood there smiling crazily with his arms and torch held out at his sides.

Syatt frowned, laughed uneasily, and continued to walk. He listened for sounds of the man following, but didn't think that he was. He tried to keep a normal pace though his intuition told him to run. When he was some distance away, he took a quick glance back and saw that the man had sat back down at his campfire.

He debated heading back to the stalls, but decided in the end to continue to follow the street that ran alongside the river on that side, which was called East Current Street. It was desolate. The lane he walked in would have been a pit of mud during a rain, but now it was just rocky, uneven soil. The whole place was like a broken mirror image of the west side's river landing. There were various small pits and loose bits of rock in the street, and he stumbled in the dark more than once when clouds obscured the moonlight. Where the street branched he took a left through an iron working district that smelled of the stuff and reminded him of a busted mouth. As he emerged from between the wooden shacks and workhouses some four unbroken blocks later, the street curved to the east away from the river, and he found himself at an entrance to the vast parkland known as Hundred Trees.

He could feel a slight sensation in his stomach, not hunger. He realized that it was akin to what he’d felt in the alleyway. Magic, but very faint. The park looked terrifying in the night. There stood a solitary, ornate, arched iron entryway, rusted and overgrown with weeds but connected with no fencing. Syatt crouched across the street and peered at the darkness beyond the archway, complete but for the deep blue blur of the rows of trees fading into totality.

The hill widened to a dark grassy plateau, and silhouetted against the night sky was a wall-less structure, one of the many pavilions spotted throughout the parkland, most of them now turned to encampments of the destitute. He thought he heard distant voices from somewhere in the trees, but couldn’t be quite sure above the orchestra of crickets that also emitted from the dark groves The arched entryway stood before him like an ornamented portal to the void of space.

Before he could change his mind he'd marched forward, heart pounding, but stopped just short of the threshold when he heard close chatter from behind him.

It was an odd hour for anyone to be there, much less a crowd. He saw a pair, then another, then a group of four. He turned then to see a large and steady influx of people of all kinds appearing off of the streets or out of their homes or shops and from nearly all directions. Some from a row of tenements down the street. Many carried torches. They talked amongst one another in small nervous clusters or walked by themselves and they just kept going, past him and into the parkland. He stood there, utterly confused as their torches dispelled the imposing illusion of pitch black which had been there just a moment ago. The deep, dark foliage of the park was suddenly illuminated in soft, orange torchlight.

He had just decided to ask someone what was going on when he was tapped on the shoulder, and turned around to find himself face-to-face, more or less, with Cass, Millie’s niece. His heart leapt. Her hair had been chopped off, but he saw that it hadn’t diminished her beauty in the least. He didn't have time to wonder how odd it was that she would be there on the other side of the city, in the middle of the night.

“Syatt, right?" she said, and he felt panic rush up his spine.

He stared idiotically at her hazel eyes, alive with the flicker of passing torches. On her cheek just below her left eye was a light smudge of red clay. He'd seen other young people with similar marks and guessed it to be some mark of the cult. She wore a sleeveless white linen tunic, a belt with a large silver buckle, and breeches cut off at the calf. "You might not recognize me without my hair. It's Cass, from the other... was that yesterday? Today has been something else." She laughed.

When Syatt didn't answer, she went on. "I know that we don’t really know one another yet, but Aunt Millie has only kind things to say about you."

At first he could not answer, but in his head he thanked Millie a hundred times. Finally he said, “Good ol' Millie.” It sounded stupid to his ears. He figured that he should say something else. “It does seem like longer," he said. "From when we met the other night, I mean." He flustered. "Uh, why are you here?"

She gave him a quizzical look. "The wizard. He's at Hundred Trees. They say it's going to rain tonight. The cultists were running up and down the streets ringing bells. They told everyone to come here. I came with a big group of folks." She frowned but laughed. “If you didn't know, then why are you here?"

Her laugh was even pretty, Syatt thought. "Yeah. I don't know,” he stammered. “I mean, it's a long story.”

"Fair enough," she said. "Well, come on. We don't want to miss this. They were talking about it all over Tabby Square, even at this hour. We're probably going to get sick, but who cares? This could be a once in a lifetime thing. Something to tell your grandchildren about. What if we helped bring back the rain? Don't you want to be able to say you were there? Come on!" she beamed.

Syatt stood there, debating with himself, somewhere else. She's in an unfamiliar part of the city. She's happy to see a somewhat familiar face. That's it, he thought.

Finally she said, "I came all the way out here on my own. I've been up all night. Do you want to walk together?"

There was an unspoken "or not?" at the end of the question. He thought of Pox for a moment, but only a moment. Their guard duty would be over soon. He told himself that his friend would understand, that he would have even urged him on had he been there. "Okay, sure," he said. “Let's go."

She smiled and put her arm out. Once again Syatt felt as if he were dreaming. He took her arm, and the two of them stepped forward through the free-standing iron arch and into the darkness to join the horde as it descended upon Hundred Trees Park in the dead of the night.

*End of Part Two*