Arc 4: Chapter 14: Small Victories
Catrin led me deeper into the city, away from the high towers of the Forger castle and the festive streets. She led me deeper, into the lower streets where the delineation between home and infrastructure became less defined, where tenements and businesses were dug into the very foundations of the cosmopolitan lagoon.
These areas were no less populated. Through the thickening mist which clung to everything like a thin film, I could make out groups of people in a variety of garb moving here and there, or moving in and out of doorways cut into the city’s stonework, no doubt hiding taverns and brothels. As we descended, “streets” became little more than lips between canal wall and the waters below barely wide enough for three or four people to walk shoulder to shoulder.
Catrin stopped leading me quite so aggressively after a time. She let go of my arm, but walked close enough as to occasionally brush against me, her long skirt of white cloth mingling with the tail of my Reynish coat.
“So why are you here?” I asked her, mostly to break the silence and my growing unease at where we might be heading. “Garihelm’s a dangerous place for a changeling to walk about these days.”
“Everywhere’s a dangerous place for a pretty girl to walk about,” Catrin jested, nudging my arm with an elbow. “Good thing I’m not a pretty girl, eh?”
I glanced at her peasant’s features and sighed. I wouldn’t let her dodge the question, but I knew cajoling wouldn’t work. So I thought about it instead, and came to my own answer. “The Keeper. He has you in the city collecting secrets for him, doesn’t he? Because of the summit. There’s a lot of important people about.”
Catrin glanced at me, pouting. “No man with as much muscle as you’ve got should have brains, too. It’s just unfair.”
I snorted. “If I had any brains, my life would look a lot different.”
“Hey hey, none of that. Come on. We’re close.”
We descended a steep flight of stairs cut into the side of a deep canal, connecting two different levels of the city with a sharp turn halfway down following the corner of a high supporting wall. Garihelm was mostly stone built atop more than a hundred small islands, foundations and bulwarks laid atop one another over centuries, all of it feeding the near constant rainfall down into the bay. Manmade waterfalls gushed from storm drains fashioned into gaping mouths or tilted bowls held by angels here and there, adding to the fog spilling up from below.
There was a good reason the Accord’s capital was sometimes called the Floating City.