Ratcity.
People insisted on calling it Crorefell or City of Fools, speaking the name with the sort of pride only city folk could muster. Crorefell had been called many things by people who loved it. A place earned its name, and this one had earned Ratcity. Too many streets. Too many houses. Too many towers stabbing at a sky that had done nothing to deserve it. Every inch of stone seemed to have another floor built upon it, every alley another alley branching off it, until the whole city became a great tangled thing of bricks, timber and human misery. Rats scurried openly along the gutters, fat from whatever the citizens threw into the streets.
Fish rotting beneath the summer heat. Coal smoke. Horse shit Frying onions. Sewage rising from the drains. Perfume poured over sweat in quantities, as though a little lavender might convince the nose. Wooden balconies sagged beneath the weight of disrepair, flower boxes and men who had been drinking since breakfast. Between the buildings, washing lines stretched overhead, dripping dirty water onto the heads of passersby.
Daniyah hated it.
She had hated it from the moment she'd first seen the walls. They were impressive, certainly. Tall enough to make anyone feel small. Thick enough to make an siege engine reconsider its profession. The sort of walls city folk pointed at with pride. Daniyah had seen better walls. She had also seen better people. She moved through the market with one hand resting near the knife at her hip. Vendors shouted from crooked stalls. A butcher's boy carried a skinned piglet through the crowd. A woman in a velvet coat offered charms against fever, curses and a soft cock. A man with three teeth swore that the bottles before him contained genuine elixirs from the hundred houses. They probably contained colored water or horse piss.
A boy darted past Daniyah and nearly collided with her. His fingers brushed her belt. She caught his wrist. He froze. For a moment they stared at one another. He was perhaps ten. Too thin. Too quick. Clever eyes. Daniyah released him. "Try someone richer." The boy looked at her purse. Then at her swords. Then vanished into the crowd. Smart enough.
Ratcity.
That was what she called Crorefell. Ratcity suited it better than any other name could. Rats were everywhere. In the gutters. In the cellars. Beneath the market stalls. Fat ones, skinny ones, mangy ones. Some wore fur. Some wore silk. Some carried blades. The human rats were harder to distinguish. They wore fine coats, cheap coats, uniforms, aprons, rings, ribbons. They smiled. They bowed. They called one another syr and m'lady while their fingers went searching for purses.
Everyone was selling something.
Everyone was lying about what it was.
Even the air reeked of counterfeit.
The contract had sounded simple. Something was killing people beneath the eastern quarter. Several bodies had been recovered. What remained of them, anyway... Unfortunately for Daniyah, this job required more than one person. She hated that too. Danger was simple. Had teeth and claws. Monsters was straightforward.
People were complicated. Cazadores of Crorefell especially, which was why she avoided that particular one den. The tunnels beneath Crorefell were old. Older than the streets above them. A maze of collapsed passages, forgotten foundations and sewer channels where even a good hunter could become nothing more than another missing person. Going alone would be foolish. Daniyah was many things, but foolish was rarely one of them.
Which was how she found herself standing in front of the Tavern of The Black Dog. The sign hung above the door at an angle, swaying slightly in the wind. A black hound painted against dark wood. One white eye. Bared teeth. The building itself looked like it had survived three fires. Daniyah steps through into the smoke and the stink and lets the dark swallow her whole before her eyes adjust. Nobody looks up. That's the first lie of the place... everybody's looking, just not with their eyes.
Rat.... city...
