The wharf hangs like a broken jaw, green-brown tendrils of oar weed hanging from the rotting wood, and the slump-shouldered roof and blind windows of the quay-master’s cabin peer through the mist.
A squall of river gulls fight for a perch on a crooked pile - its top slick with green river slime - and their black predatory eyes watch askew at the muffled shapes on the launch as it cuts through the tendrils of fog that drift over the oily water.
Splint, the boatman huffs into the wide warmth of his scarf as he sculls the narrow boat through the dark, still waters of Heron Flood. The gulls fall silent as the bark passes, and the only sound is the dull plunge-and-wash rhythm of the oars and the breathing of the oarsman and his passenger.
The silence becomes more profound as they pass beneath the carved arches of Everild Bridge, the bridge of drowned men. Splint inhales as the shadow of the arch approaches, holding his breath as he glides beneath the gaze of ancient sailors lost to the Great Verdant. His passenger chuffs a barking laugh at the old man as the faces drift above and beside them.
“Still believe that old nonsense, Splint?” His voice is heavy and behind the thick scarf his accent unreadable.
“Best be safe,” the old man growls as the light returned, “Drowned men have a habit of coming home in these parts.” In the shadow of his leather-peaked cap his eyes glitter with amusement.
The bark approaches the wharf and Splint grabs a coil of rope and stands; his balance sure from hard years of river work. He leans back, throws the loop over the slime-crusted pile and begins the laborious task of pulling the small vessel into the sagging steps, hand over gnarled hand. The joints of his fingers are swollen and red from cold, but still deft, as he ties the knots and secures his craft.
“Everild,” he mutters, “get up those steps and then cross to the Dented Flagon, take a right, then a…”
“I know the way,” his passenger mumbles, “I was born here.”
Saturday, 21 December 2013
Wednesday, 18 December 2013
The old crows watch as she walks the narrow path towards Everild, her yellow shawl trailing like a comet in the coming gloom. From their perch, high in the bell-tower of St Agrippa’s Church, the trailing river channels, criss-crossed by bridges, look like banded snakes. The streets around them like a disturbed nest of leaf skeletons.
She walks quickly and carefully, hopscotching the puddles and piles of refuse and her wake is the turning of heads. In the ragged bird’s wheeling eye she is a mote of ember in a dying fire. She walks quickly to Everild Bridge, and in the gathering gloom her shadow - reaching out like a beggar's arm - is the hand of doom upon the streets.
She walks quickly and carefully, hopscotching the puddles and piles of refuse and her wake is the turning of heads. In the ragged bird’s wheeling eye she is a mote of ember in a dying fire. She walks quickly to Everild Bridge, and in the gathering gloom her shadow - reaching out like a beggar's arm - is the hand of doom upon the streets.
The entrance to Finn Park is a high gate of ornate black iron, the rust stains from the hinges streaking the pale limestone pillars, crowned with fantastic beasts. Behind the railings the trees are still astir in the gusting wind; at their centre, impervious and imperious, the spire of the Chapel of The Ossuary.
The Grey Man pauses on his journey to examine the painted statues of the saints that crowd the surface of the chapel walls. Once a riot of colour, now the creeping decay of Empire is visible in their peeling paint.
One doe-eyed saint cradles a miniature chapel, the purple of her robe fading to a muddy pink. Anselem, patron of shipping, offers a benediction with chipped fingers, at the edge of the gothic-arched portico a forlorn Saint Isadora stands, her right hand severed at the wrist, the magpie on her shoulder a tailless oddity in peeling black and white paint.
In the network of streets around the park there shows the tell-tale signs of entropy: a genteel shabbiness is visible in the tired plaster; the trees that line the avenues are a series of unkempt tangles, their leaves shedding into drains already choked with debris.
Even the people that ply their trade in Finnward are different in these strange days. You can see it in their clothes: the subtle repairs, the almost invisible stains.
But the Grey Man, he can see it in their eyes, in the set of shoulders, in the length of their pace. He can see it their shoes, heel worn and spit-shined. He can smell it in the air all over this huge, stinking city; despite the taint of copper and iodine from the storm, despite the ozone reek, he can smell it: the stench of decay.
The Grey Man flares his nostrils and inhales deeply: there is always money to be made, even in the worst of times, and in a dying place you could make a killing out of death...
The Grey Man pauses on his journey to examine the painted statues of the saints that crowd the surface of the chapel walls. Once a riot of colour, now the creeping decay of Empire is visible in their peeling paint.
One doe-eyed saint cradles a miniature chapel, the purple of her robe fading to a muddy pink. Anselem, patron of shipping, offers a benediction with chipped fingers, at the edge of the gothic-arched portico a forlorn Saint Isadora stands, her right hand severed at the wrist, the magpie on her shoulder a tailless oddity in peeling black and white paint.
In the network of streets around the park there shows the tell-tale signs of entropy: a genteel shabbiness is visible in the tired plaster; the trees that line the avenues are a series of unkempt tangles, their leaves shedding into drains already choked with debris.
Even the people that ply their trade in Finnward are different in these strange days. You can see it in their clothes: the subtle repairs, the almost invisible stains.
But the Grey Man, he can see it in their eyes, in the set of shoulders, in the length of their pace. He can see it their shoes, heel worn and spit-shined. He can smell it in the air all over this huge, stinking city; despite the taint of copper and iodine from the storm, despite the ozone reek, he can smell it: the stench of decay.
The Grey Man flares his nostrils and inhales deeply: there is always money to be made, even in the worst of times, and in a dying place you could make a killing out of death...
Prime
It is like a mouthful of scurvy, this skyline that chews the cloudscape over New Chimera; all crumbling spires and sooty chimneys, jaggedly black against the porphyria thunderheads. The autumnal storms, fresh from the Great Verdant reek of iodine and the air is charged with the peculiar, cupric taste of thaumaturgy.
Across the city gutters overflow, forming cascades of sooty water. Cataracts plunge from rooftop, to rooftop and then to narrow alleys, flooding the silent courtyards. In the dark quarters, the Judetown Wards, the forgotten streets wallow ankle and knee-deep with all the flotsam of neglect gliding like the ragged corpses of eldritch seabirds.
Rhafensflod, the great black river of the south, froths and muscles its way through the city, rubbing its dark flanks against the pale stone embankments. On the quaysides the blank-faced warehouses, their doors piled high with sandbags, gaze with empty eyes across the churning water and restive drays stamp at the slick cobbles of the depot yards.
There is an aftermath of electricity, a crackling potentiality, a dim smudge of St Elmo’s fire that still clings to the lightning rods of church steeples and factory chimneys.
And through the hissing spill of runoff, through the copper tang of wild magic, The Grey Man paces as though the world were his to command. Along the wide avenues that border Finn Park he walks, his morning suit is the pale grey of birch bark, his waistcoat the silver grey brocade of fish-scales.
His passing is like the coming of winter.
Across the city gutters overflow, forming cascades of sooty water. Cataracts plunge from rooftop, to rooftop and then to narrow alleys, flooding the silent courtyards. In the dark quarters, the Judetown Wards, the forgotten streets wallow ankle and knee-deep with all the flotsam of neglect gliding like the ragged corpses of eldritch seabirds.
Rhafensflod, the great black river of the south, froths and muscles its way through the city, rubbing its dark flanks against the pale stone embankments. On the quaysides the blank-faced warehouses, their doors piled high with sandbags, gaze with empty eyes across the churning water and restive drays stamp at the slick cobbles of the depot yards.
There is an aftermath of electricity, a crackling potentiality, a dim smudge of St Elmo’s fire that still clings to the lightning rods of church steeples and factory chimneys.
And through the hissing spill of runoff, through the copper tang of wild magic, The Grey Man paces as though the world were his to command. Along the wide avenues that border Finn Park he walks, his morning suit is the pale grey of birch bark, his waistcoat the silver grey brocade of fish-scales.
His passing is like the coming of winter.
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