Page 55 of City of Stone and Silence

The southern, downhill gate from the Eleventh Ward is directly across from one of the Sixteenth Ward’s three northern gates, with a wide military road called the Cross-Harbor running between them perpendicular to the main military highway. The Sixteenth Ward is unusual for a number of reasons, but the most basic is its shape—unlike the other wards, which are rough rectangles, the Sixteenth is a strip, long and thin, stretching along the city’s entire harborfront and inland perhaps a quarter of a mile. The ward wall that separates it from the rest of the city is higher and more heavily guarded than the rest, being an extension of Kahnzoka’s outer defenses. Any attacker sailing into the bay, after fighting past the Imperial Navy and the forts on the headlands, would have to land at the docks and then immediately launch an assault against a fortification nearly as formidable as the landward walls.

In addition to its defensive function, the ward wall also serves to keep the untidiness of the Sixteenth’s streets away from the rest of Kahnzoka. The city authorities long ago decided that a certain amount of criminal activity is impossible to separate from the normal business of the docks, and gave up trying to do more than keep a lid on things. The Sixteenth’s Ward Guard barely patrols the streets, and never after dark. Bodies are hauled away to the paupers’ cemetery with no fanfare, and other crimes only investigated if the victim has money for bribes. I’m not naïve enough to think there aren’t criminal organizations in the upper wards, but here they work openly, their enforcers—like Isoka—more trusted than any representative of the government. The merchants who load and unload goods here pay protection money to be left in peace.

At least there aren’t any draft patrols to worry about. With so many foreigners in residence—the Sixteenth is the only ward in which noncitizens are permitted to rent rooms or travel without a special pass—the pickings would be slim. I’m worried about trouble at the gate, but we pass through the Low Market—a rowdier, less organized place than the High, stinking of the fish that’s the main commodity—and join a slow-moving queue. There are a dozen guards, but they only watch to make sure nobody tries to slip back the other way without documentation.

After the gate in the thin inner wall, we follow the crowd over the Cross-Harbor and through the second gate in the much larger seaward wall. Again, the guards aren’t paying attention to anyone going this direction. The crowd is mostly men, many of them pushing wheelbarrows, porters and vendors returning from their days in the upper wards. A few, better dressed, cluster in small groups, talking and laughing. I assume these are patrons heading for the Sixteenth’s bars and brothels, which are legendary.

The buildings on the other side of the wall are similar to those that crowd the Eleventh Ward, multi-story tenements with sloping slate roofs and external stairways, but everything is more dilapidated. Great cracks run through the plaster, and whitewash peels off the exterior in strips. Hardly any windows are glassed, and many are covered over with boards or bars. A half-dozen narrow lanes meander into the mess of twisty little streets in no particular pattern.

Garo stares around, until I grab his arm and pull him after me.

“Stop looking like a tourist,” I mutter.

“Sorry.” He lowers his voice. “To be honest, this is more what I expected when I first went to visit the lower wards. Lots of…” He waves a hand vaguely at a nearby gutter, so full of waste it threatens to overflow its banks. “Filth.”

“This is where I grew up.” I shake my head. “It hasn’t changed.”

It’s shocking how familiar everything is, actually. It’s been years since I’ve visited the Sixteenth, and yet I can still look down an alley and see the hiding spots, where two buildings don’t quite touch; the places where a skinny girl might squeeze into for the night to get out of the wind; the kitchen doors of restaurants, good for a few minutes warming your hands until the owners chased you away. It’s still late summer, a warm night, but even so I shiver in memory of winters past.

Garo frowns. “I don’t mean to pry…”

“You may as well,” I say, leading him down a slender road, buildings packed tightly on either side. More fish smells issue forth from a doorway, while from another I hear the sound of drunken voices raised in song. Real estate this close to the gate is valuable enough that most of the bottom stories are occupied by businesses, and my eyes scan the signs.

“Why would you and your sister stay here?” Garo says, eyeing a pile of steaming fish guts someone has dumped in the street. Two lean dogs are already fighting over it.

“Where else were we supposed to go?”

“Up to the Eleventh Ward? You’re Imperial citizens, aren’t you?”

I give a hollow laugh. “Sure. Born and bred here in Kahnzoka. Though I couldn’t tell you where our father came from.”

“So why not?”

“You need a chit certifying you to get into the other wards, to prove you’re a citizen.”

He nods. “The Bureau of Migration provides them on request.”

“Maybe if you live in the First Ward,” I say. “Down here if you don’t want your papers to get lost, you have to pay.” I have a vivid memory of Isoka swearing up a streak about some petty extortion, pacing back and forth across our tiny room. “Pay the Bureau man who issues it, pay the Ward Guard who approves it, probably another Ward Guard on the other side.”

“That’s … not how things are supposed to work.”

I shrug. “It’s what happens. Besides, we could never afford to live in the Eleventh Ward. Up there if the Ward Guard find you sleeping on the street, they haul you away. Down here, you can usually find a place to lie down, at least.” I wave my hand. “Away from the gates, half the buildings are empty.”

“Ah.” Garo looks vaguely horrified. I find myself taking a perverse pleasure in shocking him.

“Staying warm was harder. The winters…” I shiver again. “There were times when Isoka almost turned us over to the slave-brothels just to keep from freezing.”

“There aren’t slaves in—” At my expression, he stops and shakes his head. “Sorry. I’ll try to be less of a hopeless aristocrat.”

“It’s all right. It’s a good look for you.” Before he can respond, I find the sign I’m looking for. “Okay. In here.”

He blinks and looks up at the shop. “‘Assorted Goods’?”

“It’s a pawnshop.” I take a deep breath. “Let me do the talking.” Not that I’m an expert in talking to criminals, but neither is Garo, and I at least have my Kindre powers to help me.

“What do I do, then?”

“Loom protectively? And hopefully keep anyone from putting a knife in my back.”