Rownie pulled on his coat, which was very much too big for him. It was dust colored, or else so covered with dust that the coat couldn’t remember any other color. He wished that Graba had sent him to the market with the others rather than to Mr. Scrud’s gear shop. He was hungry. Graba never fed her household, but she usually sent them on food-errands. The others would buy bread and pastries for themselves, as well as the chicken feed, and eat on their way home. They probably wouldn’t save him any, and Rownie couldn’t sip gear oil on his own way home. This errand wouldn’t feed him.

He kicked over a dust pile beside the rusting gate to the old rail station, and then coughed and wished he hadn’t.

The street Rownie picked his way down did not run in a straight line. He walked underneath houses built on top of each other, with newer rooms and houses added on stilts or jutting out sideways and held in place by thick lengths of chain. Tin roofs, thatched roofs, and wooden shingles leaned over his head, almost touching across the width of the road.

Rownie was not very tall, but others on the street made way for him. People always made way for those who were Graba’s.

He came to the Fiddleway Bridge.

Two fiddlers stood at either side of the entrance. They played dueling tunes at each other. Hats rested on the stones in front of them, and both hats were half full of coins.

Rownie scooped up a pebble from the ground, just like he always did when he crossed the Fiddleway. This one was gray, with an orange line running through the middle of it. He carried it with him through the entranceway, through the crossfire of dueling music, and onto the bridge.

The Fiddleway was wide, and long enough to disappear into the fog of a foggy day. The central avenue had been cobbled together several times out of old stone and new ironworks. Small shops and apartments stood on both sides, separated by alleyways that looked out over the expanse of the Zombay River.

Rownie passed musicians of several sorts, and empty hats reserving spots for musicians who were not yet there. He passed piles of horse dung and cow dung and other kinds of dung that he wasn’t sure about, but the smell wasn’t so bad as on the Southside roads. River winds kept the air clean on the bridge. He made sure his coat didn’t drag in any of the dung piles.