After we emerged, I took her to meet Celly, whom she endeared with petting and rubbed her face against with shut-eyed kisses. She soon informed me of the whereabouts of her unsavory quarters, and told me not to worry about the silver. I did not question her.

It was time to go.

Filled with the empowerment of sexual knowing, and drugged with the aroma of rot and her strong perfume, I stole one of my father’s horses.

We sprung forth into the air. Wolves from the forest howled as we galloped out of the Templeton District, always on the lookout for a roving patrol. We were bound for the deformed, cobbled alleys that formed the crime-ridden Thunder Bustle District, where you were as likely to bump into a sorcerer weaving their outlawed magic as you were to lose your purse.

As we rode, she clutched my waist, buildings and landmarks of the city flying by. Our route went from dirt to the clickity-clack of cobblestones. Eyes peered out, lurking behind glass windows that never opened. We avoided the shadowy figures that approached us when I paused at an intersection for Somyellia to get her bearings. The salt smell thickened. Except for the horse underneath us, we were the only living things for the last leg of our journey.

We arrived at the backside of an old warehouse busy leaning into the sea. It was a block of wet black, grayed at the edges by some source of light. At the door were the ugliest men I had ever seen. Armed with pikes, their scars came either from disastrous afflictions of acne or battling fierce beasts with dispositions for biting.

“This is it, Seasmil,” Somyellia said with a calmness that had no place there. “Thank you for the ride.”

She walked up a series of waterlogged steps to the guardsmen, and whispered something in one’s ear that was met with a nod. Turning to face me, she looked like a thing of beauty who had chosen to give up beauty for darker delights, but whose attraction had yet to wither. Her hair now an unkempt mess of twists and shoots, she smiled and waved and disappeared through a doorway to a place that I wanted to follow at the expense of my very soul.

The brief introspection was cut short when a blood-wrenching scream erupted deep in the alleys, followed by a mob of hurried feet.

I was now again the boy from Templeton, on his father’s stolen horse, without a weapon or a guide. I proceeded to fly through the wormy spaces, between buildings all appearing abandoned. Trying to remember the direction in which we had come, and later avoiding the shaking lanterns of surely pursuing sentries, I made it back to the barn before sunrise.