SEVENTEEN

It stood on a wide, solid outcrop of dark rock, proud from the churning waters around it, at the joining of two rivers: one wide and sweeping, the second narrower, eager. It was a rising, many-tiered thing, alive with lamplight in the waning silver of the afternoon. Steam billowed from a dozen chimneys on its structure, twisting and curling until it melded with the cloud above. It seemed both elegant and sturdy, thick blocks of dark stone blended with older pale crenellations and slender turrets, myriad silken pennants drooping in the still air.

Two great bridges arced from the outcrop at the water’s centre, one to each bank, wide and walled and dotted with lights and squatting substructures. Each ended in a mighty gatehouse, ringed by stakes and torches, and beyond them shanties of hawkers, traders and supplicants had sprung, secondary settlements, parasitic and expanding.

‘So that’s the Bridge House.’ Chel took in the imposing gatehouse looming over the huddled staging inns, the peaked arc of the thick bridge beyond, the sprawling, towering structure at its end. ‘I heard of it. Never thought I’d visit.’

‘Don’t stand there gawping, you fucking hayseed,’ Rennic muttered from beside him, his eyes roving the structures at the muddy roadside. All around them, the auxiliaries called their wares and services, stabling and storage, coin exchange and covert fencing, knock-down companionship for the more frugal traveller. ‘Help me look. If we’ve missed them, I swear to God, I’ll cross that river floating on your bloated corpse.’

The third staging inn proved the right one, and it was the noise that guided Chel and Rennic – exhausted, mud-caked and farcically travel-sore – to their target. Voices rose from behind a wooden partition at the edge of the churned and puddle-washed stable-yard, the first with a strong Nortish accent.

‘Stop making that noise.’

‘What noise?’

‘That disgusting honking sound.’

‘I’m just fucken breathing!’

‘You are wheezing like a punctured bellows.’

‘I’ve got a cold, all right? It’s cold around here, we’re wet all the fucken time, I’ve waded more waterways in the last few weeks than I thought I’d see in a year. It happens.’

Chel almost collapsed as his doubt and anxiety evaporated. Lemon. We’ve found Lemon.

‘Ah, I cannot wait to get shot of you, you shirty wee bollocks. The sooner we dump you back on your lot in Denirnas, the better.’

‘The only thing that could rival my delight at returning to my people would be my joy at escaping the stench of your undergarments. Do you have some kind of mortal aversion to bodily hygiene?’

‘You want to hear what I’ve got a fucken aversion to—?’

Rennic was ahead of him, his stride reinvigorated by the confirmation of their journey’s end. ‘Lemon!’ he bellowed. ‘Get out here.’