Darkness. The smell of something familiar but strange. And more darkness, like it had swallowed the world.

She must have died. He’d killed her, the man with one eye muttering his wick magic.

It hadn’t been the gollies in the end. Or disease, or hunger or even the Arova- bits of her Ma still cold and grey at the bottom of it. Just a wick man with a spectrograph of a woman that meant more than Murmur’s life. Fair trade off, maybe. Murmur didn’t know the woman.

They’d spoken of past lives and now this one, this Murmur she’d been so fond of had collapsed too, gone down without any of that glory she’d dreamed of- only with a dull thud and a whimper. Each memory she held was a scrap of flesh falling from the bone- no more Muriel and her kids, and her brothers and their fights at the basin, Seth wouldn’t ever pull that face she liked so much especially when she called him ‘kitten’. Would there be fish markets in this new life and salt on the air? Would there be sand and heat? Or something new entirely?

She wanted her Ma. Surely her Ma could be here too? It didn’t seem fair that Murmur should have to go on countless more lives without her when that man, that man with one eye and the wick life thought he’d known her in at least two.

He’d killed her, then.

And this new life was… pain. It was the first thing that this new not-Murmur felt when she could feel. Her hands and knees stung, mouth still tasted coppery with blood. She gripped something in her hands. She knew it, it smelt familiar, like the comfort of home and was soft where she’d remembered nothing but hard, wet ground before. That had to be better?

It took a while for her eyes to get used to the overwhelming gloom, to make out shapes in the darkness. It was night, the smallest linger of luminosity seeping through from a dull street light highlighting the sparse room, the alien place.

But she knew those hands that gripped at material! Knew the coat too. Those knuckles had punched humans and wicks, even a golly once for all the good it had done her. Those fingers could gut and debone a fish in fifteen seconds flat and lift a wallet from a man’s pocket with ease. Her tongue was swollen bad and hurt as she ran it along her teeth. More than the average tumble in the harbour, but those two front teeth marked her out. She felt those empty gums like old friends. Not dead! Not yet. Thank you Vita, Thank you Ma- I knew you wouldn’t let me die.

The joy of her miraculous resurrection was short lived however, as fear overtook her. She wasn’t dead. But what had happened? All she knew was that there had been an alley and a bag and a man with one eye who she’d talked with about past lives. And now there was pain, grazed skin and blood in her mouth. And a bed…

She shot up as though burned, felt something uncomfortable creep through her body like a thousand spiders trapped under her skin. Her coat-come-coverlet fell from her body and she dove into the pocket, fish boning knife still there. Pulling her knees into her chest, Murmur clutched at the little blade, stabbed it miserably into the hard bed over and over carving tunnels in it’s lining. She didn’t know this place…didn’t know how she came to be here…but Murmur knew…oh she knew,

Murmur knew beds. Knew her mother to wake from them and weep, no memory of the night before, but for the headache and the shaking and a man downstairs eating breakfast with her children. Those men. Those drunken, stinking awful men.

How could Murmur not think the worst?

How could she not grip her hands around her legs and choke out one high pitched squeak of a sob?

How could she not stare at her body, hers and hers alone for so long and wonder?

He should have killed her. It would have been kinder.

She’d been young- so much younger, running with the tanner boy- Jude, with his dopey grin and that stink of urine and animal brains. They kissed over the counter of the shop and he brought her things; sweets, leather purses, polished marbles and the odd golly trinket- every bit of them stolen, every bit of them sold on for money for bread. Was that love? Part of Murmur hoped it wasn’t- some part of her had hoped for stars, and he’d only ever given her polished marbles sold for bread and that couldn’t be it could it? There was supposed to be more. But maybe Murmur wanted too much. No good ever came of wanting.

All the same. Her brother, Malachi, missing part of his ear from a brawl in the basin had seen his baby sister kissing that dopey boy, seen the passing of so many marbles and decided he did not like what he saw. He didn’t hug his sisters, but he beat up anyone looking at them funny, when he said I love you he punched it into some drunkards face who’d had the misfortune to try it on with a Muck girl.

“Don’ ye let that tanner boy have it, little’un. Don’ let any of em.” ” He didn’t say much, hacking at swordfish without any of Murmur’s finesse, he never did, but she’d known what he meant. And it wasn’t because he was worried about the girl stinking of animal brains and urine- at least not literally. She was the last Muck, the little dark girl who slipped between the cracks. Her big brother wanted her to be better. The big girls, Muriel and Ellen and Alva- they couldn’t hide like Murmur, they’d all had it taken from them- ripped like fragile cloth underwear so Murmur had to keep it for all of them. Don’t let the tanner boy have it, protect yourself from those men who visited the shop looking for any where warm to put it. Don’t become Ma.

She didn’t have much, but she had that…she’d pretended to brave when she was so frightened and bit and scratched and stolen when they’d asked her to lie down. Kept it cupped like the pearl inside the oyster- she did have one. But it was Ellen’s an Muriel’s and Alva’s too. Murmur picked up the sleeve of her coat, Malachi’s coat really, he’d given it to her and twisted it around her waist. She tried to picture leaning into her brother’s large chest, strong arms engulfing her. It was out of character, the hug, but she heard him in her ear- using blind rage and curse words as a comfort blanket. Those whispered words of hate aimed at Hava came so true to form that they felt as real as anything did right now, she pulled the coat tighter.

Why could she not have been awake? What happened, Ma? I needed you today, needed you lookin’ after me.

She would find him, if he’d taken it. She could wait one hundred years if she had to, but she would rip him apart, slowly. Feed his dick to the sharks.

If the fleas on the mattress were anything to go by then she was still in Old Rosie. I should never have come here…I’d have been better leaving myself to deal with the gollies. There’s no shame in a hanging…but this…. When the wick was dead, Murmur would go home, even if it wasn’t home any more. Crawl into a ball on the floor of Dem’s spice house, wish away the last year and wait to die.

She was woozy still, her head hurt, she was unsteady on her feet but anger made her stronger- or at the very least made her feel stronger than she actually was. The room clawed at her like bird’s talons and the walls seemed to close around her, til she was almost choking on it and her own tongue. Grabbing her cloth bag, Murmur hauled the door open.

And he was there. That hulking wick figure, more nightmare than anything now. She slammed the door again, pressed her tiny body up against it- all her strength pressed into holding it as shut as she possibly could all her thoughts of murder and castration bursting bubbles of fear, heart fluttering in her chest fast as a trapped rat’s. She was a trapped rat. A trapped rat with a fist closed around a fish gutting knife.

Gut him little’un, Malachi, her ma, all the Mucks hissed. Poke around his body and sprinkle the floorboards with his intestines.

Get out, whispered someone else. At first she could have mistaken it for Seth, but then she realised that it wasn’t anyone she knew, but that all the same she knew him well. The window, through the roof, any way you can. Just get out.

The hours were slow. All this stillness after his bristling adrenaline faded away, after the waves of hate settled back down. Back to placid Hava; Hava who hadn’t quit his dull job at the apothecary, Hava who hadn’t just knocked out some girl in an alley. Healer instincts rattled in him to go poking back in check and her nose, her teeth, whatever. But he wouldn’t, he couldn’t. He was glued to the wall.

Unseemly. He wouldn’t let himself go poking back in there. He scowled at his blood dappled fingers and bit them, one by one. How dirty, slinking all over her face like that. It would not happen again, that he swore.

Light waned to nothing at all, the night crowd filling up the tables and filling the air with shouts from tar-streaked throats. An accordion wheezed, somewhere. Ekua’s letters eased out of the box and strewn across his lap – he was reading them again, every curve of native tongued poetry in them, though he knew every single syllable. Had breathed them into the black air in the underbellies of ships for years and years. It was wretched poetry, terrible, but it had been scribbled by the trembly hands of a seventeen year old girl and shoved into a kitchen drawer across the sea...when he was a child, and she was a child, in their kingdom by the sea. They were beautiful for that.

Among the rising tides of music and roars of voices down below, he could barely hear the shifting sounds behind the door. He sat up bolt straight, fingers tightening around the letters edges. Delicate noises, like Akeela’s little rabbit snuffling around in a nest of straw. It wasn’t a very kind metaphor – the thing dribbled out its eyes and ears since always, it was dead before two months were out. It didn’t seem too far off the mark.

He thought to ease the door open, peek inside, but gods above and below no. She could have stripped out of that soaked blouse, snuffling around in her little cloth bag in the dark. The girl might be indecent. No, no. He would wait for her.

Little feet creaking floorboards, Hava’s spine tensed to an iron rod. A deluge of apologies were at the ready. He would be gentle and magnanimous as his brittle voice and empty pockets could allow. He wasn’t expecting that door to swish open and slam shut like that, though. The jarring noise sent his heart pounding in his throat.

Frightened rabbit.

Delicate, he slid up the wall. The span of his hand against the door, the hard press of it against an immovable object. She was – a low sigh hissed through his teeth and he bowed his forehead against the door.

“Murmur, girl?” Hava said, voice low. The kind of soft, slow words he used to use on spooked goatlings back in Thul Ka. ...right before cutting their necks, admittedly, but he wouldn’t hurt her. The machete wasn’t for her, it was for the monsters in the foyer. “Do not be afraid. I...I...” faltering, no words. “Did you rest well? Epa’ma, I am so sorry about all of this...”

Murmur let out a small grunt of effort as she felt his hand press on the door. In her addled, biased little brain his words were taunting her. Don’t be afraid, I’m so sorry. At least those men who’d stopped with her mother had dispersed with the niceties once the deed was done, if they had ever had any niceties at all. But this one, he seemed intent on being deceitful to the last. That was worse than anything. Mug men, perhaps, who pretended to have honor and to find tumbles sinful and wicked...paying was sinful and wicked perhaps, why bother when you could take what you would pay a tumble for?

“G-go away,” she said. Her voice was weak, frightened. Murmur tried again, injecting that false bravery in to her speech in a way she knew so well.

“Leave me alone!” Stronger, this time, angry and violent. She shook with so much rage, felt tears of anger and bitterness prick her cheeks. The knife was gripped tightly in her fist because she knew she couldn’t hold the door forever. He was stronger than she was and had managed to bring her to this place, had managed to do whatever else had happened in the time she’d been lost in a dream world. Happy to be away from the harshness of all of this.

It could have been hours, it could have been weeks, Murmur didn’t know. Their magic was frightening and dangerous- it could turn meat men into vegetables and leave girls who’d spent twenty years tucked inside themselves so carefully under layers and layers of dirt and stink exposed.

"Fucking, clocking, no good 'orrible dirty man!" Murmur shrieked. Maybe someone would hear her, know what he'd done. "So much for yer fuckin' Mugrobi values...passed out girl in yer bed. Fuck values, right, when there's young new flesh to be 'ad." Even saying the words made her nose sting and bile rise in her throat.

She could have spent a month at the mercy of this man, limp as a living doll and she would be none the wiser. Those hands, dark and coarse as stolen leather purses, that over worked eye darting about a socket to make up for the loss of it’s brother, her body . Hate made her nauseous.

“I’ll kill ye!” she half shouted, half sobbed. Malachi had wanted her to be better and she’d tried so hard. So hard. It would have been better had she let Jude have her- at least that way she would have had a say in the matter. “If ye touched me, if ye took it....I’ll kill ye.”

Oh, Vita, why wouldn’t he leave her alone? Was there more he wanted in revenge for the bag and the scarf? Was it not enough that Murmur felt the sting of tears on her cheeks and the scratch of shame and disappointment as intense as the physical pain in Murmur’s body now.

Would he hurt her again? This time while she was fully aware of the experience. Let him try, Murmur would fight with all the fight left in her to escape- give him another gaping hole for an eye to match the other and if she failed she would never, ever, give him the satisfaction of a scream.

Hava's spindly hands tensed convulsively, squeezing his biceps through linen and leather and meager flesh, tensing around the bones. One eye clenched tight and closed, the muscle beneath it twitching. Riding out the wave of her screaming. Whatever words there could have been withered on his tongue. She sounded so rabid, so inconsolable.

Hava could never handle the sound of a scared girl.

If you took it --

Taken what? he wanted to ask. Didn't want to ask. Didn't need to ask, he could hazard a guess. The bloodied knob of a knuckle slipped between his teeth and he bit down hard. Stifling the quiet curl of a noise that buzzed in his throat, clearing his head of the wash of white noise smothering his thoughts. He wanted to clutch her to his chest and never let her wander off into the teeth of Old Rose again.

"There is not anything -- I would never -- " words strained and rung from him by her little fists, the sound of his voice so quiet it might not have pierced the door. How could he fault her? The world was cruel and she was so slight, a little thistle down thing getting tossed about by whoever cared to. She was right to suspect someone like himself -- he touched her face.

Epa'ma, he wanted to tell her freckles. Her eyelashes. Her teeth. Her hair. Epa'ma. He bit his fingers again.

Hulaili please, please, please. May I never have a daughter, that was Hava's silent prayer. He'd fret himself into an early grave, torturing himself with thoughts of every beastly thing in the world that could hurt her. Little things, little things -- little sisters left on the further shore. How old were they now? Not too much smaller than her. Living in the darkest pockmarks on Thul Ka's fine face, only a young mother to -- he felt dizzy.

Poor Akeela. Poor Amadi.

Poor Murmur.

Hava summoned the strength to speak again, trying to stifle the edge of pity in his voice. Keep himself level, cool and clear. Tried being key here --he sounded scoured out, empty.

"You were asleep. The magic made you dizzy, you fell and hurt yourself. I could not leave you in that alley, not with all these wolves about. It was not my intention to -- to --" He had just wanted his satchel back. Just wanted her back. "--frighten you, miss. It's only been an hour or two."

Havek must have felt the relief from the surface of the door as Murmur opened the door a small chink, her one visible blue eye narrowed at Havek’s one yellow.

“Ye would say that!” she said harshly. “If ye were sick enough te...te...,” she spat a thick gob of saliva to register her disgust. “Ent like ye’d be worried about bein’ honest all of a sudden!”

She slammed the door brutally shut and buried her face in her hands, the sob thick in her throat, growing thicker like she was drowning in thick treacle- the kind other people’s mothers made. Not hers, of course. No time to be boiling sugar, making jam, or cakes for Lena Muck when there were fish heads to chop and men to fuck.

But his story, dizzy magic, good intentions- Murmur wanted it to be true, so very much. She was crying now, stupid girl that she was- quite loudly too. It was a trick learned from being the youngest of ten, if her tiny baby wails hadn’t been the loudest when she needed something then her stomach would have gone unfed, her soiled napkins unchanged, useful at the time, but she wished she could sob quietly now. She shoved a fist into her mouth.

It might not have been true. But believing a lie was better than this, gnawing at her own knuckles like a colt chomping on his bit. Stick the truth under a gauze, slap a layer of red paint over it and no one would any the wiser.

She breathed heavily, drawing on whatever courage she had left- vita, her chest hurt bad with all of this. Hands shook before being steadied by gripping both the doorknob and the knife tight.

“Ye aren’t gonna hurt me?” she said, poking her head through the door. It could be true, she wasn’t dead yet.

“And ye promise. Ye swear...yeah? Ye aint done...ye know...ye swear right?” Please, just swear it even it’s on something that doesn't matter, even if it’s all a lie was what she wanted to whisper, let me believe in something good for a change.

“I wanna go home,” she finished, voice breaking at the end. Because, fuck, she couldn’t. She’d slept in a bed for a few hours- apparently- because she’d collapsed in an alley. But now what? Back to thieving...they could come after her again, more wicks and more magic, more waking up in odd beds maybe or in an alley dress all up around her tummy or with a knife stuck all in her--

Again she slammed the door, so hard the weak thing almost jumped off it’s hinges but this time her hand stayed clutched around the door handle as she crumpled like burning paper onto the floor. Her breathing was heavy and her head hurt, but this wasn’t the time or the place...tockin’ clocks and sacks of spitch, what was this? The snot and the tears and the spit wouldn’t stop no matter how fiercely she pressed the sleeve of her blouse to her face.

What felt like a lifetime in the dark, face pressed into her knees, mouth covered by her dress passed quickly and Murmur breathed sharply. Her coat was still on the bed so she put it on, heavily with limbs cast in iron, and picked up her cloth sack.

Appearing at the door, her hair was mussed up- even worse than usual and nose tears still dribbled along her lips making them shiny with snot. “Reckon if ye were gonna kill me ye’da done it now,” Murmur said quietly, oh so stiffly she could have lips of stone “But it ent like i’m gonna thank ye fer that. Or fer bringin me here, coz if it weren’t fer ye an yer I wouldnta needed te be brung anywhere.”

She pushed her loose sleeve which was falling down her shoulder up, her movements jerky as a marionette puppet- someone else but Murmur pulling the strings- obvious from the strange flat expression of her face, the redness and the tears the only evidence that she had once been able to feel at all. “But, debt collectors...they sometimes say...don’ they? If ye can’t pay back in cash, ye pay in a pound of flesh...an' I stole from ye...”

She hugged herself tight and wished he had chosen, if indeed he had nothing was clear- like those muddy brown waters of the Arova, a different way to get his pound of flesh.

"I did not --If it were not for you, I would not have had to....please. I do not wish to argue." Hava's voice was soft, crushed by all the sound from the Dove proper.

He didn't, he direly didn't. All he wanted to do was clear the smoke-thick air of any obscene implication. If anyone in this entire filthy shark's mouth wouldn't take advantage of a girl it was him. Or so Hava liked to think. How good and moral was a man when he questioned his own goodness whenever he could? Did all this doubt have deep roots, or was it the casualty of sterling morals, his ideals built up so staggeringly high he couldn't even trust himself?

Hava thought of himself as the former, of course. Which could very well prove the latter.

Spindly fingers fluttered up to his lips as he considered her, silently. She was so small. The mess on the top her head brushed the ox yoke of his collarbone. If and only if he stood near enough for that to happen. Which he wouldn't.

He slid his hands from his face, and spoke. "Murmur Now," he said. "I swear on the sea, I wear on Hulali's teeth, I swear on ohante, esera, everything -- I swear on her, even -- that I did not do a single unseemly thing to you." A pocket of silence. His sole eye drifted down to the foyer beneath them, beyond the railing, under the floorboards. At all the beastly things gathered.

"And to be honest, Murmur Now," he added blankly. "I would cut anyone who would."

It was wrong -- absolutely sinful -- to send her out into the Harbor in this state. Nevermind how long she may have lived here before. Old Rose was littered with the delicate refuse of girls, small and hard faced. Beaten and bitter and scared, scared as trapped rats.

He wanted very much for them all to stop disappearing into shops or hiding in the crush of crowds or turning down corners where he couldn't keep an eye on them anymore. There in an instant, gone in a flash -- he didn't know their names, didn't have to. Even still, he worried. Put them all away, somewhere where no horrible thing can ever touch them, where everything is beautiful and nothing hurts.

Stupidly, inevitably: he was worried for this one, too. He didn't want to be. It would be much nicer just to let her disappear and faint in some other alley with some wolf not half as upstanding as his dear self. Except it wouldn't be, not at all, and he would lose more sleep than usual.

"Is there anything I can do for troubling you so?" Impossibly long arms cradling his chest, huddled deep in that cocoon of a coat. He was some dishwater tea spot, old and cold, on all this warm lamp light staining the walls. "You can have the herbs. And the books. And the disinfectant. Whatever you feel you need." It sounded like if he could give his hands, his coat, his eye -- he would have offered those too.

"Just..." a low sigh summoned up from the caverns of his birdcage ribs. "...you cannot have any bit of her. I am sorry, epa'ma. I do not need much, but I need --" her, he wanted to say, couldn't bring himself to say. "-- I need Otherplace, Antelife, across the water."

Softness and Sorrys were alien to her, but when Havek spoke of cutting down men doing unseemly deeds she saw a flash of her brothers in him. Stocky boys, all six of them- there was not an ounce of Havek in the way they looked, all freckled and Anaxi and pale, and though her brother’s words were loud and Havek’s spoken soft, there was danger in them too. A strange, loving danger. The kind of person who would die for you...who would kill over and over for you. It was kind of nice- but of course, wasn’t something she was planning on letting on.

Murmur could feel sickly sweet relief dancing ever so slightly on her tongue, but it was faint and there was a bitterness in her mouth that would not be shaken so easily.

She frowned at Havek, studying him closely. His appearance was so coarse and harsh, it seemed strange that the man would be so soft spoken, stranger still that there was no anger to be found at all in that one eye, or that dark gash of a mouth. Maybe she wanted to believe in the violation and the pain because it was something she at least understood. When were strangers ever kind? When would a man ever carry a girl through old rose to an inn through nothing but guilt and citizenship.

“Why?” she said suddenly, suspiciously. “Why would ye do that? What do ye want?”

Because that was how it worked, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. By the looks of things, Murmur and Havek were already part of the way anyhow. One fewer eye, a few less teeth- would it keep on going till the whole world was dark and Murmur sat smacking empty gums together.

Murmur stumbled over motives, tripped over good intentions and fell flat on her face again, doing the only thing she knew how to do in confusion. Get angry all over again. “One, I ent a charity case...so ye can cut all that ‘igh an’ mighty generous shit right out...‘sides I can’t do nuffin wi’ books an herbs, sides from make a stew wi’ the meat i ent got or read a story with the learnin’ I ent never had.”

Nothing he had was worth any of this, which he must have known. Making fun of her perhaps?

“Two, if ye expect me te roll over an’ be grateful like yer some clockin’ hero or somethin’ fer protectin me I ent gonna. I ent a yoffel wi’ a stuck paw, I can look after meself...when the stakes are fair.”

Magic. Murmur held strongly, was not fair. She could have split him clean in two were it not for that spell, Murmur liked to think. She chewed her lips trying to think of a third, teeth gnawing at skin after biting a hand that had probably only wanted to feed her.

“An three...Mister Trouble, three- ye gotta tell me honest like what ye would be thinkin if ye were me. I don’t know ye from that golly goddess Alioe an’ all I know about ye is that I done ye wrong...then I wake up in this place an’ yer here offerin’ me help. I’d be moony te tek it wouldn’t I?”

Murmur patted her hair and wiped her eyes with the back of her hands. “She must’ve been really somethin’...got her spirit trapped in that scarf ‘ave ye?” she started bitterly, “used yer magic te trap her in that picture, right? Sorry that other place means so much te you...but ye're here now...an' clingin on te shit in the past like that means people get hurt here an now."

She checked her pockets and found the coin purse from before was still there. Those few coins for a few drinks and here she was in an inn with a working bar and a need for a stiff drink. Without another word, she walked swiftly past him, flashing as clear as a 'don't even so much as think about lettin yer field touch me let alone anythin' else' and into a thick throng of drunken men.

They called things, awful, rude things. Even tried to pinch places, poke about ...but at least that was in her language. As were the finger gestures and the 'fuck offs' she snarled on her way to the bar.

"Whiskey."

Breathe. Remember how to do that before anything else.

He let her go -- and he didn't like that he thought of it as letting her, as allowing her to go. She was free to go. Like she said, she could take care of her own damn self.

Hava wanted to believe her as much as she wanted to believe him. Truly and deeply, he did. But alas and alack -- he couldn't. It could've been any number of things. Surly sharpness hitched up high and strong as a steel curtain, done so impeccably fast he almost missed the scene change. He wavered on the stairs, not wishing to move. Perhaps he could have just made up his mind to let her slip away. Disappear into all that delirous crush of bodies, never see her again. Scour away her freckles and the way her bloody mouth stuck on his fingers from his head -- he'd be doing that regardless, because those weren't things anyone should ever think about. Much less when you were trying to help someone. And even less when that someone was convinced you had -- even though you know that you never would.

The desire to help Murmur Now had dimmed considerably in a matter of seconds. Enchanted her scarf, trapped her in a picture. If anything, it was as if he were dragging around relics of a world that didn't exist anymore. If they were gone, she was gone. Her face had become dimmer and dimmer in the picture as years went by, scoured by time and salt water. And the greasy fingers of other people.

People will get hurt here and now, she'd said. He never hurt anyone. Anyone who wasn't rightfully deserving of it.

A deckhand on some ship too distant to name had found Ekua's face in his satchel. A shrill whistle, tongue pressing at gap in his teeth. "This your girl?" Havek had nodded, stiffly, already reaching to take it back. "I bet," he'd said, teeth smiling broad like the bricks in a wall, "she has the sweetest tasting pussy."

It had not been anyone's fault a week later that deckhand had gotten his tibia chicken boned when a mast rope caught him around the wrist and hauled him into the air like a bird. It was no one's fault when gangrene ate his limb to the core. And it was absolutely, certainly no one's fault that Havek couldn't find the anesthetic before he took a bone saw to the deckhand's ruined arm.

These things happen.

Fingers scratching at the insides of his satchel, trying to find something that would anchor him again. Her braid buried at the bottom, under everything, slipping coarse under his fingertips. All was quiet in him, though the Black Dove was roaring. He moved through the crush of drunken men like a thread of smoke, bustled about by outside forces but never quite veering off its course.

She was so small -- he really had to stop thinking that -- among all those hulking shoulders and tar thick voices. Like she could be crushed, snuffed out of existence by a stray elbow. He didn't like that they were huddled in so close like that. He wanted to slip things between their ribs, just a little bit, but his fingers clutched at the lock of Ekua's hair and had no desire to grab the machete.

"You know," his voice was somber and quiet, slipping in amongst the din unobtrusively as possible. "There's no way to enchant a scarf. If anything at all, it is the way around."

And Havek hovered there at her back, silent, grasping at further words. "...and...I...I want nothing from you. I simply want you to be safe. You seem very afraid," flat-line, no ounce of judgement or anything at all. "I would like it if you did not have to be."

Murmur laughed in Havek’s face in disbelief, her laugh deeper than you’d expect from a small thing with a look of surprise in her eyes- the kind of surprised laugh the victim of a prank gets when they’ve realised the joke. As though Havek was the joke. But the barkeep tossed whiskey in her direction and she looked into the murky brown depths to save herself having to wade through murky brown waters out of the glass. He wanted her to be safe. He would like it if she wasn’t afraid. What was Murmur to Havek? No skin off his nose…but all the same. He’d like it.

Could he get rid of the gollies and get her shop back, fix Fendin’s broken brain and her Ma’s broken, rotting corpse? Could he make her vanish again, or make the men not look under her coating of grime and stink the way they used to? He’d like her not to be afraid.

“I would too,” said Murmur, finger dancing around the rim of her drink. “Get’s me on edge…all this. Wicks draggin ye home like yer the catch o’ th’ day. Wakin up in strange beds…people followin’ ye round inns,” she looked at him pointedly before taking a sip of her drink. Old Rosie whiskey, Murmur had almost forgotten how damn strong it was. It burned her throat but was almost comforting, like an old friend.

“Ye know this is weird, dontcha?” her mouth twitched and formed a small conciliatory smile. It was obvious that Murmur felt slightly better drink in hand, standing in this public place- even if the public in this place was far from upstanding. “It ent how we do things…It ent normal. Not in the harbour. “

She’d pushed Havek today, strange that it hadn’t been hard enough and she’d seen lesser men explode over the smallest of things. What odd creatures these mugs, Dem in the red house giving her rum and calling her daughter bander and Havek with his past lives and his woman over the sea.

“Reckon the heat does somethin’ te yer brain in Mugroba. Turns ye fuckin insane.”

Murmur felt different, but like she could be the same. Could have been once. If she wasn’t here. If she was supposed to be somewhere else.

“I ent even supposed te be here…” she started, dark fist fishing inside the tip jar on the bar when the innkeeper’s back was turned, pulling back a fistfull of shiny pennies and slipping them into her pocket. “Got a job in Vienda- honest work, an family- enough brothers te keep me safe ye wouldn’t need to worry about that,” she smiled wide through her gap teeth, remembering her dear mad Muck clan. “This ‘ere occurance…they woulda killed ye Mister Trouble, strung yer intenstines up from our washin’ line. An’ that aint nothin’ but a fact.”

“I had a place te live too an’ everythin’ else I don’t got here…but there was a mess, I done somethin’ I shouldnta for someone…an’ he got fucked over an’ I promised I’d look after ‘im. Only I got scared so I ran away. I always get scared an’ I always run away.”

She’d done it before, when the debt collectors had come- to take her home and the pound of flesh her mother owed them, that now she was dead Murmur had to give up. They were so similar, despite everyone’s best efforts- Murmur and her Ma, both frightened. Except when Lena Muck had done her running, she’d done it right off the banks of the Arova.

Murmur poked the glass sadly and leant into the palm of her hand which rested flat on the bar. “I weren’t even supposed te steal from ye…I just wanted te get a job in the fish market. But ye made that bag so feckin attractive an’ easy to jus’ lift from ye. I feel stupid about that now, I can tell ye....I ent even supposed te be here."

"Brothers?" Hava repeated, in reference to the bit about gutting him and stringing his bits and pieces out with the wash. "How good of them. Hulali bless them for loving you so. It's so much more honorable when one acts in violence to awful things, instead of doing nothing at all." Maybe he shouldn't have been pleased to hear something like that -- but deep in the hollow core of things, he couldn't fathom he'd be any different. He wished he could be there, let the all backstreets of Thul Ka know that touching Akee or Ama Alu would be safe as caressing a bear trap.

"I did feel ever so strange carrying you here! I was not, but it must have looked --" his eye pinched shut, the faintest touch of a wince, "--it would have been so much better if someone had tried to gut me for it. But no one did. No one even --" Whatever they didn't do was lost when a man crushing past them jostled his shoulder. Havek folded himself deeper into the depths of coat, receding back into his cocoon.

He shuffled an inch or two closer, removing himself from the flow of bodies on the floor proper. Hava didn't like having to stand so close to her. He was the one who looked maidenly here, hunched into himself, head bowed, eye cast away. He had a funny way of speaking to her, huddling down from his height as if that could help his frustratingly quiet voice among all the noise.

"Is that strange, though?" there were pure dregs of curiosity lingering in his detached voice. "I hurt you. So I tried to help you. All of this lot, with their teeth and their knives and their hands, is this how people are supposed to be? All of them fleecing and cutting each other because they must, because they can? This," he arced his hand out towards the rest of the foyer, that gesture encompassing The Black Dove, The Harbor, Anaxas as a whole, "How could this seem sane to you? Then again," he added, acquiescing, head bobbing low in a bow. "No one can know what backwards looks like if they've never seen a glimpse of forward."

"It is strange to you, but it is simply a matter of honor to me. It is cruel and wrong to deny a soul help, no matter how they have wronged you." Speaking in morals was never his forte. He could taste the hyprocrisy on the underside of his tongue. It was like ashes. "Yet...I am sorry. Running away is in the heart's blood of everything, really. And there is quite a fine line between where you should and should not be. Who are any of us to decide that?"

This girl, for all her fish-stink, seemed as though she'd never been on a boat before. That teaches one so much about not having any say in where life is dragging you, about just having to stew in darkness under decks and wait for the farther shore.

"Sometimes, it is completely out of your control where you go and why, no matter how vast your sails or thick or your brow. Some things were over-powering, forces of nature that one must to ride out to the end." He paused, fingers curling over his lips, contemplative. His eye swiveled over the congregation of tar hearted Anaxi wolves -- for once, not judging them. The thick pall of disappointment there seemed aimed at no one but himself. "...even though you have no idea where the end is."

How strange he'd be preaching to this girl about fates and losing oneself. It all seemed to intimate, too familiar, as if he were divulging too much even though he wasn't saying anything clearly at all.

"In the bigger scheme of things, perhaps we are supposed to be here. Glaring at one another, not trusting a word, talking about massive uncontrollable things as if that could possibly, somehow, make them more controllable..." His gaze had drifted up from the floor and blinked up at swollen wood of the ceiling, at the water seeping the cracks. It were as if he'd been speaking to the thick air, or perhaps to himself.

"You know," he added mildly. "The smell of hard alcohol makes me think of disinfectant."

Murmur smiled a little bitterly at Havek’s lyrical, philosophical waxing. It was hard to understand in parts, that little quiet voice that nobody ever used- especially not humans and wicks unless they were hiding someplace so she leaned in a little. A mad move perhaps, especially towards one who she’d been all ready to both slice into ribbons and cower in front of. He wasn’t easy on the eye, that was the same close as it was far away and it was hard not to stare too deep into that hollow of an eye, to want to let her fingers run along that scar, how would it feel?

She clicked her tongue in her teeth, to show she was thinking about forwards and backwards and what was good and what wasn’t. “I dunno what we’re supposed te be. But I know how things are an’ I don’t like it any more than ye do…just like I only know where I am an’ I don’t like it.”

Dem had said Mugroba was better, that it was beautiful and everyone was good and decent folk. So why did these people, why did her father keep choosing this place, to leave mixed up girls belonging both here and there when there was better. “But I got born in this place- I didn’t choose it, it’s my ‘ome- teeth and ‘ands and knives is all I know…I ‘ope ye ent here te save the ‘arbour one little thief at a time. That really would drive ye barmy.”

Alchohol as disinfectant. They all hoped it would be like that, working through a drunk man’s system cleaning away all the impurities, flushing out poison and rot with clear strong alchohol. It never worked though. Just made everything murkier and more rotten most of the time.

“Ye a medicine man then?” she asked, studying her fingernail. “The smell makes me think of wakin’ up early an ghostin’ in te my Ma’s room.” Pale arm limp over the side of the bed, grasping the neck of a bottle, something smashed and pungent in the corner of the room- sometimes the floor was sticky with liquor too. Whiskey smelt like home. And she drank it like enough would take her back, mop up the pus around new wounds. Disinfect.

“That would explain them funny needles in yer bag…my sister Muriel. She ‘ad a baby, died inside ‘er an’ the medicine man ‘ad te pull it out. I remember all the needles…” And the quiet and the stink and the blood and that tiny dead baby, barely a thing at all. Muriel all pulled apart and then stitched together like a rag doll with all the stuffing yanked out of it. Ma said Muriel was lucky. Lucky she’d lived and the baby hadn’t, that the medicine man had needles to stop the pain and there wasn’t another mouth to feed.

“She kept cryin’ an’ wailin’ then they stuck one of them things in ‘er arm an’ she didn’t cry no more.” Murmur had never thought for a second that Muriel had been lucky.

She shrugged at Havek, a look of 'eh-at the end of the day, what're you gonna do?' before calling for more whiskey. "Do they not need medicine in Mugroba? Or did ye get scared an' run away like me?"

It was such, that Murmur, wearing her pretend hard-face in the face of danger was scared of safeness and softeness too. Maybe if she were happy in Mugroba too, she'd simply get scared all over again.

They stuck her with that thing and then she didn't cry no more. That was one way of putting it.

He shifted his satchel on his shoulder, passive face pinching in the brows.

Was it so wrong that the first thing his mind's eye conjured up was a rat? A rat called Muriel? She was not, couldn't be, just some Anaxi girl.

"Aye, epa'ma," fingers woven together, meshed over his heart, he bobbed into a low bow. "Poor soul. Hulali bless them both. Bless the medicine man, too. It is evil work." Her nonchalance about such a horrid thing was like a bushel of needles prodding at him. Motherhood was precious and rare. Granted, whenever Hava conjured up ideas of 'motherhood' he'd just think Ekua with her swollen belly letting him wash her hair or shuffling around a market with tiny Talia swaddled against his chest and all the merchant women crooning over her as if she was his. His own mother and her two pregnancies after him were conveniently shoved behind the curtain.

"But -- ea, miss," he bobbed into another bow, hands pressed together as if in prayer. "A healer, ea. An herbalist. Dealing in all those things that can make people stop crying." The watery beginnings of what could have been twitched at the edges of Hava's lips. "Emply of Shook's Apoth--" His placid features pinched themselves into something edged in revulsion. The tic was mercilessly brief and he managed to settle back into his emotionless mask. It was safer that way. All this day's talk of pounds of flesh made some bit of him, some thickly buried piece, quietly burn.

Some people, their hate was a flash of flame. Others, it smoked down to ashes. Hava's hate smoldered beautifully.

"Formerly --" he corrected, broken teeth worrying the metal rings in his lips. "Formerly under the employ of Shook's Apothecary, yes." Foolish thing, he tried to force some semblance of a smile. It looked more like flash of teeth, the twitch of scared dog wanting very much to sink them into something. He glowered flatly at the ceiling again, stewing in silence.

"I will grant you this, miss" he muttered at last, yellow eye summoning itself to level with Murmur's. He just now realized his hand had slipped into the depth of the satchel again, that it was slipping over the smoothness of a glass flask. As she had minutely been leaning closer, Hava huddled down towards her a bit more, voice dropping volume. How conspiratorial they must look, huddled together in some seedy crater of a bar and hissing about things.

"In a vast sense, I suppose this whole backwards-forwards business could be relative. Being surrounded by your lot -- with their teeth and knives and all that-- it certainly does have a penchant for making one sore to bite and cut as well." He folded his arms around himself, almost protective. As if holding himself to the floor. "It is a challenge, clinging to softness. But it's one I try to shoulder, even if that does entail helping little thieves. But ea, yes," he hissed, remembering. His blood wouldn't come off the floor. His clocking arm didn't work right anymore. Naomi was -- "softness does not mean that the wicked deserve no punishment. Little thieves have their reasons -- others, miss, others carve their pounds of flesh from those who have no flesh to spare, and you know...I..."

Hava didn't like getting riled, didn't like feeling things. Then again, he didn't talk much -- never had anyone to talk to -- and this was easily as much as he'd spoken in a year, all in one evening. Strange little fish girl, funny half-Mug thing, he supposed he didn't quite want her to leave. At least she was thinking about backwards, forwards. Someone like that could be salvageable. He caught the eye of the barkeep and meekly raised his fingers, gesturing for whatever she was getting.

Hava wasn't quite sure what he was consigning himself to, only that he didn't want all this rambling spotlighted on the crux of some bar.

"Murmur Now," he faltered, hissed a sigh through his teeth. "Would you like to sit? The creatures in this space quite like leering."

She recognized his anger- the bitterness that coarsed through her veins tasted the same as his. The galdori. Carving their flesh out of her mother’s spirit and Fendin’s brains. Murmur blinked at his sudden change in tone- reminded of how frightened she had been of him earlier but clenched her fist in sympathy all the same. They all felt it, she was sure of it, the lower races scraping by to get anywhere at all.

“Heffin ‘eck, Mister Trouble,” she joked, “Ye must’ve hated it at Shook’s.” Murmur knew a little of the apothecary from her last visit to the harbor but didn’t have much to do with it. It was the kind of place Wicks and tumbles went to fix their..um…problems down there and Murmur had no need for that of course. To Murmur the only place for herbs was in a stewpot- throughout her childhood if you were too ill to stand then the medicine man would come, and Ma would stand over you in her flimsiest nightie before taking the doctor to her room to pay him the only way she could afford. It was likely that none of the herbalists would sleep with her Ma which was why she knew nothing of home remedies. Wick stuff, all of it- her Ma would say- it ent fer us.

As he mentioned leering creatures, Murmur looked around and pinched her mouth tight into an annoyed pout. People in Vienda had higher standards so she was usually left alone when she was a little thing with eyes too big for her head, sticky out ears and straggly curls frizzy from the damp ait, but here in Old Rosie anything in a skirt was free game. Seth had proved that on his little sojourn into cross dressing. “Yeah…alright,” she shrugged .
Though on the other hand, studying Havek , she was still very sure she didn’t want to go anywhere on her own with him- just a precaution, just the sight of them scars and that eye and all his talk of hurting the wicked..he wasn’t one of her brothers, as much as he could act like one, and sometimes in Old Rosie danger took the guise of familiar things.“But we stay in here, yeah?”It wasn’t phrased as a question and her stubborn little face was set. It didn’t happen often but one could tell Murmur was a girl who knew how to say no to men. “Do they ‘ave booths or summat, ye been stayin’ ‘ere long?”

Murmur wondered how much the rooms were, if they were cheap she may consider it. But then again, there was no sense paying for somewhere when there were empty homes littering the harbor to stay in for free. It hadn’t been so bad the first time, once you made contacts with other squatters it was surprising how much of the harbor they had their eye on- who’d died, who’d skipped town- that sort of thing.

“Of course we shall stay here,” Hava said, plucking his drink off the bar with all the mincing awkwardness of a maiden. “I trust you don’t want to be out in the rain.” He willed down any spark of emotion he may have had. It was so terrible, dwelling on evil thoughts like that. Hava’s not-father told him that things like that bred wrath in men, and wrath was the downfall of men.

And you aren’t wrathful are you, Hava Alu?

He threaded through the warm crush of people, silent as a shade. He reached back and almost took her wrist, thinking too much of Ama or Akee getting lost in some rushing market. Murmur could be too easily lost among this crowd of drunken wolves, too, could she not? With her hatchet scowl and little fish knife, she’d be harder to lose than most. He would’ve tried to comfort himself with that if he couldn’t still so clearly hear her sobbing across that slim scrap of door.

The Black Dove, barely managing to stay standing as it was, boasted no such thing as booths. The best Hava could find were a couple of tables left mostly unoccupied -- if only because the roof was leaking particularly badly here. The cleverer patrons had migrated to dryer bits of the whole dank bar.

The ‘table’ was hardly a table. Some spindly thing shivering on its last legs, surrounded by not chairs bur “chairs”, upended barrels of some liquor or another. Hava scooted his barrel against the swollen wood of the wall before seating himself, ibis legs tangling up in themselves like a lotus, back balanced against the wall.

“I...” he blinked down into the darkness of his whiskey, like he really had no idea what to do with it. Speaking these words aloud would be shameful, but he had done plenty of shameful things already. “I live here, more or less. It is but a temporary stop to where I am going.” Wherever in all of Vita that was. His brows knit around their squiggles of scars. “But suppose that is what all places are. Temporary stops.”

Tentative, he brought the glass to his lips. The sip of whiskey burnt his nostrils and danced in the empty sockets dotting his gums. Hava tasted only blood and bones. It was fitting for the subject of discussion.

“Shook’s is...ea. Yes. Working there was tolerable. Brewing decoctions and curing salves and growing opium. Child’s play, really. One of the boys employed there was quite a pricking nettle, but the old man and the other one they were...decent. Not good, not virtuous, but nothing either or. I...” he hissed softly, shaking his head, frayed ropes of hair falling in his face. “Pe'a, Murmur, promise me you shall never venture there.” A timbre of seriousness, a touch of anxiety colored his passive voice.

“They are entrenched deep in the pockets of...ah, bigger things.” The last words fell even quieter than his voice had been before, yellow eye briefly flashing towards the foyer, a subtle gesture to the whole rotten heart of The Black Dove.

Murmur perched herself on a barrel following Havek, drawing one knee into her chest and curling an arm around it, the other swinging against the barrell as she listened. Her knowledge of what as required of an apothecary was about as good as her knowledge of personal hygene- in her mind she pictured strange smells and coloured fumes rising from the air, showy wick stuff like the spokes who danced into Vienda when she was a girl, banging their drums and twirling their streamers.

As he made mention of intrigue, bigger things and, most importantly, of pockets Murmur’s ears pricked up and she turned her full attention to the man.

“ Ere,” she said, her blue eyes growing wide with interest. “Ye mean bad brothers stuff right?”

She’d considered it of course, after her job with Amani and Seth hadn’t ended with anyone getting shot the bad brother’s mystery and fear had subsided significantly. The pay hadn’t been awful either for what the job had been, enough to comfortably get her back to Vienda and a month or so’s pocket money. But there were rumours that once you were in, you were in for life and Murmur didn’t want that.

She didn’t want to be a bad brother for life.

But she did long for something permanent, even if Havek claimed places like that didn’t exist. All Murmur wanted was a shop; the air thick with fresh fish and cold salt water, to paint her own sign on to a board and stick it out front, to haggle with customers and spend her days arms deep in fish again. It was such a simple dream, but the gollies made it feel like reaching for the stars.

Glancing again in to her whiskey she shrugged as nonchalently as she could, “reckon that must earn old Shook a lot o’ money. Dangerous te be keepin it in ‘is shop right? He must ‘ave a safe or somethin’”

Seth could pick locks, was real good at it- Murmur remembered. Damn, if he’d have been here she might have felt brave and dumb enough to consider it. But whiskey made a rather good subsitituon for genuine bravery- always had. She knocked back the dregs of her drink and chewed her lip thoughtfully.

Glancing up nervously at Havek she studied that hollowed out eye carefully, thinking of how riled up he got about punishing the wicked. The set of her jaw remind defiant to the last, however, as was Murmur’s way. Mugs just didn’t understand Anaxas. Probably best not to promise Havek she wouldn’t venture to Shook’s anyhow.

"You wouldn't be able to tell, miss." He scowled into the depths of his whiskey, as if he could piece together an answer from the dregs of booze. "It is a dreary hole of an establishment. Though it's a bit dryer than here, I shall admit." The pitter patter of rain on the tin roof was fast. It dripped quite incessantly on the center of their table, a thin stream.

"If it makes a dreg of money, the shop sees none of it. There wasn't a solid cashbox or anything, not I recall. Just this big metal beastly thing. An addition machine, bells and drawers. It was never quite barren as it should have been." A sip of whiskey again, the motion almost dainty in those dark spindly fingers.

"I never learned exactly what they..." Hava hissed again, eye shuttering closed. Yes, he had some inkling. More than an inkling. A semi-solid mass of idea coagulating in the back of his head. Crates stacked nigh to the ceiling, dingy little backrooms Hava wasn't allowed to poke in. Heavy opiates, made things sleep so hard they died.

A thick spur of chrove's heart never did that to anyone. That much a he knew.

"I worked there for...for awhile. Not long. But...may I tell you?" He leaned towards the center of the table, spindly fingers drumming an anxious tattoo on the soaked-through wood. "I only saw but one or two people come filtering in, never buying much. And yet the shelves were always, always stocked. Strange men, filtering in and out with crates of..." his flickered askance. "Things, glass things, I knew not what," he lied. His lips compressed to a thin, dark line.

"It was a strange place. It would be better in ashes than standing."

He gently swirled the booze around his glass, blinking mildly at how it caught the guttering light.

"You know," he muttered. "You did not promise me a thing."

“I don’t like makin’ promises I’m not sure if I can keep,” grinned Murmur, “I might desperatley need healin’ someday. Might need te go te an apothecary, an’ then I’d be stuck coz I’d promised ye I wouldn’t…that is of course if ye haven’t burnt it down.”

But then she rested her chin on her knee and pouted at him, more than a hint of interest in her voice. “Hawke’s men? What do ya mean glass things? First thing I woulda done was check if somethin’ strange was comin in te my shop.

When I get my own place, ent no crate comin’ in te Muck’s Mongers without me givin’ it a good once over. That’s how people end up getting’ the shits, ye know? Ye don’t check the fish is bad and ye sell it te someone who ends up crappin’ fer hours….some people even end up shitting themselves te death. Ent gonna be none of that in my shop.”

She put a finger to her lips to think, but realised that they still stung a little from her fall. “This don’t sound good te me Havek, ye know. It’s like the bad fish thing…Shook’s could have something that makes ye shit yerself te death.”

Admittedly, the metaphor didn’t work very well and Murmur giggled slightly into the sleeve of her coat.

“Well, not that exactly, but ye know what I mean. Somethin’ dangerous…or,” she frowned, “somethin’ what’s worth a lot of money. “ Now that was something to think about. “Somethin in the wrong ‘ands that could be dangerous, but in the right ‘ands…”

A droplet of water landed on her nose and she grimaced, wiping it with her sleeve. "But ye never said why ye don't work there no more..." Murmur was a human of course, and from experience if you got over the age of twenty and lost your own particular job then getting a new career was difficult at best. People always thought you'd stolen stuff or done something horrible to have left your last position. So Murmur couldn't quite fathom why he would leave, even if hated the place he was working and everyone in it. It was all about eking out a living at the end of the day.

A raspy bark of laughter escaped him, and he looked surprised by the sound. Like uliam finding his voice and not quite knowing what to do with it. Surprise coaxed a piano key smile to spread his lips.

"No, no -- I doubt it's quite like that."

This was all so serious, the subject so thick with subtle thoughts of vengeance and compromised morals, and here he was getting all amused by how childish bitter Murmur was. Giggling like that, an elusive little sound, the dumb metaphor was forgotten. Scrunching up her nose under a raindrop -- lone small women in a place so fraught with teeth had no right, being so darling like that.

How old was this scrap of harbor urchin, anyway?, he kept wanting to know, yet all at once he didn't want to know. She couldn't be too much bigger, if bigger at all, than his tiny half-sisters must be by know. The thought was enough to make him ill.

"And do not grin like that," he tried -- tried -- to chastise, only that he was grinning too. In his own small, awkward way. "If ever you do need a healing, there's a medicine hut just down the pier. 'cides, the old halfblood would daze your eyes with unguents and try to fleece you anyhow. Now I say again, it would do you well to stay far from that place." If ever you did need a healing and had no finance to do so, well..." Hava leaned his head back against the wooden walls, eye narrowing to the loft hanging above them. "I suppose you know where to find me."

The whiskey glass felt like little more than an awkward prop in his hand. His fingers had a funny way of fluttering about the air when he spoke, so the whiskey itself wasn't doing much beyond getting sloshed around and stared into. Wordless, he set it down and nudged it across the tiny tabletop to her before continuing.

"We all have reasons for things. I quit as of this morning, to be honest." Today was so full of strange changes. "I suppose it does all hinge on those wretched boxes. Full of expensive things, dangerous things. Drove them quite moony, I do think, crushing out their morals if they had any to begin with. I am not certain as to why all of this..."

All of this, whatever did 'all of this' encompass? The odd tilt of his shoulders to the right even when he so badly wished to keep them straight, the muscle in his whole limb under the scar gone watery, sluggish? Pretty Naomi, painfully pretty, with all her dead men? He meant Kathis too, mad Kathis was his smashed face and missing hand now. Hava wished Kathis had just let him run away. It wouldn't have been honorable, but none of this was.

"They, ah...they..." his features pinched into their usual dark, feelingless mask. Yellow eye blank, relaxed. "I trust you know how fishermen will throw fish guts in the water, to call in sharks? I," Hava quietly intoned, cocking his head to her. "was fish guts. You know, an expendalbe pound of flesh in exchange for...something. I suppose I like to pretend I don't know for what, exactly, but then again I think I do know."

All at once, Hava wanted to smoke. Something rarely done, and that probably wouldn't be done now because all the opium he had was surely drenched, but he found himself with satchel in lap digging for it anyway.

"Even beyond myself, hurting so many people for the contents of boxes," he hissed. "Boxes filled with...with what looked like nothing more than glass phials of water, no less. It damn well best be dangerous and valuable."

Murmur’s lip curled in angry sympathy for Havek, all fear for him and their short history filled with mistrust and magic momentarily forgotten. She imagined Havek being ripped apart by sharks in bloodied water, “sounds te me like yer enititled te a share of what ever they got,” she hissed to him.
“They can’t use people like that. That’s what the gollies are doin’ te us, usin’ us fer the jobs they don’ want, taxin us so we can’t breath te make their buildin’s in uptown that little bit fancier. But we’ll take it back. One day. Ye gotta take it back.”

Murmur clenched her hand into a fist and shook it as though wringing the neck of some unseen creature, the mona perhaps that kept her race so downtrodden, or something less tangible than that, something like time or circumstance.

“When we let em tek the shop in Vienda,” she said, taking Havek’s whiskey before he had time to change his mind, “it were the worst day of my life. Us lower races ent got much but a few special things so we gotta dig our dirty little fingers in te what we’re entitled te an’ never let go.” She tipped her head slightly again, in her confused little yoffel way once again. “I suppose that’s how ye felt when I took yer bag.”

It really was the closest he was going to get to an apology and Murmur drained her glass.

“Thanks fer the offer of the healin an’ all,” she nodded, “Hopefully won’t be needin it again. I used te go in fer brawlin a lot,” she pointed to her front teeth or lack of. “My brother’s got money in the basin oftentime and I wanted te be just like ‘em. Ended up bein’ not like much apart from a little ball of bruises. It were fun, but, we fight so much other stuff in our lives whether we want te or not it seemed a bit stupid going out and lookin fer one more.”

"But what is there to take? Nothing could justify destruction in response to destruction. What could..."

Hava was quite good at playing the innocent. Perhaps if he said these things enough, spouted about morals enough, his fine Mugrobi sensibilities would fully and quietly reassemble themselves.

"And dear girl, I am not lower, I --"

Well. The pompous, egalitarian bit of those morals still seemed intact. He snorted softly, hand flicking in gesture of dismissal. Brushing the dregs of that half-formed comment from the table. That bit of ethics could be discussed later, if there ever were to be a later. But the other bits of his pure and sterling conscience were not quite so sturdy.

"I shall admit, seeing them in a panic would be..." he bowed his head, shaking it sadly. His boney hand, free of whiskey clutched over his mouth to conceal the twitch of a smile. "Ever lit a lamp just to see all the roaches and things scurry away into the dark? They would be as such if one of those hideous little crates went missing." To say that Hava Alu was opposed to vengeance would like fish had a moral opposition to water. Ah, no -- he used to be depraved enough to enact such things. He was different now. He was meek, quiet, and gentle now.

However. This was a meek and quiet vengeance. No sawbones, no darkness, no cleverly explained slashes (words like 'he's having complications' were just sweet ways of saying 'he's dead, so dead, unfathomably dead').

"I would so hate to hurt anyone. I may not have worried so once, but I am different now. You were another creature entirely, once. As was I. All that I was once wouldn't have minded a whit, stripped their walls bare, lit the matches myself. Yet times are hard, for everyone," he reasoned, and he was so pleased with himself. Until he examined the harsh lines of her young face. "Hard for likes of us, too..."

His spindly limbs unfolded from their precarious position atop the barrel, feet resting on the ground and his elbows on the sodden table, gingerly, as if he were unsure they were real. Hava reached across the table and toyed idly with the empty glass as he spoke again.

"Mind," he intoned softly. "All that I once was always had a ship to hide away on by the next morning, slinking out to sea where no one could ever find him. Neither of us have anywhere to --" His musing were cut off with the faintest rumblings of a growl. "Whatever am I saying..."

Stalk fingers released the glass, flinching back from the table as if it scalded them. Hava slid his hands up his coarse planes of his cheeks, cradling his face in his palms for a moment. He slid them down, away, til just his eye and blown out socket peered at Murmur.

"You," he sighed, "are already a terrible influence, you know."

“Good,” said Murmur with a triumphant grin. “That’s not the first time someone ‘as said that.”

Admittedly she had been seven years old and seen another mother pulling a playmate away from the Muck children who stank worse than a corpse, who stole anything that wasn’t fixed down and who’s mother was an irredeemable whore. Bad influences, the whole lot of them. It made her proud to be called it again.

“Ye said ye wouldn’ta minded hurtin people before…but people get meaner, when they got older,” said Murmur rather sadly. “’Ard times or not.” Her Ma, Muriel, those twisted men. She felt meaner the older she got too, felt a strange curl in her stomach like growing weeds in a decaying house, something locked up and untended, unurtured would always crumble with age.

It was a sickening thought and Murmur didn’t want to rot. Not like her ma. They had no buisness asking her to identify that body, whoever it was it was never going to be her Ma. It was dead. They all died, limb by limb- it was a slow process and it was happening to Hava too even if he was denying it. That arm, that eye. Dying and decay.

Everything was dying so they might as well live before limbs started dropping off.

“Right, I reckon we should give it anovver hour, make sure that th’ place is nice an’ empty.”

No time to mess around, as far as Murmur could tell Havek was a willing accomplice and raring to go. It was a simple job, a child could rob a house. Children did rob houses, Murmur was smallest and could fit thorugh tiny open windows, shimmy up drain pipes and tread lightly over roof tiles. It had all been just a game then. Easy peasy and Havek didn’t have to worry about anybody getting hurt

“ An’ as fer ‘idin’ away, Old Rosie ent the end of the world. It just feels like it when ye ent got money in yer pocket. But from th’ sounds of things we wouldn’t hafta worry about that…an’ no ones better at hidin than I am, I can guarantee that.”

Strange how you and me had become we all of a sudden, and perhaps in a few hours Murmur would attribute it to the whiskey.

"We could go anywhere," she said, eyes wide with promise, "Virthmoore, Mimsbury in the Marsh, Mugroba even. I could find my da and kick 'im in the nads fer never bein' in my life or somethin'"

Teetering back from the edge of death was supposed to give men beautiful revelations about their lives. Hava's glorious new revelations and convictions lasted a couple of weeks. Being alive, blessedly alive, was starting to lose its glow. Perhaps he was just regular alive again, and barely even that. Alive again and okay with doing wrong again.

"I never said --" all his thoughts about protecting poor harbor girls, and yet here he was, the one sounding like a maiden with her sensibilities all in a ruffle. "--I never said I would, you know -- we?" His voice was flat and weak. Like he wasn't even convincing himself.

That one little pronoun worked so many wonders, it made him think she'd said it on purpose. Everything in him craned towards that little syllable like a light-starved weed straining towards sunlight. A sigh slipped through his teeth, any bit of pride or morality he had left hissing out with it.

"I suppose we could," he added meekly. "I do wonder if charter ships take common folk across the way. I'm almost certain we could find one if we looked hard enough..." The scant beginnings of a smile unveiled his broken teeth. "You would love it there, you must. Always warm and bright, fish markets on every corner, no one...ah," he faltered there, gaze darting away, embarrassed, "tugging at your skirts. They're good people. We...we try to be."

And his imagination was off and rolling, no 'we' nor Murmurs in sight. Seaward again, pockets fat with opiate money and head bright with retribution, finally making his glorious return to her. He didn't think about that by now, Ekua would be gutted of any love once nurtured for him. He didn't think about how he'd been marred past repair as a boy she could even recognize.

Details, details. He couldn't dwell on them for too long. The details got blurrier, day after day. Ekua would still be soft and supple and small, still on the ripe cusp of nineteen, still in love with him. His face would smooth out, his eye would blossom in that scoured socket like a flurry of goldenrod, all his fat and muscle would meander back under his skin the second he set foot on the farther shore. Surely he'd be eighteen and untarnished again.

Surely.

Hava dragged one of the empty whiskey glasses across the table, peering down into it, rolling it by its rim.

"They keep odd hours." His voice was quiet, insufferably quiet. "Never know who's gonna be about. One of them's old and the other one's not much bigger than you. And...and there's a back way..." He wasn't going to tell her he'd been taking stock of the place before he even had both feet in the front door. Hava had hoped near death would've scratched his itchy palms.

"And...I...this is doable. This is most certainly doable."