Soul Bound

1            Soul Bound

1.1          Finding her Feet

1.1.4        An Intriguing City

1.1.4.15     Rumours

Massimo: “So what do you want to see first? The street we’ve just joined runs parallel to the old wall in a big curve, all the way from the shore in the north east near the Sanctum, to a big crossroads just south of the Plaza of the Public, where it meets the river road that leaves the city westward through the Gate of Sorrows. Everything between Wall Street and Centrum makes up old Mercato. There are guilds, small workshops, the daily market, the livestock market, plenty of coffee shops for making deals in, offices of limited trading companies and shipping lines, lawyers, notaries, assessors, engravers, polishers, repairers, high fashion areas with uniformed guards, and crowded streets where you’ll be surrounded by a dozen people offering you ‘bargain of a lifetime, honoured noble’. Make sure you keep your pouches and anything else valuable inside your clothing, not on belts. Most of the residential bits are on the third floor or higher of buildings. But, just north of the Grand Market you have Palazzo Landi. It’s quite a sight.”

Kafana: “I don’t have much money at the moment, just a few coins I was given by Dante at House Landi for travel expenses. What I’d chiefly like to do is orient myself, get a feel for the area, so I can find things by myself when I no longer have your invaluable guidance available, Massimo.”

After a moment’s thought, she added: “Though, while we window shop, it would be useful to visit a maker of musical instruments, a stall selling herbs and other cooking ingredients, and to get a feel for what sort of things the nobility find fashionable or are willing to pay lots of money for.”

Wellington: “You can leave the latter to me. I can linger here while you and Bungo create some potions for us to sell at the auction, or come back later.”

Massimo: “Very well, I will start off by taking you to the best herbalist in the Grand Market, and then we can wend our way east through the district towards the Sanctum, and visit a workshop near the Arsenal where they make musical instruments on the way. Bungo, Wellington, is there anything in particular I should point out to you if we pass it?”

Wellington: “I need to open a banking account at the goldsmiths guild. If you see an honest lawyer, that would be useful too.”

Massimo muttered: “You need an honest lawyer? Couldn’t you ask for something easier, such as a flying pig or a thief who never steals?”

Bungo: “I’d like to find out where the best beers and spirits are made, and then visit the brewery. I bet I could improve their products.”

They started following Massimo, appreciating like never before that Wall Street, unlike their previous road, had a pavement to keep pedestrians out of the horse droppings.

Kafana groaned {Please tell me you’re not thinking of Chili Vodka? The only ones who liked that back at UCL were you and Tomsk, and he’s Russian.}

Bungo: {Oh, I went way beyond that. There’s an expert system that lets you specify the effect you want, and then compose ingredients and a recipe to achieve it. It came out at about the same time as they started inventing a whole range of new composite materials from first principles.}

Tomsk: {Are you slandering my taste in alcohol?}

Kafana: {Yes dear, now hush.}

Bulgaria: {Actually, we’ve finished here. The second orphan we picked is Nicolo’s elder brother, Antonio. He’s thirteen years old, and will have to leave the orphanage soon. I think he might be a good choice to help out with the business side of the gelato operation, and not just because giving him a career would be a way for us to help him. I watched him while he persuaded Alderney to hire him as a local guide for her trip into the Arsenal. He’s very quick on the uptake and a good actor. Wellington should consider using him as a runner and training him up.}

Kafana: {The apprentice that Suor Isabella gave you as a guide this morning was sensible to hire a gondola to take you to the orphanage, but they remained at the Sanctum after that, rather than accompany you, didn't they?}

Bulgaria's voice sounded so woe-struck, she felt certain he was also posing dramatically: {Great indeed is the peril that loathsome betrayer has abandoned me to. My coins, my coins, will any of my shiny darlings survive this hoard of ravenous waifs?}

Kafana: {I was more concerned for your aging legs. If you can, avoid the main road to Mercato. I’d suggest taking the back streets, explore a bit more of Basso on your return.}

Bungo: {Yeah, the mud on that road is atrocious.}

They could hear a hubbub now, which grew louder as remains from previous city walls forced the street to curve north. Soon after they emerged into a large square where four varieties of brightly coloured flagstone had been laid out in dazzling patterns covered a raised central area that stopped only just short of where traffic shuffled along three of its edges, penned there by steps and regulations. Massimo guided them to a clear spot on the fourth edge, next to a palazzo so enormous that its shadow dominated the square, and gave them a moment to make sense of it all.

The Grand Market was a mix of order and chaos. There were acres of stalls in neat rows, with waving flags on each advertising by symbol and colour what the stall was selling. Through the stalls swirled an immense variety of shoppers, from burly sailors on leave to aged grannies, jostling and searching for bargains, scolding and nattering.

Massimo looked proud: “It is said that if you can stand still at the center of the Grand Market, then within half an hour you’ll have heard every piece of gossip worth listening to.”

Wellington looked dubious: “Has anybody ever tested that?”

Massimo shrugged. “Look at the crowd. I doubt anybody has managed to stand still there for longer than 2 minutes.”

Despite the pessimism in his voice, he led them with nimble confidence, sometimes moving smoothly when the crowd flowed in a useful direction, other times standing completely still, legs braced and spine upright as if willing others to pass around him because they mistook him for an oak tree. In arlife she avoided big crowd when possible, because she'd discovered early in life that a downside of being 1.60m tall was the number of people who treated her as a bollard and how difficult it was to stop them just pushing her aside. But she'd made her avatar 1.75m and could look Massimo in the eyes. Maybe here things would be different? She tried copying his movements and felt a little victorious as she noticed more and more people hesitate and then move aside.

As they pushed their way deeper in, Kafana over heard mention of “blood-sucking nobles”, “a bouncing demon attacking the Gate of Sorrows”, “revenge on a thieving blacksmith”, “a blue-haired sea goddess who rained down favours from her flying ship”, “higher taxes”, “the rigged auction”, “they’ll invade us soon” and “assassins in the night”. Over all, their mood was rather pessimistic and worrying.

She decided to start a rumour of her own. She said loudly to Bungo: “Bungo, I hear there are wondrous singing monks, living lives of perfect peace down in the sewers. Is it true they grant wishes for the humble and use magic spears to destroy the arrogant?”

Five minutes later she heard fragments of her rumour being repeated back to her by someone else in the crowd. She grinned, and asked System to mark this as another area to gain quests.

They arrived at Massimo’s herb stall. The variety was immense. Bungo surprised her by revealing that one of his soul bound skills was an evolved version of ingredient harvesting that let him identify practically anything that could usefully be harvested, including body parts from monsters, as well as the correct way to pick, mine or otherwise extract them, including boosting the yield. He carefully looked everything over, had his System save the information in a document he shared with her, which she then asked her System to add to her orglife overlay, resulting in her seeing everything on the stall carefully labelled.

She was surprised to find cocoa beans as well as coffee, and was informed by the stall owner that they came by ship from Batille, an Iberian city south of Savada. She carefully noted down their prices, along with those for vanilla pods, dates, raisins, different types of nut, and anything else she might want to add to the gelato. She made a mental note to return here once she’d got more money.

After that, they headed east into more upmarket parts of the district, and the walking became easier.

Bulgaria: {I’ve marked a spot on the map for you, Kafana. Basso isn’t nearly as homogenous as I thought. There are different areas, with proud individuality, often divided by region of origin. There are swarms of children kicking rag footballs around, competing for the honour of their area. What they lack in rules or having even numbers on both sides, they make up for with noise and energy. Tomsk wants to organise them. I reminded him that he still needs to visit Lelio. He can come back another time. The place I marked for you has lots of singing and dancing at nights, and I think you might be able to find some backing musicians there.}

Tomsk: {Alderney, can you add more footballs to your list of things to make?}

Alderney: {Negotiating. Muting you all.}

Kafana: {Wellington, please could you schedule an evening for us all to relax and attend a dance at the encampment Bulgaria found? It sounds lovely, and we could bring food and footballs as gifts.}

They were passing a clothes shop (“Signora Moda”) that had lots of noble women gossiping outside of it, when the sign of a jeweller's shop across the way caught her eye. The image was of a ring against the same diamond background as the Speckled Dove.

“Let’s go in there.” Kafana pointed.