His eyes brightened. ‘Then you’re in luck. I probably have the last case in the whole city.’
The bottles were hidden behind the bar in a locked strongbox chained to the floor. The proprietor fumbled with a ring of keys that hung from his belt, then unlocked it and removed a bottle with an exaggerated show of care. The cork squeaked as he pulled it free with his teeth. He swirled the contents of the bottle, allowing the aroma to waft into his flaring, hairy nostrils.
‘Only the finest,’ he purred as he trickled out the tiniest of portions into a glass tumbler, chipped but reasonably clean. He was about to add some water into it when Ash held his hand over the glass.
‘And leave the bottle,’ Ash told him.
Suspicion, suddenly. ‘It costs half an eagle for a bottle of this stuff. It isn’t watered down already, you know.’
The coin skittered across the bar, turning every head in the room.
The proprietor licked his lips. He took the gold eagle and hefted it for weight. His tongue poked out and he dabbed it against the coin.
‘Very good,’ he proclaimed with satisfaction. He left the bottle where it stood and took out a chisel and small mallet from beneath the bar. The eagle, like all eagles, was stamped with two deep lines across its face, one crossing the other so as to divide it into quarters. He aligned the end of the chisel with one of the lines and pounded once, hard, with the mallet. The coin broke in two. He scooped up one half, returned the other.
Ash swirled the contents of the glass for a moment, took a sniff, then downed it.
The swarthy woman was studying him with her kohl-lined eyes. She looked Alhazii, he saw. Her eyes seemed overly fascinated with his skin.
‘What brings you to Bilge Town, stranger?’ she asked of him, and her voice was deep and rich, and it made him think of dusk.
‘My feet,’ he said, and threw the fiery liquid to the back of his throat, and refilled his glass to the brim.
Ash hired a room for the night, a dreary upstairs cubicle barely large enough for its dusty bed, where he left his sword and nothing else. He went back downstairs, and sat in a corner of the taproom with his bottle of Cheem Fire, where he began the slow but appealing process of drinking himself into the ground.
He spoke to no one all that long evening, and the look of him told them all to leave him be. The Cheem Fire soothed the pain in his skull, but most of all numbed him to himself. When the proprietor finally called for time, Ash found himself unwilling to climb to his empty room just yet. The drink had made him melancholy. He knew he would find sleep difficult, and would dream of things he would rather not be dreaming.
Ash finished off the glass in his hand and banged it down on the table. He took the bottle with him as he gathered his longcoat from the cloakstand and put on his hat, then tugged the door open.
Outside, the rain had turned to sleet, and the wind was tossing it about so that it stung as it struck his face. It was bitterly cold even with the coat fastened tight about him, and the hat tied firmly to his head. The tide was washing in with the high swells, and much of the lower Shoals was submerged in a foot or so of churning water. Ash clutched his bottle of Cheem Fire and staggered down through the dark shingle street towards it.
He tracked along the water’s edge, negotiating the shacks that perched in his way. Once or twice he stumbled, had to catch himself before he fell into the surf. He walked until the dwellings petered out, and the slope ended at a bluff that ran down into the sea.
He sat on the flattened top of a boulder with his feet dangling above the lapping waves and the rock smooth and chilly against his haunches. He stared out at the wildness of the sea, watching the sleet falling as though from nowhere. In the distant darkness, the Lansway stretched towards the far continent, and the great walls of the Shield stood tall and black. Explosions flickered across the scene occasionally, their low grumbles reaching him a moment later.
Ash wondered how much longer they had left to them. It certainly