Looking at the moonlit land beside the river, and only needing to occasionally dip the oars to correct their way, Anya found her mind wandering, particularly with regard to the city they were heading towards. She knew that New Yarrow was built upon the ruins of Yarrow the City, which had been destroyed by the great tidal wave of the Deluge, accidentally summoned by the last High King. But that was about it.
“Who rules New Yarrow?” she asked Shrub, at least in part to make a peace offering for tricking him. Shrub was always at his best when showing off that he knew more about something than anybody else.
The newt shrugged.
“There’s a mayor and a city council,” he said. “But they do whatever the League of Right-Minded Sorcerers tells them to do.”
“So the city’s not part of any kingdom?” Anya gestured at the fields to either side of the river. There was wheat growing in long swathes off into the full darkness, but even in just the moonlight, Anya could see it was taller and thicker and closer to harvesting than back home in Trallonia. She didn’t know it but these were the fabled breadbasket lands of the city, the soil unrivaled and the river providing all necessary water. The bread in New Yarrow was justifiably famous, but it owed its fame largely to the quality of the wheat from the river plains. “What about these farmlands?”
“I dunno.” Shrub’s bulbous eyes looked across the water without any particular interest. “I came by road. There’s a few places you have to stop at the borders of little kingdoms along the way, but the city rules everywhere close, I guess. Then there’s places like the inn back there—they look after themselves.”
“I see,” said Anya. She’d never thought much about it before, in the relative security of Trallonia. Even with the looming threat from her stepstepfather it had been a pretty safe and ordered place. But the breaking up of the High Kingdom into lots of little kingdoms and lawless areas was a thoroughly bad thing.
It made her think about the All-Encompassing Bill of Rights and Wrongs again, and the laws that were written within the Only Stone. Surely it would be a very good thing to bring back the Bill, and make sure the people in all the little kingdoms were treated fairly by their rulers.
“I suppose, if we do happen to see it … ” she muttered half to herself.
“See what?” asked Ardent, turning his head back without shifting from his self-appointed role as a figurehead.
“Nothing!” exclaimed Anya quickly. She didn’t want to say the name aloud, for fear of setting off Shrub. Or raising his hopes. “Um, can you spot the otters?”
“Of c-c-c-course,” barked Ardent. “One on the left and one on the right.”
Anya, who was sitting backwards to row, looked over her shoulder. Just as the dog had said, the two otters were easily keeping station with the boat, a little way ahead and to either side.
“Right a little,” said Smoothie. Anya dipped her left oar, and the boat turned. The current in the middle of the river was so strong she didn’t have to actually row at all, just drop in one or the other oar and hold it for a few moments.
With the boat almost steering itself, at least for the moment, Anya could devote herself to other problems. Foremost in her mind was Denholm. The frog prince had been uncharacteristically silent for a long time, and though he had eaten the water-skaters, it had not been with his usual appetite.
Anya rested the oars and picked up the little wicker cage. It was rather bent from the encounter with the giant, but still seemed all right. Denholm, however, didn’t.
“He does look off-color,” said Anya anxiously. She held the cage high, to get the moonlight on it. “Less green and more yellow than he did. Maybe it’s just the moon—”
“No,” said Smoothie. “He’s definitely changing color.”
Ardent came back to look. He sniffed at the cage carefully.
“Smells less like sorcery and more like a normal frog,” he announced after quite a lot of snuffling.
“I hope that doesn’t mean he’s sickening,” said Anya. “Or the transformation is having some bad effect.”
Denholm let out a croaking moan and turned his back.
“I’ll change you back as soon as I can,” said Anya, but this didn’t evoke a response. Smoothie kindly dribbled some river water on the frog, but he didn’t react to this either. Anya put the cage down near her feet and took up the oars again.
“How long till we get close to the city?” she asked.
Smoothie called out across the water, and listened intently to the peeping, yowling noise that came back.
“An hour or so,” she answered.
“What have we got to eat?” asked Ardent. “Besides that horrible magic biscuit?”
Anya raised an eyebrow. The biscuit had tasted like dry sawdust but she’d never known Ardent to disdain anything that was even remotely classed as food.
“Bread and meat, in the box,” said Shrub.
The bread was a dozen quite small rolls, fresh baked, and the meat was an equal number of roasted chops that had already been deboned. Anya rested her oars again and assembled the beef and rolls together. She ate two herself; Ardent ate four and would have had more if Anya had let him. In fact, he would have eaten the whole lot, and kept nosing the box even after the princess had wrapped the remaining rolls in the cloth the chops had come in, saving them for the return trip. Shrub and Smoothie declined the food, claiming they’d both eaten while away on their respective missions for boat and guides.
Anya saw the lights of the city not long after they ate, while they were still quite some distance away. At first it was just a glow above the dark water of the river ahead, a glow that spread and intensified as they continued along, borne westwards by the rushing current.
The princess hadn’t thought of it being light, or at least, so well lit. Gazing ahead, she realized that the glow could only be so great if almost every building and street was lit up with lanterns or torches or some other source of artificial illumination. She’d thought they could sneak along the river and canals in relative darkness and obscurity, but that was not going to be possible.
This raised the strong possibility that someone would recognize her and raise the alarm, or try to capture her themselves, in order to get the reward offered by the Duke. By now, the Duke’s agents might also know about the others with her, who were all quite recognizable too.
“We have to disguise ourselves,” she said. “I can keep my hood up. Smoothie … if you get some kind of clothes on, no one will look twice unless they’re up close. Is there anything in the boat?”
“An old sail under here,” said Ardent after a quick nose around. He pulled it out and dragged it back to Anya. It was just a rough piece of faded and patched canvas, but it served as a makeshift cloak for Smoothie. When it was drawn over her head, she looked like some poor beggar.
“What about me?” asked Shrub.
“You’ll just have to stay low in the boat,” said Anya. She couldn’t think of any way to disguise a huge, bright orange newt. “Ardent, you should lie low too. And if you do have to move, act as if you’re nervous and scared of being kicked. Not like a royal dog.”
Anya had been right to be careful. As they drew closer to the city, they encountered other boats, mostly crossing the river rather than going up or down. The farmland on either side began to be replaced by ramshackle warehouses, small businesses, and dwellings of all sizes, from tiny huts made of reeds to once-grand four-story houses. Nearly all the buildings had their own jetties or wharves, the shoreline bristling with them at all angles.
The other boats nearly all carried red, blue, or green lanterns at stern or prow, and the buildings without exception had long strings of differently colored lanterns stretched under their eaves and across to nearby trees or poles obviously erected to hold them up.
“Is this normal?” Anya asked Shrub. “All the lanterns?”
“More than usual,” said Shrub after a quick glance over the side. “Probably a festival. They have a lot of festivals in
the city.”
“Have we got a lantern anywhere?” asked Anya. “We don’t want to look different from the other boats.”
Shrub and Ardent fossicked around the bottom of the boat. Eventually, Ardent dragged a tin box over to Anya. She opened it and found several collapsed paper lanterns, a number of candle stubs, and three friction lights, or matches, as some people called them.
Anya stretched out a blue lantern, fixed the candle in place, and lit it with the second friction light. The first one had only fizzed when she dragged it along the gunwale, and smelled of sulfur. The third match she put behind her ear, in case it came in handy later on.
The blue lantern wasn’t very bright, which suited their requirements. There was a little platform for it on the bow, shielded on three sides, with a peg to keep it in place. Anya fixed it there, and went back to her oars, though she didn’t need to use them while the current sped the boat along.
Soon enough Anya had to start rowing to steer the boat, Smoothie softly calling out course corrections as she watched the two otters guiding them in. It was hard work to pull out of the current, but got a bit easier as they approached the shore.
Anya kept glancing over her shoulder; though she was confident in Smoothie’s directions, she wanted to see for herself as well. The line of buildings was now continual—there were no gaps at all that she could see—and there were more and more buildings behind the ones on the riverfront, outlined against the sky, or in evidence from the lanterns in their windows or roofs. Far more buildings than Anya had ever seen.
She also smelled the city now. It was like nothing she had smelled before, a mixture of smoke and odors that not only hung in the air but actively crawled up her nose and coated her tongue, occasionally intensifying to a point where the smell actually hurt before a slight brush of air dissipated the worst of the stench.
“You get used to the smell,” remarked Shrub from his spot near Anya’s feet. He’d seen her wrinkling her nose and making faces. “It’s a lot worse once you get in a bit.”
“Is it?” asked Ardent happily. He was crouched down as well, but his nose was up and sniffing wildly. “Fascinating! So many different combinations!”
“We’re approaching the entrance to the canal,” said Smoothie. “Diver is coming back for some reason … Slow down.”
Anya eased her oars out of the water and rested her forearms on her legs, while Smoothie bent over the side and whispered in otter to her cousin.
“There’s a guard on the lock gate where the river joins the canal,” reported Smoothie. “The lock is open. Apparently it’s always open, but there’s not normally a guard.”
“Bribe ’em,” said Shrub from the bottom of the boat. “Hold a coin up, and as you get close, throw it to the guard.”
“Oh,” said Smoothie. “We didn’t think of that. Swiftie’s already gone to—”
Up ahead they heard a faint cry and then a loud splash.
Anya twisted around to look. It took her a few seconds to make sense of what she was looking at. A shape moving in the water resolved itself as the two otters towing an unconscious guard to the muddy shore near the canal entrance. They dragged him or her up above the tidemark of flotsam and then returned to the water, yipping victoriously.
“We can go on now,” said Smoothie. Her teeth shone, moonlight reflecting from a happy smile.
Anya bent to her oars and the boat moved forward, into the canal.
It was darker almost immediately, the canal shadowed by the buildings on both sides. The lanterns, though plentiful, did not compare with the light of the silver moon. Every now and then, though, there was a line of lanterns stretched high across the canal, rather than just strung over doorways or windows. Anya hunched down as they passed under these, and tugged at her hood to keep it well forward.
There were also people. Every building had a landing with a door behind it, and some of these doors were open, as were the windows above. Though it had to be close to midnight now, there were still city dwellers looking out, or drinking on their landings, or fishing (usually while also drinking).
A few of these canal-side folk called out greetings as Anya rowed past. She didn’t answer, afraid her voice would give her away, but waved with one hand. None called out in alarm or shouted about the strange occupants of the boat, but each time Anya tensed expecting trouble to begin.
No one noticed the two otters, either—and if they did, they kept it to themselves. Though the otters rarely came into the canals in the current times, people still told stories about the huge Yarrow River otters and how they had once kept the peace on the river with tooth and claw, and by extension, kept the peace everywhere the river flowed, including the city canals. If the giant otters were about, sensible people left them to their business.
Anya was particularly tense as they passed under the next bridge. It was roofed and had high sides, but it would still be possible for someone to hang over and look down straight at them, seeing Shrub. Presuming that the inhabitants of New Yarrow didn’t see huge orange newts every day, this would probably lead to a commotion, would attract guards and perhaps Gerald the Heralds and then certainly raven spies and the like from the sorcerers of the League.
This made Anya belatedly wonder who those sorcerers actually were, and how many were located in New Yarrow. She knew about the Duke, of course, and had heard about the Grey Mist, but that was all.
“Hey, Shrub,” she whispered after they were past the bridge. “How many sorcerers belong to the League anyway? And how many might be in the meetinghouse?”
“I dunno,” said Shrub, answering with possibly his most frequent response. “Most of ’em only come in for meetings, they have ’em at the same time as the city festivals … ”
Anya looked back at all the lanterns strung across the canal, and in the windows and doorways of every building.
“Like now?” she asked softly.
“Maybe,” said Shrub. “I mean, the city has a lot of festivals. Stands to reason the League wouldn’t have a meeting every time.”
“And how many sorcerers have you heard about?”
“Let’s see. There’s the Grey Mist; she’s kind of like the caretaker. She’s always in the meetinghouse—that’s why she was the one who transformed me, Then there’s your Duke Rikard—”
“He’s not my Duke Rikard,” interrupted Anya.
Shrub swiveled one eyeball to look at her, then continued.
“Ahuren the Nightgaunt, he comes from the mountains. Grandmother Ghoul, oh, she’s a horror. I seen her once. They say she lives in the old necropolis outside the city and she looks like they dug her up from there. Yngish, Lord of the Waves, he rules the pirates that live on the Crooked Isle in the river mouth. That’s, let me see, five. I think there might be six altogether, though.”
“Let’s hope they’re not all there right now,” said Anya. “If they are, we have to avoid them. Like I said, sneak in, steal the ingredients, and sneak out.”
Everyone nodded. Anya did too, very firmly. She hoped she looked more confident than she felt. The whole being-in-charge-of-a-questing-party thing was very stressful and she was really looking forward to the time when she could just curl up with her books again in the library. Different books, though. Not ones about learning sorcery.
They continued along the canal, Anya rowing slowly and carefully. She was rather disgusted by the amount of rubbish in the water. Almost every time her oars lifted, they came up with bits of rotten stuff that had just been thrown in and was so decomposed it was hard to recognize, except when a putrescent pumpkin floated past, or what was left of some large fish or perhaps a dolphin, one pallid eye bobbing just above the surface. Once, an oar got stuck and lifted up part of something she was afraid was a dead body.
“What’s wrong with this city!” she hissed after disturbing a particular noxious mat of rotten vegetable peelings that was almost as big as their boat.
“Like I said,” said Shrub, “no one’s really in charge. Mayor and c
ouncil are afraid to do anything in case the sorcerers don’t like it. So they don’t do anything.”
“Someone should do something,” Anya growled.
She rowed on in silence for a while after that, thinking. It was easy to say “someone should do something” but rather more difficult to put it into practice.
“Big group of people up ahead,” warned Smoothie. “Small ones.”
“A group of small people?” Anya looked over her shoulder. “Oh, children! Young ones. What are they doing there?”
There were half a dozen children sitting on one of the regular small landing stages that adjoined almost every canal-facing door on every building. As Anya rowed closer, one of them stood up and held out her cupped hands.
“Food, kind people. Food for the orphans?”
Anya hesitated, shipped her oars, and let the boat coast alongside the small landing till she was level with the begging child. It was a girl, aged perhaps six or seven, wearing a short robe that had once been a flour sack and still bore fading red stenciled letters that spelled out Weshlig Mill. The other children were no better clothed, and they all looked very undersized and scrawny.
None got up as the boat stopped, their lack of curiosity and general air of exhaustion a stark contrast from the village children Anya was used to seeing.
“Food, kind people,” said the flour-sack girl again, but not as if she expected to get any.
“Here,” said Anya, handing up the remnants of their bread and meat. This did attract a response, with the children moving closer and shuffling about, till they were beaten back by the flour-sack girl.
“Wait your turns,” she snapped. “I’ll see it divided fair.”
“What are you doing here?” asked Anya. “Are you all really orphans?”
“Good as,” said the girl, intently dividing the bread into tiny but equal-size portions on her lap. “Might be some who have parents somewhere, but none that are any use.”