After some testing with her feet and fingertips, she found a loose flagstone in the main pathway between the stalls and, flexing mightily, levered it up and out. She scooped earth from beneath and then carefully placed the Scalvert’s Stone in the hollow. Covering it with the dirt, she replaced the flagstone and took a stiff and shedding stable-broom to the area to ensure it looked undisturbed.
She stared down at it for a few moments, all her hopes centered on this small stone, buried like a secret heart in Parkin’s Livery.
No, not a livery anymore.
This place was Viv’s.
She looked around.Herplace. Not a temporary stop or a spot to sling her bedroll for one night. Hers.
The brisk evening air swirled through the hole in the roof, so for tonight, at least, it would probably feel like any other night under the stars. Viv glanced up at the loft and the ladder leading to it. She tested one of the lower rungs with a foot, and it shattered like balsa. She snorted, unstrapped Blackblood, and with both hands, tossed it into the loft, startling a bunch of pigeons that escaped through the roof. Gazing after it for a moment, she then unfurled her bedroll in one of the stalls. There’d certainly be no campfire, and there were no lanterns to speak of, but that was all right.
In the dimming light she surveyed the interior, amidst horse apples of antiquity and the dust of neglect. She didn’t know much about buildings, but it was clear that this one needed an unbelievable amount of work.
But at the end of it? Something she built up, rather than cut down.
It was ridiculous, of course. A coffee shop? In a city where nobody even knew what coffee was? Until six months ago,she’dnever heard of it, never smelled or tasted it. On the face of it, the whole endeavor was ludicrous.
She smiled in the dark.
When at last she lay back on her bedroll, she started to list her tasks for the following day, but didn’t make it past the third.
She slept like the dead.
2
Viv woke in the predawn indigo to the growing murmur of the city outside. The pigeons cooed in the loft where they’d returned to their nests. She rose and checked on the flagstone above the Scalvert’s Stone. Undisturbed, of course. Gathering a few things, she slipped into the street, chewing the last of her hardtack and inhaling the moist morning scent of shadows giving way to sun. She felt limber and coiled, like she was up on her toes, ready to break into a sprint.
Across the street, Laney had swapped her broom for a bowl of peas and sat on a three-legged stool shelling them. They traded amiable nods, and then Viv locked up and left in the direction of the river.
She found herself humming as she walked.
* * *
In the receding morning fog,Viv made her way to the shipyards clinging to the bank of the river. The place was alive with the clatter of hammer and saw, shouts muffled by the mist. What she wanted was fixed in her mind, but she didn’t expect to find it right away. She could be patient, though. In her experience, you had to be. After long hours spent reconnoitering or staking out a beast’s lair, Viv had made peace with the passage of time.
She bought some apples from a rattkin urchin hawking them from a burlap sack, found a stack of crates out of the way, and settled in to observe.
The boats here weren’t large—mostly keelboats and little fishing boats best suited to the river. A dozen or so were up on the long quay, attended by small knots of shipwrights, being scraped or tarred or repaired. She watched them as they worked, keeping an eye out for what she wanted. The crews ebbed and swelled as the morning progressed.
Viv was on her last apple when she found what she’d been looking for.
Most of the crews worked in twos and threes, big men with big voices, scrambling over the hulls and hollering to one another as they did.
A few hours on, though, a man of smaller stature appeared, hauling a wooden box of tools half as large as himself. His ears were long, body wiry, skin leathery and olive, with a flat cap pulled low over his brow.
You didn’t see hobs often in cities. Humans disparagingly called them ‘pucks’ and shunned them, so they liked to keep to themselves.
Viv could relate, but she was more difficult to intimidate.
He labored alone at a small dinghy, while shipwrights and dockworkers alike avoided him. She watched his diligent, fastidious work. Viv was no woodworker, but she could appreciate craft. His tools were meticulously organized, sharp and well cared for. There was a deliberate economy to his every motion as he used drawing knife and plane and other things she didn’t recognize to shape a new gunwale.
She polished off her apple and watched him at his work, trying not to be too conspicuous about it. Lurking was a well-used part of her skill set, after all.
It was noon when he tidily replaced his tools and unwrapped a lunch from his toolbox, and Viv approached.
He squinted up at her from under his cap, but said nothing as she loomed over him.
“It’s nice work,” said Viv.
