WINDED

  By the time she’d left Old Moll’s, the sun had hung low in the sky. Now, as Fenn trekked across town toward The Emporium, it was dark enough that she had to squint, and the Duke’s men were out in the streets lighting lamps with their torches. Up on the Hillock, anyway. Down below, the light came from fiercely smoking bundles of burning pine.  There seemed to be a concerted effort on the part of the citizenry to get behind closed doors before nightfall. The vague feeling of menace that had pervaded the town by day was now, as...

“You came,” Old Moll rasped as Fenn stepped across the threshold, last in line behind several others. “And I see you’ve cleaned up.”  The old woman took a puff on a long, thin cigar pinched between her middle and forefinger and flicked a glance Fenn over square spectacles as she said it. Her eight free fingers went on wrapping a warm loaf of rye in linen while the cigar drew lines in the air above it. The man at the head of the line handed Old Moll a tied bundle of wheat stalks in exchange for his bread and sauntered...

When Fenn left the Mapmaker’s Guild, the first thing she did was retrace her steps—but only insofar as they would lead her back to Mossy’s Inn. Only from there did she have the faintest idea of how to find Old Moll’s. After that, she found the milliner’s easily enough. It stood out, painted bright red and green, with an iron sign in the shape of a hat swinging above the door. Hatter’s, it read. The legion of hats lining the windows was striking.  She turned left as she’d been told. As her path took her farther from the Hillock and...

Fenn shook her head. “That—that’s not possible!” The mapmaker shrugged. “There are three possibilities,” he said, holding up two bony fingers and a thumb. He folding them down in turn as he listed. “You’re mad—” down went the thumb. “You’re lying—” the middle finger followed. “Or you’ve crossed the sea.” He held up a closed fist.  Fenn was shaking her head more and more emphatically, and tears threatened once again. “I’m not lying!” she protested. “I’ve never crossed the sea! I’ve never even seen a boat!”  “It is not my place to judge,” the mapmaker said gently. “But I know...

The inside of the Mapmaker’s Guild was as messy as its outside was neat. Fenn tried and failed to take it all in. It became immediately evident why the mapmaker had stumbled on his way to the door. The floor was all but uncrossable, and that was assuming you could see—which he clearly could not.  There were no less than eight tables of various shapes and sizes strewn with maps, books of maps, fragments of maps, maps in progress, and maps so faded as to be almost unintelligible. There were the tools of the mapmaking trade: ink-pots and quills, sticks...