The Price {Completed}

Chapter Twenty-Six

We walked aimlessly for a few hours, going from place to place, trying to find lodgings. Ferdinand refused to talk about what happened at his parent's house, throwing himself so feverishly into his task of asking after a place to rent that it became impossible to talk to him beyond a few words. At any rate, we had no luck. Every door we knocked on either never was answered, or the landlord quickly told us there was no room before shutting the door again and leaving us with the sound of bolts being drawn.

It wasn't until the afternoon that I finally worked up the courage to suggest the one place I knew that might be willing to house two suspiciously homeless young people.

At the bottom of Rumonin there ran the wide and deep Garrond River, cutting off the slums from the working poor. It was not at all the sort of place that anyone would choose to visit, but a few of the corps girls who hadn't had the pleasure of a home before joining the company, had told me of the boarding houses run by criminals that were cheap and open to anyone with the coin.

Ferdinand looked skeptical at first, but we were already running out of time. The sun sank lower in the sky with each passing minute, and the temperature dropped with it. I wore his coat, and he'd been shivering non-stop since our retreat from his parent's home. He wouldn't last very long once night fell, which meant we needed somewhere, anywhere, to shelter in.

Luckily, our wandering left us near enough to the river, and we had only a half-hour's walk to reach the section where the boarding houses crowded the water like rats coming to drink.

We chose the building that looked least likely to collapse. It still didn't look promising. Half of the roof sunk haphazardly, and the walls were made of gray and splitting planks of wood. The grimy windows were riddled with holes that had been stopped up with rags until there was more cloth than glass. Only one door entered into the building, and above it there was a long sign fastened to the wall. It was too faded to read until we drew close, and I could see the black lettering. 'Wellington Lodging House'. The building bore some resemblance to the temporary inns that were set up when the city was first booming one hundred years ago. They weren't meant to last for very long, and most were torn down a few years later. This however, still stood, standing testimony to the ability of man's unbreakable knack for mending things to get more out of something than it could stand.

When we tried the door, it was locked. The places were all run by criminals of one sort or another, so it was safe to assume their cliental ran in the same circles. With the boarding houses pressed so close upon each other, it probably was wise to keep all doors locked and guarded.

Ferdinand knocked on the door and then rubbed his knuckles on his jacket. "Splinters everywhere," he muttered.

We only waited a few seconds before an old man opened the door. Before even hearing our greeting, he held out his hand and snarled at us with a deeply wrinkled face. "Twelve Ruma for a room," he said. "Another if you want your laundry done."

"Twelve? That's steep even for a hotel in the center of the city," Ferdinand said.

The old man's lip curled and he began to slam the door. Ferdinand, quick as lightning, jammed his foot in the way.

"We'll pay nine. It's all we have," Ferdinand said.

The old man must have believed him, for after a brief growl he opened the door and stepped out of the way. We walked into the lodging house, which was darker than night. The putrid scent of the river pervaded even inside, and added to the stale smell of used breath and stagnant bodies. As my eyes adjusted to the gloom, a tiny room with a counter at one end swam into view. The old man saddled up behind it, sitting on a stool and scrabbling around with some yellowed papers in front of him.