The Astrologies

Chapter 2: Lighthall and Berekker

The sun sets earlier in the Valley, at least that's what people say. Certainly, the darkness is more complete. The lighting is haphazard, and the buildings are irregular, casting their shadows into countless passages and corners that seem to be made for lurking, skulking, or any number of other activities that unnerve honest citizens from the hill tops of Merendir.

Lighthall was not unnerved in the Valley. He had been dealing with these people for most of his life. He was alert, though. It was important to be on one's gaurd in the Valley, and even though Lighthall travelled with ten armed men, he studied his surroundings carefully. Some day, perhaps, the Mouse would sweep this whole area clean. It was a blemish on an otherwise glorious city. Lighthall had a few business interests here, but they offered meager profits. Mostly, the Valley was a place to find people to do unpleasant work for little pay, while they lived out their short lives steeped in booze and squalor.

They were approaching Lower Market Street, which was Lighthall's least favorite place in the Valley. The notion of a street devoted to commerce pleased him, but where Upper Market Street was much the same as any other commercial area, with shops and apartments side by side, on Lower Market the street was still used as originally intended. Few of the hawkers-- to call them merchants would demean many honest men-- contained their wares in shops, and even those who did maintain meager storefronts were not shy about joining the harassing throng. A man of Lighthall's standing attracted far more attention than most, and the shouts started well before he turned into the motley marketplace.

It was regrettable that Grainger, the leader of the Poorman's Union, considered himself a man of the people, and that this led him to maintain his mock court on Lower Market. It was even more regrettable that Lighthall was forced to deal with the man. Lighthall doubted that the men who ruled Silt, or the Far East, or even the barbarous priests in Fellnia, would allow an extortionist like Grainger to operate openly-- and even to be afforded some respect and unofficial responsibility.

Lighthall stared straight forward, walking quickly in the pocket that his men opened in the crowd. Any of the hawkers who made so bold as to wave some worthless trinket in Lighthall's face was pushed indelicately aside, as was anybody who did not move to the side of the street with sufficient haste to let them pass.

They walked over a flagstone with a worn engraving marking the spot where Lower Market would intersect Haderian Street, had not hasty and zealous construction obstructed passage to and from Lower Market in all but a few places. Lighthall started counting the stalls on his left. The entrance to the twelfth stall was given a relatively wide berth by the throng, despite the silver displayed there being a good cut above anything else in the market. A handful of men and women lounged near the entrance, looking disreputable but regrettably more alert than his own guards on the occassions that Lighthall surprised them on duty. It had been the tenth stall on his previous visit, and the sixteenth the time before. He now had no doubt now that the entrance to the Poorman's Union moved. The Poorman's Union was an institution whose very name was disingenous. Lighthall knew few men and women so wholly dedicated to enriching themselves, and with as much talent for doing so, as those in the Poorman's Union.

Grainger's guards made no move to impede him, though one of them rose and walked ahead of them, taking a lamp from a peg on the door and leading them through the storefront and into an unlit wooden passageway that took a handful of turns before merging into a more permanent brick hallway. Lighthall clenched his teeth. This was unlikely to be a pleasant meeting.