The alley terminated in a sloping pile of rubble and detritus, but just before the foothills of that mountain there was an alcove in the left wall. A small sputtering flame danced in a blue and red glass bowl above it.

“You see? I told you he’d know the score. He never lets me down!” Miter stuck his thumbs in the back of his trousers and stood with one foot turned out in front of him.

“We still don’t know that this is the place, Miter. What if they’ve moved on?”

“Only one way to find out, Sim,” Miter clapped his friend on the shoulder. “Come on then, let’s see who’s home.”
Miter ducked his head into the alcove and rapped on the door while Sim idly kicked fragments of shattered masonry back onto the pile. A small hatch in the door opened and a small pair of eyes looked through at them. A faint, hollow twanging drifted out into the alley.

“Ah… a good friend told me that Aesh might be home?” Miter ventured. The hatch slid shut instantly, with a precise click.

“Mage’s Luck,” Sim growled, “Let’s get out of here before a Knight passes by.”

“Language, Sim,” Miter chided as he knocked on the door again. The hatch reopened, and the small pair of eyes looked out, impassive. Sim looked over his shoulder sullenly, and suspected they were a child’s eyes. Miter held up his hand and with practiced dexterity folded a Creditor’s Note into a small paper butterfly, which he balanced on one finger in front of the watching eyes. “Aesh?”

“Aesh,” a child’s voice replied in the affirmative. Sim spat onto the pile. It was a girl child. The hatch slid shut, slowly this time, and bolts could be heard drawing back. Miter gently pushed the door open, and the hollow twanging drifted out to fill the alley.

“Well my boy,” Miter said as he smoothed his leather waistcoat free of wrinkles, “let us venture inwards and onwards!” Sim tugged his felt cap low, and turned the velvet of his jacket collar up around his neck while nodding, a hungry look in his eyes.

They stepped into the doorway and the girl child, perhaps no more than 12 and small for her age at that, closed the door quickly but politely behind them. She slid the bolts into place and pointed them through another doorway into a long, low ceilinged room. The twanging sound was more audible, accompanied by faint, jangling beats. Miter bent to proffer the paper butterfly to the girl, but she just waved the two men on towards the other room.

The low room smelled strongly of pora leaf smoke. The room was filled with tables long and short, benches and chairs. Sporadically spaced lamps flickered, the flames enshrined in red and blue globes of cheap glass, the quality produced by apprentices and trainees. Maybe half of the seats were occupied, but everyone in the room had a steaming cup of a dark, pungent tea. The scent of pora smoke seemed to come from those cups of tea.

At the far end of the room on a small raised platform, two young girls in loose, scarcely concealing robes played the hollow twanging music that resonated in the room. The taller one held a snakeskin tori, and her hands moved like poetry over the three fat strings as Sim watched and frowned. The shorter girl beat a small daja, an instrument that appeared to be the child of a tambourine and bongos, in time with the tori’s haunting notes. As Miter tucked his thumbs into the back of his trousers and set off towards the stage, the tori player drew a large rounded bow from beside her seat and drew it across the strings. Sim clenched his teeth as the keening filled the room, and followed Miter without taking his hungry eyes off the girl.

Miter stopped near the stage and bowed his head to a short older man already spreading to fat, and sporting a thick woolly beard. He held out his hand with the paper butterfly offered in his palm. “A friend, a very good friend, told me that Aesh might be home?” Sim watched Miter and the short man intently. Without realizing he did so, Miter wet his lips with the tip of his tongue.

The fat man blew softly onto the butterfly, causing it to rock side to side in Miter’s hand. He grinned widely, and then looked into Miter’s eyes. His pupils were dark grey, a grey that seemed to swirl like clouds to Miter. His voice was husky, and pitched in key with the tori, “Aesh is always home,” he chuckled. “Aesh is always home,” he added with sudden finality as Miter began to grin. Sim jerked his head back to the stage. The girls sat as still as statues, hands neatly folded in their laps.

Sim felt the hackles on his neck rise. He never heard the music stop.