Chapter 2 – Smoke in the Fog
The air outside smelled like wet stone and pipe smoke.
Vale pulled his coat tighter as he stepped out of the building. The door closed behind him with a dull thud, and the creaking sign above the frame rattled in the wind. The building was three stories tall, leaning slightly to one side, wedged between a shuttered bakery and a pawnshop with barred windows.
The street was narrow, uneven, and slick with last night's rain. Morning fog clung to the cobbles and made everything look hazy and unreal.
He didn't walk quickly.
Every movement still felt borrowed, like he was inhabiting someone else's stride. His legs moved with purpose, but the world they moved through wasn't his.
A few people passed him by—shoulders hunched, eyes low. A woman in a bonnet dragged a squeaky cart of firewood. A child in patched wool coughed into a sleeve. A man in a long coat leaned against a lamppost, muttering to himself between puffs of smoke.
No one greeted him. No one smiled.
That suited him just fine.
He paused near the corner where the street forked. A worn wooden sign overhead read:
Barley Row ←
To Crossbridge ↑
Vale glanced both ways. The left fork curved downhill toward the docks, judging by the smell of salt and tar in the wind. The right path led uphill into fog and faint tower spires.
He chose uphill.
The street widened slightly, revealing more of the city.
Row houses stacked close together. A rag vendor shouting in a hoarse voice. A man sweeping soot from the steps of a printing shop. In the distance, a carriage rattled by, pulled by two large black horses, its wheels splashing through puddles.
Vale's eyes scanned the details.
Clothing. Speech. Movement. Currency.
Everything mattered.
A boy handed out folded news-sheets from a wooden box marked 2 pence. Vale dropped one of his copper coins in the box and took a paper without a word.
The ink was uneven. The letters printed in blocky type. The front page headline read:
"Fires Claim South Mill. No Cause Determined. Fourth This Month."
He tucked the paper under his arm.
No fire brigade, then. Or none that worked well. It reminded him of London in the 1800s—the soot, the fire, the silence.
He continued walking.
Eventually, he reached a modest square lined with gas lamps and a wrought-iron fence. Inside the fence was a fountain, long dry, and a statue of a robed man holding a lantern. Moss crawled up the pedestal. The plaque had faded, but Vale could still make out the inscription:
"Let not the Fog blind thee, child of the Flame."
Flame.
He turned that word over in his mind.
Another man might've dismissed it as metaphor. But something about the phrasing was old—ritualistic. He filed it away.
A small bell rang across the square.
He turned and spotted a tea stall—nothing more than a cart and canvas tarp, set up beside a broken drain. A short man stood behind it, wiping his hands on an apron.
"Morning brew's half pence," the man said.
Vale stepped up.
"What's in it?"
"Leaf scrap, bit of nettle, bit of brownroot." The man gave a yellow grin. "Keeps the bones working. First cup for the pale ones is free."
Vale raised an eyebrow. "Pale ones?"
"You lot. The sickly-looking. Comes from the northeast. Gutter district." He gestured to Vale's face. "Don't have the red like us."
Vale touched his cheek without meaning to. "Red?"
The man chuckled. "Color in your skin, lad. You look like you haven't seen sun in a year."
"Just got in," Vale murmured. "Long trip."
"That so?" The man handed him a tin cup. "Then you'll be needing the warmth."
The tea was bitter. Earthy. But it calmed the gnawing in his gut.
As he drank, he listened.
Nearby, two old men sat on crates, arguing over coin weights. A girl offered hand-stitched gloves from a sack. A constable walked past with a revolver at his side—dull gray metal, well-worn but oiled.
Vale took mental notes.
Firearms were present but not advanced. No signs of military patrols—just city lawmen. The clothes varied by wealth. The people spoke fast, clipped, sometimes in slang.
"Currency," he murmured to himself, watching another man hand over coins. "Copper's the smallest. Then silver. Then gold."
He recalled the pouch he'd found.
Eight pence. Two silver. One gold.
That meant:
15 pence = 1 selver.
10 selver = 1 gold.
Roughly 150 pence per gold.
And if a paper cost 2 pence and tea was half a pence, then a gold was worth a month of meals.
The man behind the cart spoke again. "You looking for work?"
"Maybe."
"Plenty of scraps down by the blackline—factories always need hands. Or if you're lucky, you find a Patron. Somebody with coin and cause."
"Not many causes I care for," Vale replied.
The man barked a laugh. "Aye, then you'll do fine."
Vale walked on.
He passed a shop with faded paint that read: Branel & Sons – Gunsmith. The window held an old revolver, two long-barrel rifles, and a box of lead rounds.
He stepped inside.
The air smelled of oil and metal.
Behind the counter stood a thick-necked man with gray in his beard and fingers blackened from soot. His eyes narrowed at Vale.
"You lookin' or buyin'?"
"Looking," Vale said calmly.
"Don't waste my time, then."
"I need something small. Concealable."
The man reached under the counter and pulled out a box. Inside lay a short-barreled iron revolver—blunt-nosed, six chamber, worn handle.
"Ten selvers. Comes with ten rounds."
Vale didn't answer immediately.
He studied the weapon. Its weight. Its age.
"This city dangerous?" he asked.
The man's face didn't change.
"If you have to ask," he said, "you don't know how to walk yet."
Vale nodded once. "Then I'll come back when I can afford to."
As he stepped back onto the street, the fog had begun to thin.
The city stretched out wider now—rows of slanted rooftops, chimneys coughing smoke into the sky, people moving like ants beneath a gray dome. He could feel it pressing in. The cold. The silence between words. The way people stared just a second too long.
This place had history. Old walls. Older scars.
---
By midday, he'd wandered into a neighborhood where the roads twisted like vines and the houses were stacked higher, more chaotic. Brick gave way to wood. Chimneys to tarps. Smoke to rot.
He passed a group of children tossing stones into a broken barrel. One of them watched him with bright yellow eyes. Not amber. Not gold. Yellow. Unnatural.
Vale didn't stare.
But he made a note of it.
A second child crouched by the wall, tracing patterns into the dirt with a piece of chalk. Circles. Dots. Lines. Repeating.
He moved on.
Eventually, he found himself outside a door with flaked red paint and a sign that read:
"The Nine-Tooth Inn."
He stepped inside.
The tavern was half-full. Low ceiling. Dirty glasses. Men drinking mid-day. A woman swept in the corner, her broom scraping over cracked floorboards.
Vale approached the bar.
The innkeeper was a bald man with a scar down his cheek.
"You rent rooms?" Vale asked.
"Coin first."
Vale set down one silver.
The man raised an eyebrow, nodded, and handed him a rusted key.
"Upstairs. Third on the left. Don't bring trouble. Don't speak names you don't understand."
Vale pocketed the key.
"I never speak more than I have to."
The man grunted approval.
---
The room upstairs was small. Dusty. But dry.
Vale shut the door behind him, locked it, and sat down on the cot.
He removed his coat and pulled up his sleeve.
Still there.
The same thin line on his wrist—a black vein, faint, barely pulsing. Not a vein, exactly. It didn't feel like blood. It didn't hurt.