The Rogue Guardian

Chapter 2: Through the Lion's Gate

She'd never been outside the capital before but she found that in spite of Jaden's ominous note and bloody disappearance, in spite of her nightmares and inner turmoil and dream-leeched exhaustion, she loved Maenaer immediately.

The boat docked in a harbor larger even than the capital's, green with seaweed and lined with muddy docks. Taverns lined the first strip of solid land, the allies between them stinking of fish and old cider and worse. Ships unloaded heavy crates and freshly-caught river fish as well as herds of people and sailors, who seemed to be an entirely different species. In the first five minutes of stepping off her own boat and getting swept up in the swirling detritus of the docks Morane spotted three pickpockets, a crate that emitted a pungent odor of something she may have recognized from the dirtier corners of the lower capital, a man being pushed into one of the stinking allies by two people in hooded cloaks, and at least eight people carrying knives in broad daylight.

In short, it was exactly her kind of city.

"Looking for something?" The woman who asked was a sailor, or maybe just a hanger-around on the docks. In any case she had the bluish tattoos Morane was already beginning to recognize twisting like snakes around her wrists and neck, her hair a long braid that tapered to another snake swinging past her waist, and she stood in the middle of the crowd as though she fully expected everyone else to move themselves around her. They did.

She knew better than to trust anyone who bothered to ask a newcomer if they knew where they were going, and she flashed the woman a smile without answering. Looking for something-- someone-- yes, but she'd find him well enough on her own. With one hand clamped over the satchel hanging over her hip and the other holding her smallest, most easily concealed dagger in her palm, she strode towards the one gap in the row of grimy taverns. The dockyard branched out into the main road of the city, and even without a map an innate sense of the city's movement pulled her into its grip. The capital was miles away. Her problems may follow her here-- she had no doubt they would-- but it would take time, surely, for them to track her down. And when they did, how could anybody imagine it would be easy to track down a thief in a city she'd decided to claim?

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After a while hiking up the teeming road-- why the hell were all cities so inconveniently laid out on hills?-- she swung the satchel over her other shoulder and pulled the map she'd stolen from the boat out of her pocket. She suspected it was old, as the taverns marked along the docks looked much less dense than she'd observed, but she'd take anything that might turn out to be useful.

In thick, smudged ink the harbor was marked with wavy lines for water, and a darker outline for the docks. The taverns were given the single label of Sailor's Row, and the road she walked along now was Gate Road, leading predictably to the city gates she could glimpse at the top of the hill. The map's artist had added what she guessed to be a lion's head over them. Beyond them Lion Way appeared to cut straight through the city to the Back Gate, branching off only once at Governor's Court. A smaller branch of the road, labeled Gold Brick, lead to a parallel circle such as the one that indicated Governor's Court, but it was labeled with only a small drawing of a crown. Around and between these landmarks crisscrossed more roads and lanes and streets-- Scarlet Temple circled by Great Sun Way, Imperial Terrace intersected by Indigo Lane. Despite the embellished names all she could see of the city so far was brown brick and mud, though looking behind her at the ships bobbing on the clear blue water she could see something majestic, something worthy of having been Solangia's first capital.

Eyes stinging from sunlight on the waves, she turned back to the gates and kept walking. In one spot on the map was inked a tangled mesh of allies that appeared to have been scratched on without thought of where they may actually be located, too haphazard to have been planned, and the name scrawled in the center was simply The Maze.