Jīn-sè Mèn was a frontier town, and it had a frontier town's sense of impermanence to it. The buildings, even the bridges over the rivers and creeks, all seemed to be made of sticks and paper. A good storm, Wen thought, will blow this place apart. And probably does.
He stumbled as he stepped onto the bridge spanning a narrow canal. It wasn't just the fog, though gods knew that was thick enough; the real problem was that he was still having trouble adjusting to being one-eyed. It was a shame the Dragon Emerald Eye was so distinctive, because there was no way to wear it and not immediately be identified as Wen Xia, pirate of the Great Eastern Sea. It was, he had discovered on his journey north, possible to be too good at developing a fearsome reputation.
On the brighter side, the stories he had heard about himself in the weeks since coming ashore had all made him seem much more like Chin Gwai, in terms of physical stature, than like himself. That was good, if it meant that nobody would identify the straggle-bearded one-eyed wanderer with the mighty pirate and scourge of Prince Zhu Yizan, the Notorious 'Bloody Sheet' Wen.
On the far side of the bridge, lanterns dotted the fog with soft circles of yellow, orange and red. There was warmth there, Wen guessed, and possibly hot wine. Though he missed Pocapetl's fiery southern stuff—after months of drinking mescal he found baijiu just a little bit bland—tonight he was prepared to settle for anything that would warm his fingers and toes.
He found himself on a street exclusively populated with wine-shops and brothels. No doubt about it: this was a good place to retire to. Wen picked the largest and most gaudy of the former, and walked in.
A few people turned to look as he came through the door, but they were sitting closest to the doorway, and probably there precisely because they liked to look at everyone coming in. Everyone else—and there were easily fifty people in here, maybe as many as a hundred—paid him no notice at all.
This included the staff, and it wasn't until he followed a serving-girl back to the far side of the main room, and found the bar, that he was able to get the hot drink he was after. This inconvenience turned out be fortunate, because as he cradled the cheap pottery cup in his hands, enjoying the heat and feeling his fingers begin to move again, Wen heard a man a few chairs away from him complaining about how absurdly difficult it was proving to get himself accepted into the Green Turban Movement, even though Jīn-sè Mèn was his home and didn't that mean anything to Chin Gwai, who had made the city his new base of operations?
Wen, shifting closer to the man, allowed as how he had considered becoming a rebel himself, and was it really that difficult to be accepted into Chin's movement? Certainly that hadn't been the case a few months ago.
"It's stupid," the man said. "I see lots of Green Turbans, swaggering around the city. So somebody's getting in. Why not me?"
Perhaps if you bathed more frequently, Wen offered silently. Aloud he said, "So it's no use my presenting myself at—well, where would I present myself at?"
Chin, the fragrant one informed him, had taken a mansion on the south side of the city, on a hill looking down over the harbor that was one day going to make this city, the Golden Gateway, even more famous than its mines were doing today. "You'd have to be blind to miss it," the man said. Then, "I mean, completely blind. Not like you... oh, the hell with it." And the man slumped, frowning, to the floor, drunk as a magistrate. He'd left his drink behind, and since Wen had finished his own, he helped himself to it. No sense in letting it go to waste.
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